AS I look back on those years of close intimacy with Turkish children, and our various discussions and squabbles, I cannot but feel thankful for opportunities denied most children. And I can see now that a great deal of the hatred which separates the different creeds and nationalities is inculcated in our hearts before we are capable of judging, by those who do their best to teach us brotherly love.
During the first year of our friendship, Djimlah and I played mostly alone. It is true that whenever other harems came to visit Djimlah’s, and brought along girls of our age, we had to accept their presence—either with alacrity or reluctance, depending on what we had afoot. There were days when Djimlah and I were about to enact some chapter of “The Arabian Nights,” and then we little cared to be disturbed by outsiders; but oriental politeness forced Djimlah to play the hostess.
I rarely invited her to my house. First, because my mother positively objected to Turks;and secondly because I had so little to offer her. She would have to share my life, as I shared hers, and my life meant lessons, duties, and discipline; so I preferred to go to her, and on Saturday nights I usually slept there.
We were quite happy by ourselves, because we made a very good team. Though we both liked to be generals, we alternated the generalship. One time Djimlah led, the next she obeyed orders. Our generalship consisted in planning what sort of characters we were to be; and I am forced to confess that on the days of Djimlah’s generalship things moved much the best. Indeed I had to spend half my time as general in explaining to her the Greek mythology, in order that she might understand the characters we were to represent, while on her days I knew “The Arabian Nights” as well as she.
Before the year was over, we admitted to our circle a third, little Chakendé, whose father was a subaltern of Djimlah’s grandfather. Chakendé’s home was not far from ours, yet we met her first by accident, and ever so far away from home.
It was on a hot August evening, when I was spending the night with Djimlah. The heat was so great that even at seven o’clock the rooms were yet hot. The oldhanoumsaid it was not necessary for us to go to bed until it became cool, and we were playing in the garden. We were up in a tall tree; for I had taught Djimlah to climb—athing she took to much more naturally than learning Greek mythology. The tree was very tall, and its branches hung over the high garden wall which protected theharemlikfrom the world’s eyes.
Presently a little urchin came and stood in the street below. Like a bird about to sing, he threw his head back, and in a clear, loud voice half chanted:
“Bou axan kaïhri kavéshindé, ei karagiuzlar, kim istersin bouyour sun,” which meant, “This evening at the café of Kairi there is to be a good show of Punch and Judy, and who wishes to come is welcome.”
Having delivered his announcement, he walked a block farther on, and chanted it again. By the time he was out of ear-shot we had the words letter perfect, and began to chant it ourselves from the top of our tree. We were so pleased with our accomplishment that we scrambled down to earth and proceeded to deliver it before each of the groups of women lying on rugs in the immense garden, waiting for the heat to lessen.
Then, with the privilege of our age, we penetrated into theselamlik, the men’s quarters, and proceeded to the dining-room, where the old pasha, his sons, sons-in-law, and guests were dining. We mounted on the sofa, and hand in hand burst forth, imitating the street urchin as best we were able.
The men laughed till the tears came into their eyes; then the old pasha bade us come to him, and taking one of us on each knee, he asked:
“So the younghanoumswish to go, do they?”
“Go where?” we inquired.
“To the show of Punch and Judy.”
“Can we?” we cried simultaneously.
“I believe so,” the grandfather replied.
“Go now—this minute?”
The old man nodded.
It was a case of speechless delight with us. The old pasha turned to his company. “I am going to take the littlehanoumsto the show, and who wishes to come is welcome.”
We dashed back to theharemlikand made ready in the greatest excitement. Our excitement was shared by all the women. They came in to see us made ready, and told us to be sure to remember everything in the show to repeat to them.
The show was given in a common garden café, such as the small bureaucracy and proletariat of Turkish masculinity frequents; but the Turks are essentially democratic, and our party did not mind this in the least.
The limits of the café were indicated by canvas hung on ropes to screen the show from the unpaying eye. Within were seats at twopence apiece, and seats at a penny. Djimlah and I were installed in special chairs at threepence, placed infront of the first row, which the men of our party occupied—and then the show opened.
It took place behind a piece of white cheese cloth, lighted by oil lamps, and a few wooden puppets acted the play. A great deal of swearing, beating, killing and dying took place in the most picturesque Turkish. The audience laughed to hysterics. As for Djimlah and me, we were simply delirious with joy. Nor did our pleasure end with that evening. We learned a lot of the vernacular of the piece, and the next day acted it for the delectation of the entire harem, who made us repeat it several times, Djimlah being half the characters, and I the other half.
