STAMBOUL, THE CITY OF MOSQUES
Stamboul is wonderfully various. Compressed between two seas, it
contains sharp, even brutal contrasts: of beauty and ugliness, grandeur
and squalor, purity and filth, silence and uproar, the most delicate
fascination and a fierceness that is barbaric. It can give you peace or
a sword. The sword is sharp and cruel; the peace is profound and
exquisite.
Every day early I escaped from the uproar of Pera and sought in Stamboul
a place of forgetfulness. There are many such places in the city and on
its outskirts: the mosques, the little courts and gardens of historic
tombs; the strange and forgotten Byzantine churches, lost in the maze of
wooden houses; the cemeteries vast and melancholy, where the dead sleep
in the midst of dust and confusion, guarded by giant cypresses; the
lonely and shadowed ways by the walls and the towers; the poetic glades
and the sun-kissed terraces of Seraglio Point.
Santa Sophia stands apart from all other buildings, unique in beauty,
with the faint face of the Christ still visible on its wall; Christian
in soul though now for so long dedicated to the glory of Allah and of
his prophet. I shall not easily forget my disappointment when I stood
for the first time in its shadow. I had been on Seraglio Point, and,
strolling by the famous Royal Gate to look at the lovely fountain of
Sultan Ahmed, I saw an enormous and ugly building decorated with huge
stripes of red paint, towering above me as if fain to obscure the sun.
The immensity of it was startling. I asked its name.
"Santa Sophia."
I looked away to the fountain, letting my eyes dwell on its projecting
roof and its fretwork of gold, its lustrous blue and green tiles,
splendid ironwork, and plaques of gray and brown marble.
It was delicate and enticing. Its mighty neighbor was almost repellent.
But at length--not without reluctance, for I feared perhaps a deeper
disappointment--I went into the mosque by the Porta Basilica, and found
myself in the midst of a vast harmony, so wonderful, so penetrating, so
calm, that I was conscious at once of a perfect satisfaction.
At first this happy sense of being completely satisfied seemed shed upon
me by shaped space. In no other building have I had this exact feeling,
that space had surely taken an inevitable form and was announcing
itself to me. I stood beneath the great dome, one hundred and
seventy-nine feet in height, and as I gazed upward I felt both possessed
and released.
[Illustration: THE ROYAL GATE LEADING TO THE OLD SERAGLIO]
For a long time I was fully aware of nothing but the vast harmony of
Santa Sophia, descending upon me, wrapping me round. I saw moving
figures, tiny, yet full of meaning, passing in luminous distances,
pausing, bending, kneeling; a ray of light falling upon a white turban;
an Arab in a long pink robe leaning against a column of dusky red
porphyry; a dove circling under the dome as if under the sky. But I
could not be strongly conscious of any detail, or be enchanted by any
separate beauty. I was in the grasp of the perfect whole.
The voice of a child disturbed me.
Somewhere far off in the mosque a child began to sing a great tune,
powerfully, fervently, but boyishly. The voice was not a treble voice;
it was deeper, yet unmistakably the voice of a boy. And the melody sung
was bold, indeed almost angry, and yet definitely religious. It echoed
along the walls of marble, which seemed to multiply it mysteriously,
adding to it wide murmurs which were carried through all the building,
into the dimmest, remotest recesses. It became in my ears as the
deep-toned and fanatical thunder of Islam, proclaiming possession of the
church of Divine Wisdom which had been dedicated to Christ. It put me
for a time definitely outside of the vast harmony. I was able at last to
notice details both architectural and human.
Santa Sophia has nine gates leading to it from a great corridor or outer
hall, lined with marble and roofed with old-gold mosaic. As you enter
from the Porta Basilica you have an impression of pale yellow, gold, and
gray; of a pervading silvery glimmer, of a pervading gleam of delicate
primrose, brightly pure and warm. You hear a sound of the falling of
water from the two fountains of ablution, great vases of gray marble
which are just within the mosque.
