The word harem comes from the Arabic “Maharem,” which means “sacred or forbidden,” and no Oriental word has been more misunderstood. It does not mean a collection of wives; it is simply applied to those rooms in a Turkish house exclusively reserved for the use of the women. Only a blood relation may come there to visit the lady of the house, and in many cases even cousins are not admitted. There is as much sense in asking an Englishman if he has a boudoir as in asking a Turk if he has a harem; and to think that when I stayed in Turkey, our afternoon’s impropriety consisted of looking through the latticed windows! The first Bey who passed was to be for me, the second for Fathma, and the third for Selma; this was one of our favourite games in the harem. One day I remember in the country we waited an hour for my Bey to pass, and after all he was not a Bey, but a fat old man carrying water.
The time has not yet come for the Turkish woman to vindicate her right to freedom; it cannot come by a mere change of law, and it is a cruelty on the part of Europeans to encourage them to adopt Western habits which are a part of a general system derived from a totally different process of evolution.
In the development of modern Turkey, the Turkish woman has already played a great part, and she has a great part still to play in the creation of a new civilisation; but present experience has shown that no servile imitation of the West will redeem Turkey from the evils of centuries of patriarchal servitude.
*****
By a strange irony of fate, it was at Fontainebleau that I first made the acquaintance of Pierre Loti’s heroines. To me every inch of Fontainebleau was instinct with memories of happiness and liberty. It was here that Francis I. practised a magnificence which dazzled Europe; here, too, is the wonderful wide forest of trees which are still there to listen to the same old story.... From a Turkish harem to Fontainebleau. What a change indeed!
The two sisters were sitting on the verandah of their villa when I arrived. Zeyneb had been at death’s door; she looked as if she were there still.
“Why did you not come to lunch?” asked Melek.
“I was not invited,” I answered.
“Well, you might have come all the same.”