Paine Albert Bigelow
The Ship-Dwellers: A Story of a Happy Cruise

XVIII
A CITY OF ILLUSION

I suppose there is no more beautiful city from the outside and no more disheartening city from the inside than Constantinople. From the outside it is all fairyland and enchantment; from the inside it is all grime and wretchedness. Viewed from the entrance of the Bosporus, through the haze of morning, it is a vision. Viewed from a carriage driven through the streets it becomes a nightmare. If one only might see it as we did – at sunrise, with the minarets and domes lifting from the foliage, all aglow with the magic of morning – and then sail away from that dream spectacle, his hunger unsatisfied, he would hold at least one supreme illusion in his heart.

For that is what it is – just an illusion – the most superb fantasy in the whole world. We left anchorage soon after sunrise and moved over abreast of Galata a little below the bridge that crosses the Golden Horn and connects this part of Constantinople with Stamboul. We are lying now full length against the street, abreast of it, where all day long a soiled, disordered life goes on. It is a perpetual show, but hardly a pleasing one. It is besmirched and raucous; it is wretched.

Hawkers, guides, beggars, porters weave in and out and mingle vociferously. To leave the ship is to be assailed on every side. Across the street is a row of coffee-houses where unholy music and singing keep up most of the time. Also, there are dogs, scores of them – a wolfish breed – and they are seldom silent. This is the reverse of the picture. As the outside is fairyland, so this is inferno.

We battled our way to our carriages and drove across the bridge to Stamboul. Perhaps it would be better there. But that was a mistake – it was worse. We entered some narrow, thronging streets – a sort of general market, I should say – that fairly reeked with offal. We saw presently that nearly everybody wore rubbers, or stilted shoes – wooden sandal things, with two or three inches of heel and sole – and we understood why; it was to lift them out of the filth. I have had dreams where, whichever way I turned, lay ordure and corruption, with no way out on any side. Such dreams were hardly worse than this. A passenger of our party – a lady – said afterwards:

"When we drove through those streets I felt as if I had died and gone to hell."

Yet on the whole, I think hell would be cleaner. I am sure it would not smell so. I have no special preference for brimstone, but I would have welcomed it as we drove through those Constantinople streets.

I know what they smell like; I can describe it exactly: they smell like a garbage-can. Not the average garbage-can – fairly fresh and leading the busy life – but an old, opulent, tired garbage-can – one that has been filled up and overlooked, in August. Now and then at home a can like that gets into the garbage-wagon, and when that wagon comes along the street on a still summer morning it arrests attention. I have seen strong men turn pale and lovely women totter when that can went by.

It would have no distinction in Constantinople. The whole city is just one vast garbage-can, and old – so old – why, for a thousand years or more they have been throwing stuff into the streets for the dogs to eat up, and the dogs can't eat some things, and so —

Never mind; enough is enough; but if ever I get home, and if ever I want to recall vividly this vision of the East, I shall close my eyes when that garbage-wagon drives by, and once more the panaroma – panorama, I mean – of these thronging streets will unfold; I shall be transported once more to the heart of this busy city; I shall see again all the outlandish dress, all the strange faces, all the mosques and minarets, all the magic of the Orient, and I shall say, "This is it – this is the spicy East – this is Constantinople – Allah is indeed good!"

It was at the entrance of the mosque of St. Sophia – a filthy entrance through a sort of an alley – that we heard our first cry of "Baksheesh!" – a plaintive cry from a pretty, pathetic little girl who clung to us, and called it over and over like the cry of a soul being dragged to perdition – "Bak-she-e-e-sh! Bak-sh-e-e-e-sh!" a long-drawn-out wail. Not one of us who would not have given her freely had we not known that to do so would be to touch off the cyclone – the cloud of vultures hovering on the outskirts. One's heart grows hard in the East; it has to.

At the door of the mosque there was a group of creatures who put slippers on us and made a pretence of tying the wretched things. They didn't do it, of course, and one had to slide and skate and straddle to keep from losing them – which thing would be a fearful desecration – we being "Christian dogs." The Apostle in those slippers, skating and straddling and puffing his way through St. Sophia's was worth coming far to see.