Gray and gold prevail in the color scheme, a beautiful combination of
which the eyes are never tired. But many hues are mingled with them:
yellow and black, deep plum-color and red, green, brown, and very dark
blue. The windows, which are heavily grated, have no painted glass, so
the mosque is not dark. It has a sort of lovely and delicate dimness,
touching as the dimness of twilight. It is divinely calm, almost as
Nature can be when she would bring her healing to the unquiet human
spirit. We know that during the recent war Santa Sophia was crowded with
suffering fugitives, with dying soldiers and cholera patients. I feel
that even upon them in their agony it must have shed rays of comfort,
into their hearts a belief in a far-off compassion waiting the
appointed time to make itself fully manifest.
The great dome is of gold, and of either black or very deep blue.
Myriads of chandeliers, holding tiny glass cups, hang from the roof.
Pale yellow matting covers the plain of the floor. The silvery glimmer
comes from the thousands of cups, the primrose gleam from the matting.
The walls are lined with slabs of exquisite marble of many patterns and
colors. Gold mosaic decorates the roof and the domes. Galleries,
supported by marble arcades, and leaning on roofs of dim gold, run round
a great part of the mosque; which is subtly broken up, and made
mysterious, enticing, and various by curved recesses of marble, by
innumerable arches, some large and heavy, some fragile and delicate, by
screens, and by forests of columns. Two-storied aisles flank the vast
nave, through which men wander looking almost like little dolls. So huge
is the mosque that the eyes are deceived within it, and can no longer
measure heights or breadths with accuracy. When I first stood in the
nave I thought the chandeliers were hanging so near to the ground that
it must be dangerous for a tall man to try to pass underneath them. They
are, of course, really far higher than the head of a giant.
In Santa Sophia intricacy, by some magical process of genius, results in
simplicity. Everything seems gently but irresistibly compelled to
become a minister to the beauty and the calmness of the whole: the
arcades of gray marble and gold; the sacred mosaics of Holy Mary, and of
the six-winged Seraphim, which still testify to another age and another
religion; the red columns of porphyry from Baalbec's Temple of the Sun;
the Ephesus columns of verde antico; the carved capitals and the bases
of shining brass; the gold and gray pulpit, with its long staircase of
marble closed by a gold and green curtain, and its two miraculously
beautiful flags of pearly green and faint gold, by age made more
wonderful than when they first flew on the battle-field, or were carried
in sacred processions; the ancient prayer-rugs fixed to the walls; the
Sultan's box, a sort of long gallery, ending in a kiosk with a gilded
grille, and raised upon marble pillars; the great doors and the curtains
of dull red wool; the piled carpets that are ready against the winter,
when the cool yellow matting is covered up; the great green shields in
the pendentives, bearing their golden names of God and his prophet, of
Ali, Osman, Omar, and Abu-Bekr. Everything slips into the heart of the
great harmony, however precious, however simple, even however crude.
There are a few ugly things in Santa Sophia: whitewash covering mosaics,
stains of fierce yellow, blotches of plaster which should be removed.
They do not really matter; one cannot heed them when one is immersed
in such almost mysterious beauty.
[Illustration: THE MOSQUE OF SANTA SOPHIA]
Men and birds are at ease in Santa Sophia. Doves have made their home in
the holy place. They fly under the long arcades, they circle above the
galleries, they rest against blocks of cool marble the color of which
their plumage resembles. And all day long men pass in through the
gateways, and become at once little, yet strangely significant in the
vastness which incloses and liberates them. They take off their shoes
and carry them, or lay them down in the wooden trays at the edges of
those wide, railed-in platforms covered with matting, called mastaba,
which are characteristic of mosques, and which are supposed to be for
the use of readers of the Koran. Then they are free of the mosque. Some
of them wander from place to place silently gazing; others kneel and
pray in some quiet corner; others study, or sing, or gossip, or sink
into reverie or slumber. Many go up to the mastaba, take off their outer
garments and hang them over the rails, hang their handkerchiefs beside
them, tuck their legs under their bodies, and remain thus for hours,
staring straight before them with solemn eyes as if hypnotized.
