The Turkish home in which I am staying at present has little in common
with the harem described by most Western writers, and no doubt those
readers accustomed to the _usual_ notions of harem life will consider
my surroundings disappointingly Western.
Had I been able, as I hoped, to send some photographs of the interior
of my friend’s house, those photographs would probably be considered
“fakes,” or perhaps even they might be returned (as they were returned
to me when I last stayed in Turkey five years ago) with the comment,
“This is not a Turkish harem.”
For a long time now, European furniture has been the fashion in Turkish
homes. At first this craze for everything Western began in the homes
of the Government officials, but it has been gradually spreading ever
since, so that to-day, in the smaller homes, cheap, gaudy furniture
of the worst kind has replaced the beautiful embroideries and
accoutrements of the East. And now the pendulum will swing the other
way. With this new movement of “Turkey for the Turks,” thinking women
like my hostess, who look round their houses to-day, must necessarily
ask themselves the question, “Is this really a Turkish home?” With as
much zeal, then, as she showed in filling her house with the ornaments
of the lands she longs to visit, my friend Fâtima has now begun to
collect the furniture, ornaments, and embroideries for the real Turkish
room which is to be mine when next I visit this country. Day after day
we have sauntered through the old bazaar, which is always an attraction
for a woman of the West, buying those quaint and delightful souvenirs
of the Turkey of the past, in much the same way as we English who
can afford it indulge our tastes for the furniture and porcelain of
a century that is gone. And when we visit the mosques, too, and the
sacred tombs, we generally come away with ideas for “my Turkish room,”
so that next time I come to Turkey I shall not have the disappointment
of travelling all these miles to sleep in a room furnished with an
Empire suite (however beautiful it may be), a Western sofa, armchairs,
and tables.
Sometimes in the morning when I wake I still wonder where I really
am. Am I in Europe, or am I in Asia? My room is as large as any of
the largest rooms in our country houses at home, and its ceiling and
high walls are painted with the primitive gaudy colouring seen in the
mosques. Fortunately there are seven windows, for there is no open
fireplace, and the room is carpeted from end to end. A solid silver
basin and jug of the real Eastern shape are on my washstand, the rest
of the toilet service is French, and there is a Venetian glass bon-bon
service, with sweets, liqueurs, and other drinks, beside my bed, and
tables--tables of all nations. One table put there specially for my
use was a gift from the late Pope Leo XIII. to my friend’s father, and
on it stands a Bible which my friend, though a Moslem, often reads.
On another table stands a signed portrait of Great Britain’s King
and Queen, removed for a short while from its place of honour in the
big salon as a sign of my friend’s great affection for one of their
Majesties’ humble subjects. It was a most delightful and delicately
turned compliment. But there are pictures in my room, too, pictures in
a Moslem house! A print water-colour of Windsor Castle and copies of
two of Reynolds’s pictures in the National Gallery, and many English
books. Is it surprising that when I look round this curious room I
wonder whether I really am in Turkey?
The more I stay in Turkey the more I admire the inborn aristocracy of
the Turk, and yet “aristocracy” as we understand it does not exist.
Turkey is the country where brotherhood and equality have been best
understood. The Turkish woman does not often open the doors of her home
to the foreigner, not for lack of any friendly feeling towards her,
but because the foreigner has lost her confidence, the foreigner has
made fun of her, and, above all, the foreigner “pities” her. But when
the Turkish woman opens her door to the foreigner, she opens her big,
generous heart. Always, however intimate may be their conversations,
the honoured guest stands on a pedestal, and the hostess is at her
feet longing only for an opportunity of showing courtesy and kindness.
In no other land have I met with such lavish hospitality--hospitality
even that makes one feel a little uncomfortable, especially when
one realizes how little one has done to deserve it. The courtesy,
also, is almost overwhelming. Every time I go in and out of the room
the assembled company, men and women, stand, and every time coffee,
cigarettes, and sweets are brought by the slaves for the guests, my
hostess rises to serve me herself. Always, too, I sit in the place of
honour, as far away from the door as possible, and sometimes right in
the draught of the window!
It is the custom, too, for the master of the house to pay all the
visitor’s bills. That I should have proposed to stamp my own letters
hurt my friend. The result is that, nowadays, I write no letters and
buy practically nothing. I feel almost guilty when I accept what I do
and give nothing in return, and always I have before me the haunting
fear of the terrible disappointment my friend will have when she visits
my country, for our hospitality cannot be compared to this.
When I asked my friend how long she expected me to stay, she was
surprised at my question. “As long as ever you like; you need never go
away; how I wish you would stay always.” And so it is in most Turkish
houses. There are guests here who came, as I did, for a few days, but
they have never gone away at all; some even came to visit Fâtima’s
grandfather, and still they remain; they have become part of the house
itself.
