The Ship Dwellers Part 13

[Ill.u.s.tration: KEYEFF]

I was mistaken. All the picture people are collected here, and more than picture ever saw. No sober imagination could conceive the scene at the end of the Galata bridge. To present it a painter would have to inebriate himself, spill his colors all about the place and wind up with the jimjams. What do these people do there? They indulge in keyeff.

There is no English word for keyeff--no word in any language, probably, except Turkish. It is not done in any other language. Keyeff is a condition of pure enjoyment, unimpaired even by thought. Over his coffee and nargileh the Turk will sit for hours in a thought-vacancy which the Western mind can comprehend no more than it can grasp the fourth dimension. It is not contemplation--that would require mental exercise.

It is absence of thought--utter absence of effort--oblivion--the condition for which the Western mind requires chloroform.

From the end of the Galata bridge the thronged streets diverge, and into these a motley procession flows. Men of every calling under the sun--merchants, clerks, mechanics, laborers, peddlers, beggars, bandits--all men--or nearly all, for the Mohammedan woman mostly bides at home.

It is just as well that she does, if one may judge from the samples.

She is not interesting, I think. She may be, but my opinion is the other way. She dresses in a sort of domino, usually of dingy goods, her feet and ankles showing disreputable stockings and shoes. Even the richest silk garments, when worn by women--those one sees on the street--have a way of revealing disgusting foot-gear and hosiery. No, the Mohammedan woman is not interesting and she has no soul. I believe the Prophet decided that, and I agree with him. If she had one--a real feminine soul--she would be more particular about these details.

The Turk is a dingy person altogether, and his city is unholy in its squalor. Yet the religion of these people commands cleanliness. Only the command was not clear enough as to terms. The Prophet bade his followers to be as cleanly as possible. There was lat.i.tude in an order like that, and they have been widening it ever since. I don't believe they are as "clean as possible." They pray five times a day, and they wash before prayer, but they wash too little and pray too much for the best results.

I mean so far as outward appearance is concerned. Very likely their souls are perfect.

At all events they are sober. The Prophet commanded abstinence, and I saw no drunkenness. There are no saloons in Constantinople. One may buy "brandy-sticks"--canes with long gla.s.s phials concealed in them and a tiny gla.s.s for tippling--though I suspect these are sold mostly to visitors.

You are in the business part of Constantinople as soon as you leave the bridge--in the markets and shops, and presently in the bazaars. The streets are only a few feet wide, and are swarming with men and beasts of burden, yet carriages dash through, and the population falls out of the way, cursing the "Christian dogs," no doubt, in the case of tourists. Yet let a carriage but stop and there is eager attention on every hand--a lavish willingness to serve, to dance attendance, to grovel, to do anything that will bring return.

The excursionist, in fact, presently gets an idea that these people are conducting a sort of continuous entertainment for his benefit--a permanent World's Fair Midway Plaisance, as it were, where curious wares and sights are arranged for his special diversion. He is hardly to be blamed for this notion. He sees every native ready to jump to serve him--to leave everything else for his pleasure. The shopkeeper will let a native customer wait and fume till doomsday as long as the tourist is even a prospect. The native piastre is nothing to him when American gold is in sight. That is what he lives for by day and dreams of by night. He will sweat for it, lie for it, steal for it, die for it. It is his life, his hope, his salvation. He will give everything but his immortal soul for the gold of the West, and he would give that too, if it would bring anything.

Most places along the Mediterranean deal in mixed moneys, but compared with Constantinople the financial problem elsewhere is simple. Here the traveller's pocket is a medley of francs, lire, crowns, piastres, drachmas, marks, and American coins of various denominations. He tries feebly to keep track of table values, but it is no use. The crafty shopkeepers, who have all the world's monetary lore at their fingertips, rob him every time they make change, and the more he tries to figure the more muddled he gets, until he actually can't calculate the coin of his own realm.

As for Turkish money, in my opinion it is worth nothing whatever. It is mostly a lot of tinware and plated stuff, and the plating is worn off, and the hieroglyphics, and it was never anything more than a lot of silly medals in the beginning. Whenever I get any of it I work it off on beggars as quickly as possible for baksheesh, and I always feel guilty, and look the other way and sing a little to forget.

n.o.body really knows what any of those Turkish metallic coins are supposed to be worth. One of them will pay for a shine, but then the shine isn't worth anything, either, so that is no basis of value. There is actually no legal tender in Turkey. How could there be, with a make-believe money like that?

Speaking of bootblacks, they all sit in a row at the other end of the Galata bridge, and they go to sleep over your shoes and pretend to work on them and take off the polish you gave them yourself in the morning.

They have curious-looking boxes, and their work is as nearly useless as any effort, if it is that, I have ever known.

I have been trying for a page or two to say something more about the streets of Constantinople, and now I've forgotten what it was I wanted to say. Most of them are not streets at all, in fact, but alleys, wretched alleys--some of them roofed over--and as you drive through them your face gets all out of shape trying to fit itself to the sights and smells. I remember now; I wanted to mention the donkeys--the poor, patient little beasts of burden that plod through those thoroughfares, weighed down with great loads of brick and dirt and wood and every sort of heavy thing, enough to make a camel sway-backed, I should think. They are the gentlest creatures alive, and the most imposed upon. If Mohammed provided a heaven for the donkeys, I hope it isn't the one the Turks go to.

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 t.i.tle. 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 gra.s.s 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 pa.s.ses 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 grat.i.tude 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 _Kurfurst_, 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 cortege--all the fuss and fanfare of this fallen king.[3]