TURKISH HOSPITALITY—A REVOLUTION FOR CHILDREN
NICE, _March_ 1907.
I can assure you, I do not exaggerate our Oriental hospitality. Go
to Turkey and you will see for yourself that everywhere you will be
received like a Queen. Everyone will want to be honoured by your
presence in their home.
The most modest household has its rooms for the _mussafirs_ or guests.
In wealthy establishments, the guest is given the choicest furniture,
the daintiest golden goblets and bon-bon dishes, the best and finest
linen and embroideries, a little trousseau for her own use, and slaves
in constant attendance.
I never remember sitting down to a meal without guests being present.
All our rooms for the _mussafirs_ were filled, and in this matter my
family was by no means the exception; everyone received with the same
pleasure. In England, I believe, you do have guest-rooms, but here in
France they do not understand the elements of hospitality.
You cannot imagine how it shocked me when I first heard a French son
paid his father for board, and that here in France for a meal received,
a meal must be returned. Surely this is not the case in England?
Often have I tried to find a satisfactory explanation of this lack of
hospitality in the French. I put it down first to the cost of living,
then to the limited accommodation, then to the disobliging servants,
but I have now come to the conclusion that it is one of their national
characteristics, and it is useless to waste time trying to explain it.
Let us know as soon as possible when you are coming.
* * * * *
After the description I have given you of our life in Smyrna you will
understand how sorry we were to return to Constantinople. Even the
delight of again seeing our parents could not console us. As soon as we
were back again began the same monotony and perpetual dread, and the
Hamidian régime made life more and more impossible.
[Illustration: MELEK IN YASHMAK]
The year that the Belgian anarchist tried to kill the Sultan Hamid, was
certainly the worst I have ever spent. Even the Armenian Massacres,
which were amongst the most haunting and horrible souvenirs of our
youth, could not be compared with what we had then to bear. Arrests
went on wholesale! Thousands were “suspect,” questioned, tortured
perhaps. And when the real culprit had declared his guilt before the
whole tribunal and had proved that it was he, and he alone, who had
thrown the bomb, the poor prisoners were not released.
It was in the summer. Up till then in the country, a woman could go
out in the evening, if she were accompanied, but this was at once
prohibited; every Turkish boat which was not a fishing boat was
stopped; in the streets all those who could not prove the reason
for being out were arrested; no longer were visits to the Embassies
possible, no longer could the ladies from the Embassies come to see us;
no “white dinners,” no meeting of friends. There were police stationed
before the doors, and we dared not play the piano for fear of appearing
too gay, when our “Sovereign Lord’s” life had been in danger.
Of course no letters could be received from our Western friends. The
foreign posts were searched through and through, and nearly all the
movement of the daily life was at an end. One evening my sister and I
went outside to look at the moonlit Bosphorus. Although accompanied by
a male relative, three faithful guardians of the safety of our beloved
Monarch stepped forward and asked for explanations as to why we were
gazing at the sea. Not wishing to reply, we were asked to follow them
to the nearest police station. My sister and I went in, leaving our
relative to explain matters, and I can assure you that was the last
time we dared to study moon effects. Never, I think, more than that
evening, was I so decided to leave our country, come what might! Life
was just one perpetual nightmare, and for a long time after, even now
in security, I still dream of these days of terror.
I remember full well what importance was given to the French 1st of May
riots. When I myself saw one of the strikers throw a stone which nearly
blinded a doctor, called in haste to see a patient, and saw his motor
stopped and broken to pieces and the chauffeur thrashed, I thought
of the days of our Armenian massacres—the awful days of Hamidian
carnage—and the 1st of May riots seemed to me a Revolution arranged to
amuse little children.—Your affectionate
ZEYNEB.