Part 9
Djevad has once more voiced the inherent complaint of all the Turks who resent the malign treatment they are subjected to, the campaign of defamation which they have had to put up with since the last generation. Under their stoic calmness these questions loom large in the inner-consciousness of all the Turks and cast a deep shadow of doubt over their faith. In the peace and quiet of our room we feel that his questions, if unanswered, will shatter our confidence in the future, we feel that the world might yet be plunged in a terror still worse than that of the years of the great war if it destroys the faith of the Turks and throws them in despair into the arms of their Nihilist neighbours of the North, at the head of millions of Central Asiatic tribes, at the head of millions of Muslims now groaning under the heels of their conquerors: a terror which might be darker than the blackest periods of the Darkest Ages.
Instinctively we turn for an answer to the Doctor. He has been silent until now. He sits in a high-backed chair like a throne. The candelabra on the table illumines his expressive face and throws the outline of his powerful profile in an enormous shadow on the gray wall. It almost reaches the ceiling and dominates the darkened room. The doctor is calm and composed, his sensitive hands rest limply on the arms of the chair. His eyes which have studied the past, stare dreamily ahead in an endeavour to visualize the future. They gleam with a spiritual light which pierces the penumbra surrounding him. He is thinking, he gazes--unseeing--at a little picture on the wall, a little Dutch picture on which the artist has, centuries ago, painted the moon rising from behind dark clouds to illumine with rays of silver a limitless ocean. He sighs, straightens up, throwing his head slightly back. Then his colourful, warm voice rises in the silence and the shadows surrounding us.
A new world is in the making. The old world had been divided by men into races, religions and creeds. Each race had different standards, each race was prejudiced against all others. Each religion and creed had, in the course of time, accomodated itself to the pettiness of humanity and had lost sight of its essential principles. The divine light which time and again God had shed in His mercy over humanity through one or the other of his prophets had been captured by narrow-minded dogmatists of different races and only an infinitesimal spark of it had been each time imprisoned in a lantern for egotistical purposes instead of being used to illumine the outer world. Jews, Christians and Muslims turned their own lanterns on themselves and each one crowded around it in an endeavour to see its own particular light. In the scramble that followed and in the jet black darkness which surrounded each separate spark, those who struggled forgot what they had seen in the light. Mercy, compassion and love disappeared from before their eyes. They all called each other renegades and apostates. The Christian world, more materialistic than the others, obtained the upper hand and exerted its supremacy over the globe. But the greediness of its different nations, their desire for economic possession brought about the general war. Even in this, however, nations were the unconscious tools of the Divine Power. One must tear down to build anew. One must punish to improve. Therefore nations were made to destroy their own material richnesses. And in the meanwhile, unknown to them the sparks in their lanterns have come ever and ever nearer to each other. The day is near when all the lanterns will be united and will illumine together--as God meant it--the work of reconstruction undertaken by a new Humanity which has been made to see through suffering. The pains of the present time are the pains of travail. Humanity is being reborn. A new age is in the making, a better world is coming. It may take some time to come, but when it arrives it will bring justice to all without distinction of class, colour, nationality or sex. It will usher in real democracy based not on equality, but on “oneness.” We are passing now through the period of preparation, the period of travail. It is painful as all travail preceding creation, but Humanity must hope, no matter how hard the present times are, no matter how long the hard times last. Nothing can alter its destiny. The millenium will come when Humanity becomes conscious of God, becomes one with Him, reflects all His attributes: and Mercy and Love are the principal attributes of God. With his eyes cast dreamily ahead, lost in his vision, the great surgeon who fights death every day tells us of immortality through love.
Our quiet room vibrates with his subdued voice--the voice of those who have heard and understood the wails of agony. Gradually and with the conviction acquired by generations of philosophers before him, the thinker is rebuilding our faith. The faith that no true Muslim must ever lose. The shadows surrounding us are becoming translucid. We come to share his vision of a better world: a world based not on the equality but on the unity of all. We come to share his conviction that this is the unavoidable period of travail with its unavoidable pains and sorrows. We must go through it without complaint, without despair, fully realizing that we must use all obstacles in the path of humanity as stepping-stones and not as stumbling-blocks and God will keep His covenant to humanity. We are not fatalists, but we have faith.
Our talk continues, inspiring and elevating. How far we are, here in Stamboul, from the mundane life of Pera. Yet it is only a narrow strip of water which divide us: a strip of water called by the ancients “Golden Horn,” possibly because of their foreknowledge that it would bring to Stamboul the soothing treasures of faith and belief.
