A Turkish Woman's European Impressions

About a week ago,[22] whilst you were writing your first letter to me and speaking of the beautiful Eastern sun that was shining through your latticed window, what a different e...

It is to-morrow that I sail. In a week from to-day, I shall again be away yonder amongst those whom I have always felt so near, and who I know have not forgotten me.

I am indeed a _désenchantée_. I envy you even your reasonable illusions about us. We are hopelessly what we are. I have lost all mine about you, and you seem to me as hopelessly...

You will say perhaps I am reminded of the Bosphorus everywhere, just as Maurice Barres is reminded of Lorraine in every land he visits. Yet how would it be possible not to think...

When I was quite young I loved to read the history of my country told in the Arabian Nights style. The stories are so vivid and picturesque, that even to-day, I remember the imp...

What a relief! What a heart-felt relief to leave Paris! Paris with its noise and clamour and perpetual and useless movement! Paris which is so different from what I expected!

I wonder which of the two suffers more—the person who expects much and is disappointed; or the person of whom much is expected and feels she has disappointed. It seemed to me so...

If you only knew the disastrous consequences of that learning and the suffering for which it is responsible! From complete ignorance, we were plunged into the most advanced cult...

I am thinking of a sad spring morning of long ago. I was twelve years old, but the constant terror in which I had lived had increased my tendency towards uneasiness and melancho...

I wonder if you know what life is like in a big _caravanserai_ on the shores of Lake Leman in December. This _hotel_ is filled from the ground to the sixth floor, and from east...

The evenings of Ramazan are the only evenings of the year when she has the right to be out of doors; the time when she seizes every opportunity of meeting her friends and arrang...

The sea before me is so blue and silent and calm! Does it know, I wonder, the despair which at times fills my soul! or is its blue there to remind me of our home over yonder!

What a curious thing it was I found so much difficulty in answering Zeyneb’s letters. To send anything _banal_ to my new friend I felt certain was to run the risk of ending the...

You will never know, my dear and latest friend, the pleasure your visit has given us. It was such a new experience, and all the more to be appreciated, because we were firmly co...

There are habits, my dearest friend, which cannot be lost in the West any more than they can be acquired in the East. You know what a terrible task it is for a Turkish woman to...

I can assure you, I do not exaggerate our Oriental hospitality. Go to Turkey and you will see for yourself that everywhere you will be received like a Queen. Everyone will want...

“Sight-seeing” was what the Hanoums[6] then called “freedom.” To them it meant being out of the cage; tasting those pleasures which for so many years had been forbidden. Their l...

We have just returned from Cap Martin, where we have had the pleasure and honour of being introduced to the Empress Eugénie, the person of all persons I hoped to meet in Europe....

For a long time last night, when I returned to my room, I tried to make you understand the intense delight I had felt in watching the good-night kiss which the lovesick moon had...

Sometimes in the summer afternoons, in large parties, and in big springless waggons, we drove to the olive woods or the vineyards near the seashore. In spite of our veils, we ju...