Birds Without Wings

by Louis de Bernières

  “So obviously the couple get very upset because they don’t have any children, and everyone keeps asking them why, and they feel uncomfortable about going out of the house or visiting their relatives.

  “One day the wife says, ‘Let’s go and ask the advice of Ismail Hodja,’ and her husband replies, ‘What? The famous Ismail Hodja who is renowned all over the world for his wisdom?’ and she says, ‘Yes, that one,’ and he says, ‘But I’ve heard that it’s very hard to get to see him,’ and she says, ‘But he only lives next door,’ so he says, ‘Well, all right then, we’ll give it a try.’

  “The husband sends a little boy to the famous judge, saying, ‘Can we come and see you?’ and before you know it they’re sitting in front of this famous judge who knows every bit of the sharia backwards, forwards and sideways, and is notoriously full of common sense as well, and the husband strokes his moustache and says, ‘Kadi Efendi, we have come to see you because we don’t have any children, and it is beginning to upset us when so many people ask us why not.’

  “The kadi blinks his eyes and he says, ‘What have you been doing about it?’ and the husband says, ‘About what?’

  “ ‘About making children.’

  “The husband and wife look at each other, and she says, ‘What do you mean, “making” them?’

  “ ‘Well, you have to make them,’ says the kadi, ‘or they don’t arrive.’

  “ ‘Really?’ exclaims the husband. ‘Are you sure?’

  “ ‘Of course I’m sure,’ says the kadi, and the husband turns to his wife and says, ‘Did you know anything about this?’ and she shrugs and lifts her hands, and so anyway it turns out that the couple didn’t know anything about how to make children because no one had ever told them, and they’d never worked it out for themselves, and the wife says to the kadi, ‘Perhaps you could give us some hints.’

  “So the kadi stands up and lifts his robe, and he shows them his kamiş, and it’s about a foot long and hard as a rock, with a great bulging purple tip like an aubergine …”

  “Spare us the details,” said Rustem Bey.

  “… and it’s standing up like a soldier, and the wife says, ‘God save us,’ and the kadi says to the husband, ‘Does yours ever get like this?’ and he replies, ‘Well, yes, it does, but mine’s more like a carrot than a cucumber,’ and the kadi says, ‘Well, that’s an advantage, because not many women can cope with one like this,’ and he turns to the wife and he says, ‘You’ve probably noticed that you’ve got one mouth in your face and another one elsewhere in the darker regions. Well, the one in your face is for eating food, and the other one is for swallowing one of these, but you’re only allowed to use it to eat your husband’s, and you’ll both find fairly quickly that you like it, and that’s how you make children.’

  “The husband says, ‘But what if she bites it off? How am I going to piss?’ and the kadi replies, ‘Don’t worry, because it doesn’t have teeth, and when you come out you find there isn’t any damage.’

  “The woman is still looking at the kadi’s gigantic kamiş with her eyes popping out like this and her mouth open, but the kadi puts it away, and then they all make their salaams, and off they go, and lo and behold a few months later they’ve got a child, and they call it after the kadi, even though it’s a girl, and that’s why in Antiphellos there was once a girl called Osman, who was the only girl with that name in the entire known world.”

  Stamos the Birdman sighed and said, “You can always rely on Veled to come up with something filthy.”

  “It’s a true story, I swear it,” protested Veled.

  “Does anyone know a story that isn’t filthy?” asked Rustem Bey. “I ask just out of curiosity, and not with much hope.” He looked around at the company and caught the eye of the potter. “Ah, Iskander Efendi, I am prepared to bet that you don’t tell such tales.”

  “I don’t know any proper stories,” said Iskander the Potter, “but I like to tell people things that really did happen. Perhaps you would like to know the story of why I am coming to Smyrna for the fourth time, when I don’t even have anything to sell and I don’t know anyone who lives there.”

  “Somebody must have told you about the brothel on the waterfront,” suggested Veled the Fat, and some of the others laughed.

  Iskander pursed his lips and raised his eyes to the heavens, and Rustem Bey said, “Ignore him.”