But all things have an end, and it is getting late. We drink another cup of coffee, we smoke a last cigarette, and true to the Turkish custom we accompany our departing guests to our front door.
Upstairs in our room we are getting ready for the night. Full of the elevating talk of the evening, we silently prepare for sleep, the sleep which will lead our souls to the giddy heights of unconscious knowledge. Through our window we see the darkness outside. It is night. Silence reigns over Stamboul. Calm and composed, the eternal Turkish City slumbers under its dark sky where glow large Eastern stars, while Levantines and foreigners feverishly revel in unhealthy amusements on the hills of Pera. Let them do what they want as long as they leave us free to use the night for its real purpose: meditation, rest and relaxation!
It is dark outside. There is only one light in the small mosque of the Sublime Porte: its tapered minaret points to the oriental stars above which silently sparkle away centuries into eternity. Then the little door on top of the minaret is pushed open and the muezzin steps out on the ring-like gallery. It is prayer time. The cloudless sky echoes the melodious voice of the muezzin. High above the roofs of the slumbering city he calls the faithful to prayer:
“Allahi Ekber--Allahi Ekber! God is Great--
“There is no God but God ...”
His voice is pure as the purest crystal. He chants the greatness of God and His Unity. He proclaims in the middle of the night that prayer is better than sleep and calls the faithful to salvation through prayer. He gives his message to the four winds, and retires after having again proclaimed the greatness of God and having claimed for Mahomed only the station of Prophethood.
One by one, silently, the soldiers on guard at the Sublime Porte and a few neighbours have gotten up from sleep and made their way to the mosque. They make their ablution in the little courtyard: one must be clean to commune with God. They enter the mosque and I can see them through the open door. In unison and as one man they kneel, they prostrate themselves in adoration and then they rise and pray: arms extended, palms upwards--standing like Christ on the Mount of Olives. Allahi Ekber! God is Great!
The prayer is finished. Perfect quiet again in Stamboul. The faithful have returned home. You can almost hear the world meditating. The mystic night unfolds its mysteries to the believers asleep.
Complete silence, calm and relaxation. The Orient is dreaming. At dawn the muezzin will again call to prayer: “Allahi Ekber.”
IX
A NIGHT IN PERA
Since our arrival in Constantinople we had heard of the night life in Pera but we had not seen it close to. Although we lived--out of necessity--in Pera during the first months of our return, we very seldom went out. In the Summer months and in the Fall we were in the country and since we had settled in Stamboul we loved too much our own quiet nights at home to seek anything else. But when my friend, Carayanni, suggested showing us Pera at night we decided that it was almost our duty to take advantage of this opportunity of seeing it with someone who knew the place. Since the armistice Pera is so full of amusement resorts of all kinds that unless one is guided by an “habitué” one is apt to get lost in more than one sense of the word.
I think that I have already said that Pera is now inhabited by almost all the races of Europe with the exception of the Turks. The Turks have been forced out of this quarter and are certainly not keen to reenter it under its present conditions. Pera shelters all the foreigners in Constantinople, from the High Commissioners of the different nations and their immediate retinues down to the worst kind of adventurers and of course there are many more adventurers than High Commissioners. Pera shelters most of the Russian refugees, from poor helpless former nobles whose plight is a real disgrace to civilization down to the most resourcefully immoral individuals of both sexes whose behaviour is a real shame to humanity. In addition Pera shelters all the Greeks and Armenians of the city and its narrow, crooked streets are the playground and dwelling-place of a nondescript people which, for lack of better name, people have agreed to call “Levantines.”
The Levantine is the parasite of the Near East. He has no country, no scruples, no morals, no honesty of any sort--in business or in private life. He is the descendant of foreign traders who have settled in the Near East at some period or other and have intermingled--not necessarily intermarried--with Greeks and Armenians or other non-Turkish elements of the country. His ancestors might have originally come to the Near East either attracted by the proverbial riches of the Orient--at a time when the Orient was still rich--or as runaways from the justice of their own country--no one knows. As foreigners always had certain privileges in Turkey the present-day Levantine calls himself a foreigner when he is dealing with the Turks or with Turkish authorities. However, when he is dealing with foreigners he is very apt to call himself a Turk, an Armenian or a Greek. Anyhow he never will call himself a Levantine, so stigmatized is that appellation in the eyes of all who know the Near East. He generally has perfected this internationalism to such a degree that he has citizenship papers or passports of different countries which he uses indiscriminately according to his wants or the necessity of the moment. But despite all a Levantine is and remains a Levantine and should be shunned as such. Anyone who is from the Near East and calls himself a non-Muslim Turk is a Levantine, and almost any foreigner who admits that his family has been living in the Near East for at least two generations is probably also a Levantine. Anyhow Pera is the hot-bed of Levantines, who have lost all their original racial qualities and have assimilated all the racial defects of all the races living in the Near East--whose one purpose is to make and spend money and who are ready to sell anything for the purpose.
