MISDEEDS
I did miss Djimlah and Chakendé and Nashan, yet the _halaïc_ made
up for a great deal, and what is more, knowing now that some day she
would go to heaven and meet her Greek lover, I was telling _her_
the Greek history, or rather that part of the Greek history where the
Greeks were intermarrying with the gods.
It is a pity that the world should be so large, and that we should
have to go from place to place, leaving behind those we have learned
to love. When the time arrived for me to go back to the island, I wept
copiously. I did so mind leaving behind Sitanthy and especially the
_halaïc_. She, however, in spite of the sorrow she felt at bidding
me good-bye, kept on saying: “Think, _yavroum_, you might never
have come, and that would have been far worse. Besides we must submit
to Allah’s will gladly, and not weep and show him our unwillingness to
obey.”
It is three hours from the Bosphorus to the islands, by going from the
Bosphorus to Constantinople, and from Constantinople to the islands.
Tears kept on coming to my eyes from time to time, while the boat
was steaming on; yet no sooner did I get a glimpse of our own island
and our own pine trees than I forgot the _halaïc_ and Sitanthy
and my sorrow, and in spite of the people on the boat I burst forth
into a loud song of joy. I was never any good at tune, and there was
little difference between my singing and the miauling of a cat; yet
whenever I was particularly happy I had to express it by song, and only
a peremptory order would stop me. And while I sang, looking at the
island, I was only thinking of the three playmates I was to see, and
the _halaïc_ and Sitanthy were forgotten, as if they had never
existed. My thoughts were on the three, and on the pleasure they would
experience when they saw me returning to them--as indeed they did.
That year was a memorable one in our lives, because it was the last
in which my three playmates would be permitted to go uncovered, and
play with children of both sexes. They were now nearing the age at
which little Turkish girls become women, must don the tchir-chaff
and yashmak, hide themselves from the world and prepare for their
womanhood. I was, of course, always to continue seeing them and
visiting them, but they could no longer enjoy the freedom they had
enjoyed up to now--now that they were to become women.
I found all three deep in the study of foreign languages. In the
spring of that year Djimlah’s grandmother decided that it would be
very good for the three Turkish girls to go twice a week and spend the
morning at Nizam, where all the European children congregated. She
wanted Djimlah to see as much of the European world as possible before
she was secluded. It was thus that we all four, accompanied by our
French teacher, went to the pine forest of Nizam. We did not like this
as much as staying at home and playing by ourselves; but the old hanoum
was quite insistent, and for the first time made us do what she thought
best.
It interfered greatly with my scheme of introducing my companions to
the wonders of Greek history, because now that I was a little older
my mother refused to let me spend the nights with Djimlah, and since
our time was quite filled with studies the only hours we had for
story-telling were those in which we had to mingle with other children.
However, it was interesting, and the different acquaintances we made
taught us a lot of games we should never have thought of by ourselves.
I cannot say that we liked our new acquaintances particularly, at any
rate we did not love any of them. They were mostly silly, we thought,
and the English girls were stiff and we did not care for the way they
spoke French. Besides most of them had large protruding teeth, which
we thought very unbecoming to girls. We used to call them Teeth.
It was there in the pines that we met Semmeya Hanoum. She was
much older than any of us, and she ought to have been wearing the
_tchir-chaff_, and to have been living in the seclusion of the
_haremlik_; but her people were not very orthodox, and Semmeya had
a way of her own of getting what she wanted, and what she wanted just
then was not to be secluded.
We never quite made up our minds about her. We had days when we knew
we did not like her, for we did not consider her honourable. She would
rather cheat at games than play fair, and she would always tell a fib
to get out of a disagreeable predicament. Again there were days when we
almost loved her for she was very fascinating.
That year we were particularly unfortunate in doing things we ought
not to have done. In many of these--until Semmeya brought her clever
mind to bear--we seemed hopelessly entangled. For example, when we
stole grapes from a vendor who had fallen asleep. We did not mean to
steal: we only thought of how wonderfully exciting it was to walk up on
tip-toe, reach the grapes, get a bunch, and slip away without awakening
the vendor. Semmeya and Djimlah and Chakendé and I accomplished it
successfully. As Nashan was reaching for a bunch she slipped--and the
man awoke!
We did not know what would have happened to us--as we talked it over
afterwards--we thought we should probably have been taken to prison to
spend our young lives there, without light or air. We were only saved
from that dreadful fate by Semmeya’s inventiveness.
Nashan stood there, petrified, staring at the vendor. Djimlah hid her
face on my shoulder; I was trying to hide behind Chakendé; and Chakendé
was trembling all over.
Semmeya walked straight up to the man and said to him proudly:
“A vendor who has something to sell must _never_ go to sleep. We
wanted some grapes, and of course we had to have them, and naturally we
took them. Now, how much do we owe you, vendor?”
The man was entirely apologetic, and begged to be forgiven. He said,
since we were four, it would make about an _oka_ of grapes, and he
would let us have them for four _paras_. I knew he was cheating
us in asking four pennies. By no possibility could we have taken an
_oka_.
Having paid him we walked away with our heads high, but I trembled, and
I know Djimlah did, too, for her arm in mine was shaking.
We spoke then of our feelings and of the awful thing that happened to
our hearts when the man opened his eyes. Djimlah wept at the thought
of being caught as a thief. “Why did we do it, _yavroum_?” she
kept on wailing to me; “why did we do it?”
“I don’t know why we did it,” I replied, nor did I know then why we
kept on getting into scrapes, from the consequences of which Semmeya
always saved us. I know now that every bit of devilry we perpetrated
was at her instigation.
While we were not conscious of her evil influence, and were fully
grateful to her for saving us, yet we always mistrusted her; and once
in despair we came together and debated how to tell her that we did not
care to have her for a friend any more.
Nashan then gravely remarked: “We must remember that without her
several times we should have been compelled to die.”
This we acknowledged to be true, and resolved still to bear with her.
Moreover, Semmeya was a remarkable story-teller, and on rainy days,
when we could not play outdoors, we would congregate in one house and
Semmeya would hold us enthralled with a fabrication of her imagination.
She could thrill us or make us laugh, at will, and was the undisputed
queen of rainy days.
Just the same, we never felt that she was quite one of us--even I who
was much more under her spell than the others. We came to know that
whenever she wanted anything she was going to get it, and that some
one else would pay for it.
“It is her Greek blood that makes her so,” Chakendé said one noon; then
looked up at me in fear; but at these words Djimlah declared that it
was time to pray, and they all fell on their knees, facing Mecca. They
knew I would not attack them while they were praying, and they made
their devotions long enough for my anger to cool somewhat.
The legend about her Greek blood was that her grandmother had been
taken from the island of Cyprus, when a baby, and sold into a
_haremlik_. Semmeya told us that only after she was married and
had children did her grandmother learn that she was a Greek; and then
she hanged herself from despair. Perhaps this matter of the Greek
grandmother helped to make Semmeya dear to me, although now, as I look
back upon it all, I think it was because instinctively I understood a
little of the curse of temperament, and poor Semmeya had a large share
of it.
* * * * *
The following year Semmeya was married, and three days before her
wedding we were invited to see her trousseau, and to be feasted and
presented with gifts. We had reached the age when we began to talk of
love and marriage in tones of awe, with the ignorance of children and
the half-awakened knowledge of womanhood. And, after we came away from
her, we put our heads together and whispered our hope that her husband
would never find out what we knew about her character.