Birds Without Wings

by Louis de Bernières

  Philothei has long ago ceased to wear a veil, because unhappiness has reduced the joys of vanity and, apart from the tatterdemalion Italian soldiers who awake from their perpetual siesta under the plane trees of the meydan in order to blow her kisses that she scornfully disdains, there are no men left in the place who might become quarrelsome on account of her beauty.

  The Allied occupation of Istanbul proceeds with comic effect. The British and the French continue to irritate both each other and the populace, and the Italians continue to be kind to everyone. The latter have been promised the Smyrna region, but they know from bitter experience in Libya that it isn’t easy to occupy Ottoman territory. It takes fewer men and less trouble just to establish a zone of influence, and they astutely choose the role of protecting the Turks against Greek ambition, which is to take the western coast, and create Greater Greece. The Ottoman government is alarmed by the presence of Greek troops and warships in Istanbul, where a very substantial proportion of the population is Greek.

  Mustafa Kemal throws himself into the demoralising and complicated machinations required to lever him into a position of power. He is convinced that only he can lead the Turks to national independence. He exploits contacts in the press, and has fruitless interviews with the Sultan. He plots to obstruct the appointment of a new and uncongenial Grand Vizier.

  The British persuade the Ottoman government to take action against those officials and officers who have been implicated in war crimes, such as the death marches of Armenians and British prisoners of war, and the deportations of west-coast Greeks in 1914. This is a good opportunity to get rid of Enver Pasha’s old cronies from the Committee of Union and Progress, the Young Turks who are not quite so young any more, and many of whom have blood on their hands. Mustafa Kemal is not arrested, and the Italian ambassador offers to protect him, should the British decide to exile him. In any case, he has never been implicated in any war crimes, and his military career has been nothing but distinguished. The Sultan checks the legal validity of the death sentences with the Sheikulislam, and the executions begin. Mustafa Kemal enters into full-time plotting with other nationalist officers; their plan is to get rid of the Allies in the entire Turkish heartland.

  The nationalists contrive to obstruct the demobilisation and disarmament of the Ottoman army, and to retain sympathisers in high office. The gendarmerie mysteriously gets bigger as the army gets smaller. An officer named Kâzim Karabekir, another child of Destiny, calls in on Mustafa Kemal to sound him out about the idea of forming a national government in eastern Anatolia, in defiance, if necessary, of the government in Istanbul. “It’s an idea,” says Kemal. There are dozens of like-minded officers waiting for the right moment.

  The Italians move in on western Anatolia, officially in order to put an end to brigandage, but really to get there before the Greeks. Ottoman Societies for the Defence of National Rights spring up like toadstools, and violence increases between rival ethnicities. Prince Abdürrahim sets off on a conciliation mission, and is welcomed by Muslims in Smyrna. In Antalya and Konya the cynical Italians, who also happen to be the only occupying force with any sense, turn out their own soldiers to greet him with full honours. Whilst the Prince is there, news comes in of the Greek landing at Smyrna. The royal attempts at peacemaking are boycotted everywhere by Christians, who do not want peace. In Pontus, on the south coast of the Black Sea, where the disappeared Armenians are being replaced by Greek refugees from communist Russia, the Greeks are demanding independence. The Muslims, many of them also refugees from Russia and the Caucasus, would rather die fighting than submit to Greeks and Armenians. Their bandit chiefs inaugurate a campaign of terror against the local Christians. The British make token efforts to restore order, but they lack the will to do it properly. They are beginning the long process of realising that to be the world’s police force and to have the largest empire in the history of the world is expensive, tiresome and unrewarding.

  Mustafa Kemal is appointed by the Sultan to investigate Greek complaints and prevent the formation of soviets in the 9th Army. His powers are so great that the Sultan has effectively appointed him the military and civil commander of eastern Anatolia. Nothing could be better for Mustafa Kemal. The 9th Army is large, powerful, well equipped, a long way from Istanbul and in exactly the right place. The Sultan presents him with a gold watch. Kemal is just about to go, when the Greeks land at Smyrna.

  The Greeks have been given permission to do so by Presidents Wilson and Clemenceau, and Prime Minister Lloyd George. The Allied intention is to use one Ally, Greece, to frustrate another Ally, the Italians. Venizelos, the Greek Prime Minister, really wants to annex western Anatolia permanently, to accomplish what the Greeks have always referred to as “The Big Idea.” It almost amounts to the rebuilding of Byzantium. In the British government, Lloyd George, sanguine and ignorant, is the only one who thinks that the Greek landing is a good thing.

  The landing goes disastrously wrong, and within a few days many Turks have been killed by Greek troops and rioting Greek civilians. After a few days Aristeides Stergiadis arrives and takes control. He is a tough and principled man with an extraordinary sense of fair play, so that local Greeks routinely accuse him of being pro-Turk, but even he cannot control the Bashi-Bazouks and renegade soldiers in the interior, nor repair the intercommunal damage done by the fiasco of the landing. Stergiadis offends the local bigwigs mainly by refusing to go to their dinner parties. He has to cope with an anomalous situation in which a British general in Istanbul is technically in command of the Greek army, even though he isn’t, in a place which is technically still under the sovereignty of the Sultan, but is actually under Greek rule.

