The Levantine is the parasite of the Near East. He has no country, no scruples, no morals, no honesty of any sort--in business or in private life. He is the descendant of foreign traders who have settled in the Near East at some period or other and have intermingled--not necessarily intermarried--with Greeks and Armenians or other non-Turkish elements of the country. His ancestors might have originally come to the Near East either attracted by the proverbial riches of the Orient--at a time when the Orient was still rich--or as runaways from the justice of their own country--no one knows. As foreigners always had certain privileges in Turkey the present-day Levantine calls himself a foreigner when he is dealing with the Turks or with Turkish authorities. However, when he is dealing with foreigners he is very apt to call himself a Turk, an Armenian or a Greek. Anyhow he never will call himself a Levantine, so stigmatized is that appellation in the eyes of all who know the Near East. He generally has perfected this internationalism to such a degree that he has citizenship papers or passports of different countries which he uses indiscriminately according to his wants or the necessity of the moment. But despite all a Levantine is and remains a Levantine and should be shunned as such. Anyone who is from the Near East and calls himself a non-Muslim Turk is a Levantine, and almost any foreigner who admits that his family has been living in the Near East for at least two generations is probably also a Levantine. Anyhow Pera is the hot-bed of Levantines, who have lost all their original racial qualities and have assimilated all the racial defects of all the races living in the Near East--whose one purpose is to make and spend money and who are ready to sell anything for the purpose.