Constantinople, v. 2 (of 2)

by Edmondo De Amicis

The sky was just beginning to grow light beyond the Asiatic hills; Stambul, momentarily disturbed by the report of fire, had sunk back into the solemn stillness of night, and banks and bridges were alike deserted. The entire Golden Horn seemed buried in slumber beneath a covering of light fog. Not a boat moved, not a bird fluttered, not a tree rustled, not a breath of wind could be heard. That huge city, blue, hazy, silent, veiled, seemed to be an atmospheric effect—a sudden cry, a burst of sunlight,—and it would tremble and vanish. Never had it appeared so aërial, so mysterious, so entirely to correspond to the magic city of the Eastern fairy-tale which the traveller comes upon unexpectedly, and on entering finds every one turned to stone, just as they were in the midst of their gay, busy lives when the spell of a wicked genie fell upon them. As we leaned over the bridge, gazing on the scene before us, the fire completely forgotten, we heard all at once, from across the water, a faint, uncertain noise as of persons calling aloud for help; then, as it drew nearer, shrill cries of “Allah! Allah! Allah!” echoing throughout the great empty space around us, and in a moment we beheld a noisy, evil-looking throng pouring toward us across the bridge.

“Tulumbadgi” (firemen), cried one of the bridge-guards, and we drew to one side and watched them as they rushed by, a horde of swarthy, half-naked savages with bare heads and hairy chests, streaming with perspiration, young and old, big and little, with faces of thieves and cutthroats, four of them bearing a small pump, that looked like a child’s bier, on their shoulders, while the rest were armed with long hooked poles, coils of rope, axes, and picks. On they rushed, uttering hoarse cries, panting for breath, with eyes dilated, streaming hair, grim, determined, their rags fluttering in the wind and poisoning the sweet morning air with the close, malodorous smell of wild beasts. Sweeping across the bridge, they finally disappeared in the Rue de Galata, whence fainter and fainter came the cry “Allah! Allah!” till at length profound silence reigned once more.

It is impossible to convey the impression made upon my mind by this unexpected and tumultuous irruption in the midst of the solemn, impressive calm of the sleeping city. In an instant’s luminous flash I saw distinctly portrayed before me scenes of barbarian invasions, of pillage, murder, and rape, which until then I had never been able to picture to my mind as actual events, and I asked myself if that could be the city that I was familiar with—if this really were the same bridge across which European ambassadors, ladies dressed in Parisian costumes, and venders of French newspapers were wont to cross by day. A moment later and the silence of the Golden Horn was once more broken by the same far-away cry, and another fierce, unruly, panting mob rushed by like a whirlwind, accompanied by the same tumult of hoarse shouts and sinister laughter, again followed by the mournful prolonged cry of “Allah! Allah!” which, dying out, left us once more silent and alone. Not long after another mob, with all the now familiar accompaniments, poured by, and still another, then two more, and finally the madman of Pera, stark naked and half dead with cold, rending the air with his piercing shrieks, and followed, as usual, by a crowd of Turkish ragamuffins. They, like the firemen, were swallowed up in the dark openings of the streets on the Frankish shore, and again profound silence fell upon the mighty city, now gilded by the first rays of morning.

Before long the sun rose, and simultaneously with it the muezzins appeared upon the various minarets; then the käiks started into life, the harbor awoke; people began to cross the bridge, and soon we could hear on all sides the dull roar of the city’s daily life as we slowly retraced our steps toward Pera. But so deep was the impression made upon us by that sight—the sleeping city, the whitening heavens, the savage hordes—that to this day we never meet without recalling it, and always with the selfsame thrill, half of wonder, half of fear, as though we had seen in a vision the Stambul of other days or dreamed it while under the mystic influence of hascisc.

And so I missed seeing a fire in Constantinople, but if I did not actually see the one that destroyed Pera in 1870, I have heard it described so often by eye-witnesses, and have collected such full and accurate details, that I may be said to have seen it with the eyes of my mind, and, it may be, can give as correct an account of what took place as though I had really been present in the flesh.

Turkish Firemen.

