Page:A child of the Orient (IA childoforient00vakarich).pdf/34

 "Look here, baby"—he interrupted my praises of Arif Bey—"Arif is handsome and a nice chap, and I can trust him up to a certain point; but don't get to thinking he is as good as we are. A Turk never is. They have enough Greek blood in them to look decent, but they have enough Turkish left to be Asiatics, and don't forget that. An Asiatic is something inferior at best. Look at Arif Bey himself, for example. He is about the best of them, and yet, barely twenty-seven, he has two wives already. There is Asia for you!"

I was quite perplexed in regard to the proper attitude of mind toward the Turks. The only girl I knew was Kiamelé—and I adored her. The only man was Arif Bey—and he got so mixed up in my mind with the demi-gods that I did not even mind his two wives. My uncle had been dead for almost a year, and I had no one to incite me against them. The old Greek writers and the beautiful mythology was beginning to make me tolerant toward everybody. I began to lose the feeling of the yoke, since Greece had once been the greatest of great countries. When one has a past achievement to be proud of, one bears a temporary humiliation better—and there was so much in the Greek past that the weight of the yoke lifted perceptibly from my neck. It is true I kept the little flag nailed under the icono-*stasis, before which I said my prayers every