Young Turk

by Moris Farhi

  No, I’m not afraid of the mission ahead. That will go smoothly, you’ll see!

  There was, however, another factor, one which proved as strong as carnal hunger, that further contributed to the hasty marriage: my mother’s love for my father’s stories about his adventures.

  Mother, as mentioned before, was an accomplished singer, pianist and painter. But, according to Uncle Jak, her gifts needed to be nurtured. They needed drama, strange characters and extraordinary episodes – in effect, compelling narratives. And my father who, despite his young years, had lived an eventful life and who, moreover, was a virtuoso storyteller, provided these in abundance. (Sadly, Mother abandoned her artistic aspirations soon after my birth. In the impoverished early years of the republic only the very few could pursue a career in the arts.)

  By all accounts, the story that clinched the marriage was the one about the battle of Sakarya, the turning-point in the War of Independence, during which my father served as a signalman in Atatürk’s command post. In my younger days, this story remained my mother’s favourite. She used to make my father tell it to everybody. She even made him write it down when his memory began to blur and he had to guess details that he could not remember exactly. In later years, after the endless quarrelling had started, she stuck to her claim that he had seduced her with that story – poor, naive damsel that she had been – the way Othello had seduced Desdemona. A brutal, worldly plebeian capturing the heart of an innocent maiden with a tale of war and bravery.

  Actually, since the Sakarya story is one of my favourites, too (and since this, my composition, whether it turns out valedictory or not, has evolved into a hosanna, my sentimental celebration of my mother and father – alas, no brothers or sisters: Mother thinks one child, particularly if not a girl, is more than enough), I will attach that story, as written by my father, as an appendix to this piece.

  A word here about the unhappiness that rules our house. I don’t know when it began. Or how serious it is. My mother and father still appear to be very close and very interested in each other. For instance, they never go their separate ways. Not for my mother, bridge parties or afternoon coffees with other women. Not for my father, the secretive world of the Freemasons or nights out at newfangled clubs with cronies.

  But begin it did at some point.

  Possibly, as Uncle Jak thinks, one sunless day, Mother took a look at Father and saw, in the brume, the shadow of a man who, though he had looked like a giant in yesteryears, was now impaled on a crag, unable even to defend himself against a buzzard that was tearing out his eyes. Sickened by this sight – maybe even thinking that the buzzard might well be herself and not Uncle Şaul’s damned shop (which my father inherited after Uncle Şaul’s death), she ran hither and thither, shouting at God, ‘Did I abandon my music and paints for this?! I threw away my life for this?!’ That same sunless day, Father, who was indeed a giant, who could have been a savant, a statesman, certainly a great man, if only he could have studied, but who, in order to feed the wife and child he loved, burned his bridges and boats, wept tearlessly, as the winds blew away his days, and asked in turn, ‘Is this all there is to life?’

  The tragedy, according to Uncle Jak, was that Mother and Father had taken stock of their lives on the same sunless day. Had they done so on different days, one or the other would have noticed that their lives, though compromised and very much unfulfilled, were also rich beyond their imaginings: their son and their love for each other, for a start ...

  After that, the unhappiness advanced with sickening speed. Now, it is a constant. Mother accuses Father of some wrongdoing – always a silly thing like not folding his napkin properly or walking home in the rain at the risk of catching a cold, to save money, instead of taking the tram. Father tries to appease her by apologizing. She responds by raising her eyes and demanding of heaven how many times a woman can forgive a man for the same stupidity. A long silence ensues. She starts again, reiterating her question. He censures her for escalating a minor disagreement into a major quarrel. That infuriates her; she starts accusing him of all sorts of misdemeanours, from being uncouth, to mocking her Greek accent (which he actually finds very endearing), to not giving her enough housekeeping money, to surreptitiously looking, maybe talking, maybe even having fun with other women. Incensed by her imputations, he protests his innocence, then retorts that she would only have herself to blame if he did go and seek the harmony and happiness he craves with another woman. This enrages her all the more: a man who can distort truth so readily, without even a twinge of conscience, is not a man, but a brute, a Nazi, a Goebbels no less. If he had his way, he would slaughter the world, starting with the wife he claims to love so much.

