“I don’t want anyone,” I replied. “I would much rather go alone.”
The puzzled expression in her eyes deepened. “Go alone—over there? But I have never been there alone in all my life.”
“I know that, mamma, but you know perfectly well that there are a great many things you never did, or will ever bring yourself to do, which I have already done. Besides,” I pleaded, “my father is dead now; my brother is away; you took me from my home and brought me to this horrid town, and you don’t even let me go to school on account of my weak lungs—and what is there left for me to do?”
“Well, well,” my mother compromised, “you had better let me think it over, child.”
The result of her thinking culminated in my being accompanied to the former capital of the great Byzantine Empire by an uninterested and unsympathetic female elder.
It was an utter failure, this my first attempt at archæological research. The elder, besides being unsympathetic, had a supercilious way of talking, and prided herself on her ignorance. Before the afternoon was at an end she became tired and cross, and then coaxed me, saying: “Why don’t we go and see the lovely jewels and silks in the market, and there I shall treat you to a plate of taouk-okshu.”
I agreed at once, not because I was willing to sell my Byzantine interests for a plate of sweets, but because her presence spoiled my pleasure.
That evening my mother and I had a conversation of an animated nature, a conversation which was continued the next day and yet the next, and grew more animated with each session, until on my side it reached stormy heights—and my mother’s nature abhorred storms; so I obtained the coveted permission of going alone to the city of Byzantium.
“Mind though, baby,” she cautioned, “don’t ever cross the Golden Horn in a boat. You must always go by the bridge.”
It had not occurred to me to take the boat, but once the suggestion was made, it took possession of my brain, and tormented it to such an extent that on arriving at the Galata Bridge my feet turned straight to the quay where the Turkish boatmen were squatted, contemplatively “drinking” their narghiles.