Birds Without Wings

by Louis de Bernières

  “You want me to veil my daughter? With us, this isn’t done. How can I do that? Not even your women veil themselves round here. Everyone will think she has become an infidel from somewhere else!”

  “ ‘Infidel’ is a word that should be picked up from a safe distance with tongs,” reproved Abdulhamid. “To you I am an infidel, and to me you are an infidel. So, neither one of us is an infidel, or we both are. The Angel commanded the Prophet, peace be upon him, to write that for every nation there is a messenger, and for every nation there is an appointed time, and to write that for each God has appointed a divine law and a predetermined way. We are commanded to vie with one another in good works, and when we all return, God will inform us of the things wherein we differ. Your prophet, Jesus Son of Mary, peace be upon him, commanded his disciples to go out among the Gentiles. So we will have no more talk of infidels. And you forget that Philothei has been long betrothed to Ibrahim, and obviously she will become a Muslim when they marry. Will she then be an infidel?”

  “She will be a Christian Muslim,” protested Charitos, who, like most of us, was quickly wearied by preaching and was paying little attention to his own words.

  Abdulhamid paused, smiling to himself, because this was a theoretical impossibility that was daily experienced as a practical reality, and said, “I am not talking about veiling her, exactly. Let her hide her face more. Let her wear her scarf so that her face is more in shadow. She might pull her scarf across her face when she is out in the street or in the meydan, that’s all. She must adopt greater modesty. It will be for the better peace of all.”

  Philothei was horrified when she heard the news that she must adopt such forced modesty, and she ran first to Drosoula’s house, crying, “Drosoulaki, Drosoulaki!” The two girls went together in a rush to the konak of Rustem Bey, hurrying through the steep narrow alleyways, negotiating their way past the crush of hawkers, donkeys, dogs and camels. They left their slippers in disorder outside the door of the haremlik, and entered, Philothei throwing herself down on the divan, wiping the angry tears from her face whilst Drosoula stood slightly awkwardly, making sympathetic faces and toying with the leaves of the basil plant that had been left on the sill to keep the mosquitoes away. The room was quite dark, on account of the shutters being semi-closed, and the heavy red carpets hanging from the walls. A brass coffee pot was beginning to raise its froth on the ashes of the brazier, and Leyla, clad in shalwar the colour of lapis lazuli, was reclining on her bed, popping syrupy morsels of tulumba tatlisi into her mouth, in between smoking a tightly rolled little cigarette from her unfeasibly long silver cigarette holder, and caressing the cat Pamuk, who was purring stertorously, kneading the covers with her claws, and dribbling. Leyla picked up her oud and ran a long, languid nail across the strings. She let the thoughtful chord ring and fade, put the instrument down again, and went to sit next to her tearful handmaiden on the divan. She put her arms around her neck and kissed her fondly. “My little partridge! Tell me all about it, come on.”

  Philothei was much comforted in those plump and maternal arms, breathing in the scents of amber and frankincense, cinnamon and rosewater. She calmed down a little, and related the awful news, whereupon Leyla clapped her hands with delight, and cried, “It’s the best thing I’ve ever heard! Oh, it’s so marvellous, and I’m so pleased for you!”

  “Pleased for me?” repeated Philothei. “Have you been listening? Is there something wrong with you? They want me to cover my face.”

  “But it’s only in public, and just think what it means! It means that you’re too beautiful! What more could you possibly want? Everyone will know that you are too beautiful! God knows, I wish I could have such luck.” She looked up at Drosoula with a conspiratorial expression that seemed to mean “Isn’t that what we’d all want?” She took Philothei’s face between her hands and kissed away her tears for sheer vicarious happiness.

  Philothei, who was not entirely without vanity, began suddenly to come round to Leyla’s point of view. Leyla threw the damask covering off her trunk of clothes, and burrowed eagerly in its depths. She rummaged for handfuls of silks, satins, gauzes and finely woven cottons, and threw them on to the divan. Standing behind Philothei in front of a mirror, Leyla reached over her head with the veils as they tried first one, then another, then the first again, giggling and exclaiming, until they had settled on a selection that would set off Philothei’s prettiness to the best advantage.

  Drosoula watched these proceedings with regret and resignation in her breast. She too was fourteen years old, and she had already developed into one of those perplexing creatures as ugly as the mythical wife of Anti-phates, of whom the poet wrote that she was “a monstrous woman whose ill-aspect struck men with horror.” She was moon-faced, great-girthed and hairy, but she was an amiable and good-natured girl, whom fate had deprived of a pretext for becoming vain. The feminine games, the frivolous pleasures in which Leyla and Philothei so naturally engaged, were of a world from which nature had excluded her, and she watched them with a pleasure that was both generous and sad. “Try this one,” she would say, or, “You look better in that one, but the other one was nice too,” but there was never a moment when she felt she might try a veil upon herself. She could not conceive of what it might be like to have to conceal one’s beauty, and so for her Leyla and Philothei were magical creatures whose pretty ways she felt privileged to observe, through the invisible but palpable gauze that separated herself from them. She felt a yearning, a kind of nostalgia for that which has never happened.

