Ekim Bey

Many people, not only Turks but also people from other countries, chiefly from Europe, began to write to him and pester him with all kinds of requests. Some begged him to foretell their future from their handwriting; others, to remedy their unrequited love; yet others to cure them from a distance of their chronic ailments. He received letters from pashas, generals, officers, mullahs, teachers, priests, merchants, and from women of every age, but especially from young women of all nationalities.

In short, there were such heaps of these letters with different kinds of requests that, if Ekim Bey had wished to send even empty replies to each of the writers, he would have had to have no less than fifty secretaries.
One day when I visited him in Scutari at his father’s estate on the shores of the Bosphorus, he showed me many of these letters and I remember how we almost split our sides with laughter at the naïveté and stupidity of people.

He ultimately grew so weary of it all that he even gave up his well­ loved work as a physician and left the places where he was known.

Ekim Bey’s thorough knowledge of hypnotism and of all the automatic properties of the psyche of the ordinary man turned out to be very useful during one of our journeys, when he succeeded in getting us out of a very difficult situation into which we had fallen.

Once, when Ekim Bey and I with several of our comrades were in the town of Yangishar in Kashgar, having one of our usual long rests, intending to go next into the valleys of the Hindu Kush Mountains, Ekim Bey received news from his uncle in Turkey that his father was failing rapidly and would probably not live long.
This news disturbed Ekim Bey so much that he decided to interrupt his journey and return to Turkey as quickly as possible, in order to spend what little time remained with his beloved father.

As these incessant wanderings from place to place under constant nervous strain had begun to weary me, and as I also wished to go and see my parents, I decided to break off my journey and travel as far as Russia with Ekim Bey.

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