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.”