  Last night, for instance.

  It began, I’m ashamed to say, because of me.

  Father was having second thoughts about my so-called boy scouts excursion to the Royal Hittite Archives at Boğazköy. The country was troubled, he said, orphaned by Atatürk’s death (Father worshipped Atatürk and has not stopped mourning him), opportunist Nazi-lovers were crawling out of their holes. There was a growing economic crisis and these rats, together with right-wing elements in the government, were blaming the minorities, particularly the Jews, as its perpetrators. True patriots were either being marginalized or, as in the case of the poet, Nâzιm Hikmet, were being thrown into gaol. (Father loves Hikmet’s work and maintains that had Atatürk been alive, he would have come to respect Hikmet’s views. I suspect, deep in his heart, Father is a socialist – or, as they call them these days, a communist.)

  Anyway, Father feared that if I went on the excursion to Boğazköy, I might be harassed by ignorant fellow-scouts or scout-masters, attacked and ostracized as yet another Jew ‘who drinks the nation’s blood’.

  As if this was the opening she had been waiting for, Mother went on the offensive. (For once, I was glad she did, because there is really no excursion to Boğazköy; that’s the excuse we – my friends and I – invented so that I can go to Salonica with Marko and smuggle out my mother’s family.) She accused Father of being jealous of the education I was receiving while he had had to leave school at thirteen; in effect, he was oppressing me, trying to reduce me to a nonentity like himself; any day now, he would probably start burning my books; well, she was not going to let that happen, not as long as she was alive; she was not going to let him victimize her son as well.

  Here is a snippet from that quarrel. I copied it down word for word:

  He: ‘Victimize my son? My own flesh and blood? I’d tear myself to pieces for him!’

  She: ‘There you go again with your violence!’

  He: ‘I’d die for him as I would for you. You know that!’

  She: ‘You’d kill us first – that’s what you’d do!’

  He: ‘Woman, you’re mad!’

  She: ‘Yes, I am mad – because I’m all heart! But you? A maniac – waiting to explode!’

  He: ‘I’m a loving man. You took me as a loving man!’

  She: ‘You’ve changed!’

  He: ‘No! All these years – have I ever hurt you? Lifted a hand to you?’

  She: ‘You’ve become like the rest. A man who runs around all day. Comes home angry. Ticks away like a bomb!’

  He: ‘A man who is trying to put bread on the table.’

  She: ‘Oh, yes, never hit a hungry person. Wait for her to finish her bread, then – wham!’

  And so it went on. And so it always goes on. And the horror is, she knows – as I do, as everybody we know does – that Father, despite his shortcomings, despite his frustrations, has no violence in him and is truly a loving man.

  A few months ago, after an exceptionally bitter quarrel, I heard my father leave the house in a fury. There was a blizzard raging outside. Thinking that he was either going to desert us or kill himself, I went after him. I followed him down to the sea. I watched him as he sat on a capstan and started smoking. He had not taken a coat or a jacket – just a thin sweater on which the snow was settling. I remembere
d how Naim’s sister, Gül, whom I adored and still miss very much, froze to death on a park bench like a homeless person. Afraid that my father, too, would freeze to death, I went and sat next to him and put my arms around him. He stared at me, seemingly surprised that someone still cared for him. Then he hugged me fiercely as if wanting me to become part of his body. Eventually, joking that we would soon turn into snowmen, he took me to the local mahallebici for some hot soup. As the warmth seeped back into us, I asked him why Mother had changed so much, why did she keep accusing him of having a brutal nature. At first, he hesitated to talk about her; then, deciding that I was old enough to know, he told me a bit about her past. He said that Mother’s father had been a violent man who had, on one occasion, crippled his wife by pushing her off a balcony. He told me that, on another occasion, when my grandfather was beating up my grandmother, Mother had threatened to shoot him with a hunting rifle. According to doctors, Father explained, exposure to such violence leaves terrible scars on sensitive minds. Perhaps under different circumstances, she could have lived with those scars without much trauma, but now, with war raging all over Europe, with the Nazis in Salonica persecuting the Jews, persecuting her family, Mother could see nothing but violence and brutal death all around her. But she could be helped through this awful period. With love and patience. Then again, a single piece of good news like her family being safe would probably bring her, in no time at all, back to her old self.

