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BANISHED PASHAS 153
inmate of Sivas jail, serving a long sentence for the
mistakes of his prosperous clays.
Owing to its remoteness from the capital, its isolation
and cold inhospitable character, Sivas was a
favourite place of banishment with Abdul Hamid.
Thither he would order wealthy pashas who had displeased
him to go and live. Once there, they were
under no restraint ; they merely had to live in Sivas
and not leave it beyond a certain distance. As a
change from palaces and caiques on the Bosphorus,
houses on the Princes Islands, and all the delicious,
sunlit life of the Ottoman capital, residence in Sivas
was the refinement of punishment. How these banished
pashas and their families had endeavoured to
make life in Sivas tolerable, I learnt one day on
going into the bazaars. I went into a shop where
it seemed that everything could be bought — wire
nails, and spades, and reels of cotton, and native
cheese done up in boar's skin ; also silks, and hats,
and ink—this low, dark, unpainted shop was indeed a
universal store. I wanted condensed milk for the
journey, and had doubt of finding it till I came
here. Having served me, the shopkeeper, with the
Armenian commercial instinct strong within him,
said, " Please buy other goods, sir."
The naive appeal amused me, and I carelessly asked
what he had got, whereupon he said :
" I sell you
English sauce piquarUe. I sell you tatler (Turkish for
anything sweet) of the English strawberry and raspberry.
I sell you cheese of the English."
Sure enough he had these things, though the
"cheese of the English" proved to be Dutch. Surprised
to find Soho jams and Worcester sauce here,
I asked how it had come about. He replied that at
one time there were forty banished pashas living in
Sivas, and that they and their harems—a large body
of fanciful palates, some of which perhaps were not
Turkish, and may even have been English—had demanded
these foreign delicacies. He added that
when Abdul Hamid was deposed the banished pashas