Djimlah, placing both her little hands on the floor, salaamed, and then walked up to her grandmother, who, magnificently attired in her orientalism, sat cross-legged on a hard sofa, which ran around three sides of the room.
“Here, grandmother, here is a Christian child. The effendi, her father, is out with grandfather, and he has lent her to me.”
I stood still, quite uncertain what was the proper thing for me to do. I had never before come so near to a Turkish lady; and this one, with her deeply dyed finger-nails, and her indoor veils, and her hundreds of diamonds, distracted all my previous education in decorum. I merely stared.
“Welcome, little hanoum,” she said, after she, too, had stared at me. “We shall do our best to make your stay among us seem like a happy minute.”
I picked up my little skirts and made her a European curtsy. She was childishly delighted with it, and I was made to repeat it before every lady in the room, who sat in her magnificence, cross-legged on the divan.
There were many, and by the time I finished my curtsies, and told my name and my age, and how I had learned Turkish, and where I lived, I felt quite at home, and when the old lady made us sit by her, and gave us such quantities of candy as I had never been permitted to eat in an entire year, I did not think once of the little flag that my sons were to carry.
They talked before us as if we were not there, and told a lot of funny stories at which we were permitted to join in the laugh.
The audience over, the ladies rose and salaamed. Djimlah and I rose, too, and as Djimlah now kissed the hems of the ladies’ dresses, so did I; and I was pleased to do so, for the ladies were reeking with strong perfumes, a thing I had been taught to consider ill-bred, but which I secretly thought lovely. We escorted the guests out to the ante-rooms, where their attendants wrapped them in their black wraps and heavy white gauze head-gear, and there we bade them good-bye.
Some of them took me in their arms and kissed me, and their perfume stayed with me even in bed that night.