Chapter VI: Champions of Women--The Men Who Lead

I have been to one of the Turkish feminist meetings, which take place every Friday afternoon upon which it is possible to find speakers. This society is not organized according to our Western methods, there being no responsible head and no list of members. It has not even a battle-cry, as, for example, “the vote,” nor an official name; it is the society where the different interests of women are discussed, and its best appellation, perhaps, would be “the society for the elevation of womanhood.” From articles which have from time to time appeared in our papers I imagined there was in Turkey an organized society for the abolition of the veil, and that “man,” the arch-enemy of woman, was the chief obstacle to woman’s progress. I believe, however, this idea is prevalent in our Western countries.

Signed always with the name of a Turkish woman, these articles are written by persons who are catering for readers of sensation. The names of the writers are unknown here amongst the feminists, the statements most emphatically denied; it is not to the women’s advantage to be described as these articles describe them--beautiful, idle creatures airing their grievances to the women of the West. A Turkish woman never airs her grievances, most certainly not to foreigners, and those who come into intimate contact with her know she resents being asked questions, and she does not ask to be pitied.

I have pointed out in previous chapters that for the present the Turkish woman’s aim is not to cast aside the veil, and also the fact which is still almost incomprehensible to me, viz. the encouragement the men are giving to the women in their work. It is they who are trying to give the women courage; they who are urging the women to be a little bolder in their tactics, and who, in their writings and speeches, are imploring them to leave no stone unturned to hasten their enfranchisement. I am told that the men have even written articles for the newly founded woman’s paper, and signed them with feminine names, for the number of women writers here is still very limited. The cultured women, it is true, speak Turkish, but as their education has been given by French or English governesses, the study of their own language has been neglected, and at present they can best express themselves in a language not their own.

My friends speak and write to one another in French; hence, when Fâtima and I walk, which is very rarely, and speak to one another in French, no one supposes that one of these veiled figures is an Englishwoman. It seems almost to a stranger that French is the language of the country, and Turkish is for the poor and uneducated, although the members of the new Nationalist movement would not be happy to hear this. They are, however, setting themselves to the task of learning their own language, which they have neglected, and many are doing so with a view to writing. Halidé-Hanoum, the most talented of Turkish writers, began the study of her own language after she was twenty, and another Turkish lady, who spent a year in London when her husband was attached to the Ottoman Embassy, is working day and night at Turkish in order to write.

The hall in which the feminist meeting was held was the large lecture hall of the university, lent by the men. Men were the stewards, and all four speakers were men. Strange and chivalrous as it seemed to me to see the men conducting the women’s meeting, I was, however, disappointed not to hear a woman speak. I had so often heard of Halidé-Hanoum’s talent as a speaker, and I particularly wanted to compare her gestures, her delivery, and her subject-matter with the women speakers of my own country. Halidé-Hanoum is the mother of two children. Up till a month ago she taught history, pedagogy, and literature at the Normal School for Girls. She has written five or six volumes of importance, as well as articles on special subjects, and frequently she addresses the Friday afternoon meetings. But in all her work, she tells me, she has been encouraged by the opposite sex, and no one ever questions whether, since she gives so much time to public work, her children and home are neglected, as is generally the case with us.

Long before the meeting began the big hall was crowded with veiled women, a few of whom never raised their face veils during the whole three hours’ meeting. The hall, from the entrance, appeared as if it were filled with nuns, for even those who had their veils thrown back carefully covered their hair. I was seated in the middle of the hall, with the Turkish woman who recently studied at Bedford College on my left, to translate for me, and my friend on my right, also to translate if she felt inclined.

The first person whom the chairman called upon to address us was a poet. Being unable to understand more than the titles and the ideas of the poems, I listened to the rhythmic language and watched the interested faces of the listeners. This poet, my friend explained to me, was a prominent member of the society, or rather, shall we call it the movement of “Turkey for the Turks”? One of the objects of this movement is to purify the language, to use exclusively Turkish words instead of a mixture of Turkish, Arabic, and Persian, which takes away from the strength of the language and makes the study of Turkish so difficult even for the Turks. We Westerners forget that, besides French and English, and perhaps German, cultured Turks must learn three Oriental languages.

