hard at work. One is washing three of my rugs. He has, as little Cousin
Myers used to say, "his bare feet on." He jumps up and down on the wet,
soapy rugs; then pounds them with a big flat stick that looks like a
cricket-bat. They are certainly getting clean--though I doubt whether
you and I should adopt that method if we had the job. The boys are
trying to talk Armenian to each other. They try hard. But they cannot
help falling into Turkish. For in this part of Turkey their
mother-tongue is the language of their oppressors--the badge of
servitude.
Armenians of breeding and education foster their language with all their
heart and soul. There is a desperate attempt to preserve the national
unity, always with the opposition of the terrible Turks! The Armenians
have natural ability along the line of enterprise and making money, but
this has been so curbed by the oppressor that even stout hearts have
given up and lapsed into a paralysis of the will that would be
contemptible if one did not understand it. Under favorable
circumstances, when the Armenian has been given a square deal, he is
successful. He is a born merchant. This is proved when he goes to
another country where his enterprise can have its own way.
We met a fine young fellow in Adana not long ago. He had come home to
see about the education of a little sister in the mission school in
Adana. He was in America only six years, but has come back thoroughly
Americanized, with a lot of money earned as a candy drummer. He is a
good example of our young American hustler who is almost blatantly
successful. It was refreshing to meet him, for he sounded like home. The
appearance of such a man among his old associates causes considerable
dissatisfaction, for he has made more money in this short time than his
cousins and brothers can make in a lifetime. The educators of Armenian
boys have a problem before them. Are they going to educate the boys in
order to encourage them to go to America? Isn't the reason for having
the schools to help these people to a better life in their own country?
Why educate the bright boys at all, if it is not to equip them to spend
their lives for the good of their countrymen? Yet, what can you answer
to the pathetic and conclusive argument that the educated Armenian has
no chance for advancement, so long as Armenia is under Turkish rule?
They really have no chance, the boys with a diploma. They are educated
for unhappiness and for danger. We cannot shut our eyes to the fact that
after they have been years in our schools, American education fits them
for American opportunities, and unfits them for Turkish opportunities.
More than this, after we have given them the vision of another kind of
national as well as another kind of individual life, they are marked men
among the Turks, and are the first to be sought out when a massacre
comes. Herbert and I have our misgivings about all this work here. In
spite of the heralded liberty of the Constitution, it requires more
optimism than we have to believe that Armenians are safer under Young
Turks than they were under old Turks.
_Bairam_ means feast. After every religious fast, a _bairam_. It is an
occasion for eating immoderately, and for giving a little pleasure and
break in the dull monotony of woman and child life. During the last
_bairam_, in the field of the camel market there was a funny little
"merry-go-round" and a crude Ferris wheel, which had hanging wooden
cages each big enough to hold four children--if they were small. A
beaming brown-faced peasant was taking in the money and bossing the two
men who turned the wheel and the merry-go-round. He came up to us, and
with real pride in his voice, asked: "Have you anything like this in
America?"
On Sunday morning, the classes have their lesson taught in their
class-rooms, and then they come together in the assembly-room for the
concluding exercises. As these are given in Turkish, Herbert and I do
not feel called upon to go. So we commit the heresy of slipping out for
a walk. It is a heresy, Mother, to these dear good people. The
missionaries have puritanical notions of Sabbath-keeping that are
different from anything Herbert and I have ever run across. Of course,
we say nothing to the boys. But we often wonder if they think that
American life is run on missionary principles. The boys are taught that
smoking is a sin. That is only one instance. On Sundays, they are not
allowed to leave the college grounds except to go over to the Armenian
Protestant Church for the afternoon service. Taking walks is taboo. What
do you think of that? We easily forego the smoking. It is a question of
example to boys: and we see the reasonableness of the point of view. But
we simply cannot stay indoors on these glorious days.
We always take the same Sunday morning walk: for it never fails to
interest us. We circle the college grounds, and climb up on a mound,
under which Cleopatra's castle or Sardanapalus's tomb is supposed to be.