My friend Carayanni is not a Levantine. He is an Ottoman Greek. Just as a Scotchman is a British subject, so Carayanni is a Greek but a Turkish--or Ottoman--subject, and is supposed to be as faithful to Turkey as the Scotchman is faithful to Great Britain. But in the eyes of the world Turkey is not Great Britain, and Carayanni is a Greek and everyone, except the Turks, seem to consider it quite natural that he should be a Venizelist. Foreigners call him and the other Ottoman Greeks like him who are Venizelists “patriots,” and blame the Turks for not loving them. A Venizelist is a Greek who wants the downfall and dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, that is to say that an Ottoman Greek who is a Venizelist is _de juro_ a rebel, a traitor, who conspires for the downfall and dismemberment of the Government of his own country. When the Turks take this attitude and try to repress this intestinal strife they are accused of committing “atrocities.” When Great Britain or any other Western Government quells with machine guns and hand-grenades a similar intestinal strife in their own country, they are said to make a legal repression of a rebellious or revolutionary movement. Double standards again.
The Venizelists want the downfall of the Ottoman Empire so that Constantinople may become again a Greek Byzance as it was over five centuries ago. Just because a city originally founded by the Romans happened to be Greek thirty-nine years before Columbus discovered America, Carayanni and all the Greeks claim now that it should again be made Greek. They call themselves Venizelists because they follow the principles of Venizelos who, although himself an Ottoman Greek, turned traitor to the country of his birth and adoption and became the political leader of Greece in her anti-Turkish policy. The western powers hailed him as the greatest statesman and diplomat of the century and never give a thought to his treason or to the weakness of his claims.
But we do not mind the Venizelism of Carayanni. Like most of the higher-class Greeks he is Venizelist only in words, and he is too well bred to talk politics when he is with Turks. The higher-class Greeks are not Venizelists enough to don the Greek uniform. They know that if they did don it they might be sent to battle, and battles against the Turks are not very safe. Why should they risk their lives, why should they suffer the discomforts of following a military campaign--even at a safe distance from the front? They know that by a cunning and insidious propaganda they can get all the desired support from foreign nations. To obtain the sympathy and the moral support of certain nations which, like America, are imbued with the spirit of fair play, some of their women write sweet articles where the keynote is the lovableness of the Turks individually, their innocence, their dearness and their romanticism cunningly interwoven with stories--supposed to be personal experiences--which emphasize in descriptions if not in words, the ignorance of the Turks, their administrative or business incapacity, how they still practise slavery and polygamy, and how they commit political murders and atrocities. The broadminded but misinformed public believes in these camouflaged false accusations because of the hypocritical profession of love interwoven with them and gives more than ever its entire sympathy and moral support to the Greeks. To obtain the active support of less broadminded nations, to secure from them all the modern war paraphernalia and all the money necessary to equip and hold under colours, against their will, the lower-class Greeks who are good enough for “cannon fodder,” the Venizelists lead in some other countries a bolder, and therefore more commendable propaganda. In this way they are sure to obtain the moral and material support they want without much risk. The upper-class Greeks like to play safe: the only battles they fight are in their clubs and around the green table of diplomacy, and the most deadly weapon they use is their tongue--which is a pretty deadly weapon at that! So they continue, day in and day out, to endeavour to Byzantinize Constantinople and, while happily they have not succeeded in the whole city, their efforts have been--for all practical purposes--crowned with success in Pera. In the old days Pera was more than half Turkish. To-day scarcely one out of every fifteen people you see in its streets is a real Turk. At the armistice all the non-Turkish elements have been given a free hand in this part of the city by the Inter-Allied police, and rather than submit to the arrogance of the Armenians and to the hostility of the Greek mobs, rather than witness the general débauche, the Turks have withdrawn to Stamboul or to the heights of Nishantashe. A Turk does not feel properly protected in Pera. He feels that he would get little protection from an Inter-Allied policeman if it came to a litigation with a foreigner, and only a very few Turkish policemen are now employed in Pera where their exclusive duty is to regulate traffic.
