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Dear Sis…awfully jolly. Ask a great deal after you.
I am trying to write all my Impressions, just as you wanted me to, but there are so many I hardly know where to begin. Imagine you were trying to write a letter describing everything you ever saw in grandmama’s china cabinets, you know the thing—Cups all piled up heller skelter, & little saucers, & Shepherdesses & Coffee pots & coloured sugar Pots, with domed lids: that’s what the whole place seems like to me. Not to mention a blue riband of water, on which the whole thing seems to rest—not the cabinet, I mean - Constantinople.
Fizerly says the Turks don’t give a thought for yesterday or tomorrow—all Fatalists—he once went into the great church built by Justinian—Aya Sofia (in Greek, pis)—all disguised as a Mohammedan (Fizerly, I mean, not Justinian—whizz!) and says it’s just awful, with nothing but some dinner gongs hanging in the corners to show what Mustafa has done there in the last 400 years. He’s a good fellow, Fizerly, and you should get to meet his Sister for he says, and I believe him, we shall be fast Friends.
On the same line, though, I have passed my first Great Test in Diplomacy. Fizerly’d hardly finished telling me the Turks live for the moment when one of them shambled up to the embassy door—they all wear cloaks, you see, and look like wizards—Turks not doors I mean—and declared himself to be an historian! Fizerly spoke some turkish to him and the chap replied in perfect French. Fizerly and I exchanged glances -1 thought I would die of laughter—but the turk v serious and wanted to investigate Janissary regiments &c. The Amb says Istanbul is much duller without the Janissaries, Fizerly tells me. Not too dull for
Yr loving bro., &c
“Who are you working for?”
Compston spoke French badly. Yashim wished he would go away and leave him to get on with the assessment. The Englishman seemed puzzled.
Yashim said: “Let us say I work for myself.”
“Oh. A freelance?”
Yashim rolled the unfamiliar word around his tongue. A free lance? He supposed he did: at least it was unencumbered by the plums that other men had gobbling at their groins.
“You are very perceptive,” he said, inclining his head.
The young man flushed. He felt certain that he was being laughed at, but could not quite understand the exchange. Perhaps he’d better just shut up for a while. More diplomatic. He folded his arms and sat stiffly on the upholstered seat, watching the Turk scribbling down lists. After a minute he said: “Jolly bad business about the Janissaries, was it?”
Yashim looked up in surprise.
“For the Janissaries, yes,” he observed drily.
The boy nodded vigorously, as if Yashim had just made a profound remark.
“Whew! Yes! Rotten for them.”
He shook his head and raised his eyebrows.
“Not much fun, being burned alive,” Yashim murmured. Pas trap amusant.
The boy goggled dutifully. “Not my idea of amusement, certainly!” He lowered his head and gave a big laugh. Yashim carried on writing.
“I say,” the boy chirped up. “What do chaps do for amusement here, in Istanbul?”
He was leaning forward now, his hands dangling between his knees, with a screwed up look on his face.
Yashim narrowed his eyes. When he spoke it was almost a whisper.
“Well, some men use a dead sheep.”
The boy startled. “A sheep?”
“They cut it and remove its—what do you say—its bladder.”
The boy’s face was frozen into an expression of horror.