The fire started in a little house in the Rue Feridee in Pera on the fifth day of June—that is, in the season when the greater part of the well-to-do population of Pera is out of town, spending the summer in their country-houses on the Bosphorus—and at one o’clock, just when the entire community, European as well, is shut up in-doors taking the mid-day siesta. The only occupant of the house in the Rue Feridee was an old female servant—the family having that very day gone to the country—who, as soon as she discovered the fire, rushed into the street and began to run, yelling “Fire!” at the top of her lungs. People at once poured out of the neighboring houses with buckets and little hand-pumps, the idiotic law prohibiting persons from extinguishing a fire until the Serasker officials have arrived upon the scene having already fallen into disuse, and flew of course to the nearest fountain to have them filled. Now, the Pera fountains are only open at certain hours of the day, when the water-carriers who draw the supply for the families of the vicinity can have access to them; once the distribution is over, they are closed and locked, the keys being placed in charge of an official with orders not to give them up “except on receipt of a notice from the authorities.” At this very moment there lounged beside this particular fountain a member of the Turkish municipal guard of Pera, with the keys in his pocket, looking impassively on at the fire; the crowd surrounded him, imploring him in excited tones to unlock the fountain; but this he flatly refused to do, on the ground that he had received no orders to that effect. They pressed closer, grew threatening, and finally laid forcible hands upon him, on which he resisted, defending himself to the best of his ability and declaring that they should never get the key from him alive. In the mean time the flames had made great headway; the original house was completely destroyed, and those next to it were burning merrily. News of the fire had spread rapidly from quarter to quarter; the watchmen on the summits of the Galata and Serasker towers had hoisted the red balloons used in the day-time as fire-signals. All the city guards were running through the streets, striking the pavement with their long staves and raising the dreaded cry, “Yanghen Vahr!” (There is a fire), in response to which was heard the hollow beating of a thousand drums as all the barracks took the alarm. Then three guns fired from Topkhâneh announced the news to every quarter of the great city, from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmora, and at that sound the Seraskerat, the Seraglio, the foreign embassies, all Pera, all Galata, were thrown into an uproar, and in a short space of time the minister of war, accompanied by a crowd of officials, appeared in the Rue Feridee, shortly followed by a troop of firemen eager for the fray. But, as is almost always the case, their first efforts proved wholly unavailing. The narrowness of the streets interfered with their movements; the pumps would not work; the water-supply was both insufficient and distant, while the undisciplined rabble of firemen found it more to their interest to add to rather than allay the general disorder, under cover of which they were able to appropriate many stray pieces of property; and in addition to everything else it was found that an Armenian festival, which was being celebrated at Beikos, had drawn almost all the porters thither, so that hardly any were to be found to transport the contents of the burning houses to places of safety. It must be borne in mind that wooden houses were much more generally the rule then in Constantinople than at present, even those whose walls were of stone or brick being surmounted by a flimsy roof but seldom protected by tiles, and consequently very easily ignited. On this occasion there was not even the advantage of a population of Mussulmans; apathetic and fatalistic as they are, even fire does not arouse them to any great excitement, and consequently, although of little or no help so far as putting it out is concerned, they at least do not interfere by their own ill-directed efforts with what is being done by others. Here the people were almost all Christians, who immediately lost their heads: hardly had the fire spread beyond the first few houses when the entire neighborhood became a scene of the wildest, most indescribable confusion: furniture was thrown recklessly out of upper windows; shrieks and lamentations rent the air; streets were blocked up, and a general state of panic ensued, upon which neither threats nor force availed to make the smallest impression. Hardly one hour had elapsed from the time when the fire first broke out before the Rue Feridee was in flames from one end to the other. Officials and firemen beat a hasty retreat in all directions, sometimes abandoning the bodies of the dead and injured in their flight, and all hope vanished of stamping the fire out at its birth. Most unfortunately, a high wind was blowing, and this carried the flames from the burning buildings in horizontal sheets across the roofs of the neighboring houses, like flapping tents of fire, so that they all caught from above as though a volcano were being discharged upon them. In this way the conflagration spread with fearful rapidity, and many families who were still assembled in their homes, feeling that they were perfectly secure for some time yet, and would be able to remove at least a part of their belongings, were first made aware of their danger by having the roof fall in, and barely had time to escape with their lives. House after house caught as though smeared with pitch, and instantly out of each of the innumerable little windows there poured a torrent of flame, long winding sheets, curling and swaying from side to side like great fiery serpents hungry for their prey, reaching down and licking the very stones as though in search of human victims. The fire did not seem to run, but rather fly, and, instead of enveloping the objects in its path, flowed over them like an angry tide. From the Rue Feridee it swept furiously down the Rue Tarla-Bashi, then turned back to pour like a torrent through the Rue de Misc and enfold the entire quarter of Agha-Dgiami as though it had been a forest of dead trees; then the Rue Sakes-Agatshe, then that of Kalindgi-Kuluk, and then street after street with terrifying rapidity until the entire incline of Yeni-Sheir was wrapped in flames; and these met and mingled with the blazing whirlwind which swept, roaring and bellowing, down the Grande Rue de Pera. It was not even as though there had been a thousand disconnected fires to extinguish, a thousand disorganized enemies to vanquish, but rather as though each fresh conflagration were the well-aimed stroke of some master mind controlling and directing all his forces, and having no less object in view than the destruction of the entire city, not one corner of which was to be allowed to escape. The narrow streets were like so many streams of lava, which would meet and swell into rivers or suddenly spread out into fiery lakes, utterly incapable of being stopped or controlled by any one. At the end of three hours half of Pera was in flames; a thousand columns of smoke, red, blue, white, and black, swept over the houses, lightly grazing the roofs, and extending as far as the eye could reach along the hillsides, obscuring and transforming with sinister effect the vast outskirts on the Golden Horn. In all directions could be seen furious whirlwinds of cinders and sparks, while against the houses still standing in the lower quarters of the city the wind beat showers of sparks and bits of charred wood, blowing them about like so much hail. In the burning quarters the streets were simply nothing less than huge furnaces, covered on top with a thick awning of solid flame, and constantly fed with pine wood from the Black Sea used for beams, the light inflammable rafters of ciardak, balconies and wooden minarets from the smaller mosques, all of which, falling in with a crackling, splintering noise, sounded as though they were being torn in pieces by an earthquake. Down those streets which were still passable flying forms were seen of mounted lancers, illuminated by what might have been the light of the infernal regions, as they galloped furiously in all directions, carrying the orders of the Seraskerat; Seraglio officials with bare heads and faces blackened with smoke; stray horses whose riders had met with some accident; files of porters laden with all manner of household goods; troops of howling dogs; gangs of homeless fugitives stumbling and falling in their mad flight down the steep inclines, blindly treading down the dead and injured, scaling the heaps of débris, and disappearing finally amid fire and smoke like legions of the damned. Once, at the opening of a burning street, the mounted figure of Sultan Abdul-Aziz appeared for an instant, surrounded by his court, pale as a ghost, staring with dilated eyes at the flames, as though repeating to himself the memorable words of Selim I.: “This is the fiery breath of my victims destined to consume my capital, my seraglio, my very self!” A moment later he had disappeared amid a cloud of smoke and cinders, followed by his courtiers.

Water Seller.