There we hear the boys singing. They are wonderful singers, and we love
to listen to the familiar hymn tunes. Last Sunday a Moslem wedding was
being celebrated at the same time. Men in gay-colored jackets and
sashes were moving toward the house where the wedding was taking place:
others were already around the door. A native orchestra was playing. The
instruments were squeaking reed whistles, two-stringed guitars and
drums. You can imagine the music they give forth, when I add that they
never get off the minor key. On the flat roof a group of women, veiled
and silent, huddled pathetically together. The blending of heathenish
music with a Moody and Sankey hymn was indescribable.
Crossing the open space from the mound to the Mersina road, we see
ill-kept cattle trying to get grass to keep them from starvation.
Sometimes there is a sick or aged horse brought here to die. With all
the frightful cruelty to animals everywhere evident, Orientals strangely
enough will not kill animals. They do not put out of misery beasts
suffering from their neglect and cruelty. This distorted kindness comes
to cap the climax of misery for patient burden-bearers broken with
toil. When an animal falls by the roadside, and the owner cannot whip or
kick it into going farther, he just leaves it there. In riding we see
frequently the remains of a camel or a horse. In spite of wanting to
avoid the offense to nostrils as well as the struggle with a mount
shying for good reason, we have to pass by. For the carcass is generally
right alongside the road, and we cannot always make a detour through the
fields. Filthy jackals skulk away at our approach, howling in savage
protest and yet trembling with fear of us.
We pass out of the town to the Mersina road under an interesting arch,
called St. Paul's gate. It is one of the gates of the old walled city,
but whether it is of Roman, Byzantine or Arabic origin it is impossible
to tell. In Tarsus and all around Tarsus there are numerous
archeological remains. But they have been so defaced and mutilated and
built over that it is hard to get any idea at all of the original
construction. The natives declare that the Mersina gate was built by
Harun-al-Rashid, hero of the _Arabian Nights_. Harun's walls did pass at
this point, and the city has never gone beyond. A few yards outside the
gate, we are in a Fellahin village. Between two of the reed huts is a
mud oven, patted into oval form, baked outside by the sun and inside by
a fire of grass. When we pass, the women are always making bread. The
whole operation is before your eyes. The wheat is threshed out of its
stalks and winnowed, and ground in a stone basin with a huge pestle of
iron or copper. The coarse flour is mixed with water, and kneaded in
pats about as big as my hand. These are passed to an old hag, who
quickly flattens them out on a board, using her forearm as rolling-pin.
They are put in the oven with sticks. Two or three minutes--and you have
your bread. It is not in loaves. Think of a griddle-cake nine inches in
diameter, or something even thinner than a griddle-cake, and you have
the Fellahin bread. It is splendid wrapping paper. When there are no
fig-leaves at hand, the peasants give you butter and cheese done up in
bread.
The Cydnus River runs through and around Tarsus in a dozen branches, all
of which do the quadruple service of mill races, drinking troughs for
man and beast, washing places for man and beast and carriage and
clothes, and irrigation ditches. There is plenty of water and it runs so
fast that there is always time for it to get clean for the user below.
Tarsus is full of mills: cotton, sesame, flour and sawmills. One of the
largest cotton-mills--for ginning and weaving both--is on the Mersina
road. Here we stop to watch and tease the turtles in the mill-race. They
are lined up on the bank, generation after generation of them--like a
family group for a photograph in New England (of the old days only,
alas!). The timid ones flop into the water at our approach. Most of
them, however, are insolently indifferent. Our idea is to make them all
"vamoose." We throw pieces of sugar-cane at them, and Herbert,
everlasting kid, is not satisfied until only ungraceful claws, wildly
waving above the surface of the water, reveal where the sprawling
creatures have taken refuge. Not a head dares appear: for Herbert is
near baseball days, and sugar-cane is heavy enough to carry straight. In
the wider water beyond the mill, we frequently see long shapeless ridges
of brown-black shifting lazily about, moving just enough to show that
they are not mud-banks. A rude cart stands on the edge of the stream and
on its pole is fastened a double-yoke. Those ridges are the buffaloes
that belong to the cart. The lumbering beasts sway back and forth
through the streets dragging incredibly high and heavy loads of
cotton-bales to the railroad. Occasionally they are unhitched and
allowed to get into the water for a rest and a bath. There they lie in
the gray mud, absolutely relaxed, languidly flapping their ears to
splash water on their heads.
