CHAPTER XII
HOW I WAS SOLD TO ST GEORGE
Shortly after Semmeya's wedding an
epidemic of typhoid fever swept over
Constantinople. Owing to our unsanitary
drainage conditions such epidemics were not
rare. All four of us had the fever. With me
it was so acute, and lasted so long, that the
doctors gave me up as a sickly child who
had not the strength to battle for health. My
lengthy illness left me alive, it is true, but
as a fire leaves standing a structure which it
has completely destroyed within. Apparently
there remained nothing solid to build on. The
doctors intimated as much when they said I
might eat and do what pleased me—and went
away.
To them I was only a hopeless patient. It was different with my mother: she would not give up the fight.
In her despair, and when science failed her, she turned to what in reality she always had more faith in—her religion, and particularly her favourite saint, St George of the Bells. Him she had inherited from the paternal side of her family,
