London, Jan. 1909.

I am indeed a dÉsenchantÉe. I envy you even your reasonable illusions about us. We are hopelessly what we are. I have lost all mine about you, and you seem to me as hopelessly what you are.

The only difference between the spleen of London and the spleen of Constantinople is that the foundation of the Turkish character is dry cynicism, whilst the Englishman’s is inane doggedness without object. In his fatalism the Turk is a philosopher. Your Englishman calls himself a man of action, but he is a mere empiric.

I quite understand now, however, that you do not pity my countrywomen, not because they do not need pity, but because for years you have led only the life of the women of this country, women who start so courageously to fight life’s battle and who ultimately have had to bury all their life’s illusions. Now, I see only too well, there are beings for whom freedom becomes too heavy a burden to bear. The women I have met here, seem to have been striving all their lives to get away from everything—home, family, social conventions. They want the right to live alone, to travel as they like, to be responsible for their own lives. Yet when their ambition is realised, the only harvest they reap after a youth of struggle is that of disenchantment.

Yet I ask myself, is a lonely old age worth a youth of effort? Have they not confused individual liberty, which is the right to live as one pleases, with true liberty, which to my Oriental mind is the right to choose one’s own joys and forbearances?

*****

Is it not curious that here, in a Christian country, I see nothing of the religion of Christ? And yet commentaries are not lacking. Every sect has the presumption to suppose its particular interpretation of the words of Christ is the only right interpretation, and Christians have changed the meaning of His words so much, and seen Christ through the prism of their own minds, that I, primitive being that I am, do not recognise in their tangled creeds the simple and beautiful teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, Son of the carpenter Joseph.

Sometimes it seems to me that the religion of Christ has been brought beyond the confines of absurdity. Would it not be better to try and follow the example of Christ than to waste time disputing whether He would approve of eating chocolate biscuits on fast-days and whether wild duck is a fasting diet, whilst duck of the farmyard is forbidden? To me, all this seems profanely childish.

The impression these numerous creeds make on me is like that of members of the same family disputing with one another. What happens in the case of families happens in the case of religion. From these discussions over details follow, first mistrust, then dislike, then hatred, always to the detriment of the best interest of them all.

I went to a Nonconformist chapel the other evening, but I could not bring myself to realise that I was in a chapel at all. There was nothing divine or sacred either in the building or the service. It was more like a lecture by an eloquent professor. Nor did the congregation worship as we worship in the East. It seemed to me, as if it was not to worship God that they were there, but to appease the anger of some Northern Deity, cold, intolerant, and wrathful—an idea of the Almighty which I shall never understand.

It astonished me to hear the professor calling those present “miserable sinners,” and as I was one of the congregation I was not a little hurt, for I have nothing very serious on my conscience. But the Catholics, in this respect, err as much as the Protestants. Why this hysteria for sins you have not committed? Why this shame of one’s self, this exaggerated humility, this continual fear? Why should you stand trembling before your Maker?

While I was still inside the chapel, a lady came up and was introduced to me. We walked down the street together, and in the course of conversation she discovered I was not even a Nonconformist, nor a Roman Catholic, but a heathen. And she at once began to pity me, and show me the advantages of her religion. But what could she teach me about Christ that I did not already know? Unfortunately for her she knew nothing of the religion of Mahomet, nor how broad-minded he was, nor with what admiration he had spoken of the crucified Jesus, and how we all loved Christ from Mahomet’s interpretation of His life and work.24

*****

As usual here, as in other Christian countries, marriage seems an everlasting topic of interest. I was hardly seven years old when I was taken for the first time to a non-Turkish marriage. It was the wedding of some Greek farm-people our governess knew. We were present at the nuptial benediction, which took place inside the house and which seemed to me interminable. After that, everyone, including the bride, partook of copious refreshments. Then, when we had been taken for a drive in the country, we returned to dinner, which was served in front of the stable. After the meal we danced on the grass to the strains of a violin, accordion, and triangle. That is the only Christian marriage I had seen till 1908, and I was astonished to find how different a Christian wedding is here.