Fâtima has put her entire trousseau at my disposal. Many of the stuffs
and embroideries were brought to her when she was a child by her
father’s friends. They made a special pilgrimage from the depths of
Asia Minor to bring their offerings to the daughter of the “father of
the people,” as the ex-Pasha was known for many years. I take out these
precious gifts sometimes and examine them at leisure, trying to imagine
the arrival of the “wise men” of the East to pay honour to the father
of the little baby girl lying in the cradle. For these pilgrims were,
many of them, real “wise men” of the East, and they brought, amongst
other garments, a coat I am to wear when I dine with European friends,
but I am sure to tremble all the evening for its safety. The tissue
itself is pale blue silk, the yoke, collar, and cuffs all studded with
precious stones. It is a present from Mecca, and it lies with the other
priceless possessions in my room--jewels, linen, embroideries, money,
and letters too, in drawers that have no locks, and in a house where
all day long the doors are left open for any to enter who will. Truly,
this is a restful civilization!
It was nine o’clock this morning before I tinkled the little silver
bell beside my bedstead to summon my “chocolate” attendant. This is
a very old Turkish house, and in spite of its Western furniture it
rejoices in neither electric bells nor electric light. As a rule,
however, my negress is in my room, patiently waiting till I wake, not
daring, although she has been asked to do so, to disturb my sleep. Miss
Chocolate, clad in a scarlet-coloured dress, her woolly head tied up
with a scarlet scarf, brings in two silver trays, on which my breakfast
is served. Her skin is like brown velvet. Round her neck she wears a
gold necklace, and on her arms she has clanging bangles, which announce
her arrival. On one tray Miss Chocolate has collected all kinds of
jams, varying from quince to strawberry and violet, and many kinds
of biscuits; on the other there are Turkish coffee, milk, powdered
chocolate, and tea. Fâtima is generally present to see that I do honour
to this curious repast.
[Illustration: MISS “CHOCOLATE”]
My breakfast finished, I follow Miss Chocolate into the marble
bath-room attached to my bedroom. But it is not a bath-room which
is in the least designed to accompany the Empire suite in my room.
A real Eastern bath-room it is, _i.e._ it has a marble floor with
a gutter, so that all the water thrown over me runs away, and it
contains also the marble basin like a fountain in which the Turks
wash, always in running water. The morning after my arrival here I
took advantage of Miss Chocolate’s leaving me alone for a few minutes
to plug up the marble basin, and began to wash as we wash in Europe.
But Miss Chocolate returned sooner than I expected, and with much the
same expression as the mother who scolds a child who has been playing
in the mud, she extracted the handkerchief which served as my plug.
“Ach, mattemoiselle,” she exclaimed, in Turkish. “What a horrid way to
wash!” And she is astonished to see my skin so white--now she knows I
have washed all my life in dirtied water. Also when, after meal-time,
she pours the water over my hands, she carries away first the basin of
dirty water, and then comes back to fetch the jug, thinking it wiser no
doubt to keep temptation out of my way.
But not only Miss Chocolate, most of the Turkish women I have met
dislike our manner of washing. Indeed, they consider it dangerous to
sit in a bath which is not exclusively reserved for their own use.
Were they only in other ways to show this fear of spreading disease!
But cleanliness, as every one knows, is godliness itself in the Moslem
religion, and no doubt the Eastern bath-room will exist even after the
veil has disappeared.
Miss Chocolate interests me. She certainly is an excellent maid. She
sews well, keeps my clothes well brushed and tidy, washes me well, and
has an unending capacity for taking pains. By degrees I shall find out
her life history, as I shall find out, perhaps, before I go, the names
and social status of all these women here, but I have to work slowly
and carefully, lest my sympathetic interest should be mistaken for
idle curiosity, and so far I have found out little about my faithful
negress. Bought at the age of four by the Pasha, Fâtima’s father, for
the sum of forty Turkish pounds, she has a record of twenty-five years’
faithful servitude. But that is all I know. Since the Constitution, the
sale of slaves and eunuchs has been forbidden, and all those at present
employed in the house have been offered their liberty. Every slave in
this household has, however, refused her liberty, preferring to keep to
the original terms of her contract--her freedom only on marriage, with
a dowry from the Pasha. Slavery, then, can be considered as no longer
existing, and only a few eunuchs remain in the palaces to remind us of
an ugly chapter of history that is closed.
Miss Chocolate’s features show that she must first have seen the
daylight somewhere in the neighbourhood of Lake Tchad. Many lies have
been told about the treatment of these slaves, but Miss Chocolate has
never been beaten, she receives only kindness; she is invited, with all
the other members of the “domestic sisterhood,” to see us dance and
hear the Western music when we dance and sing in the evenings, but
generally we read and sew. And yet never does she nor any other slave
take advantage of her mistress’s familiarity, standing always at the
door, although bidden to come in. And she has a heart of gold. When
she saw my face so covered with mosquito bites that I was unfit almost
to look upon, the tears ran down her brown cheeks. “And to think,” she
said, as she rubbed in the ointment, “they might have eaten the whole
of my face and it would not have mattered”--the mosquitoes evidently
preferred mine.
