KNIFE DANCE AT A WEDDING

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 310, 28 November 1936, Page 11

KNIFE DANCE AT A WEDDING

IN THE STEPS OF ST. PAUL

bp H.V. MORTON

(Article No. 35)

JN my last article I described how, coming to the lonely Turkish village of Akar Ivuey on the edge of the plain, I saw a ram garlanded for sacrifice, and was told that a village -wedding was being celebrated. The room into which I was shown was the upper story of a mud house, approached by an outside staircase. Striped camel rugs; placed round the room, accommodated the gathering. As Mustafa and I entered we were greeted by the elders of the village. We managed to insinuate ourselves into the assembly, and, squatting down, plunged into the usual polite greetings. “And of what nationality is the pasha?” Mustafa was asked. “Of England,” he replied. The grave old men, who probably could neither read nor write and had never before, I imagine, come into contact with England or anything

stiuck by a remarkable thing. Half the men in the room were fair-haired and blue-eyed, 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 coffee, three musicians, squatting in a corner, began to thrum on a guitar, a one-stringed 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 I thought it was a woman, but a second glance at the flat flanks and hollow chest revenled a young Turk dressed in a woman’s red silk dress. His eyes had boon plentifully blackened with kohl and his cheeks were brightened with rouge. Had he

English, nodded their heads solemnly as if the arrival of guests from England were an everyday occurrence in the village. The Turk has many qualities that remind me 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

assumed a more languishing air 1 might have believed that he was a female impersonator, but he was as fierce as a wild 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, slowly turning, his eyes half-shut and his head tossing back a hank of black hair that, kept falling into his eyes. Yet he was not I could not smile at him. He was too fierce and primitive. He was like a wild animal dressed up for a circus. I wondered what Mr <J. B. Cochran would have thought of him.

A S he quickened his steps, his eyes blazed, his colour heightened, and his breath came in gasps. Every time lie twirled round, his skirt flew out ami exposed a pair of enormous, kneehigh Russian boots splashed with stale mud. A pair of grey knitted stockings were folded down over tho tops of his boots and into them were tucked the ends 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. They have the cold, unblinking, uncompromising scrutiny of a cat. They rarely show approval or disapproval ; they just stare. All the men in the room stared at this savage young dancer in a cold, aloof manner, tapping the ash of their cigarettes on tho floor almost over his feet. When he had finished, someone shouted out a command. “They are asking for the knifedance,’’ whispered Mustafa to me. “If he comes at you with the knives, show no surprise.” I soon discovered that the first dances had been merely working up to the knife-dance. Tho 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 tho intensity of the drama he was acting, muttering strange' guttural words as the steel flashed in the uncomfortably small room. The musicians began to thrum in a monotonous, rather hypnotic rhythm —the same theme repeated over and over again—nnd, as they thrummed, tho dancer stamped until dust was breast-high in the room. His muddy boots and his whirling red skirt moved in a cloud like smoke; hut his head, his grotesque face with its parted lips, and the moving flash of the knives, were in the clear air above tho dust. It was a savago sight, for ho now began to act tho part of a man stabbing a victim.

He would pick on some member of the audience and, springing at him suddenly, and crouching, would slash the knives together within an inch of his throat arid draw them with terrifying closeness across his eyes. The man singled out for this attention must show no fear, and is obliged to gaze- hack at tho dancer as if unconscious that the knives had nearly carried off his nose or his eyebrows.'

J UNDERSTOOD why Mustafa had warned me. I expected him to put me to the test, and I was ready for him. I thought they would be interested to see how the stranger would behave. But, 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 of the village, who is a good dancer.” “But do the women never dance in Turkish villages?” I asked, pulling Mustafa’s leg. “Well, you see,” he said, “it is not 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 bo doing tile rumba. Long may they be preserved from such a fate! The appearance of the bridegroom brought the proceedings to the end. lie was a thin, shy young fellow who might have been a Norfolk farm labourer. He shook hands with me and, ! when I wished him happiness and : 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 air again. The headman said that, as the pasha was from Europe, lie was doubtless interested in all ancient stones. Would he, therefore, care 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 more, and so we set off, a motley throng, through the muddy little lanes between stone walls, into back yards where children lined the roofs of houses to watch us. They showed me Greek stones with weathered inscriptions, hits of Greek altars and suchlike relics of the great city that had once stood on the hill near by, stones that had perhaps stood in the streets when Paul preached his Faith i» Derbe.

fUHE whole village saw uS off. The ' women stood afar off and gazed curiously. Somewhere was the house on whose doorstop the blood of the ram 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 the whole world could a stranger have received greater courtesy and kindness, nowhere could he have seen better manners, (To be continued.)