CONSTANTINOPLE'S KALEIDOSCOPIC CONGLOMERATION.

Otago Witness, Issue 3467, 24 August 1920, Page 51

CONSTANTINOPLE'S KALEIDOSCOPIC CONGLOMERATION.

1 Constantinople, onco Greek, then Roman, then Christian, then Mohammedan, now awakens in the morning- to the sound of British bugles blowing the reveille. The Red Ensign flutters from British cruisers and destroyers lying outside the Golden Horn, inspiring with their guardianship a sense of security in the chance traveller who threads his way through the motley masses of humanity that throng the streets. Always a picturesque meeting-place of the East and the West, the ancient city to-day a greater diversity of races and nationalities and a more colourful picture of heterogeneous life than ever before, according to recent observers. Half a million of the city's present population are Russian refugees, we are told, among them princes and princesses, who pawn their jewels to pay for necessities, and officers of every rank of the old Russian army, who saunter through the streets in resplendent uniforms but' in many cases are compelled to descend to such lowly tasks as selling picture postcards to buy bread. The Allied forces, of course, are in military occupation of Constantinople, but they do not make a great parade of military strength in the heart of the city. The troops, mostly British, with French coloured regiments, are in camps and barracks on the outskirts of &he different quarters where many nationalities of Ottoman subjects are densely packed. But ; even without the element of military display, the colours of the picture presented by "life in the Turkish capital appear to be vivid enough to satisfy even the most extreme taste for brilliant colouring—-"a coloured cinematograph drama," Philip Gibbs, British correspondent, calls it in an account of his observations in Stamboul, appearing in the Daily Chronicle (London). "One's eyes are dazed by the infinite variety of all this crowded stage," lie says,"and he specifies: Enormous Don Cossacks, in long black overcoats, girdled with cartouche belts and heavy swords, kiss the hands of the little Circassian girls at the street corners in Pera, where the refugees meet and compare notes on this life in exile. Italian policemen in cock hats, swallowtail coats, red-striped trousers, and white gloves stand on guard outside Turkish buildings. A column of Sikhs come passing by" in British khaki. Senegalese soldiers, with black, oily faces above French blue, drive transport carts through streets where black buffaloes are drawing Turkish carts, and where in the crowd one passes • British bluejackets, Shropshire lads in I steel bats, Gordon Highlanders, Turkish ■ girls a-marketing, very chic in black silk dresses, with their 'veils pinned back, Greek girls, in a population which is all Greek in one quarter of Stamboul, Turks from Anatolia and Thrace, Persians with the brown fez of shaggy astrakhan, Nubian porters, and young gentlemen of the ; American Y.M.C.A. j Stamboul. — I The two great quarters of Constantinople are Turkish Stamboul and European Pera, linked together by the Gaiata Bridge. The Pera section is filled with handsome buildings of European construction and its shops are stocked with goods from Paris and London. Into the Ottoman world on the Stamboul side, it is said,' the British Tommies seldom venture far, and never alone or unarmed. Across the itself surges an immense traffic, of Avhich a description is given, followed by an account of the Constantinople of the Turks : j Armenian, Albanian, and Kurdish porters, bent double under enormous loads of packing-cases, household furniture, pianos, or°wine casks, thrust their way i through this human tide _ and part its i waves. Greek and Turkish merchants i pace gravely across the bridge, followed I by Greek priests with high black caps ! aiid long black beards, dervishes, mullahs, ! Cossack soldiers, Persia.n carpet-sellers, the Nubian, servants of Turkish harems, Russian officers, the black men from

French Senegal, and gipsies in tattered robes with strange, Egyptian-looking faces, gaunt and starved. Beyond is Stamboul, the real Constantinople of the Turks, with its great mosques and covered markets, the palaces of the Sultans, the gardens of the old Seraglio, and the maze of crooked streets with wooden houses and latticed windows and booth-like shops, where the Moslem population is dense and unchanging in its habits and traditions.

