no scruples, no morals, no honesty of any sort--in business or in
private life. He is the descendant of foreign traders who have settled
in the Near East at some period or other and have intermingled--not
necessarily intermarried--with Greeks and Armenians or other
non-Turkish elements of the country. His ancestors might have
originally come to the Near East either attracted by the proverbial
riches of the Orient--at a time when the Orient was still rich--or
as runaways from the justice of their own country--no one knows. As
foreigners always had certain privileges in Turkey the present-day
Levantine calls himself a foreigner when he is dealing with the
Turks or with Turkish authorities. However, when he is dealing with
foreigners he is very apt to call himself a Turk, an Armenian or a
Greek. Anyhow he never will call himself a Levantine, so stigmatized
is that appellation in the eyes of all who know the Near East. He
generally has perfected this internationalism to such a degree that
he has citizenship papers or passports of different countries which
he uses indiscriminately according to his wants or the necessity of
the moment. But despite all a Levantine is and remains a Levantine and
should be shunned as such. Anyone who is from the Near East and calls
himself a non-Muslim Turk is a Levantine, and almost any foreigner
who admits that his family has been living in the Near East for at
least two generations is probably also a Levantine. Anyhow Pera is
the hot-bed of Levantines, who have lost all their original racial
qualities and have assimilated all the racial defects of all the races
living in the Near East--whose one purpose is to make and spend money
and who are ready to sell anything for the purpose.
My friend Carayanni is not a Levantine. He is an Ottoman Greek. Just
as a Scotchman is a British subject, so Carayanni is a Greek but a
Turkish--or Ottoman--subject, and is supposed to be as faithful to
Turkey as the Scotchman is faithful to Great Britain. But in the eyes
of the world Turkey is not Great Britain, and Carayanni is a Greek
and everyone, except the Turks, seem to consider it quite natural
that he should be a Venizelist. Foreigners call him and the other
Ottoman Greeks like him who are Venizelists “patriots,” and blame
the Turks for not loving them. A Venizelist is a Greek who wants the
downfall and dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, that is to say that
an Ottoman Greek who is a Venizelist is _de juro_ a rebel, a traitor,
who conspires for the downfall and dismemberment of the Government of
his own country. When the Turks take this attitude and try to repress
this intestinal strife they are accused of committing “atrocities.”
When Great Britain or any other Western Government quells with machine
guns and hand-grenades a similar intestinal strife in their own
country, they are said to make a legal repression of a rebellious or
revolutionary movement. Double standards again.
The Venizelists want the downfall of the Ottoman Empire so that
Constantinople may become again a Greek Byzance as it was over five
centuries ago. Just because a city originally founded by the Romans
happened to be Greek thirty-nine years before Columbus discovered
America, Carayanni and all the Greeks claim now that it should again
be made Greek. They call themselves Venizelists because they follow
the principles of Venizelos who, although himself an Ottoman Greek,
turned traitor to the country of his birth and adoption and became the
political leader of Greece in her anti-Turkish policy. The western
powers hailed him as the greatest statesman and diplomat of the century
and never give a thought to his treason or to the weakness of his
claims.
