THE END OF THE DREAM
MARSEILLES, 5_th March,_ 1912.
It is to-morrow that I sail. In a week from to-day, I shall again be
away yonder amongst those whom I have always felt so near, and who I
know have not forgotten me.
In just a week from to-day I shall again be one of those unrecognisible
figures who cross and recross the silent streets of our town—some one
who no longer belongs to the same world as you—some one who must not
even think as you do—some one who will have to try and forget she led
the existence of a Western woman for six long, weary years.
What heart-breaking disappointments have I not to take away with me!
It makes me sad to think how England has changed! England with its
aristocratic buildings and kingly architecture—England with its proud
and self-respecting democracy—the England that our great Kemal Bey
taught us to know, that splendid people the world admires so much,
sailing so dangerously near the rocks.
I do not pretend to understand the suffragettes or their
“window-smashing” policy, but I must say, I am even more surprised at
the attitude of your Government. However much these ill-advised women
have over-stepped the boundaries of their sex privileges, however
wrong they may be, surely the British Government could have found some
other means of dealing with them, given their cause the attention they
demanded, or used some diplomatic way of keeping them quiet. I cannot
tell you the horrible impression it produces on the mind of a Turkish
woman to learn that England not only imprisons but tortures women; to
me it is the cataclysm of all my most cherished faiths. Ever since I
can remember, England had been to me a kind of Paradise on earth, the
land which welcomed to its big hospitable bosom all Europe’s political
refugees. It was the land of all lands I longed to visit, and now I
hear a Liberal Government is torturing women. Somehow my mind will not
accept this statement.
Write to me often, very often, dear girl. You know exactly where I
shall be away yonder, and exactly what I shall be doing. You know even
the day when I shall again begin my quiet, almost cloistered existence
as a Moslem woman, and how I shall long for news of that Europe which
has so interested and so disappointed me.
Do you remember with what delight I came to France, the country of
Liberté, Egalité, and Fraternité? But now I have seen those three magic
words in practice, how the whole course of my ideas has changed! Not
only are my theories on the nature of governments no longer the same,
but my confidence in the individual happiness that each can obtain from
these governments is utterly shattered.
But you will say, I argue like a reactionary. Let me try to explain.
Am I not now a woman of experience, a woman of six years’ experience,
which ought to count as double, for every day has brought me a double
sensation, the one of coming face to face with the reality, and the
other, the effort of driving from my mind the remembrance of what I
expected to find?
You know how I loved the primitive soul of the people, how I sympathise
with them, and how I hoped that some scheme for the betterment of
their condition would be carried out.
But I expected in France the same good honest Turks I knew in our
Eastern villages, and it was from the Eastern simplicity and loyalty
that I drew my conclusions about the people of the West. You know now
what they are! And do not for a moment imagine that I am the only one
to make this mistake: nine out of ten of my compatriots, men and women,
would have the same expectation of them. Until they have come to the
West to see for themselves and had some of the experiences that we
have had, they will never appreciate the calm, leisurely people of our
country.
How dangerous it is to urge those Orientals forward, only to reduce
them in a few years to the same state of stupidity as the poor
degenerate peoples of the West, fed on unhealthy literature and
poisoned with alcohol.
You are right: it is in the West that I have learned to appreciate my
country. Here I have studied its origin, its history (and I still know
only too little of it), but I shall take away with me very serious
knowledge about Turkey.
But again I say, what a disappointment the West has been. Yes, taking
it all round I must own that I am again a _désenchantée_. Do you know,
I am now afraid even of a charwoman who comes to work for me. Alas! I
have learned of what she is capable—theft, hatred, vengeance, and the
greed of money, for which she would sell her soul.
I told the editor of a Paris paper one day that I blushed at the manner
in which he encouraged dirty linen to be washed in public. “All your
papers are the same,” I said. “Take them one after the other and see if
one article can be found which is favourable to your poor country. You
give the chief place to horrible crimes. Your leading article contains
something scandalous about a minister, and from these articles France
is judged not only by her own people but by the whole world.”
He did not contradict me, but smiling maliciously, he answered, “Les
journalistes ont _à cœur_ d’être aussi veridique que possible.”
(“Journalists must try to be as truthful as possible.”) A clever
phrase, perhaps, but worse than anything he could have written in the
six pages of his paper.
But perhaps I am leaving you under the impression, _désenchantée_
though I be, that nothing has pleased me in the West. Not at all! I
have many delightful impressions to take back with me, and I want to
return some day if the “Kismet” will allow it.
