several days. But if it is all like to-day I could do with less of it. I
have got enough of that smell to last a good while, and of the
pandemonium that reigns in this disordered aggregation of thoroughfares,
humanity and buildings--this weird phantasmagoria miscalled a city.
Through my port-hole, now--I am on the street side--there comes the most
devilish concatenation of sounds: dogs barking and yelping, barbaric
singing, wild mandolin music, all mingled with the cries of the hawkers
and street arabs, and when I reflect that this is the real inwardness of
that wonder dream we saw at sunrise, I am filled with a far regret that
we could not have satisfied ourselves with that vision of paradise and
sailed away.
XIX
THE TURK AND SOME OF HIS PHASES
If one wants to get a fair idea of the mixed population of
Constantinople, when the city's phantasmagoric life is in full swing, he
may walk slowly across the Galata bridge, or he may stand still and
watch the kaleidoscope revolve. Every costume, every color and kind of
fabric, every type of Oriental will be represented there. It is a wild
fancy-dress parade let loose--only that most of the bizarre costumes are
rather dingy and have the look of belonging to their wearers, which is
less likely to be so on an artificial occasion.
The red fez predominates as to head-gear, and sanguinary waves of them
go by. But there is every manner of turban, too, and the different kinds
are interesting. Some of them are bound with rope or cord; some with
twisted horsehair (those are Bedouins, I believe); some are wound with
white muslin--these are worn by priests--and some are wound or bound
with green, which indicates that the wearer is a descendant of Mohammed
himself--that is, a "Son of the Prophet." The Prophet seems to have a
good many descendants--not so many as Israel had in the same length of
time, but still an industrious showing.
One might suppose that these wearers of the green turban would be marked
for special honor, and perhaps they are, but by no means are they all
men of leisure. I saw one "wearer of the green" tooling a tram to the
Seven Towers, and another son of the Prophet--a venerable man--bowed
beneath a great box until his white beard and the rear elevation of his
trousers nearly dragged in the dust.
I think, by-the-way, I am more interested in the Turkish trousers than
in any other article of national dress. They are rather short as to leg,
but what they lack in length they make up in width and general
amplitude. There is enough goods in the average pair of Turkish trousers
to make a whole suit of clothes with material left for repairs. They are
ridiculous enough from the front and the rear, but I rather like a side
view best. The long after-part has such a drooping pendulous swing to
it, and one gets the full value of the outline in profile and can
calculate just what portion of it is occupied by the owner, and can lose
himself in speculation as to what the rest is for. I like freedom and
comfort well enough, too, in my clothes, but I would not be willing to
sacrifice in the length of my trousers for the sake of that laundry-bag
effect in the rear. I can admire it, though, and I do, often.
At the Stamboul end of the Galata bridge is the most picturesque group,
I believe, in the Orient. A coffee-house is there, and in front of it
all the picture types of the East are gathered, with not a single
Caucasian face or dress. When I used to look at the gorgeously
extravagant costumes and the flowing beards and patriarchal faces of the
paintings and illustrations of the East, I said: "No, they do not
really exist. They may have done so once, but not to-day. I have seen
the Indian of my own country in his native sage-brush. And he is no
longer the Indian of the pictures. His dress is adulterated with
ready-made trousers and a straw hat; his face is mixed in color and
feature; with the Orient it must be the same."
[Illustration: KEYEFF]
I was mistaken. All the picture people are collected here, and more than
picture ever saw. No sober imagination could conceive the scene at the
end of the Galata bridge. To present it a painter would have to
inebriate himself, spill his colors all about the place and wind up with
the jimjams. What do these people do there? They indulge in keyeff.
There is no English word for keyeff--no word in any language, probably,
except Turkish. It is not done in any other language. Keyeff is a
condition of pure enjoyment, unimpaired even by thought. Over his coffee
and nargileh the Turk will sit for hours in a thought-vacancy which the
Western mind can comprehend no more than it can grasp the fourth
dimension. It is not contemplation--that would require mental exercise.
It is absence of thought--utter absence of effort--oblivion--the
condition for which the Western mind requires chloroform.
