problem and I said I was put to it to know what to call her? You said,
"Don't worry, it won't be long before you have somebody to whom she will
be grandma, and you can get out of it gracefully by calling her grandma,
too." Isn't it queer to think that I through my motherhood shall place
you in the grandmother generation? As I look back to Cloverton days and
my grandmother, I envy this baby of mine. There is something about a
grandmother that is pretty fine. They thought I was a great kid at
grandma's house--partly because of my unshakable belief that my
grandmother was beautiful. How I used to stand beside her chair stroking
her cheek, telling her, "You are beautiful." She used to smile with her
eyes while her lips protested, saying, "How can I be beautiful with all
my wrinkles?" I suppose it was the Irish coming out in me: for I
remember distinctly telling her that she had no wrinkles, except pretty
laugh wrinkles on both sides of her eyes.
Don't hug secret reflections about growing old. When you and I and the
grandbaby meet IT will be Helen's responsibility. You will be free to
play with the baby. That has not happened to you since you were a little
girl and had dolls. I shall say: "Oh, Mother is there, so baby is safe."
The meeting of the three generations will eliminate worry. Nature means
young fathers and mothers and babies to have grandmother near. You must
come to Paris next winter.
You have made a jolly start in grandmotherhood. It was better than
Christmas, when Daddy Christie and Herbert opened your box. I have my
small steamer trunk right beside our wardrobe, and am playing it is the
baby hamper. The trunk is nearly brand new, and will do very well when
we leave here in June, for it will hold all the baby things.
* * * * *
A perfume can whisk your mind five thousand miles from your body. I am
sitting beside our white iron bed, sniffing. There is the faint
unfamiliar odor given out by my cedar woodwork, the smell of fresh
whitewash on new walls, the warm breath of a log fire. Dominating it all
is the clean clover sachet you sprinkled among the baby clothes. The
sachet carried my memory straight back to home, for it smells like your
upper bureau drawer.
The baby things came this morning, and I have arranged them on the bed,
so that when Herbert comes back from teaching his Greek class, he will
get the full benefit. Dresses and petticoats, silk-and-wool shirts and
bands, didies--all six months size. Do you fear that I will not be able
to nurse your grandbaby, that you sent all the condensed and malted
milk?
Next time you have to go to Doctor Smith's office, give him my thanks
for his kind message. I can hear him gravely telling you to advise me
"by all means to go to the nearest hospital." Take with you my old
geography, and put your pretty forefinger on the right-hand upper corner
of the Mediterranean. Show him that we are where the map begins to turn
around that right-hand upper corner down towards the Holy Land. Then
tell him the nearest hospital is a two days' sea voyage away. Do you
suppose Herbert's salary could send me to Beirut? And could I take the
journey alone?
You are quite justified, however, in your wish that I make plans now for
baby's coming. The only trained nurse in Cilicia is Miss Hallie Wallis.
She is forty miles away. She receives at her house at least one hundred
natives a day and has more work than her limited strength can
accomplish. Moreover, she has such a mixed crowd that it might not be
wise for her to handle a baby case.
If we had taken the little church in Squeedunkville we used to talk
about in Princeton days, instead of setting out to see the world like a
couple of fellows in a Grimm's fairy tale, you would now be forwarding
the bassinette Grandma gave me when I was born. Some nosey old
parishioner would be trimming it up for me. I am a Presbyterian, turned
Congregationalist on account of geography, but "conformity unto" would
give me fits when it came to parishioners' notions. I am much too hasty
and human to suit anybody.
Your grandbaby will open its eyes five thousand miles from its
grandmother. The family heirlooms must wait for the second grandbaby.
Some weeks ago I had the school steward (name, when spoken, sounds like
Asturah) go to a Fellahin village near Tarsus and have a basket made
for me. A Fellahin village itself looks like a dusty unfinished basket
turned upside down. The houses are made of a crude reed matting, and the
side walls have the reeds untrimmed and upright at the place where you
expect to see eaves.
I figured out the size for my cradle basket, then cut strings of the
right length for the various dimensions. Through an interpreter I
explained that the basket must be oval. As wide at the top as my blue
string, as wide at the bottom as my red string and as deep as my white
string. A week later the basket was brought to our balcony. Herbert and
I climbed into the thing. It was big enough for us to sit down in it
Turkish fashion, both at the same time.