Munich, Venice, the Basque Countries, the Riviera, and London I hope to
see again. Art and music, the delightful libraries, the little towns
where I have worked, thought, and discovered so many things, and a few
friends “who can understand”—surely these are attractions great enough
to bring me back to Europe again.
The countries I have seen are beautiful enough, but civilisation has
spoiled them. To take a copy of what it was going to destroy, however,
civilisation created art—art in so many forms, art in which I had
revelled in the West. It was civilisation that collected musical
harmonies, civilisation that produced Wagner, and music to my mind is
the finest of all its works.
But there are books too, you will say, wonderful books. Yes, but in the
heart of Asia there are quite as many masterpieces, and they are far
more reposeful.
_6th March._
This morning early I was wakened by the sun, the advance-guard of what
I expect away yonder. From my window I see a portion of the harbour,
and the curious ships which start and arrive from all corners of the
earth. Again I see the Bosphorus with its ships, which in my childish
imagination were fairy godmothers who would one day take me far, far
away ... and now they are the fairy godmothers who will take me back
again.
I like to watch this careless, boisterous, gay crowd of Marseilles.
It is just a little like the port of Échelles du Levant with its
variegated costumes, its dirt, which the sun makes bearable, and the
continual cries and quarrelling among men of all nations.
All my trunks are packed and ready, and it is with joy and not without
regret that I see I have no hatbox. Not that I care for that curious
and very unattractive invention, the fashionable hat, but it is the
external symbol of liberty, and now I am setting it aside for ever.
My _tchatchaff_ is ready, and once we have passed the Piræus I shall
put it on. How strange I shall feel clad again from head to foot in a
black mantle all out of fashion, for the Turks have narrowed their
_tchatchaffs_ as the Western women have tightened their skirts. It will
not be without emotion, either, that I feel a black veil over my face,
a veil between me and the sun, a veil to prevent me from seeing it as I
saw it for the first time at Nice from my wide open window.
Yet what anguish, what terrible anguish would it not be for me to put
on that veil again, if I did not hope to see so many of those I have
really loved, the companions of my childhood, friends I know who wanted
me and have missed me. Even when I left Constantinople, you know under
what painful circumstances, I hoped to return one day.
“The world is a big garden which belongs to us all,” said a Turkish
warrior of the past; “one must wander about and gather its most
agreeable fruits as one will.” Ah! the holy philosophy! yet how far
are we from ever attempting to understand it! Will there ever come a
personality strong enough, with a voice powerful enough to persuade us
that this philosophy is for our sovereign being, and that without it we
shall be led and lead others to disappointments?
During the time I was away yonder, I believed in the infallibility of
new theories. I had almost completely neglected the books of our wise
men of the East, but I have read them in the libraries of the West,
where I have neglected modern literature for the pleasure of studying
that philosophy, which shows the vanity of these struggles and the
suffering that can follow.
I am longing to see an old uncle from the Caucasus. When we were
young girls he pitied us because we were so unarmed against the
disenchantment which inevitably had to come to us.
“You are of another century,” we said to him. “You reason with theories
you find remarkable, but we want to go forward, we want to fight for
progress, and that is only right.”
Ah! he knew what he was talking about, that old uncle, when he spoke of
the disenchantment of life.
“You are arguing as I argued when I was a little boy, and my father
gave me the answer that I have given to you. My children,” he
continued, “life does not consist in always asking for more: believe
me, there is more merit in living happily on as little as you can, than
in struggling to rise on the defeat of others. I have fought in all
the battles against the Russians, and had great experience of life,
but I remind you of the fact merely lest you should think me a vulgar
fatalist in the hands of destiny. I, too, have had many struggles, and
it was my duty.”
What a lot I shall have to tell this dear old uncle! How well we shall
understand each other now, how happy he will be to see that I have
understood him! We shall speak in that language which I need to speak
again after six long years. Loving the East to fanaticism as I do, to
me it stands for all that glorious past which the younger generation
should appreciate but not blame, all the past with which I find myself
so united.
I will tell this dear old uncle (and indeed am I not as old and
experienced as he?) that I love my country to-day as I never loved it
before, and if only I may be able to prove this I shall ask nothing
more of life.
* * * * *
NAPLES.
I can only write you a few lines to-day. The sea has been so rough that
many of the passengers have preferred to remain on board. Some one
impertinently asked me if I were afraid to go on shore, but I did not
answer, having too much to say. Around me I hear the language which
once I spoke with such delight; now it has become odious to me, as
odious as that Italy which I have buried like a friend of the past.
