Constantinople, v. 1 (of 2)

by Edmondo De Amicis

The apathy of that people is something incredible; they live, as a poet has said, in a sort of intimate familiarity with death, looking upon life as a pilgrimage too short to attempt, even were it worth their while anyhow, great undertakings requiring long and sustained effort; and sooner or later this fatalism attacks the European as well, inducing him to live in a certain sense from day to day, without troubling himself more than necessary about the future, and playing in the world, so far as lies in his power, the simple and reposeful part of a spectator. Then the constant intercourse with so many nationalities, whose language you must speak and whose views to a certain extent you must adopt, does away with many of those fixed rules and conventionalities which have in our countries become iron-bound laws governing society, and whose observance or non-observance causes endless vexations and heartburnings.

The Mussulman population forms of itself a never-ending source of interest and curiosity, always at hand to be seen and studied, and so stimulating and enlivening to the imagination as to drive away all thought of ennui. The very plan of Constantinople helps to this end. Where in other cities the eye and mind are almost always imprisoned, as it were, in one street or narrow circuit, there every step presents a new outlet through which both may roam over immeasurable distances of space and scenes of entrancing beauty, and, finally, there is the absolute freedom of that life, governed by no one set of customs. One can do absolutely as he pleases; nothing is looked upon as out of the way, and the most astounding performances hardly cause a ripple of talk, forgotten almost as soon as told in that huge moral anarchy. Europeans live there in a sort of republican confederacy, enjoying a freedom from all restraint such as would only be possible in one of their own cities during some period of disorder. It is like a continual Carnival, a perpetual Shrove Tuesday, and it is this, even more than her beauty, which endears Constantinople so greatly to the foreigner, so that, thinking of her after long absence, one experiences a feeling almost amounting to home-sickness; while those Europeans who have made their homes there strike down deep roots and become as devotedly attached to her as her legitimate sons. The Turks are certainly not far wrong when they call her “the enchantress of a thousand lovers,” or say in their proverb that for him who has once drunk of the waters of Top-Khâneh there is no cure—he is infatuated for life.

The Italians.

The Italian colony at Constantinople, while it is one of the most numerous, is far from being the most prosperous there. It numbers among it but few rich persons, and many who are wretchedly poor, especially those who come from Southern Italy and are unable to find work: it is also the colony most poorly represented by the press, when indeed it is represented at all, its newspapers only making their appearance to promptly vanish again. When I was there the colony was awaiting the issue of the Levantino, and meanwhile a sample copy was put in circulation setting forth the academic titles and personal gifts of the editor: I made out seventy-seven in all, without counting modesty.

One should walk down the Rue de Pera of a Sunday morning, when the Italian families are on their way to mass: you hear every dialect in Italy. Sometimes I used to enjoy it, but not always: it was too depressing to see so many of one’s fellow-countrymen homeless wanderers on the face of the earth; many of them, too, must have been cast up on those shores by storms of misfortune and strange, uncomfortable adventures. And then the old people who would never see Italy again; the children in whose ears that name meant nothing more than a place—dear, no doubt, but distant and unknown; and those young girls, many of whom must inevitably marry men of other nationalities and found families in which nothing Italian will survive beyond a proper name or two and the fond memories of the mother. I encountered pretty Genoese, looking as though they might just have come down from the gardens of Acquasola; charming Neapolitan faces; graceful little heads which I seemed to have seen a hundred times beneath the porticoes of Po or the Milanese arcades. I felt like gathering them all into a bunch, tying them together with rose-colored ribbons, and marching them two by two on shipboard, conveying them back to Italy at the rate of fifteen knots an hour. I would also have liked to take back with me, as a curiosity, a sample of the language spoken by those born in the Italian colony, especially those of the third or fourth generation. A Crusca academician, on hearing it, would have taken to his bed with a raging fever. A language formed by mingling the Italian spoken by a Piedmontese doorkeeper, a Lombardy hack-driver, and a Romagnol porter would, I think, be less outrageous than that spoken on the banks of the Golden Horn. It is Italian which, impure at the outset, has been mixed with four or five other languages, each impure in their turn; and the most singular part of it is that in the midst of all these barbarisms you suddenly come plump upon some such scholarly word or phrase as puote, imperocche, a ogni pie sospiuto, havvi, puossi, witnesses to the efforts made by some of our worthy compatriots, who by dipping into anthologies seek to preserve the celestial Tuscan speech. But, as compared with the rest, these might well lay claim, as Cesari said, to a reputation for using choice language. Some of them can hardly be understood at all. One day I was being escorted, I don’t remember just where, by an Italian youth of sixteen or seventeen, a friend of a friend of mine, who was born in Pera. As we walked along I began asking him some questions, but soon found that he did not want to talk; he answered me in a low tone and as shortly as possible, growing red in the face as he did so and hanging his head; he was so evidently unhappy that I presently asked him what it was that troubled him so much. “Oh,” said he with a despairing sigh, “I talk so badly!” As we continued our conversation I found that he spoke indeed a strange dialect, full of outlandish words and strongly resembling the so-called Frank language, which, as a French wit once said, consists in pouring out as rapidly as possible a quantity of Italian, French, Spanish, and Greek nouns and tenses until you happen to strike one the listener understands. It is, however, seldom necessary to go to so much trouble in Pera or Galata, where almost every one, including the Turks, can speak, or at least understand, some Italian, though this language, if you can call it a language, is almost exclusively a spoken one, if you can call it speaking. The tongue generally employed for writing is French. Of Italian literature there is none. I recollect on one solitary occasion, in a Galata café crowded with merchants, finding at the foot of the commercial intelligence and quotations of the Bourse, printed in French and Italian, eight mournful little verses all about zephyrs and stars and sighs. Unhappy poet! it seemed as though I could see you before me, buried beneath huge piles of merchandise, composing those verses with your last breath.

