CHAPTER XXX
FROM BILIDJIK TO BROUSSA BY YAILI—AFTER THE DAY’S ROUGHENING EXPERIENCES ONE CAN SLEEP WHATEVER THE ACCOMMODATION.
Our adieux to Bilidjik did not delay us long. As there were no trains to Constantinople, we had to take the road to Broussa and Moudania, whence the boat runs to Constantinople. I now joined the American in one carriage, the two Turkish boys following in a second. Although yaili means “a carriage with springs,” neither of ours justified their name, for they had none. An American, however, is nothing if not resourceful, and my companion performed wonders with straw, rugs, and boxes.
It was about nine o’clock when we started along the muddy roadway, in charge of one of the most happy-go-lucky coachmen it has ever been my good fortune to employ. He had ten animals of his own before the war, and, now the Greeks have taken them all, he is making a fresh start with the best he can hire from others. He said that these were steady and sound, but I could not believe we should have known the difference, over these ploughed fields on the edge of the mountains, so caked with mud that our carriages frequently stuck fast. It was a wearisome business enough, the constant alighting to be dug out for fresh starts; but I was altogether beyond sharing the American’s alarm lest we should sink for ever in a bog! I was far more concerned about the difficulty of getting really comfortable, among my disordered rugs and shawls.
As our coachman provides us with many evidences of Greek barbarity from the ruins of every village we pass, my companion’s indignation shows rapid signs of approach to fever heat. “We’ve not played ‘straight,’” he cried, “I am not pro-Greek nor pro-Turk, and, at the moment, I haven’t much use for Christians; but I don’t see myself keeping quiet about all this. You and I have to get quick and publish a little truth for a change.”
I told him that I had been trying in vain to get something done, or at least known, about Angora; but that if ever an article of mine included a word about Greek atrocities, the editorial scissors promptly got busy, and the truth remained untold.
Obviously the American belonged to that fine type, which abounds in young countries, who put all their dollars into the acquisition of knowledge, and who delight in using the knowledge they have acquired, backed by their own wealth, in the service of mankind. His keen inquiries about my impressions of the sad people he had come so far to understand, were proof enough that no kind of vanity, or pursuit of self-glorification, lay behind his insatiable curiosity.
I was much interested to find that he agreed with me in having noticed how strongly the “personal” element enters into all one’s relations with any Turk. If they do not like one, you might as well stay in England. If your personality attracts them, it will make no difference where you happen to have been born.
“They are called ignorant and fanatical; but I find that even the most illiterate understand enough of our civilisation to make any honest Englishwoman heartily ashamed of our ignorance and insularity.”
“Remember,” he said, “how little we Americans really know of you, or you of us.”
“I do remember how I shocked one of your compatriots by confessing that I had the most shaky idea of the occasion for your ‘Thanksgiving,’ but he afterwards admitted he had imagined till quite recently, that ‘Boxing Day’ was the annual event of our national sport!”
There was little to break the monotony of our lonely journey except a large number of caravans, and, every now and again, one of those tiny little donkeys, used to lead a troop of from nine to fifteen camels!
“Now you see,” said the ‘man from the States,’ “why we sometimes speak of a ‘conceited ass!’”
“Only,” I answered, “this little fellow has something to be conceited about. He has the right to say ‘look at me,’ as he trots along with the double row of turquoise beads round his neck, leading these great big chaps behind him. When he chooses to push ahead, they must hurry after him; and when he condescends to turn round and ‘look over’ them, for all the world as an officer might ‘eye’ his men, you could not discover a more striking example of personality in the East. I declare I have fallen in love with that charming ass!”
“He has the right to say, ‘Look at me.’”
“Very well,” he replied with a laugh, “the next time anyone calls me an ‘ass,’ I shall be proud to accept the compliment.”
“But, seriously,” I replied, “asses are seldom as black as they’re painted. After all, to be stubborn is one form of personality. I remember staying in a French chateau during the war, where one donkey had taken over the duties and responsibilities of the eighteen horses, which had been requisitioned by the State. On Sundays, tied up to a tree in the churchyard, while the family was inside the church, he always waited to hear the Sanctus bell, and then brayed his loudest. He must take part in the Mass!”
