"The _yashmak_ does indeed typify the Old Turkey," said Halideh Hannym.
"But is it necessary to discard it because one takes an interest in the
things identified as progress? To the _yashmak_ are attached some of the
best traditions of our race; it comes from a period when the Turk was
really great, when he was still the master of a goodly share of
Europe--when he ruled, instead of being ruled."
All of which was true enough.
I pointed out that the _büründshük_, however, was the promise that the
Turkish woman would soon be able to look into the world--that seclusion
would before long be an unpleasant memory. To that my hostess and her
other guests agreed.
"The war has been a good thing for the Turkish woman," I ventured to
remark.
"It has been," admitted Halideh Hannym. "As an example, the university
has been opened to women. Three years ago nobody would have thought that
possible. To-day it is _un fait accompli_. The world does move--even
here."
Halideh Hannym did not mention that she was largely responsible for the
opening of the Constantinople University to women. Modesty is one of her
jewels. Nor would she admit that her novels and her trenchant articles
in the _Tanin_ had much to do with the progress made in the emancipation
of the Turkish woman.
"If Turkey is to be regenerated, her women must do it," said Halideh
Hannym, when we had come to speak of the necessity of better government
in the Ottoman Empire.
That one sentence comprises at once the field of endeavor and the motive
of the woman. She believes that there is much good in her race, but that
its old-time position of conqueror and ruler over subject races had been
fraught with all the dangers of ease and idleness.
"We must work--work--work," she said. "The race that lies fallow for too
long a time gives the weeds too much chance. Our weaknesses and
shortcomings are deep-rooted now. But I believe that the plowing which
the race had during the present war will again make it a fertile field
for the seeds of progress."
Not long before that Sultan Mahmed Réchad Khan V. had told me the same
thing.
"We of the Orient are known to you Westerners as fatalists," remarked
the old monarch in the course of the audience. "The fatalist is accepted
to be a person who lets things drift along. This means that any fatalist
may be no more than a lazy and shiftless individual. In our case that is
not true. Our belief in the Fates--Kismet and Kadar--is to blame for
what backwardness there is in the Ottoman Empire. But it will be
different in the future. It is all very well to trust in God, but we
must work."
I told Halideh Hannym that probably his Majesty had read some of her
writings. My reason for doing this was largely the fact that as yet this
gospel of work was little known in Turkey.
"That is not impossible," thought the woman. "At any rate, we must work,
and it is the women of Turkey who must set the example. When the Turks
have more generally embraced the idea that all there is worth while in
life is labor, they will come to understand their non-Osmanli
fellow-citizens better. I look upon that as the solution of the Ottoman
race problems. Labor is the one platform upon which all men can meet. My
objective is to have the races in the empire meet upon it. Turk, Greek,
Armenian, and Arab will get along together only when they come to heed
that old and beautiful saying of the Persians, 'How pleasantly dwell
together those who do not want the ox at the same time.' That means that
each of us must have his own ox--work ourselves, in other words."
And Halideh Hannym applies this to herself. There is no reason why she
should write novels and articles to make money--she does not need it, so
far as I know, if town houses and a country seat on the island of
Prinkipo mean anything at all. Halideh Hannym works for the satisfaction
there is in knowing that duty is done and done to the limit of one's
ability, and within that limit lies the seizing of one's opportunity.
Hers came with the war, and while others stood by and lamented she set
to work and wrung from ungenerous man that which under the pressure of
the times he thought unimportant. Halideh Hannym and her friends and
co-workers gathered these crumbs, one by one, and then made a loaf of
them, and that loaf is not small. Some future historian may say that the
emancipation of the Turkish woman was due to the Great War. I hope that
he will not overlook Halideh Edib Hannym Effendi.
The women of Central Europe have always worked hard, but at best they
have been kept at drudgery. They have done what man would not do, as
deeming it below his masculine dignity, or what he could not do. The
result of this has not been a happy one for the women. The "lord of the
household" has in the course of time come to look upon his wife as a
sort of inferior creature, fit indeed to be the first servant in the
house, but unfit to be elevated above that sphere. The rights of
equality which he takes from his mate he generally bestows upon his
daughters, and later he is inconsistent enough to have them enter the
servitude of his wife. Thus it came that the majority of all women in
Central Europe thought of nothing but the stomach of the lord and
master, and when this was attended to they would put in their spare
moments knitting socks.
The picture of the German _Hausfrau_ may appeal to many. It does not to
me. Nothing can be so disheartening as to spend an evening with a family
whose women will talk to the accompaniment of the clicking of the
knitting-needles. The making of socks should be left to machinery, even
if they are intended to warm the "Trilbys" of the lord and master.
I am glad to report that a large crevasse was torn into this _Hausfrau_
notion by the war. With millions of men at the front, the women had to
stand on their feet, as it were. The clinging ivy became a tree. Though
the ubiquitous knitting-needle was not entirely dispensed with, it came
to be used for the sake of economy, not as the symbol of immolation on
the altar of the _Herr im Hause_.
The woman who has fought for bread in the food-line is not likely to
ever again look upon the breadwinner of the family with that awe which
once swayed her when she thought of "his" magnanimity in giving her
good-naturedly what she had earned by unceasing effort and unswerving
devotion.
Thus has come in Central Europe a change that is no less great and
sweeping than what has taken place in Turkey. All concerned should be
truly thankful. The nation that does not give its women the opportunity
to do their best in the socio-economic sphere which nature has assigned
them handicaps itself badly. Not to do that results in woman being
little more than the plaything of man, or at best his drudge, and, since
man is the son of woman, no good can come of this. The cowed woman
cannot but have servile offspring, and to this we must look for the
explanation why the European in general is still ruled by classes that
look upon their subjects as chattels. A social aggregate in which the
families are ruled by autocratic husbands and fathers could have no
other than an autocratic government. I believe that a pine forest is
composed of pines, despite the fact that here and there some other trees
may live in it.
The war has upset that scheme in Central Europe. While the labor of
woman was valuable to the state, through its contributions to the
economic and military resources of the nation, it also fostered in the
woman that self-reliance which is the first step toward independence.
Of this the plow-woman and the women in the steel-works are the factors
and Halideh Hannym the sum. While the plow-woman and steel-workers were
unconsciously active for that purpose, the Turkish feminist had already
made it the objective of a spreading social policy.
What poor pets those women in the steel-mill would make!