  The Allies inform the Ottoman government of the landing only the day before it happens, and Mustafa Kemal finds everyone in a state of outraged disbelief. An Italian occupation might have been acceptable, but a Greek one is intolerable. It puts steel into the hearts of Mustafa Kemal and everyone like him. The British hesitate before granting him a travel permit.

  Before he goes, his ship is inspected for smuggled goods, and Mustafa Kemal says, “We are not taking contraband or weapons, but faith and determination.”

  Back in Eskibahçe, a little strength and determination is rekindling in the inhabitants, along with the return of some of its menfolk, who are beginning to arrive from all directions, starving, ragged and bootless. Many of them are deserters, and others are from units that have somehow dissolved in the general chaos. Some of them say that they can’t stay long, they’ve got to find Mustafa Kemal. Karatavuk’s brother comes back, provoking wails of joy from their mother, Nermin, who immediately runs to tell Ayse and Polyxeni.

  Ayse has been reduced to penury by the death of Abdulhamid Hodja. She does not have his skill in cultivation, and, worse than this, she has very little hope. “I am waiting to die,” she says, “and I pray it might be soon.” She has been living off the charity of her friends, who also have nothing. Even Ayse, however, is affected by the arrival of the long lost, and casts around for something positive to do. She finds a pot of whitewash in the corner of Nilufer’s empty stable, and she has a good idea. She collects twenty large stones and paints them white.

  One by one she takes them down to Abdulhamid’s grave, and lays them around it to make a border.

  She has another idea. She goes to fetch the brass ornaments and the blue beads and the green ribbons. She rubs the verdigris off the brass with vinegar, and takes Abdulhamid’s spade from its hook on the wall.

  She overturns a few spadefuls of earth, and buries Nilufer’s accoutrements in her husband’s grave. She stands over it for a few moments, leaning on the spade to catch her breath, feeling weak and dizzy. She reflects that by now Abdulhamid must be nothing other than ochre bones. When she has recovered she kneels down and whispers into the earth so that he can hear her clearly. “My lion,” she says. She thinks about how she is going to continue, because one has to be economical when addressing the deceased. “I expect that Nilufer is dead b
y now,” she says. “I’ve brought you her things, and now you can ride her in Heaven.”

  Ayse puts her ear to the earth, and listens.

  CHAPTER 76

  Lieutenant Granitola’s Occupation (2)

  Whilst the war between Greece and the rebel forces of Mustafa Kemal unrolled elsewhere, Lieutenant Granitola’s platoon of Italians settled into their occupation of Eskibahçe.

  The Lieutenant was initially much vexed by the problem of how he was supposed to communicate with headquarters, which was at a great distance, at the end of a very bad road that was infested with bandits. It was not good to feel so completely cut off from the rest of the army, without the slightest idea of what was happening in the great world, without a telephone line, and no assurance of supplies.

  Rustem Bey solved this problem by proposing that tradesmen and other citizens wishing to travel back and forth to Telmessos should guide and feed a section of the occupying soldiers, in return for their protection on the journey. Upon arrival, the soldiers would report to base, collect pay, orders and supplies, and then escort the traders and travellers back again. The problem with this system was that pack animals had been conscripted and killed at the same rate as human beings during the Great War, and there was an intractable shortage of camels and mules. There were not enough left from which to breed, and those which had been bred in the war’s aftermath were only just maturing to the age when they could be usefully employed. The only person in the town who still had a donkey was Ali the Snowbringer, and since it was at present impossible to go safely to the mountains to fetch ice, he and his donkey now found a new role which certainly saved his family from desperate straits. Similarly it was now possible for Mohammed the Leech Gatherer and Stamos the Birdman to resume their vocations, although there were few doctors left to purchase leeches, and few folk who could afford to splash out on anything as frivolous as a pet bird. Rustem Bey lent two old but serviceable horses to the trains, and often went on the journeys himself, since he liked to ride, and enjoyed the adventures that were often entailed. In addition, although he was a modernising Turk, he still had ancient mores deeply ingrained in his psyche, and he felt morally obliged to protect those who were beneath him. There was perhaps also a part of him that realistically knew that his position of privilege could not endure unless he was seen very publicly to deserve it, and those such as Ali the Snowbringer certainly felt great relief if they heard that Rustem Bey was to be part of the escort.

  For Rustem Bey the Italian occupation was probably the golden age of his life, because for the first time he had a friend in the town who assumed equality with him. Whereas Leyla Hanim had filled out more than one half of what was missing in his life, in Lieutenant Granitola he found a true comrade. Granitola was himself a snob, and it was natural and inevitable for him to befriend unselfconsciously the most important person he could find in the whole community.

