Note 268 — ALI SHAR[254] AND ZUMURRUD.

Arab. “Khiyál”; afterwards called Kara Gyuz (= “black eyes,” from the celebrated Turkish Wazir). The mise-en-scène was like that of Punch, but of transparent cloth, lamp-lit inside and showing silhouettes worked by hand. Nothing could be more Fescennine than Kara Gyuz, who appeared with a phallus longer than himself and made all the Consuls-General periodically complain of its abuse; while the dialogue, mostly in Turkish, was even more obscene. Most ingenious were Kara Gyuz’s little ways of driving on an obstinate donkey and of tackling a huge Anatolian pilgrim. He mounted the Neddy’s back, face to tail, and inserting his left thumb like a clyster, hammered it with his right, when the donkey started at speed. For the huge pilgrim he used a ladder. These shows, now obsolete, used to enliven the Ezbekiyah Gardens every evening and explain Ovid’s words.

Delicias videam, Nile jocose, tuas!