Birds Without Wings

by Louis de Bernières

  “Right, men,” he said, walking up and down with his hands behind his back, “listen in. We are going to go into the centre of the town to occupy the square, after which we will have to set about finding billets and organising supplies. From this point you will march smartly and in a proper military manner, in order to create the correct military impression. The correct impression is one of implacable efficiency, undeviating purpose and indomitable courage. You will not look from side to side, you will not gawp at sights of interest, and when we arrive in the square you will halt smartly and ground arms smartly. Everything must be done to create the impression of soldiers with a decisive air of good order, who mean business. I am not expecting any trouble, but you must be on the watch for it, so I am expecting you to be on the alert at all times. Any questions?”

  There were no questions forthcoming, and so he nodded to Sergeant Oliva, who bawled “Attenti!” and forthwith the soldiers were marched into the town followed by rangy dogs, prancing children who sloped sticks over their shoulders in ape of rifles, and old folk and blessés de guerre who tried to keep up.

  The meydan turned out to be only a few yards away, around the next corner at the bottom of the town, whilst the rest of the town spread up the natural amphitheatre formed by the hillsides. Consequently, the soldiers arrived under the planes with the disappointing and anti-climactic feeling of not having had a chance to create the proper military impression. They stood at ease listening to the lieutenant telling them to wait under the planes whilst he got things sorted out, aware that he did not really have any idea what he was supposed to do next, and enjoying his confident display of bluff. It is always a pleasure for the common soldier to observe the discomfiture of officers.

  As the men fell out and began their occupation by occupying the stone benches under the trees, Sergeant Oliva approached Lieutenant Granitola and said, “Permission to speak, sir.”

  “Permission granted, Sergeant.”

  “There are two armed gendarmes approaching, sir. Shall we shoot them?” He asked this question with mischievous seriousness, knowing quite well that Granitola would say what he did, which was: “Certainly not, Sergeant. Our instructions are to work with the normal civil authorities as much as possible. We will make them welcome.”

  “As you say, sir,” responded the sergeant, affecting surprise at such signal lack of bellicosity.

  The two gendarmes, the weakest and oldest of the town’s former detachment, who consequently had been spared call-up, were feeling outnumbered and trepidatious, although no one had ever doubted their courage. They had no idea who these troops were, and had certainly received no information or instructions from the governor or anyone else. They had not even heard that the Italians had occupied Antalya.

  “What shall we do?” the old one was asking the even older, who replied through gritted teeth, “Clench your arse, and don’t even fart, in case you shit yourself.”

  When the two gendarmes came face to face with the two Italians, there was an initial mismatch of manners, for the Turks performed a respectful Ottoman salute, and the Italians held out their hands to be shaken. When these manoeuvres failed, the situation was reversed, and the Italians attempted clumsy versions of the Ottoman salute, whilst the Turks awkwardly held out their hands. This led, of course, to laughter, and in this way the ice was providentially broken. Before long there was fraternisation, and from the time that the Italians arrived to the time that they left, the two gendarmes had not a clue as to who the invaders were, knowing only that they were proper soldiers and were quite friendly, and were very good shots.

  The initial point of contact occurred when professional interest caused the gendarmes to want to take a look at the weapons of the Italian soldiers, and the Italian soldiers to want to take a look at the pistols of the gendarmes. There was much resort to dumbshow as instructions about operation were exchanged, and from then on there was never any trouble between them.

  One of the gendarmes had the very good idea of sending a small boy to fetch their aga, Rustem Bey, who would surely know what to do about the new arrivals. The latter was in the haremlik of his house, cleaning his hunting rifle whilst Leyla Hanim sang to him a lullaby which she had composed on the oud. She had recently come to realise that she would probably never have children, and so she sang her new song with a certain affecting lachrimosity. “It would be good if that music could be written down,” said Rustem Bey, “otherwise it will be forgotten, and that would be a shame.”