But we do not mind the Venizelism of Carayanni. Like most of the
higher-class Greeks he is Venizelist only in words, and he is too well
bred to talk politics when he is with Turks. The higher-class Greeks
are not Venizelists enough to don the Greek uniform. They know that if
they did don it they might be sent to battle, and battles against the
Turks are not very safe. Why should they risk their lives, why should
they suffer the discomforts of following a military campaign--even
at a safe distance from the front? They know that by a cunning and
insidious propaganda they can get all the desired support from foreign
nations. To obtain the sympathy and the moral support of certain
nations which, like America, are imbued with the spirit of fair play,
some of their women write sweet articles where the keynote is the
lovableness of the Turks individually, their innocence, their dearness
and their romanticism cunningly interwoven with stories--supposed to
be personal experiences--which emphasize in descriptions if not in
words, the ignorance of the Turks, their administrative or business
incapacity, how they still practise slavery and polygamy, and how
they commit political murders and atrocities. The broadminded but
misinformed public believes in these camouflaged false accusations
because of the hypocritical profession of love interwoven with them
and gives more than ever its entire sympathy and moral support to the
Greeks. To obtain the active support of less broadminded nations,
to secure from them all the modern war paraphernalia and all the
money necessary to equip and hold under colours, against their will,
the lower-class Greeks who are good enough for “cannon fodder,” the
Venizelists lead in some other countries a bolder, and therefore more
commendable propaganda. In this way they are sure to obtain the moral
and material support they want without much risk. The upper-class
Greeks like to play safe: the only battles they fight are in their
clubs and around the green table of diplomacy, and the most deadly
weapon they use is their tongue--which is a pretty deadly weapon at
that! So they continue, day in and day out, to endeavour to Byzantinize
Constantinople and, while happily they have not succeeded in the whole
city, their efforts have been--for all practical purposes--crowned
with success in Pera. In the old days Pera was more than half Turkish.
To-day scarcely one out of every fifteen people you see in its streets
is a real Turk. At the armistice all the non-Turkish elements have been
given a free hand in this part of the city by the Inter-Allied police,
and rather than submit to the arrogance of the Armenians and to the
hostility of the Greek mobs, rather than witness the general débauche,
the Turks have withdrawn to Stamboul or to the heights of Nishantashe.
A Turk does not feel properly protected in Pera. He feels that he would
get little protection from an Inter-Allied policeman if it came to a
litigation with a foreigner, and only a very few Turkish policemen are
now employed in Pera where their exclusive duty is to regulate traffic.
So Pera has become, under the benevolent eye of its Inter-Allied
police, the heaven of Greeks and Levantines and Carayanni, being a
Greek, lives in Pera and knows it from A to Z. He has invited us to
dinner, and as we know that he will not talk politics, as we want to
see Pera at night, and as we could not find a better guide for the
purpose, we have accepted his invitation.
One dines very late in Pera and when we start on our trip of
exploration it is already night. We left home well after eight. On our
way to meet Carayanni we had to pass through Galata, which shelters
behind its façade of business respectability sordid back streets
patronized by sailors of the international merchant and military navies
now crowding the harbour. While banks and office buildings in the main
street are closed at this late hour we have glimpses of side streets
which would make the Barbary Coast of San Francisco blush with envy.
Intoxicated sailors rock from side to side and disappear in little
streets where organs grind their nasal notes of antiquated French,
Italian, yes, even American popular songs and where harsh feminine
voices greet prospective friends in an international vernacular. A
foreign sailor, more intoxicated and more excited than the others,
jumps on the running board of our carriage. It is a good thing that the
top is up, as in the darkness he does not see that I am a Turk and when
I push him and shout in English for him to get out he obeys without a
sound, probably thinking that I am an Englishman or an American who
could get protection from the police.
My wife is frightened, but the really dangerous part of our route is
nearly over. We are leaving Galata behind. Our carriage climbs the
hill of Pera and soon we pass before the Pera Palace, the leading
hotel of Constantinople, now owned by a Greek, where foreign officers
and business men are fêted by unscrupulous Levantine adventurers and
drink and dance with fallen Russian princesses or with Greek and
Armenian girls whose morals are, to say the least, as light as their
flimsy gowns. Right next to the hotel is the “Petits Champs” Garden
where soliciting by both male and female pleasure-seekers is now so
aggressively indulged in that not even a self-respecting man dares any
more to venture in the place.
The streets are also full of pleasure-seekers, but at this hour they
are not yet as aggressive as in the Garden. They walk slowly eyeing
each other with greedy or inviting glances. Among them hundreds of
Russian refugees, derelicts of modern civilization, are drifting sadly,
their emaciated bodies clothed in rags. Maimed men in old uniforms--on
which you can still detect the insignias of the high ranks they
obtained on the battlefields when they were fighting to make the world
safe for democracy--are now peddling little wooden toys or artificial
flowers which they try to sell to passers-by. Old women--and also a
few young ones who prefer to be street vendors rather than street
walkers--are selling candies and newspapers. At one corner a sad
young woman, who will be a mother soon, holds in her hand a bunch of
multi-coloured toy balloons. She is so tired that she leans against
the wall and can hardly move her hand to offer her balloons for sale.
