IN THE STEPS OF ST. PAUL

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 263, 19 August 1936, Page 7

IN THE STEPS OF ST. PAUL

:: SERIAL FEATURE ::

(By H. V. MORTON).

:: Copyright • •

TURKEY AGAIN.

CHAPTER XXVII.

St. Paul sailed from Cyprus to Asia Minor, where he visited the towns o Iconium (now Konya), Lystra and Derbe, whose whereabouts were unknown until sixty years, or so, ago. I freely confess that when the time came for me to follow his steps back into Turkey I began to sympathise with John Mark, who at this point turned and went home! My first visit to Turkey was not pleasant. Perhaps only those who know what it is like to endure the suspicion of a police force and the pin-pricking opposition of minor officials, will be able to understand how I felt about

it. . . I had this time, however, wisely provided myself with letters of recommendation from the courteous Turkish Embassy in London, and I had also arranged to take with me a Turkish guide, who was to meet me as soon as I set foot again in Asia Minor. But, in spite of this, I began to feel rather uneasy as the small coasting vessel came in sight of Mersin. I saw a picturesque little Turkish port lying on a green plain and backed by the immense snow-tipped heights of the Taurus Mountains. There are no docks and no harbour big enough for other than fishing boats. Ships have to lie a good way out in the bay and land their passengers and goods in tenders or caiques. But this port is interesting because it fulfils the functions fulfilled by Tarsus in ancient times. Mersin is the port for the Cilician plain, the, place from which timber, grain, cotton, and other produce is shipped to Syria, Russia and other countries. ~ * * * * The place was soaked in afternoon sun. Men with baskets of oranges newly plucked from the trees stood on the shore near the crazy little Turkish cafes, which look so picturesque in sunlight; so bedraggled and squalid in rain. An athletic-looking man of about forty, dressed in a smart suit of tweed, came up and introduced himself. At first I thought he was an Englishman: “I have come to put myself at your disposal,” he said politely. “I am your guide.” As I looked at him, I thought he would be a tough customer in a scrap: “Shall we go and have a cup of coffee?” I suggested. “Delighted,” he said, and led the way to a little tin table under a scorched vine. The soiled waves tumbled on the shingle only a few yards away, and two bootblacks immediately flung themselves at our feet and began their ministrations.

I told him that there was evidently something about me which roused 1 the worst suspicions of his countrymen, and that it was more by good luck than anything else that 1 had escaped detention in prison during my previous visit to Asia Minor.

He waved his hands airily, as if to dismiss a crowd of inquisitive police, passport officials and common informers :

“Ah,” he said. “Forget it! You will have no such troubles now. I will show you Turkey.” “You speak wonderful English,” I said, “Have you been to England?”

“Never,” he replied with a smile. “I was a prisoner of war in Egypt. I was captured on the Suez Canal. I learnt English in one of your prisons.”

I remembered the commercial traveller of Adana who had also done this:

“I hope,” I said gingerly, “that we, treated you well.” “No, not very well,” he said, frowning and lighting a cigarette. “I’m sorry, because now I’m your prisoner, in a sense.” iHlis face lit up with delight, for the Turks love irony:

“War,” he said in a loud voice, “is war!” • * * * Then, dramatically, we shook hands and finished our coffee. Two fiercelooking shoeblacks, hearing us talking in a foreign tongue tried to dun us for more than the regulation five piastres. My friend bent towards them, and hissed one word in a low, polite voice, and the men picked up their boxes and fled.

I began to respect him enormously. I hoped he would have the same effect on the police. Having nothing to do in the afternoon —for the train to Konya did not start until the following day —we hired a' flea-bitten Victoria drawn by two smart little white horses and drove out to the ruins of Soli.

The road collapsed) a mile or so out of the town into a country track full of pot-holes. Camels came padding along burdened with enormous bales that took up half the way. Without warning, a hundred soldiers suddenly rose from a field of sugarcane and ran across the road with their rifles at the ready to fling themselves down on their stomachs in a ditch.

My friend watched them with professional interest, for he was an exofficer of Turkish cavalry. He had fought in Palestine and Sinai, and, after his release from prison, had taken part in the military actions that led to the Republic and the Dictatorship. I discovered that he worshipped Kemal. To him the Dictator was a god. Everything he had done was right. Everything that he proposed to do would be jnevitabiy right: “At last the Turks have a chance under our Leader to be a great nation in the modern |tense,” he said. “We have been too long the Sick Man. Now we are healthy. All the old, bad things that held us to our past are going, and we look into the future full of hope.” * «e * *

A file of camels, led by a large man on a small donkey, came down the lane:

“The Turk,” said my friend suddenly and with passion, “is not an Asiatic: he is a European.” I thought that he was a good objectlesson in this theory. He might have been English or French, as lie sat there in his tweed suit with a soft felt hat pulled down over his eyes. The ruins of Soli interested me enormously because they show the kind of town that St. Paul knew so well in the course of his journeys. Like Antioch, Damascus, Jeratli Palmyra and all the Graeco-lioman towns of Syria and Asia Minor, the main street was a long pillared avenue —a Street Called iStraight that ran the length of the city. * * * *

In Soli the traveller stepped ashore from his ship in a splendid harbour to find himself facing steps that led to the street of pillars. There are still twenty-three of these pillars Branding in a straight line, and dozens more lying on the ground overgrown with brushwood.

The undergrowth covers the ruins of baths, houses, walls and an amphitheatre. The harbour could very easily be made safe for shipping.

As I sat with my Turkish companion on the fallen pillars of this town, I thought what a happy change it was to find an ancient city whose name is written not in blood but in philology; for from Soli, we get the word solecism. That is Soli’s only claim to fame. Shortly after Pompey the Great had refounded the town, settling there a number of the Cilician pirates he had captured, the place became notorious for the bad Greek spoken there. It was so bad that when any one made atrocious mistakes in grammar and pronunciation the Greeks said that he must have come from Soli. The Greek term soloikismos has become solecism in English and solecisme in French. How curious it is to trace the origin of a word that most of us have used at some time or another to this overgrown ruin in Asia Minor where twenty-three tall columns stalk across the skeleton of a dead town. “Turkey for the Turks,” I heard a voice saying. “I beg your pardon?” “I was just saying,” remarked my guide, “that the Turks at last rule Turkey. The Armenians, the Greeks and the other foreigners, who once controlled us, are gone. It is Turkey for the Turks!” “When Lloyd George. . .” I began. “Ah, that man, that terrible nan! cried the Turk. “He would have given Turkey to the Greeks!” Then he calmed down and smiled, saying in an alnust tender tone of voice: . “We should put up statues to him in all the towns of Turkey. He should stand side by side with our great Ataturk.” “But why?” I asked, rather puzzled. “Because he made us fight for Turkey,” he cried. I have no idea what the Turkish national anthem is like, but, with, a shameful feeling that he was about to sing it, I rose swiftly and walked back with him over the ruins of Soli. (To be continued.)