Birds Without Wings

by Louis de Bernières

  “Where will you go?” asked his father.

  “Where do the birds go?” asked Sadettin. He gestured in the direction of the Taurus Mountains, rising up from the Elysian coastal plain like a vast and sombre fortress. Behind them stretched the grim plains of the east, where a hard and uncouth people sat silently in the dark for months, doing nothing whilst they waited for the winter snows to melt.

  “I am an outlaw,” he said. “That is where I will be. With God’s help, I shall not live long.”

  Sadettin left, taking nothing with him but a musket, and without kissing his father’s hand, or touching it to his forehead, or to his heart.

  Shortly afterwards Yusuf the Tall emerged from the house with the pistol restored to his sash, his fez brushed and restored to his head. A small and anxious crowd of people had gathered outside, wondering about the meaning of the shot. They had seen Sadettin leave in a fury, with his musket over his shoulder and the blood on his shirt, and his air of one who would never be able to bear a human touch again.

  Ignoring these people, Yusuf set off down the steep and teeming alleyways.

  He was affronted by the normality of the town. He stepped over the sleeping dogs, and skirted the kneeling camels. In the distance he could hear the Blasphemer railing against the priest. Little Philothei was being followed as usual by Ibrahim. Her friend Drosoula, as usual, had the devoted Gerasimos in tow. Abdulhamid Hodja rode by on Nilufer, her bells tinkling and her ribbons fluttering. Under his awning, Iskander the Potter worked at his wheel, and raised a lazy clay-caked hand in greeting. The goldfinch of Leonidas twittered in its cage outside the teacher’s door. Ali the Snowbringer led his donkey by, its flanks wet and glistening from the melting packs of ice. Karatavuk in his black shirt, and Mehmetçik in his red, played with stones under a fig tree. To Yusuf, all this ordinariness was like the mockery of God.

  He found the two gendarmes playing backgammon together on a table in the shade of the plane trees of the meydan. As the day had grown warmer, so more of the buttons of their tunics had become undone. Both of them were in urgent need of the weekly shave that they would take that evening before Friday began. They looked up, not unduly pleased to be interrupted in their duty to the holy game of backgammon, and pronounced “Hoş, geldiniz” in reluctant unison.

  “Hoş, bulduk,” replied Yusuf, adding, “I am sorry to disturb you.” He drew the pistol from his sash, and laid it down gently on the board, so that he would not disturb the pieces. The gendarmes looked up at him in puzzlement and expectation.

  “I am a murderer,” declared Yusuf gently, “and I have come to offer myself for arrest.”

  CHAPTER 28

  The Humiliation of Levon the Armenian

  Ever since the year 1189 in the Muslim calendar, which was 1774 in the Christian, the Russian Empire had exercised a policy of religious expurgation every time that it expanded into newly conquered lands. In the Crimea, in the Caucasus, in southern Ukraine, in Azerbaijan, Kars-Ardahan and Laz, the Russians massacred and displaced the Muslim populations, swamping the Ottoman Empire with refugees with which it could not cope. It is impossible to calculate the number of deaths, or to reimagine the manner in which these murders were perpetrated. It was a perduring holocaust, but, unlike the more famous one of the Second World War, it is uncommemorated by the world because it received no publicity at the time or afterwards. No monuments have been raised, no dates of commemoration have entered the calendars, no religious services have been held, and no hindsighted pieties have been repeated for our edification. The Russians replaced these slaughtered populations with Christians, preferably of Slav origin, but in the absence of Slavs they made do with Ukrainians and Armenians.

  It is curious that the Russians, calling themselves Christians, and like so many other nominal Christians throughout history, took no notice whatsoever of the key parable of Jesus Christ himself, which taught that you shall love your neighbour as yourself, and that even those you have despised and hated are your neighbours. This has never made any difference to Christians, since the primary epiphenomena of any religion’s foundation are the production and flourishment of hypocrisy, megalomania and psychopathy, and the first casualties of a religion’s establishment are the intentions of its founder. One can imagine Jesus and Mohammed glumly comparing notes in paradise, scratching their heads and bemoaning their vain expense of effort and suffering, which resulted only in the construction of two monumental whited sepulchres.

