YILDERIM
As I look back on those years of close intimacy with Turkish children,
and our various discussions and squabbles, I cannot but feel thankful
for opportunities denied most children. And I can see now that a
great deal of the hatred which separates the different creeds and
nationalities is inculcated in our hearts before we are capable of
judging, by those who do their best to teach us brotherly love.
During the first year of our friendship, Djimlah and I played
mostly alone. It is true that whenever other harems came to visit
Djimlah’s, and brought along girls of our age, we had to accept their
presence--either with alacrity or reluctance, depending on what we
had afoot. There were days when Djimlah and I were about to enact
some chapter of “The Arabian Nights,” and then we little cared to be
disturbed by outsiders; but oriental politeness forced Djimlah to play
the hostess.
I rarely invited her to my house. First, because my mother positively
objected to Turks; and secondly because I had so little to offer her.
She would have to share my life, as I shared hers, and my life meant
lessons, duties, and discipline; so I preferred to go to her, and on
Saturday nights I usually slept there.
We were quite happy by ourselves, because we made a very good team.
Though we both liked to be generals, we alternated the generalship. One
time Djimlah led, the next she obeyed orders. Our generalship consisted
in planning what sort of characters we were to be; and I am forced to
confess that on the days of Djimlah’s generalship things moved much
the best. Indeed I had to spend half my time as general in explaining
to her the Greek mythology, in order that she might understand the
characters we were to represent, while on her days I knew “The Arabian
Nights” as well as she.
Before the year was over, we admitted to our circle a third, little
Chakendé, whose father was a subaltern of Djimlah’s grandfather.
Chakendé’s home was not far from ours, yet we met her first by
accident, and ever so far away from home.
It was on a hot August evening, when I was spending the night with
Djimlah. The heat was so great that even at seven o’clock the rooms
were yet hot. The old _hanoum_ said it was not necessary for us
to go to bed until it became cool, and we were playing in the garden.
We were up in a tall tree; for I had taught Djimlah to climb--a thing
she took to much more naturally than learning Greek mythology. The tree
was very tall, and its branches hung over the high garden wall which
protected the _haremlik_ from the world’s eyes.
Presently a little urchin came and stood in the street below. Like a
bird about to sing, he threw his head back, and in a clear, loud voice
half chanted:
“_Bou axan kaïhri kavéshindé, ei karagiuzlar, kim istersin bouyour
sun_,” which meant, “This evening at the café of Kairi there is to
be a good show of Punch and Judy, and who wishes to come is welcome.”
Having delivered his announcement, he walked a block farther on, and
chanted it again. By the time he was out of ear-shot we had the words
letter perfect, and began to chant it ourselves from the top of our
tree. We were so pleased with our accomplishment that we scrambled down
to earth and proceeded to deliver it before each of the groups of women
lying on rugs in the immense garden, waiting for the heat to lessen.
Then, with the privilege of our age, we penetrated into the
_selamlik_, the men’s quarters, and proceeded to the dining-room,
where the old pasha, his sons, sons-in-law, and guests were dining. We
mounted on the sofa, and hand in hand burst forth, imitating the street
urchin as best we were able.
The men laughed till the tears came into their eyes; then the old pasha
bade us come to him, and taking one of us on each knee, he asked:
“So the young _hanoums_ wish to go, do they?”
“Go where?” we inquired.
“To the show of Punch and Judy.”
“Can we?” we cried simultaneously.
“I believe so,” the grandfather replied.
“Go now--this minute?”
The old man nodded.
It was a case of speechless delight with us. The old pasha turned to
his company. “I am going to take the little _hanoums_ to the show,
and who wishes to come is welcome.”
We dashed back to the _haremlik_ and made ready in the greatest
excitement. Our excitement was shared by all the women. They came in to
see us made ready, and told us to be sure to remember everything in the
show to repeat to them.
The show was given in a common garden café, such as the small
bureaucracy and proletariat of Turkish masculinity frequents; but the
Turks are essentially democratic, and our party did not mind this in
the least.
The limits of the café were indicated by canvas hung on ropes to screen
the show from the unpaying eye. Within were seats at twopence apiece,
and seats at a penny. Djimlah and I were installed in special chairs
at threepence, placed in front of the first row, which the men of our
party occupied--and then the show opened.
It took place behind a piece of white cheese cloth, lighted by oil
lamps, and a few wooden puppets acted the play. A great deal of
swearing, beating, killing and dying took place in the most picturesque
Turkish. The audience laughed to hysterics. As for Djimlah and me, we
were simply delirious with joy. Nor did our pleasure end with that
evening. We learned a lot of the vernacular of the piece, and the next
day acted it for the delectation of the entire harem, who made us
repeat it several times, Djimlah being half the characters, and I the
other half.