Now there is a newspaper boy on board crying with rapture “Another
Italian victory.” He offers me a paper. I want to shout my hatred of
his country, I want to call from Heaven the vengeance of Allah on these
cowardly Italians, but my tongue is tied and my lips will not give
utterance to the thoughts I feel. I stand like one dazed.
Surely these accounts of victory are false. Are not these reports
prepared beforehand to give courage to the Italian soldiers in their
glorious mission of butchering the Turks, those fine valiant men who
will stand up for their independence as long as a man remains to fight?
At last I go and lock myself in my cabin, so as not to hear their
hateful jubilation, but they follow me even to my solitude. Some one
knocks. Reluctantly I open. It is a letter. But there must be some
error. Who can have written to me when I particularly asked that I
should have no letters until I arrived?
But the letter came from Turkey, and the Turkish stamp almost
frightened me: for a long time I had not the courage to open it. When
at last I slowly cut the envelope of that letter, I found it contained
the cutting of a newspaper which announced the death of the dear old
uncle whom more than anyone I was longing to see again.
Outside the conquerors were crying out, even louder than before, “More
Turkish losses, more Turkish losses.” I folded up the letter and put it
back in its envelope with a heart too bitter for tears.
* * * * *
What did it all mean? What was the warning that fate was sending to me
in this cruel manner? _Désenchantée_ I left Turkey, _désenchantée_ I
have left Europe. Is that rôle to be mine till the end of my days?—Your
affectionate friend,
ZEYNEB.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Yali = a little summer residence resorted to when it is
too hot to remain in Constantinople itself.
[2] The Turkish women with whom I lived in Constantinople
read the Bible by the advice of the Imam (the Teacher of the
Koran) to help them in the better understanding of the Koran.
I may add that Zeyneb’s knowledge of our Scriptures, and her
understanding of Christ’s teaching, would put to shame many
professing Christians in our Western Churches.
[3] French time.
[4] When I asked a Turkish friend to write in my album, to my
surprise and pride she wrote from memory a passage from _Ships
that Pass in the Night_.
[5] Prayer which all devout Moslems say before beginning a
work.
[6] Hanoum = Turkish lady.
[7] The answer to such an observation is obvious, but I prefer
to present the Hanoum’s anecdote as she gave it.—G.E.
[8] Tcharchafs = cloak and veil worn by Turkish women when
walking out of doors.
[9] Muezzins = the religious teachers amongst the Mohammedans,
whose duty it is five times a day to ascend the minaret and
call the faithful followers of Mohammed to prayer from the
four corners of the earth.
[10] Hodja = teacher of the Koran.
[11] Babouche = Turkish slippers without heels.
[12] Chalvar = Turkish pantaloons, far more graceful than the
hideous harem skirts, which met with such scant success in
this country.
[13] Enturi = the tunic, heavily embroidered, which almost
covered the pantaloons.
[14] The Western governesses, in so many cases, took no
interest in their pupils’ reading, and allowed them to read
everything they could lay their hands on. With their capacity
for intrigue, they smuggled in principally French novels of
the most harmful kind. Physical exercise being impossible
to work off the evil effects of this harmful reading, the
Turkish woman, discontented with her lot, saw only two ways of
ending her unhappy existence—flight or suicide; she generally
preferred the latter method.
[15] Slaves.
[16] They were called “white” because they were originally
attended by unmarried women only, and they all wore white
dresses.—G. E.
[17] It sounds strange to the Western mind to speak of a
“comfortable cemetery,” but the dead are very near to the
living Turks; the cemetery is the Turkish woman’s favourite
walk, and the greatest care is taken of the last resting-place
of the loved ones.—G. E.
[18] The editor is not responsible for the ideas expressed in
this book, which are not necessarily her own.
[19] Karakheuz = Turkish performance similar to our Punch and
Judy Show.
[20] Zeyneb has forgotten that as well as Fridays and various
fast days, every Catholic receives the Holy Communion
fasting.—G. E.
[21] Inhabitants of Pera. There is no love lost between these
ladies and the Turkish women proper. I personally found many
of them very charming.—G. E.
[22] I received this letter in Constantinople, where I was
staying in a Turkish harem, having travelled there in order
to be present at the first debate in the newly-opened Turkish
Parliament.—G. E.
[23] I leave my friend’s spelling unchanged—G. E.
[24] It may be reasonably urged in reply that Zeyneb’s
criticism of our Christianity is far from adequate. But I have
preferred to present the impressions of a Turkish woman.—G. E.
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
Edinburgh & London