  Unsurprisingly, but unfortunately for themselves, orthodox Armenians were often seduced by their own religious affiliations into supporting the Russians against their fellow Ottomans, and many joined the Russian armies. Consequently, the tides of war carried opportunist Armenian settlers into territories freshly emptied of Muslims. Unsurprisingly, to Ottoman ears the word “Armenian” became virtually synonymous with “traitor,” and thus was life made arduous or dangerous for those hundreds of thousands of Armenians scattered throughout the empire and living side by side with Ottomans of other denominations and races, who could not distinguish between one type of Armenian and another, and who would not have lowered a raised fist just because a particular Armenian was in fact a Protestant or a Catholic, or a loyal subject of the Sultan.

  It was in the year 1331 by the Islamic calendar, and 1912 by the Christian, the year in which Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia attacked the empire in the hope of expansion and the liberation of their brethren, that Drosoula’s father, Constantinos, was accidentally jostled in the meydan by Levon the Armenian. The latter was walking with his eyes squinting against the sun because he was idly looking at a vulture that had appeared high over the western end of the town, and because of this inattention his shoulder struck that of Constantinos, who was passing the other way.

  Constantinos was a notorious and inveterate drunk who began each day with a poisonous hangover and ended it by vomiting in the gutter. There were those who plied him with raki deliberately, in order to enjoy the chaos that he generated and the shameful displays in which he indulged. It was a miracle to many that he managed to be drunk even when he had no money with which to buy the alcohol, and it seemed that he was capable of becoming inebriated even when he had had very little to drink.

  On this particular morning the bright sunshine was making his head throb even more agonisingly than usual, and he was clenching his eyes and grimacing in the attempt to ease the suffering of it. He was sweating as if in a fever, his gait was unsteady, and his eyes drifted in and out of focus, causing his mind to feel as if it had become remote and tangential, as though it was operating his body by a system of levers. He was already in a state of irritation because the Blasphemer was also in the meydan, and had been yelling insults at Abdulhamid Hodja as he rode by on Nilufer. These cries and curses had hurt his brain almost as much as if a nail had been driven through it, and his jaws ached so badly that it was hard for him to tell where the pain originated.

  The jolt he received from Levon was therefore a most unwelcome and disorientating intervention in the turbid stream of his consciousness, and his immediate and unthinking reaction was to lash out. “Haydi! Haydi! Haydi!” he shouted, pushing the Armenian in the sternum, and forcing him backwards. “Filthy shit! What do you think you’re doing? Pig!”

  Levon, often known as “Levon the Sly” because of his astute business sense, was an apothecary and general merchant, and, whilst he had experienced some abuse in his life, he had never experienced any direct violence. He was at that time only thirty-two years old, and had three pretty little daughters whom everybody expected to become beautiful in the fullness of time. Owing to his frequent business in Smyrna, he prided himself, like Rustem Bey, upon being a thoroughly modern man, and there was certainly nothing about his outward appearance that would have marked him out as an Armenian. His well-brushed crimson fez, his abundant black moustache, his satin sash, his black waistcoat embroidered with gold thread, his high boots, all bespoke a man at peace with himself and well off in the world. He was much admir
ed for knowing the entire story of the Forty Viziers, which made him a great asset on long evenings, and he mixed freely with the notables of the town. He was not, however, in the least equipped for the onslaught of an angry drunk with a vile headache and a short temper. Unlike Rustem Bey, he was not robustly built, for he had thriven on his ingenuity rather than his physique, and was not the sort of man who was accustomed to hard riding and days out in the hills hunting.

  His initial reaction was one of astonishment, and his mouth fell open. He said something inarticulate, and Constantinos merely thrust at him in the chest again. “Pig! Filthy Armenian! Traitor pig!”

  There was a dog asleep in the dust, and as Levon stepped backwards, he came up against it and fell over, his arms flailing. The dog yelped, leapt up and hurried away, its tail between its legs, looking over its shoulder in fear of further trouble.

  As Levon tried to sit up, the drunk began to kick him in the thighs, and the other people in the meydan were attracted to the brouhaha. Constantinos repeated his insults, and spat in the Armenian’s face. “Pig! Pig!”

