Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  Even the fat and flabby Greek, who sits not far from you upon the leathern bench, can hardly keep his eyes from the sight, although it has been familiar to him since he was a baby. He is a cook and has bilious-looking eyes. You know that he is a cook, because he is smoking a water-pipe which, as everyone who frequents the coffee-houses in Constantinople is aware, is a form of enjoyment favored almost exclusively by the members of his profession. But even the bubbling of the water-pipe, and the constant efforts of keeping its little fire alive, cannot distract your neighbor’s unhealthy yellow eyes from the inthralling spectacle of Galata Bridge at noon-day. There is nothing like it in the whole world, from San Francisco to Peking — nothing so vivid, so alive, so heterogeneous, so anomalous, and so fascinating. The imagination reels at the merest attempt to fix the characteristics or guess at the lives, to evoke the poetry, the prose, or the romance, of half a score among the countless individualities that cross the field of vision at every second, streaming backward and forward like swarms of bees between the two great hives of humanity thus linked and bound together by a single narrow causeway.

  I shall never forget my first impression of Constantinople. It has been my good fortune since then, to see it again and again, at every time of year, and under every possible aspect, but no subsequent picture has had either the vividness or the beauty of the first. I remember that it was in February and we steamed up the Sea of Marmora to the entrance of the Bosphorus in a heavy snow-storm. The flakes fell so thick and fast that scarcely a single building was distinctly visible. Then, suddenly, just when we were opposite St. Sophia, the snow ceased to fall, the clouds parted in a bright blue rent, and the clear morning sun, rising behind us, shone full upon Stamboul. It was a marvellous sight. Every dome and minaret and tower was frosted with thick silver. It was as though the whole beautiful city were moulded in precious metal finely chiselled and richly chased. The slender minarets shot up like rays of light, the dark cypresses were changed to silver plumes, even the Seven Towers, far on the western wall, were as white as Parian marble.

  Only the sea had color. A moment earlier it had been gray and dull as weather-beaten lead, but under the touch of the Eastern sun it flashed all at once to a deep opaque blue, more like lapis lazuli than sapphire.

  The glory of the scene was beyond description, and, in its way, surpasses anything I have witnessed in any part of the world. A few minutes later it was gone, the wintry clouds rolled together, the light went out, snow fell again, then rain, and then more snow, and my second impression was of dismal, slushy, filthy streets, dripping eaves, marrow-biting air, and an intense longing for a comfortable room and a good fire. Perhaps the contrast has served in memory’s gallery to throw the first picture into unreasonable prominence, but remembrance may have exaggerations which one does not regret.

  And now, quite recently, I have seen the picture in another and very different light. I was belated in Kadi Keui on a summer evening, and being obliged to get back to Pera for the night I took a four-oared kaik. The moon was near the first quarter and shone brightly, though the weather to the northward was threatening, and there was a sharp, cool breeze over the water. Very slowly, as we made our way across, the black cloud-bank crept up to the moon until, just as we were opposite Top Kapu, the thunder-storm broke on us in full force. In an instant the night was as black as ink, and I could see nothing ahead but the dim lights of the bridge and the white foam of the driving squall. Astern and to starboard the red light on the so-called Leander’s Tower served to guide the oarsmen as they pulled along through the big drops of rain. Then the lightning began. At intervals of a few seconds, vivid flashes lit up both cities, Pera and Stamboul, so brightly that even at a great distance I could distinctly see the windows of the houses, the details of the architecture, and even the little low doors high up at the tops of the minarets. It was as though at each separate moment the whole city were enveloped in flames, instantly extinguished and as suddenly rekindled.