  “Everyone else does,” said Mohammed, who was still somewhat prickled after the poor reception of his Nasreddin Hodja story.

  “Well, I’ll tell you if you’re interested,” said Iskander, and he paused before commencing, as if to gather his thoughts. “As you know, one of my sons is called Karatavuk because once I made him a whistle that sounded like a blackbird, and he started to make a big pretence of being a blackbird, and he put on a black shirt and liked to have black things, and he would run about flapping his arms and leaping about on the rocks behind the town where the old tombs are, with that whistle in his mouth.

  “Well, Karatavuk has a friend, one of the Christian boys, and I made him a whistle too, that sounded like a robin. With these whistles it’s really a matter of luck what they sound like, and you never know until you’ve tried it what it’s going to resemble. Sometimes they sound like a bulbul, for example, or a song thrush.

  “Karatavuk’s little Christian friend, he’s the son of Polyxeni and Charitos, you know them, and that pretty girl Philothei is one of his sisters, well, he’s a strong boy, and anyway he decided to call himself Mehmetçik because if Karatavuk is a blackbird, he thought, ‘Well then, I am a robin.’

  “So now we have two little boys who are running around pretending to be birds, and when they’re not pretending to be birds they’re often with me, because they like to mess around with the clay, and sometimes I let them make things out of it, and sometimes they come with me to dig the clay, and sometimes they get into the big tank of sludge and help Blind Old Dimos to get the stones out …”

  “I’ve often wondered about that,” said Ali. “Why do you have a blind old man walking up and down in a tank of clay, getting all filthy and coming out looking like a cross between a leper and a demon and a corpse, all caked up?”

  “Well,” said Iskander, “it’s because freshly dug clay is full of stones and grit and little bits of wood, and God knows what else, so you put it in a tank and stir it up with lots of water. As it settles, all the grit and stones sink to the bottom, and then someone walks about in it, picking it up between his toes. When you’ve got it all out you draw the slush out from a hole in the tank that’s a little bit higher than the bottom, and then you can dry it out and you’ve got clean clay that won’t explode or get big holes in it when you fire it in the kiln. Anyway, you don’t need eyes in order to walk up and down in a tank, and even blind people need work, and blind people get very sensitive with their sense of touch, and so I pay Blind Old Dimos to do it.”

  “Don’t you think it’s bad luck to have a Christian walking up and down in your clay, though?” asked Ali. “I mean, it doesn’t seem right for a Muslim pot to have had Christian feet in it.”

  Iskander laughed. “Feet are only feet, and in any case Blind Old Dimos is married to one of my wife’s aunt’s cousins, and I do it for charity, and I’ve never heard that charity should only go to those of one’s own kind. And in any case I sell my pots to anyone. Levon the Sly here has several, and I’ve sold them to the Jews, and even to the Devil Worshippers. Money has no religion except itself.”

  Ali nodded doubtfully, and Iskander said, “Where was I?”

  “You were telling us why you were going to Smyrna for the fourth time even though you have nothing to sell and you don’t know anyone who lives there,” said Rustem Bey, “but for some reason you were telling us about your son who pretends to be a bird, and then we got on to an old Christian who walks up and down in a tank of wet clay.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Iskander, “now I remember. The thing about stories is that they are like bindweeds that have to wi
nd round and round and creep all over the place before they get to the top of the pole. Let me see … Yes, this little boy Mehmetçik, one day he says to my son Karatavuk, ‘How come your baba doesn’t have a gun?’ and my son says, ‘I don’t know,’ and Mehmetçik says, ‘I expect he can’t afford one,’ and my son says, ‘Yes he can,’ and Mehmetçik says, ‘No he can’t!’ And my son says, ‘Yes he can,’ and Mehmetçik says, ‘No he can’t!’ You know what little boys are like. And Mehmetçik says, ‘My baba’s got a gun,’ and, ‘My baba’s better than your baba,’ and so my son Karatavuk gets very angry and he swipes Mehmetçik and gives him a black eye, and then Mehmetçik starts to cry and gives my son a good kick in the shins, and so my son is howling, and that’s when Abdulhamid Hodja comes by and grabs them both by the scruff of the neck and twists their ears for fighting in the street, and brings them along to me, and I get the story out of them.