Another object of this Nationalist movement is to encourage the translation of the Koran into Turkish. The Koran has never been completely translated into Turkish; commentaries only have been made, many of which have lost the spirit of the Prophet’s meaning. When once the Koran is translated, when once the people can read, think, and interpret for themselves the meaning of the Prophet, then really will serious progress begin.

I have been studying with a friend the verses in the Koran concerning women. “Women must have similar rights to men,” says the Koran. “Women are the twin halves of men--the rights of women are sacred. The best of men are those who are best to their wives. To acquire knowledge is an equal duty of man and woman. Woman is the sovereign in the house of her husband.” “Whosoever doeth the things that are right, whether male or female, they shall enter Paradise.” This is all so strange to me, I who have heard, ever since I can remember, that Mahomet denied woman even a soul, and she could not go to Heaven unless her husband cared to take her there.

We read, too, the verses on veiling. “Mahomet,” my friend explained to me, “knowing the jealous temperament of the Arab, considered it wiser for _married_ women to veil their hair, but he did not say all women were to be veiled, that is an amendment tacked on by his followers, and it is they, and not the Prophet, who are responsible for this useless bondage.”

I have discussed with many enlightened Turkish women this question of the veil. Is it a protection or is it not? Halidé-Hanoum considers it creates between the sexes a barrier which is impossible when both sexes should be working for the common cause of humanity. It makes the woman at once “the forbidden fruit,” and surrounds her with an atmosphere of mystery which, although fascinating, is neither desirable nor healthy. The thicker the veil the harder the male stares. The more the woman covers her face the more he longs to see the features which, were he to see but once, would interest him no more.

Personally I find the veil no protection. In my hat I thread my way in and out of the cosmopolitan throng at Pera. No one speaks to me, no one notices me, and yet my mirror shows I am no more ugly than the majority of my sex. But when I have walked in the park, a veiled woman, what a different experience. Even the cold Englishman has summed up courage and enough Turkish to pay compliments to our “silhouettes.” We have not heeded them, walking as real Turkish women, with stooped backs and bent heads and a rather swinging gait, but these two silent figures only served to excite their curiosity, and no doubt they wondered at my thick veil....

Another reason for condemning the veil is that it dispenses women from taking the responsibility of their actions. Should they desire to stray away from the path of virtue, who can control the actions of these black-robed, veiled women? During the reign of Abdul Hamid they helped most considerably in bringing about the Revolution, for it was they who went from house to house carrying the letters, as the men never could have dared to do. It was the women who were responsible for nominations being cancelled and for many important appointments, and even I have seen before now veiled women pleading the cause of their mankind at the feet of a Grand Vizier’s daughter. Turkish men and women now, however, have both declared that an anonymous power is a danger to the State, and yet who is to be the first woman to leave off her veil?

But to return to the speakers at the meeting. The poems, in beautiful sounding language, were an appeal to the women to save the Fatherland, and again and again I recognized that sacred word. The poet, with a woeful face, outstretched arms, and tearful voice, pleaded till most of us had melted into tears. This recent war had touched all those women so closely, most of them had lost some loved ones during the war, many of them had nursed those who were wounded and had fallen victims to cholera, but always the word Fatherland brought home to them the terrible fact that half the Fatherland was no longer theirs.

The next speaker was more philosophical and scientific. We dried our eyes and listened. He was explaining to us the value of our sex from a scientific point of view, and he tried to show the impossibility of one sex raising itself without the assistance of the other. “Am I really in Turkey?” I frequently asked myself, as the principal points of the speaker’s utterances were translated to me. It is as if sometimes when I think of my home away yonder and my fellow-women workers that I am standing on my head. “We are at the Antipodes, we English and Turks,” a Pasha once said to me. Indeed, he was right. Was there ever, I wonder, in my country a feminist meeting conducted only by men and where the men urged the women to rebel and strike for freedom?...

