Our house is on one of her principal streets, a wide avenue which leads to the Sublime Porte and then on to the Mausoleum of Sultan Mahmoud. The avenue, like most of the principal streets of Stamboul, is bordered with old plane trees where pigeons, and nightingales, have made their home. From our windows we see the court of the Sublime Porte, a big tumbled-down building where all the principal government departments are concentrated. The gates of the Sublime Porte are night and day guarded by Turkish soldiers and policemen, clean-cut young Turks, tanned from the sun and the invigorating air of their birthplace in Anatolia. Every hour of the day or of the night two of them tramp before the gate opposite our house, in rain or in sunshine, in snow or in fog. At the corner of the court there is a little mosque built especially for their use so that they can go five times a day to prayer. Five times a day the “muezzin” appears atop the slender minaret and in his soulful chant calls the soldiers and the neighbourhood to prayer and they all pray: when the sun rises and when it goes down, in the middle of the day, in the middle of the afternoon and in the middle of the night. Five times a day they give thanks to the Almighty, fervently confirm their faith that there is no god but God, and beg Him to assist them in following the straight path, the path to salvation. Can people of this kind be as black as they are represented abroad? Is it not monstrous to accuse them of so many dark crimes? Is it not criminal to even give credence--without investigating--to all of the deeds they are represented as doing by people who must have an ulterior motive? For my part I can't believe these people capable of even hurting a fly or of killing a wolf, unless it be in self-defense and I can truthfully say that my belief is not based on sentimental reasons or influenced by patriotic motives. I know the people, I have watched them for days and months from our windows in Stamboul, these Turkish peasant soldiers of Anatolia; I have read in their eyes only resignation, passivity, and love. I have seen how they treat little children, how they take care of poor stray dogs. No, they cannot possibly harm anyone unless it be in self-defense. From the upper story of our house we can see the entrance of the Bosphorus, that enchanting piece of blue water which lures all that have seen it once. We see it through the branches of trees, between the Sublime Porte and a brick building on the left, the headquarters of some newspaper. Towering above it are the houses of Galata and Pera forming an amphitheatre much more pleasing to the eye at a distance than from nearby. We also see the dark-green trees of the park of the Old Seraglio, where a few slender towers, a few slanting gray roofs mark the position of its imperial buildings. Truly our house is situated in the heart of Stamboul, that is why we can feel it throbbing so plainly, that is why we can learn to know her so well.