in our house in Stamboul. Ours was a large stone house with nine
good-sized rooms, one on the ground floor and four on each other
floor. It had a large brick-covered entrance hall with two separate
stairways which in the old days were used, one as the Harem stairway
and the other as the Selamlik stairway, but of course we modernized
this by using one of them for service. The walls and ceilings had been
all replastered and with the exception of the entrance hall which was
painted in Turkish blue, were all calsomined in gray. Of course we
had electric light throughout and a telephone. The real innovation
for Constantinople, however, was that we changed the kitchen from the
basement, where it generally is located, to the first floor, near the
dining-room where we had a regular American kitchenette built. Then
we had a shower put in the spacious bathroom. So really the house is
as comfortable as possible. As for the furniture, we had mostly some
of the antique furniture collected by my father and myself in Western
Europe, with here and there some Turkish embroideries, old pieces that
have been in the family for many generations, and of course Turkish
and Persian carpets. Despite our western furniture and some pictures
we have on the walls we endeavoured to keep throughout the Oriental
atmosphere of the house--not the kind of Turkish interior one sees in
exhibitions, adorned with a lot of bric-a-brac and hangings, but the
simple Oriental interior. This has been rather an easy task as our
house is typically Turkish with large rooms of perfect proportions and
big latticed windows. Therefore, by just placing a very few pieces of
furniture in each room, by having straight hangings of pale Oriental
colours in the windows, and by placing the few really valuable Turkish
antiques in the most prominent place in each room, we have tried to
keep the Turkish atmosphere which has so much charm and without which
it would be sacrilegious to live in Stamboul, especially in a house
like the one we have. Our friends and our guests have told us that we
have succeeded in our endeavours and I believe this to be true, as an
American lady with whom we have grown to be very good friends since;
confided us that the first day she called on us bringing with her a
letter of introduction from a mutual friend she was struck by the
severe Turkish atmosphere of our house and--it being her first day in
Constantinople and her imagination being full of all the horrid things
she had heard about the Turks in America--she was rather nervous until
she met my wife who breezed in to greet her in a perfectly American
way. Needless to say that a short while after she was laughing with us
at the reputation of being “terrible” which the Turks have abroad.
Certainly no one who has lived in Stamboul can even conceive where
this reputation originated. Stamboul is the Turkish section of the
city and is peopled exclusively by Turks. Its streets are so quiet,
its crowds are so calm, that they really deserve much more the
adjective of “peaceful” than that of “terrible.” Anyone who has been
in Constantinople prefers Stamboul to any other section of the city
with the possible exception of some parts of Nishantashe which are also
exclusively inhabited by Turks and have therefore the same atmosphere
of peace and quiet one finds in Stamboul.
Stamboul has the dignity of a queen. It has the same refinement, the
same poise, the same nobility that a great lady always has no matter
what her circumstances. Many of the houses are tumbling down. Alas! too
many of the people living there are shabbily dressed--nay even some of
them are now in rags. But her smallest streets, her humblest shacks
have an inexpressible dignity which is at once apparent. Stamboul is a
thoroughbred. Despite her misery and her intense sufferings, despite
all her ruins and the poverty of her inhabitants, Stamboul is a queen.
She has a soul of her own, very much alive and very compassionate--a
soul which appeals to foreigners and to the Turks alike--perhaps
because of the feeling of love and compassion which emanates from her
and wins for her the hearts of Turks and foreigners. She loves her
children: more than thirty thousand families have in the last ten
years seen their houses destroyed by fire but somehow or other not
one member of those thirty thousand families has remained without
shelter. Stamboul has provided them with a roof and there they are,
all her children, somewhat crowded it is true, but all living within
her hospitable walls. She loves the foreigners and receives them with
the greatest hospitality, she adopts those who can understand her and
treats them even better than her own children: she has named, two of
her streets after Pierre Loti and Claude Farrère, her great French
friends, so that their names will remain forever alive within her
walls. All who come to her fall in love with her, and my wife and
myself fell immediately under her spell: she is so good, so sad, so
peaceful!
Our house is on one of her principal streets, a wide avenue which leads
to the Sublime Porte and then on to the Mausoleum of Sultan Mahmoud.
