Birds Without Wings (66 page)
“Italiani,”
repeated Rustem Bey, enlightened but at the same time mystified. He was wondering what on earth a platoon of Italian soldiers was doing in Eskibahçe. It did give him a way forward, however.
“Est-ce que vous parlez français?”
he enquired.
This produced an extraordinary effect on Granitola who suddenly perceived that all of his difficulties were about to be relieved.
“Mais oui, je parle français,”
he said, adding snobbishly,
“tout le monde parle français.”
“C’est la langue universelle de la civilisation, n’est-ce pas?”
said Rustem Bey drily, raising an eloquent eyebrow.
“Je l’ai appris un peu pendant le service militaire. J’étais officier, et c’était plus ou moins obligatoire.”
In truth, neither man spoke very good French. Rustem Bey had had the misadventure of being taught by someone with a very strong southern accent, so that all the “n” sounds arrived with the addition of a hard “g.”
“Je reviens lendemain”
would come out as
“je revieng lendemeng,”
and all the vowels would arrive in the fresh air appropriately and correspondingly modified. Similarly, Granitola had never advanced beyond the pleasantries necessary for attending officers’ parties with one’s allies, and both men
had forgotten most of what they had learned. Over the months of their friendship, the two men succeeded in engendering a private language which both of them sincerely believed to be French, and for the rest of his life Granitola would horrify occasional French interlocutors with the fluent but bizarre jargon rendered in the heavy Provençal accent that he had unwittingly co-generated with Rustem Bey.
Leyla Hanim, of course, actually could speak some Italian, since dialects of it were known in the Ionian islands of her birth, but she was never able to employ it. As a matter of policy she sedulously avoided any indication that she was not from the Caucasus. She seethed with longing and frustration, and was only relieved of it when the Italians finally departed.
On this night, however, Rustem Bey led the Italian soldiers to the town’s khan, a pleasant square of bare rooms surrounding a shady courtyard. It was eminently suitable as a temporary barracks, its only inconvenience being that travellers expected to be able to use it as usual, and could not be dissuaded from unpacking their bedrolls and settling down to snore the night away even in the midst of rooms full of soldiers. The latter, however, enjoyed the custom of sharing food with travellers, and many savoury items passed their lips that they would remember with pleasure, and try to induce their wives to recreate.
Because it was the first night, Rustem Bey did his duty, and had water-pipes and foodstuffs that he could not truly spare sent down from his house. Because it was the custom with new arrivals, Rustem Bey doggedly sat in silence among the soldiers, fulfilling the obligations of hospitality, and they in their turn sat doggedly and waited for him to go, fulfilling equally their side of the obligation. The waterpipes went round and round, and eventually even those who were frightened of Turkish microbes had a few puffs on it. They noticed that Rustem Bey had his own mouthpiece, which he inserted into the pipe after removing the communal one. The smoke was cool, sweet and aromatic, it filled one with a gentle pleasure, and by mid-evening it was impossible for the weary men to remain awake any longer. No one saw Rustem Bey leave, because he did not depart until all the foreigners had nodded off.
He went home proud of having done his duty, proud of having lived up to the town’s expectations of him, proud of having been able to use his French, and pleased to have had an interesting day. He turfed the uncomplaining Pamuk off the bed, and woke Leyla Hanim by tickling her lips and eyelashes with a feather. They made love languidly, and afterwards, as
he lay listening to the nightingales, he said to Leyla, “I am going to have to get more mouthpieces for the waterpipes, to present to the soldiers.”
A little while later, apropos of nothing, and not even sure that Leyla was awake to hear him, he said, “I am mostly a happy man.” It was the first time he had ever thought it or said it.
CHAPTER 75
Mustafa Kemal (17)
Karatavuk in Gallipoli and Ibrahim in Aleppo share the strange limbo that descends upon an army that is still in existence but whose government has surrendered. Military routine continues, but no one knows what it is all for any more, and some soldiers cannot look each other in the eye, as if suspecting themselves of guilt for the defeat. Others start to chafe, carrying out orders sloppily, and losing their fear of their officers. They talk about going home, about how this might be accomplished, about whether or not there might be transport. There is a steady trickle of desertion now that it has become pointless to be a soldier, and much of the army demobilises haphazardly and unofficially. Many of those taking their weapons with them will simply become bandits in the interior, further exacerbating the misery of the population. Pay is not coming through, and the diet continues to be meagre beyond endurance. Some soldiers steal from the civilian population, and others beg.
The collapse of the Ottoman Empire has been brought about by the defeat of Bulgaria, because this has opened up the possibility of an easy Allied invasion on a long front, whilst the bulk of the army is still irretrievably far away in the Caucasus and in Syria. The Grand Vizier, Tâlat Pasha, announces, “We’ve eaten shit,” and resigns. The government of Enver Pasha and the “Young Turks” falls at last, and Mustafa Kemal is disappointed not to be appointed to the new Cabinet. The British impose harsh conditions upon the new government, and Enver and his former colleagues escape to Germany. The Ottomans realise too late that the British do not share their assumption that there will be no military advances into Ottoman territory, and Mosul is occupied, breaking an agreement that the British had made two days previously. This is the new era of the fight for Turkish independence, because the commander of the Ottoman 6th Army begins secretly to accumulate weapons and supplies when he realises what
is happening. In Syria, Mustafa Kemal finds that he is in charge of a border that does not officially exist on any modern maps, since it is defined by the ancient and indefinable border of the kingdom of Cilicia. The British announce that they intend to occupy Aleppo, and Mustafa Kemal takes steps to resist any incursion into Şskenderun. He is not pleased when told to desist by the government, and is recalled to Istanbul. In the meantime, he too has started to make preparations for resistance. His successor sets about removing essential supplies into the interior, where the Allies cannot sequester them. On every front, Ottoman commanders, as if knowing what is to come, set about gathering and organising supplies and munitions.
