The Balkan Trail

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

Though the revolution had not yet occurred, and the peasant population was still engaged in peaceful pursuits, the country swarmed with soldiers. Cavalry and infantry patrols, Turks, Albanians, and Asiatics, passed us by. Occasionally we met a guard with handcuffed prisoners, Bulgarians and sometimes Albanians. Now and then a member of our escort would meet a long-lost friend, and the old comrades would drop from their horses and embrace each other, pressing cheeks first one side and then the other. We were yet an hour off from Prelip when the white tents about the town came into view. Soon we came to the cornfields. The corn was ripe and glowing under the slanting rays of the evening sun, and here and there red poppies had wandered in to stud the golden fields. Once the road led by a milk-white field, most innocent in appearance, but covered with the deadly blooms of opium. Many houses on the edge of the town, and some in the narrow streets, were hung from roof to ground with strings of tobacco leaves, changing colour in the sun.

When we entered Prelip the natives were gathered at their gates preparatory to withdrawing for the night. It was too late for Christians to follow, and the Turks are too dignified to do more than bestow a casual glance at any traveller. But in the morning our appearance caused a commotion in the town. Greeks left their shops, Bulgarians deserted the market-place, Vlachs followed us with their pack-animals, Jews and gypsies came after us, the one to sell, the other to beg of us; men, women, and children joined in our train. They followed us until we crossed a narrow street, at the other side of which only a few veiled women were visible; then the whole throng came to an abrupt stop.

‘What is the matter with the crowd?’ I asked one of our guards.

‘They are like the dogs,’ he replied; ‘they have their boundaries. At this street begins the Turkish quarter.’

We walked on through the quiet, clean, Turkish quarter and came upon a group of bashi-bazouks, who had been called into service as village guards, squatting by the roadway smoking. They were kind enough to rise and permit me to photograph them standing. This was rather an exceptional case; the Mohamedans generally resented my camera. A gypsy minstrel, a thing of shreds and patches, on his way to a wedding feast, protested that the Evil Eye would be upon him if I took his likeness, but I ‘snapped’ him while he argued. It would have been unkind to inform him.

TURKISH WEDDING FESTIVITIES.

We then followed the Tzigane to the wedding, of which, of course, we were permitted to witness only the street celebrations, those of the male side of the house. This took the form of an almost uninterrupted dance to the monotonous music of two reed flutes and two crude bass drums. The flutes had a range of about three shrill chords, and the drums had two notes apiece. With the right hand and a heavy stick the drummers beat a slow, steady boom, while with a lighter stick in the other hand they kept up a rapid tattoo. They played by ear, of course, and the strain of a single bar of music went for hours. Monotony is bliss to the Mohamedan. A long mixed line of men gave the dance. There were Turks with red fezzes, Albanians with white skull-caps, soldiers, and bashi-bazouks. The leader of the line, swinging a red handkerchief, led the way round a circle formed by the crowd and set the figures, which varied little more than the music. The dance was evidently copied from the Bulgarian horo. Sometimes the leader withdrew in favour of the second man, and now and then a man in the line would fall out, to have his place filled sooner or later. But on went the dizzy dance to the doleful sound all the afternoon.

My companion trounced a Greek barber at Prelip, and I had my hair cut by accident. We had begun to look like Bulgarian insurgents, with full crops of hair and unshaven faces, and, resolving here to abolish the dangerous likeness in so far as our beards were concerned, we repaired forthwith to the nearest barbers’. The Englishman chose a Greek barbershop, and was shaved by a man with a characteristic nose of large proportions. At the conclusion of the ordeal he inquired the price, and was told that he owed the sum of two piastres. He handed the Greek a mijidieh, which is worth nineteen piastres in Prelip, and received five piastres in change. At this the Englishman protested, and the Greek yielded up another small coin. But more than this no gentle persuasion could move him to give. Among the crowd which had gathered to see the ‘Frank’ shaved was one accommodating individual who spoke a garbled French. The Englishman enlisted his services to make known to the man with the nose that, unless he produced the proper change forthwith he would have his olfactory organ promptly and vigorously pulled. This had no effect, and the threat was put into execution, to the wonderment and increase of the crowd. But nobody protested, and the Greek produced another insignificant coin. Again the interpreter was employed, and again without result. So again the Englishman laid his hands on the Greek, and this time so ill-used the poor man that he handed the key to him and told him to help himself with piastres from the money drawer. The Englishman took the proper change and departed.

My experience was less thrilling, but the disfiguring was of me. I discovered a Turkish barbershop, consisting of a Turk and a towel, a cane-bottomed stool, and some utensils made in Austria. The shop occupied the narrow pavement with the dogs, out of the way of the pedestrians. After shaving me with a heavy weapon, the Turk held up a formidable pair of scissors by way of asking if I wished to have my hair cut. For the moment I forgot that a shake of the head in Turkey means ‘yes,’ and a nod means ‘no’—and I shook my head. I was rescued from the wall against which I had been reclining during the process of shaving, and straightened up for the purpose, I thought, of having my hair combed. But the Turk, with a single clip, took off a large bunch of hair, and left me, without alternative, to be barbered in the latest Prelip fashion.