In the preface of his famous novel, Les Désenchantées, M. Pierre Loti writes: "This novel is pure fiction; those who take the trouble to find real names for Zeyneb, Melek, or André will be wasting their energy, for they never existed."
These words were written to protect the two women, Zeyneb and Melek, who were mainly responsible for the information contained in that book, from the possibility of having to endure the terror of the Hamidian régime as a consequence of their indiscretion. This precaution was unnecessary, however, seeing that the two heroines, understanding the impossibility of escaping the Hamidian vigilance, had fled to Europe, at great peril to their lives, before even the novel appeared.
Although it is not unusual to find Turkish women who can speak fluently two or three European languages (and this was very striking to me when I stayed in a Turkish harem), and although M. Loti has in his novel taken thexiv precaution to let Melek die, yet it would still have been an easy task to discover the identity of the two heroines of his book.
Granddaughters of a Frenchman who for les beaux yeux of a Circassian became a Turk and embraced Mahometanism, they had been signalled out from amongst the enlightened women who are a danger to the State, and were carefully watched.
For a long time many cultured Turkish women had met to discuss what could be done for the betterment of their social status; and when it was finally decided to make an appeal to the sympathy of the world in the form of a novel, who better than Pierre Loti, with his magic pen and keen appreciation of Turkish life, could be found to plead the cause of the women of what he calls his "second fatherland"?
In one of my letters written to Zeyneb from Constantinople, I hinted that the Young Turks met in a disused cistern to discuss the Revolution which led Europe to expect great things of them. The women, too, met in strange places to plot and plan--they were full of energetic intentions, but, with the Turkish woman's difficulty of bringing thought into action, they did littlexv more than plot and plan, and but for Zeyneb and Melek, Les Désenchantées would never have been written.
At the conclusion of his preface, M. Loti says: "What is true in my story is the culture allowed to Turkish women and the suffering which must necessarily follow. This suffering, which to my foreign eyes appeared perhaps more intense, is also giving anxiety to my dear friends the Turks themselves, and they would like to alleviate it. The remedy for this evil I do not claim to have discovered, since the greatest thinkers of the East are still diligently working to find it."
