From the windows of my office I can see part of the famous Galata Bridge, where more races and nationalities intermingle with each other than anywhere else in the world. I dare say that there is not a single nationality of Europe which has not at least one member cross this bridge every day. Americans, Africans and Asiatics are also represented here. Since the armistice Great Britain has added to this collection Australians and New Zealanders. Hindoos in native costumes or in British uniforms, Cossacks, Kalmuks and Tartars of the Russian steppes, Arabs with long, flowing robes rub elbows with Turcomans, Chinamen, Japanese and Annamites, while the local crowd of Turks, Armenians, Albanians, Greeks and Slavs of different nationalities go their way in an incessant stream. Flocks of sheep and herds of cattle freshly landed from the Balkan countries pass over the bridge among electric street cars, carriages, sedan-chairs, caravans of camels and automobiles: Rolls-Royces, Fiats, Mercedes and Fords. Thickly veiled Arab women, bloomered Gypsy, Armenian and Greek women, fat Jewesses covered with gold pieces and their more modern progeny—Rebeccas with sleepy black eyes—critically view each other under the amused gaze of passing British ladies, American tourists, Russian princesses and gracefully slim Turkish ladies flaunting their emancipation to the astonished gaze of foreigners, while Parisian cocottes and a few of their less refined local colleagues cross the bridge joy-riding in the military automobiles of their lovers who have occupied Constantinople “in the name of civilization.”
This continuous movement on the bridge is only equalled by the movement in the harbour which I can also see from the windows of my office. Small steamers serving the commuters of the Bosphorus and of the Islands, large cargo boats and passenger steamers, schooners, yachts, warships and even big transatlantics seem to be moving perpetually in and out of this congested harbour bringing to it their individual load of wares, merchandise and passengers from the farthest corners of the globe. Right in front of my windows the two old continents—the cradles of the most ancient civilizations—meet and become one under the clear, peaceful blue sky of the East.
It is this very diversity of things that renders Constantinople and especially business in Constantinople so interesting and captivating that I don't know of any one who, having tasted its romance, does not feel tied and bound forever to the place. It is not only that one deals with all the nations of the world but—which is far more interesting—one is in personal and daily touch with all of them: a business day in Constantinople is really captivating and edifying. Even in such a comparatively small office as ours it offers a degree of diversity and of unexpected happenings which is totally different from the usual routine and humdrum life of offices in other parts of the world.
From nine o'clock in the morning to the closing of business my office is the scene of an international procession and of unexpected events, some of which are comic and others tragic; but all instructive. It starts with the daily interview with our brokers, Jews, Armenians, Greeks and Turks. As merchants of all these nationalities are established in the market one is obliged to employ an international crowd of brokers. They are all, except the Turks, cut on the same pattern. Courteous and polite—but not any longer “sleek” or “unctuous” like the Oriental merchants of the old school—they want to impress you with their good-heartedness and their joviality. They want you to believe that they have no secrets from you and that their motive in working for you is solely the academic interest they take in your success. They are ready to swear that they do not want to make any profit and that they will sacrifice their commission to put a deal through for you. This display of good will and good intentions lasts generally up to the time that the deal is “almost" through; then at the psychological moment the broker makes a desperate attempt to obtain an additional commission on the grounds that he has been obliged—in your interest—to divide his regular commission entirely among certain people whose influence alone has brought it to the point of completion. Of course all this haggling is part of the game and at times it is quite amusing to see the extent to which a man who believes himself astute can make a fool of himself. However, I must say that when one knows them well these men can be handled easily and if after a few trials they see that they cannot fool you they respect you the more for it—and try again only on very rare occasions when they think you are off your guard.
The Turkish brokers are of a totally different type. Some are well educated, refined men, former government officials who are newly in business and hope to work their way up to becoming sooner or later full-fledged merchants. They are learning the business while they give you the benefit of their often very extended connections. But they are aware of their lack of experience and expect you to coach them. Generally you have to give them accurate and detailed instructions which you can, as a rule, depend on their following conscientiously Others are—at least in appearance—good old peasants of Anatolia, often wearing baggy trousers and turbans. They do not at first impress you as able brokers or salesmen, but try them out and see; they may know how to read only just enough to decipher laboriously the specifications of the goods they sell, they may know how to write only just enough to sign their names, but they can and they do make mentally the most complicated calculation of discounts, percentages or commissions, they can and do book orders and clients. They are usually the most honest type of brokers in Constantinople. Many Turkish merchants also belong to this class and many of them who at first impressed me as being paupers turned out to have more money than any one else in the market. They are thrifty, active, intelligent and honest peasants.
Of course the interviews with brokers are just as much part of the office routine as answering cables and letters and going over current business. I try to dispose of all these matters in the mornings so that when I come back after lunch, rested and fresh, I can devote the greater part of my afternoon to new propositions and this is the really interesting part of the day, as propositions of the most diversified nature abound now in Constantinople. One comes in touch with the most extraordinary, interesting and at times pathetic people with unusual business offers. Everybody has something to sell, everybody is in quest of business. Thousands and thousands of refugees of all kinds are here and all of them, as well as the usual inhabitants of Constantinople, have to earn their bread.
