A CHILD OF THE ORIENT

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

• SOME PAGES FROM THE LIVES OF TURKISH WOMEN
• IN THE SHADOW OF ISLAM
• Etc.

A CHILD OF THE ORIENT

BY DEMETRA VAKA

LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
TORONTO: BELL AND COCKBURN. MCMXIV

Turnbull & Spears, Printers, Edinburgh

To
TRUMBULL WHITE
EDITOR AND FRIEND, WHOSE APPRECIATION
AND ENCOURAGEMENT
HELPED TO SMOOTH THE HARD ROAD
OF A BEGINNER

CONTENTS

A CHILD OF THE ORIENT

CHAPTER I
THE TOKEN

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:

“To-day, despoinis, you are five years old. I wish you many happy returns of the day.”

He drew up a chair, and sat down by my bed. Carefully unfolding a piece of paper, he brought forth a small Greek flag.

“Do you know what this is?”

I nodded.

“Do you know what it stands for?”

Before I could think of an adequate reply, he leaned toward me and said earnestly, his fiery black eyes holding mine:

“It stands for the highest civilization the world has ever known. It stands for Greece, who has taught the world. Take it and make your prayers by it.”

I accepted it, and caressed it. Its silky texture pleased my touch. Its heavenly blue colour fascinated my eyes, while the white cross, emblem of my religion as well as of my country, filled my childish heart with a noble thrill.

My grand-uncle bent over nearer to me.

“In your veins flows the blood of a wonderful race; yet you live, as I have lived, under an alien yoke—a yoke Asiatic and uncivilized. The people who rule here to-day in the place of your people are barbarous and cruel, and worship a false god. Remember all this—and hate them! You cannot carry this flag, because you are a girl; but you can bring up your sons to do the work that remains for the Greeks to do.”

He left his chair, and paced up and down the room; then came again and stood beside my bed.

“Sixty-one years ago we rose. For nine consecutive years we fought, and to-day two million Greeks are free—and Athens, with its Acropolis, is protected by this flag. But the greater part of the Greek land is still under the Mussulman yoke, and St Sophia is profaned by the Mohammedan creed. Grow up remembering that all that once was Greece must again belong to Greece; for the Greek civilization cannot and must not die.”

He went away, leaving me with thoughts too vast for a child of five years, too big for a child who was not even strong. Yet even at that age I knew a great deal about the past of Greece, and better yet did I know of the fight of those nine years, which had made the little flag I was caressing again a flag among free nations. I folded and unfolded the miniature flag, which my sons must some day carry forward.

It was the last day of February. Outside a storm was raging. I could hear the angry Sea of Marmora beating violently against the coast, as if it would fain annihilate with its liquid force the solidness of the earth. And the rain, imitating the sea, was beating mightily against the window-panes, while the wind was forcing the tall, stalwart pines, to bend humbly to the earth. Half of the elements were doing violence to the other half—as if they were Greeks destroying the Turks, or Turks oppressing the Greeks.

It was a gloomy birthday, yet an exaltation possessed me. I kept on stroking the little flag. I loved it, and with all the fervour of my five years I vowed to do my duty by it.

The door opened softly, and Kiamelé, my little Turkish attendant, came in. Quickly I tucked away the tiny flag.

“Good morning, Rose Petal.” She kneeled by my bed, and, putting her arms around me, smothered me with kisses. “So we are five years old to-day—pretty old, I declare! We shall be looking for a husband very soon. And now show me what the grand-uncle gave you.”

Her face was droll and piquant. Her eyes possessed infinite capacity for expression. That I loved her better than anyone else at the time was undeniable. And only a few minutes ago I had been told to hate her race.

I entwined my fingers with hers. “Do you love me, Kiamelé?” I asked.

“After Allah, I love none better.”

“I wish you did love me better than Allah,” I said, “for then I could make you a Christian.”

She shook her head drolly; “No, no, I like Allah.”

“But then,” I protested, “if you like Allah, you must hate me.”

“Hate you! You, whom I love better than my heart!”

“You’ve got to; for I am a Greek, and you are a Turk.”

She folded me in her arms. “What a funny baby—and this on your birthday! Now don’t talk foolishness. Show me your presents.”

From under my pillow, where I had tucked it, I produced the little flag.

She gazed at it, her head cocked on one side.

“What’s this?”

“This,” I said with emphasis, “is the flag of my country—and my birthday present.”

“What a funny present,” she murmured. “And is this all the grand old gentleman gave you?”

I was disappointed at her reception of it, and to save my little flag from feeling the mortification I hugged it and kissed it. I wanted very much to explain to Kiamelé all that it stood for, and how my sons some day must carry it forward; but how could I, since to show my allegiance to that flag I must hate her, my bestest of friends? So I said nothing, and on that, my fifth birthday, I began to see that battles did not only exist between people, storms did not only rage among the elements of nature, but that heart and mind could be at such variance as to cause conflicts similar to those taking place outside my window.

CHAPTER II
ECHOES OF 1821

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 above the Sea of Marmora; and our near horizon was the Asiatic coast of Turkey, which stretched itself in the blue waters like a beautiful odalisk. We lived in an old huge house, which belonged to him, and was far away from any other habitation. The sea was in front, the mountains behind, and thick woodland on the other two sides.

From the time I could remember my uncle conversed with me as if I were grown-up, yet I felt that he held me in contempt because I was a girl and could not carry arms. Life contained nothing for him beyond the hope of waging warfare against the Turks.

He had been only a lad in 1821 when the Greeks had risen in desperation to throw off the Mussulman yoke. Enlisting among the first, he had fought during the entire nine years. Subsequently he fought in every one of the uprisings of Crete. When not fighting, he was back in Turkey, in his home, where he thought, studied, and sometimes wrote inflammatory articles for the Greek reviews.

At times he had tremendous physical suffering, mementoes of his many battles. On those days I did not see him. He possessed that noble and rare quality of being ashamed of his bodily ailments. But after my fifth birthday I was present on many days when mental anguish possessed him. On such days he would stride up and down his vast gloomy rooms, talking of the Greek race and of the yoke under which so large a part of it was living.

He would stand by the window and tell me about Crete, pointing, as if the island were visible from where he stood—and I believe that in spite of the distance, he actually saw it, for it was ever present in his mind, and he knew every corner of it.

