In fact, the women seem to take a malicious pleasure
in annoying their guards by encouraging such advances as can be made
by the mute language of looks and signs.
Every Friday in the year the same pantomime is performed. The women
go to the Sweet Waters to sit and stare at men whom they do not and
never will know or speak to, and the men go to walk or waddle about
and stare back at the women in the same way. This monotonous and
melancholy pastime is varied by much stuffing of sweetmeats and cakes
and sipping of colored beverages by the fair ones, and endless smoking
by the men. There are strolling jugglers and musicians plying their
trades for the amusement and paras of the public, and they are
liberally patronized in the dreary dearth of amusement on these
pleasure-grounds.
To the foreigner, after the sight has been seen a few times and
divested of its novelty, the whole thing becomes tedious in the
extreme; but we must remember that in his tastes the Turk is the very
opposite of the Western man, and what would be death to us is fun
to him. His idea of true enjoyment is that it should be passive, not
active: his highest happiness is in "keff," a perfect repose of mind
and body--an exaggeration of the Italian _dolce far niente_. This keff
he enjoys at these weekly meetings, and the women in their way enjoy
it too as the only public exposition of themselves they are permitted
to make, and as a break in the monotony of their dreary and secluded
lives.
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