Later in the evening a couple of young Turkish dandies come round to the khan and favor me with a serenade; one of them twangs a doleful melody on a small stringed instrument, something like the Slavonian tamborica, and the other one sings a doleful, melancholy song (nearly all songs and tunes in Mohammedan countries seem doleful and melancholy); afterwards an Arab camel-driver joins in with a dance, and furnishes some genuine amusement with his hip-play and bodily contortions; this would scarcely be considered dancing from our point of view, but it is according to the ideas of the East.

The dandies are distinguishable from the common run of Turkish bipeds, like the same species in other countries, by the fearful and wonderful cut of their garments. The Turkish dandy wears a tassel to his fez about three times larger than the regulation size, and he binds it carefully down to the fez with a red and yellow silk handkerchief; he wears a jaunty-looking short jacket of bright blue cloth, cut behind so that it reaches but little below his shoulder-blades; the object of this is apparently to display the whole of the multifold kammerbund, a wonderful, colored waist-scarf that is wound round and round the waist many times, and which is held at one end by an assistant, while the wearer spins round like a dancing dervish, the assistant advancing gradually as the human bobbin takes up the length. The dandy wears knee-breeches corresponding in color to his jacket, woollen stockings of mingled red and black, and low, slipper-like shoes; he allows his hair to fall about his eyes a la negligee, and affects a reckless, love- lorn air.

The last party of sight-seers for the day call around near midnight, some time after I have retired to sleep; they awaken me with their garrulous observations concerning the bicycle, which they are critically examining close to my head with a classic lamp; but I readily forgive them their nocturnal intrusion, since they awaken me to the first opportunity of hearing women wailing for the dead. A dozen or so of women are wailing forth their lamentations in the silent night but a short distance from the khan; I can look out of a small opening in the wall near my shake-down, and see them moving about the house and premises by the flickering glare of torches.

I could never have believed the female form divine capable of producing such doleful, unearthly music; but there is no telling what these shrouded forms are really capable of doing, since the opportunity of passing one's judgment upon their accomplishments is confined solely to an occasional glimpse of a languishing eye. The kahvay-jee, who is acting the part of explanatory lecturer to these nocturnal visitors, explains the meaning of the wailing by pantomimically describing a corpse, and then goes on to explain that the smallest imaginable proportion of the lamentations that are making night hideous is genuine grief for the departed, most of the uproar being made by a body of professional mourners hired for the occasion.

When I awake in the morning the unearthly wailing is still going vigorously forward, from which I infer they have been keeping it up all night. Though gradually becoming inured to all sorts of strange scenes and customs, the united wailing and lamentations of a houseful of women, awakening the echoes of the silent night, savor too much of things supernatural and unearthly not to jar unpleasantly on the senses; the custom is, however, on the eve of being relegated to the musty past by the Ottoman Government.

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Adapted from Thomas Stevens, Around the World on a Bicycle