The Ship-Dwellers: A Story of a Happy Cruise
Then there are the fountains – that is, the public watering-places. They are nearly all carved in relief and belong to an earlier period, when art here was worth something. Here and there is a modern one – gaudy, tinsel, wretched.
But one has to stop a minute to remember that these old streets are not always occupied by the turbans and fezzes of the unspeakable Turk. Constantinople was Greek in the beginning, founded away back, six hundred years or more b. c., and named Byzantium, after one Byzas, its founder. The colony had started to settle several miles farther up the Golden Horn, when a crow came along and carried off a piece of their sacrificial meat. They were mad at first; but when they found he had dropped it over on Bosporus Point they concluded to take his judgment and settle there instead.
Then came a good many changes. Persians and Greeks held the place by turns, and by and by it was allied to Rome. The Christian Emperor Constantine made it his capital about 328 a. d. and called it New Rome. But the people wouldn't have that title. Constantine had rebuilt the city, and they insisted on giving it his name. So Constantinople it became and remained – the names Galata, Pera, Stamboul, and Skutari (accent on the "Sku") being merely divisions, the last-named on the Asiatic side.
It was not until eleven hundred years after Constantine that the Turkomans swarmed in and possessed themselves of what had become a tottering empire. So the Turkish occupation is comparatively recent – only since 1453.
Still, that is a good while ago, when one considers what has been done elsewhere. Christopher Columbus was playing marbles in Genoa, or helping his father comb wool, then. America was a place of wigwams – a habitation of Indian tribes. We have done a good deal in the four and a half centuries since – more than the Turk will do in four and a half million years. The Turk is not an express train. He is not even a slow freight. He is not a train at all, but an old caboose on the hind end of day before yesterday. By the way, I know now why these old cities have still older cities buried under them. They never clean the streets, and a city gets entirely covered up at last with dirt.
I have been wanting to speak of the dogs of Constantinople ever since I began this chapter. They have been always in my mind, but I wanted to work off my ill-nature, first, on the Turk. For I have another feeling for the dogs – a friendly feeling – a sympathetic feeling – an affectionate feeling.
Every morning at four o'clock the dogs of Constantinople turn their faces toward Mecca and howl their heartbreak to the sky. At least, I suppose they turn toward Mecca – that being the general habit here when one has anything official to give out. I know they howl and bark and make such a disturbance as is heard nowhere else on earth. In America, two or three dogs will keep a neighborhood awake, but imagine a vast city of dogs all barking at once – forty or fifty dogs to the block, counting the four sides! Do you think you could sleep during that morning orison? If you could, then you are sound-proof.
I have said that I have an affection for the dogs, but not at that hour. It develops later, when things have quieted down, and I have had breakfast and am considering them over the ship's side. There is a band of them owns this section of the water-front, and they are worth studying.
They are not as unsightly and as wretched as I expected to find them. Life for them is not a path of roses, but neither is it a trail of absolute privation. They live on refuse, and there is plenty of refuse. They are in fair condition, therefore, as to flesh, and they do not look particularly unhappy, though they are dirty enough, and sometimes mangy and moth-eaten and tufty; but then the Turks themselves are all of these things, and why should the dogs be otherwise?
The type of these dogs impresses me. They have reverted to the original pattern – they are wolf-dogs. They vary only in color – usually some tone of grizzly gray – and not widely in that. They have returned to race – to the old wild breed that made his bed in the grass and revolved three times before he was ready to lie down. One might expect them to be ugly and dangerous, but they are not. They are the kindest, gentlest members of the dog family notwithstanding the harsh treatment they receive, and the most intelligent. No one really human can study them without sympathy and admiration.
I have watched these dogs a good deal since we came here, and a lady of Constantinople, the wife of a foreign minister, has added largely to my information on the subject.
