Part 5

The drawing-room in which we were was a spacious room with many doors and windows. The lattices were up and the windows opened and the breeze from the Bosphorus is so cool at this season that the great open fireplace where big logs burned was barely enough to warm the room. We sat near the windows on a wide divan which skirted about one-fourth of the walls of the room, and to keep us warmer they had placed at the corner nearest to us, a big brazero of shining copper, filled with glowing charcoal. The windows were nearly over the water, so near in fact that the rustling of the current, which is quite strong on the Bosphorus, was plainly audible. It gave the impression of being on a ship: the blue waters ran southward in an endless chain of racing wavelets and the house seemed to be floating toward the north. But opposite us the green hills of Asia, with a line of houses skirting the shores and with big Anatolian mountains towering the blue-gray horizon reminded us that our seeming flight toward the Black Sea was only an illusion caused by the incessant rush of the current. Big “mahons” or Turkish barges which have kept the graceful lines of the old caiks, passed before our eyes, gliding silently on the blue wavelets, their Oriental triangular sails swelled in the breeze. A large Italian cargo boat plowed its way toward some romantic port of the Black Sea: Costanza, where Roumanian peasant girls will purchase its cargo of vividly coloured textiles in exchange for oil, so much needed in Italy, or perhaps Batoum, where a cosmopolitan crowd of traders will give flour, sugar and other food supplies to the starving population of Caucasia against non-edible jewels, furs or platinum of limitless value. Who knows? Perhaps it goes to Odessa or Novorossisk to try bartering with Tartars and Russians, Mongols and even Chinamen who now form the motley crowd of Bolshevik Southern Russia. The Bosphorus is the gate of a whole world--a world fraught with mysterious possibilities; tempting opportunities of stupendous gains, frightful danger of very real losses, commercial and political possibilities of such magnitude that it makes you shudder to think of them. And here we are at the very gate of this world, a gate patrolled as usual by England. See that gray destroyer, slim as an arrow, speeding toward its base, the harbour of Constantinople. It flies the British flag and is coming back from the Black Sea.

I am called back from my dreams and visions by Madame Ismet Bey who is pointing out the outstanding places of the landscape to my wife. From where we are the Bosphorus looks like a lake, the sinuous curves at the two ends making it impossible to distinguish where Europe ends and Asia begins. There, on our extreme left and near the water, is the country estate of Khedive Ismail Pasha, father of the last Khedive of Egypt who was dethroned by England during the war because of his pro-Turkish sentiments. Ismail Pasha's estate is in Europe but the hills which seem next to it are on the other side, in Asia, and the funny looking buildings on top as well as the low buildings on the shore are the depots of the Standard Oil Company. They used to belong to an uncle of Madame Ismet Bey but now they belong to the Standard Oil. No, her uncle has not sold his rights: it just happened that the Standard Oil stepped in before he had time to have them renewed. His house, or what used to be his house is the one just opposite us. He used to have the most beautiful caiks in the Bosphorus, ten or fifteen years ago, and his wife and his daughters would go every Friday to the Sweet Waters of Asia in those long, slim racing barks, with tapering ends, rowed by three or sometimes four boatmen with flowing sleeves, a beautiful embroidered carpet covering the stern, its corners trailing in the sea. He used to have a passion for flowers and you can see even from here the roof of the hot-house where he grew the most exotic plants he could think of: rare varieties of chrysanthemums and poppies from the Far East, tulips from Turkestan and Persia, mogra and lotus trees from India. Now he has sold his house and has barely enough to live on.

The Sweet Waters of Asia are nearby, just between the ruins of the old mediaeval castle--built by Sultan Mahomet the Conqueror before he laid siege to Byzance--and the Imperial Kiosks of Chiok Soo, a real jewel. Further to the right--that low, rambling white building is the yali of the family of Mahmoud Pasha. They entertain a great deal and have asked us to tea next Sunday. Now we pass again without realizing it to the European shores; the old castle on the hill is the Castle of Europe, the first stronghold of the Turks on this side of the Bosphorus, and the big building next to it is the famous Robert College, the American College for Boys.

