Birds Without Wings

by Louis de Bernières

  He and the plotters meet at the house of an officer, newly wed, who is notorious for wearing oriental pyjamas and playing the flute. They swear allegiance to the ideals of the society upon a revolver, which they kiss reverently. Mustafa says, “This revolver is now sacred. Keep it carefully, and one day you will pass it on to me.”

  The authorities twig at last that Mustafa Kemal is in the wrong place, and they send orders for him to be arrested. Mustafa hears about it just in time, and hurries back to Jaffa, where Ahmet Bey hastens him to Beersheba, where the army is facing the British in an imperial squabble about the port of Aqaba. The commandant reports to Istanbul, implying that Kemal has been in Beersheba for months, and that the Mustafa in Salonika must therefore be a different one. The papers are shuffled about in Istanbul, heads are scratched. The documents are left in drawers and under piles, misclassified, trodden on, torn at the corners, and finally forgotten. Mustafa is promoted to adjutant major and keeps his nose temporarily clean. At last, to his joy, he is posted back to Macedonia, where he is supposed to be serving with the 3rd Army, but instead finds himself inexplicably with the general staff.

  CHAPTER 21

  I Am Philothei (4)

  Ibrahim comes creeping up and finds me every time I go out on an errand, and I say, “What if we get caught?” and he says, “Who cares? We’re getting married one day anyway,” and I say, “But it’s not decent!” and he just shrugs, and I am really scared about getting caught, but so far it’s been all right, and it’s true that our fathers have come to an agreement, and my mother is already thinking about things for the dowry box and we’re going to embroider some blankets. He says, “Now that you’re twelve, you’re old enough to marry,” and I say, “But you’re not,” and he says nothing, but just takes my hand and looks at me hard in the eyes, and I can see that his eyes are dark and glowing, and it makes my stomach buzz, and then he very carefully places the back of my hand first against his chest, then against his forehead, then against his lips, and finally, before he turns and leaves, back against his heart.

  CHAPTER 22

  Ayse Remembers Tamara

  Well, I wasn’t pleased. You can imagine what I thought when my eldest son called me out of the house and said, “Look what Baba’s got us into now,” and I went out, and there were Mohammed the Leech Gatherer and Ali the Snowbringer, with Ali’s donkey, and on the donkey was what I thought was a pile of rags draped across it, and I looked a bit closer and it was a body. Just imagine!

  Now I’ve got nothing against Ali the Snowbringer or Mohammed the Leech Gatherer, but they’re not the kind of people whose wives I would make friends with, if you catch my meaning. My husband, Abdulhamid Hodja, may he rest in paradise, was a very learned man, and over the years that kind of thing rubs off. A woman who marries a learned man gradually learns things, too, like a clay pot that soaks up water, and a woman who has learned things simply by having open ears doesn’t necessarily want to spend her time consorting with the wives of Mohammed the Leech Gatherer and Ali the Snowbringer, although it’s all one to God. Just imagine! Living in the hollow trunk of a tree! With a donkey and four children! I don’t know who I felt more sorry for, the wife, the children or the donkey, but they all seemed happy enough, which is more than you can say for Rustem Bey.

  Where was I? Oh yes, so there is Ali and there is Mohammed nodding their heads and wishing me peace, and delivering me a whole donkeyful of trouble without my dear husband telling me anything about it. He was in the coffeehouse sharing a waterpipe and playing backgammon with Ali the Broken-Nosed, calming himself down after all that shouting and fuss in the meydan, which I only heard about later because I missed it, being at home doing something useful unlike most other people. So Mohammed says, “Peace be upon you, Ayse Hanimefendi, we have brought you the zina işleyen kadin.” That’s what he said, those were his exact words. “We have brought you the adulteress.” Just imagine! “Adulteress?” I said. “What adulteress? What do I want with an adulteress? I never asked for an adulteress. And upon you be peace.”

