While I sat by the stream trying to cheer myself up with a pipe, since there was no dinner that night, an old man appeared, bringing his cattle to drink. He seemed to be hoping for a small reward, and he offered a suggestion. The old man was half-Bulgarian and half-Albanian. He was in charge of a tower owned by an Albanian Bey. The Bey used to bring his wives to this tower in the summer. However, in the past few years, since the Bey was suspected of having Turkish sympathies, he had stopped visiting the tower and started going to another part of Macedonia for his holidays. The old man was sure the Bey would be pleased to know that an English “effendi” (a respectful term for a man) had stayed in the tower The Night of Worry.
The Tower as Refuge
We decided to go to the tower. It was a large, square building with three stories. The lower stories were made of stone boulders, but the top story was wooden. The lower story had no windows, just a door covered with iron studs and a thick courtyard with an iron-studded gate. We locked ourselves inside for the night vitosha bulgaria private tours.
A Harem Escape
I couldn’t help but laugh at the thought of hiding in a harem to escape revolutionary capture. This was the second time in my life that I had stayed in an Oriental harem. The first time was about eight or nine years ago in Persia, where all my romantic ideas about harems disappeared when I saw the reality. The harem I visited in Persia was not at all luxurious but rather cheap and poorly decorated.
However, the tower of the Bey served a dual purpose: it was both a harem and a safe refuge. It would have been very difficult to break into the tower.
