CHAPTER XII
A LUGGAGE TRAIN—THE WORST STAGE OF MY WHOLE JOURNEY
We are an hour late, the rain is pouring in torrents as I mount from a Turk’s back to my now familiar “van”; the station is full of friends crowding to witness our start and say farewell.
From a Turk’s Back.
After no more than an hour of what proved to be much the worst stage of my whole journey, I was determined against any further dependence upon “goods traffic.” I should infinitely prefer to walk. Our compartment, I know, had not been chosen for comfort—there was no other to be had. But the roof leaked, the doors would not shut, it was impossible to keep our candles alight.
At every few kilometres there is a halt. After an hour and a half the cheik and the officer are beyond words. Wrapped in rugs on the cold, hard floor, they are soon fast asleep, and now peacefully snoring. I should have thought myself that our continual joltings were enough to wake the dead, but my friends, fortunately, seem able to sleep on, pitched as they are every moment from side to side like long, shapeless bundles of woollen stuff. I put my umbrella up and donned a mackintosh, while our fellow-traveller, the Inspector of Forests, is no more able to sleep than I, but does his best to relieve the monotony by smiling at me (since we have no common language) whenever a candle is blown out and he patiently relights it.
It was, perhaps, no more than subdued hysteria which suddenly drove me to break the long silence with strange sounds of laughter that awakened and clearly startled the cheik. After a little, I managed, somehow, to explain my unseemly outburst.
The day before leaving Paris I had written to Lord Robert Cecil in earnest endeavour to persuade that fine enthusiast for the League of Nations that an international “Mother of Parliaments” could never maintain its authority under suspicion of antagonism to Islam. Therefore, I begged him to remove the stigma once and for all by going to Angora himself. And now the picture had flashed into my mind of Lord Robert, having responded to my suggestion, only to find himself being rattled about beside me, under an open umbrella, on the floor of a crawling luggage train in the black darkness of a wet night.
It was a relief just then for all of us to join in a good laugh; but the policy of the League has not been helpful to Islam, and, in this matter, its unnecessary mistakes—as I have again and again pointed out—will prove a serious hamper to its otherwise splendid activities.
Meanwhile, our merriment is soon checked. Sudden shrieks from the engine and an exceptionally generous supply of jolts and bangs conjure up to my mind awful visions of a collision in the gruesome loneliness of the night. The cheik, however, does not share my alarm, but calmly answers: “Methinks we do but unrail!” To me, however, the prospect suggested of ending my days in an Anatolian ditch, without even the covering of my Union Jack, offers but poor consolation.
“Come, wake up,” I almost shouted, “it is too terrible! Someone must talk to me about Islam.” And when I realised my own selfishness in not leaving the poor man to sleep, I could only put forth the plea: “I am so interested in your religion.”
“I am flattered indeed,” was the immediate response. “Religion in the East is truly a real and living force.” At his grave words I saw again that long line of weary soldiers among the mountains at their prayers.
“I shall wound your feelings,” I went on, “if I persist in questioning you about the grievances of your people, though God knows my curiosity is not idle.”
“It is far better to wound my feelings and publish the truth than to suffer the slightest risk of your misjudging us. You may help to see us righted, for Great Britain may have indeed ‘sinned in ignorance.’”
But my allusion to Lord Robert Cecil had raised the problem of Christianity in the East. I had to admit that he was accused of working for “union” between the Anglican and the Greek Churches. “He is a devout, loyal and energetic Anglican, but I refuse to believe that he would ever encourage such criminal folly.”
“He is, indeed, too honourable,” replied the cheik. “That is only another example of bringing politics into religion, which must kill faith.”
“But does not Islam teach us that politics and religion are one?”
“No, indeed; that is a false, Western, interpretation of the Koran. It is our work to-day to set free religion from the canker of all statecraft.”
I could not resist interposing at this point with my conviction that no established Church can pursue wisdom; while the insecurity of our Free Churches to-day must always “put brakes” on their power against the Government, and “muzzle” the real freedom of thought or truth.
When we got back to Greece, the cheik gave me chapter and verse for his conviction that “if the Turks should allow the Greek Patriarch to remain in Constantinople, their tolerance would have degenerated to mere weakness.
“It was a golden dream for the Greeks, nearly realised; but it is not for us to substantiate it.
“They were to drive us back into the depths of Asia Minor, to rule over the peoples who had been their masters for five centuries, to recapture the great ‘Bible’ towns for the Cross; to settle on the shores of Marmora and Constantinople, that they might drive on to Rome!
“Their vision, assuredly, did not lack grandeur.
“It even seemed for a little that realisation might be achieved by zeal and ardour, until King Constantine’s return provoked M. Briand’s famous ‘Note’ of November, 1920, and put an end to the dream.”