“There it lies,” he would say, “lapped by the waves of the Mediterranean; but were the mighty sea to pass over it, it could not wash away the noble Cretan blood which drenches it. It is soaked with it, and it will be blood-soaked until the Mussulman yoke has been wrenched from it—or till there is no more Cretan blood to shed.”

Or he would cry out: “Don’t you hear the shrieks of the Cretan women as they leap into the foaming sea, holding fast to their hearts their little ones? Yes! they would rather meet their death in the merciless but clean sea, than fall, living, into the hands of the vile Turkish soldiery. Oh! my God—my Christian God—how can you permit it?”

He would bow his head on his arms and remain motionless, until the feeling which was choking him had passed. Then, in a subdued tone, he would resume:

“Crete! Crete! brave, indomitable Crete—always victorious, yet always handed back to the Turks by Christian Europe. My beautiful Crete, when shalt thou be free?”

It was on such days that he exhorted me to remember the little Greek flag he had given me, and all that it stood for. On other days, when he was calmer, he took me systematically with him through the entire nine years of the Greek revolution, and by him I was carried through all its glorious battles.

He had fought first under the leadership of Marco Bozaris, and he entertained for this heroic chief an admiration amounting to worship.

“We were only a handful, mostly lads, at first,” he would say, with a happy smile on his saddened face. “Yes, we were mostly lads, and Marco himself a little over thirty. But how we did obey him, and how we did fight!”

Here he would lose himself in memory for a while.

“I can see Marco now, seated cross-legged on the ground, a crude map of his own make before him, we bending over him. ‘Here, boys,’ he would say, pointing to the map, ‘here is where we fight the Turks to-morrow, and by night time we shall carry our holy flag farther along. We do—or we die!’ Then the handful of us would kneel and kiss the flag, and swear by to-morrow to carry it farther along—or to die. And we always carried it farther along.”

He described Marco Bozaris so vividly to me, that when one day he showed me a picture which he had smuggled into Turkey for my benefit, I instantly cried: “Why that is the great Bozaris—your Marco!”

I believe that I never pleased him more in my life than by this. He actually kissed me.

Next to Bozaris, the man he admired and talked of most was the intrepid mariner, Constantin Kanaris.

“The Turkish fleet was blazing with lights,” he told me, “for the Kabitan Pasha was celebrating. One of the warships was filled with Greek maidens, ranging from twelve to eighteen years. They had been carried off that day without distinction of class or name. The daughters of the great Greek chieftains and of the commonest sailors had been herded together, and brought on this battleship to be made the victims of the night.

“Word of this had come to us. We sat gloomily around a rude wooden table, saying not a word. Then Constantin Kanaris spoke, his voice hoarse, his face terrible to look at:

“‘Take them away we cannot—unless God sends us ships from heaven at this minute. But if we cannot take them away, we can at least send them to God, pure as he has given them to us.’

“We listened breathless, while he unfolded to us his daring plan. He would go out in a small row-boat to the battle-ship alone. ‘Never fear! I may not come back—but the battle-ship will be blown up.’

“He left us—so dumb with despair that for a long, long time none of us spoke. Hours passed since he had gone; then a far distant boom made the still air to tremble, and we, rushing to the shore, saw the sky bathed in burning colours.

“We lads were for shouting for joy, but at the sight of the older men, whose heads hung low on their breasts, we remembered that none yet knew whose were the daughters just sent to God. Each father there, maybe, had a child to mourn.”

My uncle’s friendship lasted as long as Kanaris lived, and at times he went to see him in Greece. Once he reproached me bitterly for having been born a few years too late to be taken to the home of Kanaris, to behold the great chieftain and to be blessed by him.

After the untimely death of Marco Bozaris at Karpenissi, my grand-uncle fought under other great leaders, until in turn, in the last three years of the revolution, he himself became a leader.

Of his own exploits he never spoke. He entrusted this task to posterity. It was of this and that other leader he loved to speak, and as his narrative progressed all the names which have immortalized the modern history of Greece passed before me—passed before me not as names from a book, but as men of flesh and blood, in their everyday aspects as well as in their heroic moments.

And I, seated on my little stool, with the big book I had brought him to read me still unopened on my lap, would listen enthralled, wishing that I might have lived when my uncle had, and might with him have kneeled in front of Marco Bozaris, to kiss the Greek flag, and to swear that I would do or die.

One day when he was more violent than usual against the Turks—when he almost wept at the thought of living under the Turkish yoke—an inspiration came to me.

“Uncle!” I cried, “why do we live here? Why don’t we go to live where the Greek flag flies?”

Abruptly he stopped in his walk before me, his tall, thin figure erect, his eyes aflame.

“Go away from here?” he cried. “Go away from here, and be a traitor? Yes, that is what so many thousands did in 1453. They abandoned their hearths and the graves of their ancestors. They abandoned their lands and their schools, and above all they abandoned St Sophia. To go away from here is to forsake our country—for ever to relinquish it to the conqueror. We must stay here!” he thundered, “and bear with our patrida the yoke of slavery, till the day shall come, when again strong, we shall rise to break that yoke, and hear again a Christian priest in St Sophia!”

I was seven years old when he died; yet I felt almost as old as he. Having never seen other children, and therefore having never shared in childish frolics, my world consisted of the woes of Greece.

His death was a terrible shock to me, and yet I cannot say that I quite understood what death meant. For days and days I pondered as to where he was, and whether he were comfortable or not. I saw his body, wrapped in a huge Greek flag, the icon of his patron saint clasped in his cold hands, lowered to rest beside the men of his family, who, like him, had lived and died under the Turkish yoke.

CHAPTER III
OTHER FACES, OTHER PHASES

MY uncle was now gone—gone, let us hope, to where he was to find rest from racial hatred, rest from national ambition.

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 which I would not give up for the most normal and sweetest of childhoods. He had taught me the Greek Revolution as no book could ever have done; and he had given me an idea of the big things expected of men. He had given me a worship for my race amounting to superstition, and bequeathed to me a hatred for the Turks which would have warped my intelligence, had I not been blessed almost from my infancy with a power of observing for myself, and also had not good fortune given me little Turkish Kiamelé as a constant companion.

