SINCE our arrival in Constantinople we had heard of the night life in Pera but we had not seen it close to. Although we lived—out of necessity—in Pera during the first months of our return, we very seldom went out. In the Summer months and in the Fall we were in the country and since we had settled in Stamboul we loved too much our own quiet nights at home to seek anything else. But when my friend, Carayanni, suggested showing us Pera at night we decided that it was almost our duty to take advantage of this opportunity of seeing it with someone who knew the place. Since the armistice Pera is so full of amusement resorts of all kinds that unless one is guided by an “habituÉ” one is apt to get lost in more than one sense of the word.

I think that I have already said that Pera is now inhabited by almost all the races of Europe with the exception of the Turks. The Turks have been forced out of this quarter and are certainly not keen to reenter it under its present conditions. Pera shelters all the foreigners in Constantinople, from the High Commissioners of the different nations and their immediate retinues down to the worst kind of adventurers and of course there are many more adventurers than High Commissioners. Pera shelters most of the Russian refugees, from poor helpless former nobles whose plight is a real disgrace to civilization down to the most resourcefully immoral individuals of both sexes whose behaviour is a real shame to humanity. In addition Pera shelters all the Greeks and Armenians of the city and its narrow, crooked streets are the playground and dwelling-place of a nondescript people which, for lack of better name, people have agreed to call “Levantines.”

The Levantine is the parasite of the Near East. He has no country, no scruples, no morals, no honesty of any sort—in business or in private life. He is the descendant of foreign traders who have settled in the Near East at some period or other and have intermingled—not necessarily intermarried—with Greeks and Armenians or other non-Turkish elements of the country. His ancestors might have originally come to the Near East either attracted by the proverbial riches of the Orient—at a time when the Orient was still rich—or as runaways from the justice of their own country—no one knows. As foreigners always had certain privileges in Turkey the present-day Levantine calls himself a foreigner when he is dealing with the Turks or with Turkish authorities. However, when he is dealing with foreigners he is very apt to call himself a Turk, an Armenian or a Greek. Anyhow he never will call himself a Levantine, so stigmatized is that appellation in the eyes of all who know the Near East. He generally has perfected this internationalism to such a degree that he has citizenship papers or passports of different countries which he uses indiscriminately according to his wants or the necessity of the moment. But despite all a Levantine is and remains a Levantine and should be shunned as such. Anyone who is from the Near East and calls himself a non-Muslim Turk is a Levantine, and almost any foreigner who admits that his family has been living in the Near East for at least two generations is probably also a Levantine. Anyhow Pera is the hot-bed of Levantines, who have lost all their original racial qualities and have assimilated all the racial defects of all the races living in the Near East—whose one purpose is to make and spend money and who are ready to sell anything for the purpose.

My friend Carayanni is not a Levantine. He is an Ottoman Greek. Just as a Scotchman is a British subject, so Carayanni is a Greek but a Turkish—or Ottoman—subject, and is supposed to be as faithful to Turkey as the Scotchman is faithful to Great Britain. But in the eyes of the world Turkey is not Great Britain, and Carayanni is a Greek and everyone, except the Turks, seem to consider it quite natural that he should be a Venizelist. Foreigners call him and the other Ottoman Greeks like him who are Venizelists “patriots,” and blame the Turks for not loving them. A Venizelist is a Greek who wants the downfall and dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, that is to say that an Ottoman Greek who is a Venizelist is de juro a rebel, a traitor, who conspires for the downfall and dismemberment of the Government of his own country. When the Turks take this attitude and try to repress this intestinal strife they are accused of committing “atrocities." When Great Britain or any other Western Government quells with machine guns and hand-grenades a similar intestinal strife in their own country, they are said to make a legal repression of a rebellious or revolutionary movement. Double standards again.

The Venizelists want the downfall of the Ottoman Empire so that Constantinople may become again a Greek Byzance as it was over five centuries ago. Just because a city originally founded by the Romans happened to be Greek thirty-nine years before Columbus discovered America, Carayanni and all the Greeks claim now that it should again be made Greek. They call themselves Venizelists because they follow the principles of Venizelos who, although himself an Ottoman Greek, turned traitor to the country of his birth and adoption and became the political leader of Greece in her anti-Turkish policy. The western powers hailed him as the greatest statesman and diplomat of the century and never give a thought to his treason or to the weakness of his claims.

