“in the Steps of St. Paul.”

Kaikoura Star, Volume LVI, Issue 92, 23 November 1936, Page 4

“in the Steps of St. Paul.”

■X SERIES OF ARTICLES BY

H. V. MORTON.

ARTICLE No. 35

| In my last article 1 described how, 2 • -oming to the lonely Turkish village | of Akar Kuey on the edge of the plain, H I saw a rani garlanded for sacrifice. and was told that a village wedding 5 was being celebrated. a The room into which 1 was shown g was the upper storey of a mud house. | approached by an outside staircase. | Striped camel rugs, placed round the | room, accommodated the gathering. As g Mustafa and I entered we were greeted I by the elders of the village. We man- | aged to insinuate ourselves into the I assembly, and, squatting down, plunged 3 into the usual polite greetings. g “And of what nationality is the | pasha?” Mustafa was asked. | “Of England,” he replied. I The grave old men, who probably | could neither read nor write and had | never before, I amagine, come into con--5 tact with England or anything EngII lish, nodded their heads solemnly as | if the arrival of guests from England a were an everyday occurrence in the j village. ! The Tank has many qualities that re--8 mind mo of the Englishman. One is his placid acceptance of the unusual and his reluctance to admit that he is, or could be, surprised. And, as I looked round at this picturesque gathering in a mud hut in | the middle of Asia Minor, I was struck by a remarkable thing. Half the men in the room were fair-headed and blueeyed, and, except for their pitiful rags and tatters and their wild air, might have been Englishmen. - A young Turk entered, bearing those little cups of coffee that appear, as if by magic, even out in the desert. As we sipped the coffe, three musicians, squatting in a corntr, began to thrum on a guitar, a one-string fiddle, and a drum. Men sitting in the middle of the room edged away to the side as an astonishing figure bounded’ into the vacant circle. At first 1 thought it was a woman, but a seco:. 1 glance at the flat flanks and hollow chest revealed a young Turk dressed in a woman’s red silk dress. His eyes had been plentifully blackened with kohl and his 'cheeks were i brightened with rouge. Had he assumed I a more languishing air T might have j believed that he was a female impvr- ; sonator, hut he was as fierce as a wild I cat. • He began to stamp and posture to . the sound of the tom-tom and the thin, . discordant wail of the violin. He shook • and shivered and stamped his feet, i slowly turning back” a hank of blaCjk i hair that kept falling into his eyes. I Yet he was not ridiculous. T could | not smile at him. Ho was too fierce and primitive. He was like a wild j animal dressed up for a circus. T. won- | dered what Mr C. B. Cochran would 1 have thought of him. i ****#■ ■ As he quickened his steps, his eyes | blazed, his colour heightened, and his ■ breath came in gasps. Every time he twirled round, his sikirt flew out and exposed a pair of enormous, knee-high Russian boots splashed with stale mud. A pair of grey knitted stockings were folded down over the tops of his boots and into them were tucked the ends i of his trousers. I felt that in just this manner the wild horsemen of Gengis Khan. amused themselves in the light of camp fires. Oriental audiences always interest me. Thejy have the cold, unblinking, uncompromising scrutiny of a. eat. They rarely show approval or disapproval; they just stare. AH the men in the room stared ar this savage young dancer in a cold, aloof manner, tapping the ash of their cigarettes on the floor almost over his feet. When he had finished, someone shouted out a eojnmand. “They arc asking for the knifedance,” whispered Mustafa to me. “If he comes at you with the knives, show no surprise.” 1 soon discovered that the first dances had been merely working up to the knife-dance. The dancer, flourishing two thin, sharp daggers each about a foot in length, began clashing the blades together, crouching and leaping, stabbing* the air. and, in the intensity of the drama he was acting, muttering strange guttural words as the steel flashed in the uncomfortably small Ihe musicians began to thrum in a monotonous, rather hypnotic rhythm—ihe same theme repeated over and over again and, as they thrummed, the dancer stamped until dust was breasthigh in the room. His muddy boots and his whirling red skirt moved in a . ' loud like smoke; but his head, his ‘ i grotesque face with its parted lips. v were in tho plonr -i»>• .ilm,-.. tl

, was a savage sight, for he now began * to act tin l part of a man stabbing a , victim. . He would pick on some member of »■ the audience and, springing on him suddenly, ami crouching, would slash i (lie knives together within an inch of liis throat and draw them with terristying closeness across his eyes. The * iian singled out for this attention must ; sihow no fear, and is obliged to gaze I back at the dancer as if unconscious - tghat the, knives had nearly carried off > liis nose or his eyebrows. I «■*»*• 1 understood why Mustafa had ■ warned me. I expected him to put 'me to the test, and I was ready for him. 1 thought they would be interested to see how the stranger would behave. But, I with the innate politeness of these people, he left, me out of it, feeling, perhaps, that he ought not to subject a guest to such an ordeal. ' When he had finished, ho flung the knives to a. man in the crowd and made a clumsy exit. “Who on earth is he?” I asked ’ Mustafa. ' “Only a man ol the village, who is a good dancer.” “But do the women never dance in Turkish villages?’’ 1 asked, pulling Mustafa’s leg. “Well, you see,” he said, “it is not 1 yet time for our reforms to have touched these people.” That, I thought, was perfect. It suggested that in a year or two if one returned to Akar Kuey everybody * would Be <loipg the rumba. Long may they be preserved from such a fate. 1 The appearance of tin* bridegroom ’ brought the proceedings to the end. Ho was a thin, shy young fellow who might have been a Norfolk farm labourer. He shook ham Is with me and. ' when 1 wished him happiness and 1 many sons, blushed uneasily and said it was all in the competent hands of Allah. We then rose and put on our shoes at the door. It was good to breathe fresh aii* again. The headman said that, as the pasha was from Europe, he was 'doubtless int('rested in all ancient stones. Would he, therefore, car<to see the old stones built into the wall of the mosque and into various houses in the village? I said nothing would delight me inoirand so we set off, a motley thorng, through the muddy little lanes between stone walls, into back yards where children lined the roofs of houses to match us. They showed me Greek stones with weathered inscriptions, bits of Greek altars and suchlike relies of the great city that had once stood on the hill nearby, stones that had perhaps stood in the strees when Paul preached his Faith in Derbe. The whole village saw us off. The women stood afar off and gazed curiously. Somewhere was the house on whose doorstep the blood of the rum had been sprinkled in deference to the old gods of Anatolia, the gods that were alive when Paul passed by, that are still alive in the hearts of these superstitious people. I. left them and set off back to Konya over the wide, featureless plain, thinking that nowhere in Ihe whole world could a stranger have received greater courtesy and kindness, nowhere could he have seen better manners. (Article No. 36 will appear in our next issue).