Constantinople, v. 1 (of 2)

by Edmondo De Amicis

And so you must finally either pause to take breath and collect your ideas, or else yield and allow him to accompany you.

There is nothing about the exterior of the Great Bazâr to either attract the eye or give the faintest idea of what it is within. It is an immense stone edifice in the Byzantine style, irregular in form and surrounded by high gray walls, lighted by means of hundreds of small lead-covered domes in the roof. The principal entrance is through a high, vaulted doorway of no architectural pretensions. Outside, in the neighboring streets, no sounds can be heard of what is going on within, and half a dozen steps away from the entrance one might easily believe that only silence and solitude reigned within those prison-like walls; once inside, however, this delusion is quickly dispelled. You find yourself not in a building at all, but in a labyrinth of streets with vaulted roofs, lined with columns and carved pilasters—a veritable city, with mosques and fountains, thoroughfares and open squares, pervaded with the dim, subdued light of the forest, where no ray or gleam of sunshine ever penetrates, and thronged with immense crowds of people. Every street is a bazâr, generally leading out of the principal thoroughfare—a street covered by a roof composed of white and black stone arches and decorated with arabesques like the nave of a mosque. Processions of horses, camels, and carriages pass up and down the dimly-lighted streets, in the midst of the throng of foot-passengers, with a deafening, reverberating noise. On all sides attempts are being made by word and gesture to attract your attention. The Greek merchant hails you with loud, imperious voice, while his Armenian rival, by far the greater knave of the two, assumes a modest, retiring manner, addressing you in soft, obsequious tones; the Jew murmurs gently in your ear; while the Turk, silent and reserved as ever, squats on a cushion in his doorway and contents himself with addressing you solely with his eye, leaving the results to Fate. Ten voices appeal to you at once: “Monsieur! captain! caballero! signore! eccelenza! kyrie! milor!” Down every cross-street you catch glimpses of new vistas, long lines of columns and pilasters, corridors, other streets opening out of these again, arcades and galleries, confused far-off views of new bazârs, shops, merchandise suspended on the walls and from the roofs, bustling merchants, heavily-laden porters, figures of veiled women, noisy groups, which constantly form, dissolve, and form again—a mingling of sights, sounds, colors, and movement to set one’s head in a whirl. The confusion, however, is only apparent: in reality, this enormous mart is arranged with as much system and order as a barracks, and it takes but a few hours for one to become sufficiently at home in it to find his way to any object without difficulty or the help of a dragoman. Every separate kind of merchandise has its own especial quarter, its little street, corridor, and square; there are a hundred small bazârs opening one into another like the rooms in some vast suite of apartments, and each bazâr is at the same time a museum, a promenade, a market, and a theatre, in which you can look at all without buying anything, can drink your cup of coffee, enjoy the open air, chat in a dozen different languages, and make eyes at the prettiest girls to be found in the East.

Date Seller.

Dropping at random into any one of these bazârs, half a day goes by without your so much as knowing it: take, for instance, the bazâr of stuffs and costumes. Here are displayed such a dazzling array of beautiful and rare objects that you at once lose your head, to say nothing of your purse, and the chances are that, should you in any unguarded moment be tempted to satisfy some small caprice, you will end by having to telegraph home for assistance. You pass between pyramids and heaps of Bagdad brocades; rugs from Caramania; Brusa silks; India linens; muslins from Bengal; shawls from Madras; Indian and Persian cashmeres: the variegated fabrics of Cairo; gold-embroidered cushions; silken veils striped with silver; striped blue and red gauze scarfs, so light and transparent as to look like clouds; stuffs of every variety of color and design, in which blue and green, crimson and yellow, all the colors which disagree most violently, are combined and blended together in a harmony so perfect and exquisite that you can only gaze in open-mouthed admiration; table-covers of all sizes upon whose background of red or white cloth are outlined intricate silken designs of flowers, verses from the Koran, and imperial monograms, which it would take a day to examine, like a wall in the Alhambra. Here one has as good an opportunity to see and admire, one by one, each of the various articles which go to make up the costume of a Turkish lady as though it were the alcove of a harem, from the green or orange or purple mantles which are thrown over everything in public down to the silken chemise, gold-embroidered kerchief, and even the satin girdle upon which no eye of man other than that of the husband or eunuch is ever allowed to fall. Here may be seen red-velvet caftans edged with ermine and covered with stars; yellow satin bodices; trousers of rose-colored silk; white damask undervests thickly covered with gold flowers; wedding veils sparkling with silver spangles; little greencloth jackets edged with swan’s down; Greek, Armenian, Circassian costumes of a thousand fantastic shapes, so thickly covered with ornamentation as to be as hard and glittering as breastplates; and mixed in with all this magnificence the sombre, commonplace, serviceable stuffs of England and France, producing much the same effect upon the mind as would the sight of a tailor’s bill introduced into the pages of a volume of poems. If there is a woman anywhere in the world whom you care for, you cannot walk through this bazâr without longing to be a millionaire or else feeling the passion for plunder blaze up within you, if only for a moment.

