CHAPTER XIII

TURKISH HOSPITALITY—A REVOLUTION FOR CHILDREN

NICE, _March_ 1907.

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 to be honoured by your presence in their home.

The most modest household has its rooms for the _mussafirs_ or guests. In wealthy establishments, the guest is given the choicest furniture, the daintiest golden goblets and bon-bon dishes, the best and finest linen and embroideries, a little trousseau for her own use, and slaves in constant attendance.

I never remember sitting down to a meal without guests being present. All our rooms for the _mussafirs_ were filled, and in this matter my family was by no means the exception; everyone received with the same pleasure. In England, I believe, you do have guest-rooms, but here in France they do not understand the elements of hospitality.

You cannot imagine how it shocked me when I first heard a French son paid his father for board, and that here in France for a meal received, a meal must be returned. Surely this is not the case in England?

Often have I tried to find a satisfactory explanation of this lack of hospitality in the French. I put it down first to the cost of living, then to the limited accommodation, then to the disobliging servants, but I have now come to the conclusion that it is one of their national characteristics, and it is useless to waste time trying to explain it.

Let us know as soon as possible when you are coming.

* * * * *

After the description I have given you of our life in Smyrna you will understand how sorry we were to return to Constantinople. Even the delight of again seeing our parents could not console us. As soon as we were back again began the same monotony and perpetual dread, and the Hamidian régime made life more and more impossible.

The year that the Belgian anarchist tried to kill the Sultan Hamid, was certainly the worst I have ever spent. Even the Armenian Massacres, which were amongst the most haunting and horrible souvenirs of our youth, could not be compared with what we had then to bear. Arrests went on wholesale! Thousands were “suspect,” questioned, tortured perhaps. And when the real culprit had declared his guilt before the whole tribunal and had proved that it was he, and he alone, who had thrown the bomb, the poor prisoners were not released.

It was in the summer. Up till then in the country, a woman could go out in the evening, if she were accompanied, but this was at once prohibited; every Turkish boat which was not a fishing boat was stopped; in the streets all those who could not prove the reason for being out were arrested; no longer were visits to the Embassies possible, no longer could the ladies from the Embassies come to see us; no “white dinners,” no meeting of friends. There were police stationed before the doors, and we dared not play the piano for fear of appearing too gay, when our “Sovereign Lord’s” life had been in danger.

Of course no letters could be received from our Western friends. The foreign posts were searched through and through, and nearly all the movement of the daily life was at an end. One evening my sister and I went outside to look at the moonlit Bosphorus. Although accompanied by a male relative, three faithful guardians of the safety of our beloved Monarch stepped forward and asked for explanations as to why we were gazing at the sea. Not wishing to reply, we were asked to follow them to the nearest police station. My sister and I went in, leaving our relative to explain matters, and I can assure you that was the last time we dared to study moon effects. Never, I think, more than that evening, was I so decided to leave our country, come what might! Life was just one perpetual nightmare, and for a long time after, even now in security, I still dream of these days of terror.

I remember full well what importance was given to the French 1st of May riots. When I myself saw one of the strikers throw a stone which nearly blinded a doctor, called in haste to see a patient, and saw his motor stopped and broken to pieces and the chauffeur thrashed, I thought of the days of our Armenian massacres—the awful days of Hamidian carnage—and the 1st of May riots seemed to me a Revolution arranged to amuse little children.—Your affectionate

ZEYNEB.