Here I uttered a word of regret that we had not then followed the policy of the French “surely a course that might have saved us from all the jealousy and suspicion we have so perversely incurred.”
The cheik replied indirectly by reminding me that M. Venizelos was not to be quite so easily, or immediately, defeated: “A great, some say a subtle and profound, personality, who had the entrée to all the Courts of Europe. He formed in himself a strong link between the Greek Colonies and all the Powers, particularly England and America. He made British friendship the pivot of ‘Greek Expansion.’ He was not a man to bow before any discouragement or difficulty.
“Now he conceived the idea, attributed to Lord Robert Cecil, of union between the two Churches, which at once enlisted the strong support of another Cretan, Monseigneur Metaxatis, no longer Metropolitan of Athens after King Constantine’s return.
“Metaxatis was received with open arms in America, where he devised the formation of an ‘American Orthodox Church.’ Your Archbishop of Canterbury was his next convert, and, thus supported, he was able to flout Ottoman protests and to appoint himself (or see that he was appointed) a ‘Patriarch’ at Constantinople, under the title of Metelios IV.
“I scarcely see how any real union could be established between the Protestant-Anglican—or is it Catholic?—Church and the Greek, if we realise the superstitions that Greece has never thrown off. The Greeks, whatever their faults, have always been faithful to their old, classic religion. The superstitions, if not the glories, of Hellas are, one and all, upheld to-day.”
I said that I thought the hand of Providence could be seen in M. Kemal’s victory, which had saved us from this preposterous idea.
When I learned later, in Angora, of the Patriarch’s criminal disloyalty on behalf of the Greeks, I almost wondered if Turkish religious tolerance had not been carried too far. This wily Churchman actually dared to make collections, in Turkey, for the Greek army designed for the capture of Constantinople; openly preached treason and rebellion. Yet he was sheltered behind his sacred office from the captivity of General Trécroupis at Eski-Chéir!
What can we say of this Cretan, who thus dared to tamper with our national Church? What shall we say of his spiritual fathers who approved the plan? What can we say for Greece?
Surely the Churches, whatever their creed, should uphold honour between all men. If the power a priest inevitably exerts over the penitent is once abused for political ends, religion becomes no better than treason. We look up to those in positions of trust and responsibility: priests, lawyers, or doctors. When they betray their trust our sentence is doubly severe.
The train now seems to have “put up for the night,” but it is shaking like an earthquake; and as the rain lashes upon us in torrents, its engine shrieks in unison with others in the dark distance. Every moment I expected the whole construction to collapse. It was the old impression of the “cellars” during an air-raid, the horrible suffocation of claustro-mania, or the terror of being buried alive.
“I must get out.”
“You cannot. Where will you go?”
“I shall walk.”
“You will be blown away or killed on the line.”
“I cannot help it. I must get out. The train is choking me.”
“But it may start off again any moment, and you would be left stranded on the line.”
The officer, poor man, said nothing. He knew his duty. Whatever I might choose to do, he must accompany me and share my fate.
The inspector at last jumps out, and the cheik, exclaiming, “If you must go, you must,” throws me down into the arms of that sturdy and solid being, as you might fling a cat out into the rain. Now fully exposed to the “four winds of heaven,” the drenching storm seemed to be tearing my hair off my head, and I was soon ankle-deep in the thick mud; but the air was good, and merely to be out of the train banished all fear of being crushed to death in the darkness by some passing steam monster.
I ought to have braced my nerves with the thought that Turkish women have to endure these things; but for some reason the train terrified me. As I can justly boast, I was terrified by nothing else in this country.
Three times they coaxed me back into that choking van (as now and again the train shifted along for a few miles), and three times I insisted on being tossed into the storm. It was about two o’clock in the morning when, to the intense relief of all, we actually arrived at our destination.
We disembark for “positively the last” time at Afioun-Karahissar, where the deluge adds its gloom to the now familiar woefulness of a town in ruins. Yet many of the inhabitants are actually sleeping in the mud of that awful night.
We are driven some way beyond the town, to the one primitive and tumble-down roof that can possibly offer us shelter. Like most Eastern hans (i.e., inns), it is built round a courtyard, the living-rooms next to the stable; but horses are warm and agreeable neighbours. Once at the front, on a particularly cold and bitter day, the French, who shrugged their shoulders and refused none of my mad requests, politely allowed me to travel with the horses!
We climb rickety stairs and cross a wooden veranda to examine the rooms—one with three beds, the other with two. Alas, the former is too much for even the cheik’s philosophy, and he decides for the courtyard. Neither of the beds in the double room is clean, certainly, but a marked advance on the alternative; and, after placing the cheik’s quilt and prayer-mat between myself and the “men in possession,” and wrapping myself up in two thick rugs, I am glad enough to “go to bed in my boots,” with at least the prospect of “keeping still” for a few hours. If a fire has brought out more “visitors” than were obvious at our first inspection, it is still better than traffic “by goods.”