In the abstract, the Turks, from the deeds they had done, had taken their place in my mind as the cruellest of races; yet in the concrete that race was represented by dark-eyed, pretty little Kiamelé, the sweetest and brightest memory of an otherwise bleak infancy.

Alongside the deeds of the Greeks, and the bloodshed of the Greek Revolution, I had from her “The Arabian Nights.” She told them to me in her picturesque, dramatic way, becoming a horse when a horse had to come into the tale, and any other animal when that animal appeared; and she imitated them with so great an ingenuity that she suggested the very presence of the animal, with little tax on my imagination. She talked with a thick voice, when a fat man spoke, and a terribly funny piping voice when a thin one spoke. She draped herself exquisitely with her veil, when a princess came into the tale; and her face assumed the queerest look when the ev-sahibs, or supernatural sprites, appeared. Had it not been for her and her “Arabian Nights,” I should never have laughed, or known there was a funny side to life; for I had little enough occasion for laughter with my uncle. Even to this day, when I am amused, I laugh in the oriental way of my little Kiamelé.

After the death of my uncle, the course of my life was changed. I made the acquaintance of my own family, who now came to live on the island, in the same old house where he and I had lived. It took me a long time to adjust myself to the new life, so different from the old, and especially to meet children, and to try to talk with them. I had known that other children existed, but I thought that each one was brought up alone on an island with a grand-uncle, who taught it the history of its race.

My father and I quickly became friends, and I soon began to talk with him in the grown-up way I had talked with my uncle, much to his amusement, I could see.

One day when I was sitting in his lap, with my arms encircling his neck, I said to him:

“Father, do you feel the Turkish yoke?”

He gave a start. “What are you talking about, child?”

It was then I told him what I knew of our past, and of our obligations toward the future; how some day we must rise and throw off that yoke, and hear the holy liturgy again chanted in St Sophia.

He listened, interested, yet a flush of anger overspread his face. He patted me, and murmured to himself: “And we thought she would grow stronger living in the country.”

He bent down and kissed me. “I would not bother much, just now, about these things,” he said. “I’d play and grow strong.”

“But, father,” I protested, “uncle told me never to forget those things—not even for a day; to remember them constantly, and to bring up my sons to carry forward the flag.”

“You see,” my father replied, very seriously, “you are not eight yet, and I do not believe in early marriages; so you have twelve years before you are married and thirteen before you have a son. During those years there are a lot of nice and funny things to think about—and, above all, you must grow strong physically.”

I must say I was quite disappointed at the way he took things. I was quite miserable about it, and might have become morbid—for I liked to cling to the big dreams of the future—had it not been for my half-brother. He was fourteen years older than I, and he, too, like my uncle lived in the past. His past, however, went beyond my uncle’s past; and from him I was to learn, not of the woes of Greece, but of the glory of Greece, of her golden age, and of the time when she, Queen of the World, was first in civilization.

My horizon was gilded also by the Greek mythology—that wonderful Greek mythology, which to my brother was living, not dead. He spoke one day in such a way of Olympus that I exclaimed:

“You talk as if Olympus really existed, and were not only mythology.”

“Of course, it exists,” he replied. “I used to live there myself, until they punished me by sending me down here. I cannot tell you all the particulars, because, when Zeus is about to exile one, one is given a potion which puts him to sleep, and while asleep he is carried beyond the limits of the Olympian realm, and is left outside to live the life of a man. But though he forgets a great deal—as, for example, how to find his way back—he is left with the memory of his former existence. That is his punishment. After his death, however, he is forgiven and returns to Olympus again.”

I stared at my brother, but his calm assurance, and the faith I had in him, made me implicitly believe him—and to-day I think he really more than half believed it himself.

After this I was not surprised to have him tell me that the gods of Greece were not dead, but forced to retire on the mountains of Olympus, because Christianity had to come first. “You see, little one, you will presently learn the Old Testament, as you are now being taught the New—and as I am teaching you Mythology. You will find out, as you grow older, that you need all three to balance things up.”

From him I heard not only the names of the great Greek writers, but he read to me by the hour from them. At first they were very hard to understand, since the Greek we speak is so much simpler than the Greek of Aristophanes and Sophocles; but since, after all, it is the same language, I learned to recite it pretty well before even I knew how to read and write.

It was from my brother, too, that I learned to know the Greek Revolution as our great modern poets sang of it; and before the year was over I could recite the “Chani of Gravia” and other celebrated poems, as American children recite “Mother Goose.”

One day there came into our garden, where my brother and I sat, a handsome young man, saying: “They told me you were in the garden, so I came to find you.” He sat down by us and plunged into a conversation about a certain game they were getting up, and of which my brother was the captain. We escorted him to the gate, when he left us, and after he was out of ear-shot I asked my brother who he was, as he had forgotten to introduce us.

“It is Arif Bey,” he replied rather curtly.

“You don’t mean a real Turk?” I cried.

“Why, yes.”

“But you seemed so friendly with him!”

“Why not? I like him first rate.”

“How can you be friends with a Turk?”

“He’s an awfully good fellow.”

“But ought we to like them, and treat them as if they were our equals?”

“Well, what can we do, sister? They are the masters here, and we belong to the Turkish officialdom. We have got to be friendly with them.”

“But we ought to hate them just the same, since we must kill them. Wouldn’t you kill him, if you could?”

“I don’t think I hate Arif Bey—and as for killing him, I hope I shall never have to.”

“But if we are not to kill them, how are we going to be free again, and how can the Greek flag fly over the Galata Tower?”

“Look here, baby, what you need is to play more and not think so much. Now come, and I’ll teach you to climb trees, and for every tree you climb yourself I’ll tell you a tale about the time when I lived on Mount Olympus.”

I was agile by nature, in spite of being frail, and in no time I learned to climb even the tallest trees on our place, an occupation which delighted me as much as anything I had ever done.

Arif Bey I saw again and again, for I became the constant companion of either my father or my brother, and I could not find it in my heart to hate him. A few years older than my brother, he was taller and his shoulders were broader, and he carried himself with a dash worthy of the old demi-gods of Greece. As for his eyes they were as kind and good to look into as those of my brother. What is more I was never afraid in his presence, and one day he spoke so tenderly of his sick mother that I pretty much changed my mind about the delight of seeing him killed. It was then that I talked very eulogistically about him to my brother; but one never can tell what grown-ups will do—they are the most inconsistent of human beings.

