The Lands of the Saracen: Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and SpainTaylor, Bayard
History
The Lands of the Saracen: Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain
Taylor, Bayard
Middle East -- Description and travel; Spain -- Description and travel
The oda-bashi lent us a Turkish table and supplied us with dinner from
his own kitchen; kibabs, stewed beans, and cucumber salad. Mr. H. and I,
forgetting the Ramazan, went out to hunt for an iced sherbet; but all the
coffee-shops were closed until sunset. The people stared at our Egyptian
costumes, and a fellow in official dress demanded my _teskeré_. Soon after
we returned, François appeared with a splendid lump of ice in a basin and
some lemons. The ice, so the _khangee_ said, is taken from a lake among
the mountains, which in winter freezes to the thickness of a foot. Behind
the lake is a natural cavern, which the people fill with ice, and then
close up. At this season they take it out, day by day, and bring it down
to the city. It is very pure and thick, and justifies the Turkish proverb
in regard to Konia, which is celebrated for three excellent things:
"_dooz, booz, küz_"--salt, ice, and girls.
Soon after sunset, a cannon announced the close of the fast. We waited an
hour or two longer, to allow the people time to eat, and then sallied out
into the streets. Every minaret in the city blazed with a crown of lighted
lamps around its upper gallery, while the long shafts below, and the
tapering cones above, topped with brazen crescents, shone fair in the
moonlight. It was a strange, brilliant spectacle. In the square before the
principal mosque we found a crowd of persons frolicking around the
fountain, in the light of a number of torches on poles planted in the
ground. Mats were spread on the stones, and rows of Turks of all classes
sat thereon, smoking their pipes. Large earthen water-jars stood here and
there, and the people drank so often and so long that they seemed
determined to provide against the morrow. The boys were having their
amusement in wrestling, shouting and firing off squibs, which they threw
into the crowd. We kicked off our slippers, sat down among the Turks,
smoked a narghileh, drank a cup of coffee and an iced sherbet of raisin
juice, and so enjoyed the Ramazan as well as the best of them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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