A Child of the Orient

The following year I was sent to Paris for my studies, where I was to remain three whole years, without returning home; yet on my first summer holidays my mother changed her min...

It was natural that I should bring Nashan to Djimlah, and that she should become the fourth of our group. Mechmet and his brother Shaadi also often came to spend the day at Djim...

On our return from the monastery we had the great joy of finding my brother at home, back that very day from Europe. I was so delighted I could hardly sit still. My happiness wa...

By the Western world Turkish men are held in low estimation: it may be with reason, and it may be merely out of ignorance. One of the episodes of my life deals with a Turkish ma...

It was dreary going away to Paris without my Lady of the Fountain, especially since I had made up my mind to have her with me; but it was a well-deserved punishment for attachin...

It was in meeting again the hotel proprietor, when I went back to pay him my debt, that I first realized what a summer in the land of promise had done for me. He did not know me...

This night of terrors proved my last adventure in Turkey. Soon afterwards events began to force me to feel that in order to live my own life, as seemed right to me, I must flee...

Shortly after Semmeya’s wedding an epidemic of typhoid fever swept over Constantinople. Owing to our unsanitary drainage conditions such epidemics were not rare. All four of us...

Yet after I had come to believe that these conclusions of mine were the right ones--and at the present moment I still believe them to be so--I did not rise, pack my trunk and re...

My visits to Djimlah continued, and her daring spirit was a continual delight to me. I had never seen her afraid of anything, and she did pretty much as she chose. One day when...

As I look back on those years of close intimacy with Turkish children, and our various discussions and squabbles, I cannot but feel thankful for opportunities denied most childr...

It was from curiosity rather than from friendship that I accepted Semmeya Hanoum’s pressing invitation to spend a few days with her, shortly after Nashan’s wedding. As I said in...

My father was in the habit of taking me with him whenever he went for a long walk. Generally other men went with us, and their conversation consisted of politics, a subject whic...

There is no use pretending that there has ever existed the least sense of fraternity between the Greeks and the Turks. They had their quarters and we had ours. They brought thei...

Gone though he was, his influence over my life was never to go entirely--in spite of radical modifications. He had enriched my childhood with things beyond my age, yet things wh...

The earthquake subsided, and little by little people began to forget its terrors. Some who had old-fashioned houses plucked up courage to enter them, then to abandon their tents...

Our return journey to Constantinople was uneventful. There we found our mother, who had decided to spend the winter in the town and not on the island. I was not supposed to be w...

I did miss Djimlah and Chakendé and Nashan, yet the _halaïc_ made up for a great deal, and what is more, knowing now that some day she would go to heaven and meet her Greek love...

Owing to certain circumstances, I was not living with my immediate family, but was under the care of my father’s uncle. He and I lived on one of those islands that rise high abo...

It was a patriarchal home, this first harem into which I entered. It consisted of the old _hanoum_, who was the first wife, and head of the women’s part of the household, six ot...

“Take me with you, father,” I begged, thinking of the pleasure of being with him more than of going into a Turkish home. He acceded to my request, actuated by the same motive as...

On the morning of my fifth birthday, just as I awoke from sleep, my grand-uncle came into my room, and, standing over my bed, said with a seriousness little befitting my age: