A PASHA AND HIS HAREM.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 565, 12 March 1870, Page 3

A PASHA AND HIS HAREM.

The most illustrious and important of the passengers on board the Minich (writes a correspondent of the Daily Telegraph) is a pasha, who is escorting his harem from Constantinople to Alexandria. Of the eight saloons, the doors of which open upon our narrow cabin, six are occupied by the pasha and his family — or, to speak more accurately, his families, for they are many. The Irishman, when he was carried in a sedan chair with no bottom to it, remarked that, but for the honour of the thing, he might as well have walked. He might as well have walked. I might almost say that, though I have had the privilege of a berth in a separate saloon. I might as well,but forthe honour of the thing, have been an inmate of the pasha's harem. As I sit in the cabin writing, the door of each of the various saloons opens in turn, and, with the utmost wish not to see, I cannot help becoming acquainted with the most intimate details of the inner life of the seraglio. In every pantomime there is a stock scene in which a house is shown upon the stage with any number of doors in the facade, and as fast as one shuts another opens. I often fancy that I am the solitary spectator of a pantomime in which clown and columbine, harlequin and pantaloon, have attired themselves a la Turque for my especial entertainment. The dramatis persona, as far as I have been able to grasp the plot of the play, are as follow :—

The chief actor, manager, and director is the pasha himself. I don't think I ever saw a man so fat for his height, or so short in stature for his girth. When he is en dishabille, he looks for all the world like one of the Chinese mandarin figures which are placed upon chimney pieces, and no 1 perpetually. Dressed in a chintz bedgown, festooned round his waist— or what was once his waist — with a red sash, the lower half of his round figure is twice the bulk of his upper. When in full attire he wears a green robe lined with fur, a green turban, and a diamond ring with a stone so large that I cannot but doubt its genuiness. His face would be handsome if it were not so distended with fat ; his eyes are bright, his skin white ; and I should question whether, unwieldly as he is, he is much over forty. He looks intelligent, and as good-humoured as a man well can be who loves a quiet life and is worried all day long by any number of wives. They tell me on the boat that he has four legitimate spouses ; but, beside them, what with concubines, slaves, and servants, he has at least a dozen women who have a vested right to his attention. The four wives — the lawful ones, I mean — are of various ages. There is anold wrinkled beldame, who has a cracked voice and a terrible tongue, and who spends her time trotting about with her veil all awry over her face, chattering perpetually, and scolding everybody she comes across. The second wife is a woman well on towards forty, with a face already assuming the nutcracker shape, and with a sharp, sour look, which years are sure to develop. Wife number three is a dark, sallow brunette, with bold flashing eyes, and. the look of a woman able to hold her own in any position in which she mayjje placed ; while the better half— or better eighth I suppose I ought to say— number four, is a young, sprightly, dark-eyed damsel of nineteen or twenty, who wears lavendar kid gloves with four buttons, and has a white silk parasol lined with black lace, and a veil so tightly bound round her straw sailor's hat that you might take her for a European lady. Each of these four dames has her own separate suite of servants, and most of them have children and nurses, though to whom the families belong I have not been able to discover. There are two pretty fair children— a boy and a girl -of whom the pasha is extremely fond. He is always feeding them with cakes, sweets, and fruit, and they have their abode in the largest saloon, where is also a baby in arms. But, besides, there is a little dark boy, somewhat older, to whom nobody pays much attention, and who is more or less iv everybody's way, and evinces a disposition to be friendly with the Giaour which is not to be observed in his more favoured playmates. It is easy enough to guess that he is the Ishmael of the household, though who is the Hagar I cannot tell. It may be the pretty soft-eyed woman I sometimes catch a glimpse of peeping through the chinks of the doorway, and who, for some reason or other, never appears on deck. But this is surmise only. There are any number of female servants— one of them being a tall negress, dressed in white; the other women who are perpetually trotting to and fro from one saloon to another, and whose faces can scarcely be seen under their blue cotton shawls, which they keep close folded over their faces. The service between the harem and the outer world is conducted by three body servants The highest in dignity is a black enuch — very tall, and hideously ugly, with protruding under jaw, a nose flattened to his face, and immense blubber lips, who spends his time perpetually in one saloon or in another, but only waits upon the ladies, in the way of bringing food or lighting their pipes, as a matter of favour and condescension. Next in rank comes a good-looking young fellow, with a trim moustache, who acts as a sort of major-domo and valet to the pasha, who is on the best of terms with all the ladies, and is always talking with them through the doors, and fetching and carrying for them, though he never enters the saloons — at any rate, when anybody is looking. And last, not least, there is a wretched little scrub, of any age between ten and twenty, a sort of Turkish " Smike " who acts as nursemaid to all the children, is bullied by all the nurses, I cuffed by the eunuch, aud run ofE his legs by 1 everybody, till I wonder sometimes that he does not make a hole in the water, and betake himself to a better world. Possibly on shore his life is not so hard as it is on board ship, where all his mistresses are cross, bored, and out of temper. I hope so, at any rate, for the credit of human nature. But; even

with the assistance of his male attendants, the life of the Pasha is by no means an easy one. There is always something going wrong in some one of the cabins, and the podgy little man has to puff down from the deck scores of times during the day to set things aright below stairs. The steward tells me that during all his voyages in the Levant he has never travelled with a party of Turkish ladies who were quiet or well-behaved. Depend upon it, the days are not always halcyon days even for a pasha of many tails. All through the morning the cabin is in a state of perpetual worry and confusion. Some article of toilet i 3 wanted, or an excursion has to be made to somebody else's cabin, or the pipe has gone out, or the contents of the water jugs exhausted, or the beds have to be made, or the breakfast has not appeared in due order, or the children are crying ; and for one cause or another there is a perpetual rapping at the doors, a jibbering and rustling all the midday hours. There is an end to everything, even to a scolding woman's tongue ; towards midday, when the heat is stifling, there is a sort of siesta on board the boat ; and when the noonday sleep is over, the pasha quits the saloon where the chief wives are assembled, and comes forth in the glory of his green robes and turban, has his narghile brought up on deck; squats upon a carpet, and smokes placidly. Then after a little time the ladies of the harem come up, escorted by servants, laden with folds of shawls ; and, after much arranging and re-arranging of pillows and cushions, they, too, seat themselves apart in a sort of circle, within the range of the pasha's eyes, and smoke cigarettes, or even chibouks, and drink coffee and use their eyes freely.