One rarely sees any driver astride his camel. He may be “considering his beast,” but, on the other hand, he may not. For of every variety of sickness (of the sea, the home, or love itself) is not camel-sickness the worst?
My companion agreed that he had not found the Turks either stubborn or unreasonable. “Everyone I met in Anatolia made an honest attempt to understand my point of view, even when I endeavoured to explain or at least to excuse, English policy.
“Turks are ‘stubborn,’ if you insist on the phrase, about the future of their country; but they have given a great deal of thought to the subject, and they speak from experience that has been bought at a big price. I have never encountered that uncomfortable type of mind we know so well among ourselves, and in a more aggressive, if less dangerous, form in the States, which nothing will move from its ‘pet’ hatred or chosen love, in spite of great culture and general understanding.
“I will not quote President Wilson, because we have an even better illustration in the late Lord Bryce. Few men could claim wider culture, few have been so universally acknowledged a great statesman, yet the Turk to him was no better than a red rag to a bull! And when he said that these people were ‘unspeakable,’ the world believed it.
“I once attended a debate on whether ‘the Turks should, or should not, be forced to abandon Constantinople.’ A judge from Constantinople had been called to open the discussion, who said, among other things, that ‘this eternal reference to India as an excuse for backing Turkey was mere nonsense; because Lord Bryce had said that India was indifferent to Turkey’s fate!’
“Seyed Hossain, a member of the Khaliphat Delegation, then rose to contradict this assertion. He said that he had come all the way from India with the Khaliphat Delegation, for the express purpose of protesting against the attitude of the Allies towards his Khaliph (the Sultan of Turkey).”
“‘My dear Sir,’ answered the judge, ‘I have absolutely full confidence in any statement made by Lord Bryce.’
“The poor Indian was staggered for a moment, but soon found courage to reply: ‘Has a man like Lord Bryce the right to defy commonsense, statistics, and accurate, official information. My presence here is a clear proof that my statement is correct.’
“‘Your presence means nothing to me,’ was the ‘polite’ retort, which concluded the debate!
“There is, of course, a very stupid kind of loyalty in such an attitude, but it tempts one to almost despair of ever hoping to fight against its criminal injustice to Turkey.
“It is a heavy responsibility for great men if they give rein to an obstinate and unreasonable prejudice. It is so hard to resist those we respect.”
“What do you really think about the Americans in Turkey? I am so anxious to do my utmost for these poor people, asked my friend.”
“I, who love them, will honestly say I fear that the influence of your people is very dangerous. For one who does good, as I am sure you have done, there are fifty who only make mischief, even undoing much of what you have achieved.”
“The supreme merit of the Nationalist movement comes from the fact that Turks are beginning to be themselves. All must be well in the end if they are content to ‘swallow’ Europe in small doses. Already we have with us that dangerous anomaly the European Turk. The big capitals kill his sincerity and capture his affections by their vices. His mysterious dark eyes (an everyday commonplace in his own country) too often prove ‘false lights’ leading him on to the rocks. It is a test of character to ask the European Turk if he is not ‘longing to get back to Turkey?’ When I put the question to Hussein Raghib, he said ‘if I must stay here for my country, I will stay, but I am never happy for long so far away from Angora and all it means to me.’ Certainly a healthy view!
“It is surely better to let the Turks work out their own salvation, only helping when they ask for help; and even then we should be careful to give them what they desire and not what we may think best for them. It is really cruel to tamper with other people’s ideas, particularly their religion, and it does no good in Turkey. The gospel of Islam has made them the fine race they will always remain at heart.
“You can do good in practical, material affairs and for the diminution of physical suffering. I wish every American would preach the gospel of the Rockefeller Institute all over the world: the creed of the open window, a crusade against vermin and microbes. That would bring us a ‘new’ world.
“I would like to see a closer union between the Red Cross and the Red Crescent. The Turks have not your organising ability; but they have many sound ideas already operating in their hospitals.