But we do not mind the Venizelism of Carayanni. Like most of the higher-class Greeks he is Venizelist only in words, and he is too well bred to talk politics when he is with Turks. The higher-class Greeks are not Venizelists enough to don the Greek uniform. They know that if they did don it they might be sent to battle, and battles against the Turks are not very safe. Why should they risk their lives, why should they suffer the discomforts of following a military campaign—even at a safe distance from the front? They know that by a cunning and insidious propaganda they can get all the desired support from foreign nations. To obtain the sympathy and the moral support of certain nations which, like America, are imbued with the spirit of fair play, some of their women write sweet articles where the keynote is the lovableness of the Turks individually, their innocence, their dearness and their romanticism cunningly interwoven with stories—supposed to be personal experiences—which emphasize in descriptions if not in words, the ignorance of the Turks, their administrative or business incapacity, how they still practise slavery and polygamy, and how they commit political murders and atrocities. The broadminded but misinformed public believes in these camouflaged false accusations because of the hypocritical profession of love interwoven with them and gives more than ever its entire sympathy and moral support to the Greeks. To obtain the active support of less broadminded nations, to secure from them all the modern war paraphernalia and all the money necessary to equip and hold under colours, against their will, the lower-class Greeks who are good enough for “cannon fodder,” the Venizelists lead in some other countries a bolder, and therefore more commendable propaganda. In this way they are sure to obtain the moral and material support they want without much risk. The upper-class Greeks like to play safe: the only battles they fight are in their clubs and around the green table of diplomacy, and the most deadly weapon they use is their tongue—which is a pretty deadly weapon at that! So they continue, day in and day out, to endeavour to Byzantinize Constantinople and, while happily they have not succeeded in the whole city, their efforts have been—for all practical purposes—crowned with success in Pera. In the old days Pera was more than half Turkish. To-day scarcely one out of every fifteen people you see in its streets is a real Turk. At the armistice all the non-Turkish elements have been given a free hand in this part of the city by the Inter-Allied police, and rather than submit to the arrogance of the Armenians and to the hostility of the Greek mobs, rather than witness the general dÉbauche, the Turks have withdrawn to Stamboul or to the heights of Nishantashe. A Turk does not feel properly protected in Pera. He feels that he would get little protection from an Inter-Allied policeman if it came to a litigation with a foreigner, and only a very few Turkish policemen are now employed in Pera where their exclusive duty is to regulate traffic.

So Pera has become, under the benevolent eye of its Inter-Allied police, the heaven of Greeks and Levantines and Carayanni, being a Greek, lives in Pera and knows it from A to Z. He has invited us to dinner, and as we know that he will not talk politics, as we want to see Pera at night, and as we could not find a better guide for the purpose, we have accepted his invitation.

One dines very late in Pera and when we start on our trip of exploration it is already night. We left home well after eight. On our way to meet Carayanni we had to pass through Galata, which shelters behind its faÇade of business respectability sordid back streets patronized by sailors of the international merchant and military navies now crowding the harbour. While banks and office buildings in the main street are closed at this late hour we have glimpses of side streets which would make the Barbary Coast of San Francisco blush with envy. Intoxicated sailors rock from side to side and disappear in little streets where organs grind their nasal notes of antiquated French, Italian, yes, even American popular songs and where harsh feminine voices greet prospective friends in an international vernacular. A foreign sailor, more intoxicated and more excited than the others, jumps on the running board of our carriage. It is a good thing that the top is up, as in the darkness he does not see that I am a Turk and when I push him and shout in English for him to get out he obeys without a sound, probably thinking that I am an Englishman or an American who could get protection from the police.

My wife is frightened, but the really dangerous part of our route is nearly over. We are leaving Galata behind. Our carriage climbs the hill of Pera and soon we pass before the Pera Palace, the leading hotel of Constantinople, now owned by a Greek, where foreign officers and business men are fÊted by unscrupulous Levantine adventurers and drink and dance with fallen Russian princesses or with Greek and Armenian girls whose morals are, to say the least, as light as their flimsy gowns. Right next to the hotel is the “Petits Champs” Garden where soliciting by both male and female pleasure-seekers is now so aggressively indulged in that not even a self-respecting man dares any more to venture in the place.