  Rustem Bey was much thinner than he had been in the years before the Great War, because times were hard even for him, and he still spent much of his time out in the mountains hunting, an occupation that was nowadays especially dangerous because of all the bandits that infested them. Nonetheless, he created an instantly striking impression upon the Italians when he came down into the meydan. He was dressed in a very well-cut suit that had been made for him by a Greek tailor in Smyrna, and to this Western garb he had added a red satin sash to accommodate his silver pistols and yataghan. In his right hand he carried a silver-topped cane. He wore polished knee-high riding boots, and on his head he wore a maroon fez, well brushed. With the exception of his waxed moustache, he was cleanshaven, and smelled of new lemon cologne. Despite this refined appearance, he was also very sunburned, had a soldierly bearing, and was clearly strong and fit. He was every inch a fine Ottoman gentleman, and Lieutenant Granitola immediately felt both respectful of him and at ease.

  Rustem Bey conscientiously shook hands first with Lieutenant Granitola, then with Sergeant Oliva and the two corporals, then with every one of the thirty soldiers, greeting each with a polite “Hoş geldiniz.” All of them felt as though they had been ceremoniously honoured, and wished that they knew how to reply.

  Watched by nearly everyone in the town, Rustem Bey conducted a kind of negotiation with Granitola. “Who are you?” he asked, in Turkish, and receiving no response other than perplexity, he said, “Ismim Rustem Beyefendi.” He tapped his chest as he told them his name, repeating it, “Rustem Beyefendi.”

  “Ah!” exclaimed Granitola. “Your name is Rustem Beyefendi? Ah, yes, very good. My name is Lieutenant Gofredo Granitola, Lieutenant Gofredo Granitola. Capisci?”

  “Capisci,” repeated Rustem Bey.

  “No, no, not capisci. Lieutenant Gofredo Granitola.”

  “Granitola?”

  “Sì, sü, Granitola.”

  “Ah, Granitola.” Rustem Bey beamed with enlightenment.

  The sergeant pointed to his own chest, and said, “Oliva,” sensibly sparing the details of his rank and his other names. “Oliva,” repeated Rustem Bey, who then went through the same ritual with every one of the soldiers. He then stood back and, pointing to each soldier in turn, repeated their names from memory.

  “The man is a phenomenon, Sergeant,” whispered Granitola.

  “Certainly is, sir,” said Oliva, who, like all the other soldiers, was profoundly impressed by this mnemonic feat.

  “You should have been a diplomat,” said Granitola to Rustem Bey, knowing perfectly well that the latter would not understand.

  “Are you Greek?” asked Rustem Bey. He used the Turkish word “Yunanli,” however, and received no intelligent response. He pointed to himself and said, “Ottoman,” and then changed this to “Turk.” He swept his hand to indicate the assembled soldiers, and then raised both hands in an interrogatory gesture of surmise.

  “Ah,” exclaimed Sergeant Oliva, who had suddenly understood the question, “Italiani.”

  “Italiani,” repeated Rustem Bey, enlightened but at the same time mystified. He was wondering what on earth a platoon of Italian soldiers was doing in Eskibahçe. It did give him a way forward, however. “Est-ce que vous parlez français?” he enquired.

  This produced an extraordinary effect on Granitola who suddenly perceived that all of his difficulties were about to be relieved. “Mais oui, je parle français,” he said, adding snobbishly, “tout le monde parle français.”

 
“C’est la langue universelle de la civilisation, n’est-ce pas?” said Rustem Bey drily, raising an eloquent eyebrow. “Je l’ai appris un peu pendant le service militaire. J’étais officier, et c’était plus ou moins obligatoire.”

  In truth, neither man spoke very good French. Rustem Bey had had the misadventure of being taught by someone with a very strong southern accent, so that all the “n” sounds arrived with the addition of a hard “g.” “Je reviens lendemain” would come out as “je revieng lendemeng,” and all the vowels would arrive in the fresh air appropriately and correspondingly modified. Similarly, Granitola had never advanced beyond the pleasantries necessary for attending officers’ parties with one’s allies, and both men had forgotten most of what they had learned. Over the months of their friendship, the two men succeeded in engendering a private language which both of them sincerely believed to be French, and for the rest of his life Granitola would horrify occasional French interlocutors with the fluent but bizarre jargon rendered in the heavy Provençal accent that he had unwittingly co-generated with Rustem Bey.

  Leyla Hanim, of course, actually could speak some Italian, since dialects of it were known in the Ionian islands of her birth, but she was never able to employ it. As a matter of policy she sedulously avoided any indication that she was not from the Caucasus. She seethed with longing and frustration, and was only relieved of it when the Italians finally departed.