“Look here, baby”—he interrupted my praises of Arif Bey—“Arif is handsome and a nice chap, and I can trust him up to a certain point; but don’t get to thinking he is as good as we are. A Turk never is. They have enough Greek blood in them to look decent, but they have enough Turkish left to be Asiatics, and don’t forget that. An Asiatic is something inferior at best. Look at Arif Bey himself, for example. He is about the best of them, and yet, barely twenty-seven, he has two wives already. There is Asia for you!”

I was quite perplexed in regard to the proper attitude of mind toward the Turks. The only girl I knew was Kiamelé—and I adored her. The only man was Arif Bey—and he got so mixed up in my mind with the demi-gods that I did not even mind his two wives. My uncle had been dead for almost a year, and I had no one to incite me against them. The old Greek writers and the beautiful mythology was beginning to make me tolerant toward everybody. I began to lose the feeling of the yoke, since Greece had once been the greatest of great countries. When one has a past achievement to be proud of, one bears a temporary humiliation better—and there was so much in the Greek past that the weight of the yoke lifted perceptibly from my neck. It is true I kept the little flag nailed under the iconostasis, before which I said my prayers every night, and when I felt that I was not quite as loyal to it as I ought to be, I used to pray to the Christian gods to help me to remember it. I say “gods,” because to my mind God and Christ, and St Nicholas, and St George, and the rest of the saints were much the same sort of a group as the old Greek gods, now in seclusion on Mount Olympus.

CHAPTER IV
DJIMLAH

ON the day of Beiram my father was about to set out for a call on a Turkish pasha.

“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 mine.

The old pasha was receiving his guests in his superb garden, and I, after eating all the sweets my father would permit me to, and becoming tired of their talk, which happened not to interest me, slipped away. I wandered about in the garden, and presently came across a little girl, older than myself, yet not so old as to form a barrier between us. It is true that we came very near fighting, at first, over the bravery of our respective races, but we ended, thanks to the courtesy of my little hostess, by becoming friends.

Taking my hand in hers we ran all the way to where the pasha and my father were seated. She interrupted their conversation without ceremony, and perching herself on her grandfather’s knees, she demanded that he should borrow me for her from my father.

I stood listening, confident that my father would never, never consent to such a terrible thing. When my father consented—reluctantly it is true; yet he did consent—cold shivers ran up and down my back, and my eyelids fell heavily over my eyes. I felt abandoned—abandoned by the one human being for whom I entertained the greatest confidence. Sheer will-power kept me from throwing myself on my father’s knees and imploring him to save me from the Turks. Had I not been bragging to the little girl but a few minutes before that I was a Greek, and consequently an extremely brave person, I am sure I should have broken into sobs. As it was, I let myself be led away by the little girl without even kissing my father good-bye; for that would have broken down my self-control. That, I felt, was more than even Greek blood could do. I resigned myself to my dreadful fate, but my legs felt like ripe cucumbers.

Little Djimlah enveloped me in a long caress. “You are my very own baby,” she said. “I never had one before, and I shall love you vastly, and give you all I have.”

Holding my hand in hers she began to run as fast as she could, pulling me along down the long avenue of trees, leading to the house. At the door she did not knock. It opened as by magic of its own accord.

My first glimpse of the interior corresponded exactly with the pictures of my imagination; for in 1885 Turkish homes still preserved all their oriental customs. The hall was large, dark, and gloomy; and the eunuch, who had opened the door by pulling his rope, added to its terrors. And since that was a great festival day, and many ladies were calling, the hall was lined with these sinister black men, the whites of whose eyes glistened in the darkness.

Still hand in hand, Djimlah and I mounted a flight of dark, carpetless stairs and came to a landing screened by very much the same kind of a curtain as those that hang outside the doors of the Catholic churches on the Continent.

“Open!” Djimlah cried, and silently two eunuchs drew aside the curtains, and we passed to another flight of bare stairs, now full of light and sunshine. With the sun a peal of laughter greeted us, and when we reached the upper hall I felt a trifle less afraid.

Scrambling about on rugs were what seemed to me at first to be a thousand young women, very much like my Kiamelé, dressed in as many colours as there were heads, barefooted and barearmed. They were having the greatest frolics, and laughing like a pack of children.

“Hullo, there!” cried Djimlah.

They stopped their romping, some of them rising up on their knees to see us the better.

“Why, Djimlah Hanoum, what have you there?”

Djimlah surveyed me with eyes full of that humour which is so strong a characteristic of the Turkish people, and replied seriously: “It looks to me like a Christian child.”

“And where did you find it?” they cried.

“I borrowed it from the effendi, her father, who is out in the garden talking to grandfather. She will be here a long, long time, as my own baby.”

“Really?” They became quite excited about this.

“Yes. And she can understand us, and talk the way we do,” Djimlah announced proudly, as if she had imparted to me a knowledge of her language in the short time she had been holding my hand.

“Os-geldi! os-geldi!” then they cried to me in welcome.

“Now let’s go to grandmother,” said Djimlah.

This bevy of women were the slaves of the house and the slaves of the ladies who were with the great lady within. We passed through several rooms, filled with the outdoor garments of the visiting ladies, and then came into the divan-khané, or principal reception room, where the hostess was entertaining her guests.

Djimlah, placing both her little hands on the floor, salaamed, and then walked up to her grandmother, who, magnificently attired in her orientalism, sat cross-legged on a hard sofa, which ran around three sides of the room.

“Here, grandmother, here is a Christian child. The effendi, her father, is out with grandfather, and he has lent her to me.”

I stood still, quite uncertain what was the proper thing for me to do. I had never before come so near to a Turkish lady; and this one, with her deeply dyed finger-nails, and her indoor veils, and her hundreds of diamonds, distracted all my previous education in decorum. I merely stared.

“Welcome, little hanoum,” she said, after she, too, had stared at me. “We shall do our best to make your stay among us seem like a happy minute.”