When I tried to repeat my histrionic success at home--being all the
characters--I saw my father give a glance at my mother, who, not
knowing a word of Turkish, sat unperturbed, while our two men guests
were doing their best to suppress their laughter. As I wanted my mother
to enjoy it too, I began to explain the whole thing to her, but, by one
of those cabalistic signs which existed between my father and myself,
I understood that I had better not explain; and after we were alone my
father said to me:
“You know mamma does not like Turkish things, and you had better never
explain them to her. As a rule I would rather have you tell them to me
when we are all alone. And I shouldn’t like you to repeat this piece
again; for, although it may be right for the actors to say all the
things they did, it is better for little girls not to repeat them.”
“But, father,” I protested, frightfully disappointed, “Djimlah and I
acted it all before her grandmother and the ladies of her household,
and they made us repeat it several times.”
“That is because they are Turks. We are Greeks, and that makes a very
big difference.”
It was at this Punch and Judy Show that we met the little girl who was
to become our constant companion. During an intermission her father
came up to salute the old pasha, and brought little Chakendé with him.
Immediately Djimlah’s grandfather ordered an extra chair for the little
girl, and told her to sit down beside us. She was very sweet looking,
about the age of Djimlah. We liked her so much that we asked her where
she lived, and on hearing that it was not far from us, we invited her
to come the next day to Djimlah’s house.
This she did, and we liked her even better; for she submitted to us
very gracefully. She never wavered in this attitude, but it was far
from being a cowardly submission.
She was then engaged to be married to a boy in Anatolia, whose
father had been a lifelong friend of her father’s. The engagement
had taken place when Chakendé was an hour old, and the lad seven
years old. By blood I considered Chakendé superior to Djimlah; for
Djimlah’s forefathers, for hundreds of years, had been officials,
while Chakendé’s had been warriors. They had been followers of the
great Tartar ruler Timur-Lang, with whose people the Turks had been
in constant warfare for centuries--now one side and then the other
being victorious. It was this Timur-Lang, who, early in the fifteenth
century, defeated the Turks, in the great battle of Angora, and took
Sultan Bayazet captive, and kept him prisoner in a cage till he died.
Chakendé was very proud of this descent, and although she was now half
full of Turkish blood, yet she clung to her Tartar ancestry, and when
she told me about the battles her eyes lighted up and she was very
pretty.
The lad to whom she was engaged, and whom she had not yet seen, was
also of the same clan, and she already entertained for him much
affection, and often spoke of him in such terms as, “my noble Bey,” “my
proud betrothed.”
The more we saw of her the better we liked her, not only because she
submitted to us, but because she fitted so well into all the parts we
gave her to play, and we generally gave her such parts as we did not
ourselves like to do. Whenever there was any fighting to do she was
ordered to do it, because she could give such a terrific yell--the
yell of the Timur-Lang Clan, she said--and became so wild, and made the
fighting seem so real that we liked to watch her. And she was really
brave; for she never minded worms--which made Djimlah and me wriggle
like one.
Chakendé did not speak with dislike of the Turks to me. She looked upon
them entirely as her people. “We have become one race,” she said. “They
are full of our blood, and we are full of theirs. Besides, we are of
the same faith.”
I could see, in spite of Djimlah’s affection for me, and the old
_hanoum’s_ kindness and tolerance, and of the politeness of all
the Turks toward us, that they held a Christian to be inferior to
a Mohammedan. They did not say much about it, but I felt that they
considered themselves a superior race, by virtue of their origin
and religion. As I grew older, I no longer entered into national or
religious discussions. I did not even mind their feeling superior,
since I knew that this feeling was all they had, and that the real
superiority lay with us, and if they did not have this mistaken conceit
they would be very sorry for themselves. And, in spite of my kindly
feelings toward them, I was always aware that deep down in my heart
was planted the seed of hatred toward them--a seed which was never to
wither and die, even if it were not to grow very large.
I wonder if there will ever come a time when little children will be
spared the planting of these seeds, when they will be brought up in
the teaching that there is but one God and one nationality--or that
the God and the nationality of other little children is as good as our
own: that we are all brothers and sisters, linked together by Nature to
carry out her work, and to give to each other the best that is in us? I
wonder whether we shall ever be trained so as not to care whether our
particular nation is big and powerful, but whether every human being is
receiving the chance to develop the best in him, in order that he may
give that best to the rest of the world?
