Could these Turkish girls be blamed for thus unknowingly destroying their own happiness? What was there to do but read? When all the recognised methods of enjoyment are removed, and when few visits are paid (and to go out every day is not considered ladylike), think what an enormous part of the day is still left unoccupied.
In our grandmothers’ days, the women used to assemble in the evening and make those beautiful embroideries which you admire so much. Others made their daughters’ trousseaux, others told stories in the Arabian Nights style, and with that existence they were content. Not one of them wanted to read the fashionable French novels, nor had they any desire to play the piano.
It was at the beginning of the reign of Abdul Hamid that this craze for Western culture was at its height. The terrible war, and the fall of the two beloved Sultans, woke the women from their dreams. Before the fact that their country was in danger, they understood their duty. From odalisques[15] they became mothers and wives determined to give their children the education they themselves had so badly needed.
The new monarch then endowed the Ottoman Empire with schools for little girls. The pupils who applied themselves learnt very quickly, and soon they could favourably be compared with their sisters of the West.
This was the first step that Turkish women had made towards their evolution.
*****
At the age of ten, when I began the study of English, we were learning at the same time French, Arabic, and Persian, as well as Turkish. Not one of these languages is easy, but no one complained, and every educated Turkish girl had to undergo the same torture.
What I disliked most bitterly in my school days was the awful regularity. My mother, rather the exception than the rule, found we must be always occupied. As a child of twelve, I sat almost whole days at the piano, and when I was exhausted, Mdlle. X. was told to give me needlework. Delighted to be rid of me, she gave me slippers to work for my father, whilst she wrote to “Mon cher Henri.” She took no notice of me, as I stitched away, sighing all the while. In order to get finished quickly, I applied myself to my task; the more I hurried, the more I was given to do, and in a few weeks the drawers were full of my work. Our education was overdone.
*****
So we Turkish women came to a period of our existence when it was useless to sigh for a mind that could content itself with the embroidery evenings of our grandmothers. These gatherings, too, became less and less frequent, for women were not allowed out after dark, no matter what their age.