Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews 1430-1950 (32 page)

But then Ottoman towns were hard for Western visitors to decipher. To many, as to generations of Western urban historians since, they did not really behave like towns at all. They lacked public spaces such as squares or boulevards; they were often curiously silent since there was little wheeled traffic; they were dark and deserted at night and there were no street names or numbers. The first detailed map for Salonica dates from 1882 and was almost immediately rendered out of date by the devastating fire of 1890. Even time failed to work as Europeans understood it, and the muezzins’ calls to prayer did not help them much: there were few public clocktowers but there were at least three calendars in use (four if one counted the Jewish), and when one asked the time, one had to specify whether one meant
alla turca
(which began at dawn) or
alla franca.
Travellers were understandably thrown, wrote Lucy Garnett, by being asked: “At what time is noon today?” To add to the sense of disorientation, signs and shop placards could be written in one of four scripts and conversations overheard in more than half a dozen languages, or—more likely—an ever-varying amalgam of them all.

Manners were very different too: rooms lacked basic furnishings such as chairs or tables, and table manners were decidedly peculiar: how, for instance, could it be a mark of honour for the master of the house to stuff morsels in your mouth with his own hand? There were
chibouks
and
hookahs
to master, endless pilaffs, the ubiquitous cucumber, more salads than Europeans were used to, and meat stews peppered with strange spices, fruits preserved in syrup, sherbets, and the fermented millet drink known as
boza
, Albanian
halva
and yoghurt. Salonica was in fact renowned for its cuisine—it still is—but not among the Europeans. An early guidebook warned that “if culinary science is foreign to the Turks, the science of dining well is still more unknown.”
¹⁸

This daunting prospect made it imperative for the traveller to find
a place where “amidst the dirt, decay and disorder of the Orient, one is surrounded by all the cleanliness and comfort of Europe.” For Europe now stood for propriety in every sense, and Victorian travellers commented, as their predecessors never had, on differences in hygiene, noise and smell, and sought to create small islands of civilization for themselves to escape these. Staying in Turkish caravanserais and
khans
—as Ottoman subjects did—was too awful a prospect for most Europeans: they generally only endured them if already in the company of Turks—like geologist Warrington Smyth—or when venturing into the hinterland, where nothing else was available. “Travellers accustomed to the luxurious hotels of civilized Europe can form no idea of what must be endured in the search after the picturesque in the interior of Turkey,” wrote Mary Adelaide Walker. Reaching the
khan
in Pella, just outside Salonica, she was reminded of the delights of travelling in Switzerland, Germany and France—the comfortable hotels, the bowing
maître d’
, carpeted staircases, smart chambermaids and warm, clean beds. In Pella what awaited her was a grumbling inn-keeper, clad in “a ragged caftan, greasy turban and tattered sheepskin cloak,” crumbling walls, a broken staircase, rotten flooring and a mud floor spattered by the rain coming in through the roof. “One must be endowed with a certain dose of energy and courage to travel in the provinces of Turkey in Europe,” cautioned the
Guide Joanne.
¹⁹

According to Boué, writing in 1840, inns with glass in the windows, beds, tables and chairs were only to be found in the capital, Scutari, the Danubian towns and Salonica; in the absence of separate toilet facilities, courtyards and windows served the needy, an additional hazard for travellers choosing to sleep outside at night. Most visitors of any standing lodged with their consul, until they found rooms of their own: Salonica possessed a single café, whose proprietor made available a living room, a bedroom and a gallery on the first floor. Edward Lear, passing through in 1848, records “a Locanda—a kind of hotel—the last dim shadow of European ‘accommodation’ between Stamboul and Cattaro.” Later there was the Hotel Benedetti, where travellers could enjoy a coffee and cigarette over breakfast in the central courtyard, possibly the same establishment which the
Guide Joanne
sniffily referred to as “
une mauvaise auberge
” run by an Italian. In 1874 James Baker noted “two hotels, which are moderately comfortable.” By 1890, however, with the coming of rail, things were much altered: the Colombo, the Splendid Palace, the d’Angleterre, the Imperial and the Grand Hotel stood in modern buildings on the new quay, or in the Frank
Quarter. Old Balkan hands were struck by the change: Who talked of Salonica fifty years ago? asked a French writer in 1888. “Only the antiquaries. Today her name is on every lip.”
²⁰

