Our morning ablutions were usually made à la Turk: by having water poured upon the hands from a spouted vessel. Cleanliness is, with the Turk, perhaps, more than [pg 18]ourselves, the next thing to godliness. But his ideas are based upon a very different theory. Although he uses no soap for washing either his person or his clothes, yet he considers himself much cleaner than the giaour, for the reason that he uses running water exclusively, never allowing the same particles to touch him the second time. A Turk believes that all water is purified after running six feet. As a test of his faith we have often seen him lading up drinking-water from a stream where the women were washing clothes just a few yards above.
SCENE AT A GREEK INN.
As all cooking and eating had stopped at the sound of the morning cannon, we found great difficulty in gathering together even a cold breakfast of ekmek, yaourt, and raisins. Ekmek is a cooked bran-flour paste, which has the thinness, consistency, and almost the taste of blotting-paper. This is the Turkish peasant’s staff of life. He carries it with him everywhere; so did we. As it was made in huge circular sheets, we would often punch a hole in the middle, and slip it up over our arms. This we found the handiest and most serviceable mode of transportation, being handy to eat without removing our hands from the handle-bars, and also answering the purpose of sails in case of a favoring wind. Yaourt, another almost universal food, is milk curdled with rennet. This, as well as all foods that are not liquid, they scoop up with a roll of ekmek, a part of the scoop being taken with every mouthful. Raisins here, as well as in many other parts of the country, are very cheap. We paid two piasters (about nine cents) for an oche (two and a half pounds), but we soon made the discovery that a Turkish oche contained a great many “stones”—which of course was purely accidental. Eggs, also, we found exceedingly cheap. On one occasion, twenty-five were set before us, in response to our call for eggs to the value of one piaster[pg 20]—four and a half cents. In Asiatic Turkey we had some extraordinary dishes served to us, including daintily prepared leeches. But the worst mixture, perhaps, was the “Bairam soup,” which contains over a dozen ingredients, including peas, prunes, walnuts, cherries, dates, white and black beans, apricots, cracked wheat, raisins, etc.—all mixed in cold water. Bairam is the period of feasting after the Ramadan fast.
EATING KAISERICHEN (EKMEK) OR BREAD.
On preparing to leave Kirshehr after our frugal breakfast we found that Turkish curiosity had extended even to the contents of our baggage, which fitted in the frames of the machines. There was nothing missing, however: [pg 21]and we did not lose so much as a button during our sojourn among them. Thieving is not one of their faults, but they take much latitude in helping themselves. Many a time an inn-keeper would “help us out” by disposing of one third of a chicken that we had paid him a high price to prepare.
When we were ready to start the chief of police cleared a riding space through the streets, which for an hour had been filled with people. As we passed among them they shouted “Oorooglar olsun” (“May good fortune attend you”). “Inshallah” (“If it please God”), we replied, and waved our helmets in acknowledgment.
GRINDING WHEAT.