Orient Express Read Online Free Page A

heaps of masonry of burnt-over places, where gapes an occasional caving dome with beside it a gnawed minaret, where sneakthieves and homeless people live in the remnants of houses or in shattered cisterns; or down through the waterfront streets of Galata with their fruitstands and their Greek women jiggling in doorways and their sailors’ cafés full of the jingle of mechanical pianos or the brassy trombone music of an orchestra, where the dancing of ill-assorted closehugged couples has a sway of the sea to it; or through the cool bazaars of Stamboul where in the half darkness under the azure-decorated vault Persian and Greek and Jewish and Armenian merchants spread out print cloths and Manchester goods which an occasional beam of dusty sunlight sets into a flame of colors; or into the ruined palaces along the Bosphorus where refugees from one place or another live in dazed and closepacked squalor; or into the gorgeous tinsel-furnished apartments where Greek millionaires and Syrian war-profiteers give continual parties just off the Grande Rue de Pera; or to the yards and doorways where the Russians sleep huddled like sheep in a snowstorm: somewhere some day one might find the core, the key to decipher this intricate arabesque scrawled carelessly on a ground of sheer pain.

    Teheran: The Bath of the Lion
    This afternoon I can only sit sipping douzico made opal white with water, ears drowsy with the strangely satisfying monotony of the Turkish orchestra’s unending complaint. The cool north wind off the Black Sea has come up and is making dust and papers dance in whirlwinds across Taxim Square.
    Along the line of taxis, abolishing them, abolishing the red trolleycars and the victorious puttees of Greek officers, his head in embroidered cap bowed against the wind, his almond eyes closed to black slits against the dust, taking little steps in his black embroidered slippers, the great sleeves of his flowing crimson silk gown flapping in the wind, walks a mandarin of China.
    Cathay!
    7. Constantine and the Classics
    Little Mr. Moscoupoulos threw up pudgy hands.
    â€”But the Turks have not studied the Greek classics. They are ignorant. They do not know Aristophanes or Homer or Demosthenes, not even the deputies. Et sans connaître les classiques grecs on ne peut être ni politicien, ni orateur, ni diplomate. Turkey does not exist. I assure you, sir, it is a mere question of brigandage. And this city—we peered out of the window of the Pera Palace at a passing Allied staffcar—you know the legend. A Constantine built it, a Constantine lost it, and a Constantine shall regain it.…
    Overhead bunches of green grapes hang down from the dense thatch of vineleaves and twined stems. A café outside one of the gates in the great wall of Heraclius. The dusty road dips into a low gateway that seems too small for the heavy dust-raising carts that clatter through it. On either side grey square towers timecrumbled at the top. Endlessly in either direction, grey walls occasionally splotched with the bright green of a figtree, and grey square towers. Towards the east a patch of the luminous aquamarine blue of the Sea of Marmora; westward bare umber-colored hills. In the purplish shadow of the vine arbor little tables and stools of unpainted wood and on each table a pot of rosemary or basil or thyme or a geranium in flower. In a group in one corner old men with grave gestures discuss some problem with quietly modulated voices. Their white turbans are almost motionless; now and then there is a flash of white when a head nods in a patch of sun, or a hand, lean and brown, is lifted to a grey beard. Beside me three young men in fezzes of new bright red are exchanging witticisms. An old gentleman with a puffy red face, dressed in the eternal white vest and broadtailed frock coat, listens, looks across his narghile with eyes sparkling and occasionally throws his head back and roars with laughter. A yellow slender man with