  On this night, however, Rustem Bey led the Italian soldiers to the town’s khan, a pleasant square of bare rooms surrounding a shady courtyard. It was eminently suitable as a temporary barracks, its only inconvenience being that travellers expected to be able to use it as usual, and could not be dissuaded from unpacking their bedrolls and settling down to snore the night away even in the midst of rooms full of soldiers. The latter, however, enjoyed the custom of sharing food with travellers, and many savoury items passed their lips that they would remember with pleasure, and try to induce their wives to recreate.

  Because it was the first night, Rustem Bey did his duty, and had water-pipes and foodstuffs that he could not truly spare sent down from his house. Because it was the custom with new arrivals, Rustem Bey doggedly sat in silence among the soldiers, fulfilling the obligations of hospitality, and they in their turn sat doggedly and waited for him to go, fulfilling equally their side of the obligation. The waterpipes went round and round, and eventually even those who were frightened of Turkish microbes had a few puffs on it. They noticed that Rustem Bey had his own mouthpiece, which he inserted into the pipe after removing the communal one. The smoke was cool, sweet and aromatic, it filled one with a gentle pleasure, and by mid-evening it was impossible for the weary men to remain awake any longer. No one saw Rustem Bey leave, because he did not depart until all the foreigners had nodded off.

  He went home proud of having done his duty, proud of having lived up to the town’s expectations of him, proud of having been able to use his French, and pleased to have had an interesting day. He turfed the uncomplaining Pamuk off the bed, and woke Leyla Hanim by tickling her lips and eyelashes with a feather. They made love languidly, and afterwards, as he lay listening to the nightingales, he said to Leyla, “I am going to have to get more mouthpieces for the waterpipes, to present to the soldiers.”

  A little while later, apropos of nothing, and not even sure that Leyla was awake to hear him, he said, “I am mostly a happy man.” It was the first time he had ever thought it or said it.

  CHAPTER 75

  Mustafa Kemal (17)

  Karatavuk in Gallipoli and Ibrahim in Aleppo share the strange limbo that descends upon an army that is still in existence but whose government has surrendered. Military routine continues, but no one knows what it is all for any more, and some soldiers cannot look each other in the eye, as if suspecting themselves of guilt for the defeat. Others start to chafe, carrying out orders sloppily, and losing their fear of their officers. They talk about going home, about how this might be accomplished, about whether or not there might be transport. There is a steady trickle of desertion now that it has become pointless to be a soldier, and much of the army demobilises haphazardly and unofficially. Many of those taking their weapons with them will simply become bandits in the interior, further exacerbating the misery of the population. Pay is not coming through, and the diet continues to be meagre beyond endurance. Some soldiers steal from the civilian population, and others beg.

  The collapse of the Ottoman Empire has been brought about by the defeat of Bulgaria, because this has opened up the possibility of an easy Allied invasion on a long front, whilst the bulk of the army is still irretrievably far away in the Caucasus and in Syria. The Grand Vizier, Tâlat Pasha, announces, “We’ve eaten shit,” and resigns. The government of Enver Pasha and the “Young Turks” falls at last, and Mustafa Kemal is disappointed not to be appointed to the new Cabinet. The British impose harsh conditions upon the new government, and Enver and his former colleagues escape to Germany. The Ottomans realise too late that the British do not share their assumption that there will be no military advances into Ottoman territory, and Mosul is occupied, breaking an agreement that the British had made two days previously. This is the new era of the fight for Turkish independence, because the commander of the Ottoman 6th Army begins secretly to accumulate weapons and supplies when he realises what is happening. In Syria, Mustafa Kemal finds that he is in charge of a border that does not officially exist on any modern maps, since it is defined by the ancient and indefinable border of the kingdom of Cilicia. The British announce that they intend to occupy Aleppo, and Mustafa Kemal takes steps to resist any incursion into Şskenderun. He is not pleased when told to desist by the government, and is recalled to Istanbul. In the meantime, he too has started to make preparations for resistance. His successor sets about removing essential supplies into the interior, where the Allies cannot sequester them. On every front, Ottoman commanders, as if knowing what is to come, set about gathering and organising supplies and munitions.