When I tried to repeat my histrionic success at home—being all the characters—I saw my father give a glance at my mother, who, not knowing a word of Turkish, sat unperturbed, while our two men guests were doing their best to suppress their laughter. As I wanted my mother to enjoy it too, I began to explain the whole thing to her, but, by one of those cabalistic signs which existed between my father and myself, I understood that I had better not explain; and after we were alone my father said to me:
“You know mamma does not like Turkish things, and you had better never explain them to her. As a rule I would rather have you tell them to me when we are all alone. And I shouldn’tlike you to repeat this piece again; for, although it may be right for the actors to say all the things they did, it is better for little girls not to repeat them.”
“But, father,” I protested, frightfully disappointed, “Djimlah and I acted it all before her grandmother and the ladies of her household, and they made us repeat it several times.”
“That is because they are Turks. We are Greeks, and that makes a very big difference.”
It was at this Punch and Judy Show that we met the little girl who was to become our constant companion. During an intermission her father came up to salute the old pasha, and brought little Chakendé with him. Immediately Djimlah’s grandfather ordered an extra chair for the little girl, and told her to sit down beside us. She was very sweet looking, about the age of Djimlah. We liked her so much that we asked her where she lived, and on hearing that it was not far from us, we invited her to come the next day to Djimlah’s house.
This she did, and we liked her even better; for she submitted to us very gracefully. She never wavered in this attitude, but it was far from being a cowardly submission.
She was then engaged to be married to a boy in Anatolia, whose father had been a lifelong friend of her father’s. The engagement had taken place when Chakendé was an hour old, andthe lad seven years old. By blood I considered Chakendé superior to Djimlah; for Djimlah’s forefathers, for hundreds of years, had been officials, while Chakendé’s had been warriors. They had been followers of the great Tartar ruler Timur-Lang, with whose people the Turks had been in constant warfare for centuries—now one side and then the other being victorious. It was this Timur-Lang, who, early in the fifteenth century, defeated the Turks, in the great battle of Angora, and took Sultan Bayazet captive, and kept him prisoner in a cage till he died.
Chakendé was very proud of this descent, and although she was now half full of Turkish blood, yet she clung to her Tartar ancestry, and when she told me about the battles her eyes lighted up and she was very pretty.
The lad to whom she was engaged, and whom she had not yet seen, was also of the same clan, and she already entertained for him much affection, and often spoke of him in such terms as, “my noble Bey,” “my proud betrothed.”
The more we saw of her the better we liked her, not only because she submitted to us, but because she fitted so well into all the parts we gave her to play, and we generally gave her such parts as we did not ourselves like to do. Whenever there was any fighting to do she was ordered to do it, because she could give such a terrific yell—theyell of the Timur-Lang Clan, she said—and became so wild, and made the fighting seem so real that we liked to watch her. And she was really brave; for she never minded worms—which made Djimlah and me wriggle like one.
Chakendé did not speak with dislike of the Turks to me. She looked upon them entirely as her people. “We have become one race,” she said. “They are full of our blood, and we are full of theirs. Besides, we are of the same faith.”
I could see, in spite of Djimlah’s affection for me, and the oldhanoum’skindness and tolerance, and of the politeness of all the Turks toward us, that they held a Christian to be inferior to a Mohammedan. They did not say much about it, but I felt that they considered themselves a superior race, by virtue of their origin and religion. As I grew older, I no longer entered into national or religious discussions. I did not even mind their feeling superior, since I knew that this feeling was all they had, and that the real superiority lay with us, and if they did not have this mistaken conceit they would be very sorry for themselves. And, in spite of my kindly feelings toward them, I was always aware that deep down in my heart was planted the seed of hatred toward them—a seed which was never to wither and die, even if it were not to grow very large.
I wonder if there will ever come a time whenlittle children will be spared the planting of these seeds, when they will be brought up in the teaching that there is but one God and one nationality—or that the God and the nationality of other little children is as good as our own: that we are all brothers and sisters, linked together by Nature to carry out her work, and to give to each other the best that is in us? I wonder whether we shall ever be trained so as not to care whether our particular nation is big and powerful, but whether every human being is receiving the chance to develop the best in him, in order that he may give that best to the rest of the world?