The third speaker had been in England, and prefaced his plea of “Turkey for the Turks” by relating some of his experiences in our capital. “On one occasion,” said he, “I had been invited to listen to music performed by petticoated soldiers. But it was more horrible than anything I ever heard. Our Kurds would have been ashamed of such a performance!” On another occasion he visited a school; the teacher asked the assembled boys to guess the speaker’s nationality. Unable to guess, they had to be told he was a Turk. “And then,” said the speaker, “the little boys uttered a cry of alarm.” “Why are you frightened?” asked the teacher. “Turks eat little boys,” was their reply. The speaker was not at all enthusiastic about my country; he felt so hurt at being asked the usual questions about the harem life, and how many wives he had, that he finally refused, he said, to converse with such ignorant people. He spoke, too, of the grinding poverty of the East End of our capital. “How dare that nation criticize us,” he added, “when within the gates of their own city people are living in a manner unworthy of a civilized nation.” He was right, this speaker, much as I wish he could have left unsaid what he had, alas! seen.

From afar we appear to the foreigner so great and magnificent, but when once they have stayed in our capital, and seen for themselves the degradation of our people, there is always a blot on the picture, and England is never for them the England they had dreamt of and wished to see. The object of this speech was naturally to prove the futility of any longer admiring a people who took no pains to hide how little they respected the Turks. “We must learn to help ourselves. God helps those who help themselves,” was his concluding remark. These Young Turks have certainly begun to learn the wisdom of action.

The last speech, however, was the speech which stirred the women most. How I wish it had been possible to read it afterwards in French, for my neighbours, after two and a half hours’ constant translating for me, began to grow just a little weary, and I could see they wished to listen to every word. The speaker had no notes, but he spoke with eloquence and a passion I have never yet seen in a man pleading a cause not his own. His subject was “The veil and the subjection of women.” He condemned it from a moral point of view, and he condemned it from a physical point of view, and showed how, in spite of the custom which has been accepted now for centuries, veiling is against the teaching of the Koran. “Our Prophet,” said he, “considered ignorance a sin. What has been done to help you out of ignorance?”

A woman, according to the Koran, may preach in a mosque, and may exercise any profession she chooses. How have you taken advantage of these privileges? Then he blamed the woman. “Can you not feel your bondage?” he asked. “Who can give you freedom unless you yourselves ask for freedom? What right have the interpreters to bind and fetter and degrade women? I am not against religion; it would be disastrous for Turkey to-day if there were no religion; but what I demand, and what every thinking man and woman should demand to-day, is a reformed religion, a seeking after the truth, the real meaning of the Prophet’s teaching.” A storm of applause greeted these words. My friend translated. I watched the women with their veils down over their face. Surely, after such a speech they would throw them back.

I, the foreigner, was stirred; it seemed to me that after such a speech I would be capable of any action to be free ... there sat the women, a handkerchief occasionally poked behind the thick veil, to wipe away their tears, but never once were their veils lifted. How well he had spoken! How necessary, indeed, in this country is a reformed religion! How extraordinary it is that everywhere the Church is the chief opponent to most reforms! Has the Christian Church given to woman the place that Christ intended her to have? How has the Church helped the women of my country in their fight for freedom? A little mild assistance when the heavy spade work is done, perhaps, is better than no assistance at all....

Unfortunately for the women here, the theatre at present is too primitive to be of any practical assistance. I do not mean, of course, the poor French companies which visit Pera almost weekly, but the little native theatres to be found right in the heart of Stamboul, and which my friends have visited since I have been staying with them. Whatever piece is played at these little theatres becomes ridiculous by the mere fact that when an Armenian cannot be found to play the part of a Turkish woman, a man has to supply that need, and that in itself turns any play into a farce. It is not easy either to find an Armenian to play the part of a young Turkish girl. Her accent is not pleasant, so I am told; her voice exceedingly disagreeable; and I personally saw a woman whom no theatrical manager would have accepted in my country, except for the rôle of a stout, elderly matron, playing the part of a coy maiden of fifteen.

