LITMIR.BIZ

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say that the Turks were once driven out of Hungary than they are to receive the Garter for letting his calumnies in. But there is an end to all troubles, even on the Turkish frontier, and at last we are allowed to proceed to Karakeui, where I ultimately alight at the hotel.

      Karakeui lies on a plateau, under a range of snowy mountains which glitter with strange distinctness in the pure translucent air. A forest of minarets bears testimony to the piety of the place. It is the sacred month of Ramazan, and at sunset they will be festooned with lights and blaze like columns of fire, while in the mosque below myriads of little oil lamps will shed their soft glow on the bowing crowds, the plashing fountains, and the names of saints and prophets blazoned on the walls in green and red. In the streets is a motley throng of men and animals. Strings of camels and pack-horses, dogs, sheep, and turkeys are mixed up with the human crowd. Bulgarians and Servians quarrel in the bazaar, and denounce one another to the Turks. They each claim exclusive rights over the only Christian Church, and the Governor, to end the dispute, has shut it up altogether. A few Greeks are occupied in making large fortunes, and are ready to expatiate on the Hellenic Idea, and to explain how, from a certain peculiar point of view, the late war may be regarded as a victory for Greece. Albanians, armed with many weapons, and with moustaches as long as their own rifles, swagger through the crowd which respectfully makes way for them.

      The hotel is kept by an Armenian, who left his native village on account of what are beautifully termed the “events” which occurred there. Having been inspired by these occurrences with a wholesome respect for the followers of the Prophet, he is a little apt to recoup himself at the expense of his co-religionists; but the local Ottoman authorities, to whose care I am duly recommended as being “one of those who wish well to the Sublime Government,” have sternly informed him that I am not to be fleeced. (I wonder if the Governor of New York would address a similar warning to the proprietor of this hotel.) The establishment is constructed in the form of a quadrangle. The central space is a quagmire, wherein are embedded, and, so to speak, held as hostages for payment, the vehicles in which the travellers have arrived. The ground floor of the surrounding buildings is devoted to stabling. Outside the first floor, and above the aforesaid quagmire, runs a gallery, from which open a number of cells, bare and whitewashed, devoid of all furniture, but, contrary to what might be expected, scrupulously clean. A marble bath is not, as in New York, attached to each apartment, but in response to a suitable shout a boy brings a brass jug and basin, pours water over your hands and wipes them on an embroidered towel. There is no table and no bed. When you are disposed to sleep, a pile of rugs is spread on the floor. If you want to write, you naturally sit on your heels and hold your paper in your hand—an attitude which, at least in the case of Europeans, tends to restrain exuberance and keep literary composition within due limits. At meal times a little table like a high stool is brought in. The guests squat round it on their heels, and eat with their fingers out of a large saucer set on a broad tin tray. Turkish dinners consist of a quantity of dishes, generally at least seven or eight, and sometimes as many as twenty; but each is only tasted and rapidly removed. At first it looks somewhat mysterious when people apparently wrap up some pieces of string in brown paper and eat the parcel with avidity. But the string is cheese drawn out like very attenuated vermicelli, and the brown paper sheets of very thin bread which serve as a tablecloth and napkin as well as for food. During Ramazan no Moslem may eat, drink, or smoke between sunrise and sunset. The latter phenomenon is announced by a cannon, and some minutes before the gun fires a hungry crowd is gathered round the table waiting for the blessed sound. Then follows half an hour of rapid, silent nutrition, for Turks do not talk at table. Afterwards, an hour or more of prayer; and then the earlier part of the night, until at least twelve or one, is devoted to visiting or attending the puppet show called Karagyöz. [xxxi] Half an hour before dawn people go round the town beating drums, and the faithful hurriedly take a last meal before the morning cannon announces the dawn.