Huddled on the curb and in porch-ways, little children shivering from
hunger and from cold, are begging or trying to snatch a few minutes'
sleep before the Inter-Allied police come and tell them to move on.
Fourteen or fifteen-year-old little girls are parading arm in arm
and patently offering their youthfulness in competition with the
experienced knowledge of their elder sisters. Prostitution, dishonesty,
misery and drunkenness are openly flaunted in this section of the city
which revives all the vices of Byzance coupled with those of Sodom.
And all this under the very eyes of the Inter-Allied police who have
occupied the city in the name of civilization and to enforce order and
law. Never before were Pera and Galata as disreputable as now, never
before were they so unsafe, so objectionable and so badly policed; the
Inter-Allied police professes that it does not care to mix in matters
that have no direct bearing on politics, and the Turkish police has had
its authority completely taken away in this section of the city.
At last, through this repulsive maze of vice, we arrive at the
Russian restaurant where we are to meet Carayanni. Pera is now full
of Russian restaurants, where a money-spending international crowd
revels in so-called Bohemian life. Why not? The walls are artistically
painted and the furniture queer looking enough. Of course, like most
amateur Bohemians, the only thing which this international crowd has
adopted from the Quartier Latin of Paris is free love. Anyhow, with
the punctuality of a perfect host, Carayanni is waiting for us. Well
groomed and prosperous-looking in his dapper London-made clothes, he
is trying his best to look and act like an Englishman. His polite
nonchalance and his general appearance are so perfect that, despite his
dark complexion, it is hard for me to realize that this is the same man
who, before I left Constantinople about ten years ago, was making only
a very modest living in gambling and card games in which he always was
an expert. He has changed his business, however, during the war and is
now one of the most successful food speculators in town.
Carayanni has a special table prepared right near the center of the
room and on our way to the table he stops to greet the waitresses and
to gracefully kiss their hands. Most of these girls are supposed to
belong to the Russian nobility, so in Pera it has become the custom
to kiss the hand that feeds you. We take our seats and glance about
the room. As a whole the place is almost respectable. The crowd is
the usual mixture seen now at night in Pera: mostly olive-skinned,
thick-lipped, dissipated Armenians and Greeks who can afford
high-priced restaurants, thanks to their unscrupulous war and post-war
profiteering; many foreigners who can the better afford to spend in
view of the low rate of exchange of the Turkish money; a few Americans
who love to indulge in foreign countries in pleasures forbidden to
them in their own either by puritanic traditions or by the eighteenth
amendment. The food is excellent; we have a taste of “vodka,” the
Russian drink, while at other tables imported and local wines of
rare vintage are consumed copiously. The professional entertainment
provided consists of an excellent gypsy orchestra, the best I have
heard anywhere, a few singers who sing some weird Russian songs and
an interpretative dancer who interprets better than she dances. In
between the professional numbers those who desire to dance can do
so in the middle of the room which remains cleared for the purpose.
After all, it is the same kind of cabaret restaurant that one finds in
London, Paris or New York, except that its performers are Russian, its
waitresses are supposed to be princesses and its crowd is a little more
“Bohemian.”
Of course Carayanni finds it too slow and as we are finishing dinner
he suggests that we go to a show. At one theater the Greeks are giving
a performance for the benefit of their refugees and at another the
Turks are giving a performance for the benefit of their refugees and
as our party to-night is both Turkish and Greek we must not hurt the
feelings of each other by going to either of these shows. Carayanni
suggests adjourning to a certain “club” which is the rage of the moment
and where plays and actors are so--“unreserved,” that the public is
required to wear masks. Naturally I object to this suggestion: my wife
and I are, so to speak, provincials from Stamboul and our blushes would
glow even through our masks. My wife is so shocked that Carayanni
is sorry to have ever suggested it and he proposes hastily to go to
see Scheherazade which is played by some of the former actors of the
imperial ballet corps of Petrograd. We all decide in favour of this and
we adjourn to the theater.