  “So, the odd thing is that after a while I begin to think about this gun that I don’t have. I say to myself, ‘I don’t need a gun. It’s a waste of money, what do I want a gun for?’ And then there’s this other voice in my ear, saying, ‘Yes, but you’d like one really, wouldn’t you?’ and the first voice says, ‘Don’t be stupid,’ whereupon the second voice says, ‘Every man has a gun, and in fact no man is a proper man unless he’s got a gun.’ ”

  “That’s right,” interrupted Stamos, “that’s perfectly true. That’s why I’ve got one. It’s probably more important than having balls and a whole clutch of children.”

  “Anyway,” continued Iskander, “these voices keep on and on at me, until finally I can’t even sleep at night because of them quarrelling with each other and ruling each other out, and abusing each other, and it’s worse than when the nightingales won’t shut up. Finally, I am at my wheel one day, and I am making a plate, which isn’t easy at the best of times, and suddenly it goes wobbly and collapses, and I get really irritated, and I pick up the spoiled plate and squash it in my hands and fling it back into the bucket of clay, because I have realised that I can’t even concentrate on my work any more because I am thinking about this damned gun that I don’t have. I decide there and then that the only way out is to get myself a gun, and then I can be at peace.”

  “An excellent decision,” agreed Mohammed. “That’s what I would have done.”

  “So,” continued Iskander, “I decided to go on the next caravan to Smyrna and get myself a gun. I had some trouble with my wife, who said it was a waste of money, and we were too poor, and all those sorts of things, but then I said I would bring her back a silver bracelet, and suddenly we had plenty of money, and wasn’t it all a wonderful idea, and a gun would be bound to come in useful eventually. I worked day and night to make enough pots, but there weren’t enough people to sell them to, until a party of Yörük nomads passed by, and they’d been selling carpets in Aleppo, and had lots of money, and it so happened that they needed pots. So I was lucky.

  “I had some trouble in Smyrna because it’s such a big place, and there are so many people, and I was quite lost, and people kept giving me instructions and directions that I couldn’t follow, and half the time people spoke in languages I couldn’t even recognise, and I slept down on the wharf to save money, which wasn’t funny, because at night the rats come out, and I hate rats, and it’s also where the cheapest whores go and fornicate on the coiled heaps of rope with all the foreign sailors, so you can say that I didn’t sleep much.

  “The day after I arrived I met a man who had a beautiful pistol in his sash, and I said, ‘Salaam aleikum, and please excuse me for molesting you, but please may I ask where you got that beautiful pistol? Because I am looking for something like it.’

  “He tells me about Abdul Chrysostomos the Gunsmith, and points me in the direction of the Turkish quarter, where it joins up with the Armenian quarter, and he says, ‘I am warning you, it isn’t a simple thing to get any sense out of Abdul Chrysostomos. You’ll end up with a beautiful gun, but don’t expect results too fast.’

  “After a little difficulty I find this Abdul Chrysostomos and he is definitely a peculiar character. He is like a Jew crossed with a Greek, crossed with an Armenian, crossed with an Arab, crossed with a Bulgarian, crossed with a Negro and a mad dog too. He speaks with an accent that’s like a donkey, if a donkey could speak, and he’s got his head shaved except for in the top of the middle of his head, and that’s made into a plait, and he’s got a gold ring through one nostril, and four or five gold rings in each ear. He’s got great big lips that spread from ear to ear when he smiles, and in one of his front teeth he’s had a diamond set in, so that it flashes all the time and it makes him hard to talk to, because you keep having this diamond flashing at you.

  “He works in a shop that’s full of burning coals and furnaces and it stinks of hot metal, and it’s just like a picture of Hell, and everything is covered with soot, including Abdul Chrysostomos, so I still don’t know whether or not he’s a black man or an Arab or any of those other things.