  But perhaps the most characteristic view of all, and the most permanently abiding is that of Stamboul in summer when the strong, unwavering light fills every lane and alley and corner from sunrise to sunset, drinking up the shadows as heat dries moisture. Then behind the gilded gratings of Sultan Ahmed’s lovely fountain the watermen are ever busy filling the little metal cups from the cool cistern for the thirsty faithful and faithless alike. Then, in the bright shade that is like the sunshine of other cities, the wretched street dogs forget to fight, and lie panting in the heat, trusting that each passer-by may be a merciful Turk, who will step aside rather than disturb them, and not a Greek or an Armenian, who will kick them half across the street rather than go a yard out of his way. Then it is pleasant to wander through the halls and passages of the Top Kapu Serai — in English, the “Cannon Gate Palace” — to spend half an hour in the exquisite little library dreaming over the marvellous portraits of the Sultans, if you are lucky enough to be trusted with the precious parchment pages. Mehemet the Conqueror, Bayezid the Mystic, Suleiman the Magnificent, Ahmed First — he of the six minarets — Mahmud the Reformer, the Slayer of the Janissaries, the introducer of the fez — these and many others have all lived and moved and had their being within the walls of the great rambling old palace, men of many strange and divers passions and ambitions, some of them voluptuous in their tastes beyond a Roman Emperor’s dream of luxury, others warlike, simple, and severe, some merciful, some bloodthirsty, all despotic in theory, in fact, or in both. Here are their portraits as they looked in their rich and varied magnificence, turbaned, jewelled, and armed, fierce-looking men most of them, even when there is a trace of effeminacy in their features, for the Sultan is not only the Padishah — The King of Kings — but also the Hunkyar, the “Man Slayer.” And at the entrance to the palace, between the gates, there is a dismal little room where the slaying used to be done, where many a Pasha, many a Vizier, and many a Minister of State has felt the tough bow-string quietly tightening round his throat, when a few moments earlier he had dreamed of favor and of power. Down by the water’s edge, too, there is a little gate about which many stories are told, legendary, perhaps, and certainly not so surely true as the historical facts connected with the Jellad Odasi — the gloomy little room — under Orta Kapu. Tradition says that through that narrow water-gate more than one rebellious beauty of the harem was carried out, sewn in a weighted sack, that her soul might expiate her follies and her body feed the fish of the Bosphorus. If you have a Greek guide, he will assure you, with every appearance of believing the story himself, that it was the custom of the earlier Sultans to torture rich Greeks into confessing the whereabouts of their hidden treasures, and then to consign their mangled remains to the sea by that same gate — a story which finds no corroboration whatever in the charters granted to Christians by the Sultans, and very little, if any, in history as told by the Christians themselves. But as for the ladies of the harem, we know very little about them, though their shadowy eyes and snowy yashmaks seem to pursue us in the still warm air through that vast deserted dwelling — and there are no portraits of them among the illuminated parchment leaves in the quiet library.

  There is nothing dull or commonplace about shopping or shopkeeping in the East. Every man’s shop is much more literally his stronghold than the Englishman’s house is his castle, and every customer’s appearance is the signal for a siege. The unconscionable length of time necessary to develop a bargain in Turkey accounts, perhaps, for the perpetual crowd in the bazaar. Whoever wishes to buy anything of which the price is not commonly known and fixed by custom, must return many times to the assault before he gets what he wants. The consequence is that where every customer comes four times instead of once to the shop where he has business, there are four times as many people in the tortuous passages and labyrinthine ways of the bazaar, as should legitimately correspond to the amount of business actually done. The process is certainly cumbrous. When you first see the object for which you are looking you must be blind, not let your features
betray by the least expression that you are interested. Next, you should ask the price of at least one hundred articles in the shop, being careful, however, not to omit the one you need, lest the omission should make the shopkeeper suspect that you want it.