Our walk ends at the bridge half a mile beyond the cotton factory. West
of the bridge the Adana-Mersina road enters the great Cilician Plain
once more after the long break of Tarsus and its suburbs. Half a dozen
broken places in this bridge are a constant menace to horse and camel.
It keeps getting worse and worse. An enormous traffic passes over it:
but does any one think of mending it? They will wait until it falls
down. The motto of this country is every man for himself. There is no
public spirit--no idea of the common weal. One is moved only by what
affects him directly, and acts only for what he believes is his
interest. But none sees farther than _immediate interest_. To-morrow is
in God's hands. The Young Turk régime, on which we see the American
newspapers and magazines publishing extravagant eulogies--how will it
succeed? The governing classes in Islam cannot be regenerated until
Islam is imbued with a different spirit--self-sacrifice, initiative,
thought of the future.
Every day we look out of our window to see what there is to see. This is
no idle curiosity or idle waste of time--there is always some sight to
be memorized, visualized, and tucked away in your mind for future
reference. A little group of haggard, prematurely old women, with veils
over their heads, and tall green or terra-cotta water-bottles on their
bent shoulders, passes by. The women of the poor wear shabby black
bloomers, shoes without stockings, gay-colored blouses open at the
throat, and on their heads veils made of cheesecloth. One corner of the
veil they hold in their teeth, so that but half of their hopelessly
tired, haunting, unhappy faces can be seen. Only the children and the
men look happy at all. Very early the lines of care and cruelty are
indelibly penciled upon girl-faces. Half a dozen horses bravely struggle
along under the weight of an odd-looking burden: the bakeries here burn
in their ovens green branches of a kind of resinous bush that grows in
the foot-hills and mountains. The bush is gathered and bound into rough
bundles, and put in bulging loads on the groaning pack-saddles of
uncomplaining horses. The horse is hidden in his leafy burden. A passing
train looks like a moving forest. One could believe Shakespeare had been
here to get the idea of the Burnham beeches moving to Dunsinane!
Childish voices call up hopefully: "Madama." I see sometimes as many as
a dozen children holding out their hands. Some girls have tiny babies
strapped to their backs. I go to the window armed with savory
ammunition, and before I know it these fascinating young ones have
charmed away all my store of dates and figs and candies from the last
day in Mersina.
If you look higher than the street you see a sky-line that leads from
flat grass-topped roofs, through the town, up to the foot-hills. Domes
mean mosques, when flanked by minarets. The minarets are tall, slender
and pointed at the top. Where the cone begins, a door opens to a small
iron-railed ledge, and here it is that the muezzin walks when he sings
the chant that calls the faithful to prayer. You know as you look at
these minarets at the hour of prayer that men are lying prostrate before
each of the mosques, and more men are grouped around the city fountains
washing their feet in preparation for prayer. It is not pleasant to
think of the curse against "infidels" in the call to prayer--even if the
muezzin has a sweet voice that rings out over the houses and comes to
you mingled with the sweeter voice of the muezzin in a more distant
minaret.
Away to the left are the beloved Taurus mountains. They are
never-failing--and we look at them with new eyes every day. As we go
down to breakfast, we stop just a minute to see the color and outline of
these old friends. We can distinguish the pass that leads to
Namrun--and often in the moonlight we think of the lovely night last
autumn when we rode into Tarsus while the deep rich bell of the
clock-tower was ringing. The clock strikes the hour, then after a pause
of two minutes repeats it. Splendid idea: for you can check up on your
first count.
A whole letter could be written about what we see from the windows.
Whatever I write, the culmination, the climax, must be the camels. They
are the best of all "sights" to me. The first I saw were in Smyrna, or
rather just outside of Smyrna, taking refuge under a clump of trees from
the noon-day sun. It was a group of at least thirty, the most camels I
had ever seen together in my life. I wanted then to stop, but we were en
route for Polycarp's tomb, and had only a few hours ashore. Now I have
camels to my heart's delight and satisfaction. But never enough! Our
street is one of the roads to the market-place. During the autumn, when
much wood and cotton was being transported, camels passed under my
window every morning. About six o'clock they began. Train after train
wound slowly along. The camels travel single file, fastened from saddle
to saddle.
