Byzantine history, combined with my search in old Byzantium, and Ali Baba’s rapt attention to my expounding of it, made that winter a very happy one. I generally returned when the city was bathed in the sunset light; and these hours with Ali Baba, listening, his oars poised over the waters of the Golden Horn—truly golden at this hour—were hours of enchantment for me. How could we help becoming fast friends, sharing as we did such magical moments together. I liked him so much that I began to economize and make him presents I thought he needed, such as a new shirt, a new pair of stockings, a new cloth for his turban; and it almost broke my heart when one evening, as he was landing me on the Constantinople side, he, too, made me a present. It was a very gaudy red and blue handkerchief, filled with raisins and leblebia—a delectable grain only to be found in Turkey.
I accepted these, apparently delighted, yet wondering what I was to do with them. It would have been impossible to enter the house and go to my room without having to explain the handkerchief and its contents—and the handkerchief would mean telling about the crossings in the boat, and I did not wish to contemplate what would follow that disclosure.
With a great deal of heart-aching I had to dispose of the sweets. I gave them to some urchins in the street, and my ache in a measure was relieved by the joy they manifested.
Although this was the only winter I travelled with Ali Baba, I never forgot him. Indeed the bond between us was too great lightly to forget; and when I came to town I always managed to save a half hour for him. I would go directly to the quay, and if he were not there I would wait for him till he came back from the other side. If he were there, he always rose quickly, unfastened his little caïque, and off we were; only to stop in mid-stream, his oars poised in the air, his kind eyes twinkling, his mouth half-opened with a smile, listening to the things I had to say of books and of travels.
CHAPTER XV
MY LADY OF THE FOUNTAIN
THE following year I was sent to Paris for my studies, where I was to remain three whole years, without returning home; yet on my first summer holidays my mother changed her mind and sent for me. That summer, too, we were not to spend at our home on the island, but in Pantich, an adorable, sleepy, little Turkish village, on the Asiatic shore of the Marmora.
Pantich is as far behind the rest of Turkey as the rest of Turkey is behind Europe. Its traditions are those of the Byzantine period, when Constantinople was the capital of the Greek Empire. The Turkish quarters cluster around the Tzami, which is built in a square of plantain trees, with a fountain in the middle. The Greek houses make a belt around their little Orthodox Church, with a school on its right and a cemetery on its left.
And though the Turks and the Greeks are divided like the goats and the sheep, all men wear the fez, and all women veil their faces.
Only one event ever happened in Pantich: the coming of the railroad through it. Small wonder that, when the trains began to run, the inhabitants brought their luncheons and sat all day long close to the rails, waiting to see the wonderful thing pass, which ran of its own accord, with a speed beyond the dreams of the fastest horse. Small wonder, too, that the rents of the houses near the track began to go up like speculative stocks in a Wall Street boom.