  You will then send for coffee and say that you have not come to buy anything, but have merely made inquiries out of curiosity. A few days later come, and again ask the prices of several things. On your third visit you may allow yourself to look more closely at what you have long since mentally selected, and to offer the shopkeeper not more than one-third of what he asks. On the fourth day prepare for a final pitched battle. If you do not look unrighteously rich and have not the appearance of being a “tender-foot,” you may consider that you have done fairly well if you pay in the end about two-thirds of what was demanded, especially if you have dealt with a Turk or a Jew, avoiding anything like a Christian as you would shun the plague. But this roundabout process has compensations after all so real as to be almost attractions in themselves. Everything is mysterious in the bazaar and much is beautiful. A walled city within a walled city, and again an almost impregnable fortress within that, cut up in all directions by narrow passages, blind alleys and crossways, the whole being vaulted and roofed, and entirely lighted by countless little domes — a labyrinth Cretan in its complications, and puzzling even to those who inhabit it, crowded by a busy, jostling, motley multitude drawn together from all quarters of the globe, and filled in all its recesses to very overflowing with every production of Western civilization and Eastern art, pervaded throughout its enormous extent by the strange smell of the East, so dear to strangers and so hateful to the exiled European — rich in everything, in life and sound and gorgeous color — the “charshi” of Stamboul stands alone in the whole world as the product of three continents, Europe, Asia, and Africa, fused at one busy, central, seething point.

  The centre of centres, the safe deposit, the stronghold of the Constantinople merchant, is Bezestan the “Armorer’s market.” The wealth in this inner sanctum is said to be enormous — coin, precious stones, jewels of all sorts, silken carpets, rich embroideries, gold, weapons, and treasures of Oriental art of every sort, are deposited here in what must seem to an ordinary European a very casual way, in deal boxes more or less strengthened with iron and furnished with by no means burglar-proof locks. And yet nothing is ever stolen from Bezestan. It has heavy gates of its own; it is opened late and closed early, and the merchants and other depositors employ numerous watchmen by night and day, according to a system which is primeval in the East, and to which the West is rapidly approaching. After expending its ingenuity for centuries upon the construction of ingenious locks and bolts and bars, Europe is beginning to understand that approximate safety is only to be found in employing plenty of light and a reliable watchman.

  It would be hopeless to attempt anything like a description of the merchandise and antiquities here accumulated for sale. Such a catalogue would fill a hundred volumes, in a place where hardly any two objects are alike. What strikes one is the enormous product of Eastern manual labor, its variety and its artistic beauty, and those facts are more familiar in the West than they were twenty years ago, when no average cultivated person could tell by inspection whether a carpet were a Giordes or a Smyrna.

  But one is tempted to ask whether the world would not be richer and far more beautiful if the countless eyes that pore over “miserable books” and the innumerable fingers whose cherished occupation is to look as though they had none, were employed in producing something useful and yet not machine-made.

  Constantinople owes much to the matchless beauty of the three waters which run together beneath its walls, and much of their reputation again has become world-wide by the kaik. It is disputed and disputable whether the Turks copied the Venetian gondola or whether the Venetians imitated the Turkish kaik, but the resemblance between them is so strong as to make it certain that they have a common origin. Take from the gondola the “felse,” or hood, and the rostrated stem, and the remainder is practically the kaik. It is of all craft of its size the swiftest, the most easy to handle, and the most comfortable, and the Turks are generally admitted to be the best oarsmen in Europe. Indeed, they have need to be, for both the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn are crowded with craft of every kind, and made dangerous by the swiftest of currents. The distances too are very great, and such as no ordinary oarsman would undertake for pleasure or for the sake of exercise. It is no joke to pull fifteen or sixteen miles against a stream which in some places runs four or five knots an hour.

