OCR Text |
Show t t f S 1 1 ' 3 t i r' ' Ji ALX3NIK1 AND ITS l-IARBOJ. TIER upon tier of crowded eastern east-ern roofs rise from the blue bay up to the old Mohammedan town. There on the summit delicate minarets and cypresses stand out against a lemon sky. One's eye turns gratefully from the clamorous Greek boatmen and Jostling porters which crowd boat and quay to the lovely lines of the sailing boats, which bring back from the past many an old classic tag. In just such a boat did the old Greeks set forth on their adventures, ad-ventures, perhaps even to the quest of the Golden Fleece, writes Constance Brooke in London Graphic. And what a contrast they must have been, those grand men, to the modern Greek with his supple fingers and voluble tongue, and anxious efforts to compromise! com-promise! The lup-Kage is at last extracted ex-tracted from the Lubbub by force. A very Bmall boy wheels the barrow under un-der a stream of instructions from a rabble, who would not lay one lordly finger on it to help, but find huge delight de-light in directing the weak one, and, shouting chaff and information to everyone we meet, convey me to the hotel. Soft voices pur in my ear. "You go Delphi? I good guide." "Sirree your boat gomorre? Where come from? Engleesh? Yes?" "Hotel Rome, good hotel!" "You come Paris hotel me!" A persistent shoeblack backs in front of me the whole way j1""!! '""r''jnVhhi pointing to role "of shoeblack a profit a'bi'e" ' o'n iT a t Saloniki! I myself used to give my boots ten minutes' respite; but this was according to the attractiveness or otherwise of the shoeblack. Still a Turkish Town. Saloniki has only been in Greek occupation oc-cupation a couple of years or so, and is still a Turkish town. The richer Turks, not liking their masters, migrated mi-grated to Turkey; only the poor ones, not allowed by the Greeks to leave, still remain. The lower part of the town is a maze of tangled streets and of hurrying foot passengers. Only the stately Jews are unhurried. They are bearded, and wear long black robes, fur-edged (for it is winter) , and black or fur caps on their hearlf, and most are singularly good looking. . Their womankind seldom seen has picturesque pic-turesque head dresses of emerald green silk, with long streamers flowing flow-ing out behind, covered with Hebrew characters. I loved the Turkish eating eat-ing shops open o the st-eet, their counters filled with pyramids of fruit, dates and a gray-colored sweetmeat which looked like putty. Strange odors of cooking came from the inner regions. re-gions. The bazar is cobbled u iderfoot and glass-roofed above. Tt iS full of Oree'; money chancers f whore .von also buy tobacco and siamns). huotshops and the usual open shops of rhe Fast. A strange mixture of V.'rv.t. iv.id Ka:-t. neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor sood f d herring. Here In the bazar yon :- -o only Greeks and Jews. Put go farth"" up the hill toward the old town a'.iii the country roads, or rather tracks, and you will see Macedonians in whiie caps drawn over their ears, a knife in their red sash, or Alhaninns striding disdainfully along in their native dreiss, like all mountaineers, upright and stalwart. One day, in a quiet street. I come upon a country cart drawn tip in the shade of a great wall. Its wheels had been roughly sawn out of the trunk of a tree. The two magnificent black oxen had red tassels and red cloth on their harness. Under great spreading spread-ing horns their beautiful eyes gazed wonderingly all ways (and upwarTC) as they waited, chewing the cud. To add to the picture, their driver, a Turk, leaned gracefully against ono of the glossy beasts, lazily rolling; a cigarette. Besides the fez, he wore the short white coat embroidered in black of the country, loose white tvou-sers tvou-sers and leather slippers. It was hot, and the color, light and shadow w?re sharply defined. Here and there in the town, turning out of some narrow street, are small market places, full of stalls and baskets and sorrow-strick'in donkeys, where girls from the coin-try coin-try wear handkerchiefs wound ovsr their heads and thrown gracefujly round their chins, and small boys ie chattering in the shade. I shall never forget one figure which came clatt:r-ing clatt:r-ing out upon me from the shadows- -a crouching figure smothered in while sheepskins, a white drapery over his head, beneath him a poor little donkey, staggering under the added load of many sacks and baskets. (Oh! the cruelty of this Near East to animals' an ignorant, unheeding cruelty.) Flashing eyes peered at me; a strange wild figure, which one would rather not meet if alone on a hill path. In the Mohammedan Quarter. Waiting one day for the Greek boat, which may come today, or in three days, or in a week who shall say? I wandered up the hill to the old Mohammedan town. Such a strange quiet drowses here, after the hurrying, chattering crowd below! The narrow road, worn by the rain, winds between high blank walls and latticed windows. As the hill steepens, steep-ens, broken steps help the traveler htre and there. Not a dog, not a living liv-ing thing is to be seen, only a funny little tub of a boy standing at my feet, peering up at this queer woman, so unlike his own womankind. A great wide red sash holds his fat little person together, and his trousers are so wide I wonder why he does not catch one leg in the other. He has kicked off his funny little slipper, and rubs one foot against his leg, wondering whether to run or to cry. So I give him a lepta (Greek sou), and he decides to smile; and we sit down together under one of the delicious aromatic cypresses, on a square platform of what were the old fortifications. He sucks his thumb, and I look out dreamily over tangled roofs to the blue, blue Aegean, and watch the pigeons circling round a minaret min-aret above my head. The sound of clattering slippers makes me turn to see two Turkish women veiled in b'.ack from head to foot, accompanied by their servant, basket on arm, going to shop in the town below. Two or three Turkish men, going home, no doubt, or to the cafe for food, come lazily up the hill, their sashes, red trousers and tarboosh making a lovely bit of color against the yellow walls. There are hills outside the town; a year ago they were covered with tiny delicate flowers, now, alas! I fear, destroyed de-stroyed by the camps and trenches of the allies. The consulates are in the aristocratic aristocrat-ic suburbs of Saloniki, where wide roads and pretty gardens abound. Here the Greek merchants, too, have their villas. Bej'ond these, again, on the left of the bay, hills and greensward green-sward stretch out to the sea. The large villa out here where "Abdul Hamid was interned until his very sudden sud-den death, must have seemed a cell to teat poor thing, accustomed to great palaces. And the garden, beyond which he was not allowed to stir, is small for ordinary mortals. Greek women drive out to these open spaces to take the air, and the bourgeoisie go to a well-known cafe to eat giaourti (sour milk) or the delicious sheep's milk cheese of Greece. |