Children, too, go to the mastaba, settle cozily down and read the Koran
aloud, interspersing their study with gay conversation. On one of them I
found my singing boy. Small, fanatical, with head thrown back and the
fez upon it, he defiantly poured forth his tune, while an older
companion, opposite to him and looking not unlike an idol in its shrine,
stared impassively as if at the voice.
Santa Sophia is mystical in its twilight beauty. Its vastness, its
shape, its arrangement, its beautifully blended colors, the effects of
light and of sound within it, unite in creating an atmosphere that
disposes the mind to reverie and inclines the soul to prayer. Along the
exquisite marble walls, in the mellow dimness, while Stamboul just
outside is buying and selling, is giving itself to love and to crime,
the murmur of Islam's devotion steals almost perpetually, mysterious as
some faint and wide-spread sound of Nature. The great mosque seems to be
breathing out its message to the Almighty, and another message--to man.
The echoes are not clear, but dim as the twilight under the arches of
marble and beneath the ceilings of gold. They mingle without confusion
in a touching harmony, as all things mingle in this mosque of the great
repose.
[Illustration: IN THE CEMETERY OF EYUB, ON THE GOLDEN HORN]
And yet not all things!
One day I saw standing alone in the emperor's doorway a child in
blood-colored rags. The muezzin had called from the minaret the summons
to the midday prayer, and far off before the mihrab, and the sacred
carpet on which the prophet is said to have knelt, the faithful were
ranged in long lines: pilgrims on the way to Mecca; Turks in quilted
coats and in European dress; two dervishes with small, supple limbs and
pale faces smoldering with reverie; and some hard-bitten, sun-scorched
soldiers, perhaps bound for the battle-fields of the Balkan War. Moving
almost as one man they bent, they kneeled, they touched the floor with
their foreheads, leaned back and again bowed down. Their deep and
monotonous voices were very persistent in prayer. And the echoes, like
secret messengers, bore the sound along the arcades, carried it up into
the vast space of the dome, under the transverse arches and the vaulted
openings of the aisles, past the faint Christ on the wall, and the "Hand
of the Conqueror," with horrible outspread fingers, the Sweating Column,
and the Cradle of Jesus, to the child in the blood-red rags. He stood
there where Theophilus entered, under the hidden words, "I am the Light
of the World," gazing, listening, unconscious of the marvelous effect
his little figure was making, the one absolutely detached thing in the
mosque. The doves flew over his head, vanishing down the marble vistas,
becoming black against golden distances. The murmur of worship increased
in power, as more and more of the faithful stole in, shoeless, to join
the ranks before the mihrab. Like incense from a thurible, mysticism
floated through every part of the mosque, seeming to make the vast
harmony softer, to involve in it all that was motionless there and all
that was moving, except the child in the emperor's doorway, who was
unconsciously defiant, like a patch of fresh blood on a pure white
garment. The prayers at last died away, the echoes withdrew into
silence. But the child remained where he was, crude, almost sinister in
his wonderful colored rags.
Close to Santa Sophia in the Seraglio grounds is the old Byzantine
Church of Saint Irene, now painted an ugly pink, and used by the Turks
as an armory and museum. It contains many spoils taken by the Turks in
battle, which are carefully arranged upon tables and walls. Nothing is
disdained, nothing is considered too paltry for exhibition. I saw there
flags riddled with bullets; but I saw also odd boots taken from Italian
soldiers in Tripoli; caps, belts, water-bottles, blood-stained tunics
and cloaks, saddles, weapons, and buttons. Among relics from Yildiz
Kiosk was a set of furniture which once belonged to Abdul Hamid, and
which he is said to have set much store by. It shows a very distinctive,
indeed a somewhat original taste, being made of red plush and weapons.
