the; butcher: saloniki 



Photograph by Frederick Moon 



"Saloniki is naturally less of a Turkish town than it was when the Turks stood second 

 and the Greeks third in the roll of local babel. But while they have now changed places, 

 the fez still adds a very appreciable note to the color of Saloniki" (see text, page 228). 



LISTENING TO A NATURALIZED ■ 

 GRAMOPHONE 



Upper stories lean out toward each 

 other on curved wooden brackets. Sten- 

 ciled under broad eaves, or hung there 

 like a picture in a frame, is an Arabic in- 

 vocation : "O Protector!" "O Proprietor 

 of all Property!" Occasionally you pass 

 a building like a mosque without a min- 

 aret, whose domes are studded with glass 

 bulls' eyes and within whose doorways 

 lounge half-nude figures in striped to- 

 gas — a Turkish bath. And you keep dis- 

 covering little squares where a plane tree 

 or two make shadow, where water is sure 

 to trickle, and where grave persons sit on 

 rush - bottomed stools, sipping coffee, 



smoking water-pipes, and listening it may 

 be to a naturalized gramophone. 



At the tiptop of the hill you are 

 stopped by the old walls, whose crenella- 

 tfons print themselves so decoratively 

 across the sky as you look up the long 

 streets from below. Or at least it was so 

 the last time I mounted to that Castel- 

 laccio of this Levantine Genoa. 



Even then, however, unsentimental 

 crowbars were at work in that ancient 

 masonry. Through the resultant breaches 

 you look northward into a bare country 

 that dips and mounts again to a farther 

 background of heights. One reason why 

 the country is so bare is perhaps that it 

 was so long cut off from the city by the 



229 



