I shook my head. "There is Allah, and there is God," I replied. "And I am a Greek, and you are a Turk—and the Turks are very cruel people."
"Have we been cruel to you, all this long time you have come to see us?"
"No," I had to admit, "but you are cruel just the same. If you will read history you will know how cruel you are; for when you took Constantinople, for days and nights you were killing our people and burning our homes." I was ready to weep over our past wrongs, and my blood was boiling. "I don't love you any more—and God doesn't love you either."
Djimlah's eyes opened wide open. "I don't understand. Let's go to grandmother: she will explain things to us."
"I don't want them explained. I shall go home to-morrow, and never, never, so long as I live, shall I again speak to you, or to any Turkish child."
At this Djimlah began to cry: at first softly, then yelling at the top of her lungs. This brought not only the old hanoum but a bevy of the younger ones.
It took some time to pacify Djimlah, who managed to convey between her sobs that I, her own baby, "her own flesh and blood," as she put it, was no longer coming to see her, because she was a Turkish child and because Constantinople had been burned.