I picked up my little skirts and made her a European curtsy. She was childishly delighted with it, and I was made to repeat it before every lady in the room, who sat in her magnificence, cross-legged on the divan.

There were many, and by the time I finished my curtsies, and told my name and my age, and how I had learned Turkish, and where I lived, I felt quite at home, and when the old lady made us sit by her, and gave us such quantities of candy as I had never been permitted to eat in an entire year, I did not think once of the little flag that my sons were to carry.

They talked before us as if we were not there, and told a lot of funny stories at which we were permitted to join in the laugh.

The audience over, the ladies rose and salaamed. Djimlah and I rose, too, and as Djimlah now kissed the hems of the ladies’ dresses, so did I; and I was pleased to do so, for the ladies were reeking with strong perfumes, a thing I had been taught to consider ill-bred, but which I secretly thought lovely. We escorted the guests out to the ante-rooms, where their attendants wrapped them in their black wraps and heavy white gauze head-gear, and there we bade them good-bye.

Some of them took me in their arms and kissed me, and their perfume stayed with me even in bed that night.

CHAPTER V
WE AND THEY

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 other wives, whom she called her sisters, several married daughters, the wives of some of the sons, and two married grand-daughters. Among them they were the mothers of numerous babies—indeed, there were babies all over the house; and since each lady had several slaves there must have been at least a hundred women and children.

Djimlah happened to be the only child of her age. They were all sorry for her, and said so constantly while doing their best to amuse her.

There was little furniture in the house, just rugs and hard sofas, and small tables upon which were always sorbets or sweets, and cushions of all colours piled up on the rugs, where babies or grown-ups were always lying slumbering. Various small musical instruments were also among the cushions, and at any time some person would pick one of these up to play and sing, so that most of the time, on the floor, there were both people slumbering, and people playing and singing. And since the long, curtainless windows were latticed, and the upper part entirely hidden by creeping vines growing from pots, the whole place seemed to me like a play-box, transformed into a fairy house, from which discipline, like a wicked fairy, was banished.

All the cooking was done in the men’s part of the house, and brought in by eunuchs. At mealtimes we sat around small, low tables, on cushions, and ate most of the things with our fingers, except rice and soup, which we ate with pretty wooden spoons.

The amount they permitted me to eat was incredible. Even to this day I wonder what prevented me from becoming ill.

Djimlah and I practically owned the house. We slid on the banisters; we climbed on the backs of the slaves, who, at any time, were ready to play horse with us; and we ate candy whenever and in whatever quantities we pleased.

No one said “No” to us, whatever we did, and the old hanoum let us ruffle her beautiful clothes and disturb her even when she was asleep. We slept on a little bed, made up at the foot of hers, in her own room, and it was she who said our prayer, which we repeated, and then kissed us good-night.

The day had passed so rapidly, and had been so crowded with events and candy that I had had no time to think. Once in bed, after Djimlah put her arms around me and kissed me and then sweetly fell asleep, I had plenty of time to review the day. It seemed preposterous that I, my uncle’s grand-niece, should be here in a Turkish household, and in the same bed with a Turkish little girl—a little girl I liked and should hate to kill. Yet my uncle’s teachings were strongly with me and his dark, fiery eyes seemed to pierce my heart. I tried to focus my mind on the bad side of this household. There was the fact of the several wives, and if it was bad for Arif Bey to have two wives, it must be terribly bad to have seven, as had Djimlah’s grandfather, who did not even have the excuse, to my thinking, of being young, handsome and Olympian. On the other hand, the old hanoum liked those other wives, and called them Sister, and Djimlah spoke of them lovingly. Impelled by my uncle’s eyes I tried to dislike the Turks. I felt disloyal to him, whom I could feel very close that night; but when I fell asleep at last, my rest was not troubled, and on awakening again Djimlah was leaning over me, cooing and laughing, and I began to laugh too.

The tears, which I had had the courage not to shed when my father said that I might stay with Djimlah, flowed copiously when the time came to leave her. I cried hard and loud, and so did Djimlah and because we two cried some of the slaves joined in, and then the old hanoum said:

“Now, young hanoum, that you have come once, you will like to come again, and prove to us that we have made your stay happy.”

“I’m ready to come this minute,” I sobbed. At this she laughed, and we began to laugh, too; and thus I bade them good-bye.

The first words I said on reaching my own home were that the Turks were the nicest people in the world. My father was amused, but my mother was horrified, and had she had her way I believe my first would have been my only visit. As it was, eight days later I was again with Djimlah; and thus it came about that from that early age I became a constant visitor not only to Djimlah’s home, but also to that of other little girls whom I met through her, and otherwise.

As I grew older, the vast contrast between my race and theirs became more and more clear to me; and I had the distinct feeling of partaking of two worlds, mine and theirs.

In my home there were duties for me from my babyhood, duties which had rigidly to be performed; and things to be learned, remembered, and to be guided by. The words duty and obligation played a great rôle in my Greek home, and these two words, so stern, so irreconcilable with pleasure, were absent from the Turkish homes.

For me there was a tremendous Greek history to be learned and understood; and the more one studied it, the more one had to suffer because of the present; for in my home we lived with the past, we talked of the past, and of the obligations which the past imposed upon our present and future.

In the Turkish homes there was no history to be learned. All they seemed to know was that they were a great conquering race, that they had come from Asia and had conquered all Europe, because they were brave and the Europeans were cowards. There was no past or future in their lives. Everything was ephemeral, resting on the pleasure of the day, or better yet, on the pleasure of the moment; unconscious of the morrow, and indifferent to the moment after the present.

In entering a Turkish home, especially as I grew older, I felt as if I were leaving my own life outside. They were different from us, these women, these children of the Turks. They were so different, indeed, that I rarely spoke to them of the things I felt or thought about at home. I came to them ready to enjoy them, and to enjoy life with them; and yet, as the years went by, deep down in my heart I felt glad to be a Greek child, even though I belonged to the conquered race; and I began to return to my home with greater satisfaction than I had at first, and to put into my studies a fervour and a willingness which might have been less, had I not been a visitor to these Turkish households.

Yet curiously, too, as I grew older, I liked the Turks more and more, though in my liking there was a certain amount of protective feeling, such as one might feel for wayward children, rather than for equals.