It is a mighty place, a grand place, but it has been described too often for me to attempt the details here. It is very, very old, and they have some candles there ten feet high and ten inches through (they look exactly like smooth marble columns and make the place very holy), and there are some good rugs on the floor. Several of our party who are interested in such things agreed that the rugs are valuable, though they are laid crooked, as they all point toward Mecca, whereas the mosque, originally a Christian church, stands with the points of the compass.

It has been built and rebuilt a good many times. The Emperor Justinian was its last great builder, and he robbed the ruins of Ephesus and Baalbec of certain precious columns for his purpose. On Christmas Day, 537 a. d., he finished and dedicated his work. Altogether he had spent five million dollars on the undertaking and had nearly bankrupted the empire. Nine hundred years later the Turks captured Constantinople, and Mohammed II., with drawn sword, rode into St. Sophia's and made the bloody handprint which remains the Moslem ruler's sign-manual to this day. They showed us the print, but I don't think it is the same one. It may be, but I don't think so – unless Mohammed was riding a camel.

Some kind of ceremony was in progress when we arrived, but as usual in such places, we did not mind. We went right in just the same, and our guides, too, and we talked and pointed and did what we could to break up the services. Old turbaned sons of the Prophet were kneeling and bowing and praying here and there, and were a good deal in the way. Sometimes we fell over them, but we were charitably disposed and did not kick them – at least, I didn't, and I don't think any of the party did. We might kick a dog – kick at him, I mean – if we tripped over one, but we do not kick a Moslem – not a live one. We only take his picture and step on him and muss him up, and make a few notes and go.

I have been wondering what would happen to a party of tourists – Moslems, for instance – who broke into an American church during services, with guides to point and explain, and stared at the people who were saying their prayers, and talked them over as if they were wax figures. An American congregation would be annoyed by a mob like that, and would remove it and put it in the calaboose. But then such things wouldn't happen in America. We have cowed our foreign visitors. Besides, there is nothing in an American church that a foreigner would care to see.

We went to other mosques: to Suleiman, to Ahmed, to the "Pigeon" mosque with its gentle birds that come in clouds to be fed, but there is a good deal of sameness in these splendid edifices. Not that they are alike, but they seem alike, with their mellow lights, their alcoves and sacred sanctuaries; their gigantic wax candles; their little Turkeys – Turkish boys, I mean – rocking and singing the Koran, learning to be priests. And everywhere, whether it be prayer-time or not, there were old bearded men prostrated in worship or bowed in contemplation. Quite frequently we sat down on these praying men to rest a little, but they were too absorbed to notice it.

There were no women in the mosques. The men supply the souls and the religion for the Turkish household. A woman has no use for a soul in Turkey. She wouldn't know what to do with it, and it would only make her trouble. She is allowed to pretend she has one, however, and to go to mosque now and then, just as we allow children to play "store" or "keeping-house." But it's make believe. She really hasn't any soul – everybody knows that.

Constantinople is full of landmarks that perpetuate some memory – usually a bloody one – of the Janizaries. Every little while our guide would say, "This is where the Janizaries conquered the forces of Abdullah VI."; or "This is where the Janizaries overthrew and assassinated Mahmoud I."; or "This is where the Janizaries attacked the forces of His Sacred Majesty Bismillah II.," and everybody would say, "Oh, yes, of course," and we would go on.

I said, "Oh yes, of course," with the others, which made it hard, later on, when I had worked up some curiosity on the subject, to ask who in the deuce the Janizaries were, anyway, and why they had been allowed to do all these bloody things unreproved.

By and by we came to a place where the guide said that eight thousand of them had perished in the flames, and added that fifteen thousand more had been executed and twenty thousand banished. And we all said, "Oh yes, of course," again, and this time I meant it, for I thought that was about what would be likely to happen to persons with Janizary habits. Then I made a memorandum to look up that tribe when I got back to the ship.

I have done so, now. The Janizaries were a body of military police, organized about 1330, originally of young Christians compelled to become Moslems. They became a powerful and terrible body, by and by, and conducted matters with a high hand. They were a wild, impetuous horde, and five hundred years of their history is full of assassinations of sultans and general ravage and bloodshed. In time they became a great deal more dangerous to Turkey than her enemies, but it was not until 1826 that a sultan, Mahmoud II., managed to arouse other portions of his army to that pitch of fanatical zeal which has made Janizaries exceedingly scarce ever since. I think our guide is a Janizary – he has the look – but I have decided not to mention the matter.

