In a Sultan’s Palace.

Hokitika Guardian, 6 February 1923, Page 4

In a Sultan’s Palace.

(By G. Ward 3 Vice)

“There is no more Sultan,” Afnstapha Kemalis reported to have said to a French newspaper correspondent. This will not change things much. The last two Sultans have been captive nonentities. The late Alehmed Beshid was prisoner of the Young Turks ; his brother, the present -Mohammed VI., is practically a prisoner of the Allies.

Odd lives these modern descendants of what Were once the mightiest fflnllarehs of Europe lead! I have paid private visits to the last two Sultans and found them living among surroundings of garish pout]) that must he most depressing.

In the old days when terrible .Sultans, at whose frown half Europe quaked, lived in the Old Seraglio on Staniboul Burnt, they had a dreamy Eastern palace of lofty halls lined with cool hl#io tiles, opening into little courts where tiny silver fountains played. Gardens full of grave cypresses and flowering almond-trees sloped gently to the blue waters of the Marmora and Golden Horn, and the Padishah, in stately robes, with an emerald as big as your list clasping the aigrette in his turban, took his case niton a velvet throne studded with hundreds of pearls each big enough to make a handsome tie-pin.

Xmvadux • there seems to he some I'rench furnishing firm that specialises in fitting up modern palaces for Orion-J tal potentates. Their working motto is: Cover everything you can with crimson velvet and gild the rest. Lately it is hut seldom that .Mohammed, worried by Kemafist threats lo depose him, of, at any rate, reduce him to the position of a capfive Mussulman Pope, has left the shuttered, walled-in. forbidden apartments of the harem-—a whole palace in itself. There not even his Alini-lers or personal ohamherb.ius can reach him with hatl news, and his only communication with the world beyond its silent precincts is through the eunuchs—black and white -whose gawky, disjointed, frock-coaled figures shamble in and out through guarded gates. One day huL month, while I was sitting with an officer of the Sultan’s stafi the most extraordinary ol these entile in with a message for him. It was a tiny figure, not a hair's breadth over three feet high, dressed in uniform like an animated sihlier-thdl. At lirsl I thought lie was a baby-hoy mascot. The chubby hands and toddling walk seemed those of a child of five. Bui something odd in the wizened face- a hall wistful, half resentful and hitter look in the dark eyes- said ■otherwise; it told of a man's spirit cooped up in the'dwarf body. The oil leer (rented the odd lit lie

•jr non it* :«s it he were a toy, when he sji lii led with a click of pijimv heels or spoke in his scpioaky treble voice.

“He is thirty years old,” lie iu]d me. “Knver Pasha found him soinewliwre in Asia Minor ami him here. He is n dwarf eunueh, and he keeps Ihe harem amused. "They used to dress him "in a red fantastic costume, hut the funny little thing was miserable in it and nufped ; theiM'icy had a wee froekeoat made for him. hut he always wanted lo he it soldi, r. and now that he's in uniform you can see how happy it’s made him. ITe even savs lie's going Co get a medal when M.usiapha Kentitl comes.” But the sorrow of deformity I hat lurked in the dwarf's eye- made it im]i..- -ilde lo (ilid him a figure of fun.