I learned to see what was noble, charming, and poetical in their lives; but I also became conscious that in spite of the faults of my race, in spite of the limitations of our religion, our civilization was better than theirs, because it contained such words as discipline, duty, and obligation. And dimly I felt that we were a race that had come to the world to stay and to help, while theirs was perhaps some day to vanish utterly.

CHAPTER VI
AUNT KALLIROË

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 their customs and traditions from the East, and we held fast to our own. The two races had nothing to give each other. They ignored us totally, and we only remembered them to hate them and to make ready some day to throw off their dominion.

I have never heard a good word for the Turks from such of my people as have not crossed their thresholds. It is almost unbelievable that for upward of four hundred years we should have lived side by side, ignorant of each other’s history, and positively refusing to learn of each other’s good qualities. With entire sincerity the Greeks daily relate to each other awful deeds of the Turks—deeds which are mere rumour and hearsay, and contain only a grain of truth, or none at all.

Each side did its best to keep the other as far away as possible. They had their resorts and we had ours. They had their tekhé and we had our schools; they had their mosques and we had our churches; they had their Punch and Judy shows and we had our theatres; they had their music and we had our own; they had their language and we clung jealously to ours. Our own differences we did not bring before the Turkish law, but before our own Church. Neither in sorrow nor in pleasure did we mingle. Turkey is the only country in the world where one may travel for months without using the language of the country, with such great tenacity do the conquered races cling to their own. Indeed, in order to live comfortably in Constantinople, one must know Greek, not Turkish.

After I had played with Turkish girls for two years, had been in and out of their homes as a friend, and liked them, one morning my grand-aunt Kalliroë came to our house in a great state of excitement and worry.

“Go fetch your father, dear,” she cried to me, “and tell him that it is of the utmost importance—of the utmost national importance.”

Aunt Kalliroë was an old lady, and the last of her type I remember. She was of an old Phanariot family, and to her the traditions of Phanar—the Greek portion of Constantinople—were as important as her religious duties. She always dressed in the old fashion of Phanar, wearing black lace, turban-like, on her head, a dress in one piece, with ample skirts, and a shawl which she let hang gracefully over her shoulders. She was tall and imposing, with the sharp features of the Greeks of Phanar, which perhaps were sharpened during their first two hundred years under Turkish rule. Even in her old age her eyes were as piercing and clear as a hawk’s. She carried a cane, and wore silk mittens made by hand; and whenever she met a Turk in the street she muttered exorcizing words, as if he were an evil spirit.

Upon her marriage she had at first gone to live in another community, where the Greek traditions were not so rigidly adhered to. At once she decided that her marriage was providential, and that God had meant her to go to this place to revive the Greek spirit. She undertook her task with a fervour at once patriotic and religious; and she succeeded in her mission, for she made these wayward sheep return rigorously to the fold.

“Go, child!” she now admonished me impatiently. “Don’t stand there and stare at me—go fetch your father.”

I knew my father did not like to be disturbed in the morning, but I knew also that there was not a human being who did not obey Aunt Kalliroë, so I went and fetched my father.

“Nephew!” she cried, without any greeting, as soon as she saw him, “I will not countenance it—I will not tolerate it! He must be made to understand the impossibility of his desire.”

My father sat down by her, took her silk-mittened hand, and kissed the fingers.

“Now just tell me who is ‘he.’”

Aunt Kalliroë looked at my father with disgusted surprise.

“Nephew, are you living at the North Pole, and not in Turkey? Baky Pasha, of course.”

She flung the name as if it were a bomb, and waited for it to explode. My father took the matter calmly.

“What has he done?” he inquired.

“Nephew, what is the matter with you? Don’t you know?”

My father shook his head. “Tell me,” he begged.

“He is proposing to buy the Spathary homestead! The—Spathary—homestead! Why the man didn’t leave it to the Church I can’t understand; but I suppose the stroke prevented him from putting his affairs in order. Well, his only heirs live in Roumania, and they want to sell the house, not to rent it, and what is more they are asking a ridiculous price. The house has been vacant for two years; and now Baky Pasha, the Asiatic brute and murderer, proposes to buy it, to buy a Christian home, which contains a niche for our saints in every bed-chamber—a home which has been blessed by our priests, and in which many a Christian child has been baptized!”

She threw up her hands in despair.

“Christian God, are you going to try your children much more? You have sent these Asiatic hordes to come and conquer us; you have allowed your great church to be polluted by their profane creed; and now are you going to try your children further by permitting these beasts to buy Christian homes to lead their improper lives in?”

My father waited till her outburst came to an end, and then said gently: “You know, Aunt Kalliroë, Baky is a very nice fellow, and what is more he has never murdered anybody, or is likely to.”

My grand-aunt stared at my father; then asked stiffly: “And what is his nationality, please?”

“He is a Turk, of course——”

“A Turk—and not a murderer?” She lifted her eyes to the ceiling. “Christian God, what are we coming to? Is 1453 so far away that your children have forgotten it? A Turk—and not a murderer! But I am not here to discuss the Turks with you, nephew; for are you not a Turkish official, do you not consort daily with these barbarians, and do they not even say that you permit your innocent babe to sleep under the roof where Turks keep their women? Christian God, give grace to your children.”

She joined her hands, and her lips moved in silent prayer.

“Just tell me what I can do for you?” my father begged.

“You can speak for me to that Turk, and tell him that the Spathary homestead is Greek, and that it is in the midst of a Greek community, where he is not wanted. If he offers so much money that it will be sold to him, well, it shall be burned to the ground before he moves into it, that is all.”

My father opened his cigarette case, and offered her a cigarette, for all the women of her generation smoked.

She selected one, and examined it closely. “I am gratified at least to see that you smoke what is made by your countrymen, and not Turkish cigarettes.”

My father laughed. “Why, auntie, there is not a Turkish cigarette-maker in all Turkey. All the Turkish cigarettes are made by Greeks.”

Aunt Kalliroë took a puff or two; then, for once, on the defensive, she observed: “All decent things are made by Greeks—isn’t that so?”

“I suppose so.”

“You ought not to ‘suppose so,’” she cried, again on the offensive; “you ought to be certain. Christian God, what are we coming to? Is this the patriotism to be expected of the men who must try to free your great church from the Mussulman profaning?”