What is the use of an organ for marrying people? And twelve bridesmaids? The bridal pair themselves look extremely uncomfortable at all this useless ceremonial, to which nobody pays any particular attention. Every bride and bridegroom must know how unnecessary are all these preparations, and how marriages bore friends. Yet they go on putting themselves to all this useless trouble, and for what?

Each person invited, I am told, has to bring a present. What a wicked expense to put their friends to. Oh, vanity of vanities!

How is it possible not to admire the primitive Circassians, who when they love one another and wish to marry, walk off without consulting anyone but themselves?

*****

I am also disappointed at the manner in which divorce proceedings are conducted in England. What a quantity of unkind words and vile accusations! What a low handling and throwing of mud at each other, what expense, what time and worry! And all simply to prove that two people are not suited to live together.

To think that, with the possibility of such a life of tragedy, there are still people who have the courage to get married! It seems to me there are some who take marriage too seriously, others who do not take it seriously enough, and that others again only take it seriously when one of the partners wants to be liberated.

How sad it is! And what good can be said of laws, the work of human beings, which not only do not help us in our misfortunes, but extend neither pity nor pardon to those who try to suffer a little less.

During the time I lived away yonder and suffered from a total absence of liberty, I imagined that Europe respected the happiness and the misfortunes of individuals. How horrible it is to find in the daily papers the names of people mercilessly branded by their fellow-men for having committed no other fault than that of trying to be less unhappy, for having the madness to wish to repair their wrecked existence. To publish the reports of the evidence, the sordid gossip of menials, the calumnies, the stolen letters, written under such different circumstances, in moments of happiness, in absolute confidence, or extreme mental agony, in which a woman has laid her soul bare, is loathsome. Is it not worse than perjury to exact from a friend’s lips what he only knows in confidence? Poor imprudent beings! They have had their moments of sincerity: for this your sad civilisation of the West makes them pay with the rest of their broken lives.

*****

For a long time I have wanted to make the acquaintance of Mr. W. T. Stead, who is known and respected in the East more perhaps than any Englishman. I had no particular reason to go and see him except that he knew my father at the first Hague Conference. So, one day I was bold enough to jump into a hansom and drive to his office. I was asked whom I wanted. I asked for Mr. Stead.

“Who wants him?” I was asked.

“I do,” I replied.

“Give me your card.” But as I had no card I wrote on a slip of paper: “The daughter of a Turkish friend of the Hague Conference will be so pleased to see you.”

He received me at once. There was so much to talk about. He spoke so nicely of my poor dead father, questioned me about the Sultan, about the country I had left, about the Balkans, about Crete, and the Turks themselves. More than an hour we talked together, and when finally I rose to go he said to me: “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“No,” I said, thanking him very kindly.

“Then it was simply to see me,” he went on, “that you came.”

“Yes,” I said, “it is a friendly visit.” He laughed heartily.

“Do you know,” he said, “that is the first time that this has happened in my life.”

Then he was kind enough to send for tea, and the tray was put down on the table among the papers and the journals, and he showed me signed portraits which he had collected during his travels, among them the one that my dear father had given him at The Hague. He then gave me his own, and signed it, “To my only Turkish lady friend.”

*****

I saw him for a little while in Paris on his return from Constantinople, and he came back really enthusiastic. He was much in sympathy with the Young Turks, though he had much also to find fault with. He despised but pitied Abdul Hamid, and hoped that an entente between England and Turkey could be arranged, but his ideas were quite unpractical. His policy was purely sentimental, and his suggestions impossible.

*****

I have had the pleasure, since I have been here, of seeing two diplomatists with whose voices I was familiar for many years in Constantinople. My father highly esteemed them both; they often came to see him. When they had drunk their coffee, sometimes my father sent for us to come and play and sing to them, and from behind a curtain they courteously thanked us for our performance.

