You cannot imagine how it shocked me when I first heard a French son paid his father for board, and that here in France for a meal received, a meal must be returned. Surely this is not the case in England?
Often have I tried to find a satisfactory explanation of this lack of hospitality in the French. I put it down first to the cost of living, then to the limited accommodation, then to the disobliging servants, but I have now come to the conclusion that it is one of their national characteristics, and it is useless to waste time trying to explain it.
Let us know as soon as possible when you are coming.
*****
After the description I have given you of our life in Smyrna you will understand how sorry we were to return to Constantinople. Even the delight of again seeing our parents could not console us. As soon as we were back again began the same monotony and perpetual dread, and the Hamidian régime made life more and more impossible.
Melek in Yashmak
The year that the Belgian anarchist tried to kill the Sultan Hamid, was certainly the worst I have ever spent. Even the Armenian Massacres, which were amongst the most haunting and horrible souvenirs of our youth, could not be compared with what we had then to bear. Arrests went on wholesale! Thousands were “suspect,” questioned, tortured perhaps. And when the real culprit had declared his guilt before the whole tribunal and had proved that it was he, and he alone, who had thrown the bomb, the poor prisoners were not released.
It was in the summer. Up till then in the country, a woman could go out in the evening, if she were accompanied, but this was at once prohibited; every Turkish boat which was not a fishing boat was stopped; in the streets all those who could not prove the reason for being out were arrested; no longer were visits to the Embassies possible, no longer could the ladies from the Embassies come to see us; no “white dinners,” no meeting of friends. There were police stationed before the doors, and we dared not play the piano for fear of appearing too gay, when our “Sovereign Lord’s” life had been in danger.