He told me that almost immediately after their marriage (about a year and a half ago, when she was only seventeen), they had “escaped” to Rhodes, and it was only too likely their brief experience of home—such as war had left them—would be once more cruelly interrupted. She, unfortunately, did not speak French, but I could easily read in her large, pathetic, dark eyes the excuses she strove to offer for what would never have struck me as “inadequate” hospitality.
I tried to convey my deep sympathy to her husband. “You seem like a couple of dear children,” I said, “just eager to make us all happy.”
“Every Turk,” he replied gravely, “must marry young. The country needs children.”
M. Kemal Pasha entirely confirmed the curious impressions that this household could not fail to produce on any visitor from Europe. It almost made one think of Turkey as the social Antipodes. In England so many women are now doing men’s work, in addition to their own. Here we see men working for both sexes. I have no doubt the sweet little lady had “prepared” everything in advance, but when we arrived, she felt it becoming to disappear! It was our host, again, whom I had surprised in the midst of his ministrations for a most excellent lunch!
The afternoon was spent in driving about the pillaged city, visiting our host’s carpet-factory and a number of weaving-looms in private houses. It is a privilege, indeed, to see all these treasures of beauty shaping before one’s eyes. It must, I think, be a great relief for the “tired in mind” to “get busy” about mechanical work. One’s fingers soon turn into machines, weaving the wool in and out of the frame, cutting the pile, the whole process of creating those wonderful Eastern “floorings” we all admire. The making of even “high art” goods must rest the nerves, like the “perpetual motion” of my Scotch mother’s knitting needles!
In the distance the cemetery looked like a large field, glaring with poppies and cornflowers that it was puzzling to find so late in this cold climate. As we approached, however, the picturesque scene proved to come from dyed wool left to dry on the tombstones, which were, themselves, of a turban-like shape.
In the market we were astonished to find how quickly trade had recovered, almost to pre-war activity, since my last visit. Somehow they have discovered tools and wood to patch up booths for the old business.
I told my companions I “hoped the people would soon be given material to rebuild the whole town, that Europe would send money in admiring recognition of their ‘already proven’ ability to help themselves.”
It seemed almost a “confessional” for me, as the officers and municipal authorities, the deputies and the hodjas, plied me with question after question, because they knew I would tell them all I could, and speak the truth!
They brought me photographs—of cities in ruins, of mutilated and disfigured human beings!—unfortunately too primitive for reproduction, but no less invaluable as documentary evidence, almost too ghastly for man to “look on and live”!