Part 3 (1/2)
Their social position is also different from that of other servants, for as foster-mothers they have a say in the child's upbringing, and their own children can claim kins.h.i.+p as foster-brothers or foster-sisters.
Strange and incongruous connections are often the result, as, for instance, in the case of an acquaintance of mine in Smyrna, a British subject and manager of a bank. His foster-brother, a Greek, took to the mountains, and was known as the famous brigand, Caterdjee Yiani, and many a time the latter escaped detection and arrest by hiding in the house of his British milk-kinsman.
Wet-nurses in the Sultan's palace are, it is stated, invariably Circa.s.sians, and their own children become playmates with the Crown Princes, and are not forgotten in after life. The foster-mother enjoys a t.i.tle of courtesy, and often her influence in the palace comes next to that of the reigning Sultan's mother. In the case of the wet-nurse of Sultan Abdul Aziz, her power was such that frequently the appointment or dismissal of Governors and other State officials depended on her good-will.
Greek servants are as a rule honest, but very slovenly, and at first very raw and unused to the ways of civilized life. They love to go about barefooted, or shuffle in slippers. Their hair is seldom combed, and their garments hang loosely about them. Their head-dress is a printed kerchief, called a _fakiol_, which they wear both indoors and out of doors, but the more advanced wear hats, and consider it such a distinction, that a man-servant of mine, who wanted to get married, could not describe his intended to me in more flattering terms than by saying that ”she wears the _capello_” (hat).
On Sundays they put on their finery and are very keen to go to church, and gossip with their fellow-servants in the women's gallery. It was probably to similar t.i.ttle-tattling, so common in Eastern churches, that St. Paul referred when forbidding women to ”speak in the churches.”
Factories are so seldom to be seen in Turkey that women have few opportunities of employment as factory-girls, but in the silk-spinning factories in Brusa Greek, Armenian, and Turkish girls work side by side.
Their great ambition is to be possessed of and wear gold coins about their persons, but specially a five-lira piece, representing about 4 10s. of our money. Too eager to wait until their savings enable them to buy that coin, they go to a money-changer and receive one immediately on credit, paying him weekly a stipulated instalment, and interest at 12 per cent. a year in addition. The result is that when they have paid off the debt they find that the coin has cost them at least 6 or 7; but in the meanwhile their feminine vanity has been gratified, and the coin displayed three or four years earlier than otherwise.
A curious cla.s.s of people to be found in nearly every village in Turkey, and even in the interior of Arabia, Egypt, and Khartoum, is that of the _bakals_, or grocers, who are Greeks from Kaisarieh, in Karamania (Asia Minor). Fat, dumpy, and oily, with dirty, baggy trousers, greasy vests and s.h.i.+ning countenances, they are as like one another as two peas. They have practically the monopoly of the retail grocery business, and their shops contain everything you can imagine in the way of Eastern articles of diet--bread, cheese, black olives, salted anchovies, sardines, curdled milk called _yiaourt_, oil, vinegar, salt, sugar, rice, sausages, and dried meats, honey, b.u.t.ter, dried fruits, tallow candles, matches, etc.
Their little boys--chips of the old block--go round every house, calling out ”_Bakalis_” and catering for orders, or bringing them back in conical bags of brown paper. Nearly everybody buys on credit, and an account is run up (not always too honestly) which, after a short time, becomes formidable, and credit is stopped till an instalment is paid.
The _bakals'_ book-keeping is of the most primitive type, and will baffle the sharpest chartered accountant; but mistakes are seldom on the wrong side.
A peculiar method for recording the number of loaves of bread distributed in each house is that of the _tchetoula_, and consists in cutting a notch on a piece of stick for every loaf taken. The householder retains the stick, and receives a new one when the amount is paid. Another method is to make a chalk-mark on the door, and efface it on payment.
With a community living from hand to mouth like the Eastern, it is difficult to know what they would do without the ubiquitous _bakal_.
Besides making himself useful in the catering-line, he frequently is the only man in his village who can read, and is resorted to both for reading and writing letters. His correspondence is carried on in Turkish words, but with Greek characters, full of conventional signs and contractions, and is next to impossible to decipher.
Stray newspapers sometimes reach him, and the news of the day is conveyed by him to clients; and should there be a Christian church in his village, he is sure to be one of its dignitaries, and as _psaltis_, or precentor, preside over the singing.
Another curious product, if I may so call it, of the Greek market is a cla.s.s of beggars known as the _Volitziani_. They come from villages in Thessaly, and are young women who put aside their best garments, and don an old black skirt and black jacket, so as to a.s.sume an air of abject poverty. When about to start they receive from their community a beggar's staff, as a badge or pa.s.sport of their functions, and they proceed to Constantinople, or any other town where begging offers advantageous prospects. On their arrival they borrow or hire two or three children, one of which is an infant, and which they drug and cause to sleep on a handkerchief spread out in a corner of the street. The beggar sits beside it, putting on her most tearful looks, and when any likely pa.s.ser-by approaches, she raises her voice in supplication, and sends the other children to pull at his coat-tails. These _Volitziani_ frequent the neighbourhood of churches, and their appeal is: ”Give for the sake of the souls of the departed.” The result is a plentiful harvest of coins, which enables them to return with a bagful to their country. The beggar's staff is then hung behind the door as a trophy.
Should they desire to proceed on another begging expedition, a second staff is given them, and so on, and at each successive return the staff that has done service is deposited behind the door. Sometimes as many as seven make up the trophy. Young men desiring to find wives with money pry behind the door, and form an approximate idea of the fortune of the owner, the one with seven staffs taking, of course, the palm.
Constantinople was once the great resort of beggars of all descriptions, and lines of them used to exhibit on the Galata Bridge (see frontispiece) all manners of deformities to elicit sympathy, but one of the reforming measures of the Young Turks was to expel them from the city. In ill.u.s.tration facing Chapter III. you will see one of these wayside beggars.
CHAPTER VI
JEWS--SUPERSt.i.tIONS
We read in the New Testament of Jews scattered all over the Roman Empire. The same is true of them to-day in Turkey. Their princ.i.p.al resorts are Constantinople, Smyrna, Salonica, and the other great towns.
Some are original colonists, princ.i.p.ally from Palestine; others are exiles from Spain in 1493. Common vicissitudes with the Moors, who had also been ejected from Spain, created sympathy for them in the Moslem world, and, to the honour of the Turk let it be told, they were offered a shelter and a home. These immigrants introduced with them the jargon which they had employed in Spain, and which consists of a mixture of Hebrew and Spanish, and is known as Judeo-Spanish. To it have been grafted a number of Italian and Turkish words, and it has been adopted as the common vernacular of both cla.s.ses of Jews above mentioned.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A CEMETERY BY THE BOSPHORUS.]
Another division is that of Hebrews from Russia, Poland, and Austria.
These do not understand Judeo-Spanish, but speak corrupt Russian and German, and differ from their southern brethren in features and customs; they all adhere to the law of Moses, and accept the teaching of the Prophets. There exists also a sect of Jews called _Dunmes_, or turncoats, who are both Mahomedans and Jews. Ostensibly they are the former, and observe all Moslem rites, but secretly they practise those of the Hebrews also.
The Dunmes give their children two names, one a Turkish, such as Mustapha, and the other a Hebrew, such as Jacob.