The watchman continues his round. His voice is now dying out in the distance. Everything is quiet again. The night has fallen. It is the hour of relaxation. We might receive the visit of some friends. One can better exchange ideas in the calm of the night, and people in Stamboul are now too poor to indulge in regular social life but they love to call on each other in after-dinner impromptu visits. They leave the more elaborate kind of entertainments to their more wealthy cousins living on the slopes of the hills above Pera, in Shishli or Nishantashe. Here we are satisfied with simple, unpretentious visits; they help pass away the time in a far more interesting and morally productive manner than the dancing and exchange of platitude usual in large social gatherings.
Let us light the candles and turn out the electric light. The soft, golden glow of candles is more restful, and conducive to deeper thought. It is in harmony with the darkness outside and will attune us to the relaxation of nature at night. I love semi-darkness. I will only light the silver candelabra on the table and this funny old lantern hanging here at the corner. Its silent shadow will talk to us of the past, when its pale light was used to illumine the steps of those who ventured in the streets after sunset. Even I can remember the time when the streets of Stamboul were not lighted. Electricity is a very recent innovation and in my childhood there were so few and such feeble oil lamps in the streets that every one who went out at night was accompanied by a servant who carried a lantern like this, a folding lantern with a round chiselled silver bottom and a round chiselled silver top, its sides made of oiled parchment or goatskin pleated horizontally so that it could fold when not in use. The servant would walk just a few steps before you, holding the lantern low on the ground so that its dim light would illumine your steps. It was an event for me to go out after sunset and the few occasions when I did have remained engraved in my memory as great adventures, somewhat terrifying and most exciting. I remember how I used to hang on to the hand of my mother. I was abashed by the darkness surrounding us, by the mystery of the night and its solitude. I remember how I would strain my ears to hear the familiar rustle of my mother's wide silk skirt, how I would ask her any question that came into my mind just for the sake of hearing her musical soft voice coming from the darkness above, in modulated tones, I remember how fascinated I would be by the yellowish dancing light of the swinging lantern, which would project big shadows all around us and when one of the street dogs, so common at that time, would wake up and run away from our path, I would squeeze my mother's hand and nestle nearer to her so that I could feel her silk dress against my cheek and now this lantern hangs in our drawing-room, not any more for a useful purpose in this age of electricity, but as an artistic ornament, a symbol of the past, a symbol of the darkness of bygone years. Its yellowish glow illumines the head of my wife who sits right under it. It surrounds her hair with a halo of ancient light. The cycle of thoughts continues, running after the cycle of time in a sequence of flashes followed by long periods of darkness!
We are silent. The street outside must be almost deserted, I can only hear occasional steps every once in a while. But something now stirs at our front door. Someone knocks. It might be some friends, it might be a poor man, a widow or an orphan who comes to ask for some help or for something to eat. Ours is a Turkish home and no matter who comes the Turks welcome an opportunity to be hospitable or charitable. No matter how hard the times, there is always something for the guests.
It must be guests as they are coming up the stairs. The voices stop at our door. The servant announces our neighbours, Dr. Assim Pasha and his wife with our mutual friend, Djevad Bey. They are welcome, the night is still very young and they are all very interesting people. Djevad is a newspaper man, he might have some interesting news to impart. The doctor is one of the leading surgeons of the age known not only here but even in France and Germany where he completed his studies. He is a scientist and more: he is a thinker, a philosopher, a man who knows human beings and humanity intimately. His wife is one of the modern Turkish women who do real things. She speaks English fluently so she has grown to be a very good friend of my wife despite the difference in their age. She has a daughter who is now studying surgery in Germany. They are all quiet, nice people, they exactly fit our mood to-night, they materialize the deep, calm atmosphere of a Stanlboul night. We need not turn on the lights.
We sit around, sip our coffee and smoke. Madame Assim Pasha is on the sofa next to my wife. She tells her of her day. She is always engaged on some errand of mercy, helping the Turkish refugees. Thousands and thousands of them, escaped from the horrors of the Greek invasion of Western Anatolia, are now in Constantinople, homeless, without clothes and in want. All the foreigners in Constantinople, all the foreign papers abroad think, talk and assist only Russian, Greeks, Armenians and others who are now crowding this poor city of Constantinople which the armistice and the unnatural Treaty of Sèvres have made the dumping-ground of all those in need, but no one gives a thought to the Turkish refugees except the Turks. They are horded in Mosques and in public buildings and great misery prevails among them. They depend entirely upon the mercy of the Turks of Constantinople who are themselves too poor to give sufficient help. But we have to do what we can, we have to share our all with our hungry brothers and sisters of Western Anatolia who have come to our city after the Greeks, mandatories of “civilized” Europe, had burned their villages, ransacked their farms and killed their cattle. The Turks are too proud to beg for the assistance of foreigners, and we are all Turks. So we must multiply our efforts, we must do the impossible to feed and clothe our refugees, to take care of their health and to send their children to school even if we can count only on our own resources. Let the Russians, the Armenians and the Greeks cry and wail on the sympathetic shoulders of the foreigners. We will keep our courage up, and with the help of God we will see our needy ones through, we will overcome our present troubles as we have overcome all our past troubles! We do not ask help from any one, we only ask to be left alone. Why do not the foreigners take in their own homes their pet children, their crybabies, and leave us alone to heal our wounds? Are they afraid that the public opinion in their countries will—through direct contact—realize too soon the hypocrisy of their pets? Are they afraid that their own people might be contaminated with the political and moral ailments of these foreign refugees? and if so why should they let Constantinople and its people be contaminated by anarchical ideals and immoral principles? Have they not occupied Constantinople for the purpose of maintaining law and order? Is Constantinople now more lawful than before? Are not the foreign refugees responsible for the spread of immorality in Constantinople? and what will happen to Constantinople if all these foreigners, imported against their will, remain here and spread their propaganda of discontent, restlessness and lawlessness? Madame Assim Pasha talks calmly and in a subdued tone. She does not argue, she just states facts. Slowly and masterfully she depicts the gloomy consequences that the thoughtlessness of the Western Powers might bring to this city of misery. The present is dark enough but the future will be darker unless the Western Powers find a remedy to it. The shadows in our room seem to have darkened, we are silent for a few minutes, then Djevad Bey speaks.