  “This gunsmith shows me all the different models that he makes, and the difference between a Damascus barrel and a bored barrel, and he tells me that he can make me a rifled barrel if I want and if I keep quiet about it, because it’s supposed to be illegal, and he says that actually a smooth barrel is more versatile, even though it’s less accurate, and he shows me all the beautiful inlay in ivory or silver or mother-of-pearl that he might or might not put into the stock, which might or might not be made of walnut or birch or whatever, and he talks to me about whether or not the gun will be muzzle-loading or breech-loading, and whether or not it will be single-shot or provided with a revolving chamber, until finally I am clutching my head in my hands, and I say, ‘Abdul Efendi, you are giving me so much choice that I am completely confused, and I think my brain has just stopped working.’

  “He says, ‘Well, let’s just start from the beginning. Do you want a pistol or something to fire from the shoulder?’

  “This is a difficult one in itself, because I had thought I wanted a nice pistol to wear in my sash, but now I begin to think, ‘A bigger gun might be nicer.’ I think about the expense, and this devil inside my head starts to say, ‘Who cares?’ and I say, ‘Actually, I want one of each,’ and his face lights up because I am the kind of customer he likes. Anyway, we finally decide that I am going to have a smooth-bored single-shot breech-loading pistol with a nice plain birchwood handle, and a rifled single-shot breech-loading hunting gun with a plain birchwood stock. You can see I was trying to be sensible in the midst of all my folly, because the guns would be practical and useful, but not too fancy or expensive. We haggle over the price, and even though it’s a lot, it’s not too much, and you can always hope for another party of nomads. They break a lot of pots because they travel so much, and their route to the south passes through our town, so there’s always plenty of trade. Abdul Chrysostomos says to me, ‘Come back in a couple of months, and they’ll be ready.’

  “Naturally, I am in a ferment of looking-forward, and I can hardly concentrate on anything, and every pot I make falls to pieces between my fingers, and then finally I travel back with the next caravan, and I find myself in the shop of Abdul Chrysostomos, and he remembers me, and he says, ‘Ah, Iskander Efendi, how good to see you. You’ll be pleased to know that your weapons are ready, and I am sure you will be delighted with them.’ Even so, he has a sheepish expression, and I soon find out why. First of all, the pistol has a walnut handle inlaid with silver filigree, and he’s given it four muzzle-loaded barrels, and these barrels are splayed out like the fingers of a hand, and I say, ‘Abdul Efendi, what on earth is this?’ and he says, ‘It’s a mutiny pistol, a very classic design. You can kill four people with one pull of the trigger, as long as they are standing side by side.’

  “ ‘Abdul Efendi,’ I say, ‘it’s beautiful, but I don’t need to put down any mutinies. In fact, I have never been on a ship and I’ve never been in the sea, and I am not a captain who needs to keep any order. I am a potter who nee
ds a pistol to put in my sash when I walk about the town and when I celebrate the holy days.’

  “Abdul looks very crestfallen, and says, ‘Don’t you want it then? I thought it was very fine, and that you’d be pleased.’

  “ ‘Abdul Efendi,’ I say, ‘it’s absolutely beautiful, but it isn’t what I asked for, and I bet it’s more expensive too.’

  “He puts on this voice like a little child, and his bottom lip begins to quiver, and a tear runs down one cheek, and this great big brute of a man starts to cry, and he says, ‘I thought you’d like it. I worked so hard, I made it with so much love, and it only costs twice as much.’

  “I try to comfort him, and I say, ‘Abdul, it’s a masterpiece, and you should send it as a gift to the Sultan Padishah himself, because it is worthy of the Royal Armoury, but it is too good for me, and I can’t afford it. Have you got the rifle?’

  “Abdul Chrysostomos wipes his face with the back of his hand, so that it’s smeared with wet soot, and he fetches the rifle, and I look at it, and I can hardly believe my eyes, because this one has six barrels all joined together, and when you pull the trigger they revolve one at a time. The stock is made of ebony, and it’s inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and it’s very beautiful, and it’s so heavy because of all the barrels that I actually can’t lift it to my shoulder. Abdul smiles and says proudly, ‘It’s my newest design.’

  “I say, ‘Abdul Efendi, this is another one for the Sultan Padishah. It’s exquisite, but it’s too heavy to lift, and it isn’t what I ordered.’