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AN ARMENIAN AND A TURK 291
ride with him for hours together, holding endless
conversations on Turkish religion, habits, and ideas.
When X and he fell out he would come and joke
with me : one day I teazed him about being a better
friend to her than to me.
" How can that be ? " he said gravely.
"Because," I answered, "you quarrel with the
Vali Pasha" (X was the Vali Pasha and I was the
Padishah), " and then you make it up and are great
friends again. But you are never cross with me.
If I were your friend you would quarrel with me,
too. But I am glad I am not your friend, or you
would get angry with me." This idea seemed to
tickle him immensely, and every day after this
conversation there would be a moment when he
would ride alongside of me, and, feigning an air of
great disgust, would shrug his shoulders and say,
" Istemen, istemen" (I do not want you). It was
his singularly primitive way of acting a quarrel with
me, and thereby showing that he and I were also
friends. X would also attack him on the subject.
" Why don't you go and scold the Padishah? " she
said on one occasion; "she thinks the same as I do
about these things, only she cannot talk Turkish, so
she does not say them."
"The Padishah is but a child," he answered; "it
would hurt her. It would be a shame to hurt a
child."
As a matter of fact I was older than X in months,
but her bodily proportions were larger than mine, and
everything goes by size in the East.
As time went on, however, we too had our little