Chapter V: The Angel of Death

The Baïram festivities have ended sorrowfully for us. This house, which a few days ago echoed with mirth and laughter, is now silent--as silent as a grave. The whole Konak is as if it were covered with a pall of ice; the happy faces of the slaves have now an expression of woe; the long stream of ladies who came to visit us at Baïram have returned to mingle their sorrows with ours--the beloved master of this house is dead. He was spending the winter in Cyprus; his Baïram telegram said he was in perfect health: but even before the news reached us he was sleeping beside his father in the little cemetery by the sea, buried within twenty-four hours of his death, as is the custom here; and the grand old man of Turkey was laid to rest like the most humble of the Sultan’s subjects.

We Westerners, with our curious ideas of Eastern life, cannot imagine the picturesque, simple, and natural attitude the Turks have towards death. None of the hideous wailing, the rending of garments, sackcloth and ashes (supposed to be part of the Eastern mourning); none of our Western terrifying preparation for the long last journey; no mourning, no flowers, no funeral cards; it is as if the dear one had gone on a journey to a foreign land, and his family and friends pray for him as if he were still alive. A Turkish burial, however, is impressive in its simplicity. A plain wooden coffin, covered with a Persian shawl, and a fez at its head, is carried on the shoulders of the relatives and friends.

When the dead man’s eyes are closed the Hodja is called, and he reads for the comfort of the bereaved ones some verses of the Koran. Then he pauses, and solemnly asks those persons present whether they consider their relative an upright, honourable man--a curious custom, this seems to me; it is almost as if the Hodja were preparing for the dead man a passport for the next world. (I write these words with all reverence.) It is not always, however, that the assembled mourners answer the Hodja’s question in the affirmative. If their conscience tells them to speak the truth they do so, and the Hodja answers simply, “Then forgive your brother his sins, as Allah will forgive you,” and the assembled mourners pass on to the grave.

To me it has seemed a little strange to see the sons of wealthy Pashas buried as only the poor in our country would be buried. When I questioned a friend about this she answered, “The money you people in the West spend on funeral pomp we give to the poor assembled round the grave, and according to the deceased’s years and fortune. Supposing a rich man of 83 is buried, eighty-three sovereigns would be distributed amongst the poor; when a man of 83 and of moderate means, eighty-three francs, or even eighty-three pence, as the case may be. The poor are never forgotten in this country; they come to the marriage feast, they come to the Baïram festivities, every day they come to this house and are fed, and even during death they are not neglected.”

We, the women of the house, do not follow the coffin to the grave. Twice since my short stay here the Angel of Death has visited this house. The Pasha’s grandson left us first of all, and now the Pasha himself is “not here,” which is my Turkish friend’s expression to avoid pronouncing the word “death.”

For days now, streams of visitors have come to show their sympathy. The door leading to the _selamlik_ has been left open for all the men friends who will to enter, and the door leading to the _haremlik_ has been left open for any women who care to enter. But what a curious assembly of visitors! What a lesson in “equality”! Some of the callers were the wives of Ministers of State, some were the wives and daughters of generals, admirals, and the most honoured of Turkey’s great men, some were almost beggars, but they were all together in the same room. Death, the great leveller, had brought them together to mourn the loss of a personal friend, and we of the household were grateful for the sympathy of them all.

According to their custom, the ladies made their _temenahs_ (Eastern salutations) to the hostess, which she acknowledged, rising, however, to kiss the hand of the old ladies, some of whom came from long distances to take part in the mourning. They came in bright colours many of these callers, which seemed strange to me, accustomed from my birth to the habit of outward mourning.

When the visitors have taken their seats, they make their _temenahs_ to all the assembled guests, and the guests acknowledge their salutations; it is a picturesque manner of saying “How do you do?” When first I arrived here I frequently forgot to acknowledge the _temenahs_ of the guests. A veil, after all, does not make a Turkish woman. My thoughts at the time were far away, but the look of surprise at my lack of breeding called me to order, and I pay particular attention now to what are elementary points in good education.

Whilst sipping my coffee, as very few of the ladies speak, or, if they speak, they do so in a whisper, I carefully study the assembled guests. The wife of ---- Pasha is wearing a bright blue satin dress and _tcharchaff_ (Turkish cape and veil), high-heeled shoes, and open-worked silk stockings; a scarf of ermine is round her neck. At her feet, sitting cross-legged on the floor, is an ex-slave dealer, a woman in a tattered red _tcharchaff_. She has left her shoes outside. Near her are a bath attendant and a poor woman, who usually sits nursing her miserable offspring not far from our gate; they sit silently weeping, these women, for the benefactor who is no more, and without uttering one word they rise, politely bow to the assembled guests, put on their shoes, and disappear through the open door of the harem.