The avenue, like most of the principal streets of Stamboul, is bordered
with old plane trees where pigeons, and nightingales, have made their
home. From our windows we see the court of the Sublime Porte, a big
tumbled-down building where all the principal government departments
are concentrated. The gates of the Sublime Porte are night and day
guarded by Turkish soldiers and policemen, clean-cut young Turks,
tanned from the sun and the invigorating air of their birthplace in
Anatolia. Every hour of the day or of the night two of them tramp
before the gate opposite our house, in rain or in sunshine, in snow
or in fog. At the corner of the court there is a little mosque built
especially for their use so that they can go five times a day to
prayer. Five times a day the “muezzin” appears atop the slender minaret
and in his soulful chant calls the soldiers and the neighbourhood to
prayer and they all pray: when the sun rises and when it goes down,
in the middle of the day, in the middle of the afternoon and in
the middle of the night. Five times a day they give thanks to the
Almighty, fervently confirm their faith that there is no god but God,
and beg Him to assist them in following the straight path, the path to
salvation. Can people of this kind be as black as they are represented
abroad? Is it not monstrous to accuse them of so many dark crimes? Is
it not criminal to even give credence--without investigating--to all
of the deeds they are represented as doing by people who must have an
ulterior motive? For my part I can't believe these people capable of
even hurting a fly or of killing a wolf, unless it be in self-defense
and I can truthfully say that my belief is not based on sentimental
reasons or influenced by patriotic motives. I know the people, I have
watched them for days and months from our windows in Stamboul, these
Turkish peasant soldiers of Anatolia; I have read in their eyes only
resignation, passivity, and love. I have seen how they treat little
children, how they take care of poor stray dogs. No, they cannot
possibly harm anyone unless it be in self-defense.
From the upper story of our house we can see the entrance of the
Bosphorus, that enchanting piece of blue water which lures all that
have seen it once. We see it through the branches of trees, between the
Sublime Porte and a brick building on the left, the headquarters of
some newspaper. Towering above it are the houses of Galata and Pera
forming an amphitheatre much more pleasing to the eye at a distance
than from nearby. We also see the dark-green trees of the park of
the Old Seraglio, where a few slender towers, a few slanting gray
roofs mark the position of its imperial buildings. Truly our house is
situated in the heart of Stamboul, that is why we can feel it throbbing
so plainly, that is why we can learn to know her so well.
The famous Santa Sophia, the Mosque of Sultan Ahmed with its six
slender minarets, the Square of the Hippodrome, where the decadent
emperors of Byzance held horse races nearly six centuries ago, even
the famous bazaars are all within our range, almost within view of our
house and we pass our first weeks after we have settled in visiting all
these places, not as tourists, but for the purpose of knowing them,
of communing with them so that we will feel that we have become one
with our surroundings. We go time and again to the Old Seraglio, whose
nooks and corners become as familiar to us as if we had lived there,
the Old Seraglio whose every building, every kiosk, every room is still
alive with the history of Turkey's past grandeur, whose garden still
glows with the life of all the great Sultans and of their courtiers
who lived and died there. From its outer court with its long alley of
tall cypresses and poplars gently swaying to the breeze as if bewailing
past splendours, from its outer Council Room where generations of
grave Pashas robed in sable furs covered with silk brocades and with
bejeweled turbans have discussed affairs of State and international
policies while powerful Sultans were listening from behind the golden
lattices of a small balcony, from the informal audience room from
which a Sultan chased the Ambassador of Louis XIV, King of France,
for having dared to sit in his presence, to the court where another
Sultan was murdered by his Janissaries, to the Kiosk of the Lilacs to
the laboratory where learned doctors prepared drugs for their august
masters, to the very trunk of the old plane tree in the shade of which
a resentful Sultan signed the decree condemning to death one of his
generals who had failed to capture Vienna, and to the marble terrace
of the Badgad kiosk where a poet Sultan improvised his immortal verses
to his Sultana, the place seems to be full of living shadows and
remembrances. It seems as if it were only asleep and semi-consciously
waiting a signal to people again all its buildings and its gardens with
Princes and soldiers continuing their interrupted earthly existence.
