WHEN ALLAH WILLS A FIRE.

Dunstan Times, Issue 2486, 21 June 1909, Page 6

WHEN ALLAH WILLS A FIRE.

A wag of an Irishman visiting Constantinople recently suggested that if there was but one way of doing a thing the Turk would do it the opposite way. It does seem' indeed that every idea of the Western world is reversed in this topsyturvy city. The Turk nods his head when he means to say no, and has a way of shaking, or rather swinging, it for yes. He writes not from left to right, -but in the other direction. He takes off his shoes, but never his fez when he enters a mosque or a home. “Yavash” (slowly) is his word on the street instead of the American “Step lively.”

He rides in a creeping street car with a ticket punched for the place at which he gets on. To cut a piece of wood he ruts it on a saw which he holds between his legs, and until recently he has killed Christians while guarding the lives of dogs —in fact, I heard recently of an Englishman, a coachman for an embassy, who was poisoned because, disturbed by the nightly howling of street dogs, he had shot several that lived in his street.

Until recently salt could not be brought into the country because there is a monopoly here. . Firearms wei’e prohibited, though they were always sold openly on the streets. Education was dreaded by the people as well as the Government. Steam machinery and electrical appliances were forbidden, the first for no given reason, the second because the word dynamo too closely resembled dynamite. Dictionaries containing words elder and brother were censored because Abdul Hamid usurped the throne from his elder brother. Works on chemistry were debarred because H2O could mean only ‘‘Hamid second zero.’’

Nor has everything been changed with the coming of the Young Turk and his Western ideas acquired in exile in Europe. Because of Moslem prejudice among the masses the old Sultan remains upon the throne, the dogs still blockade what tidewalks there are; for the purpose of extracting backsheesh one’s luggage is still examined when leaving the country, and the mad fire brigade still scatters dogs, beggars, and pedestrians in its ridiculous chase through the streets. There is nothing more typical of this extraordinary country than the fire brigade of Constantinople, which is the model of all others throughout the empire. It possesses and displays strikingly all the failings of Mohammedanism and the Turk —vanity, stupidity, cupidity, and corruption, bravery, arrogance, cruelty, and the rest. Until these firemen are gone there can be no real hope of reform in Turkey, for only their passing will mark a true change of attitude in the nation. For the moment the new Government, which permits the discussion of the dog problem in the Parliament would hardly venture upon that of the fire brigade for fear that the thousand rival bands composing it would unite in opposition, would even attempt to destroy large sections of the city. The reactionaries, who would like to revive the old order, have already given the city a lesson in this thing. Every night and almost every day the weird ‘unearthly call of the red-coated runner with the spear, the emblem of duty, is heard in the streets of the capital. You must hear this call to know what it is. It cannot be described or imitated by a man not of the East.

The effect it has aiipon one hearing it for the first time is distinctly of warning, though not a word of it is understood. But the warning is not of an element, it would seem, that man knows, and Is capable of conquering; it is of something supernatural, in which the Almighty plays a part. It is a sound that only a man with a deep belief in the other world could utter. It is not loud, but you cannot fail to hear it, and no matter what the hour of dav or night, it will come upon a stillness, for all the city seems to hold its breath and let the runner sound his call.

There are two great ancient towers in Constantinople, one on the heights of Tera, whence the Romans in their day surveyed the Bosphorus, the other on the high ground of Stamboul, rising even above the minarets of the mosques upon the seven hills. At the summit of these towers, up a spiral staircase of 300 steps, which the stranger climbs taper in hand, stands always a watcher looking around the horizon. A white triangular flag with a great red ball upon the centre is lifted as a signal to gunners in the antiquated harbor forts, and their cannon announce the discovery of a fire. Everyone knows at the sound that a fire hss been sighted, but for ten or twenty minutes no one knows where it is till the call begins to ring through the narrow streets. The men at the ton of the towers have descended, and the word has gone about to a score of red-coated, often bare-legged' men, who grab their four foot spears, and start, each in a different direction, to let the city know in what section the fire would seem to be. Everybody steps aside for the runner with the spear, who makes his way generally from mosque to mosque, where the call is taken up by the muezzin, who chants it from the minaret, or at night by the beckji, the watchman. Meantime all idle Turks arouse themselves from their coffee and cigarettes, to move as far as the corner of the nearest of the high roads—of which there are but two or three in either Stamboul or Pera. At the bends in the road these Turks and some Geeks take up their stand to watch the race of the firemen that has begun; strangers, too, are in the crowd. A captain on a dwarfed nag leads the better companies, which number from twenty to forty men. The chief is dressed in everyday clothes, often European except for the fez, for his work is only to bargain with the owner of the burning building and direct the men, as no Turk ever works if he is able to make someone else serve him. The crew—clad generally in the slimmest of short trousers, striped or spotted undershirts and usually .barefooted or wearing light slippers—come carrying a diminutive hand pump. The object seems to be not to get the most effective apparatus, but one so small and light that it will permit the company to beat all rivals .to the scene of the fire. There is a regular order about the procession. Hie man who carries the hose nozzle follows on the heels of the pony. The pump, carried on two long poles by

eight men, comes next. On either side of the pump run the extra men, who take their turn every two or three hundred yards in carrying it. Bringing up the rear comes the man with the hose, a thing such as you would use at home to water a garden. The hand pump and the hose comprise the entire equipment of these volunteers. Ladders and axes they do not carry, for these would impede their progress, and their object is to get to the fire. The object of getting to the fire is not primarily to put it out, which seems to be, indeed, a very minor consideration; but being on hand first gives a crew the pick of the plunder. Of course there are rival brigades bent' on the same purpose, and when any two meet in a street a terrific race—a running fist fight—ensues. v Some fires are easy to find, because the blaze can be seen at a distance, or the neighborhood may have the scent and be able to direct the firemen ; but little fires, at which there is often much loot to be had, are difficult to discover in the network of twisting, alleylike streets, only the district or approximate whereabouts having been discovered by the watcher on the tower.