From the end of the Galata bridge the thronged streets diverge, and into
these a motley procession flows. Men of every calling under the
sun--merchants, clerks, mechanics, laborers, peddlers, beggars,
bandits--all men--or nearly all, for the Mohammedan woman mostly bides
at home.
It is just as well that she does, if one may judge from the samples.
She is not interesting, I think. She may be, but my opinion is the other
way. She dresses in a sort of domino, usually of dingy goods, her feet
and ankles showing disreputable stockings and shoes. Even the richest
silk garments, when worn by women--those one sees on the street--have a
way of revealing disgusting foot-gear and hosiery. No, the Mohammedan
woman is not interesting and she has no soul. I believe the Prophet
decided that, and I agree with him. If she had one--a real feminine
soul--she would be more particular about these details.
The Turk is a dingy person altogether, and his city is unholy in its
squalor. Yet the religion of these people commands cleanliness. Only the
command was not clear enough as to terms. The Prophet bade his followers
to be as cleanly as possible. There was latitude in an order like that,
and they have been widening it ever since. I don't believe they are as
"clean as possible." They pray five times a day, and they wash before
prayer, but they wash too little and pray too much for the best results.
I mean so far as outward appearance is concerned. Very likely their
souls are perfect.
At all events they are sober. The Prophet commanded abstinence, and I
saw no drunkenness. There are no saloons in Constantinople. One may buy
"brandy-sticks"--canes with long glass phials concealed in them and a
tiny glass for tippling--though I suspect these are sold mostly to
visitors.
You are in the business part of Constantinople as soon as you leave the
bridge--in the markets and shops, and presently in the bazaars. The
streets are only a few feet wide, and are swarming with men and beasts
of burden, yet carriages dash through, and the population falls out of
the way, cursing the "Christian dogs," no doubt, in the case of
tourists. Yet let a carriage but stop and there is eager attention on
every hand--a lavish willingness to serve, to dance attendance, to
grovel, to do anything that will bring return.
The excursionist, in fact, presently gets an idea that these people are
conducting a sort of continuous entertainment for his benefit--a
permanent World's Fair Midway Plaisance, as it were, where curious wares
and sights are arranged for his special diversion. He is hardly to be
blamed for this notion. He sees every native ready to jump to serve
him--to leave everything else for his pleasure. The shopkeeper will let
a native customer wait and fume till doomsday as long as the tourist is
even a prospect. The native piastre is nothing to him when American gold
is in sight. That is what he lives for by day and dreams of by night. He
will sweat for it, lie for it, steal for it, die for it. It is his life,
his hope, his salvation. He will give everything but his immortal soul
for the gold of the West, and he would give that too, if it would bring
anything.
Most places along the Mediterranean deal in mixed moneys, but compared
with Constantinople the financial problem elsewhere is simple. Here the
traveller's pocket is a medley of francs, lire, crowns, piastres,
drachmas, marks, and American coins of various denominations. He tries
feebly to keep track of table values, but it is no use. The crafty
shopkeepers, who have all the world's monetary lore at their fingertips,
rob him every time they make change, and the more he tries to figure the
more muddled he gets, until he actually can't calculate the coin of his
own realm.
As for Turkish money, in my opinion it is worth nothing whatever. It is
mostly a lot of tinware and plated stuff, and the plating is worn off,
and the hieroglyphics, and it was never anything more than a lot of
silly medals in the beginning. Whenever I get any of it I work it off on
beggars as quickly as possible for baksheesh, and I always feel guilty,
and look the other way and sing a little to forget.
Nobody really knows what any of those Turkish metallic coins are
supposed to be worth. One of them will pay for a shine, but then the
shine isn't worth anything, either, so that is no basis of value. There
is actually no legal tender in Turkey. How could there be, with a
make-believe money like that?
Speaking of bootblacks, they all sit in a row at the other end of the
Galata bridge, and they go to sleep over your shoes and pretend to work
on them and take off the polish you gave them yourself in the morning.
They have curious-looking boxes, and their work is as nearly useless as
any effort, if it is that, I have ever known.
