A WALK WITH PIERRE LOTI IN A WESTERN CEMETERY
Yesterday afternoon, accompanied by M. Pierre Loti, we visited the cemetery of Birreyatou. Its likeness to Turkey attracted us at once, for all that is Eastern has a peculiar fascination for Loti. There were the same cypress trees and plants that grow in our cemeteries, and the tombs were cared for in a manner which is quite unusual in Western Europe.
To go for a walk in a burial-ground I know is exclusively an Eastern form of amusement. But wait till you have seen our cemeteries and compared them with your own, then you will understand better this taste of ours. Oh, the impression of loneliness and horror I felt when I first saw a Western cemetery! It was Père La Chaise, the most important of them all. I went there to steal a leaf from the famous weeping willow on Musset’s grave, and to my great surprise I found by the Master’s tomb, amongst other tokens of respect, a Russian girl’s visiting card with the corner turned down. But this was an exception. How you Western people neglect your dead!
I could not for a long time explain to myself this fear of death, but since I have seen here the painful scenes connected with it—the terror of Extreme Unction,[18] the visit of the relatives to the dead body, the funeral pomp, the hideous black decorations on the horses’ heads, and last but not least the heart-rending mourning—I, too, am terrified.
We, like the Buddhists, have no mourning. The Angel of Death takes our dear ones from us to a happier place, and night and morning we pray for them. The coffin is carried out on men’s shoulders in the simplest manner possible, and the relatives in the afternoon take their embroidery and keep the dear ones company. It is as if they were being watched in their sleep, and they are very, very near.
Zeyneb in her Western Drawing Room
She is playing the oute, or Turkish guitar, which is played with a feather. Although Turkish women are now good pianists and fond of Western music, they generally like to play the oute at least once a day.
Yet here in the West what a difference! I shudder at the thought that some day I might have to rest in one of these untidy waste heaps, and that idea has been preying on my mind so that I have actually written to my father and begged him, should I die in Paris, to have me taken home and buried in a Turkish cemetery.