Song of the Erzinjan Kurds.
The weather was not so fond of me as to clear up for the sake of keeping me, for as the day of decision approached it grew steadily worse, and it was in a driving storm of cold rain that I waded down to Galata and booked a passage by the Messageries Maritimes steamer to Beyrouth.
There were few arrangements to make; a passport I possessed; it was but necessary to provide myself with a document called a “tezkere i ubūrī,” a travelling passport in Turkish, issued by the police. So having obtained an order from the Consul, I found my way to a collection of huts, called the “Eski Zaptié,” in Stamboul, and after running from hovel to hovel in order to interview numerous effendis, whose duties apparently consisted of making marks upon the application form, I was suddenly presented with the document from an unsuspected corner of a dirty courtyard. The writer was absolutely unaware of my existence in the building, nevertheless I found myself described in Turkish as of medium height, dark-haired, and beardless, with black moustache, all fairly accurate—last and most, of the “Protestant” religion. I was to pass during most of my journey as a Muhammadan, and here I found at the outset all my plans checked by a Turkish clerk who described me in his fatuous passport as a Protestant. Naturally enough I protested, and vigorously, against the right of these omniscient police clerks to brand me as of any sect or creed; but they were mildly astonished at my objections, and could not be brought to see any point except that all Turks were Musulman, all Armenians “Kristiāan,” all French “Kātūlīk,” and all English and Americans “Purūtestān.” They but regarded these as the religious names of the nations, and could not conceive that an Englishman might be any one of the innumerable dissenting sects. That he could be a Catholic was too obviously absurd, and the increase of their contempt for my intelligence was most marked as I asserted the possibility. So the offending word had to stand, and I resolved secretly to erase or destroy it whenever necessary.
PASSPORT DIFFICULTIES
The day of departure was like the preceding months, rainy and cold, and I looked with pleasant anticipation upon the prospect of seeing in a few days the sunny hills of Syria. Our ship was the Saghalien, a comfortable and roomy old boat. The early spring season had brought with it the first of the tourists to Palestine. Arriving on board, I heard the first English that had fallen upon my ears since I had left London. The parties were incongruous enough. Four or five Roman Catholic priests escorted a company of pious “bourgeois” to the pilgrimage at Jerusalem, while another and much larger party of manufacturing folk of wealth and accent had been gathered from Leeds, Leicester, and a dozen other of the Midland towns of England. A second party had been formed by some imitator of Mr T. Cook, and included no less than six gentlemen of religious profession, each from a different sect of British dissenters. These were all provincial too. An American and his wife, a Turkish Pasha and his family and attendant effendis, and some unattached and inconsequent Germans and French, pretty well made up a full ship.
As I had to start wearing a fez sooner or later, I thought I might as well begin at once, and pass for a Persian going to Persia, which would excuse my ignorance of Turkish, which no other disguise I could have adopted would have been effectual in doing. In the guise of a native of a far land, and en route for places where the name “English” was hardly known, I felt strangely cut off from my fellow Europeans when I heard them talking about their tour, planning expeditions and journeys new—when they should have “done” Palestine and Egypt, and returned once more to their Midland towns—experienced Oriental travellers.
It is strange what a simple exchange of headgear can do. Here was I, by the mere fact of wearing a fez, isolated, looked down upon by types one would pass unnoticed in London, audibly commented upon as “quite a civilised-looking Turk,” exciting wonder as to “’ow many wives ’e’s got,” and such traditionally Oriental questions. The ignorance of these people was wonderful and colossal. We sighted, I remember, Mitylene one morning, and all the force of parsons and tourists hung over the rail with guide-books and glasses, disputed whether the high land was Chios or Rhodes, oblivious of the big chart on the top of the saloon stairs, where our position could be reckoned on the route line at the expense of two minutes’ thought. They certainly appreciated the beauties of the glorious archipelago through which we passed, not too quickly, and faithfully enough raised enthusiasm in the places the guide-books recommended. Rhodes, when we did get there, and they were certain it was not Cyprus, created great excitement among them, the controversy anent the Colossus and his legs was heated enough to keep the subject alive quite two hours after the island had disappeared beneath the blue horizon, “quite as blue as the sea at Blackpool,” as one Manchester man affirmed, in a spirit of rash generosity.
Before we had been two days at sea, I was drawn into uttering some words of English in a moment of thoughtlessness, and that to a very hearty individual from Newcastle. He trod heavily upon my feet, and as I quite involuntarily replied to his apology with an English phrase, he looked at me in the most utter astonishment, ejaculated, “Great ’eavens, you speak English.”
MY DISGUISE SUCCEEDS
“Yes,” I said, “I was brought up in England.”