I have been trying for a page or two to say something more about the
streets of Constantinople, and now I've forgotten what it was I wanted
to say. Most of them are not streets at all, in fact, but alleys,
wretched alleys--some of them roofed over--and as you drive through
them your face gets all out of shape trying to fit itself to the sights
and smells. I remember now; I wanted to mention the donkeys--the poor,
patient little beasts of burden that plod through those thoroughfares,
weighed down with great loads of brick and dirt and wood and every sort
of heavy thing, enough to make a camel sway-backed, I should think. They
are the gentlest creatures alive, and the most imposed upon. If Mohammed
provided a heaven for the donkeys, I hope it isn't the one the Turks go
to.
Then there are the fountains--that is, the public watering-places. They
are nearly all carved in relief and belong to an earlier period, when
art here was worth something. Here and there is a modern one--gaudy,
tinsel, wretched.
But one has to stop a minute to remember that these old streets are not
always occupied by the turbans and fezzes of the unspeakable Turk.
Constantinople was Greek in the beginning, founded away back, six
hundred years or more B.C., and named Byzantium, after one Byzas, its
founder. The colony had started to settle several miles farther up the
Golden Horn, when a crow came along and carried off a piece of their
sacrificial meat. They were mad at first; but when they found he had
dropped it over on Bosporus Point they concluded to take his judgment
and settle there instead.
Then came a good many changes. Persians and Greeks held the place by
turns, and by and by it was allied to Rome. The Christian Emperor
Constantine made it his capital about 328 A.D. and called it New Rome.
But the people wouldn't have that title. Constantine had rebuilt the
city, and they insisted on giving it his name. So Constantinople it
became and remained--the names Galata, Pera, Stamboul, and Skutari
(accent on the "Sku") being merely divisions, the last-named on the
Asiatic side.
It was not until eleven hundred years after Constantine that the
Turkomans swarmed in and possessed themselves of what had become a
tottering empire. So the Turkish occupation is comparatively
recent--only since 1453.
Still, that is a good while ago, when one considers what has been done
elsewhere. Christopher Columbus was playing marbles in Genoa, or helping
his father comb wool, then. America was a place of wigwams--a habitation
of Indian tribes. We have done a good deal in the four and a half
centuries since--more than the Turk will do in four and a half million
years. The Turk is not an express train. He is not even a slow freight.
He is not a train at all, but an old caboose on the hind end of day
before yesterday. By the way, I know now why these old cities have still
older cities buried under them. They never clean the streets, and a city
gets entirely covered up at last with dirt.
* * * * *
I have been wanting to speak of the dogs of Constantinople ever since I
began this chapter. They have been always in my mind, but I wanted to
work off my ill-nature, first, on the Turk. For I have another feeling
for the dogs--a friendly feeling--a sympathetic feeling--an affectionate
feeling.
Every morning at four o'clock the dogs of Constantinople turn their
faces toward Mecca and howl their heartbreak to the sky. At least, I
suppose they turn toward Mecca--that being the general habit here when
one has anything official to give out. I know they howl and bark and
make such a disturbance as is heard nowhere else on earth. In America,
two or three dogs will keep a neighborhood awake, but imagine a vast
city of dogs all barking at once--forty or fifty dogs to the block,
counting the four sides! Do you think you could sleep during that
morning orison? If you could, then you are sound-proof.
I have said that I have an affection for the dogs, but not at that hour.
It develops later, when things have quieted down, and I have had
breakfast and am considering them over the ship's side. There is a band
of them owns this section of the water-front, and they are worth
studying.
They are not as unsightly and as wretched as I expected to find them.
Life for them is not a path of roses, but neither is it a trail of
absolute privation. They live on refuse, and there is plenty of refuse.
They are in fair condition, therefore, as to flesh, and they do not look
particularly unhappy, though they are dirty enough, and sometimes mangy
and moth-eaten and tufty; but then the Turks themselves are all of these
things, and why should the dogs be otherwise?
The type of these dogs impresses me. They have reverted to the original
pattern--they are wolf-dogs. They vary only in color--usually some tone
of grizzly gray--and not widely in that. They have returned to race--to
the old wild breed that made his bed in the grass and revolved three
times before he was ready to lie down. One might expect them to be ugly
and dangerous, but they are not. They are the kindest, gentlest members
of the dog family notwithstanding the harsh treatment they receive, and
the most intelligent. No one really human can study them without
sympathy and admiration.