Every time coffee is served--and coffee is offered to every visitor--I take a cup; it gives me a better chance of studying the curious scene in which I am playing a part, and the more I look, the more beautiful it seems to me, and it makes me almost sad to think I cannot meet this spirit of democracy in any other land. But the most beautiful part of it all is the absolute “naturalness” of the situation. The rich woman has not the patronizing attitude of the Western woman towards her humbler sisters, the poor woman has not the cringing gratitude of the West for favours received; each knows her part--the woman whose birth and education entitle her to a chair and the woman whose education teaches her, her place is on the floor, and who, even though the high-born woman invites her to sit on a chair, refuses. Each is fulfilling her destiny--each is content with her lot.

I do not swear by everything Turkish, much as I love the Turks. They have their faults; which nation has not its faults? but, as a woman who has led the life of a Turkish woman, surely I am privileged to point out to the reader the most beautiful features of this life as I see them. We have been unjust to Turkey; we have for so long confounded the Turkish subjects with the cruel despots of the Hamidian régime; we have for so long now condemned wholesale everything Turkish, and the novel-writers of the day describe a Turkey which certainly does not exist to-day.

I have so often explained the meaning of the word harem; the papers have repeated my explanation; but I still receive letters asking the most primitive questions I would be ashamed to repeat to my friends. They who know our history and literature as few in England know it, how would they feel were they to have an idea of what Europe thought of them? How is it possible for a British official, after long residence here, to ask whether we eat with our fingers? How could a man of any intelligence suppose that my host, who has eaten at the Kaiser’s table, could come back to his own country and eat with his fingers? One feels inclined to treat the question with the contempt one feels for the questioner, but silence is consent, and one of the reasons why the modern Turk is so misjudged to-day is because he has treated these calumnies with silent contempt.

To the British official I answer, then, we eat with Sheffield knives and forks, we eat off British plates, we sit on British chairs, we have a British table, British linen, and a British sideboard, and in every corner of this house is some token of the very great love the late Pasha had for my country.

And the word harem! When will Europe understand the meaning of that unfortunate word? An Arabic word, meaning “sacred” or “forbidden,” it is used to describe those rooms in a Turkish house exclusively reserved for the women. Imagine for a moment a konak (Turkish palace, a large Turkish country house), situated on a hill, and with a magnificent view over the Sea of Marmora and its picturesque islands. The wooden gates are always open, the beggars enter at leisure and loiter in the carriage-drive, and walk along the garden paths, and sit under the trees and eat the fruit, so that unless you notice you have entered a gate you would imagine yourself still on the road. To the ordinary tourist this garden would seem a mass of ruins, a waste heap, a place most shamefully neglected. But the connoisseur knows at once the priceless treasures it contains, relics of Byzantine fountains, crypts, cornerstones, for which Western museums would give a fortune.

There are two entrances to this Turkish house. One leads into the selamlik, and the door leading into the harem is at the side. In the selamlik, or men’s quarters, there are reception-rooms, a dining-room, and bed-rooms for the unmarried male relations living here. A door in the selamlik leads into a big salon, and a door also from the harem leads into this same big salon. It is here that European guests are received, having entered by the door of the selamlik, and this is all they see of a Turkish house; it is here they must find all the material for their romances of Turkish life. Occasionally through the open door they catch a glimpse of some of the ladies of the house who pass by the door, and who strictly keep their hair veiled. They see, perhaps, the slaves in their picturesque costumes, and immediately the thought of “polygamy” enters their mind; all these ladies must be the wives of the Pasha.

Polygamy does not exist, nowadays, in Turkey, or at least it is very exceptional. Even many members of the Imperial family content themselves with one wife. The reason for this is only too obvious. “When four wives meant to their possessor four tillers of the land,” said a witty Pasha, the other day, “there was some sense in polygamy, but not when they buy their dresses at Paquin’s.” Setting aside, however, the economic question, where is the woman to be found who would tolerate a rival in her own home, and supposing she did, what kind of a life would the poor master lead?

A story is told of a pious Moslem who was always the first in the mosque. “How is it you are so early?” one day his friend asked him; “however early I come, you are always here.” “I have two wives,” answered the pious man; “I get away as soon as I possibly can.”

The Turkish woman is proud, and insists that her dignity be respected, and, personally, I know few who would put up with the “polygamy” which women of the Latin races are obliged to accept. When a Turkish woman marries, her husband is obliged according to his means to make a settlement; this sum becomes hers should she find it necessary to divorce him. So when a wife has cause for complaint she claims her dowry and personal effects, and returns to her family or nearest relative, and both husband and wife are free to marry again.

Marriages can be made and unmade here with a rapidity that would astonish even our Transatlantic cousins. Reform of the marriage and divorce laws is urgently needed, and yet when you come to look at the question carefully, regrettable as this easy divorce is, it is astonishing how few men take advantage of their privilege. In a country where public opinion considers a man’s private life belongs exclusively to him, where men and women take their pleasures apart, where men are so frequently obliged to seek the society of European women, and divorce is as easy as saying “Good morning,” it seems incredible to me that the Turkish households run along so smoothly. Perhaps it is that the Turkish wife, feeling her insecure position, takes particular care to please her lord and master; perhaps it is that the Turk is, as a rule, a good husband and father; perhaps it is that he sees in his wife a charm the European does not possess. At any rate, to a foreigner these laws appear as though they were made to lead men into temptation.

