Hendaye, July 1907.

What a relief! What a heart-felt relief to leave Paris! Paris with its noise and clamour and perpetual and useless movement! Paris which is so different from what I expected!

We have had in Paris what you English people call a “season,” and I shall require many months of complete rest, to get over the effects of that awful modern whirlwind.

What an exhausting life! What unnecessary labour! And what a contrast to our calm harem existence away yonder. I think—yes, I almost think I have had enough of the West now, and want to return to the East, just to get back the old experience of calm.

Picture to yourself the number of new faces we have seen in six weeks. What a collection of women—chattering, irritating, inquisitive, demonstrative, and obliging women, who invite you again and again, and when you do go to their receptions you get nothing for your trouble but crowding and pushing.

All the men and women in Paris are of uncertain years. The pale girl who serves the tea might be of any age from fifteen to thirty, and the men with the well-trimmed fingers and timid manners are certainly not sixty, but they might be anything up to forty.

But where are the few intellectuelles? Lost between the lace and the teacups. They look almost ashamed of being seen there at all. They have real knowledge, and to meet them is like opening the chapter of a valuable Encyclopedia; but hardly has one taken in the discovery, when one is pushed along to find the conclusion of the chapter somewhere in the crowd, if indeed it can be found.

As you know, since our arrival from Nice we have not had one free evening. The Grandes Dames of France wanted to get a closer view of two Turkish women, and they have all been charming to us, especially the elder ones.

Yes, charming is the word which best applies to all these society ladies, young and old, and is not to be charming the modern ideal of civilisation? These women are all physically the model of a big Paris dressmaker, and morally what society allows them to be—some one quite inoffensive. But it is not their fault that they have all been formed on the same pattern, and that those who have originality hide it under the same exterior as the others, fearful lest such a blemish should even be suspected!

But really, am I not a little pedantic? How can I dare to come to such a conclusion after a visit which lasts barely a quarter of an hour?

At luncheon and dinner the favourite topics of conversation are the pieces played at the theatres or the newest books. Marriage, too, is always an interesting subject, and everyone seems eager to get married in spite of the thousand and one living examples there are to warn others of what it really is. This supreme trust in a benign Fate amuses me. Every bride-elect imagines it is she who will be the one exception to the general rule. Turkish women do not look forward to matrimony with the same confidence.

Divorce has a morbid fascination for the men and women here: so have other people’s misfortunes. And as soon as a man or woman is down—a woman particularly—everyone delights in giving his or her contribution to the moral kicking.

I must own, too, I cannot become enthusiastic about Mdlle. Cecile Sorel’s clothes nor the grace of a certain Russian dancer. What I would like to talk about would be some subject which could help us two peoples to understand each other better, but such subjects are carefully avoided as tiresome.

Do you remember how anxious we were to hear Strauss’s Salome discussed, and what it was in all this work which interested these Paris Society ladies?—nothing more nor less than whether it was Trohohanova or Zambelli who was to dance the part of Salome.

That was a disappointment for me! All my life I looked forward to being in a town where music was given the place of honour, for in Constantinople, as you know, there is music for everyone except the Turkish woman.

I had no particular desire to see the monuments of Paris, and now I have visited them my affection for them is only lukewarm. The Philistine I am! I wish I dared tell the Parisians what I really thought of them and their beautiful Paris! I had come above all things to educate myself in music, and now I find that they, with their unbounded opportunities, have shamefully failed to avail themselves of what to me, as a Turkish woman, is the great chance of a lifetime.

A WALK WITH PIERRE LOTI IN A WESTERN CEMETERY

Yesterday afternoon, accompanied by M. Pierre Loti, we visited the cemetery of Birreyatou. Its likeness to Turkey attracted us at once, for all that is Eastern has a peculiar fascination for Loti. There were the same cypress trees and plants that grow in our cemeteries, and the tombs were cared for in a manner which is quite unusual in Western Europe.

To go for a walk in a burial-ground I know is exclusively an Eastern form of amusement. But wait till you have seen our cemeteries and compared them with your own, then you will understand better this taste of ours. Oh, the impression of loneliness and horror I felt when I first saw a Western cemetery! It was PÈre La Chaise, the most important of them all. I went there to steal a leaf from the famous weeping willow on Musset’s grave, and to my great surprise I found by the Master’s tomb, amongst other tokens of respect, a Russian girl’s visiting card with the corner turned down. But this was an exception. How you Western people neglect your dead!

I could not for a long time explain to myself this fear of death, but since I have seen here the painful scenes connected with it—the terror of Extreme Unction,18 the visit of the relatives to the dead body, the funeral pomp, the hideous black decorations on the horses’ heads, and last but not least the heart-rending mourning—I, too, am terrified.

We, like the Buddhists, have no mourning. The Angel of Death takes our dear ones from us to a happier place, and night and morning we pray for them. The coffin is carried out on men’s shoulders in the simplest manner possible, and the relatives in the afternoon take their embroidery and keep the dear ones company. It is as if they were being watched in their sleep, and they are very, very near.

Yet here in the West what a difference! I shudder at the thought that some day I might have to rest in one of these untidy waste heaps, and that idea has been preying on my mind so that I have actually written to my father and begged him, should I die in Paris, to have me taken home and buried in a Turkish cemetery.