  The French occupy Adana, in late 1918, and immediately set the cat among the pigeons. The Ottoman Empire has asked for an armistice, but it has not surrendered. It is weary and economically ruined, it is inconceivable that it has any fight left in it, but the victors have yet to become fully cognisant of the fantastic obstinacy of the Turks. Now that foreign troops are beginning to occupy its territory, it is inevitable that resistance will be organised, and a pattern begins to emerge: as the authorities of the empire progressively capitulate, and accede more and more to the Allies’ demands, resistance originates more and more from a loose coterie of dissident army officers. The empire begins to divide, but it will take a while for Mustafa Kemal and his brother officers to fire up the abject population. In this they are greatly helped by the French, who unleash detachments of Armenian volunteers upon the population of Adana. These volunteers set about exacting revenge upon the locals, and resistance predictably commences. All over Anatolia, Ottoman weapons stores that are under Allied guard begin to have armaments smuggled out of them.

  In Istanbul, Mustafa Kemal surveys the Allied warships in the harbours and becomes depressed. He had suffered months of insomnia and sacrificed tens of thousands of men at Gallipoli in order to prevent this very thing. He is downcast, but at the same time entertains the hope that one day soon he will be head of a government that will put all this to rights and end the succession of humiliations. He rents a house from an Armenian at Osmanbey, conveniently close to the nexus of political life, and conveniently far from his mother.

  The occupying French and British troops freely antagonise each other and the local population in Istanbul. The French are just setting into motion a petulant foreign policy which has remained steadfastly unchanged ever since, and whose sole object is to obstruct and irritate the Anglo-Saxon world as much as possible, even when that is against French interests. The Italian troops are pleasant to everyone, but the Italian government is plotting to frustrate Greek ambitions to reclaim territory that was anciently Gr
eek. The British and French have a vague understanding with the Greeks that lends wings to this ambition. There are Greek troops in Istanbul, who have been ecstatically welcomed by the vast Greek population. For those such as Mustafa Kemal, this is most worrying of all, because everyone knows that the Greeks yearn to regain the ancient capital of Byzantium.

  Astute Turkish politicians, however, begin to appreciate just how war-weary the Allies are, and how easy it might be to exploit their divisions. Mustafa Kemal throws himself into full-time manoeuvring, but because the politicians are incapable of mutual cooperation, it is in fact the general staff of the armed forces that becomes the focus of resistance to the Allies, and in particular that group of nationalist officers of whom Mustafa Kemal is to become the leader.

  The Greek Prime Minister, Eleftherios Venizelos, submits a memorandum in which Greece lays claim to Thrace and to western Anatolia. He proposes a voluntary exchange of Turkish and Greek populations. The idea seems terribly sensible, as if it is a perfectly acceptable idea that the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent individuals should be arbitrarily disrupted in the interests of nation-building. In Istanbul, the Greek Orthodox patriarch announces on behalf of the Greek population that it is no longer Ottoman, and declares union with Greece. Unsurprisingly, Turkish societies for the defence of national rights begin to proliferate all over Turkey. The Italians decide to frustrate the Greeks, and land troops in Antalya. Uniquely among the Allies, the Italian policy is to butter up the Turkish population at every possible opportunity, and treat respectfully with Ottoman emissaries.

  Under Allied authority the Greek government sends soldiers to occupy Smyrna, and ultimately another war will be sparked off. Instead of going home, Karatavuk and Ibrahim will find themselves embroiled in a campaign which will be marked particularly by its dishonour and viciousness. Back in Eskibahçe, where there is now a small detachment of Italian troops, the lovely Philothei, more melancholy than ever, still yearns for the return of her fiancé, believing, as so many girls do, that life does not truly begin until one is a bride. She knows that when he returns she will have to become a Muslim, but this prospect has little meaning for her, as she will still be able to leave little offerings in front of the icon of the Panagia Glykophilousa, and it has always been the pattern for a woman to take her husband’s faith, and there have been certain Muslim and Christian families in Eskibahçe that have customarily intermarried since memory began. She is comforted by Drosoula, who talks of nothing but hope, and by Leyla Hanim, who tries to force her to learn to play the oud, thrusting it into her hands and explaining how to use the cherrywood plectrum. Philothei resolutely refuses, forbidden by her own gentleness from explaining that in common opinion hereabouts, the only kind of woman who plays the oud is a whore.