So Pera has become, under the benevolent eye of its Inter-Allied police, the heaven of Greeks and Levantines and Carayanni, being a Greek, lives in Pera and knows it from A to Z. He has invited us to dinner, and as we know that he will not talk politics, as we want to see Pera at night, and as we could not find a better guide for the purpose, we have accepted his invitation.
One dines very late in Pera and when we start on our trip of exploration it is already night. We left home well after eight. On our way to meet Carayanni we had to pass through Galata, which shelters behind its façade of business respectability sordid back streets patronized by sailors of the international merchant and military navies now crowding the harbour. While banks and office buildings in the main street are closed at this late hour we have glimpses of side streets which would make the Barbary Coast of San Francisco blush with envy. Intoxicated sailors rock from side to side and disappear in little streets where organs grind their nasal notes of antiquated French, Italian, yes, even American popular songs and where harsh feminine voices greet prospective friends in an international vernacular. A foreign sailor, more intoxicated and more excited than the others, jumps on the running board of our carriage. It is a good thing that the top is up, as in the darkness he does not see that I am a Turk and when I push him and shout in English for him to get out he obeys without a sound, probably thinking that I am an Englishman or an American who could get protection from the police.
My wife is frightened, but the really dangerous part of our route is nearly over. We are leaving Galata behind. Our carriage climbs the hill of Pera and soon we pass before the Pera Palace, the leading hotel of Constantinople, now owned by a Greek, where foreign officers and business men are fêted by unscrupulous Levantine adventurers and drink and dance with fallen Russian princesses or with Greek and Armenian girls whose morals are, to say the least, as light as their flimsy gowns. Right next to the hotel is the “Petits Champs” Garden where soliciting by both male and female pleasure-seekers is now so aggressively indulged in that not even a self-respecting man dares any more to venture in the place.
The streets are also full of pleasure-seekers, but at this hour they are not yet as aggressive as in the Garden. They walk slowly eyeing each other with greedy or inviting glances. Among them hundreds of Russian refugees, derelicts of modern civilization, are drifting sadly, their emaciated bodies clothed in rags. Maimed men in old uniforms--on which you can still detect the insignias of the high ranks they obtained on the battlefields when they were fighting to make the world safe for democracy--are now peddling little wooden toys or artificial flowers which they try to sell to passers-by. Old women--and also a few young ones who prefer to be street vendors rather than street walkers--are selling candies and newspapers. At one corner a sad young woman, who will be a mother soon, holds in her hand a bunch of multi-coloured toy balloons. She is so tired that she leans against the wall and can hardly move her hand to offer her balloons for sale. Huddled on the curb and in porch-ways, little children shivering from hunger and from cold, are begging or trying to snatch a few minutes' sleep before the Inter-Allied police come and tell them to move on. Fourteen or fifteen-year-old little girls are parading arm in arm and patently offering their youthfulness in competition with the experienced knowledge of their elder sisters. Prostitution, dishonesty, misery and drunkenness are openly flaunted in this section of the city which revives all the vices of Byzance coupled with those of Sodom.
And all this under the very eyes of the Inter-Allied police who have occupied the city in the name of civilization and to enforce order and law. Never before were Pera and Galata as disreputable as now, never before were they so unsafe, so objectionable and so badly policed; the Inter-Allied police professes that it does not care to mix in matters that have no direct bearing on politics, and the Turkish police has had its authority completely taken away in this section of the city.
At last, through this repulsive maze of vice, we arrive at the Russian restaurant where we are to meet Carayanni. Pera is now full of Russian restaurants, where a money-spending international crowd revels in so-called Bohemian life. Why not? The walls are artistically painted and the furniture queer looking enough. Of course, like most amateur Bohemians, the only thing which this international crowd has adopted from the Quartier Latin of Paris is free love. Anyhow, with the punctuality of a perfect host, Carayanni is waiting for us. Well groomed and prosperous-looking in his dapper London-made clothes, he is trying his best to look and act like an Englishman. His polite nonchalance and his general appearance are so perfect that, despite his dark complexion, it is hard for me to realize that this is the same man who, before I left Constantinople about ten years ago, was making only a very modest living in gambling and card games in which he always was an expert. He has changed his business, however, during the war and is now one of the most successful food speculators in town.