The Theatres.

Any one who is blessed with a pretty strong stomach can pass his evenings while at Constantinople at the play: he may, moreover, choose among quite a number of almost equally wretched little theatres of various sorts, many of which are beer-gardens and wine-shops as well. At some one of these one can always find the Italian comedy, or rather a troupe of Italian actors, whose efforts frequently make one wish the whole arena could be converted into a vegetable market. The Turks, however, frequent by preference those theatres in which certain bare-necked, brazen-faced, painted French women sing light songs to the accompaniment of a wretched orchestra. One of these theatres was the Alhambra, situated in the Grande Rue de Pera: it consisted of a long apartment, always crowded to the utmost, and red with fezzes from stage to entrance. The nature of those songs, and the bold gestures which those intrepid ladies employed in order to make their meaning perfectly clear, no one could either imagine or credit unless indeed he had been to the Capellanes at Madrid. At anything especially coarse or impudent all those great fat Turks, seated in long lines, broke into loud roars of laughter, and then the habitual mask of dignity and reserve would drop from their faces, exposing the depths of their real nature and every secret of their grossly sensual lives. There is nothing that the Turk conceals so habitually and effectually as the sensual nature of his tastes and manner of life. He never appears in public accompanied by a woman, rarely looks at, and never speaks to, one, and considers it almost an insult to be inquired of concerning his wives. Judging merely by outside appearances, one would take this to be the most austere and straitlaced people in the world, but it is only in appearance. The same Turk who colors to the tips of his ears if one so much as asks if his wife is well, sends his boys, and his girls too, to listen to the coarse jests of Kara-gyuz, corrupting their minds before their senses are fairly awakened, while he himself is fully capable of abandoning the peaceful enjoyments of his own harem for such excesses as Bayezid the Thunderbolt set the first example of, and Mahmûd the Reformer was doubtless not the last to follow. And, indeed, were proof needed of the profound corruption which lurks beneath this mask of seeming austerity, one need go no farther than to that selfsame Kara-gyuz. It is a grotesque caricature of a middle-class Turk, a sort of ombra chinese, whose head, arms, and legs are made to accompany with appropriate gestures the developments of some extravagant burlesque having usually a love-intrigue for its plot. The marionette is worked behind a transparent curtain, and resembles a depraved Pulcinello, coarse, cynical, and cunning. Sensual as a satyr, foul-mouthed as a fishwife, he throws his audience into paroxysms of laughter and enthusiasm by every sort of indecent jest and extravagant gesture. Before the censorship curbed to some small extent the hitherto unbridled looseness of this performance, the figure was made to give visible proof of its corporeal resemblance to Priapus, and not infrequently upon this lofty and elevating point the whole plot hinged.

Turkish Cooking.