      My neighbour in the room on the right is a spy appointed by the Imperial Government to watch over my doings. He is a charming companion, and I fancy has a very pretty talent for the composition of imaginative literature. My only regret is that I have never seen the daily reports which he draws up on my conduct. They are, I believe, replete with incident, and are excellent specimens of a new and interesting variety of fiction. The room on my left is occupied by the Christian Vice-Governor of the Province, who was appointed some months ago under immense pressure from the Powers, met by such resistance on the part of the Porte that one might have supposed his nomination was a deadly blow to the Turkish Empire. It is a wise plan of the Porte’s never to make the most trivial concession without opposing a resistance, which is often successful, and always seems to enhance the importance of the point in dispute. But the concession once made, means are soon discovered to deprive it of all its value, and the positions of victors and vanquished in the game prove to be reversed. In the present case the Christian Vice-Governor found that none of his co-religionists were disposed to let him lodgings; and the local authorities, with a tender solicitude for his welfare, represented to him that there was a strong feeling against him in the town, and that he would be much more comfortable in the hotel; predicting (like Kinglake’s prophet, Damoor) that if he went out into the streets, or meddled in the administration, he would arouse that excitable sentiment known as Mussulman religious feeling. Like the Jews of Safet, the Christian Vice-Governor thought that the predictions of such practical men were not to be disregarded, and takes his ease in his inn with as good a grace as he can muster. Another interesting occupant of the hotel is the Turkish inspector of Reforms. To rightly understand the duties of this functionary it must be remembered that the Turkish Government is divided into two parts, which have no connection with one another: firstly, the real Government, which is hard to comprehend, but of which one gets a dim idea by observation on the spot; and secondly, the show Government, intended to impress Europe, and having as chief practical result the enrichment of telegraphic agencies. Two common manifestations of the show Government are circulars to the Powers, and commissions despatched to the Provinces to rectify abuses. The present Commissioner has come to inspect reforms, and from the official language used respecting him it may be supposed that his mission is to tend and water the new institutions which are springing up like a luxuriant vegetation in a favourable climate, but at the same time to exercise a fatherly control, prevent the country from rushing into downright republicanism, and not permit the Christians to positively oppress their weaker Mohammedan brethren. He is a very affable man, with a broad, smiling face, and an amiable rotundity of person which causes his gorgeous uniform to burst its buttons and gape at critical points. He pays me long visits for the purpose of political discussion, being, as he calls it, tout à fait dans les idées libérales, and in order that this outpouring of radical views may not be interrupted, he brings a soldier to mount guard over the door. No tortures could make me disclose the Commissioner’s confidences. I will merely observe that the long fasts of Ramazan are irksome to an enlightened mind, and that liberal theologians hold that a mixture of brandy and champagne does not fall under the Prophet’s ban, inasmuch as it cannot accurately be described as either wine or spirits.

      Very different is the room at the end of the passage. No guard is needed here. The door stands proudly open, and all the world may see that no crumb of bread or drop of water enters from sunrise to sunset. In the middle of a low sofa sits, cross-legged, a Hodja, clad in striped silk. He is no ordinary country parson, but a noted preacher invited to tour in the provinces during Ramazan, and hold what in other countries would be called revival meetings. His thin nervous face shows that he is not a real Turk. Probably he is of Arab extraction, and in any case he burns with a Semitic indignation against those who “ascribe companions to God.” Round him sit in a solemn circle the notables of the town—stout, devout men of the churchwarden order, who, to judge from the heavy sighs and puffs which they occasionally emit, do not share the Hodja’s fierce joy in trampling on the desires of the flesh. To-morrow he will preach in the Great Mosque with a sword in his hand, in token that the building was once a Christian Church and has been won from the infidel. I tell the Commissioner for Reforms that I think this dangerous and injudicious. He explains that the whole point of the ceremony lies in the fact that the sword is sheathed, as a token that religious discord is at an end, and that an era of mutual love and toleration has commenced. But when I think of that nervous, fanatical face, the green garments, the ample turban, the amulets and the sword, I cannot help suspecting that it is better to be a Christian traveller than a Christian resident at Karakeui.

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