The bond which existed between Djimlah and Chakendé often gave me food for thought. For centuries their people fought each other. Then they amalgamated and made one, loved each other, and shared each other’s destiny. My people had fought their people, and they had conquered us—yet there was no amalgamation. My civilization stood on one side, and theirs on the other, and in that dividing line stood Christ and Mohammed, insurmountable barriers. I loved Djimlah, I loved Chakendé; but, if any question arose, I was fore-most a Greek, and they were Turks. They were Turks having the upper hand over us—a hand armed with a scourge. And if they kept that hand behind their back, and I could not see it, I knew that it held the whip, and that at times they used itboth heavily and unjustly. And I felt that my race must watch its opportunity to get hold of that whip.
The arrival of Chakendé, and later of Nashan and Semmaya, brought into my friendship with Djimlah a feeling which did not exist before. It is true that, on the first day we met, Djimlah and I almost fought over the bravery of our respective nations, and her assumption of equality before God had almost ended our friendship; yet never by word or sign did she do anything to rouse our racial antagonism. But when the two of us grew into a group, and of that group I remained the only Greek, they sometimes forgot, and spoke unguardedly.
One day, for example, when Djimlah’s grandfather had given each of us some money to spend, we were waiting for the afternoon vendor to pass in order to buy candy. We waited for a long time—unendurably long, we thought—before the stillness of the afternoon vibrated with the words:
“Seker, sekerji!”
We rushed to the door, pennies in hand, and stamped impatiently for the white-clad figure to come near. Then Chakendé exclaimed peevishly:
“Oh, it isn’t Ali. It’s the Christian dog. Let’s not buy of him—let’s wait for Ali.”
In an instant I was transformed. I was wholly the child of my uncle, wearing the Turkish yoke. I got hold of Chakendé’s two long braids, andpulled and kicked—for when it came to real, not make-believe, fighting I was more than her equal.
Djimlah’s courtesy and tact alone saved the situation. She immediately called to the Christiansekerji, and told us she was going to treat us with all her pennies. Moreover, she addressed herself most politely to the vendor, approved of his wares, and even praised his complexion to him.
Occurrences similar to this arose from time to time. If not often, still they did arise, and they served as water and air and sunshine to the little seed planted years before. I used to become so angry, and to strike them so hard and so quickly that they nicknamed me “yilderim,” which means thunder-storm.
Djimlah had a little boy cousin, Mechmet, who lived a short distance from her, and who sometimes came to play with her. He was nice and generous, and gave us ungrudgingly of whatever he had. He was particularly nice to me, and I liked him because he had large blue eyes and light golden hair.
One day when we were playing together he said to me: “I like you ever so much, and when we grow up we can be married.”
I shook my head: “That can’t be,becauseyou are a Turk and I am a Greek.”
“That doesn’t matter. I shall make you my wife just the same,” he answered confidently.
From a remote past there arose memories in me, memories perhaps acquired through reading, or lived in former existences; and pictures came before me of Greek parents weeping because a little girl was born to them—a little girl who, if she grew up to be pretty, would be mercilessly snatched from them and taken to a Turkishselamlik. And as picture succeeded picture, I became again entirely the child of my uncle, with a hatred for the Turks as ungovernable as it seemed holy.
Wild now, like a fierce little brute, I struck Mechmet, and struck and struck again; and at the sight of the blood flowing from his nose an exaltation possessed me. I was a girl, I could not carry arms—but with my own hands I could kill a Turkish boy, and be able to say to my uncle when we met again in the other world: “Uncle, girl though I am, I have killed a Turk!”
Djimlah, after vainly imploring us to stop fighting, ran to the cistern and drew a bucket of cold water. In our battle we had fallen down, and Djimlah drenched us with water, and the icy shower stopped our battle.
In our room she was very severe with me. “Baby mine, I believe sometimes you are mad! Why, you ought only to be glad if a boy says he will marry you. What are girls for, but to be given to men and to bear them children?”
“Did I kill him?” I asked anxiously.
She thought I was frightened, and came over and smoothed my hair. “Of course you didn’t kill him; but he is much the worse for the beating you gave him.”
Then I wept bitterly in utter contempt for myself at having failed in such a small task as killing just a little Turkish boy. Years afterwards, when I accidentally found myself in the midst of the Armenian massacres, I could appreciate probably better than most spectators the feeling of racial antipathy which gloried in the shedding of blood.