Elegant, pricey Maxim was at the upper end of popular tourist entertainments in Constantinople. But the city had many other levels, both native and foreign, and there was a lot to choose from if you had eclectic tastes or were not a prude. An American naval officer who went to a Russian restaurant where “the waitresses were all refugee Russian girls chosen obviously for their good looks” kept being urged, “You can be as wicked as you like” by the maître d’hôtel, a man “with a black beard who looked like Rasputin.” Vertinsky’s nightclub “La Rose Noire,” in which his singing was the prime official attraction, was reputedly shut down when a police raid “unearthed quantities of cocaine and 100 per cent syphilis among the lady servants and entertainers.” There were exotic “Oriental” entertainments that one could attend, like the “camel fights” between pairs of beasts that were held in the MacMahon Barracks Hippodrome in Taxim Square, not far from Maxim.
American tourists also treated as entertainments some Turkish cultural traditions and rituals of the Ottoman court that survived under the Allied occupation. The weekly ceremonial procession of the sultan to his mosque for worship attracted crowds of observers because of the magnificence of the scene: lined-up palace guards in bright scarlet; units of cavalrymen richly uniformed in red breeches, hussar jackets, and astrakhan hats, their lances tipped with red and green pennants; the sultans’ horses caparisoned with tiger skins and silver mountings. Especially popular with tourists were the dervishes, Sufi Muslim ascetics who resembled Western monks in some ways. Their religious practices, which varied by sect, included the famous dance-like “whirling,” as well as a form of collective prayer that supercilious foreigners called “howling.” There were also lurid forms of self-mortification, with individuals searing their bodies with red-hot irons, striking themselves with swords or spiked iron balls, and even thrusting daggers through both cheeks.
But probably the oddest entertainment in Constantinople was the “cockroach races” that the Russians invented. In an attempt to control the spread of gambling in the city, in April 1921 the Allied authorities forbade the “lotto” games of chance that Russian refugees had introduced all over Pera. After casting about for some other source of income, several enterprising souls dreamed up the idea of staging races using the ubiquitous insects. They sought permission from the head of the British police, who, being a “true sportsman,” enthusiastically granted it. A large, well-lit hall was found and a giant table was set up in the center, its surface covered with a series of tracks separated by low barriers. Announcements of a new “Cafarodrome”—after the French “cafard,” “cockroach”—were posted throughout the district. The public poured in. Men with feverishly glistening eyes and women with flushed faces crowded around the table, trans-fixed by the sight of the enormous black cockroaches. Each had a name—“Michel,” “Dream,” “Trotsky,” “Farewell,” “Lyulyu.” A ringing bell signaled the start of the race. Released from their cigar-box “stables,” the cockroaches dashed forward, pulling tiny, two-wheeled sulkies fashioned out of wire; some, dumbfounded by the bright lights, froze, waving their feelers around uncertainly to the despair of their fans. Those that reached the end of their runs found stale cake crumbs as their reward. Pari-mutuel winnings could reach 100 Ltqs—the equivalent of several thousand dollars today. The success of the first Cafarodrome was so great that competing “racetracks” began to pop up all over Pera and Galata, with word spreading to Stambul and even Scutari. Some of the organizers quickly became rich and started to make plans to leave for a new life in Paris. If you had the money, you could buy a forged passport, and if your assets were portable and the Interallied Police did not know you, you could board a ship and escape.
9: Sultan of Jazz
In late summer of 1922, just when Maxim was emerging as the pre-eminent nightclub in Constantinople and Frederick was finally beginning to enjoy genuine financial success, the historical ground under his feet began to shift. Once again, his life and the life of the country he had adopted began to diverge, just as they had when he reached the pinnacle of his financial and social success in Russia on the eve of the October Revolution. The Turkish Nationalist movement had started to liberate the country from foreign invaders. And central to Mustafa Kemal’s aims was to put an end to the Allied occupation of Constantinople, which had created the artificial oasis where Maxim had thrived.
Following their victory at Sakarya, the Nationalists resumed their campaign against the invading Greek army in August 1922 and launched a major offensive in western Anatolia. The Greeks broke and fell back in disarray to Smyrna on the Aegean coast, where they had begun their invasion three years earlier, and which the Allies had promised Greece. On September 9, the Nationalists took Smyrna, thus completing their reconquest of Asian Turkey; several days later a vast fire, apparently started by the victorious Turks, burned much of the city, causing many deaths and much hardship among the Greek and Armenian populations. The only part of Turkey that remained in foreign hands now was on the European side of the Straits in the north, which included Constantinople. Kemal’s forces continued their advance and two weeks later entered what the Allies considered a “neutral zone” near Chanak on the Asian side of the Dardanelles, precipitating a crisis that almost led to war with Great Britain. A diplomatic solution averted conflict at the last minute, but the relations between the occupying powers and a renascent Turkey had irrevocably changed.
In Constantinople, the news of the Nationalists’ advance, two hundred miles away, greatly alarmed the Americans. On September 23, Admiral Bristol circulated a memorandum explaining that the United States would remain neutral should fighting break out between Turkish and Allied forces, but would still evacuate all American citizens living in and near the city. A detailed list of all 650 Americans (including a young journalist named Ernest Hemingway) was prepared but, needless to say, Frederick and his family were not on it.
The Nationalists now had the upper hand and nothing stood in the way of their goal to reclaim the rest of their country. On October 11, 1922, Britain, France, and Italy accepted Kemal’s demands and signed the Armistice of Mudanya. They also agreed to a new peace conference to renegotiate the onerous Treaty of Sèvres, which had provided for the partition of the Ottoman Empire and the internationalization of Constantinople.
Kemal next shifted his attention to his internal enemy—the sultan. Mehmet VI, a bespectacled, studious-looking man who inherited the throne from his brother, had opposed the Nationalists from the start and blamed them for the disaster that had befallen the Ottoman Empire after the war. For a time, his government in Constantinople, whose powers had already been severely limited by the Allies, continued to function independently from the Nationalist government that had formed in Angora. The Nationalists also initially attempted to remain loyal to the sultan personally, but the final rupture between them became inevitable. On November 1, 1922, Kemal and the Nationalists proclaimed the abolition of the sultanate. Two weeks later, Mehmet VI slipped out of the Dolmabahçe Palace, boarded a British warship, and fled to Malta and permanent exile on the Italian Riviera.