I got my cradle finally "by some ingenious method." (One of the students
is always saying that.) Funny how the boys here pick out bookish
expressions and use them for everything. I collected my strings again,
suspecting that they had not been out of Asturah's belt pocket since
the day I gave them to him. You ought to see those belts! The natives
take a square of wool material with a striped blue and brown and red
Persian design, fold it corner-wise, and attach one end to their
potato-sack trousers. Then they wind this affair around and around their
middle and fasten it on the other side. The shawl is pretty big to begin
with. They keep an amazing number and variety of things in the fold of
this belt; dagger, package of bread and cheese and olives for lunch, and
a little brass contrivance for holding pen and ink. There is really some
sense to this kind of a belt in a blow-cold, blow-hot country, for it
keeps tummies warm and protects from intestinal troubles. No wonder
natives get along without expensive Jaeger cholera belts.
This time I sent Socrates with my strings to the tinsmith in the bazaar.
He made me a tin affair according to my measurements. Baby's bathtub.
Next I sent the bathtub to the Fellahin with orders to make a basket
covering for it, the same shape as the "tin dish" to protect it during a
long journey we expected soon to take. The weaver then had in his mind's
eye just how tub and basket would be strapped on one side of a
pack-saddle. For these people, a journey means going somewhere on
horseback. When we sail for Marseilles in June, I will put the tub into
the basket, pillows, didies and mattress into the tub, cover the whole
with a Turkish cradle shawl we bought yesterday, and fasten it with a
big strap. The cradle shawl is two yards square, made of coarse woolen
material. If you please, it is dyed brilliant red and green, with
alternating checks. How is that for something dainty for a baby? In the
middle of the shawl, about a yard apart, are round buttonholes. One is
worked in green and the other red. A native mother would hitch these
buttonholes to little pegs that stand up at either end of the box-like
affair she uses for a cradle to protect the baby inside from fresh air.
Germs are carefully tucked into the cradle with the baby. Never mind, I
am going to give my cradle shawl a good cleaning, and I expect it will
serve me well as outer covering for the package I shall make of the tub
and bed and bedding. I must plan thoughtfully for that journey. It will
be worth while to do this because we have to go to Egypt in order to get
a good boat for Marseilles and that makes a twelve-day voyage.
Cotton crops are coming in. I bought a pile, and had a man fluff it up
with a stringed instrument that looks for all the world like a giant's
violin bow. On the first windless day I put it on a sheet, spread out in
the tennis court, for a day's sunshine. The sunshine here reminds me of
Nice at its best.
In the bazaar I bought white material, something like _piqué_. When I
washed and ironed it, I cut out two oval pieces a little larger than
the bottom of the basket, joined the two ovals with a band five inches
wide, stuffed this with the cotton,--and behold a jolly little mattress!
Lucky thing I am so attached to those two wee pillows I had at college.
Lucky, too, that I bought a new set of pillow cases for them before I
left home. After I find suitable material and make a pair of blankets,
my cradle will be ready. When the Queen of Holland's baby comes, it
won't find a better bed.
We have been laughing at Daddy and Mother Christie. One night there was
chicken for dinner, and by accident not quite enough to go around. Daddy
fussed and made jokes, and we soon forgot all about it. Not so Daddy. He
went to the bazaar, and came home with the announcement that he had
bought one hundred chickens. Boys were hastily put to work to make a
pen, and fenced off a run! The chickens arrived that same afternoon, and
Daddy laid down the law to the two chaps who were to take care of them.
He said his chickens would cost the school nothing. He was paying for
them out of his Civil War pension. The chickens were photographed. Dr.
Christie had a lot of prints made and sent to America. On the back of
each photograph he wrote: "The lay workers of Tarsus." Now he has the
laugh on all of us. The photographs and Daddy's inscription have already
brought in much more money in gifts to the college than the chickens and
photographs and postage cost. Typical! Such a darling he is. He looks
like Carnegie. If he had Carnegie's fortune, we should have to call him
Daddy Christmas.
