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 CHAPTER XV

ANGORA I.—ENTERING A "BROTHERHOOD"—AN ATMOSPHERE OF CAMARADERIE

"Well, what did you expect to see?" asked the colonel.

"Really, I don't know exactly," said I, "but something different I suppose I am foolish enough to look for some sort of likeness to our Western towns There is a certain resemblance in parts to a town in the Rhondda Valley, except that the Welsh mining districts are sordid and this is picturesque."

"Why not leave it as it is," said the colonel—"unique and impossible to classify? Begin your explorations at my house, where you can enjoy another glass of warm tea."

This, in fact, was the first house I entered, and the last I left, in Angora.

On a crowded platform—for the arrival of a train is an event—stood a Chef de Cabinet of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other officials. The Prime Minister embraced his old friend the cheik, and carried him off to his simple two-roomed dwelling.

When I met Fethi Bey in London, it seemed incredible that he should have been treated as an enemy and exiled to Malta. Now that I came to know Rauf Bey, it was impossible not to feel the same. Away in these distant mountains, he speaks the most excellent English, without even an accent.

I remember a merchant of Smyrna, who complained to me that "these horrible people expect us to learn their language, to speak and write it."