  That evening Philothei proudly returned home to the house of her parents, wearing an exiguous veil so finely woven that it was almost transparent, embroidered with tiny golden stars and crescent moons. When Ibrahim saw her in the meydan his heart leapt in his chest even more violently than usual, and he turned to Gerasimos beside him and said, “It’s time that I spoke to my mother so that she can speak to my father.” He was referring to the marriage that everyone knew to be foreordained. Philothei was fourteen, two years past the age when many girls married, her parents had very deliberately not left an empty bottle on their roof to signify that a girl of marriageable age was available within, and now it seemed that there was no more point in waiting. Gerasimos, who had watched over Drosoula for as many years and as faithfully as Ibrahim had watched over Philothei, also decided to speak to his mother. He wondered what opposition he might meet, and braced himself for it in advance. Not only was his beloved ugly, but her father was a shameless drunk, and there would be little dowry to speak of, in return for the goats and the household goods that would come from his own folk.

  In the meantime, the upshot of it all was that Philothei grew somewhat in coquettishness. Leyla supplied her all that she needed to conceal her features to an extent that was exactly tantalising, and taught her to adopt a disingenuously modest mien that merely exacerbated her desirability. Ali the Snowbringer, lovesick though he might have been, reverted soon enough to his profession through sheer pressure of poverty and wifely remonstrance, and Ibrahim came to know the delicious pleasure of having the veil lifted solely for himself whenever he and Philothei chanced to find themselves alone in the township’s extraordinary maze of tiny alleys.

  Inevitably, the same thing happened in Eskibahçe as had happened in Bursa in the days of the Circassian refugees and the Sultan’s intervention. The novelty caught on, and almost all the women, including the ugly and the indifferent ones, who nonetheless lacked neither astuteness nor vanity, took to wearing veils in public in order to imply that they likewise were too beautiful to be safely gazed upon. In Telmessos the people started to make jokes about the presumption and silliness of the women of Eskibahçe, but of course the fashion briefly caught on there as well.

  One day Abdulhamid Hodja composed a song that was about the ways in which one’s plans can be confounded, on an evening when for some reason he was reminded of his futile mission in the matter of Philothei. As he cleared away into sacks the tortoises that raided his vegetable
s at dusk, the words just came into his head, and he sang:

  “I wanted to go fishing

  And I needed a mouse for bait

  So I sent out the cat to fetch one

  And back he came with a moth.”

  There are people on the coastal plain who sing it still.

  CHAPTER 41

  An Embarrassing Question

  “You’re so lazy,” said Rustem Bey, leaning over her where she reclined on the divan in the haremlik, “you just lie around all day doing nothing, only getting up to be fed.”

  She blinked up at him with an expression that seemed to proclaim that he was completely mad, and he touched a finger to her cheek. “And what’s more, everywhere that you’ve been sleeping you leave patches of hair and grit. So much grit! Where does it come from? Why don’t you wash? Have you no self-respect?”

  “She doesn’t care about how much grit there is,” said Leyla Hanim, who was reclining equally lazily upon the bed, “as long as someone comes and sweeps it away.” She popped a piece of pink lokum into her mouth, and continued, “When I remember how much you didn’t want to bring the cat along when you took me from Istanbul, it makes me laugh. I remember your face. You said, ‘I reckoned on no cat!’ ” Leyla giggled at the memory, the end of her nose wrinkling up with mirth, in the manner that he had always found very fetching.

  “Pamuk and I are good friends now,” said Rustem Bey. “She hasn’t eaten my partridge, and she is very good to talk with.”

  “You love her more than you love me,” replied Leyla, pouting and rolling over on to her stomach. She kicked her heels in the air, and smiled coquettishly at Rustem, licking the sugar off her fingers.

  “There’s nothing to choose between you,” observed Rustem. “You’re both completely idle and you’re both getting plump.”

  “She’s not completely idle! She goes out at night and has fights, and yeowls along with the best of them. I’m much lazier than she is.”

  “You say that with pride, it seems.”

  “I’ve worked very hard to get as lazy as this. At night I can’t go out and fight and yeowl because my master wants to lie with me, and besides, I’m tired from all the lying about I have to do. Anyway, don’t you like me plump? You don’t think I eat like this just to please myself?”

  “Well, of course you do. But I like you plump anyway.”

  “More to enjoy?” suggested Leyla salaciously.

  “More to enjoy.” Rustem stroked his moustache, and asked, “Why do you think Pamuk has never had kittens?”

  “God decreed otherwise,” said Leyla. “I’ve never got pregnant myself, and I wonder why. If we were married I would be afraid that you’d divorce me.”

  “Has Philothei gone home?” asked Rustem Bey, and when she nodded he sat beside her on the bed and stroked her face in much the same way as he had been stroking the cheek of the cat. “I want to ask you something.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s been intriguing me for a long time, but I never got round to asking.”

  “Yes?”

  “When we are together … at night …” he smiled shyly, “you say things, you know, when we are …”

  “Together?”

  “Yes. When we are in pleasure together.”

  “What things?”

  “You say things that sound like ‘s’agapo’ and ‘agapi mou.’ ”

  “Do I?”