Here are the Faithful of the Prophet who bow their heads to the dust when the muezzin calls them to prayer from the high minarets. They crowd round the basins against the walls of the mosques, dabbling their hands and feet five times a day according to the law. Water is a great need of life in these du3t-swept streets of the Eastern city, though there is never enough of it, so it seems, to attain the standai'ds of Western cleanliness for body and house, where dirt and smells have harbourage. Through the streets of Stamboul go water-carriers, with tall pitchers of brown earthenware on their heads Or shoulders, and round the wells there is always a crowd of redcapped men, barefoot boys, veiled or unveiled women and girls, pushing, shouting, while they fill their pots. In these narrow streets about the mosques there are many coffee-houses and taverns, built of wood, with open fronts under latticed windows. Here are the houses of gossip where news is whispered from Anatolia and Thrace and the places where the Nationalists are raising the banner of Islam and preaching a war against the Christian. Here, also, are trreat covered bazaars, where all the produce of the East and West is sold by Israelites and Turks in narrow streets of booths under vaulted roofs and between stone pillars. The light here is dim, except where it strikes in shafts through narrow slits, and enter ing into one of these tunnel-like alleys one feels at first like Aladdin who holds the genii's lamp* at the entrance of the enchanted cave.

The aroma of old carpets, spices, coffee, and a thousand other indefinable smellstouch one's senses, not unpleasantly, and in the twilight one sees the Turkish merchants sitting among their tapestries and rugs, like characters in an Eastern play waiting for Oscar Asche and Lily Brayton to come upon the stage. Strangers from the West brush shoulders with newcomers from the East. The wives of British officers or Russian ladies in exile drive to the gates of the bazaar, and then, with an escort of their men folk, visit the booths to buy Turkish rugs or Persian carpets. "Naval officers or petty officers, under the guidance of small boys who speak a little of every known tongue, are accosted by all the Israelites with cries of "This ■way, mister," but satisfy themselves with a few cheap curios for the folk at home, while they wink audaciously at Turkish girls, veiled or unveiled, -who are buying cotton kerchiefs or black silk for. their frocks.

"Into this scene yesterday, as I wandered through, came two old bandits from the Anatolian mountains, the -worse for wear after five years or so away from such a market as this. Their toes obtruded through their peaked shoes. Their sashes were in rags, their baggy trousers were slashed by sleeping on sharp stones, and their turbaned fezzes hardly held together above their sunbaked, " wrinkled old "mugs." They- were buying new underclothing, which consisted of one immensely long woollen band, like a- baby's swaddingcloth, -which they wrap round _ themselves, and use as shirt and waistcoat, purse, and portmanteau, sword-belt, and holster.

"Gravely they took off their fezzes and produced'sundry scraps of filthy paper, which they presented as payment for their purchase. In a few days, no doubt, they will go back to Anatolia to join .the "Nationalist" army of Mustafa Kemal, to slit the throat of any Armenian who may happen in their way, and to tell the tale of their marketing* in this great bazaar of Stamboul, where foreign women show their faces to the crowd." Pera. It is in Pera that the Europeans spend most of their time, for on its principal street, the Grande -Rue, the Broadway, or, as the English writer calls it, the "Oxford street of the East," they may find the goods or the diversions which their occideiitalised taste requires. Thus we read :

"The British officer, sauntering as best he may between crowds of Turks, Greeks, Armenians, and Russians, buys his safety razors, his. hair oil, his new socks, ties, and all that man needs for comfort. "Here the Russian princess in exile finds the latest modes from Paris, and stands at the same counter with little Turkish ladies with veiled faces, who are also on the same quest. "All day long there is a great traffic of carriages and pairs, as elegant as any that drove up Bond before the age of motor cars, with brightly polished panels, painted wheels, and splendid horses of Arab strain. They are the ordinary hackney carriages of Constantinople, driven for 'hire bv Turks, who demand two and a-half Turkish pounds for a- mile journey. "British, French, and Italian officers dash about in them, while others come in motor cars, with a menace of death to the crowds of Turks who gather in the roads, though always by some fluke of luck they escape. Rich Turks drive in their own carriages, richly upholstered, with oriental rugs on the cushions, and in closed carriages. Turkish ladies, veiled or unveiled, go about the city. "Round about the Grande Rue the British soldier, who has been brought by a strange chapter of history to this city of the old Eastern empire, finds his places of refreshment, and is wise if he is not tempted to stranger haunts, where trouble lies in wait for him."