Until I came to Turkey, I had seen few camels outside of a Zoo. The only
loose one I remember is the camel ridden in Paris by the beggar that
used to haunt the Place Saint-Michel. No two camels are alike. In a
hundred that pass, each is different from the one ahead, very different.
Camels are just as different as people. They are dark brown, tawny
brown, on and on through the various shades up to the palest tan. The
colors run from that one gets from polishing russet shoes with the black
shoe brush to that produced by whitewashing a dust-covered wall. The
shades are the echoes of the blending shifting tones of desert sand. The
wide cushioned foot speaks fervently of the silence and patience of the
camel's journeyings to and fro. The camel's eye is sorrowful. His air
is supercilious, as if his claim to aristocracy among animals was
forever settled by the fact that he was the favorite of Mohammed.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] More than seven years have passed, and neither the Tarsus letter nor
the Holy Land letter has yet been written. Our life moves so fast, in
the midst of a great and changing drama, that the event at hand demands
all there is of time and energy.
HAMLET AND THE GATHERING OF THE STORM CLOUDS
_April seventh, Nineteen-Nine._
Dear Mother:
There's an awful lot of knowledge,
That you never get at college.
But I tell you, my dear, I am glad that Anna Bess put me on the scenery
committee the first time 1906 had a play. Ever since I left Bryn Mawr I
have been looking for the things I learned that were "going to prove
useful in after years." For the first time I've hit something. When the
boys wanted to get up a play I showed them how to put squares of canvas
together, tacked on poles at the platform end of the big schoolroom. I
marked out a court scene with charcoal, and painted it in. One
advantage of making scenery here is that paint dries quicker than it did
in the cellar of our dormitory.
I economized time by sewing costumes while the boys rehearsed. It was
the most unimaginable sort of rehearsing. For the play was to be given
in Turkish, of which Jeanne and I understood not a word. All the same
with my little red leather-bound English Shakespeare stuck in the corner
of the divan near my lapful of sewing, I was supposed to criticize the
acting. I kept looking from needle to book to actor. Jeanne, on the
other side of the divan, was following in a French translation. Hamlet
and Ophelia dashed around while I put ermine on the king's coat. The
boys would not listen to cutting. They were game for the whole play--not
quailing before scenes that Irving and Terry could not swing. They have
prodigious memories. We found that out when one of them memorized
Herbert's entire lecture on the Rise of the Papacy, and gave it
afterwards as answer to a question in term examination. Their patience
and endurance are limitless. They never get bored.
Jeanne and I were back of the scenes on the great night to start the
play with everybody dressed and bewigged, painted and securely hitched
together. Clothes had to be sewed on the ladies. The boys entered so
fully into the spirit of the thing that when the show was actually on,
they hadn't time to think about their clothes. My red Cretan rug, firmly
strapped to the shoulders of Hamlet's mother, made a real court train.
(The actors had practised not to walk on it. Luckily they learned this
early in the rehearsals, when Ophelia, passing his future mother-in-law,
stepped on the Cretan rug and "sat down too much" on the hard schoolroom
floor.) Crowns and wigs had to be anchored with adhesive tape. Ophelia,
young and rather slender for his age, was capable of the martyrdom of
forcing his feet into my satin dancing slippers. It was possible only
when I made him wear my silk stockings. His own knitted socks were much
too thick for stage purposes as well as for slippers. A schoolroom
bench, assisted by the boxes of two croquet games and covered by rugs,
made a passable throne. The stage manager was dismayed when he realized
that Doctor Christie's pulpit was screwed fast to the platform. I
discovered that the top of the pulpit could be removed, and comforted
the boys by pointing out to them that those in the audience who had ever
seen a real theater would certainly think the pulpit was a prompter's
box.
The audience of students and teachers was increased by the parents of
boys living in Tarsus and local Moslem dignitaries, the Kaïmakam, the
Feriq and the Mufti.[3] They were delighted to come, and praised our
school and its hospitality. At the end of each scene they applauded
conspicuously. The Mufti's parchment-like cheeks wrinkled to expose his
yellow gumless teeth in an appreciative grin, while the Kaïmakam shook
hands with the asthmatic Feriq Pasha until his Hamidian decorations
jingled on his breast.
