Do you see now, dear Englishwoman, why we appreciated your discreet interest in us, and how we looked forward to a friendship with you who have understood so well, that there can be tears behind eyes that smile, that a daughter’s heart is not necessarily hard because she breaks away from the family circle, nor is one’s love for the Fatherland any the less great because one has left it forever? All this we feel you have understood, and again and again we thank you.—Your affectionate
Zeyneb.
Fontainebleau, Oct. 1906.
You ask me to give you my first impression of France (wrote Zeyneb), but it is not so much an impression of France, as the impression of being free, that I am going to write. What I would like to describe to you is the sensation of intense joy I felt as I stood for the first time before a window wide open that had neither lattice-work nor iron bars.
It was at Nice. We had just arrived from our terrible journey. We had gone from hotel to hotel, but no one would give us shelter even for a few hours. Was that Christian charity, to refuse a room because I was thought to be dying? I cannot understand this sentiment. A friend explained that a death in an hotel would keep other people away. Why should the Christians be so frightened of death?
I was too ill at the moment to take in our awful situation, and quite indifferent to the prospect of dying on the street. Useless it was, however, our going to any more hotels; it was waste of time and waste of breath, and I had none of either to spare. No one advised us, and no one seemed to care to help us, until, by the merest chance, my sister remembered our friends in Belgrade had given us a doctor’s address. We determined to find him if we possibly could. In half an hour’s time we found our doctor, who sent us at once to a sanatorium. There they could not say, “You are too ill to come in,” seeing illness was a qualification for admittance. But I shall not linger on those first moments in Europe: they were sad beyond words.
It must have been early when I awoke the next morning, to find the sun forcing its way through the white curtains, and flooding the whole room with gold. Ill as I was, the scene was so beautiful that I got out of bed and opened wide the window, and what was my surprise to find that there was no lattice-work between me and the blue sky, and the orange trees, and the hills of Nice covered with cypress and olives? The sanatorium garden was just one mass of flowers, and their sweet perfume filled the room. With my eyes I drank in the scene before me, the hills, and the sea, and the sky that never seemed to end.
A short while after, my sister came in. She also from her window had been watching at the same time as I. But no explanation was necessary. For the first time in our lives we could look freely into space—no veil, no iron bars. It was worth the price we had paid, just to have the joy of being before that open window. I sign myself in Turkish terms of affection.—Your carnation and your mouse,
Zeyneb.