The French occupy Adana, in late 1918, and immediately set the cat among the pigeons. The Ottoman Empire has asked for an armistice, but it has not surrendered. It is weary and economically ruined, it is inconceivable that it has any fight left in it, but the victors have yet to become fully cognisant of the fantastic obstinacy of the Turks. Now that foreign troops are beginning to occupy its territory, it is inevitable that resistance will be organised, and a pattern begins to emerge: as the authorities of the empire progressively capitulate, and accede more and more to the Allies’ demands, resistance originates more and more from a loose coterie of dissident army officers. The empire begins to divide, but it will take a while for Mustafa Kemal and his brother officers to fire up the abject population. In this they are greatly helped by the French, who unleash detachments of Armenian volunteers upon the population of Adana. These volunteers set about exacting revenge upon the locals, and resistance predictably commences. All over Anatolia, Ottoman weapons stores that are under Allied guard begin to have armaments smuggled out of them.
In Istanbul, Mustafa Kemal surveys the Allied warships in the harbours and becomes depressed. He had suffered months of insomnia and sacrificed tens of thousands of men at Gallipoli in order to prevent this very thing. He is downcast, but at the same time entertains the hope that one day soon he will be head of a government that will put all this to rights and end the succession of humiliations. He rents a house from an Armenian at Osmanbey, conveniently close to the nexus of political life, and conveniently far from his mother.
The occupying French and British troops freely antagonise each other and the local population in Istanbul. The French are just setting into motion a petulant foreign policy which has remained steadfastly unchanged ever since, and whose sole object is to obstruct and irritate the
Anglo-Saxon world as much as possible, even when that is against French interests. The Italian troops are pleasant to everyone, but the Italian government is plotting to frustrate Greek ambitions to reclaim territory that was anciently Greek. The British and French have a vague understanding with the Greeks that lends wings to this ambition. There are Greek troops in Istanbul, who have been ecstatically welcomed by the vast Greek population. For those such as Mustafa Kemal, this is most worrying of all, because everyone knows that the Greeks yearn to regain the ancient capital of Byzantium.
Astute Turkish politicians, however, begin to appreciate just how war-weary the Allies are, and how easy it might be to exploit their divisions. Mustafa Kemal throws himself into full-time manoeuvring, but because the politicians are incapable of mutual cooperation, it is in fact the general staff of the armed forces that becomes the focus of resistance to the Allies, and in particular that group of nationalist officers of whom Mustafa Kemal is to become the leader.
The Greek Prime Minister, Eleftherios Venizelos, submits a memorandum in which Greece lays claim to Thrace and to western Anatolia. He proposes a voluntary exchange of Turkish and Greek populations. The idea seems terribly sensible, as if it is a perfectly acceptable idea that the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent individuals should be arbitrarily disrupted in the interests of nation-building. In Istanbul, the Greek Orthodox patriarch announces on behalf of the Greek population that it is no longer Ottoman, and declares union with Greece. Unsurprisingly, Turkish societies for the defence of national rights begin to proliferate all over Turkey. The Italians decide to frustrate the Greeks, and land troops in Antalya. Uniquely among the Allies, the Italian policy is to butter up the Turkish population at every possible opportunity, and treat respectfully with Ottoman emissaries.
Under Allied authority the Greek government sends soldiers to occupy Smyrna, and ultimately another war will be sparked off. Instead of going home, Karatavuk and Ibrahim will find themselves embroiled in a campaign which will be marked particularly by its dishonour and viciousness. Back in Eskibahçe, where there is now a small detachment of Italian troops, the lovely Philothei, more melancholy than ever, still yearns for the return of her fiancé, believing, as so many girls do, that life does not truly begin until one is a bride. She knows that when he returns she will have to become a Muslim, but this prospect has little meaning for her, as she will still be able to leave little offerings in front of the icon of the Panagia
Glykophilousa, and it has always been the pattern for a woman to take her husband’s faith, and there have been certain Muslim and Christian families in Eskibahçe that have customarily intermarried since memory began. She is comforted by Drosoula, who talks of nothing but hope, and by Leyla Hanim, who tries to force her to learn to play the oud, thrusting it into her hands and explaining how to use the cherrywood plectrum. Philothei resolutely refuses, forbidden by her own gentleness from explaining that in common opinion hereabouts, the only kind of woman who plays the oud is a whore.
Philothei has long ago ceased to wear a veil, because unhappiness has reduced the joys of vanity and, apart from the tatterdemalion Italian soldiers who awake from their perpetual siesta under the plane trees of the meydan in order to blow her kisses that she scornfully disdains, there are no men left in the place who might become quarrelsome on account of her beauty.
The Allied occupation of Istanbul proceeds with comic effect. The British and the French continue to irritate both each other and the populace, and the Italians continue to be kind to everyone. The latter have been promised the Smyrna region, but they know from bitter experience in Libya that it isn’t easy to occupy Ottoman territory. It takes fewer men and less trouble just to establish a zone of influence, and they astutely choose the role of protecting the Turks against Greek ambition, which is to take the western coast, and create Greater Greece. The Ottoman government is alarmed by the presence of Greek troops and warships in Istanbul, where a very substantial proportion of the population is Greek.
Mustafa Kemal throws himself into the demoralising and complicated machinations required to lever him into a position of power. He is convinced that only he can lead the Turks to national independence. He exploits contacts in the press, and has fruitless interviews with the Sultan. He plots to obstruct the appointment of a new and uncongenial Grand Vizier.