A Turkish Woman's European Impressions

A TURKISH WOMAN’S EUROPEAN IMPRESSIONS

Zeyneb in her Paris Drawing-room She is wearing the Yashmak and Feradjé, or cloak.
BY ZEYNEB HANOUM (HEROINE OF PIERRE LOTI’S NOVEL “LES DÉSENCHANTÉES”) EDITED & WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY GRACE ELLISON WITH 23 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS & A DRAWING BY AUGUSTE RODIN PHILADELPHIA J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY LONDON: SEELEY, SERVICE & CO. LTD. 1913



In the preface of his famous novel, Les Désenchantées , M. Pierre Loti writes: “This novel is pure fiction; those who take the trouble to find real names for Zeyneb, Melek, or André will be wasting their energy, for they never existed.”
These words were written to protect the two women, Zeyneb and Melek, who were mainly responsible for the information contained in that book, from the possibility of having to endure the terror of the Hamidian régime as a consequence of their indiscretion. This precaution was unnecessary, however, seeing that the two heroines, understanding the impossibility of escaping the Hamidian vigilance, had fled to Europe, at great peril to their lives, before even the novel appeared.
Although it is not unusual to find Turkish women who can speak fluently two or three European languages (and this was very striking to me when I stayed in a Turkish harem), and although M. Loti has in his novel taken the precaution to let Melek die, yet it would still have been an easy task to discover the identity of the two heroines of his book.
Granddaughters of a Frenchman who for les beaux yeux of a Circassian became a Turk and embraced Mahometanism, they had been signalled out from amongst the enlightened women who are a danger to the State, and were carefully watched.
For a long time many cultured Turkish women had met to discuss what could be done for the betterment of their social status; and when it was finally decided to make an appeal to the sympathy of the world in the form of a novel, who better than Pierre Loti, with his magic pen and keen appreciation of Turkish life, could be found to plead the cause of the women of what he calls his “second fatherland”?