The view is so gorgeous that it cannot be described. I wish I had a canvas and the technique of Courbet, the talent of Turner and the daring of Whistler to paint in all its splendour the clear sky of the Bosphorus, so clear and so blue that the eyes can almost see that it is endless--the red and gold flakes of its dark-green vegetation, so luxuriant that it speaks of centuries of loving care--the peaceful atmosphere of its old houses, so restful that you can feel that generations of thinkers and philosophers have meditated behind their walls--the harmonious outline of its hills, so smilingly round that only immemorial age can have so smoothly curved them--the mystery of its always running currents, running so continuously that they should have long ago emptied the Black Sea into the Mediterranean. I wish I was endowed with enough insight to understand the mischievous whisper of its always dancing, always running little waves. I believe they want to tell us that although the winds have pushed them south ever since time began and will continue to push them south until the end of the world, although they seem to follow the wind in an endless mad rush, they still are there. They mischievously laugh because they will always remain there, despite the wind and all its strength. I believe they want to give the Turks an object lesson as to how nothing can be swept away against its will.

Our first evening in Emirghian passed very quietly. The Turks being very reserved by nature it always takes some time before the ice is broken, even among members of the same family. We passed the time sitting around and talking, giving a chance to our hosts and to my wife to know each other.

But for every day thereafter Madame Ismet Bey and her son had arranged some special entertainment for us. Quietly, unostentatiously and with the characteristic lack of show with which well-bred Turks entertain their guests, they succeeded in giving us, without our being aware that it had all been pre-arranged, a different distraction every afternoon. Friends and neighbours would drop in for tea one evening and a little dance or a little bridge game would be organized as on the spur of the moment. Another afternoon they would take us in their rowboat for an outing on the Bosphorus and we would stop either to call on some friends or to walk around or take some refreshments in the casino of the park at Beikos, which at this season is quiet and pleasant. Once we had a small picnic at the Sweet Waters of Asia. We went in the rowboat up this little stream--a miniature Bosphorus, with old tumbled-down houses by the water, big trees leaning their branches covered with autumnal golden leaves over old walls covered with vines, here and there a ramshackle wooden bridge spanning the stream and giving it the appearance of a Turkish Venice, and then large meadows on both sides, where groups of people were, like us, taking advantage of the last few days of summery sunshine of the year. Old Turkish women in black dusters, their hair covered with a white veil arranged Sphinx fashion, were sitting cross-legged near the water in silent and impassible contemplation, while younger women--their daughters or granddaughters--were sitting a few steps away on chairs, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes and chattering away their time. Small boys in vividly coloured shirts, knickers hanging loose below their knees, wearing shapeless fezzes with a small blue bead--against the evil eye--would be running around and prancing with little girls clad in Kate Greenaway skirts coloured with the brightest shades of the rainbow, their loosened hair flapping over their narrow shoulders. Simple folk all, neither peasants or city folk--just the families of small village traders--the kind of people whose pictures foreign newspapermen find a malign pleasure in publishing as representative Turks. They might as well publish pictures of tenement house dwellers of New York and London as being representative Americans or Britishers. Many gypsies were there, going from group to group to tell fortunes, to sing or to dance, gypsy women of all ages and of suspicious cleanliness, who can always be detected in Constantinople by the fact that they are the only ones to wear coloured bloomers, while some old Greek and Armenian women wear black bloomers. By the way, another conception of foreigners which my wife shared but which she lost after a short stay in Constantinople was this very one of bloomers: in all our stay in Turkey she did not see a single Turkish woman wearing them.

A little further up on the shores of the stream was a group of Kurdish porters, big, athletic fellows, watching a bout of wrestling: two of their companions stripped to the waist, their legs and feet bare, their bodies soaked in oil, engaged in a bout of cat-as-catch-can, while further up some Laze sailors of the Black Sea were dancing their slow rhythmic national dance to the sound of weird flutes and tambourines.

