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ABSENCE OF WOMEN 33
white shawls as they went, more concerned, it would
appear, to hide their faces than their legs,—though
these, I believe, were stockingless, I had disturbed
a water-party, and in this way discovered that of
which I was in search. The women had been gathered
round a paraffin-tin standing on a low shelf, drawing
water from it by the smallest and most tedious
tap man ever made. This home-made cistern contained
the supply for inmates on our balcony, and was replenished
from time to time as thought necessary by a
careless man-servant. Little water remained in it
now, and for a moment I doubted what to do.
Should I draw off what was left, thinking only of
my own convenience? Should the startled women
presently return to find that the Englishman had
driven them away in order to seize the water ?
Such are the problems that may arise in a fashionable
Tchan. I solved this problem by going down to the
yard and having my earthenware jar filled there.
Perhaps the sharpest and most impressive contrast
between Turkish and European life that a traveller
finds in Asia Minor arises from the Moslem seclusion
of women. And not Moslem women only are withdrawn
from view. The custom extends in large
degree to women of all the Christian populations.
As a general principle women are beings to be kept
out of sight as much as possible. So you go through
the country waited upon by men ;
your food is
cooked by men ; in shops you are served always by
men. At khans you never see the equivalent of the
innkeeper's buxom wife, never the innkeeper's comely
daughter, never a cheerful maid-servant. It is much
the same in the streets of villages and towns. There
indeed you see women sometimes ; but they go timidly ;
they are closely veiled, or have their heads more or less
enveloped in shawls. Even peasant women working
in the fields will twitch some kind of covering: over
the face as you pass, or turn their heads away,
though you may be thirty or forty yards off. You
see women if you enter the homes of Christians, and
c