Wishing to investigate for myself the Turkish manner of cooking, I got my good friends of Pera to take me to a restaurant ad hoc where every kind of Turkish dish is to be had, from the most delicious delicacies of the Seraglio to camel’s meat prepared as the Arabians eat it, and horseflesh dressed according to the Turkoman fashion. Santoro ordered the breakfast, severely Turkish from the opening course to the fruit, and I, invoking the names of all those intrepid spirits who have faced death in the cause of science, conscientiously swallowed a part of each without so much as a groan. There were upward of twenty dishes, the Turks being a good deal like children in their liking to peck at a quantity of different kinds of food, rather than satisfy their appetite with a few solid dishes. Shepherds of the day before yesterday, they seem to disdain a simple table as though it were a trait of rustic niggardliness. I cannot give a clear account of each dish, many of them being now no more than a vague and sinister memory. I do, however, remember the kibab, which consisted of little scraps of mutton roasted on the coals, seasoned with a great deal of pepper and cloves, and served on two soft, greasy biscuits—a dish not to be named among the lesser sins. I can also recall vividly the odor of the pilav, the sine quâ non of a Turkish meal, consisting of rice and mutton, meaning to the Turk what maccaroni does to the Neapolitan or cuscussu to the Arab or puchero to the Spaniard. I have not forgotten either—and it is the sole pleasant memory connected with that repast—the rosh’ab, which is sipped with a spoon at the end of the meal: it is composed of raisins, plums, apples, cherries, and other fruits, cooked in water with a great deal of sugar, and flavored with essence of musk, citron, and rose-water. Then there were numberless other preparations of mutton and lamb, cut in small pieces and boiled until no flavor remained; fish swimming in oil; rice-balls wrapped in grape-leaves; sugar syrups; salads served in pastry; compôtes; conserves; sauces, flavored with every sort of aromatic herb—a list as long as the articles of the penal code for relapsed criminals; and finally the masterpiece of some Arabian pastry-cook, a huge dish of sweetmeats, among which were conspicuous a steamboat, a fierce-looking lion, and a sugar house with grated windows. When all was over I felt a good deal as though I had swallowed the contents of a pharmacist’s shop or assisted at one of those feasts which children prepare with powdered brickdust, chopped grass, and stale fruit—not unattractive-looking when seen at a distance. All the dishes are served rapidly, four or five at a time. The Turks dive into each with their fingers, the knife and spoon only, being in common use among them, and one drinking-goblet serves for the whole company, the waiter keeping it constantly filled with flavored water.

These customs, however, were not followed by the party who were breakfasting at the table adjoining ours. They were evidently Turks who valued their ease, even to the extent of poising their slippers upon the table: each had a plate to himself, and they plied their forks very skilfully, drinking liquors freely in despite of Mahomet. I observed, moreover, that they failed to kiss the bread before beginning to eat, as every good Mussulman should, and that more than one longing glance was sent in the direction of our bottles, although the muftis pronounce it a sin to so much as cast the eye upon a bottle of wine. There is, indeed, no doubt that this “father of abominations,” one drop of which is sufficient to bring down upon the head of the sinning Mussulman the “curses of every angel in heaven and earth,” gains new disciples among the Turks every day, and that nothing but the fear of public opinion prevents its open use. Were a thick cloud to descend upon Constantinople some day, and after an hour suddenly be lifted, I have little doubt that the sun would surprise fifty thousand Turks, each one in the act of lifting the bottle to his lips. In this, as in almost every other shortcoming of the Turks, it was the sultans who were the stone of stumbling and rock of offence. Singular to relate, it is that very dynasty which rules over a people among whom it is considered a sin in the sight of God to drink wine at all, which has produced more drunkards than any other line of rulers in Europe; so sweet is forbidden fruit even in the estimation of the “shadow of God upon earth.” It was, we are told, Bayezid I. who headed the long list of imperial tipplers, and here, as in the case of the first sin, woman was the temptress, the wife of this Bayezid, a daughter of the king of Servia, offering her husband his first glass of Tokay. Next Bayezid II. got intoxicated on Cypress and Schiraz wines; then the selfsame Suleiman I. who fired every ship in the port of Constantinople that was laden with wine, and poured molten lead down the throats of those who drank the forbidden liquor, himself died when drunk, shot by one of his own archers. Then comes Selim II., surnamed the messth (sot), whose debauches lasted three days, and during whose reign men of the law and men of religion drank openly. In vain did Muhammad III. thunder against this “abomination devised by Satan;” in vain did Ahmed I. close all the taverns and destroy every wine-press in Stambul; in vain did Murad IV. patrol the city accompanied by an executioner, who beheaded in his presence every unfortunate whose breath witnessed against him, while he himself, ferocious hypocrite that he was, staggered about the apartments of the seraglio like any common frequenter of the pothouse. Since his day the bottle, like some gay little black imp, has crept into the seraglio, lurks in the bazâr, hides beneath the pillow of the soldier, thrusts its little silver or purple neck from beneath the divan of the beauty, and, crossing the threshold of the very mosques themselves, has stained the yellow pages of the Koran with sacrilegious drops.