The Master’s voice boomed from above with its grating syllables and closed vowels, he could be heard castigating Persia and the Shah and announcing the evils which would come to pass. I tried to make myself unobtrusive, being the foreigner – an American with a small foreign hat, small foreign footsteps and my foreign concerns who made the trip from Paris to Constantinople, a trip of seventy hours by train across three empires, in order to ask after a manuscript, an old poetry book, a pathetic bundle of papers in a tumultuous Orient. A servant came up to me. He made an Ottoman bow, spoke a few words of greeting in French but asked not the slight question. Everyone came here for the same reason, to meet the Master, to hear the Master or to spy on the Master. I was invited to wait in the huge sitting room. As I entered, I notice the silhouette of a woman. This induced me to lower my eyes; I had been told too much about the country’s customs to walk forward beaming and cheery with my hand outstretched.
