Coming Home to Turkey [excerpt]

     I barely remembered Hilmi Pasha, although I had known him before I went away from Turkey. When he came in, he kissed his first wife first, then his second, and it seemed to me that there was a difference in his manner to the two, the first kiss being that of a lover, the second that of an older man to a pet child.
     He talked with me concerning affairs in America. It was just after the assassination of President McKinley. All the papers printed in Turkey were only permitted to say that he had died of indigestion. The news of the murder of a ruler can never be printed in Turkey, because it is supposed to put ideas into the heads of the malcontents. However, every one in Turkey who counted at all knew the truth about McKinley and discussed it.
     Hilmi Pasha expressed his astonishment at the inability of the American government to suppress the anarchists. “Isn’t he the third one they have killed?” he asked. [21][22]
     I explained that Lincoln and Garfield were not killed by anarchists, but Hilmi Pasha only smiled as much as to say,—in our slang,—“What are you giving us?” In Turkey the truth about public matters is so often suppressed that he thought I had some reason for not telling it now.