Piri Pasha.
Descending from the Ok-Meidan toward the Golden Horn, we came to another little Mussulman quarter called Piri Pasha, possibly after the famous vizier of the time of the first Selim, who educated Suleiman the Magnificent. Piri Pasha faces the Jewish quarter of Balata, situated on the opposite bank of the Golden Horn. We met nothing as we passed through it except a few dogs and occasionally an old Turkish beggar; we did not regret this, however, as it gave us an opportunity to examine its construction at our leisure. It is a very curious fact that on entering any quarter of Constantinople, after having seen it from the water or some adjacent height, you invariably experience precisely the same shock of astonishment as on going behind the scenes of a theatre after having witnessed some beautiful spectacular effect from the stalls. You are filled with amazement to find that the combination of all these mean and ugly objects is what has just produced so charming a whole. I suppose there is no other city in the world whose beauty is so entirely dependent on general effect as Constantinople. Seen from Balata, Piri Pasha is the prettiest little village imaginable, smiling, radiant with color, decked with foliage, its charming image reflected in the Golden Horn like the features of some beautiful nymph, awakening dreams of love and pleasure in the breast. Enter it and the whole thing changes: you find nothing but rude, mean little houses colored like booths at a country fair, filthy courts looking like witches’ dens, groups of dusty fig and cypress trees, gardens littered with rubbish, narrow, deserted streets—dirt, misery, wretchedness. But run down the hillside, jump into a käik, and give half a dozen strokes with the oars, behold! the fairy city has reappeared, beautiful and fascinating as before.