“We must be quite sure that our civilisation is perfect before we force it on others. It is ‘mine,’ and I owe much to it; but I, for one, can see much to criticise.”
“I, too, believe we have no right to offer more than material assistance, and such an example as our own efforts, towards the best we know, may afford.”
“It is a great deal, if given in the right spirit. My own idea of ‘service’ is to try and understand the East, to prevent such terrible blunders as our ignorance of them have brought about, which may even involve us in the horrors of another war.
“Why should we ask Orientals to accept our civilisation and ‘look at life’ through our eyes. It is no wiser or juster than asking a woman to see nothing except through a man’s eyes; and to work in his way. She cannot do that, and has suffered in the attempt. Your work is even a great peril. It is only too probable that you will be ‘starting’ them on the wrong road, and you must soon leave them to find their own way.
“If I am wrong, at least I speak in all sincerity; and I have studied the question for many years. As I see it, our Western civilisations have much to learn from the East in pity and humanity.”
“Osman Nyzami Pasha said to me once, in Rome, ‘you must not judge a nation by its Government but by the gods it creates for itself in its own image.’ The ancient Greeks peopled Olympus with gods of revolting immorality; but you in Oxford forget that chapter of the story. The God of the North——”
He paused, and I took up the challenge.
“The cold, harsh, and unforgiving Deity; the bogeyman of my childhood, always ready with some awful punishment for the least shortcoming.
“Why are our Puritan countries, whose God is love, so unjust to women, keeping them down under cruel and illogical laws. It is idle for men to say that no laws can diminish the deep respect they accord to women, which, in fact, is seldom shown to any of us except their wives, certainly not to woman as a woman.
“I certainly hold no brief for ‘irregularity,’ but there is something wrong with a conception of God which has produced the immeasurable gulf between the married and the unmarried mother. Humanity is not of our making; the ‘imperfect’ man has no right to demand ‘perfection’ from all women. Has he not made and tolerated War that has overthrown every standard of morality, changed all our ‘values,’ shattered every ideal, leaving religion nowhere, and two million women without a mate?
“Such is the civilisation that dares to point a finger of scorn at the unmarried mother; and, by dismissing her, characterless and unpensioned, from every respectable avenue of support, dares to brand a child as unwanted, and push the innocent young life into secret and shameful surroundings. Those who should help, with all the power of their sheltered purity, prefer to keep themselves ‘too respectable for any knowledge of these uncomfortable problems,’ since they are good and faithful servants of One who said, ‘Let him who is without sin amongst you cast the first stone!’
“All maternity is sacred to the Turk, and every child enjoys full legal status. The super-cowardice of declaring a child as born of ‘parents unknown’ (as you may in France) could never be allowed. If marriage be not the high sacrament it is, theoretically, regarded in Europe, the life of every babe whom God sends us is held to be a sacred charge. Do our missionaries in Turkey really preach the Gospel of Christ?”
“Do you approve, or admire, the resignation of the East, the Turk’s ideal of being content with so little?” asked the energetic American.
“We are both wrong. Their resignation too often leaves life stagnant, our race for dollars drenches the world in blood.
“Is it not horrible for us to have to confess that all this appalling Battle of the Cross against the Crescent, sprang out of greed for oil.
“One cannot realise what the world would be like were all nations governed by your and my ideals. Would there ever have been a British Empire? We can scarcely justify, on grounds of high morality, the conquest of America; and, surely, the States could by such ruling have, indeed, become ‘God’s own country.’”
When the road became rather more European, our Turkish boy friends sought to relieve the monotony by a furious race between the two yailis, and we were tossed about beyond all possibility of further talk. When, however, the boys had won the first heat, I begged to be excused from trying to secure our revenge, as the carriages did not seem solid enough for racing.
Then behold, at the word, one of our wheels flew off! And, though we were mercifully taking a saunter “between rounds” at the moment, we had to follow our belongings into the mud and do what we could to help the wheelwright.