They are quite wonderful in many ways. They have divided themselves into groups or squads, and their territory into districts, with borders exactly defined. They know just about how much substance each district will supply and the squads are not allowed to grow. There is a captain to each of these companies, and his rule is absolute. When the garbage from each house is brought out and dumped into the street, he oversees the distribution and keeps order. He keeps it, too. There is no fighting and very little discord, unless some outlaw dog from a neighboring group attempts to make an incursion. Then there is a wild outbreak, and if the dog escapes undamaged he is lucky.
The captain of a group is a sultan with the power of life and death over his subjects. When puppies come along he designates the few – the very few – that are to live, and one mother nurses several of the reduced litters – the different mothers taking turns. When a dog gets too old to be useful in the strenuous round – when he is no longer valuable to the band – he is systematically put out of the way by starvation. A day comes when the captain issues some kind of an edict that he is no longer to have food. From that moment, until his death, not a morsel passes his lips. With longing eyes he looks at the others eating, but he makes no attempt to join them. Now and again a bit of something falls his way. The temptation is too strong – he reaches toward the morsel. The captain, who overlooks nothing, gives a low growl. The dying creature shrinks back without a murmur. He knows the law. Perhaps he, too, was once a captain.
The minister's wife told me that she had tried to feed one of those dying dogs, but that even when the food was placed in front of him he would only look pleadingly at the captain and refuse to touch it. She brought him inside, at last, where he was no longer under that deadly surveillance. He ate then, but lived only a little while. Perhaps it was too late; perhaps the decree was not to be disobeyed, even there.
As a rule, it is unwise to show kindness or the least attention to these dogs, she said. The slightest word or notice unlocks such a store-house of gratitude and heart-hunger in those poor creatures that one can never venture near that neighborhood again without being fairly overwhelmed with devotion. Speak a word to one of them and he will desert his companions and follow you for miles.
The minister's wife told how once a male member of her household had shown some mark of attention to one of the dogs of their neighborhood group. A day or two later she set out for a walk, carrying her parasol, holding it downward. Suddenly she felt it taken from her hand. Looking down, she saw a dog walking by her side, carrying it. It was the favored animal, trying to make return to any one who came out of that heavenly house.
She told me how in the winter the dogs pile up in pyramids to keep warm, and how those underneath, when they have smothered as long as they can, will work out and get to the top of the heap and let the others have a chance to get warm and smothered too.
Once, when some excavations were going on in her neighborhood the dogs of several bands, made kin by a vigorous touch of nature, cold, had packed themselves into a sort of tunnel which the workmen had made. One dog who had come a little late was left outside. He made one or two efforts to get a position, but it was no use. He reflected upon the situation and presently set up a loud barking. That was too much for those other dogs. They came tumbling out to see what had happened, but before they had a chance to find out, the late arrival had slipped quietly in and established himself in the warmest place.
Once a pasha visited a certain neighborhood in Pera, and the dogs kept him awake. In his irritation he issued an order that the dogs of that environment should be killed. The order was carried out, and for a day and a night there was silence there. But then the word had gone forth that a section of rich territory had been vacated, and there was a rush for it that was like the occupation of the Oklahoma strip.
There was trouble, too, in establishing the claim and electing officers. No such excitement and commotion and general riot had ever been known in that street before. It lasted two days and nights. Then everything was peaceable enough. Captains had fought their way to a scarred and limping victory. Claims had been duly surveyed and distributed. The pasha had retired permanently from the neighborhood.
It is against the law for the ordinary citizen to kill one of the dogs. They are scavengers, and the law protects them. One may kick and beat and scald and maim them, and the Turk has a habit of doing these things; but he must not kill them – not unless he is a pasha. And, after all, the dogs own Constantinople – the pariah dogs, I mean; there are few of the other kind. One seldom sees a pet dog on the streets. The pariah dogs do not care for him. They do not attack him, they merely set up a racket which throws that pet dog into a fever and fills him with an abiding love of home. But I am dwelling too long on this subject. I enjoy writing about these wonderful dogs. They interest me.
