Читать книгу A Child of the Orient - Demetra Vaka - Страница 9

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MY visits to Djimlah continued, and her daring spirit was a continual delight to me. I had never seen her afraid of anything, and she did pretty much as she chose. One day when I was visiting her, a tremendous thunder-storm broke out, and I said to her:

“Oh, Djimlah, let us go out in your grounds and watch the storm. They never let me do that at home, and I do so want to find its roots.”

She did not accept the proposal with alacrity. “It will rain hard in a minute,” she objected, “and we shall get wet. I hate to look like a rat—and all the curl will come out of my hair.”

“I believe you are afraid, like the other women,” I mocked her. “Maybe if you had a European bed in your home you would go and hide under it.”

She rose majestically: “Come, we will go and see whether I am afraid.”

We went out, bent on finding the beginning of the storm. I always thought that a storm must have a beginning; and from the windows of my nursery, where I watched the storms, it looked as if it were just around the corner. In vain, however, on that day did we wander around many corners, on Djimlah’s grounds: we could find no beginning.

The storm grew fiercer and fiercer. The whole sky was dark lead-coloured, and black clouds rushed along as if a tremendous force were pushing them from behind. The lightning, like a vicious snake, was zigzagging over the sky. Then there came a bang! and a crash of thunder. By that time we were far from the house, and on the cliffs. Djimlah put her arm within mine.

“I am possessed with fear,” she gasped; “for Allah is wrathful.”

Her tone was full of awe, and it subdued me. “Let us go back,” I said.

“No, it will overtake us, and crush us,” Djimlah answered. “I don’t want to die—not just yet. We must hide somewhere.”

At this time I was being taught my Bible, and felt that I knew a great deal about religious subjects.

“We can’t hide from God,” I explained. “He sees us everywhere—even in the darkest corner of a dark closet.”

“I don’t want to hide from God,” Djimlah corrected, “I want to hide from the thunder. Come! I know where we can go—to the Hollow of Allah’s Hand.”

Hand in hand we ran as fast as we could against the hard, beating rain, the fierce wind blowing against us, bending even big trees, and mercilessly breaking off their branches. With the agility of children we managed to reach a high cliff partly concealed by pines. It resembled a gigantic hand, rising up, the fingers curving over and forming a protected hollow. Into this we crept and sat down, high above the Sea of Marmora, with miles and miles of horizon in front of us.

In our little shelter the rain could not get at us, but we were already wet, and our clothes clung to us uncomfortably.

“Let us take our coats off,” suggested Djimlah, “for the under layer must be less wet than the upper one. And also let us take off our shoes and stockings. We shall be more comfortable without them.”

We divested ourselves of some of our clothing, and as the hollow where we sat had sand, we stretched our coats in front of us to dry, curled our feet under us, and snuggled very close to each other.

The storm was still raging, but we now looked upon it with the renewed interest and pleasure derived from our safety.

“We didn’t find its roots after all,” Djimlah observed. “I believe it begins at the feet of Allah and ends there, and since we are sitting in the hollow of his hand it can’t hurt us.”

It struck me as curious that she should be talking of God so familiarly. In my ignorance of their religious side, I considered the Turks as infidels and without religion.

“I didn’t know that God had any hands,” I remarked. “I thought He was only an eye—at least that is the way He is painted on the ceiling of our church.”

Djimlah shook her head. “How can He be only an eye? Have you ever seen a person being only an eye?”

“He isn’t a person,” I retorted. “He is God, which is very different from being a person,” and yet as I spoke the words, something I had just learned popped into my head, that man was created in the image of God. Magnanimously I mentioned this to Djimlah.

“I always knew that,” she agreed, “and I know whom He looks like, too. He looks like grandfather at his best.”

“Your grandfather is old,” I protested. “God isn’t an old man.”

Djimlah pondered this. “Well, He has lived ever since the beginning of the world—and grandfather is only sixty.” She looked at me puzzled. “That’s funny. I never thought much about His age.”

“Yes,” I put in more perplexed still, “and His Son, if He had lived, would have been almost nineteen hundred years old.”

She turned abruptly, and her face in the little hollow was very near mine.

“What son?” she inquired with interest.

“Jesus Christ, our Lord,” I answered.

“Your prophet? Why, He wasn’t His Son. Allah never married,” and again the words flashed into my mind that there was neither giving nor taking in marriage in heaven. Yet I stood by my orthodoxy.

“Christ is the Son of God,” I maintained.

Djimlah, too, stood by her belief. “Allah had no children of the flesh. Christ was only a prophet—and He was second to Mohammed.”

A brilliant idea came to me. “You know, Djimlah,” I explained, “I am not talking of Allah, I am talking of God.”