The legs of the tables and chairs are guns and revolvers. As I looked at
the chairs I could not help wondering whether ambassadors were invited
to sit in them, after they had been loaded to their muzzles, or whether
they were reserved for subjects whom the ex-Sultan suspected of
treachery. Near them were several of Abdul Hamid's favorite
walking-sticks containing revolvers, a cane with an electric light let
into the knob, his inkstand, the mother-of-pearl revolver which was
found in his pocket, and the handkerchief which fell from his hand when
he was taken prisoner by the Young Turks, who have since brought their
country to ruin.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF SANTA SOPHIA]
In a series of galleries, under arches and ceilings of yellow and white,
stands, sits, reclines, and squats, in Eastern fashion, a strange
population of puppets, dressed in the costumes of the bygone centuries
during which Turkey has ruled in Europe. Those fearful ex-Christians,
the Janissaries, who were scourges of Christianity, look very mild now
as they stand fatuously together, no longer either Christian or
Mussulman but fatally Madame Tussaud. Once they tucked up their coats to
fight for the "Father" who had ravished them away from their fathers in
blood. Now, even the wicked man, who flees when no one pursueth, could
scarcely fear them. Near them the chief eunuch, a plump and piteous
gentleman, reclines absurdly upon his divan, holding his large black
pipe, and obsequiously attended by a bearded dwarf in red, and by a thin
aide-de-camp in green. The Sheikh-ul-Islam bends beneath the coiled
dignity of his monstrous turban; a really lifelike old man, with a
curved gray beard and a green and white turban, reads the Koran
perpetually; and soldiers with faces made of some substance that looks
like plaster return blankly the gaze of the many real soldiers who visit
this curious show.
One day, when I was strolling among the puppets of Saint Irene, some
soldiers followed me round. They were deeply interested in all that they
saw, and at last became interested in me. Two or three of them addressed
me in Turkish, which alas! I could not understand. I gathered, however,
that they were seriously explaining the puppets to me, and were giving
me information about the Janissaries, and Orchan, who was the founder of
that famous corps. I responded as well as I could with gestures, which
seemed to satisfy them, for they kept close beside me, and one, a
gigantic fellow with pugnacious mustaches, frequently touched my arm,
and once even took me by the hand to draw my attention to a group which
he specially admired. All this was done with gravity and dignity, and
with a childlike lack of self-consciousness. We parted excellent
friends. I distributed cigarettes, which were received with smiling
gratitude, and went on my way to Seraglio Point, realizing that there is
truth in the saying that every Turk is a gentleman.
Upon Seraglio Point I found many more soldiers, resting in groups by the
edge of the sea, upon the waste ground that lies at the foot of the
walls, beyond the delightful abandoned glades that are left to run wild
and to shelter the birds. If you wish to understand something of the
curious indifference that hangs, like moss, about the Turk, visit
Seraglio Point. There, virtually in Stamboul, is one of the most
beautifully situated bits of land in the world. Though really part of a
great city, much of it has not been built upon. Among the trees on the
ridge, looking to Marmora and Asia, to the Bosporus and the palaces, to
the Golden Horn, Galata, and Pera, lie the many buildings and courts of
the Old Seraglio, fairy-like in their wood. The snowy cupolas, the
minarets, and towers look ideally Eastern. They suggest romantic and
careless lives, cradled in luxury and ease. In that white vision one
might dream away the days, watching from afar the pageant of the city
and the seas, hearing from afar the faint voices of the nations,
listening to strange and monotonous music, toying with coffee and
rose-leaf jam in the jewel-like Kiosk of Bagdad, and dreaming, always
dreaming. There once the Sultan dwelt in the Eski-Serai, which exists no
longer, and there was built the great Summer Palace, which was inhabited
by Suleiman I, and by his successors. Hidden in the Old Seraglio there
are many treasures, among them the magnificent Persian throne, which is
covered with gold and jewels. Beyond this neglected wonder-world the
woods extend toward the waters; hanging woods by the sea--and the Turks
care nothing about them. One may not wander through them; one may not
sit in them; one may only look at them, and long to lose oneself in
their darkness and silence, to vanish in their secret recesses. The Turk
leaves them alone, to rot or to flourish, as Allah and Nature will it.