  If there had been any notables in the meydan, or if the gendarmes had been playing backgammon there as usual, then it is more than likely that the sot would have been dragged off his victim, and reprimanded. But there was no one there with any authority, and the plebeians were of the sort who enjoyed a spectacle, particularly when someone cleverer or more fortunate than themselves was degraded. There had probably been nothing as good as this since Tamara Hanim had been dragged out into the streets by the hair.

  There was not a single one of those there who would not have helped Levon if they had found him injured by the side of the road, but as a mob they were individually not a wit superior to hyenas.

  So it was that a laughing and mocking crowd of people surrounded the terrified man, and egged on his assailant, who continued to kick and spit.

  “Go on, Constantin, get him, get him!” cried Veled the Fat, and his yells of encouragement were taken up by the likes of Stamos the Birdman, Mohammed the Leech Gatherer, Iskander the Potter, Ali the Broken-Nosed, Charitos, father of Philothei and Mehmetçik, and any number of others who happened to be there at the time. The women too were not to be held back, and Ayse, Polyxeni, Lydia the Barren and Hasseki, daughter of Ayse, were among those who pressed themselves into the throng in order to howl gleefully with the rest. An unknown but uncouth hand squeezed Hasseki’s virginal backside, however, and she squealed and backed out.

  Spurred on by the crowd and by his own pain and rage, Constantinos began to kick at the fallen man’s ribs. Levon instinctively huddled into a foetal position and tried to protect his chest with his arms.

  “Look at the coward!” exclaimed Iskander, and people laughed.

  “He’s not a man, he’s a dog!” shouted Charitos, to more laughter.

  “Kick him, kick him!” cried the women, like an intoxicated chorus of maenads.

  “Traitor pig, Armenian son of a whore!” cursed Constantinos, rhythmically swinging his right foot into the recumbent and cowering body.

  Constantinos raised his foot high, and suddenly everyone fell silent. It was clear that he was about to bring his foot down and stamp on the man’s head. It was the crucial point at which the game might overleap itself into murder. No one was able to say anything, and nobody moved.

  The hush continued for what seemed like minutes, as Constantinos stood there with one foot raised high, swaying lightly back and forth as the terrible deed germinated in his intention.

  The injured man whimpered, and out of the fallen bundle came the words, faint but completely clear: “I am a loyal Ottoman. Long live the Sultan Padishah. I am an Ottoman. Long live the Sultan. Long live the Empire.”

  Constantinos lowered his foot carefully to the ground, and placed it beside the other. He swayed a little, and then suddenly wheeled round and faced the silent and appalled crowd of people. He waved his arms drunkenly, embracing them all by his gesture, and then pointed at them accusingly. He announced in a voice that was slurred but full of anger and contempt: “You! You’re all shits! You’re all shits and pigs like this son of a whore, and you’re all sluts and slutsons. Fuck you all, fuck you all, and may you all rot in the earth with your whore mothers and your whore-begotten fathers!” He spat on to the ground, and wiped his hands together as if brushing off the dust.

  With this, he composed himself as best he drunkenly could, and lurched purposefully away in the direction of the Church of St. Nicholas. Iskander the Potter leaned down and touched the arm of Levon the Armenian. Idiotically, he asked, “Levon Efendi, are you all right?”

  Levon moaned and began the slow, painful process of trying to stand up. He was covered in white filth, and his fine clothes were torn and disarrayed. Ali the Broken-Nosed picked up the man’s fez, brushed it off with his fingers and handed it to him. Such was the pain in Levon’s sides that he could hardly breathe if he stood upright. Nonetheless, he forced himself erect, and looked at the people who surrounded him, concern on their faces where only moments before there had been malevolent pleasure. There was a long moment of silence, and then Levon said softly, but with great dignity, “Shame. Shame on you all.”

  With that he turned and began to walk very slowly and with the utmost difficulty in the direction of the Armenian quarter. Charitos, father of Philothei, full of regret and the very shame that Levon had wished upon him, impulsively went forward to take his arm and help him away. The rest of the people looked at each other and shrugged, and then went quietly about their business, as if there were someone asleep nearby, whom they did not wish to wake.