The officer is compelled literally to “sit up” all night, as there is no room for him to stretch his limbs.
On such a night I could have wished for a “smaller” hole in the floor, and that the “mud” walls had not been quite so badly in need of repair; yet the shabby and threadbare costume of the “man with our morning tea,” was not sordid, but only picturesque.
The cheik, like so many men, is an excellent housewife, and when he laid a clean handkerchief upon a large volume for tray, our breakfast of bread and helva, nuts and fruit, looked quite appetising.
It is not the “indolence of the East” that is leaving these people in destitution among the ruins. One day, what remains standing will have to be pulled or burnt down, and a complete rebuilding undertaken. But nothing can be done under a threat of war.
At every inn on our return journey the whole of the “service” was entrusted to men. This, no doubt, largely explains the usual discomfort. Women must not remain entirely anonymous.
The cheik told me he hoped the new generation, largely educated in Europe, might welcome such innovations, but “it would be difficult for the old. My wife, for instance, complained at having to ‘receive’ men visitors in Berlin. She considered it ‘cheap’ and ‘lowering’ to her prestige.”
I can only hope the women of Turkey, when they achieve progress, will advance on the right lines—more determined on tact than pace.
One must, of course, discard conventions at need, as I was doing all the time on this journey, but one can, at the same time, respect the feelings of others.
I could not, for convention, allow my present companions to keep up the full Eastern “separation of the sexes”; and, as the cheik remarked, London ballrooms would be no less offensive to Turkish ladies of the old school than the comparatively “close quarters” which common humanity forbade us to avoid.
There are often, of course, directly opposed conventions in different climates. In the Eastern mosques men keep on hats and take off boots; Europeans reverse the custom. Eastern women object to “low” frocks and “strange” partners “for the dance”; and, as one who had joined in them once told me, it is better to dance alone; for, if the music suddenly stops, a “couple” feel so embarrassed!
We were driven to the station for a train due to leave at 10 in the morning, which actually started about 5 P.M.! We had first attempted to find room in a third-class compartment with a French colonel, a Turkish officer, and two servants. But Europeans, even in Asia Minor, are seldom inclined to be accommodating, and my “ally” (!) diplomatically expressed his desire to be left alone in his glory. “You will be much more comfortable, my dear madam, in a less crowded carriage. I fear you could not even find a seat among all these officers, and, at least, fifty boxes.” We were not slow to take the hint.
However, there is no sign of being able to leave the station for some hours, and the sun is shining for a change. Everyone, naturally, prefers the platform; and having learnt, it appears, that I am not married to either the cheik or the Turkish officer, the colonel approaches me with renewed curiosity. When I explain that I am English, he simply answers: “You mean American?”
“The one Frenchman and the one Englishwoman in Anatolia,” was my retort, “have met by chance at a wayside railway station, and you will not even allow me to enter your carriage. Are you really French?”
“I should be delighted and honoured if you will come and talk to me,” was the would-be gallant reply, “but I have twenty boxes” (he has quickly disposed of thirty). “I thought at first you were a lady of sixty.”
“And numbered your boxes to match my years! I see; after all, you must be French!”
H.M. THE KALIPH OF ISLAM.
A charming gentleman and a distinguished artist.
p. 112
The cheik told me that Afioun means “opium,” and Karahissar is the centre of that trade, completely paralysed for the moment. When I had tea with Dame Rachel Crowday at the League of Nations in Geneva, I heard that Turkey desired to join the Opium Convention, a striking instance of public spirit in a country that needs all the money it can possibly lay hands on; but the moral welfare of her people counts for more than “profit” to the State. M. Kemal Pasha, indeed, has shown equal wisdom by prohibiting the sale of alcohol. In Constantinople it was said, with a truly “Western” hauteur: “How can the Turks imagine that they will succeed where the United States have made such a failure?”
“Is that a sound argument” I replied, “for giving them a chance of becoming what the States were before prohibition? Americans do not know ‘how to drink’; and I am afraid the Turks also might learn to use alcohol, not as a beverage or a pick-me-up, but just to get drunk.”
The strength and endurance of Turkish children, nourished on bread and water, must prove of the strongest possible support to prohibition. “And remember how quickly the Arab’s wounds were healed at the front, while alcohol was so effective an antidote for septic-poisoning, because it had never before even entered their systems.”
Constantinople had proved a sore affront to my national pride; but there was an occasion in Naples when its humiliation was even more complete.
I was passing a crowd of happy children on the quay, rolling and tumbling about in some strangely ridiculous fashion. Always keenly interested in children’s games (and prayers), I went up to them and asked what they were doing.
It was a game entitled “The drunken Englishman”!