Although I had so often heard their voices I never had an opportunity of seeing a photo of either of them, and I can’t tell whether I was agreeably surprised or not. Have you ever tried putting a body to a voice?

*****

What a magnificent city London is! If you English are not proud of it, you ought to be. It is not only grand and magnificent but has an aristocratic look that despises mere ornament.

Here in London I have a feeling of security, which I have had nowhere else in the world. It is the only capital in Europe I have so far seen that gives me a sense of orderliness not dependent on authority. It seems to me as if English character were expressed even in the houses of the people. You can tell at a glance what kind of people dwell in the house you are entering. How different is Paris! What a delight to have no concierge, those petty potentates who, as it were, keep the key of your daily life, and remedy there is none.

For the first time since I left Turkey I have had here the sensation of real home life. As you know, we have no flats in Turkey, and have room to move about freely—room for your delightful English furniture, which to me is the most comfortable in the whole world.

Like ours, the houses here are made for use, and their wide doors and broad passages seem to extend a welcome to you which French houses hardly ever do. In France you smell economy before you even reach the door-mat.

You who are in Turkey can now understand what I have suffered from this narrowness of French domestic life. You can imagine my surprise when, the morning after my arrival here, a big tray was sent into my room with a heavy meal of eggs, bacon, fish, toast, marmalade, and what not. I thought I must have looked ill and as if I needed extra feeding, and I explained to my hostess that my white skin was not a sign of anÆmia but my Oriental complexion: all the eggs and bacon in the world would not change the colour of my skin. She was not aware that the Mahometan never eats pork, and like so many others, seemed to forget that bacon, like pork, came from a forbidden source.

I do not find London noisy, but what noise there is one feels is serving a purpose. Life seems so serious; everyone is busy crowding into twelve hours the work of twenty-four. We Turks take no heed of the passing hours.

The Englishmen remind me of the Turks. They have the same grave demeanour, the same appearance of indifference to our sex, the same look of stubborn determination, and, like the Turk, every Englishman is a Sultan in his own house. Like the Turk, too, he is sincere and faithful in his friendships, but Englishmen have two qualities that the Turks do not possess. They are extremely good business men, and in social relations are extremely prudent, although it is difficult to say where prudence ends and hypocrisy begins.

But if Englishmen remind me of Turks, I can find nothing in common between English and Turkish women. They are in direct contrast to one another in everything. Perhaps it is this marked contrast that balances our friendship. A Turkish woman’s life is as mysterious as an Englishwoman’s life is an open book, which all can read who care. Before I met the suffragettes, I knew only sporting and society women. They were all passionately absorbed in their own amusements, which as you know do not in the least appeal to me. I suppose we Turkish women who have so much time to devote to culture become unreasonably exacting. But everywhere I have been—in England, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain—I have found how little and how uselessly the women read, and how society plays havoc with their taste for good books.

Englishwomen are pretty, but are deficient in charm. They have no particular desire and make no effort to please. You know the charm of the Turkish woman. The Englishwoman is pig-headed, undiplomatic, brutally sincere, but a good and faithful friend. The Turkish woman—well, you must fill that in yourself! I am too near to focus her.

But now that I have seen the women of most countries, you may want to know which I most admire.

Well, I will tell you frankly, the Turkish woman. An ordinary person would answer, “Of course,” but you are not an ordinary person, so I shall at once give you my reasons. It is not because I am a Turkish woman myself, but because, in spite of the slavery of their existence, Turkish women have managed to keep their minds free from prejudice. With them it is not what people think they ought to think, but what they think themselves. Nowhere else in Europe have I found women with such courage in thinking.

In every country there are women—though they may be a mere handful—who are above class, above nationality, and dare to be themselves. These are the people I appreciate the most. These are the people I shall always wish to know, for to them the whole world is kin.—Your affectionate friend,

Zeyneb.