This is a great life. We may have evil-tasting fat made of melted-down
sheep-tails, and no butter for our bread, but there are bowls of
thirst-quenching bonny-clabber and rolled pats of buffalo cream. The
rice may be half-cooked, and the bread may taste sour, but almost any
day I can send to the kitchen where the students' food is prepared and
get a plate of _bulgur_ made of coarse ground wheat. We have fresh figs
stewed or raw and honeysweet, and oh, the oranges. I am guilty of one
"notion." I eat quantities of these golden oranges, about fourteen a
day. I may feel the limitations of life in Turkey in many ways, but
until I outgrow them, I can put on my khaki riding things, swing into my
Mexican saddle and at sunset ride like the wind across the Cilician
Plain with the crying of jackals and the chant of the _muezzins_ in my
ears. The law of compensation is a fact, my dear, and let me tell you
this--don't feel sorry for missionaries.
ROUND ABOUT TARSUS
_April fourth, Nineteen-Nine._
Dearest Mother:
I haven't written since I told you the biggest news a girl can give her
mother, and then I was so full of it that I did not answer the questions
your letters have been re-iterating for many months. What is Tarsus
like? What sort are the people, and your school boys? What do you and
Herbert do with yourselves out there in that God-forsaken country? It is
precisely because we have been trying to find out all about Tarsus and
get to know the people and the boys that I have neglected writing. That
is part of the reason. The biggest part has to do with horses. You know
how we love to ride--and here we have learned what it really means to
ride. It isn't a genteel afternoon tea parade through a park where
every one you meet is as sick of seeing you and the park as you are sick
of seeing them and the park. When conventional city folk look at a bird
or an animal in a cage, and are sorry for the poor thing, it is only
another sign of lack of realization as well as of imagination. With my
teas and balls and clothes I was blissfully happy at home: but so was
our canary. Neither of us knew any better, for we knew only our prison.
We have been round about Tarsus everywhere, and every day, rain or
shine. There is very little of the former. From the moment of our
arrival in Mersina last August, aside from an hour or so in the morning
of tennis, and an occasional visit to the bazaars, all our out-of-doors
has been on horse. We have explored the city and the neighborhood, and
have tried the roads on the Plain in every direction. Herbert's
sky-piloting in Idaho gave him a taste for restless stallion mounts, and
I encourage it. Mastering horses is training for mastering men. There
is nothing in the world better for the teacher than to ride
high-spirited horses. The other day we took out a new horse Henri Imer
is thinking of buying. We had him from a villager, who declared the
horse was in a town for the first time. It was true! For he shied at
every little thing. I tried him first, and had great fun making him go
through crowded streets and the bazaars. The noise in the copper and tin
bazaar drove him wild. But I had him in hand: for Turkish bits give you
the hold. He did not like the butcher stalls. Such a time. It cost me
ten piastres to the indignant butcher to get the better of the horse.
But I did it by making him go straight up and rub his nose in
freshly-cut pot-roasts. There was no danger for pedestrians. In Turkey
the people are used to camels and horses and buffaloes "acting
regardless." Pedestrians know how to get out of the way.
Coming home, Herbert was trying the fractious beast. We took him around
by a water-wheel which we call the "third degree." It is our final stunt
in town-breaking a village horse. The water-wheel stands almost at
right-angles with the road. Its little buckets dip up the water and
empty some ten feet above into an irrigation trench. The hub of the
wheel screeches and the buckets keep up a clank-clank, accompanied by a
thud as they go into the water and a sucking sound as they come out. The
road is narrow--brook on one side and wall on the other. Over the wall
protrude branches of a tree, wrapped round by hanging vines. It is low
bridge for fair. Herbert, leaning over the neck of the frightened beast,
had all kinds of trouble. We knew the animal had no intention of falling
into the stream. Horses don't. The horse, however, refused to pass the
wheel. Each time he backed Pony and me some yards down the road. Finally
Herbert lost his whip. It fell into the stream. Herbert looked
relieved. But you know, Mother, the elemental in me would not allow me
to see a horse get the better of my man. I gave Herbert my whip. He
tried again, and got by. Pony, who had long ago received "the third
degree" when we first discovered that wheel, followed easily.