On the third of Stamboul's seven hills stands the Mosque of Suleiman the
Magnificent, all glorious without, as Santa Sophia is not, but
disappointing within, despite its beautiful windows of jeweled glass
from Persia, and the plaques of wonderful tiles which cover the wall on
either side of the mihrab. Somber and dark, earth-colored and gray,
dark-green and gold, it has a poorly painted cupola and much plastered
stone which is ugly. But there is fascination in its old dimness, in its
silence and desertion. More than once I was quite alone within it, and
was able undisturbed to notice its chief internal beauty, the exquisite
proportions which trick you at first into believing it to be much
smaller than it is.
[Illustration: ST. GEORGE'S GREEK CHURCH, NOW A MOSQUE, CONSTANTINOPLE]
When seen from without it looks colossal. It is splendid and imposing,
but it is much more, for it has a curiously fantastic, and indeed almost
whimsical charm, as if its builder, Sinan, had been a playful genius,
full of gaiety and exuberance of spirit, who made this great mosque with
joy and with lightness of heart, but who never forgot for a moment
his science, and who could not be vulgar even in his most animated
moments of invention. Massiveness and grace are blended together in this
beautiful exterior. Round the central dome multitudes of small
domes--airy bubbles thrown up on the surface of the mosque--are grouped
with delightful fantasy. Four minarets, the two farthest from the mosque
smaller than their brethren, soar above the trees. They are gray, and
the walls of the mosque are gray and white. In the forecourt there is a
fine fountain covered with a cupola; the roof of the cloisters which
surround it is broken up into twenty-four little domes. A garden lies
behind the mosque, and the great outer court is planted with trees.
In the garden are the turbehs, or tombs, of Suleiman the Magnificent and
of Roxalana, "the joyous one," that strange captive from Russia, who by
her charm and the power of her temperament subdued a nation's ruler, who
shared the throne of the sultan, who guided his feet in the ways of
crime, and who to the day of her death was adored by him. For Roxalana's
sake, Suleiman murdered his eldest son by another wife, and crept out
from behind a curtain to look upon him dead; and for Roxalana's sake
that son's son was stabbed to death in his mother's arms. Now the fatal
woman sleeps in a great octagonal marble tomb near the tomb of her lord
and slave.
An atmosphere of peace and of hoary age broods over these tombs and the
humble graves that crowd close about them. Mulberry-trees, fig-trees,
and cypresses throw patches of shade on the rough gray pavement, in
which is a small oval pool, full of water lest the little birds should
go thirsty. A vine straggles over a wall near by; weeds and masses of
bright yellow flowers combine their humble efforts to be decorative; and
the call to prayer drops down from the mighty minarets to this strange
garden of stones, yellow flowers, and weeds, where the lovers rest in
the midst of Stamboul, which once feared and adored them. They were two
criminals, but there was strength in their wickedness, strength in their
pride and their passion. Romance attended their footsteps, and romance
still lingers near them.
One morning, as I sat beneath the noble fig-tree which guards Roxalana's
tomb, and listened to the voice of the muezzin floating over old
Stamboul, and watched the birds happily drinking at the edge of their
little basin in the pavement, I thought of the influence of cities. Does
not Stamboul forever incite to intrigue, to lawlessness, to bloodshed?
The muezzin calls to prayer, but from old Stamboul arises another voice
sending forth an opposing summons. Suleiman heard it echoed by Roxalana,
and slew his son; Roxalana heard and obeyed it; and how many others have
listened and been fatally moved by it! It has sounded even across the
waters of the sea and over the forests of Yildiz; and Armenians have
been slain by thousands while Europe looked on. And perhaps in our day,
and after we are gone, old Stamboul will command from its seven hills
and will be horribly obeyed.