Before I leave this house I hope to get some photos of the interesting
persons it contains, but in undertaking to photograph a Turkish
household, I had forgotten first that the windows are dimmed by the
inevitable lattice-work, which prevents my having a full view of the
wonderful landscape which stretches from the foot of our garden to the
rising and setting sun, and when the sun shines it shines through the
lattices, throwing on to the furniture all around large lozenge-shaped
reflections. But there is another and a greater difficulty, and that
is, photography is forbidden by the Moslem religion. My friend would
certainly let me photograph the house if I asked her. The sacred law
of hospitality is part of her religion. She urged me even to eat bacon
in the morning, although pork is forbidden in an Eastern house, and
no doubt she would have insisted on buying it had I not declared that
even in my own country I never eat pork. But Fâtima has to deal with a
most fanatical entourage, the women much more than the men, women who
for centuries have been taught to interpret the Koran as Mahomet never
intended it should be interpreted, women who are purblind to any form
of progress, women who still consider that to reproduce the human form
created by God involves disobedience to the laws of the Prophet, though
the Koran distinctly orders the faithful to march on with the centuries.
It is extraordinary and interesting to watch the working of this
household. My host, an exceedingly well-read, intelligent officer,
speaking two European languages, and having served three years in the
German army, is a man with ideas of feminism and government and social
questions quite half a century before his time, and he is surrounded
by a household of ignorant fanatics who can neither read nor write. He
would give his wife complete liberty this very day if it were possible,
and, although she has more liberty than any woman I know, for her sake
he cannot too openly defy Islam. The other day one of his brother
officers lunched with us in the harem, but we were served by the male
servants, as every woman slave refused to appear with bare face before
a man who was not a “blood relation” of the lady of the house.
There are some ladies here who blame the Turkish women for not taking
their freedom as other women have done; there are times, too, when I
feel inclined to sigh for the militant spirit of the Englishwoman, but
until one has really been behind the veil one can have no idea of what
“fanaticism” really means. Isolated rebellion is of no use--a protest
here and there may, or may not, help, but a movement only really counts
when women march out in an army, and nothing will ever make them turn
back, and there is no fear of death.
The day I first visited my friend Zeyneb in the Turkish home which she
left six years ago, and to which she has now returned, the sight of me
in a hat made her forget her surroundings, and, as she always did in
Paris, she eagerly seized my new hat and tried it on. But she had not
counted with the picturesque old lady seated cross-legged in the corner
of the room alternately smoking and embroidering. The old lady wore a
red tunic and green pantaloons; her tobacco and matches she kept under
the arm-chair near which she worked. She, too, had come on a visit to
Zeyneb’s grandmother, and never gone away again. Perfectly contented
with her lot, as are the women of the last generation, she saw no
reason why the children of this generation should sigh for a horizon
that goes beyond embroidery, cigarettes, and sweetmeats, especially
when it brings them to forget the sacred commands of the Prophet. The
old lady, at the sight of my heathenish hat on Zeyneb’s head, muttered
something about the giaour I could not understand, ground her teeth
(she is eighty, and still has her teeth), and cast at both of us a look
of the most profound contempt. Then it was I first understood what the
women of this country must put up with whenever they try to take a step
forward.
“And supposing you were to go into the street with that hat, what would
happen?” I asked Zeyneb.
“The old lady would rouse the neighbourhood, we should be seized by an
angry mob, and trampled to death....” I made no comment. It is not for
me to criticize the methods of the women who are working for liberty.
“These old women are not immortal,” I am assured; “we are concentrating
all our efforts on the future generation and educating the people. The
rest will come by itself.”
The women are fortunate, however, in having the Government on their
side, and without exaggeration I may say they have with them most of
the men who count at all, for what thinking man could see any chance of
progress while this absurd separation of the sexes continues? I don’t
say the Turk wants for his womenkind the liberty of the English or
American women. He does not even want them to work, but he does want
them, for his sake, to take part in the social life going on around
them. The Turk likes society, and he likes theatres, but to-day, unless
he has married a Christian woman, he must go there by himself, borrow
some one else’s wife, or stay at home.
“Why should I go out and amuse other people’s wives and leave my own
wife at home?” said my host one day; and very rarely does he go out
in the evening; but all Turks are not like my host. The Minister of
the Interior, Talaat Bey, a man of surprising energy, with a clear
understanding of men and things, a real God-send to this country in
its present state, encourages any work for the advancement of women,
and he is paying particular attention to their education. The military
governor of Constantinople, Djémal Bey, too, has given instructions
that the liberty of the women is not to be interfered with, and no
doubt in time his word will become law.
The women, however, as I said before, have made enormous progress in
five years. What would have happened five years ago if Fâtima and I
had driven home from a family party with her husband at the “indecent”
hour of 9.30? Five years ago we never walked a step; now we not only
saunter through the bazaar, but go to a big dressmaker’s in Pera,
whilst formerly all our goods had to be purchased from Greek merchants
and Paris dressmakers who came with their goods to the harem. But not
only in the bazaar do we walk; we have walked in the magnificent newly
laid-out park, where women are allowed for the first time to walk, in
a park where there are men. The men, I must say, have not yet grown
accustomed to this new and extraordinary state of things, and vie with
the Levantine “mashers” in their desire to see the features under the
veil. It is not a very comfortable experience for the Turkish women,
but it is the darkness before the dawn. The dawn is coming slowly; but
it will come if the Turkish woman really wishes it, and works always
with that aim before her--the uplifting of her sex.