"Certainly, many things, as for instance, cherry water, lemonade, almond water. A cup of Turkish coffee or a piece of loukoumi with a glass of cold spring water, are also good things to quench the thirst."
You decide upon cherry water, an excellent drink made from stirring a quantity of preserved sour cherries into a glass of cold water, and mine host returns to his narghile.
The kaleidoscope keeps turning, presenting new combinations, new colors, new effects. At times the whole square is crowded, and again the mass of humanity breaks up and drifts away, as sometimes happens to a dense cloud. Then some grotesque or sublime figure or group of figures is sure to straggle across the rift. You sip your cooling drink and look up. There go two Greek priests, in flowing dark robes and high, black hats. They are tall men with red, swarthy cheeks and luxuriant beards. They wear their hair long, neatly done up in Psyche knots. They walk with dignified strides, their hands crossed upon their stomachs and hidden in voluminous sleeves. They both carry strings of large beads of polished wood. The crowd closes in behind them, to open out again good-naturedly, as a Cretan in soft red fez, shirt sleeves, blue breeches with a seat that drags upon the ground and high, yellow boots, swings a long crook to right and left and shouts frantically to his flock of scurrying turkeys. The birds dart in and out among the throng with an action that reminds one of a woman lifting her skirts and stepping through the mud. He is assisted by a boy of ten, an exact reproduction of himself in miniature.
A priest of Islam passes; he, too, in a graceful robe that falls to the ground from his shoulders. A thick turban encircles his brow. He is tall and slender one moment, corpulent the next, according as the wind inflates his robe or escapes and allows it to collapse.
What a feast of color! And you notice that somehow these changing combinations always result in harmonies. One feels the same effect as though he were listening to a clash of barbarous instruments in a sweet, wild melody of the desert.
There goes a chocolate-colored Nubian, in a terra cotta tunic, carrying a shining copper kettle under each arm. His glistening feet and legs are bare.
That bronze-skinned Arab yonder in the white turban must be a very old man, for his beard and hair are as white as the wool on a sheep that is newly washed and ready for the shearer; yet he is straight and lithe as a figure on a French clock, and his skin is exactly the same color. He wears a bright red sash about his waist and walks with a staff as tall as himself. Red fezzes everywhere and turbans of all bright hues.
But we must have another cherry water—vicinada—and move into the shade.
Now, who are these somber-looking creatures, coming across the square? If there were any such thing on earth they would be agents of the Spanish Inquisition. But that horror does not exist even in Turkey. Through the warm yellow sun they move, slowly, silently, muffled all in black, with black umbrellas above their heads—shapeless, sepulchral figures. On the black veil that covers each face are painted white eyes, a nose and a mouth; or a palm tree or other device. They stroll by us talking in whispers, but a silvery girlish laugh, stifled almost in its birth, betrays them. Ah, sweet demons, we know you now! These are nuns of love, houris of the harem. Who knows what sweet faces, merry eyes, red lips, warm and yielding forms masquerade in those forbidding garments? We know you now; not all the disguises ever invented by fanaticism and jealousy can cover the roguish features of love. That one little, stifled laugh conjured up more poetry and romance than could be read in a summer's holiday—the Arabian Nights, Don Juan, and the vision of Dudu; the song of the bulbul in old gardens, dangerous trystings in the shadow of the cypress trees; Tom Moore in a city office, dreaming of camel bells and the minarets of Ispahan.
Donkeys. Out from under the low stone arches they come, or down the straggling narrow street, slipping and staggering over the greasy cobblestones, yet never falling. There is one driven by a Cretan boy, another by a jet black Nubian, with thick lips and shell-white teeth, another by a shuffling Greek monk in dirty robe. Each in his own outlandish way curses and threatens his animal, but the stick falls with the same rattling thwack on the bony ribs, whether wielded by Christian or Turk. Look at the loads which the donkeys bear in their immense, squeaking baskets, and you will gain some idea of the fertility of this garden spot of the world, harried though it be by oppression and bloodshed. We see borne by or arranged in heaps yonder on the pavement, great quantities of cucumbers, artichokes, beans, cauliflower, garlic, tomatoes, courgets, eggplant, medlars, apricots, cherries, and those various wild greens which are so delicious, but which cannot be bought in the cities of America for love or money. If you ask the price of any of these crisp, tender vegetables or fruits dewy fresh, you will find that one penny will go as far as twenty-five would among the stale, withered and niggardly exhibits of Chicago—the emporium of the great Mississippi valley and the hub of a hundred railroads. But there is no cabbage trust in Crete, and the donkey route has no board of directors to fix the price of freight.