Peace in The Harem

A lady from Tiffin, Ohio and 299 other feminists from 30 countries appeared triumphant last week in the Royal Yildiz Harem of Abdul Hamid "The Damned" (deposed 1909, died 1918). "As President of the International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship." crisply observed Britain's Margery Corbett Ashby, "I think we can all feel that 1934 was a notable year. In 1934 the women of Brazil and the women of Turkey were accorded the vote and equal status with men!"

To have these triumphs celebrated in Yildiz, for centuries the most glamorous and sinister harem in the Ottoman Empire, was the neat idea of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk ("Chief Turk"), the progressive Dictator who put Turkish men in derby hats.

Last week incorrigible male correspondents distressed the feminists on whom they were reporting by turning up a precise account of what harem life in Yildiz was actually like under Abdul Hamid, written by Philadelphia-born Princess Djavidan Hanum* who married Khedive Abbas Hilmi II and knew Turkish royal harems as few non-Turks ever have.

"Abdul Hamid became more & more a prey to his fears." related Philadelphia's harem Princess. "The Sultan kept a revolver in his hand by night and by day. . . . He shot his own child when the little one lifted a revolver that lay on the table. The playful hand might be the instrument of a woman's revenge and the Sultan knew better than anyone else that no tool is too weak to inflict a death wound. . . . This fear, this perpetual watchfulness, required that the concubines must be changed from night to night, so that his very pleasures were robbed of the ease of familiarity. . . .

"At the entrance of the harem he was welcomed by the Sultan's mother. Then he passed slowly between bejeweled rows of women, a man who cared little for the revelation of women's beauty. . . . His impenetrable majesty forbade any redeeming contact. . . .

"The Sultan passed on to visit his princesses and favorites in their private apartments. If one of their slave girls chanced to please him, tradition required that he should seem to notice nothing--indeed it would have been highly improper to show any sign of a new attachment in the presence of a reigning favorite. Every mood had to be controlled in the harem. The chief slave girl was the go-between and she informed the lucky girl of the honor that awaited her. ... A new career was opened to her. ... In other ways, too, it was a momentous time. Only virgins were sold as slaves, and although life in the harem--with its peculiar atmosphere, preoccupations and hopes--had left them none but a physical innocence, still each royal caprice changed the slave forever. . . .

"Modesty has always been supposed to add zest to a wooer's conquest . . . but the Sultan was too mighty to fight for his prize. . . . The slave maiden was allowed a scanty choice of fascinating devices. However beautiful she might be, the three silent obeisances that she made as she entered the bridal chamber could not bewitch the master's senses by their eloquence-- for the most part he did not notice them, for he was already in bed . . .

"In deathly silence she reached the foot of the bed, and there waited for the command to lift the silken coverlet and kiss the Sultan's feet. ... She must follow the traditional path to the Sultan's arms, must creep under the coverlet and slowly make her way upwards. ... No husband or sweetheart lay before her. It was her Lord the Caliph who now desired to be treated like a man, without giving her the freedom to treat him so. ... Nor must she breathe a single tender word."

_ This sort of thing, the International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship put thankfully out of mind last week in the sinister harem in which it for so long occurred. After an address by emancipated President Bayan Latife Bekir Issik of the Turkish Women's Union they got to work in committees devoted "to the principles for which we stand: equal political, economic, moral and legal rights, Peace, and the League of Nations."

"We women," said Committeewoman Lady Astor M. P., "seek to raise the moral standing of mankind. The more we look at men the less we want to look like them."

*Harnu Life--Dial Press.

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