The bond which existed between Djimlah and Chakendé often gave me food
for thought. For centuries their people fought each other. Then they
amalgamated and made one, loved each other, and shared each other’s
destiny. My people had fought their people, and they had conquered
us--yet there was no amalgamation. My civilization stood on one side,
and theirs on the other, and in that dividing line stood Christ and
Mohammed, insurmountable barriers. I loved Djimlah, I loved Chakendé;
but, if any question arose, I was fore-most a Greek, and they were
Turks. They were Turks having the upper hand over us--a hand armed with
a scourge. And if they kept that hand behind their back, and I could
not see it, I knew that it held the whip, and that at times they used
it both heavily and unjustly. And I felt that my race must watch its
opportunity to get hold of that whip.
The arrival of Chakendé, and later of Nashan and Semmaya, brought into
my friendship with Djimlah a feeling which did not exist before. It is
true that, on the first day we met, Djimlah and I almost fought over
the bravery of our respective nations, and her assumption of equality
before God had almost ended our friendship; yet never by word or sign
did she do anything to rouse our racial antagonism. But when the two of
us grew into a group, and of that group I remained the only Greek, they
sometimes forgot, and spoke unguardedly.
One day, for example, when Djimlah’s grandfather had given each of us
some money to spend, we were waiting for the afternoon vendor to pass
in order to buy candy. We waited for a long time--unendurably long, we
thought--before the stillness of the afternoon vibrated with the words:
“_Seker, sekerji!_”
We rushed to the door, pennies in hand, and stamped impatiently for the
white-clad figure to come near. Then Chakendé exclaimed peevishly:
“Oh, it isn’t Ali. It’s the Christian dog. Let’s not buy of him--let’s
wait for Ali.”
In an instant I was transformed. I was wholly the child of my uncle,
wearing the Turkish yoke. I got hold of Chakendé’s two long braids,
and pulled and kicked--for when it came to real, not make-believe,
fighting I was more than her equal.
Djimlah’s courtesy and tact alone saved the situation. She immediately
called to the Christian _sekerji_, and told us she was going to
treat us with all her pennies. Moreover, she addressed herself most
politely to the vendor, approved of his wares, and even praised his
complexion to him.
Occurrences similar to this arose from time to time. If not often,
still they did arise, and they served as water and air and sunshine
to the little seed planted years before. I used to become so angry,
and to strike them so hard and so quickly that they nicknamed me
“_yilderim_,” which means thunder-storm.
Djimlah had a little boy cousin, Mechmet, who lived a short distance
from her, and who sometimes came to play with her. He was nice
and generous, and gave us ungrudgingly of whatever he had. He was
particularly nice to me, and I liked him because he had large blue eyes
and light golden hair.
One day when we were playing together he said to me: “I like you ever
so much, and when we grow up we can be married.”
I shook my head: “That can’t be, because you are a Turk and I am
a Greek.”
“That doesn’t matter. I shall make you my wife just the same,” he
answered confidently.
From a remote past there arose memories in me, memories perhaps
acquired through reading, or lived in former existences; and pictures
came before me of Greek parents weeping because a little girl was born
to them--a little girl who, if she grew up to be pretty, would be
mercilessly snatched from them and taken to a Turkish _selamlik_.
And as picture succeeded picture, I became again entirely the child of
my uncle, with a hatred for the Turks as ungovernable as it seemed holy.
Wild now, like a fierce little brute, I struck Mechmet, and struck and
struck again; and at the sight of the blood flowing from his nose an
exaltation possessed me. I was a girl, I could not carry arms--but with
my own hands I could kill a Turkish boy, and be able to say to my uncle
when we met again in the other world: “Uncle, girl though I am, I have
killed a Turk!”
Djimlah, after vainly imploring us to stop fighting, ran to the cistern
and drew a bucket of cold water. In our battle we had fallen down, and
Djimlah drenched us with water, and the icy shower stopped our battle.
In our room she was very severe with me. “Baby mine, I believe
sometimes you are mad! Why, you ought only to be glad if a boy says he
will marry you. What are girls for, but to be given to men and to bear
them children?”
“Did I kill him?” I asked anxiously.
She thought I was frightened, and came over and smoothed my hair. “Of
course you didn’t kill him; but he is much the worse for the beating
you gave him.”
Then I wept bitterly in utter contempt for myself at having failed
in such a small task as killing just a little Turkish boy. Years
afterwards, when I accidentally found myself in the midst of the
Armenian massacres, I could appreciate probably better than most
spectators the feeling of racial antipathy which gloried in the
shedding of blood.