Of course no letters could be received from our Western friends. The foreign posts were searched through and through, and nearly all the movement of the daily life was at an end. One evening my sister and I went outside to look at the moonlit Bosphorus. Although accompanied by a male relative, three faithful guardians of the safety of our beloved Monarch stepped forward and asked for explanations as to why we were gazing at the sea. Not wishing to reply, we were asked to follow them to the nearest police station. My sister and I went in, leaving our relative to explain matters, and I can assure you that was the last time we dared to study moon effects. Never, I think, more than that evening, was I so decided to leave our country, come what might! Life was just one perpetual nightmare, and for a long time after, even now in security, I still dream of these days of terror.
I remember full well what importance was given to the French 1st of May riots. When I myself saw one of the strikers throw a stone which nearly blinded a doctor, called in haste to see a patient, and saw his motor stopped and broken to pieces and the chauffeur thrashed, I thought of the days of our Armenian massacres—the awful days of Hamidian carnage—and the 1st of May riots seemed to me a Revolution arranged to amuse little children.—Your affectionate
Zeyneb.
CHAPTER XIV
A STUDY IN CONTRASTS
Nice, March 1907.
There are habits, my dearest friend, which cannot be lost in the West any more than they can be acquired in the East. You know what a terrible task it is for a Turkish woman to write a letter—even a Turkish woman who pretends to be Western in many ways. Can you, who belong to a race which can quietly take a decision and act upon it, understand this fault of ours, which consists of always putting off till the morrow what should be done the same day? Thanks to this laziness, we Turks are where we are to-day. Some people call it kismet; you can find it in almost all our actions. Since we started, now a year ago, I have been expecting an answer to a letter sent the day after my arrival here. It will come; Allah knows when, but it will come.
But I am as bad as my friend, you will say. Three weeks ago I began this letter to you, and it is not finished yet, for all I am doing is so strange and curious, I feel I must let you know all about it.
It was at Monte Carlo that I first saw and heard the wonderful operas of Wagner. When I heard they were performing Rheingold, in spite of medical advice not to go into a theatre, I could not keep away. Since my childhood, I had longed to hear an orchestral interpretation of the works of this genius. I seemed to have a presentiment that it would be to me an incomparable revelation, and I was not disappointed.