CHAPTER II
ZEYNEB’S GIRLHOOD
Fontainebleau, Sept. 1906.
When I was quite young I loved to read the history of my country told in the Arabian Nights style. The stories are so vivid and picturesque, that even to-day, I remember the impression my readings made on me. [Alas! the profession of conteur or raconteur is one which has been left behind in the march of time.] Formerly every Pasha had a conteur, who dwelt in the house, and friends were invited from all around to come and listen to his Arabian Nights stories. The tales that were most appreciated were those which touched on tragic events. But the stories contained also a certain amount of moral reflection, and were told in a style which, if ever I write, I will try to adopt. The sentences are long, but the rhythm of the well-chosen language is so perfect that it is almost like a song.
What a powerful imagination had these men! And how their stories delighted me! There were stories of Sultans who poisoned, Ministers who were strangled, Palace intrigues which ended in bloodshed, and descriptions of battles where conqueror and conquered were both crowned with the laurels of a hero. But I never for a moment thought of these tales but as fiction! Could the history of any country be so awful! Yet was not the story of the reign in which I was living even worse, only I was too young to know it? Were not the awful Armenian massacres more dreadful than anything the conteurs had ever described? Was not the bare awful truth around us more ghastly than any fiction? Indeed, it was.
How can I impress upon your mind the anguish of our everyday life; our continual and haunting dread of what was coming; no one could imagine what it means except those Turkish women who, like ourselves, have experienced that life.
Had we possessed the blind fatalism of our grandmothers, we should probably have suffered less, but with culture, as so often happens, we began to doubt the wisdom of the Faith which should have been our consolation.
A Turkish Child with a Slave
Until a Turkish girl is veiled, she leads the life of an ordinary European child. She even goes to Embassy balls. This is a great mistake, as it gives her a taste for a life which after she is veiled must cease.