The streets are also full of pleasure-seekers, but at this hour they are not yet as aggressive as in the Garden. They walk slowly eyeing each other with greedy or inviting glances. Among them hundreds of Russian refugees, derelicts of modern civilization, are drifting sadly, their emaciated bodies clothed in rags. Maimed men in old uniforms—on which you can still detect the insignias of the high ranks they obtained on the battlefields when they were fighting to make the world safe for democracy—are now peddling little wooden toys or artificial flowers which they try to sell to passers-by. Old women—and also a few young ones who prefer to be street vendors rather than street walkers—are selling candies and newspapers. At one corner a sad young woman, who will be a mother soon, holds in her hand a bunch of multi-coloured toy balloons. She is so tired that she leans against the wall and can hardly move her hand to offer her balloons for sale. Huddled on the curb and in porch-ways, little children shivering from hunger and from cold, are begging or trying to snatch a few minutes' sleep before the Inter-Allied police come and tell them to move on. Fourteen or fifteen-year-old little girls are parading arm in arm and patently offering their youthfulness in competition with the experienced knowledge of their elder sisters. Prostitution, dishonesty, misery and drunkenness are openly flaunted in this section of the city which revives all the vices of Byzance coupled with those of Sodom.

And all this under the very eyes of the Inter-Allied police who have occupied the city in the name of civilization and to enforce order and law. Never before were Pera and Galata as disreputable as now, never before were they so unsafe, so objectionable and so badly policed; the Inter-Allied police professes that it does not care to mix in matters that have no direct bearing on politics, and the Turkish police has had its authority completely taken away in this section of the city.

At last, through this repulsive maze of vice, we arrive at the Russian restaurant where we are to meet Carayanni. Pera is now full of Russian restaurants, where a money-spending international crowd revels in so-called Bohemian life. Why not? The walls are artistically painted and the furniture queer looking enough. Of course, like most amateur Bohemians, the only thing which this international crowd has adopted from the Quartier Latin of Paris is free love. Anyhow, with the punctuality of a perfect host, Carayanni is waiting for us. Well groomed and prosperous-looking in his dapper London-made clothes, he is trying his best to look and act like an Englishman. His polite nonchalance and his general appearance are so perfect that, despite his dark complexion, it is hard for me to realize that this is the same man who, before I left Constantinople about ten years ago, was making only a very modest living in gambling and card games in which he always was an expert. He has changed his business, however, during the war and is now one of the most successful food speculators in town.

Carayanni has a special table prepared right near the center of the room and on our way to the table he stops to greet the waitresses and to gracefully kiss their hands. Most of these girls are supposed to belong to the Russian nobility, so in Pera it has become the custom to kiss the hand that feeds you. We take our seats and glance about the room. As a whole the place is almost respectable. The crowd is the usual mixture seen now at night in Pera: mostly olive-skinned, thick-lipped, dissipated Armenians and Greeks who can afford high-priced restaurants, thanks to their unscrupulous war and post-war profiteering; many foreigners who can the better afford to spend in view of the low rate of exchange of the Turkish money; a few Americans who love to indulge in foreign countries in pleasures forbidden to them in their own either by puritanic traditions or by the eighteenth amendment. The food is excellent; we have a taste of “vodka,” the Russian drink, while at other tables imported and local wines of rare vintage are consumed copiously. The professional entertainment provided consists of an excellent gypsy orchestra, the best I have heard anywhere, a few singers who sing some weird Russian songs and an interpretative dancer who interprets better than she dances. In between the professional numbers those who desire to dance can do so in the middle of the room which remains cleared for the purpose. After all, it is the same kind of cabaret restaurant that one finds in London, Paris or New York, except that its performers are Russian, its waitresses are supposed to be princesses and its crowd is a little more “Bohemian.”

Of course Carayanni finds it too slow and as we are finishing dinner he suggests that we go to a show. At one theater the Greeks are giving a performance for the benefit of their refugees and at another the Turks are giving a performance for the benefit of their refugees and as our party to-night is both Turkish and Greek we must not hurt the feelings of each other by going to either of these shows. Carayanni suggests adjourning to a certain “club” which is the rage of the moment and where plays and actors are so—“unreserved,” that the public is required to wear masks. Naturally I object to this suggestion: my wife and I are, so to speak, provincials from Stamboul and our blushes would glow even through our masks. My wife is so shocked that Carayanni is sorry to have ever suggested it and he proposes hastily to go to see Scheherazade which is played by some of the former actors of the imperial ballet corps of Petrograd. We all decide in favour of this and we adjourn to the theater.