  It was after that conversation that I decided to find a way of saving my mother’s family in Salonica.

  So, this is what lies ahead.

  My friends, Naim, Can, Robbie and I have devised a perfect plan.

  We will save all five members of my mother’s family: my aunt, Fortuna; her three children, David, Süzan and Viktorya; and my grandfather, Salvador. Initially, I had been against including my grandfather in the rescue because of his violent nature, but then decided that it would be ungallant to exclude him. Sadly, Fortuna’s husband, Zaharya, died a few months ago, after being sent to hard labour by the Nazis.

  We have passports for them all: Turkish ones, which, we have been told, will be honoured by the German authorities because Turkey is still neutral in this war and, following the occupation of Greece, a neighbour to be wooed. We procured the passports by exchanging them with British ones. We got hold of the latter thanks to Robbie, who can go in and out of the British consulate because his father is a grandee there. The exchanges were made through the intermediacy of Naim’s classmate, Tomaso, a Levantine boy whose family controls all the smuggling in this region. Tomaso also introduced us to Marko, his mother’s young brother, who, although only twenty-five, has the reputation of being the best and the most daring operator in the Aegean; moreover, it is said that his boat, the Yasemin, can run circles round any patrol boat. So Marko will be our saviour. Originally, Naim, Can and Robbie were to have joined us. We had invented a good excuse to be away from home – the boy scouts excursion to the Hittite Archives at Boğazköy that I mentioned earlier. But, alas, Naim and Can are needed to help out in their fathers’ shops and Robbie has to stay at his mother’s side because she is not at all well.

  So it will be just Marko and me. We will slip into Greece, make our way to Salonica, find Mother’s family, hand them the passports and slip out again.

  We’ll be back in a week.

  We sail the day after tomorrow.

  God, I was hoping to say much more.

  Well, another time ...

  Oh, I nearly forgot. I had a strange dream last night. I don’t normally remember dreams. Only the sexy ones that wake me up all messy.

  Anyway, this dream. I was in ancient times. Watching a religious rite. People were piling their troubles and wrongdoings on to the back of a kapora, the traditional animal of purity, the scapegoat, in effect. But in this case the animal was a monkey, like Cheetah in the Tarzan films, only sky-blue in colour. When this monkey was so loaded that it was staggering about, they dragged it to an altar where a priest stood ready to slaughter it so that in death it would take away with it all the people’s misery. As the priest prepared to cut its carotid artery, the monkey turned and looked at me.

  It had my face.

  Bizarre.

  When I get back, I must ask Ruhiye, Uncle Jak’s maid, what it means. Like most descendants of the Yürük, the original Turkish tribes from Central Asia, she is good at explaining dreams.

  So ...

  TO BE CONTINUED ...

  WHEN I GET BACK ...

  WITH GOOD NEWS, GOD WILLING!

  Appendix: Herewith my father’s story

  Sakarya

  Most historians will tell you that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was not only a prodigious statesman, but also a soldier of genius. In support of this conclusion, they will expound on his bold and often unorthodox strategies in Tripoli, Gelibolu, Syria and the Turkish War of Independence. Some of these, I believe, are part of the curriculum in military academies across the world.

  But only a historian who has survived trench warfare, who breathed the stench of decomposing bodies, who lay paralysed by fear in livid shell-craters, who, coming under fire in open terrain, ran like a headless chicken, who strove to cling to his sanity as he watched Death snatch much of his generation on fields which, only yesterday, had been adorned with poppies, daisies and marigolds, can encapsulate the qualities that made Mustafa Kemal indomitable in warfare.