Perhaps the "Young Turks" will improve Constantinople. Already they have made the streets safer; perhaps they will make them cleaner. Also, they may improve the Turkish postal service. That would be a good place to begin, I should think. Constantinople has a native post-office, but it isn't worth anything. Anybody who wants a letter to arrive sends it through one of the foreign post-offices, of which each European nation supports one on its own account. To trust a letter to the Turkish post-office is to bid it a permanent good-bye. The officials will open it for money first, and soak off the stamp afterward. If you inquire about it, they will tell you it was probably seditionary and destroyed by the sultan's orders. Perhaps that will not be so any more. The sultan's late force of twenty thousand spies has been disbanded, and things to-day are on a much more liberal basis. Two royal princes came aboard our vessel to-day, unattended except by an old marshal – something which has never happened here before.
These princes have been virtually in prison all their lives. Until very recently they had never left the palace except under guard. They had never been aboard a vessel until they came aboard the Kurfürst, and though grown men, they were like children in their manner and their curiosity. They had never seen a type-writer. They had never seen a steam-engine. Our chief engineer took them down among the machinery and they were delighted. They greeted everybody, saluted everybody, and drove away at last in their open victoria drawn by two white horses, with no outriders, no guards, no attendants of any kind except the old marshal – a thing which only a little while ago would not have been dreamed of as possible.
Perhaps there is hope for Turkey, after all.
XX
ABDUL HAMID GOES TO PRAYER
It was on our second day in Constantinople that we saw the Selamlik – that is, the Sultan Abdul Hamid II. on his way to prayer. It was Friday, which is the Mohammedan Sunday, and the sultan, according to his custom, went to the mosque in state. The ceremony was, in fact, a grand military review, with twenty-five thousand soldiers drawn up on the hillside surrounding the royal mosque, and many bands of music; the whole gay and resplendent with the varied uniforms of different brigades, the trappings of high officials, the flutter of waving banners, the splendor of royal cortége – all the fuss and fanfare of this fallen king.3
For Abdul Hamid is no longer monarch except by sufferance. A tyrant who in his time has ordered the massacre of thousands; has imprisoned and slain members of his own family; has sent a multitude to the Bosporus and into exile; has maintained in this enlightened day a court and a rule of the Middle Ages – he is only a figurehead now, likely to be removed at a moment's warning.
The Young Turk is in the saddle. Hamid's force of twenty thousand spies has been disbanded. Men-of-war lie in the Bosporus just under Yildiz, ready to open fire on that royal palace at the first sign of any disturbance there. The tottering old man is still allowed his royal guard, his harem, and this weekly ceremonial and display to keep up a semblance of imperial power. But he is only a make-believe king; the people know that, and he knows it, too, best of all.
We had special invitations from the palace and a special enclosure from which to view the ceremony. We had cakes, too, and sherbet served while we waited – by the sultan's orders, it was said – but I didn't take any. I thought Abdul might have heard I didn't care for him and put poison in mine. That would be like him.
I was tempted, though, for we had driven a long way through the blinding dust. It was hot there, and we had to stand up and keep on standing up while all that great review got together and arranged and rearranged itself; while officials and black Nubian eunuchs, those sexless slaves of the harem, ran up and down, and men sanded the track – that is, the road over which his majesty was to drive – and did a hundred other things to consume time.
One does not hurry the Orient – one waits on it. That is a useful maxim – I'm glad I invented it. I said it over about a hundred times while we stood there waiting for Abdul Hamid, who was dallying with certain favorites, like as not, and remembering us not at all.
It was worth seeing, though. Brigade after brigade swung by to the weird music of their bands – billow after billow of brown, red, and blue uniforms. The hillside became a perfect storm of fezzes; the tide of spectators rose till its waves touched the housetops.
Still we waited and watched the clock on the mosque. Nobody can tell time by a Turkish clock, but there was some comfort in watching it. Presently an informing person at my side explained that Turkish chronology is run on an altogether different basis from ours. There are only three hundred and fifty-four days in a Turkish year, he said, which makes the seasons run out a good deal faster, so that it is usually about year after next in Turkey; but as it is only about day before yesterday by the clock, the balance is kept fairly even.