“Tell me, how do you propose to settle the Spathary matter?” my father asked, reverting to the less dangerous topic. “If Baky shouldn’t buy it, how would you keep off other Turks who might wish to buy? Your community is an old-fashioned one. The younger generation of Greeks is moving away from it; and only rich Turks will buy the big old Greek homesteads.”

“I propose to buy it myself,” she thundered, “and move into it, and sell my own house to the Bishop of Heraclea, who wants it.”

“How much does he offer for your house?”

“Four thousand pounds.”

“And what do the Spathary heirs ask?”

“Those Roumanian Greeks have no more idea of value than they have of patriotism—they are asking five thousand, and what is more I shall have to pay it.”

“Then you will sell the home of your husband’s forefathers, and pay a thousand pounds more for an inferior one?”

She banged her stick on the floor in exasperation. “I am not driving a money bargain: I am keeping a Turk from coming among us. Great Christian God, am I to permit an infidel to pass daily by my door, and to walk the street where Christian virgins dwell?”

“Why doesn’t the Bishop buy the Spathary homestead?” my father suggested.

“It isn’t big enough. It hasn’t enough ground. And it’s farther from the landing. Now, are you going to carry my message to that brutal Turk?”

“Yes, certainly. And I know that he will not be willing to buy where he is not wanted. But I am sorry that you are going to lose your own home, and pay a thousand pounds over.”

“Needn’t worry! I have enough to live on, and, as you know, all my money goes to the Educational Fund, so that I might just as well use a thousand pounds now to keep a Turk away from Christians.”

The next time we visited Aunt Kalliroë she was installed in the Spathary homestead. Just within the front door stood a small table, covered with a white linen table-cloth, such as orthodox Greek women spun themselves for the purpose of putting on the tables where the ikons were laid—table-cloths always washed by the mistress herself in a basin kept apart from the other dishes. On the table lay a Greek ikon, a brass candlestick holding three candles, all burning, and a brass incense-burner, from which a column of blue smoke was rising, filling the house with the odour of incense.

“Why, it isn’t Easter and it isn’t Christmas,” I cried. “It isn’t even a great saint’s day. Why are you burning the candles and the incense, Aunt Kalliroë?”

“They have been burning since I moved into this house, and they shall burn for thrice forty days, to cleanse it from Turkish pollution.”

“But since Baky Pasha never bought it, and never lived in it——”

“No, but a Turk has coveted it, and that is enough to pollute a Christian home.”

This incident is one of many. It illustrates the feeling which existed in the hearts of the orthodox Greeks for the people who conquered them and brought, to the very capital of their former empire, their religion and their customs. We disliked them and feared them; and our fear partook both of the real and of the unreal, because we ascribed to them not only the deeds which they had done, but also a great many that they were incapable of doing, and had not even considered the possibility of doing.

I wonder now what would have been the outcome had the Greeks and the Turks mingled more together; had they come to know each other and to recognize each other’s good qualities, and had they been able to profit by the good which is in each nation. Had the Turks, for example, borrowed from the light of Greek civilization and culture; and had the Greeks profited by the calm contemplative spirit, which is the keynote of the Turkish character, when not in war. I wonder always what would have been the outcome, and perhaps that is one more reason why I try to show what is best in the Turks—to save the gold from the dross, and to disentangle from the bad what was divine and immortal in them.

We Greeks have never been able to learn from them and to give something in exchange; but why let it be lost to the whole world? And since we call ourselves Christians, why should we not be able to say—when the sick shall be dead—even as Christ said of the dead dog: “Yes, he is a dead dog—but his teeth are beautiful.”

CHAPTER VII
IN THE HOLLOW OF ALLAH’S HAND

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 I was visiting her, a tremendous thunder-storm broke out, and I said to her:

“Oh, Djimlah, let us go out in your grounds and watch the storm. They never let me do that at home, and I do so want to find its roots.”

She did not accept the proposal with alacrity. “It will rain hard in a minute,” she objected, “and we shall get wet. I hate to look like a rat—and all the curl will come out of my hair.”

“I believe you are afraid, like the other women,” I mocked her. “Maybe if you had a European bed in your home you would go and hide under it.”

She rose majestically: “Come, we will go and see whether I am afraid.”

We went out, bent on finding the beginning of the storm. I always thought that a storm must have a beginning; and from the windows of my nursery, where I watched the storms, it looked as if it were just around the corner. In vain, however, on that day did we wander around many corners, on Djimlah’s grounds: we could find no beginning.

The storm grew fiercer and fiercer. The whole sky was dark lead-coloured, and black clouds rushed along as if a tremendous force were pushing them from behind. The lightning, like a vicious snake, was zigzagging over the sky. Then there came a bang! and a crash of thunder. By that time we were far from the house, and on the cliffs. Djimlah put her arm within mine.

“I am possessed with fear,” she gasped; “for Allah is wrathful.”

Her tone was full of awe, and it subdued me. “Let us go back,” I said.

“No, it will overtake us, and crush us,” Djimlah answered. “I don’t want to die—not just yet. We must hide somewhere.”

At this time I was being taught my Bible, and felt that I knew a great deal about religious subjects.

“We can’t hide from God,” I explained. “He sees us everywhere—even in the darkest corner of a dark closet.”

“I don’t want to hide from God,” Djimlah corrected, “I want to hide from the thunder. Come! I know where we can go—to the Hollow of Allah’s Hand.”

Hand in hand we ran as fast as we could against the hard, beating rain, the fierce wind blowing against us, bending even big trees, and mercilessly breaking off their branches. With the agility of children we managed to reach a high cliff partly concealed by pines. It resembled a gigantic hand, rising up, the fingers curving over and forming a protected hollow. Into this we crept and sat down, high above the Sea of Marmora, with miles and miles of horizon in front of us.

In our little shelter the rain could not get at us, but we were already wet, and our clothes clung to us uncomfortably.

“Let us take our coats off,” suggested Djimlah, “for the under layer must be less wet than the upper one. And also let us take off our shoes and stockings. We shall be more comfortable without them.”

We divested ourselves of some of our clothing, and as the hollow where we sat had sand, we stretched our coats in front of us to dry, curled our feet under us, and snuggled very close to each other.