The American, I found, had been teaching himself the language, and claims to have read Nasreddin Hodja in the original. Now he hastened to improve the occasion by the most voluble congratulations to our unmoved drivers. “This wheel evidently knew how to choose the ‘psychological moment’ for its detachment,” he exclaimed. “On the edge of a mountain, we should all have been pitched into the depths; crossing a river, our lady passenger, who cannot swim, would have been drowned; during the race, we could not have avoided a fatal collision. If it had to happen, it could not have happened more wisely!”
The job is finished at last; maybe hastened by such lively chatter; but I confess we did not feel really secure. In fact, the prudent suggestion that one of us should hold the reins while our driver “kept an eye on” the wheel was soon justified by a second flying away of that “offending member.” It was this time discovered that something must be found to enlarge the circumference of the axle to keep it fixed, and I immediately offered my pocket-handkerchief. Our driver, however, would not hear of “depriving me” and so I begged the American “not to disturb him, but to see how he would contrive.” Though obviously puzzled for a few minutes, he soon justified my confidence by cutting off a good handful of hair from the horse’s mane, and thus “fixing” the wheel once more.
“That’s all very ingenious,” laughed my companion, “but ‘hair’ won’t ‘wear.’”
“Then he’ll find something just as original,” was my triumphant retort.
Nevertheless it was growing dark, and there were rivers ahead that would seem to demand rather better security than we possessed. My anxieties, however, were soon scattered to the four winds by the most astonishing tirade of unjust contempt for all things English, in which my companion now proceeded to indulge. My anger lasted just long enough for us to cross the river; for once we were over, the good man explained that he’d done it to make me furious, the only way he knew to cure a brave woman’s fit of nerves.
At last the welcome smoke, rising from peat cottage-fires, brings the comforting knowledge that we have almost reached Enichéir; and we are soon happily searching for some sort of a resting place that may call itself “an inn.” We are offered the choice of four beds in a room with five others already occupied, or an empty, partially wrecked, sleeping apartment containing two!—one for me, one for the boys, and the American on the floor.
We naturally accept the latter, and immediately get busy about some cooking and a wash. After the day’s roughening experiences one can sleep whatever the details of the accommodation!
At about 9.30 that evening we are awakened by the police, who, however, explain that I am only “wanted” by the Commandant, who has called to wish me bon voyage, and inquire if there is anything he can do for my comfort or to speed me on the way.
“It is not now the Pasha and four wives,” said I, as our visitor soon discreetly left us, “but the Englishwoman and three husbands!”
Next morning after a pleasant hour of mutual assistance in heating the water and holding a looking-glass for each other, with, as I told them, “the most courtly assistants any woman could desire,” the American goes out in order to fix that wheel to his own satisfaction and, by inference, to mine. We have two more days in the yailis and cannot afford to lose time.
Our next halting-place is still more primitive, with its four houses, the tiny inn, a large stable, and a poultry yard. Here, however, the Mayor is ready to join us, in his long Persian shawl, robe, and turban, his documents wrapped in a case of flannel. Like the driver, I notice that, as he steps into his seat, he is careful to take off his muddy shoes. Indeed, the godly cleanliness of Islam, if it does not quite follow our Western traditions, is a very real and honest ideal. The body, as the cheik had assured me, is clean if the clothes be dirty; and I am beginning to think that those “little visitors” in the hotel beds must really be “suffered in kindness.”
I well remember the shock with which one of my friends met the suggestion that he might drown some of the kittens who were arriving, just then, with most alarming rapidity. He said, “the Koran would not permit it!”
Another weary day, amidst so much mud and so many ruins, naturally stirs my companion to thoughts of what might be done by a few dollars.
“I do not mind your having any concessions,” I said, “if you will keep your hands off the architecture. I was hearing the other day about a scheme for building a railway in co-operation with the Turks: one rail to be laid by them and the other by the Americans! I should feel far more safe in a yaili with one wheel!
It is a delightful pastime to work out big schemes for smashing up Europe, Asia, and America; in order to rebuild the world tastefully and according to hygiene, like a couple of happy children with their bricks; but we have at last reached the conclusion of the whole matter. East is East and West is West. If they attempt to “take turns” building railways, the trains will certainly “go off the line.”