In Pera, also, the Europeans their

fun. There is ■dancing, every night, though there axe not enough partners to go rounds and good-looking boys from the navy have to dance together if they are not lucky to get "just one dance" with ajj English girl or a Russian princess in exildj Mr Gibbs describes a scene in the Palaes Hotel, the rendezvous of Pera's "smart set'':— "The women wear evening frocks thaj) have travelled across Europe from Franccj or Russia but have not lost their sheen* Naval officers of the .Allied fleets seejtr} to know these little ladies before thS band strikes up the fox trot, "Tall Cossacks, with empty cartridge* cases in their bandoliers, and long, curved swords, dance tightly in top boots, ana Jew money-lenders, Bitting in the wait for the day when, by a nod and whisper, the jewelled rings from iho fingers of Russian exiles will pass into their pockets." In Pera the British soldier, too, find? his amusement, for Mr Gibbs tells us;-^ "The Red Triangle hangs out its sigh on the gates of an old Turkish mansion, and Tommy if he is a good boy, is well content withthe billiaird tables, the reading and writing rooms, and the grand piano, which was carried trastairs by one Turkish porter as though it were a box of biscuits.

"The Union Jack bar gives him. a glad welcome, where he can meet the bluejackets from the Bosphorus and exchange notes on life over a glass of German beer. Up and down the street there are kinema shows, with English. French, Greek, Russian, and Turkish sign-boards, mostly showing the same old pictures, with. Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and the ghoot pictures of poor little Gaby Deslys and others, not censored, unfortunately, by T. P. O'Connor or any boa.rd of moralists.

"If Tommy is out for adventure—and he is very young in Constantinople—he may find it to his peril in any side street off the Grande Rue,, where Circe spreads her lure and where there are many robbers' ; caves. Some of them are marked, "Out } of bounds to British troops," but through ' the iron gratings of many old houses kept \ by Greeks and Jews, or from high, > latticed windows above wooden doorways, faces peer out and voices call to any ' youth in khaki who may have money in. ' his purse. "As a rule Tommy is. wise enough not to walk alone. Generaliy he links up with a party of pals, and it is only now and then that his high spirits tempt him to one form of fun which is delightful but dangerous, when he knocks off a row of red fezzes in a street full of Turks. "What Tommy thinks of Pera has not yet been recorded in history, for it is beyond his power of words. And what Pera thinks of Tommy is also not written. For the Turk doe's not tell. But I doubt whether there is any place in the wide world so fantastic in its variety of human types and contrasts. The Voice of the East.—

A number of times in his story, Mr Gibbs mentions "the voice of the East, so old, so strange to Western ears, so full of mystery," to ■which the Europeans sometimes listen with a sense of its uncanny contrast to their way of life. This voice is heard even in the sounds issuing from the numerous gramophones found in Constantinople, it seems, for these instruments, however reminiscent of Western civilisation they may be, never play Western melodies, but "give forth strange oriental howlings in the minor key and nasal half-tones, and the old voice of the East speaks out of their tin funnels, hostile to progress and content with the faith and philosophy of Islam." The writer heard this same voice in another form on© evening when he sat on the balcony of an Englishman's house overlooking the Bosporous. It was evening, the scent of Avistaria was borne upon the breeze, the lights twinkled in the harbour, the minareta of the mosques gleamed white above the dark trees, and then—- " Where a little old mosque stands among a huddle of wooden houses, a black figure stood against the whiteness of its tower.

"He faced the east and called the people of the East to prayer. It was a long, wailing song, rising and falling in the oriental scale, and the man's voice was harsh. But there was something which stirred one with a sense of things spiritual in that call through the starry eky above the mcon-lit world. Other voices answered . him. From • all the minarets of Pera and Stamboul voices were calling :

Allah is great, There is no God but Allah, And Mohammed is his Prophet.

“,So the voice of the muezzin calls through all the villages of Asia at dusk and dawn, at noonday and at night, as nearly five hundred years ago, when the Moslems were encamped outside this city, and then stormed through a breach in the wall, by a palace which still stands in ruins (a Turkish donkey eats thistles where Christian emperors walked) and massacred until their crescent swords were blunt.”