STREET LIFE IN CONSTANTINOPLE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1248, 30 January 1896, Page 10

STREET LIFE IN CONSTANTINOPLE.

As in most Oriental cities, there are two distinct modes of existence in Constantinople—the out-dour life and the indoor life. The majority of Turks leave their homes in thu morning and return late in the afternoon when their work is done. Du'ing the day they live out-of-doora in the bazaars, but so soon as the Turk has completed his business he goes home, and if you ask for him you will be told that he is in the harem and not to be disturbed ; and, as a rule, his servants will refuse <n*en to inform him of your presence. If it is indispensable that you should see him, you may wait his pleasure in the selamlik, the room for receiving male guests, which is to be found in every Turkish house, and beyond which are the mysterious regions of the ' harem. " Harem," in the modern acceptation of the word, merely means the private apartments, and these would be called by the same name even in a bachelor's establishment inhabited solely by men, but generally it is applied to every place intended for women. The end of the Turkish railway carriage, curtained off from the rest, is harem ; so is the ladies' cabin on board ship, and the latticed gallery in a tnoeque. In the dwellinghouse it is all that quarter inhabited by the wife and children and other ladies of the family ; and hero [ may say, in passing, that very few Turks nowadays have more than one wife, though the Koran allows every man four at a time, and encourages a constant change by facilitating divorce. The traditional Turk with his innumerable women no longer exists, except as a very rare exception, bat the Mussulman has not sacrificed the advantages of the privacy granted him by the Mohammedan law and custom. Whatever exists or goes on behind the doors leading out of the selamlik belongs to his private life, and no one with any knowledge of Eastern manners would think of even suggesting the existence of women in the house. His life when away from home during the day is passed exclusively among men, and ho does not Jike to be seen in the company of any female member of the household. I have once or twice seen a Turk driving with a veiled lady, far in the country on thfl Asian side, but never in Stamboul. Whether the Turk thinks it beneath his dignity to be seen with a lady, or whether it is but the outcome of a social condition that has obtained so long that its origin is shrouded in mystery, Ido not know. It seems but a natural phase of the seclusion under which women live in the Orient.

During the busy hours of the day the Turk usually lives out of do<>rs, in the streets, under the trees in the open squares, and in the shops of the bazaar, eating, drinking, taking his coffee, and smoking, wherever it best suits his convenience. The consequence is that the busy part of the city is full of eatinghouses and coffee-shops, and there is no need of the itinerant vendors of food and drink who carry the ir wicker stands up and down in the crowd. There is the man *ho wells bread and "pide" and " pekaOmit " unleavened bread and bis cuits ; there is the cheesemonger, who has a round wicker basket and one or two kinds of cheese and "yoord" or Turkish curds ; there, is the cook who sells kebaby—lit lie morsels of lamb or mutton broiled on wooden skewers—and pilaf, kept hot in a big closed tin, or stuffed spring squashes and other vegetables, not to mention the sweetmeat sellers, the custard makers, and the sellers of sherbet. Most numerous of all are the water-carriers. They generally have a cylindrical \ essel strapped on their shoulders and closely covered with green boughs to protect the water from the sun ; in one hand they hold the end of a flexible tube with a polished brass faucet, and in the other they carry two or three heavy glasses, with which, by a skillful movement of the fingers, they play a perpetual tune which gives notice of their whereabouts.

Coming from Italy, one is forcibly struck by the extreme cleanliness of all these pedlnrs (if food and drf k, and by the highly appetising appearance of what they have to sell. But besides those, there are a certain number of kitchens and restaurants in the bazaar. In particular, there is a fat and rosy Turk who makes the best kebaby in the world, and whose little place is in a small court close to one of the thoroughfares. On the clean marble slab which { orma the sill oLJjhe window, the rows of wooden aßmers lie ready for use, pilof heaped up

in large dishes steams by the well-kept fire, and a couple of clean, handy boys wait upon the customers, who sit at a little table at the back of the kitchen, or out of doors in a quiet court before it, something like the out door cafes of Paris and other Continental cities.

The composition of the favourite dish I must sound extraordinary to European j ears. " Pide," or unleavened brend, is I cut into squares find laid in the bottom of a soup plate. Upon this curded cream is poured to the thickness of two fingers. Upon this*, again, little squares of meat, hot from the tire, are heaped up, and the whole is seasoned with salt, pepper, cardamom, and sumach. It is exceedingly good and, what is more, very digi stible, as those travellers will know who have been accustomed in'Russia to eating sour cream with everything. Nor is the pilaf to be despised, though it would take long to describe the proper mode of preparing it, and to explain the differences between the four great pilafs \ of the world —the Turkish, the Greek, j the Peisian, and the East Indian —of i which the Persian is, in my opinion, by { far the best. The cook provides you with food, but nut with drink, and if you require the latter you must hail the passiny waterman and buy a glass of water or ! sherbet. Civilization, however, is far i advanced in Constantinople, where every i customer expects a knife and fork with I his food, and uses them. In Persia he j would be given a piece of unleavened cake, which he would have to supplement | with his fingers. For my own part, it has I always struck me that fingers should be j considered as much more appropriate j instruments for feeding than forks. I know that they are my own fingers, and that I have washed them, but as for the I forks in places of public entertainment, I am not sure that they have been washed at all, and I would rather not think of the way in which they have been used. We would rather suffer much than use another man's toothbrush, but we think; nothing at all of using the whole world's fork—a fact which proves the vanity of most outward refinements.

But everything which the Turk consumes in the bazaar is in the nature of luncheon, his principal meal being always taken at home and after sunset. In a dark coiner of Bezestan there stands a little mosque with a small minaret, of which the pointed spire springs up like that of a toy house toward the high vault of the roof overhead. At midday, as at the other hours of prayer while the bazaar is open, the muezzin climbs the tall tower and calls the faithful from the window above with as much zeal as though he were crying the summons from the highest pinnacle of Sultan Ahmed. But though it be midday, there is no general movement among the crowd, as there would be in Southern Christian countries at the dinner hour. For the Turk, when away from home, is nomadic and indifferent to regular meals, whereas the evening dinner or supper at home is a patriarchal institution treated with due importance and solemnity. There are Turkish families still in which a table is set in the snlamlik, and is literally open every day to all comers, rich and poor. Anyone may enter, and he will be shown to a place at the master's table, if he he of the master's class, or to another, lower down the hall, if he be an inferior. And in Turke}', to dine means also to spend the night, the entertainer being expected to furnish his guests with beds, slippers, and sleeping garments. Of course, the ladies of the establishment do not appear, but are served separately in the harem. The chief butler of a friend of mine was recently heard to complain bitterly that the guests often rose very early in the morning and carried away the shirts and s'ippers provided them for the night, a poor return for such open handed hospitality. It must be said that Turkish dinners do not as a rule last a long time. They consist, indeed, of a very «reat number of dishes, but these are offered but once to each guest and removed with incredible rapidity l>y the servants. — From "Constantinople," by F. Marion Crawford.