“They are all the same,” she asserted. “There is but one Heaven and one Earth, and one Sun and one Moon. Therefore there is but one God, and that is Allah, and we are His children.”

I was staggered by her confident tone. Djimlah with her words had made of me a Mohammedan and an infidel—something religiously unclean and unspeakable. And, what is more, she was unconscious of the enormity of her speech: she was excitedly watching the lightning, now making all sorts of arabesques on the sky.

“Watch, darling, watch!” she cried. “I know now what the storm is. It is fireworks, Allah’s fireworks!”

“Fireworks—foolishness!” I exclaimed peevishly; for I was sorely hurt at the idea of her being on equal terms with me before God. “God is not frivolous—He does not want any fireworks. He is vastly busy watching the world, and guiding the destinies of the human race.”

“Why should He watch and guide?” Djimlah said proudly. “He knows everything from the beginning; for He writes it on the foreheads of people. My destiny is written here,” she pointed to her forehead, “and yours is written there.” She tapped my forehead.

I hated her, and crossly pushed her finger from my forehead.

“He doesn’t,” I cried, “for He leaves us free to choose whether we shall be brave or cowardly, whether we shall do good or evil.”

She laughed derisively. “A nice kind of a father you would make of Him—taking no more care of us than that. But do stop arguing and watch the storm. Isn’t it glorious?”

Indeed the lightning over the Asiatic side of Turkey was wonderful. The storm had worked its way over there, and the rain had followed, leaving our side of the coast clear. Right above us a yellowish cloud tore open and disclosed the sun. Djimlah greeted him with delight. She extended her little arms up toward him, crying:

“Come out, Sun Effendi, come out! You are so golden and warm, and I am so cold.”

She shook her little body and rose, jumping up and down to get warm.

As if to oblige her the sun’s rays grew stronger and stronger, and we began to feel better under their warmth. We could hear the storm growling miles away now, and see only bits of lightning.

“It’s working its way back to Allah,” said Djimlah, “so let’s go home, and get dry clothes and something to eat. But I am glad we came out, for now you know that it has no roots.” She put her arm around me. “I used to be afraid of the noise,” she confessed sheepishly. “I used to hide my head in some one’s lap. I never knew it was so beautiful. You made me see that.”

This deference pleased me, yet it did not take away the smart from which I was suffering. Indeed, the calm assertion of Djimlah that we were all in the same way children of God hurt me more than any abstract proposition has since been able to. Had she intimated that the Turks and the Greeks were alike, I could have proved to her by actual facts that the Greeks were superior to the Turks, because they had attained to the noblest civilization, the most beautiful architecture, and the greatest literature in the world; but how was I to prove my position of superiority before God?

The afternoon passed in various games, in which I took only a half-hearted interest. Then came supper and bedtime. I was spending the night there, and by the time I was to go to bed my smart, instead of being lessened, had grown tremendously. I undressed silently.

The old hanoum came in to hear us say our prayers. Up to this time I had not minded praying with Djimlah to Allah. I was sure it did not matter, because when I was tucked in bed, I crossed myself three times, and implored the Virgin Mary to watch over me and over those I loved. To-night it was different. If I were to show Djimlah that I did not believe in her words, I must stop praying to her god; so I said:

“I shall not pray to Allah to-night.”

“Oh, but you must,” Djimlah declared. “You wouldn’t like to disappoint him, would you?”

“I don’t belong to him,” I asserted passionately. “I don’t belong to him. I belong to God, so I don’t care whether I disappoint Allah or not.”

“Djimlah,” interposed her grandmother, “you must let the little hanoum do as she likes. You and I can pray alone.”

Djimlah stood before her grandmother, her face tilted upward, her hands outstretched, palms upward.

“Allah, the only true god of heaven and earth, be praised! There is no other God but God, the great, the wonderful, the just. Allah be praised!”

She kissed her grandmother and me, and the old lady kissed us both, and put us to bed. No sooner was she out of the room than Djimlah said:

“Baby mine, I believe the storm has upset you. You have been so quiet all the afternoon—and now you don’t even pray.”

“I am upset,” I replied. “But it isn’t the storm—it’s you.”

She sat up in bed. “Now what have I done to offend you, when you are under my roof?”

“It wasn’t under your roof. It was when we were in the open, during the storm.”

“That part of the heavenly roof being over grandfather’s land is our roof,” she corrected me.

“Well, I don’t care what you call it, you have offended me.”

“But, darling,” she cried, “how did I do it? I don’t remember it.”

“I can’t quite explain it; but, although I have been very fond of you, I don’t like you to say that you and I are the children of God in the same way, and——”

She interrupted me—and it was a pity, too; for at the moment I was getting it quite clear how she was not my equal before God, and afterwards I could not quite get it again.