This, of course, made the piece worthless except as an amusement, and a form of amusement a trifle too primitive for thinking women to-day. “How can I convince these people?” one day a Turk asked me. “Have you ever tried the theatre?” I asked in reply. “In our Western countries it is from the stage that most of our important messages are given to the world--the stage has been magnificent in the cause of women.”

But to return once more to the meeting. “Can you not see for yourselves,” went on the speaker, “that although it is our duty to protect our women, it is detrimental to their very best interests to keep them shielded from every gust of wind? What use are these hot-house flowers in the garden of life? Virtue cannot be purchased by slavery. Are you going to cut out your children’s tongues to prevent their telling lies?” Again a storm of applause gave my neighbour a chance of translating for me. Then the meeting ended. How magnificently he had spoken! After such a speech one would have expected these women to have walked out without their veils ... but they are still afraid.

To ask a Turkish woman to go out without her veil is almost like asking an Englishwoman to go out without a blouse. Living in a Turkish household one sees this slavery has become almost part of a woman’s existence. I have heard of women face to face with death, women saved from a burning house, covering their hair with a veil--the height of imprudence. The other day at luncheon a poetess of about fifty was at the table. In the midst of a most interesting discussion on modern Turkish literature, she screamed, and holding her serviette between her face and the open door, called for a veil. She had heard the young Bey’s spurs coming towards the open door of the dining-room. “Don’t come in!” called my hostess to her husband, and at last I understood what was happening.

I was wearing a Broussa silk scarf round my shoulders; I lent it to her; she covered up all her hair and tied it round her neck; then the young Bey came in to lunch. And yet this was not an ignorant woman! On the contrary, she was a woman of great intelligence, but she, like so many others, will not countenance any attempt to modify the veil.

And what about the other women? Halidé-Hanoum, who tells me “the veil surrounds the woman with an unhealthy air of mystery”--how does she appear in the street? A thick veil over her face, which she never throws back. I asked her one day the reason why she kept herself so closely veiled. “It is a habit,” she answered. Another feminist told me of her great admiration for the British militant Suffragettes. “If only we Turkish women could get some of that fine spirit,” she said; and a little while later she told me of an adventure she had had a few days before. It was towards five o’clock, an insolent Turk had pulled her sleeve and pinched her arm. She was defending herself with her umbrella, when the policeman came to her assistance. “And what happened?” I asked, for she stopped short in her narrative. “I am ashamed to say,” she answered, “I ran away. If I had stopped to give evidence the man would have been exiled.” “And what an advertisement for your cause,” I added. “Yes,” said she, “but I had not the courage to face the scandal!”

As I have said before, it is not for me to criticize the methods of the women of a civilization so totally different from our own. The men are urging them to take their freedom, and helping them all they can, but if they will be free they themselves must strike the blow. The women of another civilization cannot help them except by giving them the benefit of education whenever they ask for it. An enterprising Turkish woman came a year ago to Bedford College to study. Her year in England will mean more to her than anything that could have been offered to her. She may not have learnt from us as much book knowledge as the French could have taught her, but she took away with her a moral background which is of more value than mere knowledge. I have seen this woman giving her lessons. I have seen her when her weekday lessons are ended spending her Friday (the Turkish day of rest) giving lessons to the women of the poor classes. Some of these women are between fifty and sixty, some are younger, but it is one of the most pathetic sights I have yet seen here to see these old ladies spelling out their words like little children, and with bent backs applying themselves to the task of learning to write as if their very existence depended on it.

When once women can be seriously interested in a cause they are splendid. In Turkey, in spite of their veil, in spite of their apparent desire not to take advantage of the privileges offered them, they have shown themselves magnificent in two most important branches--nursing and teaching. In both these branches the Turkish woman has shown qualities Europe never supposed she possessed--she is a true patriot.