“I wear those trousers,” she explained, “to afford pleasure to my grandparents. You see I’m only a girl, and it must break their hearts to have a boyless home, so I saved all my pennies and bought these trousers to give the household an air of possessing a boy.”
I hugged her, and never again thought of her trousers as ridiculous.
In the simple way Turkish children have, she also told me the affairs of her home. The household consisted of her grandfather, her grandmother, the old eunuch, a cook older than the eunuch, and a young slave—the halaïc.
A halaïc is a slave who is plain, and consequently cannot be given in marriage to a rich husband; nor is she clever enough to become a teacher; nor does she possess that grace and suppleness which might make of her a dancing girl. Having thus neither mental nor physical attributes, she becomes a menial.
She does all the coarsest work; and after seven years of servitude, if she belongs to a generous master, she is either freed, with a minimum dowry of two hundred and fifty dollars, or is given in marriage, with a larger dowry, to one of the men servants in the retinue of the household.
It is said that sometimes, if her master be either poor or cruel, he sells her before her time expires, and thus she passes from house to house—a beast of burden, because Allah has given her neither cleverness, nor bodily beauty nor grace; and men cheat her of her freedom and youth.
Thus, knowing exactly what a halaïc was, I laughed at Sitanthy when, in answer to my question about the goddess of her garden, she replied: “It must be our halaïc—she is the only young woman in our household.”
After I was entirely well again, I was permitted to go with Sitanthy to play in her garden. I went with great expectations; for I hoped that by daylight and with all the afternoon before me I could find out something about my goddess.
On entering the garden, the first person I encountered was she—and what I saw stabbed my heart. My goddess was harnessed to the old-fashioned wooden water-wheel at the well, and with eyes shut was walking round and round it, drawing up water.
We had a similar arrangement in our own garden, but it was a blindfolded donkey who did the work—not a goddess.