There is, of course, a more dignified brigade than these lawless packs of volunteers, a brigade so large and important that it cannot hasten and seldom arrives on the scene till the fire is out. This might be called the paid department. It is composed of soldiers, and is quartered at central barracks in Stamboul and Pera. Mounted officers are' in command. The hand-pumps are carried in waggons drawn by four horses, and adzes, chains, and hooks, as well as ladders form part of the equipment. The ladders are anywhere from fifteen to twenty feet long, dnd will reach to the second floor of almost any house.

The soldier fireman make a spectacle at night which no one who visits Constantinople would care to miss. The bugle blast which clears the street for them is not to be mistaken, and you turn to see a flare of oil torches shedding a dim light on a more extraordinary aggregation than any that has passed. While the volunteers hurried along in small parties by the light of a paper lantern the soldier company numbers from two to three hundred men. Thick woollen iijuiforme of a reddish brown for summer as well as winter, are not sufficient impediment, to speed; every man must wear the regulation army high-boots, while on his head is a domed helmet of steel enamelled in brilliant shiny red. From these helmets, giving the company the appearance of mailed crusaders, a leather hood hangs down to the shoulders, covering all the head except where the face looks out.

With the short hatchets and loops of rope that these men carry at their belts it is a wonder that they and the torch bearers can follow the pump and ladderwaggons, going even at a slow trot, yet they manage to get to the fire in time to drive off the snarling rival packs of volun. teers fighting among themselves over the plunder. The customary procedure of a volunteer company on getting to a fire is to seek the owner of a house near that which is burning and bargain with him for saving it. The negotiatrons are conducted rapidly at the top of the voice, with tremendous gesticulation. While this is going on the crew of the blackmailing chief prepare the pump ; not that there is any danger of the soldiers arriving upon the scene ; but because other 'volunteers are pouring in, competition is rife and prices are tumbling. All available tube and buckets have already been brought into service and water is being fetched from the nearest fountain before whose gentle drip the members of various crews are fighting. At last the water comes. It is poured into the pump. The muscular arms swing the levers. The nozzle sputters, then squirts for three minutes, then sputters again, and stops till another bucket is brought. Some-/-times you see a man—not a volunteer— l with the supreme intelligence to threw the bucket of water direct upon the blaze. At last, when the fire has burned itself opt, the soldiers reach the scenej drive the pack from the wreckage, and stop the yelling, the fighting, and the destruction of property. A sight of these creatures at a fire, waging a hopeless fight against an element in which they recognise the hand of Allah, opens to you an understanding of the meaning of the cry of fire in Constantinople. The idea pervading the mob is that nothing can really be done, because that is God’s will; that it would, indeed, be wicked' to oppose the flames too strenuously. Fires easily extinguished are put out because God permits it; but no serious effort is ever made, and you may see Moslems throughout the crowd standing idly by, lifting not 5 a finger to save their homes. It is because there is no adequate fire department in Constantinople that Europeans and native Christians of means are careful to build all large houses of material as nearly fireproof as possible. . The day after the fire, nevertheless, the volunteers are careful to go round to the houses of all Christians in the neighborhood to levy blackmail, declaring that to them was due the stopping of the conflagration’s ravage. A wealthy houseowner may be called upon by the chiefs of ten on a dozen of these brigades, and as the volunteers number always the most desperate of the local brigands it may be dangerous not to reward them to some extent, say a tenth of what they first demand. It was these firemen who formed a nucleus of the bands that conducted the Armenian massacres of some years ago, and they are to be counted to-day among the reactionaries who would revive the old regime of Abdul Hamid, under whom they thrived, ,0f course, they are all Mohammedans.

At a recent fire which I attended with a companion, where two mosques had been burned and things were going very badly for the Moslem community generally, a Jewish youth wearing a fez came uip to us and, speaking French, called our attention to the fact that we alone wore hats in all the crowd, and suggested that we would be wise to leave the scene. 1 It has been the cry of the reactionaries here that the numerous fires that have stricken Constantinople in the last six months have been sent by Allah because the country defied the Caliph and wrung from him the Constitution.

Automatic hooters proclaiming excess of speed are to be attached to motor ’buses and cabs. •

The old prejudice which existed against actors and actresses has comnletely disappeared. They now hold in society the rank they deserve. A chemical discovery which is expected to make wood pulp and paper products many times more plentiful and much cheaper than they are at present has been -announced. The discoverer is Dr George

B. Frankforter, dean of an American College of Chemistry, who has worked on the process for more than _ twelve years. The discovery makes possible the manufacture of paper from fir trees, of sawdust and waste timber. The pulp for paper at present is made only from spruce. The supply of fir is 100 times greater than the supply of spruce, and Dr Frankforter and those associated with him say the new pulp process will be more economical. As proof of the value of his discoverv Dr Frankforter shows a table recording his experiment with one cord of fir wood. The wood cost him £1 10s and from it he obtained wood pulp worth £7 IGs. turpentine worth £8 and hy-nroduots of a lesser value. The waste that is now burned or thrown away. Dr Frankforter says, can be used as well as the fresh cut wood.