The play has already started. Here again there are only a very few
Turks in the audience and their presence seems to me as incongruous
as mine must seem to them. It is queer to see the place crowded with
foreigners when but a few years ago the crowds in theaters were almost
exclusively Turkish. I remember that one of the last times I came to
this very theater it was to assist at a gala performance given by the
Municipality of Constantinople in honour of the Young Turkish leaders
who had just then so successfully accomplished their democratic
revolution. The place was then covered with Turkish flags and humming
with Turkish enthusiasm. To-day it is almost entirely Russian. Really,
the dream of Peter the Great of making a Russian city of Constantinople
has partly come true, but it has turned into a nightmare. I whisper
this to my wife and, unknown to Carayanni, we both express the wish
that any one who might nourish the ambition of taking Constantinople
away from the Turks might share a plight similar to that of the
Russians. It is not generous, I admit it, but if we were not Turks and
formed the same wish for the enemies of our country, people would call
us patriots.
The performance is pretty good but it drags on. Scheherazade is a
spectacular play and neither the theater nor its staging are adapted
to such plays. The actors might have been in the Imperial Ballet of
Petrograd but they certainly were not principals. So we decide to
leave before the performance is over. This time Carayanni insists that
we go to a regular café chantant. He will take us to the best one; it
is an open-air affair but the weather is really not so cool to-night as
to make it disagreeable. We have to take a carriage as it is at some
distance, on the hills of Shishli.
This café chantant is in a garden. In the center, where orchestra
seats should be, are small tables, with chairs in semi-circle facing
the stage. It is a regular theater stage and on both sides of the
garden, boxes have been built. It is crowded. Every one seems to be
intoxicated and the weird music of a regular jazz band composed of
genuine American negroes fires the blood of the rollicking crowd to
demonstrations unknown even to the Bowery in its most flourishing days
before the Volstead Act. Much bejewelled and rouged “noble” waitresses
sit, drink and smoke at the tables of their own clients. The proprietor
of the place, an American coloured man who was established in Russia
before the Bolshevik revolution and who--it seems--protected and helped
most efficiently some British and American officers and relief workers
at the time of the Revolution, is watching the crowd in a rather
aloof manner. Frankly he seems to me more human than his clients; at
least he is sober and acts with consideration and politeness, which
is not the case with most of the people who are here. Not one real
Turk is in sight. Many foreigners, but mostly Greeks, Armenians and
Levantines--with dissipated puffed-up faces, greedy of pleasure and
materialism. We have a liqueur. The show is a vaudeville which is not
very interesting. Every minute that passes makes the crowd more and
more demonstrative. Carayanni is enjoying it immensely, but I realize
that our presence puts a damper on his good time and although he
defends himself in the most exquisite manner when I tease him about
it and accuse him of being evidently an “habitué” of the place, the
glances that he exchanges surreptitiously with one of the waitresses--a
real Russian beauty with pale skin, fire-red lips and languid black
eyes--confirm my suspicions. My wife does not enjoy herself, and she is
tired: our life in Stamboul has evidently made her lose her taste for
late hours. Besides she has never seen this kind of night life anywhere
and the atmosphere is getting decidedly too tense for us. A “parti
carrée” enters a box--and immediately pulls the curtain, thus cutting
itself entirely from the view of the public. My wife looks at me in
surprise. We really must go.
It is too early for Carayanni, the night has just started for him and
for the other regular Perotes. So we insist that he should not spoil
his evening and we apologise for our departure. He is heartbroken to
see us go but asks permission to remain, protesting that he has some
very important business matters to talk over with a friend of his whom
he has just seen in the crowd. We understand perfectly well and take
our leave.