He was a very entertaining person. Referring to the music, he said that once the sultan's special brass band had played before him so pleasingly that he ordered all their instruments filled with gold, which was well enough, except for the piccolo-player, who said: "Sire, I am left out of this reward." "Never mind," said the sultan, "your turn will come." And it did, next day, for the band played so badly that the sultan roared out: "Ram all their instruments down their throats," which was impossible, of course, except in the case of the piccolo-player.
My entertainer said that formerly cameras were allowed at the Selamlik, but that an incident occurred which resulted in prohibiting cameras and all suspicious articles. He said that a gentleman engaged a carriage for the Selamlik, and explained to the driver that he had invented a wonderful new camera – one that would take pictures in all the colors – and instructed him just how to work the machine.
The gentleman had to make a train, he said, and couldn't wait for the sultan to arrive, but if the driver would press the button when the sultan reached a certain place the picture would take, after which the driver could bring the camera to the Pera Palace Hotel on a certain day and get a hundred piastres, a sum larger than the driver had ever owned at one time. Then the gentleman left in a good deal of a hurry, and the driver told all the other drivers about his good-fortune while they waited; and by and by, when the sultan came, and got just to the place where the gentleman had said, the driver pressed the button, and blew a hole seventy-five feet wide and thirty feet deep right on that spot, and it rained drivers and horses and fezzes and things for seven minutes. It didn't damage the sultan any, but it gave him a permanent distaste for cameras and other suspicious objects.
Laura, age fourteen, who had been listening to the story, said:
"Did they do anything to the driver who did it?"
"Yes; they gathered him up in a cigar box and gave him a funeral. No, the man didn't call for the camera."
I am sorry I have kept the reader waiting for the Selamlik, but the sultan is to blame. One may not hurry a sultan, and one must fill in the time, somehow.
Some carriages go by at last, and enter the mosque enclosure, but they do not contain the sultan, only some of his favorite wives, with those long black eunuchs running behind. Then there is a carriage with a little boy in it – the sultan's favorite son, it is said – the most beautiful child I ever saw.
A blare of trumpets – all the bayonets straight up – a gleaming forest of them. Oh, what a bad time to fall out of a balloon!
A shout from the troops – a huzzah, timed and perfunctory, but general. Then men in uniform, walking ahead; a carriage with a splendid driver; a pale, bearded, hook-nosed old man with a tired, rather vacant face. Here and there he touches his forehead and his lips with his fingers, waving the imperial salute. For a moment every eye of that vast concourse is upon him – he is the one important bauble of that splendid setting. Then he has passed between the gates and is gone.
Thus it was that Sultan Abdul Hamid attended mosque. It seemed a good deal of fuss to make over an old man going to prayer.
We drove from the Selamlik to the Dancing Dervishes. I have always heard of them and now I have seen them. I am not sorry to have it over.
Their headquarters are in a weather-beaten-frame-barn of a place, and we stood outside for a long time before the doors were open. Inside it was hot and close and crowded, and everybody twisted this way and that and stood up on things to get a look. I held two women together on one chair – they were standing up – and I expected to give out any minute and turn loose a disaster that would break up the show. There wasn't anything to see, either; not a thing, for hours.
We were in a sort of circular gallery and the dancing-floor was below. We could see squatted there a ring of men – a dozen or so bowed, solemn, abstracted high priests in gowns of different colors and tall fezzes. These were the dervishes, no doubt, but they didn't do anything – not a thing – and we didn't care to stare at them and at the dancing-floor and the rest of the suffering audience forever.
Then we noticed in our gallery a little reserved section with some more abstracted men in gowns and fezzes, and after a long time – as much as a thousand years, I should think – there was an almost imperceptible movement in this reserved compartment, and one of the elect produced some kind of reed and began to blow a strain that must have been born when the woods were temples and the winds were priests – it was so weirdly, mournfully enthralling. I could have listened to that music and forgotten all the world if I hadn't been busy holding those two women on that chair.