We had to go well upstream to find a place where we could enjoy our picnic peacefully and without onlookers. But I must say that we enjoyed it thoroughly, quite as much as the spectacle we had on our way up and down the river. I could not help however realizing how much a few years had changed the general aspect of the Sweet Waters of Asia. Before my departure it used to be the smartest place to go to during the good season on Friday and Sunday afternoons. You would meet all your friends there and the place used to be congested with the most graceful “caiks” and rowboats of the Bosphorus.

On Sunday we went to tea at the house of Mahmoud Pasha. It was a big affair, almost an official reception, as are all entertainments given by the family of Mahmoud Pasha. This family is what might be called another great and old Turkish clan. At present it is probably the most socially prominent Turkish family of Constantinople and the reason underlying its social activities is quite well known among the other Turkish families who, while possibly not entirely approving them, hold the family of Mahmoud Pasha in great respect for the utterly unselfish manner in which all its members live up to their convictions. Its social activities are looked upon as having a political reason or significance. In the first place the family was one of the first and bitterest enemies of the Committee of Union and Progress which, after engineering most marvellously the Turkish Revolution, had instituted a most objectionable sort of plural dictatorship conducted by its own members. Mahmoud Pasha's family who, like all the other old Turkish families, did not approve of this dictatorship of the few, became very active in the Liberal Party organized in opposition to the Committee. So far, so good! But with the extreme enthusiasm which is a characteristic of all the family, it carried on its war against the Committee by taking a firm and active stand against any and all of its policies. It fought the Committee on every ground, not so much because it was opposed in principle to this or that other policy but just because this or that other policy emanated from the Committee. For this purpose it joined hands with every party that was formed against the Committee. It kept up this war for years and years and one of its members--a most brilliant specimen of young Turkish manhood--sacrificed his life on the altar of his convictions during this long-drawn feud. It was quite natural that when the Committee embraced a pro-German policy Mahmoud Pasha's family would automatically become anti-Germans. But instead of being satisfied with fighting this nefarious pro-German policy by an exclusive pro-Turkish policy--as was done by most of the other prominent Turkish families--Mahmoud Pasha's family had to go one better and ever since the armistice has actively embraced a pro-British policy. Therefore, it feels that it can perfectly well entertain and lead a social life even under the present conditions in Constantinople. The second reason which moves this family to participate so actively in the social life of Constantinople is its belief that after all social life in the Turkish capital should be led by the Turks themselves and rather than abandon the functions of society leaders to some foreigners, or worse still to some Greeks, Armenians or Levantines, the family makes every sacrifice needed to hold and prolong its leadership. Therefore it gives large entertainments and weekly teas amounting to real functions.

The Sunday we called on them the immense rooms of their magnificent house were crowded to full capacity. Foreign officers of high rank in resplendent uniforms, members of the different high commissions and distinguished visitors of all nations were elbowing each other and alas! also quite a few Levantine, Greek and Armenian business men whose standing in the business community had forcibly made a place for them in this cosmopolitan clique of Constantinople. Of course the crowd here was not representative of Turkish society, but rather of the cosmopolitan society that one meets in every principal center of Europe. Only a very few Turks were present, mostly old friends of the family who had come more with a desire to show their esteem and respect for the charming hostesses than mixing with the international crowd they were sure to meet there. The three daughters of the family were doing the honours with a tact and courtesy only possible in scions of old families whose breeding in etiquette has extended to so many generations that it has finally become second nature. They were assisted in their duties by two granddaughters of Mahmoud Pasha, two young Turkish débutantes, who were so earnestly endeavouring to overcome their natural shyness and act like their elders that their charming awkwardness was really delightful to watch. It amused my wife greatly to make a mental comparison between this refreshing shyness of the Turkish débutantes and the self-confidence and forwardness of their American sisters. To this day I don't know which of the two schools my wife really approved of!

Of course the brothers and husbands of our hostesses were also there, circulating from group to group and introducing the guests to each other. And to me the most humorous note of the whole afternoon was given when the husband of one of our hostesses' a middle-aged gentleman, very-serious and very widely learned--confided to me that for him entertainments and social functions of this kind were terrible bores but that he had to go through with them just to please his wife. Husbands are the same all over the world!... As I did not contradict him he took me in the quietest corner we could find and we had a long and interesting talk on subjects which took us far away from our surroundings.