*****

COMÉDIE FRANÇAISE

Did I ever tell you of my visit to the ComÉdie FranÇaise? Alas, alas! again I have to chronicle a disappointment. I am trying to think what I pictured to myself I was going to see, and I am not at all clear about it. In my childish imagination I must have thought of something I will never see.

Naturally the piece played was Œdipus Rex. Every time I am invited to the ComÉdie FranÇaise I see Œdipus Rex. It seems a particular favourite in Paris, I am sure I cannot tell why.

The scenery was perfect, so were the costumes, but you cannot imagine how uncomfortable I was when I heard the actors, together or one after the other, screaming, moaning, hissing, and calling on the whole audience to witness a misfortune, which was only too obvious.

All the actors were breathless, hoarse, exhausted—in sympathy I was exhausted too, and longed for the entr’acte. Then when at last a pause did come, I began to hope in the next scene a little calm would be established and the actors take their task a little more leisurely. But no! they cried out louder still, threw themselves about in torture, and gesticulated with twice as much violence.

When I heard the voice of Œdipus it reminded me of the night watchers in my own country giving the fire alarm, and all those Turks who have heard it are of the same opinion. As I left the theatre tired out, I said to myself, “Surely it is not possible that this is the idea the Greeks had of Dramatic Art.”

What a difference to the theatre I had known in Turkey! Sometimes our mothers organised excursions, and we were taken in long springless carts, dragged by oxen, to the field of Conche-Dili in the valley of Chalcedonia, where there was a kind of theatre, or caricature of a theatre, built of unpainted wood, which held about four hundred people.

The troop was composed of Armenian men and women who had never been at the Paris Conservatoire, but who gave a fine interpretation of the works of Dumas, Ohnet, Octave Feuillet, and Courteline. The stage was small and the scenery was far from perfect, but the Moslem women were delighted with this open-air theatre, although they had to sit in latticed boxes and the men occupied the best seats in the stalls.

During the entr’acte, there was music and singing, the orchestra being composed of six persons who played upon stringed instruments. The conductor beat time on a big drum, and sometimes he sang songs of such intense sadness that we wondered almost whence they came.

That was a dear little theatre, the theatre of my childhood. Primitive though it was, it was very near to me as I listened to the piercing cries of alarm sent out by Œdipus. Would they not, these rustic actors of the Chalcedonian valley, I wonder, have given a truer and better interpretation of the plays of Sophocles?

A BULL-FIGHT

Guess, my dear, where I have been this afternoon. Guess, guess! I, a Turkish woman, have been to a bull-fight! There were many English people present. They are, I am told, the habituÉs of the place, and they come away, like the Spaniards, almost intoxicated by the spectacle.

This is an excitement which does not in the least appeal to me. Surely one must be either prehistoric or decadent to get into this unwholesome condition of the Spaniards. Is the sight of a bull which is being killed, and perhaps the death of a toreador, “such a delightful show,” to quote the exact words of my American neighbour? He shouted with frenzy whilst my sister and two Poles, unable to bear the sight of the horses’ obtruding intestines, had to be led out of the place in an almost fainting condition.

As for myself, I admit to having admired two things, the suppleness of the men and the brilliant appearance of the bull-ring. The women of course lent a picturesque note to the ensemble with their sparkling jewels, their faces radiant as those of the men, their dark eyes dancing with excitement, and their handsome gowns and their graceful mantillas. But shall I ever forget the hideous sight of the poor horse staggering out of the ring, nor the roars of the wounded bull? It was a spectacle awful to look upon. What a strange performance for a Turkish woman, used to the quiet of our harem life!

Perhaps, however, for those to whom life has brought no emotion or sorrow, no joy or love, those who have never seen the wholesale butchery to which we, alas! had almost become accustomed—perhaps to these people this horrible sight is a necessity. Spanish writers have told me they have done their best work after a bull-fight, and before taking any important step in life they needed this stimulus to carry them safely through. I can assure you, however, I heaved a sigh of relief when the performance was over, and not for untold gold would I ever go to see it again.

After leaving the scene I have described to you, we followed the crowd to a little garden planted with trees, which is situated in the Calle Mayor and stretches along the side of the stream till it meets the Bidassoa. This is the spot where, on cool evenings, men and maidens meet to dance the Fandango. Basque men with red caps are seated in the middle to supply the music. On the sandy earth, which is the ballroom, the couples dance, in and out of the gnarled trees, to the rhythm of dance music, that is strange and passionate and at the same time almost languishing.

The music played was more Arabian than anything I have yet heard in the West, but unfortunately the modern note too was creeping into these delightful measures. The Basques with their red caps, bronzed faces, white teeth, and fine manly figures, the women with their passionate and supple movements and decorated mantillas, and the almost antique frame of Fontarabia, proud of its past, hopeful for its future, were all so new and so different to me.

But it is dark now, the dancing has ceased, the crowd has dispersed. How good it is to be out at this hour of the evening. I, who am free (or think I am), delight in the fact there are no Turkish policemen to question me as to what I am doing.

*****

But alas! alas! I spoke of my freedom a little too soon. Even in this quiet city can I not pass unobserved?

“Have you anything to declare?” a Custom House officer asks me.

“Yes,” I replied, “my hatred of your Western ‘Customs,’ and my delight at being alive.”—Your affectionate friend,

Zeyneb.