We go time and again to all the different mosques of the neighbourhood,
places renowned the world over for their architecture and which are so
impregnated by the prayers Which generations of faithful believers have
made within their walls five times a day for centuries and centuries,
that they vibrate with spirituality and force you to meditation--not
a sad meditation with visions of everlasting fires to expiate earthly
sins, but encouraging meditation which whispers into your ears that
God who has created such beautiful surroundings for a city like
Constantinople, God who has given the power to human beings to conceive
and construct such cheerful and elevating temples of worship and prayer
cannot and will not create another life where the miseries of this one
are continued and multiplied eternally. A meditation which makes you
realize that if winter comes, spring cannot be far behind!
Then again we go often to the Bazaars, not necessarily to hunt for
antiques or to purchase things, but to get acquainted with the little
old shopkeepers, the second-hand booksellers with white beards
and turbans, sitting placidly in their small stores surrounded by
books--hand-written books in Turkish, Arabic or Persian, illuminated
with delicate multi-hued designs and covered with priceless old leather
bindings; little old shopkeepers who receive you as a guest and as a
friend, offer you tea and talk with you for hours on such and such
a book, this or the other school of philosophy, this or the other
Arabic, Persian or Turkish writer--without even thinking of selling
you a book. In our visits to the Bazaars we carefully avoid the Jew,
Armenian or Greek antique dealers hunting in the covered streets of
the place for foreigners and other easy prey. After a visit or two we
are known even by them and we can freely wander in the streets without
being molested by their employees who try to induce strangers to visit
their shops. We make friends with two or three dealers in the Bedesten,
the central hall of the Bazaars, a huge circular place covered with a
round dome where stands are like wide shelves and where shopkeepers sit
cross-legged surrounded by genuine works of art, jewels and furniture
piled in a beautiful disorder one on top of the other. We make friends
with a few of these vendors--old men who have kept their stands since
their early youth, people who knew my father, or an uncle or a cousin
of mine, who adopt us as if we were one of them. Thereafter we have no
more need of worrying; if we want to purchase something we have only to
tell them and they will get it for us if it exists in Stamboul, if we
see something that we want in one of the antique stores and are afraid
that it is not genuine or that the storekeeper will ask us a price
above its real value, we just have to speak of it to one of our friends
and he will expertise it for us and purchase it for us at its real
value. You see we are related to the late Reshad Bey--may the Mercy
of God be on his soul--and all these old merchants were friends of
his, and he had through their offices and with their cooperation made
the most precious collection of Turkish antiquities that exists to
this day in Constantinople and for the peace of Reshad Bey's soul, for
friendship to him, these good old people want to help us whenever they
can.
Thus we have gradually entered into the inner life of Stamboul and
identified ourselves with it. And we love it the more for the way it
has treated us. But who would not? People in Stamboul are so different
from those in Pera. Even the ordinary storekeepers, the butcher,
the grocer and the candlestick maker are honest and courteous here,
whereas honesty and politeness are as rare in Pera as the mythical
stone of the Alchemists. The Levantines, Greeks and Armenians of Pera
think they have found a speedier and better way to change everything
they touch into gold, and judging by their prosperity their system
may be efficient in so far as it secures gains. But the Turks in
Stamboul do not worry about material gains. All they want is peace
and tranquillity. And how can you secure peace with your neighbours,
how can you secure the tranquillity of your own mind if you are not
courteous to every one and if you are not honest?
So it is a real pleasure to go shopping in Stamboul and we absolutely
avoid Pera when we want or need anything. One can find everything
in Stamboul when one knows where to look for it. We have found even
English and American chintz for the curtains of our bedrooms and at
half the price we would have to pay for them in Pera. The little
cabinet maker around the corner has restored one of our Chippendale
chairs, which was broken on its way from America, so well that the
repairs cannot be detected even after a very close scrutiny. And the
funny part of it is that he never had seen a Chippendale chair before
in his life.