  “Yes. What do they mean?”

  “Mean? They mean nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “They are little words I like to say … endearments … to show my pleasure.” Leyla was by now feeling very embarrassed and awkward. She could feel her cheeks begin to flush, and that knowledge made them flush even more. Her brain whirled as she tried to think of an explanation.

  “What language are they?” demanded Rustem Bey.

  “What language?”

  “Yes.” And then Rustem saved her unintentionally by saying, “I always supposed that they’re Circassian.”

  Much relieved, Leyla said, “Yes, they’re Circassian. Of course.” She held out her arms and summoned him by beckoning with all of her fingers at once, her painted nails glowing in the light of the brazier. “Come, my eagle,” she said, “Philothei’s gone home and so has her sweet but ugly little friend. I’m suddenly not feeling quite so lazy.”

  Rustem Bey hesitated, but then he acquiesced.

  CHAPTER 42

  Mustafa Kemal (9)

  It is 1911, and the Ottoman state begins its Great War. From now on, caught up in other people’s imperial wars, and with only one year unblooded, it will be sloughing off its sons continuously until 1923. Mustafa Kemal will be busy indeed.

  Mustafa Kemal passes through Egypt, which is in the hands of the British, and is not spotted by them even though he is obviously not an Egyptian. He is fair-haired and blue-eyed, he walks proudly with a military mien. He gains an audience with the Khedive, who promises him support, and recruits Arabs to send to Benghazi.

  It is as an Arab that he disguises himself for the train journey to the east. He has with him an Egyptian guide, a Turkish gunner and an Arabic interpreter. An Egyptian officer searches the train, with instructions to arrest the Turkish officers on board, and Kemal realises that the game is up. He therefore reveals his identity and harangues the officer. “This is a holy war,” he declaims, “it is a war of Muslim against infidel. It is not for you to stand in the way of God.” Rhetorically masterful, eloquent and persuasive, he cynically but brilliantly persuades the officer of what he himself cannot believe, and the following day all but the Turkish gunner are released.

  Well provided for by their Egyptian agents, Kemal and his party of picaresques ride off across the lunar desert on their camels. They reach what they think is the border, and change into their Turkish uniforms, only to be confronted by a unit of the British army. Mustafa Kemal once more brings to bear his prodigious powers of bluster. “This is Ottoman territory,” he tells the British, “and you are trespassing upon it.”

  “Old chap, you are misinformed,” say the British. “The borders have lately been changed.”

  “Nonsense,” says Mustafa Kemal. “If you do not withdraw at once, we shall be obliged to open fire upon you and remove you by force.”

  The British officers laugh, because they are well armed and many, and Kemal’s men are pitifully few, but they enjoy and admire Kemal’s swashbuckling gasconade, and they let his party pass.

  At Tobruk the Italians occupy all the best positions, and Enver Pasha has been busy trying to seduce the Senussi Arabs into resistance. Glamorously engaged to a niece of the Sultan, he is now, however, disguised as a sheikh, is issuing his own currency, signed by himself, and is ensconced in a finely caparisoned tent, whence he has been doling out Turkish gold, but without so far managing to persuade anyone to fight the Italians.

  Kemal also disguises himself as a sheikh, perhaps in the spirit of competition, and makes a survey of the military dispositions. He invites the tribesmen and their sheikhs to a pourparler, and finds them to be a shabby crowd of ruffians armed with clubs and muskets. He plays the Islamic card, previously so successful, but finds that they are unimpressed. He insults the honour of the truculent Sheikh Mebre by stating that he knows him to be an Italian spy, and adding that from now on he will only give money and assistance to other tribes.

  The bluff works, and in the morning the proud chieftain announces that he will attack the Italians with his own men alone. Armed with Turkish rifles, and summarily trained in their use, the tribesmen attack the Italians at dawn and destroy some seventy guns, bringing back two hundred Italians, who, like their sons after them, prove to have no great liking for imperial desert wars, and gleefully surrender. Enver Pasha and Mustafa Kemal cannot think of what to do with them all, so they release them in the desert near the Egyptian border, and let them find their own way home.

  The Turks have only one active warship, and the Italians have complete control of the sea, so it is
impossible for the Ottoman troops to displace them from Tobruk. It is equally impossible for the Italians to take control of the desert hinterland, where there is no water, but a great many hostile tribesmen. Enver Pasha, however, has romantic dreams of conquest, and over many attacks he futilely expends his troops by the hundred. Mustafa Kemal, horrified, but unwilling to cause a split in the command of such a small expeditionary force, holds his tongue and bides his time. He is struck down by an eye infection that temporarily blinds his left eye. He finds that his Arab tribesmen come and go as they please, and he never knows quite how many soldiers he has under his command at any one time. They are paid two piastres apiece for each day’s work, and consequently they avoid combat as much as possible in order to prolong the war. The Turkish officers are amazed by the fact that from the age of three years, the Arab women are not allowed out at all. Nuri Bey writes: “We lead ascetic lives like the monks of Mount Athos. If we go on from here, our next stop will surely be paradise.”

  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.