Alas, the days of horseback have passed for me until next summer.
The other day we made a second trip to the sea, this time in a carriage.
Socrates was on the box, and Herbert was gallant enough to forego his
mount and ride with me.
Halfway we stopped at a _tchiflik_ (farm-house) to water the horses and
try to buy eggs. Every farmer has half a dozen dogs--ugly fellows that
give low growls. They hate you the way their Mohammedan masters hate
you. After the tenant of the farm-house had driven back his dogs, he
surprised us by showing unusual friendliness. We asked for eggs. He said
he had none. This we knew was cheerful mendacity: so we pressed him
further. Finally he brought us a whole basket of eggs, saying that he
ought not to sell them, because he was supposed to send them all to the
town to Pasha Somebody or Other. As we were leaving, we put a coin into
his hand. He would not take it! Socrates gave it to a little girl who
was apparently the child of the tenant. Some superstition made the
father hesitate to take the money directly from us.
Farther along, a lone dead tree twisted itself above the masonry of a
typical oriental well of ancient origin. As we stopped our carriage a
moment, we saw a solitary owl sitting motionless on a loosened stone.
When we drove on, the owl turned his head slowly following us, like a
spirit of a forgotten century resenting with superb unconcern the
investigating energy of modern times. A flock, no, I ought to call it a
whole nation, of wild geese was quietly standing, undisturbed by our
approach and arranged in little groups as if according to tribes,
although all were facing the same way. They looked like the men of
different counties in the same state--drawn up in military line and
waiting for orders. Herbert and Socrates growled because they had no
guns with them. I was glad that such perfect unity did not have to be
broken up just to amuse us.
When we reached the sea the old gray horse wanted to have another roll
in the sand. The last time he had seen the sand was the day he tried to
roll with me on his back. Socrates unhitched the horses, and soon it was
time for luncheon. We settled ourselves on steamer rugs and unpacked our
provisions. We had tea made in my tea-basket and cold turkey, the
remains of Sunday dinner. When lunch was finished, Herbert and I took a
long walk on the beach. It was a blustery day when sunshine alternates
with low swiftly-moving clouds. Ahead of us was the town of Mersina, a
curved line of mingled flat roofs and slender minarets. A mile out to
sea lay half a dozen ships, and we knew that there must be mail for us
in Mersina.
After we turned back towards the place where our camp was, we could see
beyond it a ramshackle structure, lonely and abandoned now--since the
New Constitution. Here used to be stationed a guard--not a Life Saving
Guard, such as we should have in a similar place--a guard whose whole
duty it was to watch for Armenians, who chose this part of the seashore
to escape in small boats. From here it was comparatively easy to get a
ship and go away from Turkey forever. There was romance, as well as
adventure, in these escapes. A young Armenian found means to go to
America, and there made plenty of money. Back here on this Cilician
Plain a girl was waiting. The man saved up enough to come back and get
the girl. His friends smuggled her out to the ship, a missionary was
pressed into service, and a wedding at sea took place. The bride and
groom sailed away, returning to New York or Chicago, to live happily
ever afterwards. You see the young man had become an American citizen.
If he landed on Turkish soil, the new citizenship would have been lost.
That is why his bride had to go out to the ship to be married. The
guard-house must have frequently intercepted such weddings: for it is
built where it commands the coast Mersina-wards.
On the way home we saw a great deal of black smoke. This meant some
people were having fun driving wild boar out of the swamps. You get
natives for "beaters," build fires through the canebrake, and then you
wait patiently. There is sure to be a reward if your "beaters" don't
take the stick or the shot before you get your spear or your gun ready.
The last time we were visiting the British Consul in Mersina, the
Doughty-Wylies took us pig-sticking. After making elaborate
arrangements, with any number of native "beaters" in tow, the best shot
of the day was lost just this way. The "beaters" did not remember that
their job was to beat--not to steal shots they were paid to let slip.
It began to rain. But we didn't care. It was a slanting rain and
fortunately dashed against the back of the carriage. We had rugs and
coats: so the rain was an addition to the fun. We were careful to
protect our driftwood, of which we had gathered enough to make two or
three glorious fires. That evening we burned the driftwood, only to be
disappointed. Of wonderful colors we got not one flicker. Is this
another superstition disproved?