Many people have stayed to lunch this week, none of them, of course, invited. Always our table is laid for twelve persons, although sometimes we are only three to lunch. Those who call in the morning stay to lunch as a matter of course; the hostess would feel herself slighted were they to go away without sharing her meal. She it is who is under obligations to her guests for honouring her with their presence.

The two principal meals here, lunch and dinner, are unending, and generally extend to twelve or fifteen courses, quite ten of those courses being vegetables cooked in oil or cooked with the meat, and, the goodness of the meat having given itself to the vegetables, it is not served at table, but is given to the beggars or the endless army of cats which inhabits the basement of a Turkish house. These cats, fortunately, understand their place is downstairs unless they are invited upstairs. Stamboul will soon be as overcrowded with cats, as Pera was with dogs. “Why do you not drown some of them?” I asked a member of this household. “It would be a sin according to the Koran,” said he; “we only kill animals to eat them.”

Turkish cooking, delicious though it be, is not the diet for most of the ladies here, and certainly not for me. Cheese _bereks_, of pastry, so thin that they fall in bits before you can get them into your mouth. _Kadaïf_, biscuits soaked in treacle and covered with sugared cream, the breast of chicken ground into a powder and served with cream and chocolate--I feel I need four hours’ hard riding to digest properly the dishes the hospitable Turks set before us, and I have scarcely walked five hundred yards in six weeks.

This lack of physical exercise and air is to me one of the most unfortunate features of Turkish life. It is true the windows are open, but the sun shining through the lattice windows does not have a chance of playing its proper part; it can neither warm the house nor kill the microbes. This would not matter so much if the ladies spent more time out of doors, or if, when they are out of doors, they kept their veils up. There is absolutely no reason now why they should not; the police have strict orders from the “feminist” Military Governor of Constantinople to interfere in no way with the ladies, and any man daring to insult a woman is punished with exile.

But the slavery of ages cannot be cast aside in a few months, and the ladies continue to wear their thick black canvas veils over their faces. Through this veil the beautiful coloured landscape becomes a black-and-white sketch. On hot days it is unbearable; one has a tendency to squint because of looking through the holes in order to see, and it makes one’s eyes ache if one suddenly throws it back and comes into the full glare of the sunshine. And yet the Turkish woman still wears her veil down. “You see,” said Djémal Bey (the Military Governor of Constantinople), “they will not take advantage of the liberty I try to give them.”

And now the men, not the women, curious as it may seem to Western minds, have awakened to the fact that this lack of physical exercise is beginning to show most distressing results in the poor anæmic children born of these mothers who take no exercise. Nowadays, when thinking men no longer accept the decrees of the Church as the supreme verdict, but begin to judge for themselves, progress is possible.

Formerly, when the weaklings died off, the faithful bowed their heads in resignation: Kismet, “it is written,” said they. Now the indefatigable Minister of the Interior, Talaat Bey, who has ordered fifty schools to be opened during the next year, is importing into the country teachers of Swedish drill. I took part the other day in the first lesson given to the girls. How interesting it was to see their wide-awake, wondering eyes, their look of disgust when the teacher appeared in knickerbockers and unveiled in the presence of the male inspector--they who, though only ten to twelve, had their hair closely veiled. And the mothers who came upon the scene, and with tears in their eyes begged that they might have their children back, for they could not understand what these Western women were doing with them. How strange and curious it all is, this awakening of a people after centuries of sleep!

In this work of regeneration, again, we have not given the Turks either the praise or justice they deserve. It is when one is behind the scenes, and sees the difficulties the Turks have to contend with that one can appreciate their efforts. It is true they have made mistakes; youth and inexperience always make mistakes--that is the natural order of things. It would certainly have been better for Turkey to have made more mistakes and had the advantage of the lesson those mistakes bring than to have relied on Europe for assistance. The duty of Europe should have been to help the Turks to help themselves, instead of which all along the line they have stepped in and taken the bread from their mouths.

Here are these Turks struggling against the tyranny of a religion which is not the religion of Mahomet; they are striving for a more intelligent interpretation of the Koran, especially on the subject of women and the veil. The all-powerful Sheik-ul-Islam, whose followers are principally amongst the turban-headed men in Asia Minor interferes with progress, as the Church always does when Church and State are combined. When Djemil Pasha, the Prefect of Constantinople, opened a beautiful park in Stamboul, and gave men and women permission to walk in that park at the same time, the Sheik-ul-Islam issued a decree forbidding the women to walk in this park the same day as the men. Then Talaat Bey, with a boldness yet unknown in Islam, issued a decree ignoring the Sheik-ul-Islam, and gave women and men permission to walk in the park on the same days.

All these reforms are going on in what Europe considers an almost bankrupt State. Education, new roads, industries, a new navy--everything is needed; but Turkey will pull herself together if only she has confidence in herself.