“Why, it isn’t Easter and it isn’t Christmas,” I cried. “It isn’t even a great saint’s day. Why are you burning the candles and the incense, Aunt Kalliroë?”
“They have been burning since I moved into this house, and they shall burn for thrice forty days, to cleanse it from Turkish pollution.”
“But since Baky Pasha never bought it, and never lived in it——”
“No, but a Turk has coveted it, and that is enough to pollute a Christian home.”
This incident is one of many. It illustrates the feeling which existed in the hearts of the orthodox Greeks for the people who conquered them and brought, to the very capital of their former empire, their religion and their customs. We disliked them and feared them; and our fear partook both of the real and of the unreal, because we ascribed to them not only the deeds which they had done, but also a great many that they were incapable of doing, and had not even considered the possibility of doing.
I wonder now what would have been the outcome had the Greeks and the Turks mingled more together; had they come to know each other and to recognize each other’s good qualities, and had they been able to profit by the good which is in each nation. Had the Turks, for example, borrowed from the light of Greek civilization and culture; and had the Greeks profited by the calm contemplative spirit, which is the keynote of the Turkish character, when not in war. I wonder always what would have been the outcome, and perhaps that is one more reason why I try to show what is best in the Turks—to save the gold from the dross, and to disentangle from the bad what was divine and immortal in them.
We Greeks have never been able to learn from them and to give something in exchange; but why let it be lost to the whole world? And since we call ourselves Christians, why should we not be able to say—when the sick shall be dead—even as Christ said of the dead dog: “Yes, he is a dead dog—but his teeth are beautiful.”
CHAPTER VII
IN THE HOLLOW OF ALLAH’S HAND
MY visits to Djimlah continued, and her daring spirit was a continual delight to me. I had never seen her afraid of anything, and she did pretty much as she chose. One day when I was visiting her, a tremendous thunder-storm broke out, and I said to her: