Birds Without Wings

by Louis de Bernières

  She gazed at him very sincerely. “Yes, my lion, I would have done, and afterwards I would have wept again, and perhaps I never would have stopped.”

  He approached more closely and put his hands on her head, as if in benediction. He tried to tip her head back a little. “Let me look at your face again. Let me look at your eyes that used to look at me so sadly when you were young.”

  She pulled herself away. “No, don’t look at me! Why do you think we keep the light so dim? If you look at me you will see the diseases, and you will see that I am under a curse, and you will not be able to think of me.” She let her head fall, put her hands to her face, and clenched the muscles of her shoulders to resist him.

  He stepped back, and his hands fell to his sides. “I will bring you food and money whenever I can.”

  “Will you tell Leyla Hanim that you came?”

  “No.”

  Tamara nodded, and he said, as if trying to lighten the conversation and ease the farewells, “The woman who let me in is very strange. She is quite beautiful in an ugly sort of way, and she has a low voice, and is very tall, and has hands like a man. I once came across a woman like that in Istanbul. It gives me an uncomfortable feeling.”

  Tamara smiled at his innocence. “He’s a eunuch,” she said. “Some men come here specially for him.”

  After he had gone, Tamara undid the package and found olives, cheese, bread and cooked chicken. She also found a pair of earrings made out of gold coins, and a pair of embroidered slippers that she recognised as a gift that he had brought back from Smyrna in the early months of their marriage, and which she had accepted graciously, but without enthusiasm or gratitude. She remembered that she used to put these embroidered slippers outside her door in order to make him think that she had a visitor.

  CHAPTER 71

  The Death of Abdulhamid Hodja

  After the battle of Gallipoli, Karatavuk was spared any further military action until the invasion of the Greeks some years later, as he was detailed to remain with the Ottoman garrison on the peninsula, chafing with boredom, and longing to return to battle. The time was passed in an endless round of drill, guard duty and tinkering with the defences. The fact that he was an accomplished sniper with expertise in concealment meant, however, that he was able to spend many a contemplative day hidden in various remote spots, watching for anything suspicious. In these places he was the only living creature in the midst of silent hordes of contorted and decomposing dead. He became used to them, and even lost his curiosity. The carrion birds departed, and the rats starved and ate each other.

  The task of disposing of so many corpses was too great for the military authorities to contemplate, and so it was that armies of soldiers lay undisturbed except by the grasses and shrubs that grew through their bones until, after the war, Allied authorities would arrive to try to identify thousand upon thousand of clean skeletons, most still clad in the remnants of their uniforms. Without a uniform, it is impossible to tell the nationality of a soldier’s frame, and many an unidentifiable, incomplete and anonymous heap of fractured bones ended up in co-interment with those of former enemies, near monuments speciously engraved with the sentiment that “Their Name Liveth For Evermore.”

  In deference to such spectacular carnage it is perhaps perverse to dwell upon one person’s death, but we are creatures so constituted that the passing of one friend or one acquaintance has a profounder effect than that of 100,000 strangers. If there is any metaphorical truth in the Jewish proverb that he who saves one life saves the whole world, then there is equal metaphorical truth in the proposition that when one person dies, the whole world dies with them.

  Abdulhamid Hodja began to fall ill at roughly the time when the Allies were withdrawing from Gallipoli, but no one had seriously thought that he had only a few months in which to live.

  On a day when new flowers were forcing themselves out of the land, Ayse Hanim, ragged and thin, made her way through streets that were eerily uncluttered, and came to the back door of Polyxeni’s house, where she put her shoes into the niche in the wall. They were nearly worn out, and more often than not these days Ayse went barefoot in order to conserve them. She opened the door, called softly, and slipped inside.

  Polyxeni, also thin and worn, was seated on the divan where the light from the window could illuminate her work. She was sewing a patch into a pair of shalwar. She gave a soft coo of pleasure, and said, “Merhaba, merhaba,” without even looking up.

  Ayse sat down near her old friend, and said, “I am sorry, I have nothing to bring you, or I would have brought something.”

  “No one has anything,” said Polyxeni. “We are all living off thin air and hope. I don’t even have a melon seed. If it wasn’t for Philothei bringing things back from Rustem Bey, I don’t know what we’d do.”

  From the darkness of a corner, Great-Grandfather Socrates said, “I’m ninety-four, you know.” In response to his croaking voice, Ayse got to her feet and went to kiss his hand, saying, “Ah, Grandfather Socrates, may you be ninety-four for ever!”

  “I think he always has been ninety-four,” observed Polyxeni. “He has been for as long as I can remember. The shame of it is that he has so many memories, but nowadays he can’t remember any of them. He is like an iron chest full of treasure, and the key’s been lost.”

  “It’s good to live long,” said Ayse, sitting down and hanging her head. Polyxeni looked up from her stitching, and realised from the shaking of Ayse’s shoulders that she was weeping. “Oh, Ayse, what is it?” she asked, moving to put a comforting arm around her friend. “What’s happened?”

  “The hodja,” said Ayse. “My poor husband.”

  “The hodja? Why, what is it?”

  “He won’t live long.”

  “But he’s not old!”

  “There are many who died younger than him, and I don’t just mean the soldiers.”

  “A lot of women giving birth,” agreed Polyxeni, “but not the men.”

  “Oh, Polyxeni, he is very ill. I know it. What am I going to do?”

  “What’s the matter, though? He hasn’t looked well for a long time, but you didn’t say anything!”

  “It’s not an easy thing to say. He was never the same after they took the horse.”

  “He’s not dying because they took the horse?” Polyxeni was astounded. She had never heard of anyone dying of despair over a horse.

  “Oh no, Polyxeni, it’s much worse than that.”

  “Tell me, Ayse, you must tell me.”

  “It’s embarrassing.”

  “Embarrassing?”

  “Oh, Polyxeni, please don’t tell anyone, but it’s … it’s … the hodja can’t piss.”

  “He can’t piss?”

  “It’s killing him. He is in such pain that the tears roll down his face all the time, but he won’t cry out. His belly is swollen like a waterskin.”

  “How long has he been like this?”

  “It’s just a few days, but it began a long time ago. He’d go out, and then come back in and say, ‘I don’t seem to be able to get it all out,’ and then it got a bit worse, and he couldn’t get it started, and he used to go out for hours and he’d just have to stand there trying to get a few drops out, and then he’d come back in and a few minutes later he’d have to go back out and try all over again. He’d say to me, ‘Wife, this is very tedious, I am becoming an old man,’ and he tried to laugh about it, but it wasn’t funny. He tried drinking lots of water to sort of push the old water out, but it didn’t work, and now he’s even worse. I said to him, ‘Maybe someone’s put a curse on you,’ and he said, ‘I have used every verse in the Koran that I can think of, I’ve written out the first sura and placed it on my belly, I’ve taken oil from the tomb of the saint and rubbed it in, but I still can’t piss.’ He said, ‘God has decided that it’s time,’ and I said, ‘You have served God faithfully all your life, so why is He giving you so much pain?’ and the hodja didn’t know what to say for a moment, and then he said, ‘I h
ave been wondering the same thing. I think I have become unbeloved.’ ”

  Ayse held out her hand. “Polyxeni, please, I want you to put this in front of the icon and ask the Mother of Jesus to help us. If God won’t listen to the hodja and me, maybe He will listen to Mary Mother of Jesus.” Polyxeni saw that Ayse was offering her a small silver coin.

  Polyxeni felt herself stabbed by the pain of compassion. She took the little mite and then gave it back to Ayse. “The Mother doesn’t need any coins,” she said gently, “the Mother knows that you need this more than she does. In Heaven nobody spends any coins, and even the Mother can’t spend it. The Mother will know that you wanted to give her the coin. I’ll go to the church and kiss the icon, and ask her to help you, and the Mother will consider that you wanted to give her the coin.”

  “Thank you,” said Ayse, her eyes full of tears. “But are you sure? What if the Mother doesn’t listen?”

  “We should find a doctor,” said Polyxeni. “Wouldn’t a doctor know what to do?”

  “All the doctors have gone. There is no one left. And they were all Christians, and I couldn’t have paid them.”

  “Perhaps there’s a doctor in Smyrna.”

  “It’ll be too late, the hodja is already dying. He would die on the journey, and if we went to fetch someone he would be dead before we got back. Oh, Polyxeni, you would weep if you saw him. He is babbling, and his skin is turning yellow, and there are white crystals like salt all over it that I have to wipe off when his sweat dries, and his breath is foul and smells of piss, and … and …” Ayse hid her face in her hands.

  “What, Ayse? What?”

  “His eyes are bleeding. They were so kind and beautiful, everyone said so, but now they are full of blood.”

  “I’ve got twelve children,” said Grandfather Socrates, and the women sighed and ignored him.

  “What about Levon the Armenian? He is an apothecary, he will know exactly what to do.”

  “He was taken away. They took all the Armenians away. You know they did.”

  “Oh, I’d forgotten for a moment. Who could have known how it would be without them?”

  Abdulhamid Hodja lay on his palliasse, drifting in and out of consciousness, the usual clarity of his mind obliterated by waves of agony. In truth, he had suffered more than his wife knew, because his was not a querulous and complaining nature, but a stoical one. All his life he had accepted that anything that happens is the will of God, and therefore one must learn acceptance, but in the face of his afflictions he had discovered a certain rebelliousness. He had questioned God a great deal in his moments of lucidity. He had endured headaches that were like red-hot rods inserted into the back of his head and his neck. He had become drowsy and disorientated, but unable to sleep. He had undergone a fit of convulsions that had utterly terrified him, and a recurring delusion of being eaten slowly by the Archangel Azrael that was even worse. Sometimes he had suddenly been unable to breathe at night, and had sat up quickly, fighting for breath as if there were no more air in the world. It was like having the invisible hands of demons around his throat. Sometimes his fingers had lost all feeling, and sometimes there were cramps that he could not dispel by any amount of twisting and contorting. Every now and then he had been blind and deaf for hours at a time, and had undergone the indignity of sudden and frequent diarrhoea. In these last hours, the pressure from the distension of his abdomen had caused him such extreme pain that he had decided to fight no longer. The torment from within his body was so appalling that if anyone had branded him on the face with an iron, he would not even have noticed it, and he began to fall in love with the prospect of death.

  When Ayse returned from Polyxeni’s house, and Polyxeni had gone to the church to talk to the Panagia, she found Abdulhamid Hodja very weak and very near the end. His face had sunken in over the bones, making his hooked nose seem greatly bigger than it was, and his face was like yellow paper. Ayse knelt beside him, along with her daughter Hasseki, who was rubbing her father’s hands and sobbing softly. “Ah, my tulip,” whispered the hodja. He lifted his hand feebly and beckoned to Ayse to draw close. She put her ear next to his lips, and he said, “God has chosen me a vile and horrible death. I am sorry … that you have to see it.” He fell silent, and Ayse talked to him, sure that he was listening. “If our sons come back from the war, I will give them your blessing,” she said.

  “Ah, my tulip,” whispered the hodja.

  “My husband,” said Ayse suddenly, “is it true what some people say, that a woman has no soul and can’t go to paradise?” She had been troubled by this question ever since it had become clear that her husband was fading away. She realised that she could not bear the thought of spending a separate eternity.

  The hodja smiled weakly with his eyes closed, and squeezed her hand very lightly. “Without you … it would not … it could not be paradise,” he whispered.

  Ayse and Hasseki watched disbelievingly and with desolate hearts as he visibly began to die. They took one of his hands each, and kissed them. He spoke only one more time, when he briefly opened his blood-filled eyes: “Hasseki,” he said, “you have been a most excellent daughter.” To Ayse he said, “Tulip, tulip, you are the best of all women. I shall go and tell it to God.”

  Listening to him groan with agony, Ayse and Hasseki had the same thoughts, remembering Abdulhamid Hodja in his prime, when he wore his green cloak and the white turban wound about his fez, and a silver yataghan in his sash, when his beard was combed, and his black eyes were sharp like a bird’s. They thought of him proudly riding about on the silvery Nilufer, with her polished brass breastplate engraved with a verse from the Koran, and the green ribbons with the tiny bells braided into her mane. “He was a great horseman,” said Ayse softly. “He was like no other. I am glad that I was put beside him in this life.”

  Hasseki laughed tearfully. “He collected tortoises in a sack and took them away from the vegetables. Who else would have done it?”

  “We will have to do it,” said Ayse, “and it will always remind us.”

  Abdulhamid Hodja had sunk swiftly into a coma, and the women were watching him leaving. His breaths became more and more infrequent, and they held their own breath in agonised sympathy. As the intervals grew longer they could scarcely believe that any more would come. The suspense was unbearable. Then there was at last no more breath, and a low gurgling sound came from the hodja’s throat.

  “He’s gone,” said Hasseki.

  “Yes,” said Ayse. She seemed quite calm as she got to her feet, and then she went to the door and out into the evening. The nightingales and bulbuls had just begun to sing. Ayse numbly thought that she was going to be all right, but then the waves of grief began to surge up inside and push rhythmically at her guts. They were very like the contractions of birth. She held them back for a moment, but then could do so no longer. Out in the narrow street, clutching her head between her hands, she began to howl and wail, her clear and dolorous voice carrying over the rooftops and up the hillside, proclaiming her wretchedness and misery to the empty sky. Up among the ancient tombs, the Dog cocked his head and listened, understanding that there must have been a death.

  Two hours later Polyxeni called in at the house of Iskander the Potter, and spoke to his wife Nermin, asking her to request a favour of Iskander. The latter was virtually the only able-bodied Muslim man remaining in the town, and the message to him was that Ayse and Hasseki had been trying to dig a grave for Abdulhamid Hodja on their own. They had been defeated by the exhaustion of malnourishment, by stones, by darkness, by sorrow and by tree roots, and had gone home to sleep until dawn, when they intended to finish the grave and put the hodja’s body into it, as decreed by law. Polyxeni had heard Ayse’s cries, recognised her friend’s voice, and arrived immediately to try to be of comfort, but Ayse had not wanted her to help in the digging of the grave, because it did not seem quite right for a Christian. Polyxeni had sat nearby, singing to them as they hacked at the hard earth of the forest floor, and now t
hat they had given up for the night, she had conceived the idea of asking Iskander to help.

  Iskander listened to the message that he received via his wife, and reflected that, much as he was reluctant to venture out, it would be an honour to dig the imam’s grave. He reflected in addition that the merit would be greater if no one were told that he had dug it, and so he asked Nermin to tell Polyxeni that she should say nothing to Ayse.

  Accordingly, he took a spade and an axe and went down by bright moonlight into the pine woods, returning two hours later, filthy, tired and satisfied.

  Amazed and even frightened by the miracle of the fully excavated grave, Ayse and Hasseki wrapped Abdulhamid Hodja’s wasted body in a white shroud, and carried it down on a litter, burying him with his Koran folded into his hands and Nilufer’s brass breastplate under his head. After the war, when the stonemasons returned, a headstone was carved and painted in the form of a white turban wrapped about a fez.

  There is some argument about whether or not it involved the intervention of angels, but there are still stories in that region about an imam who was such a saint that his grave dug itself in the night, and this story and the headstone are the only traces that remain.

  CHAPTER 72

  Mustafa Kemal (16)

  Mustafa Kemal believes that Germany is dragging the empire down into ruin, requisitioning troops and supplies that are desperately needed at home, and plotting to make Turkey into a colony. He believes that Enver Pasha has become a German poodle, and he writes furious and detailed letters to the Grand Vizier. He lectures the Minister of Foreign Affairs, denouncing German hegemony on the general staff. He goes to Sofia for a break, but returns to Adrianople to take command of the 16th Army Corps, a unit withdrawn from Gallipoli, and destined for the Caucasus in order to salvage Enver’s disastrous campaign against the Russians. In Adrianople he receives a hero’s welcome from the populace, who have been primed by his old comrade, Major Izzettin. Back in Istanbul, Mustafa Kemal’s achievements at Gallipoli are sedulously left unmentioned and unlauded during the victory celebrations.