  I met such a man. Nikos Vassilikos. At the time, a Greek colonel. We captured him in August 1921, during the battle of Sakarya when the Hellenes were pushing towards Ankara. As I was the only one in the regiment who spoke some Greek, my Paşa had asked me to conduct the interrogation.

  If I may, I will refer to Mustafa Kemal as my Paşa. That is how he lives in my heart. Paşa, incidentally, is the rank of seraskier; its European equivalent is Field Marshal.

  During the interrogation, Vassilikos repeatedly informed me that, in his efforts to become a diligent officer, he had applied himself to analysing my Paşa’s strategies in previous campaigns; consequently, he could construe why – and how – my Paşa invariably obtained the advantage over his adversaries. In fact, Vassilikos had sent a detailed report to his General Staff on my Paşa’s martial acumen, but they had dismissed it as a defeatist tract – a stupidity that had confirmed Vassilikos’ conviction that most General Staff officers were textbook soldiers, therefore buffoons. (Vassilikos is now a respected historian. His even-handed study of the Turkish–Greek conflict has become a standard work – except for the die-hard xenophobes of his country.)

  Vassilikos maintained that what the High Command could not see – or did not want to see – was that my Paşa was, quite simply, way ahead of his time. Like Alexander the Great. Tomorrow’s man today. An astute rationalist who had soon perceived that accurate information on the enemy’s morale, disposition, capabilities and the manner of its deployment was the principal weapon for victory rather than, as his peers obdurately claimed, a standard item of an army’s ordnance. My Paşa was a visionary who saw the military potential, particularly for gathering intelligence, of every new invention, long before the desk runners in any defence establishment.

  Vassilikos supported this assertion with numerous examples. Not being of a military mind, I have forgotten most of them. But I can never forget a specific strategy because, as Fate decreed it, I had been a cog in the wheel.

  One of the innovations that my Paşa had speedily espoused was the field telephone. According to Vassilikos, the Gelibolu victory could be attributed, in the main, to my Paşa’s exceptional use of this device. Today, many military historians agree with this appraisal.

  By deploying countless look-outs on and in the periphery of the battleground, with emphatic orders that they should provide continuous reports, my Paşa could not only determine the foe’s weak positions and strike accordingly, but also ascertain, often far better than the enemy’s own officers, the state and morale of its troops. He was particularly interested in what most commanders-in-
chief would have dismissed as irrelevant. How well turned-out was the adversary? What was the state of their uniforms and boots? How often did the soldiers eat? What did they eat? How often were they given a break? Did they smoke heavily? Did they sing? If so, what sort of songs – sad or rousing? How regularly did they wash and shave? How often did they relieve themselves? And so on ...

  My Paşa drummed it into us that very important deductions could be made from these seemingly unimportant details. How well the soldiers were turned out, the state of their uniforms and boots and what they ate would give an indication of how well the enemy was supplied. How often they ate and smoked, the kind of songs they sang and how frequently they washed and shaved would be excellent pointers to their morale. Moreover, a detail as banal as the number of times they relieved themselves could make the difference between victory and defeat. Too many men relieving themselves too many times would suggest that the enemy had been stricken with diarrhoea, maybe even dysentery, and that it was likely to be too weak or too exhausted to defend itself against a full-scale attack.

  In 1921 I was one of the signalmen who gathered these reports for my Paşa.

  How come?

  Well, a number of recruits from the minorities – Jews like myself, Armenians, Levantines, Pontos, etc – had been chosen for the Signals Corps and speedily trained. We had been favoured because the Ottoman authorities’ negligence of their people, particularly in terms of education, had been so ignominious that a large percentage of our comrades-in-arms had remained illiterate. Against that, most of the minorities – allowed to have their own schools and maintain their own cultures or, should they wish it, to undertake a European education in one of a number of foreign schools that had opened in the principal cities – had attained high levels of literacy. The majority of these schools had sprouted in the 19th century as an extension of the Capitulations that had been granted to some European nations by the Ottoman empire. Since literacy and the ability to speak languages were of primary importance in intelligence work, most of the conscripts from the minorities had been assigned to that corps.