The play has already started. Here again there are only a very few Turks in the audience and their presence seems to me as incongruous as mine must seem to them. It is queer to see the place crowded with foreigners when but a few years ago the crowds in theaters were almost exclusively Turkish. I remember that one of the last times I came to this very theater it was to assist at a gala performance given by the Municipality of Constantinople in honour of the Young Turkish leaders who had just then so successfully accomplished their democratic revolution. The place was then covered with Turkish flags and humming with Turkish enthusiasm. To-day it is almost entirely Russian. Really, the dream of Peter the Great of making a Russian city of Constantinople has partly come true, but it has turned into a nightmare. I whisper this to my wife and, unknown to Carayanni, we both express the wish that any one who might nourish the ambition of taking Constantinople away from the Turks might share a plight similar to that of the Russians. It is not generous, I admit it, but if we were not Turks and formed the same wish for the enemies of our country, people would call us patriots.

The performance is pretty good but it drags on. Scheherazade is a spectacular play and neither the theater nor its staging are adapted to such plays. The actors might have been in the Imperial Ballet of Petrograd but they certainly were not principals. So we decide to leave before the performance is over. This time Carayanni insists that we go to a regular cafÉ chantant. He will take us to the best one; it is an open-air affair but the weather is really not so cool to-night as to make it disagreeable. We have to take a carriage as it is at some distance, on the hills of Shishli.

This cafÉ chantant is in a garden. In the center, where orchestra seats should be, are small tables, with chairs in semi-circle facing the stage. It is a regular theater stage and on both sides of the garden, boxes have been built. It is crowded. Every one seems to be intoxicated and the weird music of a regular jazz band composed of genuine American negroes fires the blood of the rollicking crowd to demonstrations unknown even to the Bowery in its most flourishing days before the Volstead Act. Much bejewelled and rouged “noble” waitresses sit, drink and smoke at the tables of their own clients. The proprietor of the place, an American coloured man who was established in Russia before the Bolshevik revolution and who—it seems—protected and helped most efficiently some British and American officers and relief workers at the time of the Revolution, is watching the crowd in a rather aloof manner. Frankly he seems to me more human than his clients; at least he is sober and acts with consideration and politeness, which is not the case with most of the people who are here. Not one real Turk is in sight. Many foreigners, but mostly Greeks, Armenians and Levantines—with dissipated puffed-up faces, greedy of pleasure and materialism. We have a liqueur. The show is a vaudeville which is not very interesting. Every minute that passes makes the crowd more and more demonstrative. Carayanni is enjoying it immensely, but I realize that our presence puts a damper on his good time and although he defends himself in the most exquisite manner when I tease him about it and accuse him of being evidently an “habituÉ” of the place, the glances that he exchanges surreptitiously with one of the waitresses—a real Russian beauty with pale skin, fire-red lips and languid black eyes—confirm my suspicions. My wife does not enjoy herself, and she is tired: our life in Stamboul has evidently made her lose her taste for late hours. Besides she has never seen this kind of night life anywhere and the atmosphere is getting decidedly too tense for us. A “parti carrÉe” enters a box—and immediately pulls the curtain, thus cutting itself entirely from the view of the public. My wife looks at me in surprise. We really must go.

It is too early for Carayanni, the night has just started for him and for the other regular Perotes. So we insist that he should not spoil his evening and we apologise for our departure. He is heartbroken to see us go but asks permission to remain, protesting that he has some very important business matters to talk over with a friend of his whom he has just seen in the crowd. We understand perfectly well and take our leave.

We step out of the gay garden. At the curb a long line of automobiles is waiting. We take one as it will get us home quicker than a carriage. Besides, the streets of Pera, and especially of Galata, are not very safe at this late hour, and the quicker one rushes through them the better.

Pera is tossing in her sleep, nervous and restless. A few night-owls of both sexes who evidently have not yet been able to find a branch to their liking are still wandering on the sidewalks. The porches and doorways of nearly every house are crowded with groups of children and refugees, half-naked, sleeping cuddled up together to keep warm. In restaurants and amusement places the merry-makers are continuing their revels.

Galata again, her narrow streets still lit up and still resounding with sinister noises. Now the bridge, almost deserted, and then at last Stamboul, our Stamboul, the beautiful Turkish city, sleeping in the night the sleep of the just; poor Stamboul, ruined by fires and by wars, sad in her misery, but decent and noble; a dethroned queen dreaming of her past splendour and trusting in her future.