Birds Without Wings (38 page)

The Italians bomb Beirut, shell the forts that line the Dardanelles, and occupy Rhodes and other islands of the Dodecanese. They send torpedo boats in the direction of Istanbul.

Back in Istanbul the revolutionary government that once promised so much has declined into chaotic tyranny. It dissolves parliament and packs the infamous sopali seçim election in its own favour. Just as the Committee of Union and Progress had once acted against the despotism of the Sultan’s government, now a similar group of young officers is acting against the despotism of the Committee. Paradoxically, they demand the withdrawal of the military from all political activity and the restoration of a freely enfranchised parliament.

They succeed in establishing a new liberal government just as the Balkan nations, incited by the Russians, for the first and only time in their history manage to concoct a collective conspiracy, and actually cooperate to implement it. Serbia aspires to the Adriatic coast, and Bulgaria to the Mediterranean, whilst Greece wants Thrace. All three want what they can get of Macedonia. Bulgaria and Greece both want Thrace. The Balkan states combine in a military “exercise.” In the meantime, 120 Ottoman battalions in the Balkans have been demobilised as an imprudent gesture of conciliation. Suddenly the King of Montenegro declares war on the Ottoman Empire on 8 October 1912, and the Serbs, the Greeks and the Bulgarians join in shortly after. Eleftherios Venizelos, the Greek Prime Minister, makes a proclamation calling his people to come to the aid of downtrodden Christians. The Muslim populations in the path of the invaders begin to suffer an unimaginably horrible but entirely unremembered holocaust, as they become refugees, demented with terror and exhaustion, pushed hither and thither between equally malevolent and efficiently vicious armies of looters and rapists. There are terrible massacres of Muslims, particularly in the path of the Bulgarians. Many of the fleeing will find their way to Istanbul, where, in the courtyards of the mosques, they will die by the thousand of winter cold, disease and starvation. One day Mustafa Kemal will chance upon his mother and sister just in time, and find a place for them to live.

The Ottoman government makes rapid peace with Italy, and Mustafa Kemal has to wend home from Africa via Italy, Austria, Hungary and
Romania. In Vienna he has his infected eye treated by Austrian doctors. Monastir falls to the Serbs. It is at the Egyptian border, at the beginning of his homeward odyssey, that a British officer recognises him, saying, “I know you; you’re Mustafa Kemal. You may go anywhere you like in this damned country.”

CHAPTER 43

I Am Philothei (8)

Every time there was a harvest, we would give the first-fruit to a neighbour, and it so happened that since I was betrothed to Ibrahim, his family would give things to us and we would give things to them, and fortunately they often sent Ibrahim with the gifts, and so I would know that if I was in the right place Ibrahim would pass by, and in this way I would be sure of seeing him. This is how I got to see him on the first baking of the new wheat, and on the day of St. Theodoros when he came round with lokma, and on the afternoon of the Holy Cross when we broke the fast with grapes and olives and koliva.

And this is how I saw him on Holy Thursday, when some of the Muslims joined us and sent yeast, salt, eggs and bread to the church, because Jesus Son of Mary and Mary herself are also theirs as well as ours, and these things were placed by the icon and then Father Kristoforos would read the gospel over them and then we had to fetch them home again, and we threw the salt into our larders, and the yeast we put back with the yeast, and the eggs we put among our own icons for the sake of Easter, and we all ate a little of the bread and kept the rest in tiny portions so that we could eat of them when an animal was sick and needed a cure. I saw Ibrahim during all these errands.

I remember there was one night when Ibrahim showed how great his love was. It was at three o’clock in the morning on the night of the service for the Resurrection, and the town crier had come round and roused us by knocking on our doors, and we said the Jesus Prayer, and we were going to the church in the dark, and out of the corner of my eye I saw something moving in the shadows of an almond tree, and it was Ibrahim who had got up in the coldness of three o’clock in the morning on Resurrection Day even though he was a Muslim, and he did it just to catch a glimpse of me in the dark, and that is how much he loved me.

All in all I was grateful to God for ordaining us so many feasts and obligations, because that was one way in which I often saw my beloved.

CHAPTER 44

In Which a Playful Conversation Takes a Bad Turn

One evening Rustem Bey sat relaxing on cushions in the selamlik with a narghile before him whilst Leyla played to him on the oud. Pamuk lay curled up on the divan with her tail over her nose, snoring lightly, and the charcoal in the brazier glowed, giving off warmth and the deliciously incensuous smell generated by the garlic skins that Leyla periodically tossed upon them. Drosoula had called round to ask for her friend, and Leyla had allowed Philothei to leave her work and go home to her parents. The house had been cleaned that day, because it was a Wednesday, and Leyla Hanim said that this was the day on which the Sultan’s harem was cleaned. The brass ornaments sparkled and glowed in the gentle light of the oil lamps. Leyla Hanim played a song in Greek, in which a sailor was promising the Panagia that if she saved him from the storm he would silverplate her icon, and Rustem Bey, who did not understand the words at all, was marvelling once again that she knew so many songs in two languages, and was wondering how it came about that she had learned them. The music did not seem to be going very well, however, and Leyla ceased her singing and frowned. “What’s the matter?” enquired Rustem Bey.

