Istanbul (Turkey) -- Description and travel; Istanbul (Turkey) -- Social life and customs
Our tour started by stepping out of the French windows into the little
terrace, where an old fashioned New England flower garden had been
transplanted on these distant shores. The hedges were not high enough
to completely mask the gorgeous Oriental view. Seeing we were so much
interested in the panorama, our hosts suggested our going on the roof
of the Hospital Building where we could see it without any obstruction.
As we passed through the drawing-room our hostess pointed out to us
the genuine Turkish and Persian carpets she had been lucky enough to
purchase through the uncle of one of the pupils who had a shop in the
Bazaar. She considered them as a real bargain and she proudly told
us the price she had paid. Of course we did not say anything, but
my conscience was only set at rest after I found, through skilful
investigation, that the pupil whose uncle had a shop in the Bazaar
was an Armenian “and one of the cleverest little fellows we have.”
Our hostess showed us also, hidden in a corner near the door and
patiently awaiting the eventual return of its owners to America where
it could be shown to friends from Michigan or Wisconsin as exhibit A
of a quaint collection of Turkish antiques, a brass brazero, another
bargain purchased from the Armenian uncle of the clever little pupil.
It seemed that this man through his good services to our hosts had
been recommended by them to many of their friends and had furnished
to several of them similar bargains. No wonder that the family of the
little boy prodigy could afford to send him to Robert College.
We climbed the stairs of the building and stopped on our way in the
hospital room, a perfectly equipped place with all the comforts devised
by modern science and kept immaculately clean and as we climbed one
more flight we reached the door of the roof, a spacious flat place with
an indented parapet built according to the best principles of American
neo-mediaeval suburban architecture. Here we had the view, and words
fail me to depict its gorgeousness. Imagine if you can a limitless
horizon extending far into the transparent azure of a limpid Eastern
sky, deep into the snow-covered mountains of Anatolia, which are,
however, so far away that they almost seem at this distance to be below
your level. All around in the country are little bouquets of trees
which, with each slender minaret, represent the location of a small
village. Nearer, but still on the Asiatic shores, are the green hills
of the Bosphorus with their summer residences and their uninterrupted
line of homes by the water, while below are the green hills of the
European shore. With the blue water in between and the blue sky
overhead, the picture is unforgettable. We admired it in silence while
our hosts told us of their little country house in America, near a
little pond whose waters are as blue as the waters of the Bosphorus.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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