When Herbert writes the letter about Tarsus that he has long been
talking about, but never gets down to, he will probably say much about
the bazaars. But I am now going to anticipate him. Why not? I have only
the typewriter to console me for having to give up my horse. Anyway, we
may get away from here and into other things before Herbert tackles
Tarsus. I am still waiting to see his letter on the trip he took to the
Holy Land.[2]
There are very few women in the bazaars. None at all are engaged in
selling. Turkish ladies never go. Rarely one sees Armenian and Fellahin
women buying. When the time came to get Christmas gifts for Herbert, I
did the markets with one of the Seniors. It is perfectly proper for me
to go to the bazaars. Foreign women are a different order of beings,
absolutely beyond the comprehension of the natives. They look at me as
if I had dropped from Mars. I suppose they consider me a sexless being,
resembling their women only in the lack of a soul. Menfolks in Turkey,
you know, have a corner on souls. Herbert and I have a great deal of fun
as we walk about Tarsus.
But I was telling you about my Christmas shopping. I took Harutun, my
Senior, to the markets half a dozen times. You cannot go to a shop and
select the thing you want, then ask the price and have it sent home. Oh,
no! You go, and appear to be looking at something else, and let your
attention be attracted to the thing you really want--by merest chance.
Even then you do not mention this to the merchant. You simply say to
your English-speaking boy: "See that little brass bowl in the opposite
corner of the shop? I will give him eight piastres for it." Boy says:
"Yes, Mrs. Gibbons," and you turn up your nose a little higher as the
merchant urges upon you the purchase of some other thing you do not
intend to buy. You draw yourself up to your full majestic height,
incline your head backward the least little bit, raise your hand in a
queenly waving aside, give a little click with your tongue, perhaps
emphasizing it by exclaiming in good Turkish: "Yok" (which being
interpreted means "nothing doing, old man"), and then you indifferently
withdraw, followed by your boy. Next day Harutun sends _another boy_,
who gets your brass bowl for about one-quarter the price you'd paid if
you had insisted on buying it yourself. That is how shopping is done in
the Orient. In this way I got Herbert a fine old copper tray and a queer
pitcher-like thing to go with it. I found two coins whose owner did not
appreciate them, and these I had made into a pair of cuff-links. A tiny
silver cup, about an inch and a half in diameter, with the dearest
little carved handle, was the best thing of all. We use it on our desk
as a place to keep pens. I pursued a camel-train, and after a great deal
of intrigue came into possession of several camel-bells. These are
especially interesting to us because they were bought right off the
camel. It reminded me of pig-tail days in the Engadine, when I followed
a pretty cow home to her owner's chalet, and bought the bell on her
neck.
Tarsus markets are cosmopolitan. You can find a dozen races rubbing
elbows there. The predominating four are Turks, Arab Fellahin, Armenians
and Greeks. There is a babel of these four tongues. One hears also
Russian, Persian, Hindustani and Italian. We manage with French in
Mersina, but it is little spoken in Tarsus. The Turkish language rules
in inter-racial transactions. Armenians must use this language. Educated
Armenians struggle valiantly to maintain the two surviving elements of
national identity: the church and the language. But oddly enough the
mother-tongue of the average Armenian is Turkish. Greek has a strong
hold upon the Greeks here. It is something like the tenacious hold of
the French language in Canada. The Fellahin speak a form of Arabic, but
are too ignorant to care whether they make themselves understood or not.
Some weeks ago Jeanne Imer and I were being carefully escorted through a
Fellahin village by one of the students. Suddenly a little boy ran into
the road. He took hold of my bridle, looked up at me with a winning
smile, and said: "From where you come? From America?" Imagine my
surprise. I was delighted to hear my own language away off here in the
outskirts of the town. I reached into my coat pocket, pulled out an
orange, and gave it to the little fellow. He said "Thank you" most
politely. I found afterwards that there is a mission school in the
quarter of Tarsus nearest where these people live. The child was
evidently a pupil. But wasn't it cute of him to spot me for an American!