I have watched these dogs a good deal since we came here, and a lady of
Constantinople, the wife of a foreign minister, has added largely to my
information on the subject.
They are quite wonderful in many ways. They have divided themselves into
groups or squads, and their territory into districts, with borders
exactly defined. They know just about how much substance each district
will supply and the squads are not allowed to grow. There is a captain
to each of these companies, and his rule is absolute. When the garbage
from each house is brought out and dumped into the street, he oversees
the distribution and keeps order. He keeps it, too. There is no fighting
and very little discord, unless some outlaw dog from a neighboring group
attempts to make an incursion. Then there is a wild outbreak, and if the
dog escapes undamaged he is lucky.
The captain of a group is a sultan with the power of life and death over
his subjects. When puppies come along he designates the few--the very
few--that are to live, and one mother nurses several of the reduced
litters--the different mothers taking turns. When a dog gets too old to
be useful in the strenuous round--when he is no longer valuable to the
band--he is systematically put out of the way by starvation. A day comes
when the captain issues some kind of an edict that he is no longer to
have food. From that moment, until his death, not a morsel passes his
lips. With longing eyes he looks at the others eating, but he makes no
attempt to join them. Now and again a bit of something falls his way.
The temptation is too strong--he reaches toward the morsel. The captain,
who overlooks nothing, gives a low growl. The dying creature shrinks
back without a murmur. He knows the law. Perhaps he, too, was once a
captain.
The minister's wife told me that she had tried to feed one of those
dying dogs, but that even when the food was placed in front of him he
would only look pleadingly at the captain and refuse to touch it. She
brought him inside, at last, where he was no longer under that deadly
surveillance. He ate then, but lived only a little while. Perhaps it was
too late; perhaps the decree was not to be disobeyed, even there.
As a rule, it is unwise to show kindness or the least attention to these
dogs, she said. The slightest word or notice unlocks such a store-house
of gratitude and heart-hunger in those poor creatures that one can never
venture near that neighborhood again without being fairly overwhelmed
with devotion. Speak a word to one of them and he will desert his
companions and follow you for miles.
The minister's wife told how once a male member of her household had
shown some mark of attention to one of the dogs of their neighborhood
group. A day or two later she set out for a walk, carrying her parasol,
holding it downward. Suddenly she felt it taken from her hand. Looking
down, she saw a dog walking by her side, carrying it. It was the favored
animal, trying to make return to any one who came out of that heavenly
house.
She told me how in the winter the dogs pile up in pyramids to keep warm,
and how those underneath, when they have smothered as long as they can,
will work out and get to the top of the heap and let the others have a
chance to get warm and smothered too.
Once, when some excavations were going on in her neighborhood the dogs
of several bands, made kin by a vigorous touch of nature, cold, had
packed themselves into a sort of tunnel which the workmen had made. One
dog who had come a little late was left outside. He made one or two
efforts to get a position, but it was no use. He reflected upon the
situation and presently set up a loud barking. That was too much for
those other dogs. They came tumbling out to see what had happened, but
before they had a chance to find out, the late arrival had slipped
quietly in and established himself in the warmest place.
Once a pasha visited a certain neighborhood in Pera, and the dogs kept
him awake. In his irritation he issued an order that the dogs of that
environment should be killed. The order was carried out, and for a day
and a night there was silence there. But then the word had gone forth
that a section of rich territory had been vacated, and there was a rush
for it that was like the occupation of the Oklahoma strip.
There was trouble, too, in establishing the claim and electing officers.
No such excitement and commotion and general riot had ever been known in
that street before. It lasted two days and nights. Then everything was
peaceable enough. Captains had fought their way to a scarred and limping
victory. Claims had been duly surveyed and distributed. The pasha had
retired permanently from the neighborhood.
It is against the law for the ordinary citizen to kill one of the dogs.
They are scavengers, and the law protects them. One may kick and beat
and scald and maim them, and the Turk has a habit of doing these things;
but he must not kill them--not unless he is a pasha. And, after all, the
dogs own Constantinople--the pariah dogs, I mean; there are few of the
other kind. One seldom sees a pet dog on the streets. The pariah dogs do
not care for him. They do not attack him, they merely set up a racket
which throws that pet dog into a fever and fills him with an abiding
love of home. But I am dwelling too long on this subject. I enjoy
writing about these wonderful dogs. They interest me.