  And Ali says, “Ayse Hanimefendi, it was Abdulhamid Hodja himself who told us to bring her here, so that if she is alive, inshallah, she can be dealt with, and if she is dead, inshallah, she can be dealt with. So that, whatever happens, inshallah, she can be dealt with.”

  And Mohammed says, “The imam efendi told us that you would deal with her,” and Ali adds, “Inshallah.”

  So I say, “He did?” and they nod their heads, and I say, “So what adulteress is it, because I think I have the right to know.”

  And they say, “It is Tamara Hanim, wife of Rustem Bey,” and I am thinking, “That husband of mine is one man who is going to get too much pepper in his food for a good long time and he’ll be lucky if I sneak out into the fields with him ever again,” and they say, “Rustem Bey killed her lover as he came out of the haremlik, and the imam stopped the rabble from stoning her,” and they exchange glances, and later I find out in the hamam that both of them were in the rabble throwing stones with everyone else, including the Christians who should have been minding their own business, as if they ever did.

  So I stand there puffing my cheeks out and smiling at Ali and Mohammed even as inside I am cursing fate and my husband and Rustem Bey and his sullied wife, and I say, “Well, perhaps you should bring her in and put her in the straw with the animals,” but neither of them want to touch her, so I say, “Don’t be foolish,” even though I didn’t want to touch her either, and finally we carry her in and lay her in the part below, where Nilufer was stabled at night, snorting and farting and hinnying as horses do, so how were we supposed to sleep with all that coming up through the boards at night?

  So Ali goes back to his wife and his children and his hollow tree, and Mohammed goes and catches leeches for all I know, except that it was almost night-time by now, so he probably didn’t, come to think of it, and there I am in Nilufer’s stable with this adulteress who may or may not be dead, these things being in God’s hands, because God’s the boss after all.

  Well, I wasn’t pleased. I was thinking, “I hope that husband of mine, peace be upon him, cuts himself in the hand so that I can pour salt and vinegar in the wound and lemon juice and give him a good stinging, and I hope that Nilufer stands on his foot and blackens a nail,” and just then I hear the clopping of hooves, and Abdulhamid comes back on Nilufer, and swings down from the saddle, and he catches my eye and looks away again quickly because he knows I’m not much pleased and in the mood for too much pepper in his pilav, and he raises a hand as if he can make me hold my peace, and I say, “Welcome back,” with the corners of my mouth turned down, like this.

  Abdulhamid says, “Is she alive?” and I say, “Well, I wouldn’t know because I haven’t looked yet, and why would any husband want his own wife to soil her hands attending to a harlot? And why would any husband want an adulteress in the house when he has three young daughters who need protecting when harlotry is contagious like lice as everybody knows and these daughters are unmarried and pure as a new chick straight from the egg?” and Abdulhamid says, “Where did you put her?” And he says, “Wife, you had better watch out, because unless you attend to her I will have to do it myself, and a man is more likely to be drawn into bad deeds by a harlot than a virgin daughter is,” and of course I know he is joking because he is a virtuous man as everybody knows, and I say, “I have enough work to do, what with making bread and hoeing and weaving …” and he raises his hand again, and says, “My lale …”—that’s what he always called me, he called me his tulip, and it always worked and he knew it did too, may he rest in paradise, and when the wild tulips came up in spring and he noticed, he used to come in and say, “Wife, all your little sisters have arrived”—and anyway I went soft inside, and he says “My tulip, what are the five pillars of Islam?” and I know what’s coming, and I say, “Whenever you’re in the wrong you try to make out that God agrees with you,” but that doesn’t stop him and he says, “Well, charity consists of more than tossing s
craps to beggars and making donations,” and I say, “Well, I didn’t know that charity consists of making more work for your wife,” and he comes back with, “God will reward you in paradise, my tulip,” and I say, “I’ll be too worn out to make the journey if it has anything to do with you,” and anyway I go into the lower room, and I start to tend to Tamara.

