BY MUFTY-ZADE K. ZIA Bey LONDON STANLEY PAUL & CO. 31, Essex Street, Strand, W. C. 2. All rights reserved Printed in U. S. A. Speaking of The Turks...

W E were arriving at Constantinople, my native city, from which I had been absent nearly ten years. I had been in America all this time. At first my business interests and later the general war had prevented my coming back to my own country even on a visit. I was of military age and Turkey was under blockade. When I had left Constantinople a few years after the Turkish revolution, the whole country was exhilarated, filled with joy, with ambition and with hope. Freedom and emancipation from an au

P RINKIPO reminds me of Bar Harbor. It is the largest of a group of four islands. It is covered with pine trees and has large and small country estates and villas scattered all over its balmy hills. It has several hotels and two beautiful clubs and many prominent Turkish families have their summer residences there. In the old days it was the Turkish resort “par excellence” as opposed to Therapia on the Bosphorus where all the embassies and foreign missions have their summer headquarters. But now

S INCE our arrival at Constantinople my wife had been complaining that I had not shown her a “harem.” So she was very anxious to visit my aunts, in Erenkeuy, when I told her that it was there that she could see one, at least in the Turkish sense of the word. Harem in Turkish means nothing less, but nothing more, than the special house or the special section of a house reserved to the ladies of the family. In the old days when the ladies did not associate with men they used to live in the main ho

O UR stay in Erenkeuy which had started under such pleasant auspices continued in perfect harmony and developed additional ties between my wife and her new Turkish relations. A most cordial friendship grew between her and my cousin, the daughter of my second aunt. She had been educated at the American College for Girls of Constantinople and her education was therefore a most happy blend of the Orient and the Occident. It opened an additional ground of common understanding between the two girls w

I T was with real regrets that we left Erenkeuy. A visit in such a congenial atmosphere ends always too soon even if it has extended over two weeks. But I wanted my wife to know our cousins who lived on the Bosphorus, to whom we had already announced our coming, and I wanted her to come in close touch with the different aspects of home life in Turkey, to see the Turks from different angles. So we had to tear ourselves from Erenkeuy, after exchanging repeated promises of seeing each other soon an

A T last we settled in Stamboul. It took us a long time to arrange everything as we wanted, as it is hard to get upholsterers, carpet men and all the rest to do their work properly and rapidly here in Constantinople. Constantinople is not much different in this than any other city I know. There is possibly this difference that it is less difficult to explain what you want and how you want it to decorators who, like those in western Europe or in America, have already had experience in putting up

N OW that we have a house which we can call our home we are able to lead an organised life. Our daily routine varies little but it certainly is a relief to settle down and take things easily after having lived like gypsies for so many months. I go to my office every morning—everybody works or at least tries to work now in Constantinople. I had good luck in finding proper quarters for the office at a short distance from home so that it does not take more than ten minutes' walk to go to work and I

I GENERALLY leave my office at about five-thirty or six o'clock. On my way home I meet the crowd going to the bridge, the commuters who have to catch their boat as well as business people and government employees who live in Nishantashe or Shishli, on the other side of the Golden Horn. It is the rush hour of Constantinople. Every one is going home. The small stores on the avenue, mostly stationery stores and bookstores, are pulling down corrugated iron shutters over their doors. Every few minute

S INCE our arrival in Constantinople we had heard of the night life in Pera but we had not seen it close to. Although we lived—out of necessity—in Pera during the first months of our return, we very seldom went out. In the Summer months and in the Fall we were in the country and since we had settled in Stamboul we loved too much our own quiet nights at home to seek anything else. But when my friend, Carayanni, suggested showing us Pera at night we decided that it was almost our duty to take adva

T HE night life in Pera sketched in the past chapter constitutes, naturally, only one aspect of the present-day so-called social life of Constantinople. In full justice to the inhabitants of the city I must say that it is only the “Perotes,” that is, only those who inhabit Pera—be they foreigners, Greeks, Armenians or Levantines—who find pleasure in this kind of distraction. The people of Stamboul lead the quiet life which I have already described and in between these two extremes there are, of

R OBERT COLLEGE is situated at the most picturesque spot on the Bosphorus. It dominates the narrowest part of the waterway and its many buildings are on a hill, above the very place which was selected by the Turks nearly six centuries ago as the strategic spot to build their first fort for the conquest of Constantinople. The ruins of the old fort are still there. Although the electric cars run from the city almost to the very door of the college, we took an automobile, both because we wanted to

I T was very easy to assist my friends in the investigation they wanted to conduct for their own private information on Turkish schools and the educational system of Turkey. My father had been twice Minister of Public Education and he was in a position to give all the information desired. My first step was, therefore, to take our friends to him and have him explain the present educational system in our country. Contrary to what is generally believed in foreign countries education is obligatory i

T HE week following our visit to the Darul-Elhan and the concert which was given there, I had an opportunity to arrange a meeting for our American friends with the leader of one of our Muslim sects, Hassan Effendi, who had been described to me as one of the most advanced and broadminded theologians of Islam. A friend of mine who was a follower of Hassan Effendi was to take us to his house and we were to go there from our own home in Stamboul, as that was the most convenient place where we could

N O matter how short and succinct it is, an account of the Turks as they really are and of the Turkey of to-day would not be complete without a description of the Turks who are now so successfully engaged in fighting the supreme battle of their country on the plains of Anatolia. The foregoing pages have been devoted almost entirely to the Turks of Constantinople, to their mode of living, their ideals and ideas. But after all Constantinople is only one city of Turkey and Anatolia is the real back