The perspiration ran down and my joints petrified while that music droned on and on. Then there was another diversion: a man got up and began to sing. I don't know why they picked that particular man – certainly not for his voice. It was Oriental singing – a sort of chanting monotone in a nasal pitch. Yet there was something wild and seductive about it – something mystical – and I liked it well enough. Only I didn't want it to go on forever, situated as I was. I wanted the dancing to begin, and pretty soon, too. It didn't, however. Nothing begins soon in the Orient.
But by-and-by, when that songster had wailed for as much as a week, those high priests on the dancing-floor began to show signs of life. They moved a little; they got up; they went through some slow evolutions – to limber themselves, perhaps – then they began to whirl.
The dance is a religious rite, and it is supposed to represent the planets revolving about the sun. The dancers serve an apprenticeship of one thousand and one days, and they can whirl and keep on whirling forever without getting dizzy. The central figure, who represents the sun, has had the most practice, no doubt, for he revolves just twice as fast as the planets, who are ranged in two circles around him. His performance is really wonderful. I did not think so much of the others, except as to their ability to stand upright. I thought I could revolve as fast as they did, myself, and I would have given four dollars for a little freedom just then to try it.
Would that constellation never run down? The satellites whirled on and on, and the high priest in the middle either got faster or I imagined it. Then at last they stopped – just stopped – that was all; only I let go of those two women then and clawed my way to fresh air.
We went to the bazaars after that. There is where the Kurfürster finds real bliss. He may talk learnedly of historic sites and rave over superb ruins and mosques and such things, when you drag him in carriages to see them. But only say the word bazaar to him and he will walk three miles to find it. To price the curious things of the East; to barter and beat down; to walk away and come back a dozen times; to buy at last at a third of the asking price – such is the passion that presently gets hold of the irresponsible tourist who lives on one ship and has a permanent state-room for his things.
You should see some of those state-rooms! Jars, costumes, baskets, rugs, draperies, statuary – piled everywhere, hung everywhere, stowed everywhere – why, we could combine the stuff on this ship and open a floating bazaar that would be the wonder of the world.
The bazaars of Constantinople are crowded together and roofed over, and there are narrow streets and labyrinthine lanes. One can buy anything there – anything Eastern: ornaments, inlaid work, silks, curious weapons, picture postals (what did those Quaker City pilgrims do without them?), all the wares of the Orient – he can get a good deal for a little if he is patient and unyielding – and he will be cheated every time he makes change. Never mind; one's experience is always worth something, and this particular tariff is not likely to be high.
We bought several things in Constantinople, but we did not buy any confections. The atmosphere did not seem suited to bonbons, and the places where such things were sold did not look inviting. Laura inspected the assortment and decided that the best Turkish Delight is made in America, and that Broadway is plenty far enough east for nougat. In one bazaar they had a marvellous collection of royal jewels: swords with incrusted handles; caskets "worth a king's ransom" – simply a mass of rubies, emeralds, and diamonds – half a barrel of such things, at least, but we didn't buy any of those goods, either. We would have done so, of course, only they were not for sale.
We called at the bazaar of Far-away Moses, but he wasn't there. He died only a little while ago, and has gone to that grand bazaar of delight which the Mohammedans have selected as their heaven.
As usual, Laura and I were the last to leave. We were still pulling over some things when our driver, whom we call Suleiman because he has such a holy, villanous look, came suddenly to the entrance, waving frantically. We started then and piled into our carriage. The rest of our party were already off, and we set out helter-skelter after them, Suleiman probably believing that the ship had its anchors up ready to sail.
We were doing very well when right in front of a great arch one of our horses fell down. We had a crowd in a minute, and as it was getting dusk I can't say that I liked the situation. But Suleiman got the horse on his feet somehow, and we pushed along and once more entered that diabolical Street of Smells. It had been bad day by day, but nothing to what it was now. There were no lights, except an oil-lamp here and there; the place was swarming with humanity and dogs, general vileness permeating everything. The woman who thought she had died and gone to hell could be certain of it here.