  I’ll admit it was Rustem Bey I felt sorry for to begin with. I mean, poor man, his father goes off to Mecca on the haj, and that year all the pilgrims come back with plague, and the old man has it too, and then he dies, and then his wife dies, and then the children one by one and then half the town, and we’re all trembling because it’s the worst haj epidemic we’ve ever had in this place, and don’t we get one almost every year? And quite a lot of people recover, but after all that, Rustem Bey, who’s the richest man in the vilayet, has no one left in that great big house but himself and a tame partridge, and he’s half dead with grief and loneliness, and then he goes and marries a cold proud woman who won’t even talk to anyone else in the hamam and takes a lover who’s a well-known devil, which proves that God has no respect for wealth, but some people were secretly pleased because if there’s one thing that’s like a gnat in the ear and a flea up the nose for most people it’s when they see that someone else is doing better than they are.

  But anyway, when I kneel down and start to tend to Tamara the first thing I notice is that she’s alive and she’s got tears just streaming out of both eyes, and I’ve never seen anyone cry like that before or since, without even sobbing at all, just tears streaming down as if this kind of crying is something over and above, and I wipe her cheeks with my sleeve, and my heart melts, and do you know why? It’s because I see so much sorrow in that young girl’s face that I just can’t bear it, and when Abdulhamid calls from the door “Is she alive?” I can hardly speak in reply, because, you know me, I’m soft, and I whisper to Tamara, “I’m going to boil some water,” and out I go and upstairs and I call my daughters and I say, “We’ve got work to do, but don’t forget she’s a harlot and I’m not having you catching it because if you do I’ll take you to Haleb and sell you to an Arab with five wives and I mean it,” and my oldest daughter, Hasseki, you know the one, she says, “Annecişim, what is a harlot?” as if she didn’t know, and the other two start smiling behind their hands, and I’m standing there with my hands on my hips trying to be serious, and then I smile too, and that’s the end of being serious, so then we just get on with the job.

  Before we start I say, “Bismillah al-rahman al-rahim,” just to make sure that everything’s fine with God, and Hasseki brings down a pallet and the other two bring down lamps and the hot water and some cords and drapes that we can arrange around her to make a kind of little room so that she doesn’t have to look at Nilufer and no one can look in either, especially not Abdulhamid, and we start to undress her because we know she’s been stoned and kicked, and she just lies there with her tears streaming down, and when we’ve undressed her, my heart begins to break, because not only does she have the big cut and the bruise on the head, but she’s got broken ribs and a broken collarbone so that she can hardly breathe, and every time we move her she whimpers like a dog.

  I noticed before, in the hamam, how pretty she was, she was small and slight, but her breasts were round like pomegranates, and any mother in the hamam would have wished her as a wife for the pleasure of a son, and now, even though she was bruised and cut as if she’d fallen down a cliff, I could see clearly what a lovely thing she was, and it made what had been done to her seem even more horrible because of that.

  We washed her down and cleaned the wounds with raki, not that we have raki in the house, but I sent Hasseki off to borrow raki from Polyxeni, wife of Charitos, because to borrow raki from a Christian is more reputable because the rest of us aren’t supposed to have it, even though we do, except in our house, and we set the collarbone as best we could, but what can you do with a collarbone? If you don’t set it right in a woman then she’s got one breast higher than the other till she’s lying in the grave and even after, so after we’ve bound up her ribs we make a sort of sling with three kerchiefs so that her right hand is resting on her left shoulder, and that works, I am glad to say, and she heals up nice and square, within reason.

  But what shocked us more than anything and made us shake our heads and worry about the good people of this town, and what made me less surprised about what they did to each other later, was where they’d been kicking her when she was lying there in the dust in the meydan.

  It was all in the breasts and the private parts, and I think that’s really disgusting.