We skated through mosques and the tombs of sultans and their wives most of the day, appraising the rugs and shawls and general bric-à-brac, and dropped into a museum – the best one, so far, in my opinion. They have a sarcophagus of Alexander there – that is, it was made for Alexander, though it is said he never slept in it, which is too bad, if true, for it is the most beautiful thing in the world – regarded by experts as the finest existing specimen of Greek art. We lingered a long time about that exquisite gem – long for us – and bought photographs of it when we came away. Then we set out for the Long Street of Smells, crossed the Galata bridge, and were at the ship – home.

We have only made a beginning of Constantinople, for we are to be here several days. But if it is all like to-day I could do with less of it. I have got enough of that smell to last a good while, and of the pandemonium that reigns in this disordered aggregation of thoroughfares, humanity and buildings – this weird phantasmagoria miscalled a city. Through my port-hole, now – I am on the street side – there comes the most devilish concatenation of sounds: dogs barking and yelping, barbaric singing, wild mandolin music, all mingled with the cries of the hawkers and street arabs, and when I reflect that this is the real inwardness of that wonder dream we saw at sunrise, I am filled with a far regret that we could not have satisfied ourselves with that vision of paradise and sailed away.

XIX
THE TURK AND SOME OF HIS PHASES

If one wants to get a fair idea of the mixed population of Constantinople, when the city's phantasmagoric life is in full swing, he may walk slowly across the Galata bridge, or he may stand still and watch the kaleidoscope revolve. Every costume, every color and kind of fabric, every type of Oriental will be represented there. It is a wild fancy-dress parade let loose – only that most of the bizarre costumes are rather dingy and have the look of belonging to their wearers, which is less likely to be so on an artificial occasion.

The red fez predominates as to head-gear, and sanguinary waves of them go by. But there is every manner of turban, too, and the different kinds are interesting. Some of them are bound with rope or cord; some with twisted horsehair (those are Bedouins, I believe); some are wound with white muslin – these are worn by priests – and some are wound or bound with green, which indicates that the wearer is a descendant of Mohammed himself – that is, a "Son of the Prophet." The Prophet seems to have a good many descendants – not so many as Israel had in the same length of time, but still an industrious showing.

One might suppose that these wearers of the green turban would be marked for special honor, and perhaps they are, but by no means are they all men of leisure. I saw one "wearer of the green" tooling a tram to the Seven Towers, and another son of the Prophet – a venerable man – bowed beneath a great box until his white beard and the rear elevation of his trousers nearly dragged in the dust.

I think, by-the-way, I am more interested in the Turkish trousers than in any other article of national dress. They are rather short as to leg, but what they lack in length they make up in width and general amplitude. There is enough goods in the average pair of Turkish trousers to make a whole suit of clothes with material left for repairs. They are ridiculous enough from the front and the rear, but I rather like a side view best. The long after-part has such a drooping pendulous swing to it, and one gets the full value of the outline in profile and can calculate just what portion of it is occupied by the owner, and can lose himself in speculation as to what the rest is for. I like freedom and comfort well enough, too, in my clothes, but I would not be willing to sacrifice in the length of my trousers for the sake of that laundry-bag effect in the rear. I can admire it, though, and I do, often.

At the Stamboul end of the Galata bridge is the most picturesque group, I believe, in the Orient. A coffee-house is there, and in front of it all the picture types of the East are gathered, with not a single Caucasian face or dress. When I used to look at the gorgeously extravagant costumes and the flowing beards and patriarchal faces of the paintings and illustrations of the East, I said: "No, they do not really exist. They may have done so once, but not to-day. I have seen the Indian of my own country in his native sage-brush. And he is no longer the Indian of the pictures. His dress is adulterated with ready-made trousers and a straw hat; his face is mixed in color and feature; with the Orient it must be the same."

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 latitude 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 glass phials concealed in them and a tiny glass 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.

Nobody 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 title. 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 grass 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 passes 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 gratitude 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.