The most unusual propositions are generally engineered by the Russian refugees. Many of these are spendthrifts who prefer to earn their living in an easy manner, either through gambling or through managing amusement places, restaurants, dancing clubs, theaters, etc. A group of titled Russian refugees headed by a former chamberlain of the late Tsar succeeded in starting a large establishment which provided all imaginable amusements, not barring roulette, and their enterprise was so successful that within two or three months after it started they were able to pay back with substantial profits the money they had borrowed to launch it. After this they became intoxicated with their success and considering their enterprise as a mint, proceeded to spend its nightly earnings as rapidly as they were won. They disposed of their profits at their own gambling tables, they lavishly entertained their friends and guests by consuming indiscriminately their own stocks of wines and food, and naturally within another couple of months they were obliged to close their doors. But many other amusement places flourish still in Pera under the management of Russians, who are most ingenious in this kind of enterprise. A former officer of the Russian army once came to us and asked us to finance a scheme which would have made a second Monte Carlo of Constantinople. As we did not care to enter into this kind of business we lost sight of him for quite a long period. He came back one day, however, and told us that his scheme having fallen through he and his family had been so near starvation that they had just about decided to commit suicide collectively when it occurred to him to commercialize the hobby he had in his days of prosperity, namely, cabinet and furniture making. He had offered his services for this purpose to a new restaurant which had immediately commissioned him. His wife, a former lady in waiting of the Tzarina, had become a cook in this restaurant and their daughter, a child of about fifteen, had had the good luck to find a position as lady's maid with some well-to-do foreigners. Thus the family had been saved from starvation and the former officer is now one of the most successful furniture makers of Constantinople. He had heard that we were enlarging our offices and wanted to figure on the new furniture we needed. Needless to say that he got the order.
Some Russians have, of course, regular business propositions like the man who undertook—and succeeded—in exchanging for the account of some friends of mine, jewels, petroleum and caviar from Caucasia for American flour and condensed milk, a transaction which brought very substantial profits to himself and to my friends. Others, however, have propositions which are businesslike or practicable only to their unaccustomed eyes. Some come just with an idea and expect you to jump at it and give them a substantial participation, like an old Russian admiral who came once to us suggesting that we should purchase one of the cargo boats of the Russian Volunteer fleet which was to be sold at auction next week for the payment of debts. He believed that by making an offer before the public auction the boat could be purchased at a bargain price. The poor old admiral was very much disappointed when it was explained to him that the creditors—British and Greek firms—were the ones who forced the sale and would be satisfied only by the highest price obtainable as their claims exceeded by far the market value of the ship. He had counted on the influence he still had with Russian circles to accomplish this transaction. He had counted on this to keep his body and soul together. His clothes were shabby and his shoes were patched.
One could not help feeling sorry for him, but the most pathetic of all are the women. One day an old Russian princess was ushered into my office. Her name was familiar to me as having been the hostess in the years gone by in her stupendous estate in Crimea of an uncle of mine on a special mission of the Sultan to the Tsar who was then summering at Yalta. My uncle had told us the lavish manner in which this princess had entertained the Turkish mission. Her residence was a palace filled with precious antique furniture and works of art. Her meals were served on solid gold plates incrusted with diamonds, rubies and other precious stones. She had thousands of peasants on her estate. Now she was coming to ask my assistance to sell her rights to some oil fields she had in Caucasia. She was willing to sell them for a song—the rights to these oil fields whose annual income had been in the past equal to a king's ransom. I had to explain to her that as the Bolsheviks did not recognize the rights of private property, especially property belonging to the former Russian nobility, I was afraid that it would be impossible to find a buyer for her. The poor lady was disappointed, but she confided to me that she had received similar answers from other business men. She therefore wanted to make me another proposition. When she had fled from Crimea she had hidden her most precious jewels in a place where she knew the Bolsheviks would never think to search for them. She was now ready to tell exactly where these jewels were and to divide them with anyone who would recover them for her. When I told her that the insurmountable difficulties of getting her jewels out of the country while the Bolsheviks were still there made her proposition impracticable, the poor old lady, making a superhuman effort not to break down at this, possibly the hundredth, refusal of her “business” proposition, asked me if I knew any one who would care to take French lessons. Happily my wife wanted to take up French and I was able to help her.
Russians are not the only ones who scramble for business. Hundreds of transactions are proposed by and handled through people of a hundred different nationalities, and the characteristics of each individual nation govern the negotiations in each transaction. With so many diversified propositions and with the different style of negotiations they each require, it really is a fortunate thing that the religions of the different races of the Near East crowd the calendar with many diversified holidays. Otherwise few business men would be able to stand the strain. As it is, the quantity of holidays which are kept by the business community of Constantinople affords a welcome relief. First of all there are the weekly Sabbaths. Turkish business houses keep their Sabbath on Fridays which is the Sunday of the Muslims. While they generally do not close altogether, business is always very slack for them on Fridays. In my office where we are all Turks and Muslims, and we are eight in all, we take our Friday turns in rotation so that on these days there are only two of us at the office. The Jews and the Christians, of course, maintain their Sabbath respectively on Saturdays and Sundays so that business is also slack on these days. Other holidays occur quite often on account of the great diversity of religions and nationalities. All these compensate for the strain of normal business days which, while not being as intensive as in some of the great western business centers is nevertheless very exhausting on account of the variety of business treated and of the complexity of the transactions. One has to satisfy the requirements of buyers and sellers who do not speak the same business language, whose conceptions, ideas and mentality are totally different and whose methods are diametrically opposed. One has, therefore, to think and engineer all kinds of combinations to overcome all the difficulties, and I know by experience that it is not always an easy task.