We step out of the gay garden. At the curb a long line of automobiles
is waiting. We take one as it will get us home quicker than a carriage.
Besides, the streets of Pera, and especially of Galata, are not very
safe at this late hour, and the quicker one rushes through them the
better.
Pera is tossing in her sleep, nervous and restless. A few night-owls
of both sexes who evidently have not yet been able to find a branch
to their liking are still wandering on the sidewalks. The porches and
doorways of nearly every house are crowded with groups of children and
refugees, half-naked, sleeping cuddled up together to keep warm. In
restaurants and amusement places the merry-makers are continuing their
revels.
Galata again, her narrow streets still lit up and still resounding
with sinister noises. Now the bridge, almost deserted, and then at
last Stamboul, our Stamboul, the beautiful Turkish city, sleeping in
the night the sleep of the just; poor Stamboul, ruined by fires and
by wars, sad in her misery, but decent and noble; a dethroned queen
dreaming of her past splendour and trusting in her future.
X
CONSTANTINOPLE, 1922
The night life in Pera sketched in the past chapter constitutes,
naturally, only one aspect of the present-day so-called social life of
Constantinople. In full justice to the inhabitants of the city I must
say that it is only the “Perotes,” that is, only those who inhabit
Pera--be they foreigners, Greeks, Armenians or Levantines--who find
pleasure in this kind of distraction. The people of Stamboul lead the
quiet life which I have already described and in between these two
extremes there are, of course, quite a large number of foreigners, of
Turks and of non-Turks who do not participate in this kind of life but
who nevertheless seek distraction in the society of each other in a
more rational and decent way than the Perotes--if not quite as sedate
as their friends of Stamboul.
Pera is the theatrical and the red light district of the city.
Stamboul is the residential district of the more conservative Turks,
that is to say, the Turks who are modern enough to set aside all the
antiquated customs of their ancestors who--by preventing their women
from participating in the every-day life, had handicapped the social
progress of the race--but who are not and do not care to be modern to
the point of adopting indiscriminately all the social customs, good and
bad, of the Occident. Fortunately for Turkey, the Turks who belong to
this group constitute the greatest majority. They are serious-minded
people, progressive without exaggeration, desirous of adapting to
their own temperament and customs only those foreign customs which
are desirable. They do not seek to imitate blindly western nations.
They do not care to be over-westernized. These Turks realize that with
all its superiority over the Oriental structure, the social structure
of the West is far from being perfect, and they do not propose to
introduce and adopt customs which either might be incompatible with
their temperaments and traditions or which have been and are strongly
criticized by well-thinking people even in western countries.
Besides Pera and Stamboul, the two opposite poles, there is another
district of the city where certain foreigners live and some native
non-Turks, and quite a few Turks who do not mind over-westernization.
This district comprises the quarters of Taxim and Shishli and a certain
portion of Nishantashe. It is situated on the hills north of Pera and
is considered by some to be the modern residential section of the city.
For those who really love Turkey and the Turks or even for those who
are only interested in the Orient it has, however, not much charm
or attraction. Modern apartment houses and new residences built in
concrete or in stone, but which have no distinctive character, adorn
its wide avenues and its smaller streets. The architecture here has no
individuality whatsoever, judging by the external appearances of the
buildings and by the aspect of the avenues and streets, with electric
street cars running, with automobiles and modern garages one might be
in any city of Europe. All speak of modernism and those who inhabit it
worship anything that has the stamp of western civilization. However,
if one desires to lead any kind of social life comparable to that of
western countries one has to come to this district and one has to
identify oneself with the social clique which dwells in it.
So, as my wife and I are both human, as we are still young and desire
once in a while some kind of mundane distraction, we have had to
frequent--if not extensively at least moderately--this section of
Constantinople. One glimpse of a night in Pera had been sufficient to
make us realize the necessity of finding other playgrounds. We had to
break, once in a while, from the quiet, peaceful and elevating life of
Stamboul if it were only to make us appreciate more our normal home
life.