I shall always remember, among many less famous buildings, the small
mosque of Rustem Pasha near the Egyptian Bazaar, with its beautiful
arcade and its strangely confused interior, full of loveliness and bad
taste, of atrocious modern painting and oleographic horrors, mingled
with exquisite marble and perfect tiles. The wall of the arcade gleams
with lustrous faience, purple and red, azure and milk-white, and with
patterns of great flowers with green centers and turquoise leaves. I
recall, too, the Mosaic Mosque, once the church of the monastery of the
Chora, which stands on a hill from which Stamboul looks like a beautiful
village embowered in green, cheerful and gaily fascinating. The church
is ugly outside, yellow and lead-colored, with a white plaster minaret,
and it is surrounded by wooden shanties like booths. But its mosaics are
very interesting and beautiful, and its chief muezzin, Mustafa Effendi,
is a delight in his long golden robe and his yellow turban.
Mustafa Effendi was born near Brusa in Asia Minor, but for forty-two
years he has held the office of chief muezzin at the Mosaic Mosque, on
which all his thoughts seem centered. He speaks English a little, and
has an almost inordinate sense of humor. As he pointed out the mosaics
to me with his wrinkled hand he abounded in comment, and more than once
his thin voice was almost overwhelmed by ill-suppressed laughter. He
seemed specially entertained as he drew my attention to two birds on the
wall--"Monsieur Peacock and Madame Peahen"; and he was obliged to
abandon all dignity and to laugh outright when we came to a company of
saints and angels.
The most sacred mosque in Turkey lies outside of Stamboul, at Eyub, far
up the Golden Horn and not very distant from the "sweet waters of
Europe." In it, on their accession, the sultans are solemnly girded with
Osman's sword instead of being crowned. Eyub is a place of tombs. Chief
eunuchs and grand vizirs sleep near the sea in great mausoleums inclosed
within gilded railings, and some of them surrounded by gardens; on the
hillside above them thousands of the faithful rest under cypresses in
graves marked by dusty headstones leaning awry.
[Illustration: STREET VISTA IN GALATA FROM END OF BRIDGE,
CONSTANTINOPLE]
The center or heart of Eyub is a pleasant village, which gathers closely
about the mosque, and is full of a quietly cheerful life. Just beyond
the court of the mosque is a Turkish bath, where masseurs, with shaven
heads and the usual tuft, lounge in the sunshine while waiting for
customers. Near by are many small shops and cafés. In one of the latter
I ate an excellent meal of rice and fat mutton, cooked on a spit which
revolved in the street. If you stray from the center of the village
toward the outskirts you find yourself in a deserted rummage of tombs,
of white columns, white cupolas, cloisters, rooms for theological
students, mausoleums of white and pink marble. No footsteps resound on
the pavement of the road, no voices are heard in the little gardens, no
eyes look out through the railings. As I wandered through the sunshine
to the small stone platform, where the Sultan descends from his horse
when he comes to be girded with the sword, I saw no sign of life; and
the only noise that I heard was the persistent tap of a hammer near the
sea, where his Majesty is building an imperial mosque of white stone
from Trebizond.
Presently, growing weary of the white and silent streets of the tombs, I
turned into a narrow alley that ran by a grated wall, above which great
trees towered, climbing toward heaven with the minaret of the Mosque of
Eyub, but failing in their journey a little below the muezzin's balcony.
They were cypresses, and creepers climbed affectionately with them. Just
beyond them I came into the court of the mosque, and found myself in the
midst of a crowd of pilgrims before the tomb of Abu Eyub, which is
covered with gilding and faience. Near it is a fountain protected by
magnificent plane-trees which are surrounded by iron railings decorated
with dervish caps.
I had been told more than once that the Christian dog is unwelcome in
Eyub, and I was soon made aware of it. In the façade of the tomb there
is a hole through which one can look into the interior. Taking my turn
among the pilgrims, I presently stood in front of this aperture, and was
about to peep in discreetly when a curtain was sharply drawn across it
by some one inside. I waited for a moment, but in vain; the curtain was
not drawn back, so at last I meekly went on my way, feeling rather
humiliated. A Greek friend afterward told me that an imâm was stationed
within the tomb, and that no doubt he had drawn the curtain against me
because I was an unbeliever.