The storm was still raging, but we now looked upon it with the renewed interest and pleasure derived from our safety.

“We didn’t find its roots after all,” Djimlah observed. “I believe it begins at the feet of Allah and ends there, and since we are sitting in the hollow of his hand it can’t hurt us.”

It struck me as curious that she should be talking of God so familiarly. In my ignorance of their religious side, I considered the Turks as infidels and without religion.

“I didn’t know that God had any hands,” I remarked. “I thought He was only an eye—at least that is the way He is painted on the ceiling of our church.”

Djimlah shook her head. “How can He be only an eye? Have you ever seen a person being only an eye?”

“He isn’t a person,” I retorted. “He is God, which is very different from being a person,” and yet as I spoke the words, something I had just learned popped into my head, that man was created in the image of God. Magnanimously I mentioned this to Djimlah.

“I always knew that,” she agreed, “and I know whom He looks like, too. He looks like grandfather at his best.”

“Your grandfather is old,” I protested. “God isn’t an old man.”

Djimlah pondered this. “Well, He has lived ever since the beginning of the world—and grandfather is only sixty.” She looked at me puzzled. “That’s funny. I never thought much about His age.”

“Yes,” I put in more perplexed still, “and His Son, if He had lived, would have been almost nineteen hundred years old.”

She turned abruptly, and her face in the little hollow was very near mine.

“What son?” she inquired with interest.

“Jesus Christ, our Lord,” I answered.

“Your prophet? Why, He wasn’t His Son. Allah never married,” and again the words flashed into my mind that there was neither giving nor taking in marriage in heaven. Yet I stood by my orthodoxy.

“Christ is the Son of God,” I maintained.

Djimlah, too, stood by her belief. “Allah had no children of the flesh. Christ was only a prophet—and He was second to Mohammed.”

A brilliant idea came to me. “You know, Djimlah,” I explained, “I am not talking of Allah, I am talking of God.”

“They are all the same,” she asserted. “There is but one Heaven and one Earth, and one Sun and one Moon. Therefore there is but one God, and that is Allah, and we are His children.”

I was staggered by her confident tone. Djimlah with her words had made of me a Mohammedan and an infidel—something religiously unclean and unspeakable. And, what is more, she was unconscious of the enormity of her speech: she was excitedly watching the lightning, now making all sorts of arabesques on the sky.

“Watch, darling, watch!” she cried. “I know now what the storm is. It is fireworks, Allah’s fireworks!”

“Fireworks—foolishness!” I exclaimed peevishly; for I was sorely hurt at the idea of her being on equal terms with me before God. “God is not frivolous—He does not want any fireworks. He is vastly busy watching the world, and guiding the destinies of the human race.”

“Why should He watch and guide?” Djimlah said proudly. “He knows everything from the beginning; for He writes it on the foreheads of people. My destiny is written here,” she pointed to her forehead, “and yours is written there.” She tapped my forehead.

I hated her, and crossly pushed her finger from my forehead.

“He doesn’t,” I cried, “for He leaves us free to choose whether we shall be brave or cowardly, whether we shall do good or evil.”

She laughed derisively. “A nice kind of a father you would make of Him—taking no more care of us than that. But do stop arguing and watch the storm. Isn’t it glorious?”

Indeed the lightning over the Asiatic side of Turkey was wonderful. The storm had worked its way over there, and the rain had followed, leaving our side of the coast clear. Right above us a yellowish cloud tore open and disclosed the sun. Djimlah greeted him with delight. She extended her little arms up toward him, crying:

“Come out, Sun Effendi, come out! You are so golden and warm, and I am so cold.”

She shook her little body and rose, jumping up and down to get warm.

As if to oblige her the sun’s rays grew stronger and stronger, and we began to feel better under their warmth. We could hear the storm growling miles away now, and see only bits of lightning.

“It’s working its way back to Allah,” said Djimlah, “so let’s go home, and get dry clothes and something to eat. But I am glad we came out, for now you know that it has no roots.” She put her arm around me. “I used to be afraid of the noise,” she confessed sheepishly. “I used to hide my head in some one’s lap. I never knew it was so beautiful. You made me see that.”

This deference pleased me, yet it did not take away the smart from which I was suffering. Indeed, the calm assertion of Djimlah that we were all in the same way children of God hurt me more than any abstract proposition has since been able to. Had she intimated that the Turks and the Greeks were alike, I could have proved to her by actual facts that the Greeks were superior to the Turks, because they had attained to the noblest civilization, the most beautiful architecture, and the greatest literature in the world; but how was I to prove my position of superiority before God?

The afternoon passed in various games, in which I took only a half-hearted interest. Then came supper and bedtime. I was spending the night there, and by the time I was to go to bed my smart, instead of being lessened, had grown tremendously. I undressed silently.

The old hanoum came in to hear us say our prayers. Up to this time I had not minded praying with Djimlah to Allah. I was sure it did not matter, because when I was tucked in bed, I crossed myself three times, and implored the Virgin Mary to watch over me and over those I loved. To-night it was different. If I were to show Djimlah that I did not believe in her words, I must stop praying to her god; so I said:

“I shall not pray to Allah to-night.”

“Oh, but you must,” Djimlah declared. “You wouldn’t like to disappoint him, would you?”

“I don’t belong to him,” I asserted passionately. “I don’t belong to him. I belong to God, so I don’t care whether I disappoint Allah or not.”

“Djimlah,” interposed her grandmother, “you must let the little hanoum do as she likes. You and I can pray alone.”

Djimlah stood before her grandmother, her face tilted upward, her hands outstretched, palms upward.

“Allah, the only true god of heaven and earth, be praised! There is no other God but God, the great, the wonderful, the just. Allah be praised!”

She kissed her grandmother and me, and the old lady kissed us both, and put us to bed. No sooner was she out of the room than Djimlah said:

“Baby mine, I believe the storm has upset you. You have been so quiet all the afternoon—and now you don’t even pray.”

“I am upset,” I replied. “But it isn’t the storm—it’s you.”

She sat up in bed. “Now what have I done to offend you, when you are under my roof?”

“It wasn’t under your roof. It was when we were in the open, during the storm.”