Right near our house is a shoe-store. I realized one Sunday morning
that I had forgotten to cash a cheque the previous day and as the
banks were closed and cheques are very little used in Turkey, my wife
and I were wishing we were in America where we could have cashed one
at a hotel, a club or even a store where we were known. I decided to
take a chance and send our man with a cheque for ten Turkish pounds
to the shoe-store to ask if they would cash it for me. A few minutes
later our man came back with the cheque--and with the ten pounds, the
storekeeper having absolutely refused to accept the cheque on the
grounds that he had entire confidence in us, that he was sure we would
pay him back next day or the day after, and that his retaining the
cheque would be tantamount to mistrusting us. I could not help thinking
that it takes an honest man to have confidence in the honesty of some
one else and one has all the time such proofs of honesty when one deals
with the small Turkish traders. I must admit however that they have
two standards of principles when it comes to naming a price for their
merchandise or for their services: the first standard which applies
to their steady customers and to Turks exclusively and which is one
of strict honesty satisfied with a very small margin of legitimate
gain--the steady customers and the Turks know that this means one
price only and do not begrudge them their small profits or try to beat
them down by bargaining--the other standard is the one they apply in
their dealings with foreigners or with a casual client, it consists in
asking for a much larger profit, leaving enough margin to indulge in
bargaining. I must also add in the defense of the small Turkish dealer
that he is obliged to have recourse to this second standard especially
in dealing with foreigners, purely and simply in self-defense. I have
still to find a foreigner who will step into a shop in Turkey and pay
without haggling over the price first asked by the merchant. This is
always a source of wonderment to me as very often the foreigner who
begrudges a paltry ten per cent profit to the Turkish merchant is the
same one who pays without the slightest protest twenty-five or fifty
per cent profit in his own town to a retailer who has had the good
sense to advertise himself as having only one price for his goods.
Anyhow, in Stamboul we never have to complain of the manner in which
we are treated by our suppliers, and when we deal with them we feel
that we have an individuality of our own and are not just a name or a
number which has to be served. We are friends who have to be pleased.
That is one of the reasons why we love Stamboul so much, and why
Stamboul is loved by all who have lived there. One becomes identified
with the quarter one lives in, one becomes part of it, one gets to
know and to be known at least by sight by every one who lives in the
same quarter: the policemen on the beat, the night watchman, the
storekeepers, the neighbours--all know each other and take a personal
interest in helping each other. There is a spirit of friendship, an
“esprit de corps” among all members of the same community.
The community in which we live is possibly exceptional in one respect
and that is that it is the center not only of Government circles, but
also of publicists and doctors. Stamboul even in its living quarters is
very markedly divided into sections where people of a certain trade,
a certain education or of a certain walk in life live in communities
distinct from each other. Ours is an intellectual community, all the
big doctors, physicians and surgeons and all the writers, publicists
and newspapermen live here, while the people of the Government come
every day to the Sublime Porte opposite our house. The result is that
after a short while we have a circle of neighbours and friends who make
it a practise to drop in informally once in a while to visit with us.
There are no official visitors, but friends who come in to pass away
the time in case you have nothing better to do and the informality is
such that they do not feel hurt if you cannot receive them. If by any
chance you have some formal party going on, they themselves do not
desire to stay. So it is perfectly charming and agreeable. So much the
more since these people are all interesting people: men and women who
know things and who are doing things and who shun small talk or gossip.
It is a remarkable thing how little gossip there is in these cliques of
Stamboul and this is a relief and a great difference from the cliques
of Pera. True, the people here are not social people in the foreign
sense of the word: they are people who do things and who desire to
exchange ideas, constructive and profitable ideas.
They generally come in late in the afternoon, when the Sublime Porte
is closing. They have to pass before our house, and every once in a
while some one of our friends stops in at tea time. After dinner we
receive the visits of our immediate neighbours, doctors and publicists,
if we have nothing else to do or if we do not ourselves call on some
neighbours. Of course these calls are not an every-day occurrence, they
happen about two or three times a week and help to pass the time in
a most pleasant way, as we have on our list of steady callers people
interested in different lines, philosophic and religious thoughts as
well as scientific and political thoughts.
So we are now finally settled and are leading a very quiet, interesting
life, right in the midst of our Stamboul, right among the Turks;
not any more the Stamboul and the Turks of Pierre Loti or of Claude
Farrère, but a Stamboul which has suffered and is suffering much, a
Stamboul which is thinking and feeling deeply, and among Turks who are
passing through a transition period of passive development--chrysalises
of the Near East which may soon develop into sturdy butterflies with
large wings and whose one ambition is to carry their race, their
country and their associates as high as the ideals towards which their
constructive imagination is now soaring.