To free yourself from these unhallowed desires you have but turn a little to one side and you find yourself in the pipe-bazâr, where the soul is gently conducted back to more tranquil pastures. Here you come upon collections of cherry, maple, rosewood, and jessamine pipes, and of yellow amber mouth-pieces from the Baltic Sea, polished until they shine like crystal, and of every grade of color and transparency, some of them set with diamonds or rubies; pipes from Cæsarea, their stems wrapped with silk and gold thread; tobacco-pouches from Lybia decorated with many-colored lozenges and gorgeous embroidery; silver, steel, and Bohemian glass narghilehs of exquisite antique shapes, engraved and chased and studded with precious stones, their morocco tubes glittering with rings and gilding, all wrapped in raw cotton and under the constant surveillance of two glittering eyes whose gaze never wavers; but let any one short of a vizier or a pasha who has spent years in bleeding some province of Asia Minor approach, and the pupils dilate in such a manner as to cause the modest inquiry as to the price to die away upon one’s lips. Here the purchaser must be some envoy of the sultana anxious to present a slight token of her appreciation to the pliable grand vizier; or a high court dignitary, who on assuming the cares of his new office is obliged, in order to maintain his dignity, to expend the sum of fifty thousand francs upon a rack of pipes; or a newly-appointed foreign ambassador who on departing for some European court wishes to take to its royal master a magnificent memento of Stambul. The Turk of modest means gazes mournfully upon these treasures and passes by on the other side, paraphrasing for his consolation that saying of the Prophet, “The flames of the infernal regions shall rage like the bellowing of the camel in the stomach of him who shall smoke a pipe of gold or silver.”

Passing from here into the perfumery bazâr, we once more find ourselves beset with temptations. It is one of the most distinctively Oriental in character of all the bazârs, and its wares were very dear to the heart of the Prophet, who classes together women, children, and perfumes as the three things which gave him the greatest pleasure. Here are to be had those famous Seraglio pastilles designed to perfume kisses; packages of the scented gum prepared by the hardy daughters of Chio to be used in strengthening the gums of delicate Mussulman women; exquisite essence of jessamine and of bergamont and powerful attar of roses, enclosed in red-velvet, gold-embroidered cases, and sold at prices that make one’s hair stand on end; here can be bought ointment for the eyebrows, antimony for the eyes, henne for the nails, soap to soften the Syrian beauty’s skin, and pills to prevent hair from growing on the face of the too masculine Circassian; cedar and orange-water, scent-bags of musk, sandal oil, ambergris, aloes to perfume cups and pipes—a myriad of different powders, pomatums, and waters with fanciful names and destined to uses undreamed of in the prosaic West, each one representing in itself some amorous fancy or seductive caprice, the very refinement of voluptuousness, and exhaling, all together, an odor at once penetrating and sensual, and dreamily suggestive of great languid eyes, soft caressing hands, and the subdued murmur of sighs and embraces.