I have never been able to understand why anyone should be so afraid of the Cheriat Laws. With all respect for my present company, I say, what I afterwards repeated to Sir William Tyrell, “I would rather trust myself in a Turkish court than appeal to American justice.” In the first case, you may find yourself in the hands of a kind-hearted judge; the second adventure depends entirely on cash. English justice has no equal; but our laws for women are themselves unjust, and the best workman can do little with poor material. Trials, like marriages in foreign countries, should be illegal unless the Consul, or someone equally expert, is present to “watch for” his fellow-countryman. What crimes have not we committed in the name of Justice through ignorance of foreign customs!
“Those who face the choice of trusting themselves to the Cheriat or keeping away from Turkey, may find that these laws are not so terrible after all,” answered the American.
Zeyneb once said that the great merit of Moslem “Commandments” was the absence of mystery. “The i’s are all carefully dotted. We are not told, for instance, that we should give to the poor; we are told the precise percentage of income that must be allotted to charity. Though our laws come from the great Prophet of Allah they are not ecclesiastical.”
In Moslem countries the Head of the State must be elected by the people; he has full executive and legislative power, but he is also personally responsible to the nation. We cannot deny that Mustapha Kemal Pasha has rigidly adhered to this theory of government in his daily practice.
This is the true Democracy. Born without any advantages of caste or family, Fethi Bey laughs at all my allusions to “old ancestors.” The attitude does seem peculiar to Western minds, and may often lead to confusion between us, but it is not without charm.
“How do these very intelligent, modern Turks attempt to reconcile their zeal for liberal reform with their firm loyalty to Islam? How do they account for the decline in prestige and power that none can deny has been their fate?”
“My friends at the Assembly attribute the temporary fall of Turkey to the strong, non-progressive, influence of the hodjas, who have converted themselves into a powerful priestly class, as forbidden by the Prophet. Others attribute it to ignorance of economics; others to Western remoulding of Islam, and foreign oppression; others still, to a perpetual state of war.”
“What is the Pasha’s personal opinion?”
“No man,” he says, “can live without complete liberty and full freedom; nor can any nation. So long as the interests of my own country permit it, I will be the friend of all nations and all humanity; but when any nation begins to tamper with our freedom and our independence, as Germany did in the war, then we can only resist and fight to the bitter end. I sought to discover my people’s will, and I found they were ready for any sacrifice to defend their country. I had faith in the sons of Turkey, and my faith has justified itself to the utmost.”
“There has, indeed, been no finer movement among the ‘despised and rejected’ since the world began.”
“Here comes my friend the sun,” I exclaimed; “a snow-capped Olympus, the cypress beneath the azure! Why is our driver using his whip with such unusual success, just when we want to linger and admire—— Do you know, my friend, should I paint this soil, in all its varied tones from ruby to terra-cotta, all men would cry out, ‘that woman always sees her Turkey en coleur de rose!’”
“I will bear witness,” laughed my friend.
“But, seriously,” I went on, “does it not mean iron; rich veins of iron that it would pay someone to produce?”
In this district of lonely marshland, one can at least rejoice in the cold for one reason. It has driven away the flies and mosquitoes.
“Why does not your country find the capital and send over our unemployed ex-service men to help the Turks drain and cultivate these waste lands?”
When I afterwards spoke of the possibility at Lausanne, I was told that “something might be done!”
Now we have reached Broussa, and our young Turks hurry forward to announce our arrival to the Governor.
It is more trying than ever to lack springs, as we jolt over the loose cobbles of these primitive and neglected town streets. But I could cheerfully have put up with far greater discomfort to reach, at last, the “luxurious” (in comparison) Hotel Brotte, its glowing fire, can after can of water, clean sheets, and the blessed chance of changing one’s clothes and really brushing one’s hair.
THE TOMB OF THE SULTAN OSMAN AT BROUSSA.
p. 272
This is not the Savoy, but, surely, something better!