Perhaps the "Young Turks" will improve Constantinople. Already they have
made the streets safer; perhaps they will make them cleaner. Also, they
may improve the Turkish postal service. That would be a good place to
begin, I should think. Constantinople has a native post-office, but it
isn't worth anything. Anybody who wants a letter to arrive sends it
through one of the foreign post-offices, of which each European nation
supports one on its own account. To trust a letter to the Turkish
post-office is to bid it a permanent good-bye. The officials will open
it for money first, and soak off the stamp afterward. If you inquire
about it, they will tell you it was probably seditionary and destroyed
by the sultan's orders. Perhaps that will not be so any more. The
sultan's late force of twenty thousand spies has been disbanded, and
things to-day are on a much more liberal basis. Two royal princes came
aboard our vessel to-day, unattended except by an old marshal--something
which has never happened here before.
These princes have been virtually in prison all their lives. Until very
recently they had never left the palace except under guard. They had
never been aboard a vessel until they came aboard the _Kurfuerst_, and
though grown men, they were like children in their manner and their
curiosity. They had never seen a type-writer. They had never seen a
steam-engine. Our chief engineer took them down among the machinery and
they were delighted. They greeted everybody, saluted everybody, and
drove away at last in their open victoria drawn by two white horses,
with no outriders, no guards, no attendants of any kind except the old
marshal--a thing which only a little while ago would not have been
dreamed of as possible.
Perhaps there is hope for Turkey, after all.
XX
ABDUL HAMID GOES TO PRAYER
It was on our second day in Constantinople that we saw the
Selamlik--that is, the Sultan Abdul Hamid II. on his way to prayer. It
was Friday, which is the Mohammedan Sunday, and the sultan, according to
his custom, went to the mosque in state. The ceremony was, in fact, a
grand military review, with twenty-five thousand soldiers drawn up on
the hillside surrounding the royal mosque, and many bands of music; the
whole gay and resplendent with the varied uniforms of different
brigades, the trappings of high officials, the flutter of waving
banners, the splendor of royal cortege--all the fuss and fanfare of this
fallen king.[3]
For Abdul Hamid is no longer monarch except by sufferance. A tyrant who
in his time has ordered the massacre of thousands; has imprisoned and
slain members of his own family; has sent a multitude to the Bosporus
and into exile; has maintained in this enlightened day a court and a
rule of the Middle Ages--he is only a figurehead now, likely to be
removed at a moment's warning.
The Young Turk is in the saddle. Hamid's force of twenty thousand spies
has been disbanded. Men-of-war lie in the Bosporus just under Yildiz,
ready to open fire on that royal palace at the first sign of any
disturbance there. The tottering old man is still allowed his royal
guard, his harem, and this weekly ceremonial and display to keep up a
semblance of imperial power. But he is only a make-believe king; the
people know that, and he knows it, too, best of all.
We had special invitations from the palace and a special enclosure from
which to view the ceremony. We had cakes, too, and sherbet served while
we waited--by the sultan's orders, it was said--but I didn't take any. I
thought Abdul might have heard I didn't care for him and put poison in
mine. That would be like him.
I was tempted, though, for we had driven a long way through the blinding
dust. It was hot there, and we had to stand up and keep on standing up
while all that great review got together and arranged and rearranged
itself; while officials and black Nubian eunuchs, those sexless slaves
of the harem, ran up and down, and men sanded the track--that is, the
road over which his majesty was to drive--and did a hundred other things
to consume time.
One does not hurry the Orient--one waits on it. That is a useful
maxim--I'm glad I invented it. I said it over about a hundred times
while we stood there waiting for Abdul Hamid, who was dallying with
certain favorites, like as not, and remembering us not at all.
It was worth seeing, though. Brigade after brigade swung by to the weird
music of their bands--billow after billow of brown, red, and blue
uniforms. The hillside became a perfect storm of fezzes; the tide of
spectators rose till its waves touched the housetops.