CHAPTER VI
AUNT KALLIROË
THERE is no use pretending that there has ever existed the least sense of fraternity between the Greeks and the Turks. They had their quarters and we had ours. They brought their customs and traditions from the East, and we held fast to our own. The two races had nothing to give each other. They ignored us totally, and we only remembered them to hate them and to make ready some day to throw off their dominion.
I have never heard a good word for the Turks from such of my people as have not crossed their thresholds. It is almost unbelievable that for upward of four hundred years we should have lived side by side, ignorant of each other’s history, and positively refusing to learn of each other’s good qualities. With entire sincerity the Greeks daily relate to each other awful deeds of the Turks—deeds which are mere rumour and hearsay, and contain only a grain of truth, or none at all.
Each side did its best to keep the other as far away as possible. They had their resorts and we had ours. They had their tekhé and we had our schools; they had their mosques and we had our churches; they had their Punch and Judy shows and we had our theatres; they had their music and we had our own; they had their language and we clung jealously to ours. Our own differences we did not bring before the Turkish law, but before our own Church. Neither in sorrow nor in pleasure did we mingle. Turkey is the only country in the world where one may travel for months without using the language of the country, with such great tenacity do the conquered races cling to their own. Indeed, in order to live comfortably in Constantinople, one must know Greek, not Turkish.
After I had played with Turkish girls for two years, had been in and out of their homes as a friend, and liked them, one morning my grand-aunt Kalliroë came to our house in a great state of excitement and worry.
“Go fetch your father, dear,” she cried to me, “and tell him that it is of the utmost importance—of the utmost national importance.”
Aunt Kalliroë was an old lady, and the last of her type I remember. She was of an old Phanariot family, and to her the traditions of Phanar—the Greek portion of Constantinople—were as important as her religious duties. She always dressed in the old fashion of Phanar, wearing black lace, turban-like, on her head, a dress in one piece, with ample skirts, and a shawl which she let hang gracefully over her shoulders. She was tall and imposing, with the sharp features of the Greeks of Phanar, which perhaps were sharpened during their first two hundred years under Turkish rule. Even in her old age her eyes were as piercing and clear as a hawk’s. She carried a cane, and wore silk mittens made by hand; and whenever she met a Turk in the street she muttered exorcizing words, as if he were an evil spirit.
Upon her marriage she had at first gone to live in another community, where the Greek traditions were not so rigidly adhered to. At once she decided that her marriage was providential, and that God had meant her to go to this place to revive the Greek spirit. She undertook her task with a fervour at once patriotic and religious; and she succeeded in her mission, for she made these wayward sheep return rigorously to the fold.
“Go, child!” she now admonished me impatiently. “Don’t stand there and stare at me—go fetch your father.”