Nevertheless I could not help but agree entirely with my wife when she told us, on our return to Emirghian, that she had found the whole thing “somewhat too stiff,” and I believe Madame Ismet Bey was also of our opinion and felt that we were sincere when we told her that we much preferred her own small at-homes and the unpretentious little parties to which she had taken us on the previous days.

I must say that we met most interesting and charming people at all these small parties. It is of course easier to get to know people when you meet them a few at a time than when you meet them in a big gathering. Madame Ismet Bey's friends and neighbours were exceptionally interesting people. During our stay in Emirghian we met for instance Ihsan Pasha, the Turkish general who, being taken prisoner by the Russians during the war, and having refused to give his word of honour that he would not attempt to escape, was exiled to the innermost part of Siberia. He told us in the most vivid manner how he ran away from his captors in the middle of a stormy night, disguised as a peasant; how, for three long months he had to walk--hunted and tracked by the Cossacks and travelling only by night--to reach the Chinese border; how he arrived, half-starved and completely exhausted in Mukden, in Mandchouria, where a community of rich Chinese Moslems gave him hospitality and, after he had recovered from his three months' walk across the steppes of Siberia, gave him money to continue his trip. He told us--but with much less detail--the difficulties he had had to elude the Allied Secret Service which were on the lookout for him when he crossed Japan and the United States, although America had not yet entered the war at that time. However, he did not tell us how he succeeded in crossing the Atlantic despite the severe surveillance of England and how he succeeded in running the Allied blockade of Turkey and popped out one day in Constantinople after every one had entirely given up hope of ever seeing him alive again. Under the most difficult and trying circumstances he had thus succeeded in getting over seemingly unsurmountable obstacles and accomplishing in war time, tracked by enemies on all sides, a complete loop around the world in less than ten months. We could not help thinking how terrible those long months must have been for his wife, a charming young lady, who seemed now to have forgotten all the horror of these interminable weeks of suspense and who confided to us that she had never given up hope as she had an entire trust in the ability of her husband and an immovable faith in God. She said that she had passed most of her time in prayer.

We also met in Emirghian Captain Hassan Bey and his wife who lived with her family in a beautiful villa on the hills of Bebek, but a villa in the old style, in complete harmony with the surroundings and nestling in a park of old trees which did not, however shut out the gorgeous view of the Bosphorus. From the top of these hills the Bosphorus looks more like a chain of small lakes than like a continuous waterway, the sinuous capes of both continents cutting the view of the water in different places. It is like looking at the lakes of Switzerland from the peak of a mountain, only one is much nearer the water and the panorama has no sharp or rugged outlines but presents a continuous aspect of smoothly rounded hills, covered with forests, with mosques here and there, and with little patches of blue water. On Fridays all the ships, barges and rowboats and all the houses owned by the Turks are adorned with Turkish flags, red with the white crescent and star, fluttering in the wind and it gives to the country a cheerful and gay aspect which reminds you at a distance of a gorgeous field of poppies.

Living with Madame Hassan Bey was her young sisters, a Turkish sub-débutante, but somewhat less shy than the granddaughters of Mahmoud Pasha, as she is a student of the American College for Girls. In the course of time it became one of our greatest pleasures to call on them at Bebek, where they give once in a while a small informal tea. They live there all the year round as it is at an easy distance from the city.

VI

STAMBOUL

At last we settled in Stamboul. It took us a long time to arrange everything as we wanted, as it is hard to get upholsterers, carpet men and all the rest to do their work properly and rapidly here in Constantinople. Constantinople is not much different in this than any other city I know. There is possibly this difference that it is less difficult to explain what you want and how you want it to decorators who, like those in western Europe or in America, have already had experience in putting up a modern home, than to those in Constantinople who have had none or very little experience in this line. But anyhow there is always a way to get things done by working people, and the Turkish workingmen respond to good treatment in a most willing manner: they are anxious to learn and have much aptitude for learning.