Duly chastened by this rebuff, I nevertheless went on to the mosque, and
was allowed to go in for a moment on making a payment. The attendant was
very rough and suspicious in manner, and watched me as if I were a
criminal; and the pilgrims who thronged the interior stared at me with
open hostility. I thought it wiser, therefore, to make only a cursory
examination of the handsome marble interior, with its domes and
semi-domes, and afterward, with a sense of relief, took my way up the
hillside, to spend an hour among the leaning gravestones in the shade of
the cypresses. Each stone above the grave of a man was carved with a
fez, each woman's stone with a flower; and tiny holes formed receptacles
to collect the rain-water, so that the birds might refresh themselves
above the dust of the departed.
The great field of the dead was very tranquil that day. I saw only two
closely veiled women moving slowly in the distance near the small tekkeh
of the Mevlevi dervishes, and an old Turk sitting with a child, at the
edge of the hill before a café. The women, who were shrouded in black,
disappeared among the gigantic cypresses, seeking perhaps among the
thousands of graves one stone with a flower or a fez that was dear to
their hearts because of the sleeper beneath it. The old Turk rolled a
cigarette in his knotty fingers, looking dreamily down at the child, who
sat with his little legs under him silently staring at the water below,
upon which no vessels, no caiques were moving. On the bare hill to my
left I saw the white gleam of the stones in a Jewish cemetery; and,
beneath, the pale curve of the Golden Horn, ending not far off in the
peace of the desolate country. Red-roofed Eyub, shredding out into
blanched edges of cupolas and tombs by the sultan's landing-place,
marked the base of the hill; and, beyond, in the distance, mighty
Stamboul, brown, with red lights here and there where the sun struck a
roof, streamed away to Seraglio Point. The great prospect was closed by
the shadowy mountains of Asia, among which I divined, rather than
actually saw, the crest of Olympus.
In these Turkish cemeteries there is a romantic and poignant melancholy
such as I have found in no other places of tombs. They breathe out an
atmosphere of fatalism, of bloodless resignation to the inevitable.
Their dilapidation suggests rather than mere indifference a sense of the
uselessness of care. Dust unto dust--and there an end! But far off in
Stamboul the minarets contradict the voices that whisper over the fields
of the dead. For the land of the Turk is the home of contradictions; and
among them there are some that are welcome.
[Illustration: A VIEW OVER CONSTANTINOPLE SHOWING THE MOSQUE OF SANTA
SOPHIA]
To rid myself of the clinging impression of sadness that stole over me
among the cypresses of Eyub, I took a boat, later in the day, to the
shore of Asia, and visited the English graveyard at Haidar Pasha, where
long ago Florence Nightingale established her hospital for soldiers
wounded in the Crimean War, and where now Germans have built an
elaborate station from which some day we shall be able to set out for
Bagdad. Already smart corridor cars, with white roofs and spotlessly
clean curtains, and with "Bagdad" printed in large letters upon them,
are running from the coast to mysterious places in the interior of
Asia. In the excellent restaurant beer flows freely. If the mystic word
"Verboten" were not absent from the walls, one might fancy himself in
Munich on entering the station at Haidar Pasha. On the hill just above
the station lies the English cemetery, a delightful garden of rest, full
of hope and peace. It is beautifully kept, and contains the home of the
guardian, a British soldier, who lives with his wife and daughters in a
cozy stone bungalow fronted by flower-beds and trees. Close to his house
is a grave with a broken column, raised on a platform which is
approached by three steps and surrounded by a circular grass-plot. Here
I found a serious Montenegrin, one of the workers in the cemetery,
busily employed. He had spread sheets of paper all over the grass-plot,
and up the steps of the grave, and had scattered above them a great mass
of wool which suggested a recent sheep-shearing. When I came up he was
adding more wool to the mass with a sort of grave ardor. I asked him
what the wool was for and why he was spreading it out. He glanced up
solemnly and replied:
"It is for my bed. I live in that shed over there and am preparing my
mattress for the winter."