With terrors ranging from dogs to stone-throwing little boys, walking around town unchaperoned was still only for the brave. Cultural intermediaries and protectors were needed, especially the interpreter (
dragoman
) and security guard (
cavass
). It was they who negotiated on the voyager’s behalf for horses and provisions, dealt with Ottoman officials, and guided him or her through the narrow streets of the lower town to the sights. “I had to get organized, or what came to the same thing, to find someone to do it for me,” wrote Auguste Choisy in August 1875. Nikolaos Hadji-Thomas was, in the words of his satisfied customer, “the model
dragoman:
a well-built man of open countenance, loyal, speaking Greek, Turkish, Bulgarian, Italian and able to make himself understood in French.” The Romanian Hermann Chary, who was interpreter at the Hotel Imperial on five francs a day, spoke “nine or ten languages fluently” and had served Gordon in Egypt before being employed by Whitman of the
New York Herald
during the 1897 Greco-Turkish war.
²¹

In fact, more or less the only activity which the average European undertook alone in the city was shopping for gifts in the
Kapalı Çarsi
—one of the largest and most impressive covered arcades in the Turkish provinces. “Sightseeing and visiting being accomplished, we had only to look if there was anything in the shops,” wrote the Misses Irby and Mackenzie. Then, as now, obtaining souvenirs and presents took up time and energy—avoiding the pestering boot-blacks while browsing among the shoes, belt-knives, “gaudy pistols,” silks, gold-embroidered trousers, rose oil and carpets. Shops were not organized as at home, and there were “no ‘Stores’ or general shops in which goods of various kinds are collected.”

But the modern traveller’s obsession—the search for authenticity—was already being obstructed by modern tourism’s nightmare creation—consumerism—and local markets were gearing themselves to the visitors far more quickly than the visitors liked to realize. Local photographers began to churn out series of hand-coloured postcards of the main sights, and ethnographic street scenes, local trades and costumes—“the Lemonade Seller,” “the Travelling Butcher,” “Negro Slave chatting at her door”—appeared alongside views and vistas and the rich repertory of monuments. One traveller bought some local writing materials, a pair of white half-leather slippers, and an
impressive dagger that looked “extremely Turkish”—only to discover too late that the blade was stamped with a German mark. “Ver’goot Johnnie, anyting you like, Sair, souvenir Salonik,” rang in the ears. “The Salonician quickly realized the Westerners’ weakness for souvenirs,” wrote another, “and it was not long before a number of shops were doing excellent business selling cheap modern jewellery and antiques, such as Turkish swords and pistols, Greek daggers, Albanian cartridge-cases and old coins dating from the Byzantine and Roman eras.” The city was turning itself and its past into an object of consumption. What remained unchanged in the city was both despised and treasured for its difference; what adapted and modified itself to “European civilization” was both demanded by Europe itself and decried by it as depriving the “Oriental life” “of a large part of its colour and picturesque relief.”
²²

M
YSTERIES OF THE
E
AST

O
NE
A
UGUST DAY IN
1828, an Austrian diplomat was amusing himself by pacing the circuit of the city walls—like Evliya Chelebi before him—and had reached the upland fields behind the citadel which served as a Muslim graveyard, when he noticed a small group of Turkish women sitting together under the plane trees and admiring the view. Even though they were not veiled, they called him over. The youngest got up and asked him if he was a medical man. When he said he was, they asked him to test their pulse, claiming they were all feeling feverish. Anton von Prokesch-Osten describes the scene:

A negress indeed, the companion of the young beautiful woman, was not at all surly. She listened attentively with her mistress to my advice and spoke in a friendly fashion. The younger woman’s colouring was wonderful, her eyes bright and her hair deepest black. Her carriage was careless but her arms and hands were carefully made up. She did not bother about covering up her breasts and appeared interested in what impression this would make on me. “I love the Franks,” she told me, while I took her pulse, and added, in a tone that would have done honour to a Parisienne, “because they are all doctors.”
²³

To foreigners, Muslim women had always symbolized the unattainable mystery of their society and culture. Hidden behind their veils,
they were remote figures, well guarded from Western eyes. When a French chaplain wanted to climb a minaret for the view of the town, local householders stopped him, saying he might be able to glimpse inside their homes. Similar considerations delayed the spread of glass windows, especially on high buildings. On the streets of the city, approaching women was no easier, unless they were slaves out on an errand. Bisani and his companions were foolishly attracted by a beautiful pair of eyes, until they were driven off by a little boy throwing stones at them. “Here comes trouble!” was the usual way in which Muslim women greeted the approach of unknown men. Doctors were in fact about the only kind of male strangers who might on occasion get closer.

Jewish women were similarly secluded, especially during the violent eighteenth century: many took to the veil as rabbis forced local custom on their congregations, and did not venture out unless accompanied by a man. Christian women also kept off the streets if they could, preferring the networks of paths and gates which inter-connected private houses. But, then as now, it was the Muslim woman who captured the imagination of the Western visitor. Or to be precise, of Western men, for there were a few women—especially if they could converse in Turkish, like Fanny Blunt or Lucy Garnett—who mingled socially with them and did not find them especially mysterious. Having spent many afternoons chatting politely and drinking coffee in the
haremliks
of the city, Fanny Blunt numbered among her acquaintances women like Besimé, originally a Circassian slave and a former member of the imperial harem, who lived in quiet retirement in Salonica and confided to her “all the sorrows of her adventurous life.” For men, on the other hand, all remained fantasy where local women were concerned, especially when, as one visitor wrote, their “refined coquettishness piqued the curiosity and provoked desire.”
²⁴
Nowhere was this desire expressed more forcefully than in one of the most curious works ever to be inspired by an Ottoman city.

Salonica.
Loti’s Journal. 16 May 1876

 … A beautiful May day, bright and sunny, a clear sky … When the foreign rowboats arrived, the executioners were putting the final touches to their work: six corpses hanging in front of the crowd underwent their horrible final contortion … Windows, roofs were thick with spectators; on a nearby balcony the Turkish authorities smiled on the familiar spectacle.

Thus, with a characteristic blend of his favourite themes—death, Oriental despotism, voyeurism—did one of fin-de-siècle France’s most popular novelists begin his first best-seller,
Aziyadé
, a book which appeared shortly after the murder of the two consuls, and showed Western self-absorption turning the Ottoman city from an object of aesthetic and sentimental contemplation into nothing more than a mirror for the individual psyche. There was only one ingredient missing, and this was soon supplied:

One fine spring day, one of the first that we were permitted to circulate in Salonica of Macedonia, a little after the massacres, three days after the hangings, around four in the afternoon, it happened that I stopped before the closed door of an old mosque to watch two storks fighting. The scene took place in a lane of the old Muslim quarter. Decrepit houses flanked tortuous little paths, half-covered by the projecting
shaknisirs.
Oats pushed between the paving stones, and branches of fresh greenery overhung the roofs. The sky, glimpsed at intervals, was pure and blue. One breathed everywhere the balmy air and sweet smell of May.

The inhabitants of Salonica still displayed a constrained and hostile attitude towards us. The authorities obliged us to carry a sword and full military kit. In the distance, some turbaned men passed the walls, and no woman’s head showed itself behind the discreet grilles of the
haremlik.
One would have said it was a dead city.

I felt so perfectly alone that I felt a shock when I perceived near me, behind iron bars, at the height of a man’s head, two great green eyes fixed on mine.