Our efforts to persuade the boys to cut out a part here and there were
in vain. They insisted on giving the whole blessed thing. Candied
almonds and glasses of water passed around in the audience helped to
keep them awake. The atmosphere was hot and close, and the petroleum was
getting low in the lamps. Between the first and second acts the school
band--all individualists--did their favorite piece, the very march that
the old German orchestra leader in Philadelphia used to play at the
Country Club dances just after the last waltz before supper. The boys
put the vigor of their youth and the enthusiasm of the occasion into
their playing. I was glad the venerable Mufti had cotton in his ears.
The place was already so full of people and talk and lamp-baked air that
I thought the floor of the dormitory above would spill down on us when
the band thundered a climax of horns, trombones, drums and cymbals.
As the play went on, the audience did not need candied almonds or music
to keep them awake. Things began to go badly for Hamlet's mother's
husband. People stopped fanning. The dignitaries moved uneasily in their
places. With heads hunched down in their shoulders, they kept their eyes
glued on the stage. They are not familiar with our great William, and
believe, no doubt, that we invented the play as well as the actors'
costumes. Horror of horrors! We had forgotten what they might read into
the most realistic scene. An Armenian warning for Abdul Hamid? The
assassins mastered the struggling king. He lay there with his red hair
sticking out from his crown, and the muscles of his neck stiffened as
he gasped for breath while his throat was cut with a shiny white
letter-opener.
As I fell asleep last night, I saw the three dignitaries leaning forward
frowning. The Mufti had clinched the sides of the bench with his thin
hands. Could they be seriously disapproving of our show, because we
killed a king in it? I went to sleep laughing over Doctor Christie's
story of the way the authorities would not permit him to teach physics
in the early days because he was obliged to use the word "revolution."
_April ninth._
Last night Herbert and I drove on the Mersina road. We love this drive
in the late afternoon. It leads in the direction of home--straight to
the sunset. Camels came towards us. From the head the line was double.
As they parted to the sides of the road, I said to Herbert, "Let's count
the beasts. You take your side and I'll take this." They numbered more
than two hundred, all laden with petroleum tins.
* * * * *
We drove again this evening. Even walking is proscribed for me now. I
can go out of the college grounds only in a carriage, and then not far.
In a Moslem quarter, on a road between vegetable gardens, boys threw
stones--the first time it has happened to us. As Charlemagne was nervous
and reared from being hit several times, Herbert did not dare to get out
and leave me alone. There was nothing to do but drive on, and accept the
stoning. I was hit on the left shoulder--a big stone it was. The bruise
is painful.
* * * * *
_April thirteenth._
Could not finish for Thursday's post. We have had Easter to think
about--examinations, and the boys going off for their ten days.
Miss Talbot has come to stand by me. Isn't she a dear? Imagine a
soft-voiced Englishwoman of the upper class being a trained nurse, and
_my_ nurse--when there is none in the world for me to turn to. It seems
as if she has been dropped from Heaven at my door. Miss Talbot is a
woman of independent means, who studied nursing to equip herself for
doing good. She came out here to Turkey to find work at her own expense.
She is going into mission dispensary nursing, but thinks just now that I
am "the duty at hand." Lucky for me!
The annual meeting of the American Mission is being held in Adana this
week. It opens to-morrow. Dr. Christie and Miner, of course, had to go,
and they persuaded Herbert to go with them. It was a chance for him to
meet the missionaries from the interior, and get an idea of mission
problems. Herbert was very anxious to meet the missionaries of whom we
have been hearing so much. They are to reach Adana overland on horse
from Marash, Hadjin, Aintab and other stations. It is the jubilee
year--the fiftieth annual meeting. The native Protestant pastors of
this whole field are to hold a reunion at the same time. An important
question is coming before the Mission--what to do with the orphanages
that were established after the massacres of 1894-96. The orphans are
practically all grown up now.
I urged Herbert to go. It is only forty miles, and he can return
to-morrow if we have news to telegraph him. Miss Talbot thinks it is all
right, and her being here reassures him. He needs only to be gone one
night. At the last minute he hesitated, but I pushed him out with the
others.