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A Turkish Woman's European Impressions

by Zeyneb Hanoum (edited by Grace Ellison) · 1913

Memoir · Classics

Letters from Zeyneb Hanoum to the journalist Grace Ellison, describing her flight from Constantinople with her sister in 1906 and her impressions of Europe. She compares the lives of women behind the veil with the freedom and the disappointments she finds in the West, and the book follows her return to Turkey.

Content note: Edited and published in 1913 by an English journalist. It includes opinions about religion, race and gender that are outdated today.

20 chapters

A look inside

A few days after my visit to the Désenchantées at Fontainebleau, which is described in the Introduction, I received the following letter from Zeyneb:

Fontainebleau, Sept. 1906.

You will never know, my dear and latest friend, the pleasure your visit has given us. It was such a new experience, and all the more to be appreciated, because we were firmly convinced we had come to the end of new experiences.

For almost a quarter of a century, in our dear Turkey, we longed above all for something new; we would have welcomed death even as a change, but everything, everything was always the same.

And now, in the space of eight short months, what have we not seen and done! Every day has brought some new impressions, new faces, new joys, new difficulties, new disappointments, new surprises and new friends; it seemed to both of us that we must have drunk the cup of novelty to its very dregs.

On Sunday, after you had left us, we talked for a long time of you and the many subjects we had discussed together.

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