So I rose from my bed and looked through my latticed windows at the beautiful Bosphorus, so calm and still, whilst my very soul was being torn with anguish. But what is that noise? What is that dim light slowly sailing up the Bosphorus? My heart begins to beat quickly, I try to call out, my voice chokes me. The caïque has stopped at our Yali.
Now I know what it is. Four discreet taps at my father’s window, and his answer “I am coming.” Like a physician called to a dying patient, he dresses and hastily leaves the house. It is three o’clock in the morning à la Franque,[3] but his master is not sleeping. Away yonder, in his fortress of Yildiz, the dreaded Sultan trembles even more than I. What does he want with my father? Will he be pacified this time as he has often been before? What if my father should have incurred the wrath of this terrible Sultan? The caïque moves away as silently as it came. Will my beloved father ever return? There is nothing to do but to go on waiting, waiting.
*****
Let us change the scene. A Turkish official has arrived at our house, he has dared to come as far as the very door of the harem. He is speaking to my mother.
“I am only doing my duty in seeing if your husband is here? I have every right to go up those harem stairs which you are guarding so carefully, look in all your rooms and cupboards. My duty is to find out where your husband is, and to report to his Majesty at once.”
This little incident may sound insignificant to you, yet what a tragedy to us! What was to happen to the bread-winner of our family? What had my beloved father done?
The explanation of it was simple enough. A certain Pasha had maligned him to the Sultan in a most disgraceful manner. And the Sultan might have believed it, had he not, by the merest chance, discovered that my father was at the Palace when the Pasha so emphatically said he was elsewhere. On such slender evidence, the fate of our family was to be weighed! Would it mean exile for our father? Would we ever see him any more? Again I say, there was nothing to do but wait.
*****
As we told you on Sunday, we Turkish women read a great deal of foreign literature, and this does not tend to make us any more satisfied with our lot.
Amongst my favourite English books were Beatrice Harraden’s Ships that Pass in the Night,[4] passages of which I know by heart, and Lady Mary Montagu’s Letters. Over and over again, and always with fresh interest, I read those charming and clever letters. Although they are the letters of another century, there is nothing in them to shock or surprise a Turkish woman of to-day in their criticism of our life. It is curious to notice, when reading Lady Mary’s Letters, how little the Turkey of to-day differs from the Turkey of her time; only, Turkey, the child that Lady Mary knew, has grown into a big person.