VII
BUSINESS IN CONSTANTINOPLE
Now that we have a house which we can call our home we are able to lead
an organised life. Our daily routine varies little but it certainly is
a relief to settle down and take things easily after having lived like
gypsies for so many months. I go to my office every morning--everybody
works or at least tries to work now in Constantinople. I had good luck
in finding proper quarters for the office at a short distance from home
so that it does not take more than ten minutes' walk to go to work and
I can come back every day to lunch. In the mornings my wife is busy
with the thousand and one duties so easily devised by any woman who
takes a real interest in her home and when I come to lunch by noon
everything is ready for a quiet meal “en tête-a-tête,” followed by
twenty minutes or half an hour of restful conversation. It is so nice
to cut the day with a short recreation of this kind, well earned by
both of us. It makes one more alive for the work of the afternoon and
for the sake of having this short recreation we very seldom ask any one
to lunch. However, ours is a Turkish house and it always remains open
to guests, and we are ready to entertain any one who drops in to share
our meal. This is the custom, but every one is brought up not to take
undue advantage of the privilege, so friends or relations do not drop
in at lunch time more often than once in a great while.
When I again leave my wife for the office in the afternoon she
generally sees some friends or goes out shopping, but she is always at
home when I return in the evenings at half-past five or six. We work
rather late in the offices here.
Business life in Constantinople is a rather exacting thing nowadays.
It is unquestionably most interesting, but there is such competition,
such a scramble for work that one has to hustle to hold one's own.
Unfortunately we live in a century of commercialism and trade, and no
matter where one is one has to take an active part in the universal
struggle for life. The unfortunates who have to earn a living are the
actors in this struggle and have to devote their days, their years,
their whole life to business, no matter if they are in America or
in England, in Italy or in France, in Turkey or in China. In some
countries many go in business for a pastime. But in others--as in
Turkey--most of those who are in business have entered it only because
they had to. They would much prefer, if they could afford it, to pass
their time in the pursuit of some more elevating and morally profitable
occupation. Dire necessity has compelled practically every one now in
business in Turkey to take it up, men, women and children. I do not
think that deep in their hearts the Turks really relish this, but they
have a sort of a feeling that as long as everybody else is doing it, as
long as this is a century where only material progress counts, as long
as there is an urgent necessity to earn money, well they have to try to
make the best of it. They have come to this conclusion only in recent
years, and I believe that this is the only real good that the war has
done to Turkey and the Turks. When I left Constantinople for America,
ten or twelve years ago, there were very few Turks in business.
Commerce, finance and industry was, and had been for centuries, the
exclusive realm of the non-Turkish elements of the empire. Perhaps
this explains the reason why Turkey and the Near East did not enjoy a
very good business reputation in foreign countries--a handicap which
it will take some time still to overcome. It will require years and
years before foreign business men will realize that trustworthy and
reliable people can be found in Turkey to deal with, now that the Turks
are in business--just as it required years and years for the Chinamen
to change the opinion of foreigners on the risks of Chinese business.
Most traders who knew about the unsatisfactory results obtained in the
past in Chinese trade were prejudiced against Chinese business without
realizing that they had dealt through Japanese or half-bred Far Eastern
firms. When the Chinese entered personally into international business
the foreigners gradually lost their prejudice but it took some time.
The fact that the Turks have not entered into business until
comparatively recently is not at all due to laziness or indolence. It
is rather due to two distinct causes which must be mentioned here to
render full justice to the Turkish race. The first is a moral cause.
The religion, the education and the Asiatic origin of the Turks have
led them to look upon life more like a road that should be used to
reach spiritual attainments than like an opportunity to obtain material
gains. Spiritual attainments are eternal--those who accumulate them in
this life continue their progress in the other with a useful capital
and with assets that really count. Material gains are perishable and
those who accumulate them in this life cannot take them into the other.
Why should I therefore use my time and energy to accumulate things that
will be useful to me only during this life which, after all, is only
an infinitesimal part of my eternal existence. Accustomed to think and
to reason thus the Turks have become a race indifferent to material
gains and ambitious only for spiritual gains, and they have naturally
enough disdained business. In fact, they have for centuries looked
down upon commerce and finance and have purposely avoided competing in
these activities with the less spiritual but far more materialistic
non-Turkish elements of the Near East.