  CHAPTER 29

  I Am Philothei (6)

  One year when I was quite little we had been fortunate, and it was decided that we would perform a kurban, and sacrifice a ram on my father’s saint’s day, and so he bought a big Karaman ram, and that was the kind we all preferred because of there being so much fat in the tail, the kind that we cooked with honey to make the Panagia’s food. It was a very beautiful ram, and it was washed, and we tied it with ribbons and flowers, and I put my hand into its wool, and it felt wonderful, and I began to have feelings of affection for it.

  On the evening before, my father sharpened the knife, and my mother and I went into the church and cleaned it so well that everything sparkled for lack of dust. In the morning my little brother Mehmetçik, whose real name was Nicos, had to lead the ram to the church and tie it up at the gate, but the ram was obstinate and it wasn’t easy, and everyone was laughing to see him struggling so hard, but he managed in the end, and so the onlookers applauded, and then Father Kristoforos arrived to read the gospel to the ram, and bless it.

  Then at the time of the doxology my father Charitos untied the ram and led it round the altar three times, and then he turned the head of the animal to face the east, and he pressed it up against the altar, and then the stone was moved under the ram’s neck, and with the knife my father made the sign of the cross three times at its throat, and I was so horrified that I was watching through my fingers and then my father said, “May this be acceptable to God,” and I saw him cut the animal’s throat. Then the blood flowed out into the dish of the stone, and the ram kicked a few times, and Father Kristoforos swung the incense over it, because incense makes the dead happy, and so the ram would forgive us. When the throat was cut and the ram kicked, I started to cry because I had loved the ram, and my mother told me to be quiet and not be so silly, it was only a ram.

  But I was very upset, and afterwards I hit my own father because I was angry, and fortunately he only laughed, and we decked ourselves with flowers and we children were given our little branches hung with fruit, and the Patrikos went ahead of us crying out the message about the feast, and we went down to the meydan, and I sat with my brother Mehmetçik in the meydan where the sacrifice was roasting, and I was still crying and didn’t want to talk to anyone, and people were saying, “She has a tender heart, this little pretty one, all covered with flowers.”

  And
when the meal was being served with rice, and everyone was feeling merry, my mouth was watering, but I wouldn’t accept any food, and everyone found this very amusing, and then finally my brother whispered in my ear and said, “If you don’t eat any, someone will die,” and I said, “Who?” and he whispered, “Ibrahim,” and I didn’t really believe him, but because I was unsure I had to eat the meat anyway, just in case, because my anxiety was greater for Ibrahim than it was for the sheep, and it was only afterwards that Mehmetçik admitted he’d been lying, and so I got revenge by putting a dead beetle in his rice, and he ate it because it was dark by then, and it wasn’t till the following Christmas that I asked my father Charitos to forgive me for hitting him.

  One day I would like to tell Ibrahim this story.

  CHAPTER 30

  Mustafa Kemal, His Own Policeman (7)

  The Young Turks’ plans to root out corruption and nepotism, to improve education, to update the armed forces, all come to nothing in the face of old habits, opportunistic vendettas and tribal loyalties. The vast majority of the population are deeply conservative, because for them the Sultan is chief of all the Muslims, the Shadow of God on Earth. To rebel against him or to contest with him is tantamount to sacrilege. Officials appointed under the ancien régime find themselves undermined and operating under ambiguous loyalties. The deputies in the new parliament, Turks, Greeks, Arabs, Albanians, Jews, Serbs, Armenians, Bulgarians and a Vlach, prove themselves incapable of any ideal higher than ethnic self-interest. Unrest grows in the army as officers promoted from the ranks see their chances of further promotion diminished. Military units become fractious because of being transferred away from Istanbul on the grounds of their dubious loyalty. A Mohammedan Union arises to combat the secularism of the Young Turks, to fight for the adoption of the sharia law, and for the exemption of religious students from military service in the event of their failing their religious exams. The press, which now has freedom under the reinstated constitution, begins to agitate vociferously, like a dog that barks with no clear intention at the moon. An opposition journalist is murdered on the Galata Bridge, and his funeral becomes a mass protest.