These fancies are quickly dispelled on turning into the jewelry bazâr, a narrow, dark, deserted street, flanked by wretched-looking little shops, the last places on earth where one would expect to find the fabulous treasures which, as a matter of fact, they do contain. The jewels are kept in oaken coffers, hooped and bound with iron, which stand in the front of the shops under the ever-watchful gaze of the merchant, some old Turk or Hebrew with long beard, and piercing eyes which seem to penetrate into the very recesses of your pocket and examine the contents of your purse; occasionally one or another of them, standing erect before his door, as you pass close by first regards you fixedly in the eye, and then with a rapid movement flashes before your face a diamond of Golconda, a sapphire from Ormus, or a ruby of Gramschid, which at the slightest negative movement on your part is as quickly withdrawn from sight. Others, circulating slowly about, stop you in the middle of the street, and, after casting a suspicious glance all around, draw forth from their bosoms a dirty bit of rag in whose folds is hidden a fine Brazilian topaz or Macedonian turquoise, watching like some tempting demon to see its effect upon you. Others, again, after scrutinizing you closely, come to the conclusion that you have not the precious-stones look, as it were, and do not trouble themselves to offer you anything, and you may wear the face of a saint or the airs of a Crœsus, and it will not avail to open those oaken boxes. The opal necklaces, emerald stars and pendants, the coronets and crescents of pearls of Ophir, the dazzling heaps of beryls, agates, garnets, of crystals, aventurine, and lapis lazuli remain inexorably hidden from the eyes of the curious, provided he has no money, or, at all events, from those of a poor devil of an Italian writer. The utmost such an one can accomplish is to ask the price of a coral or sandal-wood or amber tespi which he runs through his fingers, as the Turk does, to pass away the time in the intervals of his forced labors.

If you want to be really amused, though, just go into the Frankish shops, those which deal in everything, and where there are goods to suit all pockets. Hardly has your foot crossed the threshold before a crowd of people spring up from you don’t know where, and in an instant you are surrounded. It is out of the question to transact your business with one single person. What between the merchant himself, his partners, his agents, and the various hangers-on of the establishment, you never have to do with less than a half dozen at least. If you escape being floored by one, you are, so to speak, strung up by another. There is no way by which final defeat can be warded off. Words fail to describe their patience, art, and persistency, the diabolical subterfuges to which they resort in order to force you to buy what they choose. Finding everything put at an exorbitant price, you offer a third, upon which they drop their arms in sign of profound discouragement or beat their foreheads in dumb despair, or else they burst into an impassioned torrent of appeal and expostulation calculated to touch your feelings as a man and a brother. You are hard and cruel; you are evidently determined to force them to close their shops; your object is to reduce them to misery and want; you have no compassion for their innocent children; they wonder plaintively what injury they could ever have done you that you should be so bent upon their ruin. While you are being told the price of an article an agent from a neighboring shop hisses in your ear, “Don’t buy it; you are being cheated.” Taking this for a piece of honest advice, you soon discover that there is an understanding between him and the shopkeeper; the information that you are being imposed upon in the matter of a shawl is only given in order to fleece you far worse in the purchase of a hanging. While you are examining the various articles they talk in broken sentences among themselves, gesticulating, striking their breasts, casting looks full of dark meaning. If you understand Greek, the conversation is in Turkish; if you are familiar with that, it is in Armenian; if you show any knowledge of Armenian, they employ Spanish; but whatever language is adopted, they know enough of it to cheat you. If after some time you still preserve an unbroken front, they begin stroking you down—tell you how beautifully you talk their tongue; that you have all the air and manner of a real gentleman; that they will never be able to forget your attractive face. They talk of the land of your birth, where they have passed so many happy years. They have, in fact, been everywhere. Then they make you a cup of fresh coffee and offer to accompany you to the custom-house when you leave in order to interpose between you and the overbearing authorities; which means, being interpreted, in order to secure a final opportunity for cheating you and your fellow-travellers, in case you may have any. They turn their whole shop upside down for you, and should you finally leave without having bought anything, you get no black looks, as they have a sustaining conviction that the harvest is only deferred; if not to-day, then some other day: you are certain to return to the bazâr, when their bloodhounds will scent you out, and should you escape falling into their clutches, you will undoubtedly be caught in the toils of one of their associates; if they do not fleece you as shopkeepers, they will flay you as agents; if they fail to overreach you in the bazâr, they will get the better of you at the custom-house. Of what nationality are these men? No one knows: by dint of having a smattering of so many different languages they have lost their original accent, and the constant habit of acting a part has ended by altering the natural lines of their faces to such a degree as to efface their national traits. They belong to any race you choose, and their profession is whatever you may have need of at the moment—shopkeeper, guide, interpreter, money-lender, and, above all, past master in the art of gulling the universe.