“But, yavroum, much loved by the stars and the rivers, are we not Allah’s children, you and I?”

“No!” I cried bitterly, “I have nothing to do with Allah. He is a cruel, beastly god, who tells people to kill—and you know you have killed thousands of us—and little babies, too!”

To my surprise I found myself hating the Turks with a hatred I never thought I could feel since I had come to know them. And I was miserable because I was in the same bed with Djimlah.

Her eyes glistened in the semi-darkness. Our little bed faced the windows, where there were no curtains, and the light undisturbed was pouring in from the stars above, which we could see twinkling at us.

“Funny! funny! funny!” she kept saying to herself. “I thought you liked us—and oh! I do adore you so! I felt as if truly you were my own baby.”

She had on a night-dress made of light brown cambric, with yellow and red flowers on it. Her hair was tied at the top of her head with a yellow ribbon, from which was dangling a charm against the evil eye. It came over me how unlike a Greek child she was, and how very Turkish.

“Djimlah!” I cried, “you are not, and you shall not be my equal before God.”

She crossed her hands on her breast and became lost in meditation. After awhile she said:

“There is no other God but God—and we are all His children. So they told me and I believe it, don’t you?”

I shook my head. “There is Allah, and there is God,” I replied. “And I am a Greek, and you are a Turk—and the Turks are very cruel people.”

“Have we been cruel to you, all this long time you have come to see us?”

“No,” I had to admit, “but you are cruel just the same. If you will read history you will know how cruel you are; for when you took Constantinople, for days and nights you were killing our people and burning our homes.” I was ready to weep over our past wrongs, and my blood was boiling. “I don’t love you any more—and God doesn’t love you either.”

Djimlah’s eyes opened wide open. “I don’t understand. Let’s go to grandmother: she will explain things to us.”

“I don’t want them explained. I shall go home to-morrow, and never, never, so long as I live, shall I again speak to you, or to any Turkish child.”

At this Djimlah began to cry: at first softly, then yelling at the top of her lungs. This brought not only the old hanoum but a bevy of the younger ones.

It took some time to pacify Djimlah, who managed to convey between her sobs that I, her own baby, “her own flesh and blood,” as she put it, was no longer coming to see her, because she was a Turkish child and because Constantinople had been burned.

The old hanoum sent the younger women out of the room, put Djimlah on the hard sofa by the window and wrapped her in a shawl. Then she came to me, tucked me in a blanket, and carried me near to Djimlah. After that she fetched two enormous Turkish delights with nuts in them, and two glasses of water.

“Both of you, eat and drink.”

When this operation was over, she said quietly: “Now tell me all about it.”

As well as I could I told her of what Djimlah had said, and of my feelings on the subject.

“I don’t want to be equal with her before God,” I protested. “It isn’t right; for she is a Turk, and I am a Greek.”

“Well, my sweet yavroum, you are all mixed up about just where you stand before God. At present you stand nowhere, because you are only babies. As you grow older your place will be determined by your usefulness in the world, your kindness and gentleness, by the way you treat your husband’s mother and his other wives, and how healthy and well brought up his children are. As to your being a Greek and Djimlah a Turk, that is only geography,” she explained vaguely. “When we shall die and go to God, we shall be that which we have made of ourselves.”

“She says that we are wicked and brutal, and burned Constantinople, and killed the people,” Djimlah moaned.

“That was because Allah willed it. Nothing happens without the will of Allah, and his word must be carried by the sword. We like you and love you, and could no more harm you than we could harm Djimlah.” She leaned over and took me on her lap. “Now, yavroum, remember that Allah is father to you all, and he loves you equally well; and all you have to do is to love each other and be good and go to sleep, and that will please him.”

She kissed me, and drew Djimlah to us, and made us kiss each other.

A latent sense of justice made me recognize how good she was; and although I did not relinquish my nationality as a bit of geography, I recognized that there was something in what she said. So I kissed the old hanoum, and kissed Djimlah, and obediently was led away to bed. Then she sat by us and sang us a little lullaby.

After she had left us Djimlah put her arms around me and whispered: “Do you love me again? For I love you just the same, and when we grow up let us marry the same effendi, and never be separated.”

I did not go away the next day because Djimlah would not listen to it. She was afraid lest I should keep to my first intention, and never return. She wanted to talk over everything with me, which we did; and with the help of the old hanoum, her light and her kindness, I saw things a little better.

Just as my idea of the ferocity of the Turks in their homes had long ago vanished, so what they believed and taught God to be appealed to me; and, although I retained my own idea of the relative importance of the two races in this world, I could not help feeling that perhaps the old hanoum was right, and that our position before God was less a matter of creed and belief than of how we lived our lives.