  CHAPTER 23

  Tamara’s Refuge

  Abdulhamid Hodja sat on a low stool with Nilufer champing straw behind him, and in front of him the drapes around the recumbent Tamara. Periodically the horse would attempt to take a mouthful out of his woollen cloak where it lay across his shoulder, and he would push Nilufer’s nose away with a few gentle words of reprimand. He had not seen Tamara’s face since the evening of the stoning, and had decided that it would be better not to. It was not that he placed great store by the veiling of women; no woman veiled herself in the countryside because it would have been impossible to work, and the women who covered themselves in this town, small as it was, merely did so as a point of vanity, to indicate that they enjoyed a leisuresome life. Abdulhamid, therefore, was no stranger to the sight of female faces, framed and rounded as they always were, in practical headscarfs that kept the dust out of the hair and preserved it as something special that among men only a husband would see. The imam avoided looking at Tamara’s face because her prettiness made him want to touch her, and the ineffable sadness of her eyes had the effect of filling him with an identical sadness that perturbed him. In addition, she was no older than his daughter Hasseki, and in the light of what had happened, this also perturbed him.

  “Tamara Hanim, would you like some mastika?” he asked, passing a hand through the drapes. “It must get very tedious for you, lying in there like a carrot laid up for winter.” He felt the tickle and scrape of small fingers picking the golden crystals from his palm, and was reminded of the teeth and the soft lips of Nilufer.

  “The mastika is from Chios,” he added inconsequentially. “It’s the very best, so I understand.” It was certainly difficult to make conversation, and he could not escape the feeling that he probably should not be talking to her at all. If Ayse came in, he could be sure that there would be too much pepper in his pilav that very same evening.

  “I hope you are feeling better, Tamara Hanimefendi,” he said, and he listened to the sound of Tamara sucking and chewing on the resin. A small, strangled voice from behind the drapes said, “You should have let them kill me.”

  “You should not wish to undo the kind deeds of others,” riposted Abdulhamid, always happier when there was a point of principle to discuss.

  “What kind of life can I have?”

  “I have wondered the same thing,” confessed Abdulhamid.

  “If I return to my family, they will kill me,” said Tamara. “Am I to beg, and live in the tombs, like the Dog? And Selim is dead.”

  “Remember, daughter, it is in midwinter that the almond blooms.”

  “I will have no life,” said Tamara softly, “and I will spend eternity with Satan’s foot on my neck.”

  Abdulhamid was shocked. “Don’t say such terrible things!”

  “I am guilty,” she stated simply.

  Abdulhamid clamped his hands over his ears. “Don’t say that in front of me!” he exclaimed. “I won’t hear it! I will not permit you to make me a witness! I forbid it!”

  “I am guilty,” she repeated.

  “I can’t hear you,” said the imam quickly, and he began to sing the first popular song that came into his head:

  “My house is a cage

  My bed is a stone

  This is my destiny

  I water you

  But you wither away

  Ama-a-a-a-a-a-n.
”

  The Imam stopped and removed his hands from his ears. Tamara said, “I am …” But Abdulhamid quickly broke in with a new burst of wailing: “Ama-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-an,” adding melismatic flourishes of which his voice was not truly capable. He stopped when he ran out of breath, and was mildly offended when he heard Tamara stifling a giggle. “I am …” she said, and up started Abdulhamid: “Ama-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-an.”

  When he had finished and was panting to regain his breath, Tamara lay ominously silent behind the drape, and Abdulhamid realised that she was toying with him. Finally she said, “I feel less miserable now.”

  “My voice is like a nightingale, is it not?” jested the imam, and Tamara laughed.

  At this point Abdulhamid Hodja realised that someone other than Nilufer was standing behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and stood up quickly. It was Rustem Bey, who had approached silently, and was stroking Nilufer’s neck with the back of his right hand. In his left, he held a piece of stick with which he tapped at the sides of his high boots, and his moustache was gleaming with fresh pomade. In his sash were two silver-handled pistols and a matching yataghan, and his fez was clean and freshly brushed. He looked as dapper and proud as ever, but Abdulhamid could see that he was unconsoled.