The Mussulman shopkeepers present an altogether different field of observation. Among them may still be found examples of those venerable Turks, rarely enough to be seen now-a-days in the streets of Constantinople, who look like living representatives of the days of the Muhammads and Bayezids, remnants left intact of that mighty Ottoman edifice whose walls received their first rude shock in the reforms of Mahmûd, and which since then, year by year, stone by stone, have been crumbling into ruins. One must now go to the Great Bazâr and search in the dimmest shops of the most obscure streets to behold those enormous turbans of the time of Suleiman, shaped like the dome of a mosque, and beneath them the impressive face, the expressionless eye, hooked nose, long white beard, antique purple or orange caftan, full, plaited trousers confined about the waist by a huge sash, and the haughty and melancholy bearing of a once all-powerful people. With expressions dulled by opium or lighted up with the fire of fanaticism, they sit all day in the backs of their dens with crossed legs and folded arms, calm and unmoved like idols, awaiting with closed lips the predestined purchaser. If business is brisk, they murmur, “Mach Allah!” (God be praised!); if dull, “Ol-sun!” (So be it!), and bow their heads resignedly. Some employ their time in reading the Koran; others run the beads of the tespi through their fingers, murmuring under their breath the hundred epithets of Allah; others, whose affairs have prospered, drink their narghilehs, as the Turks express it, slowly revolving around them their sleepy, voluptuous-looking eyes; others sit with drooping lids and bent brow in an attitude of profound meditation. Of what are they thinking? Possibly of their sons killed beneath the walls of Sebastopol, of their far-off caravans, of the lost pleasures of youth, or possibly of the eternal gardens promised by the Prophet, where, in the shade of the palm and the pomegranate, they will espouse those dark-eyed brides never yet profaned by mortal or geni. There is about each individual one of them something striking and original, and all are picturesque. The shop forms a framework for a picture full of color and suggestion; one’s mind is instantly filled with images taken from history or what is known of the domestic life of this strange people. This spare, bronzed man with a bold, alert expression is an Arab; he has led his train of camels laden with gems and alabaster from the interior of his far-off country, and more than once has felt the balls of the robbers of the desert whiz past him. This one in the yellow turban, bearing himself with an air of command, has crossed the solitudes of Syria on horseback, carrying with him treasures of silk from Tyre and Sidon. Yonder negro, with his head enveloped in an old Persian shawl, is from Nubia; his forehead is covered with scars made by magicians to preserve him from death, and he holds his head aloft as though still beholding before him the Colossus of Thebes or summits of the Pyramids. This good-looking Moor, with his black eyes and pallid skin, wrapped in a long snow-white cloak, has carried his caic and his carpets from the uttermost western limits of the Atlas chain. That green-turbaned Turk, with the emaciated face, has this very year returned from the great pilgrimage. After seeing relatives and companions die of thirst amid the interminable plains of Asia Minor, he finally reached Mecca in the last stages of exhaustion, and, after dragging himself seven times around the Kaaba, finally fell half swooning upon the Black Stone, covering it with impassioned kisses. This giant with a pale face, arched brows, and piercing eyes, who has far more the air of a warrior than of a merchant, his entire bearing breathing nothing but pride and arrogance, has brought his furs hither from the northern regions of the Caucasus, and in his day struck at a blow the head from off the shoulders of more than one Cossack. And this poor wool-merchant, with his flat face and small oblique eyes, active and sinewy as an athlete, it is not so long since he was saying his prayers in the shadow of that immense dome which rises above the sepulchre of Tamerlane. Starting from Samarcand, he crossed the desert of Great Bûkharia, and, passing safely through the midst of the Turkoman hordes, crossed the Dead Sea, escaped the balls of the Circassians, and, after returning thanks to Allah in the mosques of Trebizond, has at last come to seek his fortune in Stambul, from whence, as he grows old, he will surely return once more to his beloved Tartary, which always claims the first place in his heart.