This is the main disastrous result of fatalism: it has destroyed the vigor of a once powerful nation. But every day brings forth instances of lesser evils flowing from the same source. It is hardly necessary to point out in how many ways a fatalist injures himself and all belonging to him. One or two common cases will be enough. I have already referred to the neglect of all sanitary precautions as one of the results of the belief in kismet. This neglect is shown in a thousand ways; but one or two instances that I remember may point the moral. Turkey is especially liable to epidemics, and of course the havoc they create is terrible among a passive population. In all district towns the Turks manifest the greatest possible dislike and opposition to every species of quarantine: they regard quarantine regulations as profane interference with the decrees of God, and systematically disregard them. The doctor of the first quarantine establishment at Broussa was assaulted in the street by several hundred Turkish women, who beat him nearly to death, from which he was only saved by the police. Small-pox is among the most fatal of the scourges that invade the people, and Turkish children are frequently victims to it; yet it is with the utmost difficulty that a Turk can be induced to vaccinate his child, though, happily, the precaution is now more practised than it used to be.
Separation in sickness is another of the measures Turks can never be made to take. A short time ago a girl of fourteen, the daughter of our kavass, was seized with an attack of quinsy. As soon as I heard of it I begged our doctor to accompany me to the Mohammedan quarter and visit the invalid. We found her lying on a clean shelté, or mattress, on the floor, which was equally occupied by her young brothers and sisters, who were playing round and trying to amuse her. The doctor’s first care was to send away the children, and recommend that they should on no account be allowed to come near her, as her throat was in a most terrible condition. Both parents declared that it would be impossible to keep them away; besides, if it was their kismet to be also visited by the disease, nothing could avert it. The room occupied by the sick girl was clean and tidy; the doors and windows, facing the sea, fronted by a veranda, were open, and the house being situated in the highest part of the town, under the ruins of the old walls, the sharp April air was allowed free access to the chamber most injuriously to the invalid. On the attention of the parents being drawn to the fact, they simply answered that the feverish state of the child needed the cool air to such an extent that twice during the preceding night she had left her room and gone down to the yard to repose upon the cold stone slabs in order to cool herself!
In spite of every effort to save her, she died on the third night from exhaustion caused by her refusal to take the medicines and nourishment provided for her, and to be kept in her chamber, which she had abandoned, taking up her quarters on the balcony, where we saw her on the last day. On visiting the family after the sad event, we found the unhappy parents distracted with sorrow, but still accepting it with fatalistic resignation, saying that “her edjel had come to call her away from among the living.”
Our attention was next attracted by three of the children. The youngest, a baby, appeared choking from the effects of the same complaint, and died the same night. The other two, a boy and girl, also attacked, were playing about, although in high fever and with dreadfully swollen throats. The doctor begged that they should be sent to bed, to which they both refused to submit, while the parents phlegmatically said that it would be a useless measure, as they could not be kept there, and that if it should be their kismet to recover they would do so. I am glad to say they did recover, though I am afraid their recovery did not convert the doctor and me to a belief in kismet.
Owing to this fatal and general way of treating sickness, the prescriptions of physicians, neither believed in nor carried out, are useless; besides, they are always interfered with and disputed by quacks and old women, and the muskas, prayers, and blowings of saintly Hodjas.
When the patient survives this extraordinary combination of nursing, it is simply stated that his edjel or death-summons has not yet arrived.
If a man die away from his home and country, his kismet is supposed to have summoned him to die on the spot that received his body.
Kismet thus being the main fountain whence the Mohammedan draws with equanimity both the good and the evil it may please Providence to pour forth upon him, he receives both with the stoicism of the born-and-bred fatalist, who looks upon every effort of his own to change the decrees of destiny as vain and futile. Hence he becomes Moslem, or “resigned,” in the most literal sense. His character gains that quality of inertness which we associate with the Oriental, and his nation becomes, what a nation cannot become and live—stagnant.
CHAPTER XXII.
CHRISTIANITY IN TURKEY.
The Greek or Holy Orthodox Church—Its Character under Ottoman Rule—Its Service to the Greek Nation—Superstitious Doctrines and Rites—Improvement—Revenues—Bishops—Patriarchs—The Higher Clergy—Schools—Parish Priests—Fatal Influence of Connection with the State—Monasteries—Mount Athos—The Five Categories of Monks—Government of the “Holy Mountain”—Pilgrims—The Bulgarian Church—Popular Interest in the Church Question—Sketch of the History of the Schism—The Armenian Church—St. Gregory—Creed—Church Polity—influence of Russia—Contest between the Czar and the Catholicos—Ritual—Clergy.