He has been recently to Anatolia and tells us that the situation in the regions occupied by the foreigners is much worse there than here. Standing at his full height, his slim athletic figure dimly discernible in the darkness of the room, he quivers with restrained emotion and tells us of the sufferings he has seen there. He launches a diatribe against the foreign press which will never tell of the miseries and injustice suffered by the Turks, while it will always exaggerate the miseries and sufferings of all other nations—the foreign press which will never tell of the qualities and accomplishments of the Turks while it will show through a magnifying glass the accomplishments of other nations. Will this double standard ever be changed? Can the truth be forever distorted? Why this prejudice against the Turks? Will the Western world ever outgrow it and discard it? Will the World ever replace its preconceived hatred for some and friendship for others by a single feeling of compassion for all who suffer, no matter who they may be, no matter what their race, and by one all-embracing feeling of love for all—will it ever adopt one single standard of justice for all?
Djevad has once more voiced the inherent complaint of all the Turks who resent the malign treatment they are subjected to, the campaign of defamation which they have had to put up with since the last generation. Under their stoic calmness these questions loom large in the inner-consciousness of all the Turks and cast a deep shadow of doubt over their faith. In the peace and quiet of our room we feel that his questions, if unanswered, will shatter our confidence in the future, we feel that the world might yet be plunged in a terror still worse than that of the years of the great war if it destroys the faith of the Turks and throws them in despair into the arms of their Nihilist neighbours of the North, at the head of millions of Central Asiatic tribes, at the head of millions of Muslims now groaning under the heels of their conquerors: a terror which might be darker than the blackest periods of the Darkest Ages.
Instinctively we turn for an answer to the Doctor. He has been silent until now. He sits in a high-backed chair like a throne. The candelabra on the table illumines his expressive face and throws the outline of his powerful profile in an enormous shadow on the gray wall. It almost reaches the ceiling and dominates the darkened room. The doctor is calm and composed, his sensitive hands rest limply on the arms of the chair. His eyes which have studied the past, stare dreamily ahead in an endeavour to visualize the future. They gleam with a spiritual light which pierces the penumbra surrounding him. He is thinking, he gazes—unseeing—at a little picture on the wall, a little Dutch picture on which the artist has, centuries ago, painted the moon rising from behind dark clouds to illumine with rays of silver a limitless ocean. He sighs, straightens up, throwing his head slightly back. Then his colourful, warm voice rises in the silence and the shadows surrounding us.
A new world is in the making. The old world had been divided by men into races, religions and creeds. Each race had different standards, each race was prejudiced against all others. Each religion and creed had, in the course of time, accomodated itself to the pettiness of humanity and had lost sight of its essential principles. The divine light which time and again God had shed in His mercy over humanity through one or the other of his prophets had been captured by narrow-minded dogmatists of different races and only an infinitesimal spark of it had been each time imprisoned in a lantern for egotistical purposes instead of being used to illumine the outer world. Jews, Christians and Muslims turned their own lanterns on themselves and each one crowded around it in an endeavour to see its own particular light. In the scramble that followed and in the jet black darkness which surrounded each separate spark, those who struggled forgot what they had seen in the light. Mercy, compassion and love disappeared from before their eyes. They all called each other renegades and apostates. The Christian world, more materialistic than the others, obtained the upper hand and exerted its supremacy over the globe. But the greediness of its different nations, their desire for economic possession brought about the general war. Even in this, however, nations were the unconscious tools of the Divine Power. One must tear down to build anew. One must punish to improve. Therefore nations were made to destroy their own material richnesses. And in the meanwhile, unknown to them the sparks in their lanterns have come ever and ever nearer to each other. The day is near when all the lanterns will be united and will illumine together—as God meant it—the work of reconstruction undertaken by a new Humanity which has been made to see through suffering. The pains of the present time are the pains of travail. Humanity is being reborn. A new age is in the making, a better world is coming. It may take some time to come, but when it arrives it will bring justice to all without distinction of class, colour, nationality or sex. It will usher in real democracy based not on equality, but on “oneness." We are passing now through the period of preparation, the period of travail. It is painful as all travail preceding creation, but Humanity must hope, no matter how hard the present times are, no matter how long the hard times last. Nothing can alter its destiny. The millenium will come when Humanity becomes conscious of God, becomes one with Him, reflects all His attributes: and Mercy and Love are the principal attributes of God. With his eyes cast dreamily ahead, lost in his vision, the great surgeon who fights death every day tells us of immortality through love.
Our quiet room vibrates with his subdued voice—the voice of those who have heard and understood the wails of agony. Gradually and with the conviction acquired by generations of philosophers before him, the thinker is rebuilding our faith. The faith that no true Muslim must ever lose. The shadows surrounding us are becoming translucid. We come to share his vision of a better world: a world based not on the equality but on the unity of all. We come to share his conviction that this is the unavoidable period of travail with its unavoidable pains and sorrows. We must go through it without complaint, without despair, fully realizing that we must use all obstacles in the path of humanity as stepping-stones and not as stumbling-blocks and God will keep His covenant to humanity. We are not fatalists, but we have faith.