“It’s this plectrum,” she replied. “It’s new. The old one became thin and frayed, but on this one they’ve cut the cherrywood too thick, and now it doesn’t play on the strings as it should. It needs to be thinned down at the tip.”

“Go and cut it down then, my partridge,” said Rustem Bey, contentedly puffing out a cloud of sweetly scented smoke.

She stood up and went into the kitchen, where she carefully removed some very thin shavings with the blade of a knife, held at ninety degrees so that it would scrape rather than pare. Rustem Bey could hear the dull rattle of her bracelets on the chopping board. He reflected upon how happy he was, and also upon the undeniable fact that there was something in his soul that troubled him.

When Leyla returned she tried the plectrum briefly and then set the
instrument down beside her. She looked at her lover archly. “You’ll never guess,” she said, “what people are saying.”

He raised his eyebrows in silent enquiry.

“They’re saying that you are a bad master to me because you don’t beat me. I have heard women in the hamam saying it, and remarking how I never have any bruises.”

Rustem Bey looked at her in amusement. “They have a saying around here that a woman is like an olive tree. She bears the best fruit when well thrashed.”

“Do they? I have never heard of anyone thrashing an olive tree.”

“Neither have I. If anyone really thrashed an olive tree, he would be thought mad.”

Leyla crawled on all fours from her cushions to his, and lay down with the back of her head on his lap. She reached up a hand and placed it on the nape of his neck. “Kiss me, my lion,” she said.

Rustem Bey leaned down, but stopped halfway. “I can’t,” he said. “Either I am too fat or too inflexible.”

“Why don’t you beat me?”

“I don’t feel like it. Perhaps if I felt like it, I would. Anyway, you don’t do anything to be beaten for.”

“Some men beat their wives every week, on a Friday, just to ensure good behaviour,” she said teasingly.

“These are not modern men,” replied Rustem Bey, impatiently. “This is all old stuff. Do you think that in France, in modern places, men still beat the women? Do you want to be beaten? Do you think it would do you good?”

Leyla shuddered, and rolled her eyes in mock horror. “Certainly not. I only brought it up because it was amusing. If you beat me I would run away.”

“Well, I couldn’t be bothered to beat you.”

“Don’t you care for me then?”

“I don’t beat my servants, I don’t beat my horses, I don’t beat my dogs, I don’t beat my olive trees. I care for all of them, and all of them are perfectly good. I don’t even beat Pamuk when she sticks her claws in my leg or leaves the guts of mice on the floor.”

“Everyone beats their servants,” observed Leyla, “everyone but you.” She laughed mischievously, and suggested, “Why don’t we open the shutters, and you can pretend to beat me, and you can beat the doorpost and the divan with a belt or something, and you can shout and I’ll scream, and then everyone will know that you treat me right after all.”

“I do believe you’re serious,” he said, amazed.

“It would be fun, just to fool the neighbours, and hear the story spreading from mouth to ear. It would be wonderful, honestly. Go on. Let’s do it.” She jumped up, and her eyes glistened with a childish excitement and anticipation.

Rustem Bey let himself admire her joy and her beauty for a moment, before saying, “If you don’t stop talking about this, I might beat you after all. You are spoiling the enjoyment of smoking, and if we were to do as you suggest, it would undoubtedly frighten the cat, and I don’t believe it would truly improve my reputation.” There was a long silence, and Leyla bent forward and kissed his face, dabbing her lips upon his eyes and his cheeks and his mouth. The aga was still unused to such affection even after so much time, and his reaction was always the same; he sat very stiffly and behaved as if she were doing nothing at all. He inhaled the scent of rosewater from her hair, and the musk and amber that she caressed into her neck and between her breasts.

“I have never beaten anyone, but I killed someone once,” said Rustem Bey suddenly, “but it was in self-defence, and he deserved it.”

Leyla drew back. “I know. I heard about it.”

“In the hamam?”

“Where else?” There was a long pause, and then she said, very tentatively, “From time to time I see your wife. In the hamam.”

Rustem Bey did not respond.

“She asks after you. Her health is very bad.”

There was still no response, but his face was darkening with displeasure. Finally he said sharply, “Do you talk with prostitutes in the hamam?”

Leyla sat up abruptly and went over to where she had been sitting before. She rolled herself a very thin cigarette of Latakia tobacco, took it up in a long, delicate pair of golden tongs, lit it from the brazier and put it to her lips. She let the smoke curl out of her mouth, and finally replied, “Who do you think I sit with, when I am in the hamam? Who else do you think would let me sit beside them? According to the people of this town, I am anyway nothing but a whore.”

There was anger and bitterness in her voice, and he repented and said softly, “You are my chosen one,” but she ignored the pacifying hand that he held outstretched, and went out, leaving him to feel ashamed.

CHAPTER 45