  Lieutenant Gofredo Granitola was a slim man of average height, but his habit of authority made him seem taller than he really was. He wore an exiguous military moustache, and on his left cheek he bore the neatly angled scar of a bayonet wound that gave him the romantic air of a gentleman pirate. He liked to be smart at all times, believing that this was good for the morale of his men, and had achieved some notoriety in the Austrian campaign for shaving punctiliously at dawn even under shellfire, when expecting an imminent assault. He had kept his boots polished even when the soles had detached themselves. He had been decorated for gallantry twice, and been presented to the King, but he had failed to be promoted on account of his sedulous cultivation of the art of offending military superiors that he considered to be socially otherwise. If not for this, he could by now have expected to have become a lieutenant colonel. He had, however, no intention of staying in the army after the death of his father and the entailment of the family estates, but envisaged for himself a career in politics. He did indeed join the Fascist Party in 1926, only to secede quietly from it in 1930, having scotched his prospects by being scornfully rude to Roberto Farinacci at a ball. Thereafter he made wine, travelled to stay with Rustem Bey in the new republic of Turkey, and had children with a variety of mistresses until his life was abbreviated by a misdirected Allied bomb

  Initially, the friendship between Granitola and Rustem Bey came about because of the necessity of feeding the Italian soldiers, who for a while were obliged to live off bulghur wheat and olives, supplemented by the few fish that they could purchase from Gerasimos the Fisherman, husband of Drosoula, and father of Mandras. Granitola mentioned the problem of meat to Rustem Bey one evening when they were sharing a waterpipe in the khan, and the latter proposed that the only solution was to go hunting. Granitola had already created a small flock of military chickens by giving the escorts money to buy them in the market at Telmessos. These chickens, each with a name and a rank, now lived by pecking about in the courtyard of the khan, which they quickly reduced to an inglorious dust bath.

  Eggs were not quite enough to keep the men happy, however, and so it was that Rustem Bey and Granitola set out into the wilderness very early one morning armed with two scatterguns, and with Rustem Bey’s pet partridge dangling from his saddle in a wickerwork cage. Granitola had never experienced this method of hunting before, and he was very intrigued when Rustem Bey tied the bird to a bush in the middle of a relatively clear space, scattered some seed for it to browse on, scattered more seed at a safe distance from it, and then retired to a place of concealment. “Please don’t shoot the tame partridge,” Rustem Bey told him. “They are hard to replace, and I am quite fond of it.”

  The method certainly worked, since one could often get two or three birds at once by waiting for them to bunch up. However, it was rare to get very many birds, and certainly not enough to feed a whole platoon, so Granitola had to introduce a rota system. This naturally led to the kind of griping so enjoyed by soldiers, since soldier B would complain of being given a pigeon when soldier A had been given a partridge the week before.

  More of a problem from Granitola’s point of view was that the patient Turkish method was too boring. He ached with tedium as he and Rustem Bey waited motionless, often prone upon the ground, covered over with brush, for hours at a time. One day he proposed to Rustem Bey that they should try the Italian method.

  “Et qu’est-ce que c’est, la méthode italieng?” asked Rustem Bey in his egregious Provençal accent.

  “We walk about, keeping ourselves fairly well concealed, and when the birds fly overhead, we shoot them down.”

  “It isn’t possible to shoot flying birds,” said Rustem Bey firmly. “Nobody does that.”

  “In Italy, that’s how we do it.”

  “I find it impossible to believe. Why would anyone choose a method so difficult?”

  “But it isn’t difficult. It’s just a technique.”

  “I would like to see it,” said Rustem Bey sceptically.

  Rustem Bey did see it shortly afterwards. Lieutenant Granitola spotted a duck flying towards them, and dropped it out of the sky with such precision that it landed at their feet, stone dead.

  Rustem Bey’s reaction was initially a curious one. He became angry. It seemed to him to be very bad manners to controvert one’s host so curtly. He felt that Granitola should have had the good manners to miss a couple of times first. He also felt a childish fury at having been proved wrong at all; since he was the aga, he did not inhabit a world where it was possible for him to be wrong with any great frequency, and being wrong was not something he was ever likely to have to get used to. He walked away suddenly, and vehemently smoked a cigarette with his back turned to Granitola, who was by now feeling frightened and disturbed. All that Granitola could think was “Holy Maria, I’ve offended a Turk.” He knew that one can fight with Turks, but one seldom gets away with offending them.

  When the cigarette was finished, Rustem Bey ground the stub into the stones with his foot, paused a minute, and turned about. He was clearly still angry, because his face was glassy with ho
stility, and his eyes were glittering. He had managed to conquer himself, however, and said curtly, “I would like you to instruct me.”

  “You were a soldier, weren’t you?” asked Granitola.

  “Yes, but a bird moves faster than a running man, and more often than not you miss a running man in any case.”

  “The principle is the same,” said Granitola, “but with birdshot it is much easier, because the shot spreads out as it flies. You aim in front of the bird, and experience teaches you how far in front it should be. You have to remember to keep the gun swinging at the same pace as the bird, until after you’ve fired. It’s no good keeping the gun still and hoping to pull the trigger at the right time. It never works.”