To reach the Great Bazâr we take a street opening out of the fish-market, so narrow that the projecting parts of the opposite houses almost touch one another; on either side are rows of low, ill-lighted tobacconist shops, that “fourth support of the tent of voluptuousness,” coming after coffee, opium, and wine, or “the fourth of pleasure’s couches,” as it is sometimes called. Like coffee, tobacco has been blasted by imperial edicts and denounced by the mufti, with the usual result of adding fresh zest to its use and making it a fruitful source of tumult and punishment; and now this entire street is devoted to traffic in it alone. The tobacco is displayed upon long shelves in pyramids and round piles, each one surmounted by a lemon. All kinds are to be found here: latakia from Antioch; Seraglio tobacco as fine and smooth as spun silk; tobacco for pipe and cigarette of every grade of strength and flavor, from that smoked by the gigantic porter of Galata to that used by the indolent odalisques of the Seraglio to put them to sleep. There is the tombeki, so powerful that it would set the head of even a veteran smoker spinning did its fumes not reach his mouth first purified by the water of the narghileh, and which is kept in glass jars like a drug. The tobacconists are all Greeks or Armenians, with ceremonious manners, somewhat inclined to give themselves airs. The customers assemble before the shops in groups. Many of them are employés of the various foreign ambassadors or of the Seraskerat, and occasionally one sees some personage of importance. It is a great place for gossip of all kinds; politics are discussed; the doings of the great world talked over; and merely to walk through this little, retired, aristocratic bazâr leaves a strong impression upon one’s mind of the joys to be obtained from conversation and tobacco.
We now pass beneath an old arched doorway festooned with vines, and come out opposite a large stone edifice, from which opens a long, straight, covered street lined with dimly-lighted shops and filled with people, packing-boxes, and heaps of merchandise. Entering this, we are immediately assailed by an odor so powerful as to fairly knock one down: this is the Egyptian Bazâr, where are deposited all the wares of India, Syria, Egypt, and Arabia, which later on, converted into essences, pastilles, powders, and ointments, serve to color little hands and faces, perfume apartments and baths and breaths and beards, reinvigorate worn-out pashas, dull the senses of unhappy married people, stupefy smokers, and spread dreams, oblivion, and insensibility throughout the whole of the vast city. After going but a short distance in this bazâr your head begins to feel dull and heavy, and you get out of it as fast as you can; but the effect of that hot, close atmosphere and those penetrating odors clings long to your clothing, and remains for all time in your memory as one of the most vivid and characteristic impressions of the East.
After escaping from the Egyptian Bazâr you pass among a crowd of noisy coppersmiths’ shops, Turkish restaurants, from which issue endless nauseous smells, and all manner of wretched booths, shops, and stands, dark little dens containing trash of all sorts, and finally come to the Great Bazâr itself, not, however, before you have been obliged to defend yourself from a vigorous attack.
About a hundred feet from the main entrance there lie in ambush like so many cutthroats the agents or middlemen of the merchants and the agents of the agents. These fellows are so well up in their business that at a single glance they learn not only that this is your first visit to the bazâr, but usually make so clever a guess as to your nationality that they rarely make a mistake in the language which they first address you in.
Approaching, fez in hand, they proceed, with an engaging smile, to offer their services.
There usually then follows a conversation something like this: the traveller, declining the proffered service, remarks,
“I do not propose to make any purchases.”
“Oh, sir, what difference does that make? I only want to show you the bazâr.”
“I don’t care to see the bazâr.”
“But I will escort you gratis.”