  The foreigner avoids the kaik when he is alone, because he cannot bargain, and because the only alternative is the society and unceasing chatter of the tormenting guide. But he loses much. It is well worth while to lie back among the cushions opposite the silent oarsmen with no companion but a cigarette, and to be pulled swiftly up the Golden Horn on a Friday afternoon in summer, choosing the hour so that the sun shall be behind the hill just as the kaik sweeps into the broad lagoon beyond the Arsenal. The river broadens and narrows suddenly again and again, streaked with light and shade, and the reflections of the soft green hills, shot with the ripples and wake of small light craft, dotted brilliantly with color, the bright red fez, the full and snowy shirt of the kaikja, the rich hues of dark velvets trailing over the stern of a private boat here and there among the rest. Now, as the water widens, there is room for all and they spread like a fan, hastening to be the first at the narrows beyond; and then you are in the throng again, wondering at the boatmen’s matchless skill and sometimes at their marvellous good temper. Then under pretty wooden bridges, between low river banks carpeted with turf. Trees grow in little thickset plantations, and in each tiny grove the coffee-seller has his small furnace of live coals, his water-jar and his array of spotless cups. There, in the deep, cool shade, whole families spend the afternoon at rest, the women and children seated together upon the grass, their ferajehs drawn closely round them and their yashmaks carelessly draped around their faces, while the men are grouped by themselves a little apart. As you near the Imperial villa trees grow more closely together and the people are more numerous; Egyptian fiddlers and flute-players fill the evening air with strange Arab melodies, often harsh, sometimes tuneful, but always melancholy. The people talk little among themselves, and everywhere the voice of the ice-cream vendor rises loudly above other sounds — dondurma kaimak — frozen cream! A little higher the trees are larger still, the crowd is greater. Carriages of all sorts, from the most brilliant equipage to the humblest country cart, are drawn up in long rows. There are booths and tents — you may eat broiled mutton collops with sour cream, or simple ices, or you may drink sherbet and coffee, and everyone smokes the inevitable, the eternal, the universal cigarette.

  And here by the Sweet Waters of Europe, in the pleasant shade and by the cool, flowing water, I will leave you for a space to breathe the gentle Eastern air, to dream out your dream of romance until the shadows deepen to purple, and the silent kaiks drop away down the stream, or if you feel commercially inclined, and have spent your day in the bazaar, to lay deep schemes for the circumvention of Isaac, or Moses, or my dear old friend Marchetto, or of Osman Bey, the honest Turk, in the purchase of the ideal Persian carpet.

  II

  BEYOND the limits of the business quarter and the neighborhood of the public offices and ministerial buildings, Constantinople is one of the quietest cities in the world. The Turk’s home life seems mysterious to the European, though there is much less real secrecy about it than might be supposed. In the East, as elsewhere, the house-servants gather together, gossip, and tell each other what their masters have for dinner, how often their mistresses dye their hair with henna, lose their tempers, and get into debt in the bazaar. But though all these things go on, as they do wherever human beings are gathered together, the closed doors and latticed windows of the long narrow streets present an impenetrable front. As one leaves the centre of business, going westward, there are fewer women to be seen, an
d the veils, strange to say, are more closely drawn about the face. The great Turkish quarter stretches through the midst of the city in the direction of the Adrianople Gate and the Kahriye Mosque. The houses are mostly but two stories high, and in every stage of preservation. A solid brick or stone dwelling with projecting balconies, dazzlingly whitewashed and immaculate as to its doorstep, is followed by a tumble-down wooden cottage so distorted by the yielding of its timbers in all directions as to disturb an ordinary man’s theories of possible stability. Next, perhaps, comes a low, open shed, kept by a cobbler, a small tailor, or a coffee-seller. Beyond that, the rusty grating of a public fountain or a tiny burial-ground not five yards square, the tall, weather-beaten head-stones leaning and lying in all directions like jack-straws. Then more dwellings, straight or crooked, a little mosque, another coffee-shop, a cross street and two or three sturdy horses held by skinny boys to be hired as cabs are in other cities. And so on, through many varieties of the same view, over the execrable pavement, up and down hill, until you reach the neighborhood of the walls, along which a considerable part of the land rises abruptly like an embankment to the level of the gates and the open fields without.

  Everyone who goes to Constantinople visits the Kahriye Mosque, once known in Greek as the “Country Hermitage,” a small but very ancient church, richly adorned with paintings and mosaics. The Mollah in charge is an enlightened Turk of the purest breed, with yellow hair, blue eyes, and fresh complexion — and a descendant of the Prophet, too, for he wears a green turban. He also speaks a little French, and is quite as much interested in the archaeology of his mosque as you can be. It is in a great measure due to him that so much whitewash has been removed from its walls, and that the building itself is kept constantly in repair.