And he continued quietly and dexterously to scatter the wool over the
tomb.
The cemetery, which looks out over the sea and the beautiful shores of
Europe, is full of the graves of soldiers who died of wounds received in
the Crimean War, or of maladies caught in camp and in the trenches.
Among them lie the bodies of many devoted women who worked to allay
their sufferings.
Bent perpetually on escape from the uproar of Pera, in which at night I
was forced to dwell, I made more than one excursion to the walls and the
seven towers of Stamboul. There are three sets of walls: the land, the
sea, and the harbor walls. The seven towers, Yedi Kuleh, are very near
to the Sea of Marmora, and are now unused and deserted; the home no
longer of imprisoned ambassadors, of sultans and vizirs, but of winds
from the islands and from Asia, of grass, yellow wild-flowers, and the
fallen leaves of the autumn. When I went there I was alone, save for one
very old man, the peaceful successor of the Janissaries who long ago
garrisoned this marvelous place of terror and crime. With him at my
heels I wandered among the trees of the deserted inclosure surrounded by
gray and crenellated walls, above which the towers rose up grimly toward
the windy sky; I penetrated through narrow corridors of stone; I crawled
through gaps and clambered over masses of rubble and fallen masonry; I
visited tiny and sinister chambers inclosed in the thickness of the
walls; peered through small openings; came out unexpectedly on
terraces. And the old man muttered and mumbled in my ears, monotonously
and without emotion, the history of crime connected with the place. Here
some one was starved to death; here another was strangled by night; in
this chamber a French ambassador was held captive; the blood of a sultan
dyed these stones red; at the foot of this bit of wall there was a
massacre; just there some great person was blinded. And, with the voice
in my ears, I looked and I saw white butterflies flitting, with their
frivolous purity, among the leaves of acacia-trees, and snails crawling
lethargically over rough gray stones. Near the Golden Gate, where an
earthquake has shaken down much of the wall, and the Byzantine dove of
carved stone still remains--ironically?--as an emblem of peace, was a
fig-tree giving green figs; Marmora shone from afar; in the waterless
moat, that stretches at the feet of the walls, the grasses were waving,
the ivy grew thickly, here and there big patches of vegetables gave
token of the forethought and industry of men. And beyond, stretching
away as far as eye could see, the cemeteries without the city
disappeared into distances, everywhere shadowed by those tremendous,
almost terrible, cypresses that watch over the dead in the land of the
Turk.
Beauty and sadness, crime and terror, wonderful romance, and a ghastly
desolation seemed brooding over this strange region beyond the reach of
the voices of the city. Even the ancient man was silent at last. He had
recited all the horrors his old memory contained, and at my side he
stood gazing, with bleary eyes, across the moat and the massy cypresses,
and, with me, he turned to capture the shining of Marmora.
On the farther verge of the moat three dogs, which had somehow escaped
the far-flung nets, wandered slowly seeking for offal; some women
hovered darkly among the graves; a thin, piercing cry, that was not
without a wild sweetness, rose to me from somewhere below. I looked down
and there, among the rankly growing grasses of the moat, I saw a young
girl, very thin, her black hair hanging and bound with bright
handkerchiefs, sketching vaguely a danse du ventre. As I looked she
became more precise in her movements, and her cries grew more fierce and
imperative. From some hovel, hidden among the walls, other children
streamed out, with cries and contortions, to join her. For here, among
the ruins, the Turkish Gipsies have made their home. I threw down some
coins and turned away. And as I went, returning through the old places
of assassination, I was pursued by a whining of pipes and a thrumming of
distant guitars. The Gipsies of old Stamboul were trying to lure me down
from my fastness to make merry with them among the tombs.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious spelling and punctuation errors have been repaired. Other
unusual period spellings and grammatical uses were retained.
P. 19: "Blazekovic Park;" diacritical markings were removed in the text
version, but retained in the utf-8 and html versions.
P. 239: three uses of "mastaba;" original used "masbata."