Tribes with Flags: Adventure and Kidnap in Greater Syria. Charles Glass
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closeness would hold the heat of coal fires on winter nights.
The houses were arranged in winding terraces along narrow alleys. Overlooking the alleys were a few lighted windows, through which I could see huge armoires and large steel-frame beds. On the walls, painted in drab shades of green or grey, hung cheap calendars and posters, sometimes of Atatürk, more often of Sylvester Stallone. Most of the houses presented only a stone wall and closed door to the street, their windows opening onto central courtyards, with fountains and trees, flowers growing in rusted tin cans, tables and chairs for dining in warm weather, some with laundry strung on a line or children’s toys scattered on the tiles. The doors of the various rooms of each house led, not to other rooms or to a hallway, but onto the courtyards. The enclosed garden was the heart of family life, open to the sky above, but closed to the world outside. Some of the houses had been divided into two or more dwellings, with makeshift walls across their once lovely gardens.
At one turning out of the Rich Quarter was the Hamman, or Turkish Bath, still open for late-night bathing. Beyond was a wider shopping street, where cars were parked in front of shabby restaurants and shops which in the morning would sell everything from meat to newspapers. At another turn was a wide avenue built during the French Mandate years and at its end a large plaza. There, behind an ornate wall, stood a two-storey stone structure with a grand arcade and beautiful arched windows, the imposing Ottoman palace of the Governorate of Hatay. The palace, like the houses and the courtyards, was dark, and only the dawn would reveal the life within.
Antioch was the most “oriental” city I had ever seen in the Levant, on this or any other journey. Poverty had no doubt spared it the attentions of property developers, who had wreaked such havoc on Beirut and Damascus. I went back to my hotel, the shabby Atahan Oteli, looking forward to the morning’s exploring, and lay down to read the copy of A Tale of Two Cities I had bought in Alexandretta. “A solemn consideration,” Dickens had written, “when I enter a great city by night, is that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!
“Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this.”
The governor’s interpreter turned out to be a plump, dark-haired teacher named Ayfer Ozmen, who had a high-pitched voice and an unusual approach to translating between Turkish and English. Before she sat down on a couch, she coyly told me Ayfer meant “Moonlight”. Two men in green military uniforms came in a moment after her. She explained they had an appointment with the governor, but would wait until we had finished. “The governor told me before you came that Hatay was easy to govern,” I said. “Why is this?”
She spoke to him in Turkish, and he answered through her, “We don’t have any terrorism in this area as it is in Europe. We have economic power, and the people of Hatay are hard-working.”
“In the governor’s experience, has he ever seen any conflict among the religious sects?”
“I don’t understand what you are asking,” she said.
“Any problems?”
She and the general exchanged some Turkish. “Thanks God, nothing happened. These two gentlemen,” she said, indicating the two officers, “are in charge of security, and they agree too.” The two men nodded without smiling.
“I understand the Catholics have been denied permission to say Mass at St Peter’s Church.”
“I don’t understand.”
I explained that in the ancient church, hewn into the rock outside Antioch, where St Peter the Apostle reputedly held services for the early Christians, the governor had forbidden the saying of Mass.
She translated, “He would like to explain that St Pierre Church is not a church. It is a museum now. At the regular churches, there are services now.”
The general talked about Turkey’s application to join the European Community. “There is an Atatürk’s order,” she said, “that says every time you will have contact with Western countries, it’s nice.” The general smiled at this, as she did. The security officers did not.
I asked about security problems. “Accidents are the main problems,” she said, apparently translating the governor’s reply. “They get the girls in an unlawful way, to get married. I mean, families don’t agree, to let them take the girls to get married.”
“Is that illegal?”
“Of course,” she said, without reference to the governor, “it is illegal. This is done sometimes because the gentlemen who want to get married to the girls are not rich, they are poor. And we have the traditions, of course. The families want certain things from the bridegrooms. Since they cannot afford to buy them, they do this in this way.”
“Do they go to prison?”
“If they struggle, if they fight, of course.”
“Do you have sister killing, as in Lebanon, if a girl loses her virginity and her brother discovers it?”
“No,” Miss Ozmen answered immediately. General Oytun, who understood the question, corrected her in Turkish. “He says, ‘It’s not so common, but we do have the problem.’ “
For centuries, Levantine travellers have had to rely on translators, or dragomen as they were known from the Arabic word for translator, turjuman. Only those who had taken the trouble to learn Turkish were able to avoid my difficulties or the kind of scene described in his book Eothen by the English traveller Alexander Kinglake, who toured the Ottoman Empire in 1835. This is Kinglake’s account of a typical meeting between the pasha, or local ruler, and the visiting feringee, or foreigner:
PASHA. – The Englishman is welcome; most blessed among hours is this, the hour of his coming.
DRAGOMAN (to the Traveller). – The Pasha pays you his compliments.
TRAVELLER. – Give him my best compliments in return, and say I’m delighted to have the honour of seeing him.
DRAGOMAN (to the Pasha). – His Lordship, this Englishman, Lord of London, Scorner of Ireland, Suppressor of France, has quitted his governments, and left his enemies to breathe fora moment, and has crossed the broad waters in strict disguise, with a small but eternally faithful retinue of followers, in order that he might look upon the bright countenance of the Pasha among Pashas – the Pasha of the everlasting Pashalik of Karagholookoldour.
TRAVELLER (to his Dragoman).–What on earth have you been saying about London? The Pasha will be taking me for a mere Cockney. I wish to heaven that if you do say anything about me, you’d tell the simple truth!
DRAGOMAN. –[is silent].
PASHA. – What says the friendly Lord of London? is there aughtthat I can grant him within the Pashalik of Karagholookoldour?
DRAGOMAN (growing sulky and literal). – This friendly Englishman – this branch of Mudcombe, this head purveyor of Boughton-Soldborough – this possible policeman of Bedfordshire – is recounting his achievements and the number of his titles.
PASHA. – The end of his honours is more distant than the ends of the earth, and the catalogue of his glorious deeds is brighter than the firmament of heaven!
DRAGOMAN (to the traveller).–The Pasha congratulates your Excellency.
TRAVELLER .–The deuce he does! – but I want to get at his views in relation to the present state of the Ottoman empire. Tell him the Houses of Parliament have met, and that there has been a speech from the Throne pledging England to maintain the integrity of the Sultan’s dominions.
DRAGOMAN (to the Pasha).–This branch of Mudcombe, this possible policeman of Bedfordshire, informs your Highness that in England the talking houses have met, and that the integrity of the Sultan’s dominions has been assured for ever and ever by a speech from the velvet chair.
PASHA. –Wonderful chair!