Searchology Directory 17

The soldiers thus designated are not given rifles, nor are they trained for service, but are simply employed as servants to the regular soldiers. It is easy to understand that no one can endure such conditions of military life, the result being that each and every one of these non-Moslems sells whatever property he has in order to pay the ransom and get away from the army, and from Turkey as well. In ten days, since this peculiar recruiting began, fully ten thousand Greeks found a way of escaping from Constantinople, many of them finding a refuge in the free and hospitable United States. This getting away is not so easy, writes the same correspondent, because officials of the various ports are exacting heavy sums from the fugitives before letting them go. Graft and extortion in this case reign supreme, and it costs anywhere from three to fifteen pounds ($13 to $70) to "buy" a police or port official. This process, originating in Constantinople, is widespread in the provinces, and the sums paid in this way by the non-Moslems to escape military service amount to millions. "Let the infidels pay!" say the Turkish officials. "They have taken our ships, and they have to pay for it."

People say that with money you can do anything you like in the world. I had at that time on my person some L6,000 sterling, of which L4,000 was in actual cash. If anybody had placed before me a morsel of any food I would gladly have given the entire sum to have it. But no, indeed; no such luck! How many times during those days did I vividly dream of delightful dinner and supper parties at the Savoy, the Carlton, or the Ritz, in London, Paris, and New York! How many times did I think of the delicious meals I had had when a boy in the home of my dear father and mother! I could reconstruct in my imagination all those meals, and thought what an idiot I was to have come there out of my own free will to suffer like that. My own dreams were constantly interrupted by Benedicto and Filippe, who also had similar dreams of the wonderful meals they had had in their own houses, and the wonderful ways in which their _feijaozinho_--a term of endearment used by them for their beloved beans--had been cooked at home by their sweethearts or their temporary wives.

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