Love in the Days of Rebellion

by Ahmet Altan

  “I rented a mansion for you in Nişantaşı, we had to do everything in a hurry so there might be a few things missing, you can work all of that out with the housekeeper, it’s a nice, quiet place with a large garden.”

  “Thank you, that was very thoughtful of you, I really do need quiet . . . I sent a telegram to my mother asking her to send the children, I want to have them with me.”

  A smile appeared on Reşit Pasha’s face.

  “Your mother isn’t going to send the children.”

  Hikmet Bey sat up a little in his seat.

  “I don’t understand.”

  The Pasha shook his head as if he was speaking about a spoiled child.

  “She’s coming herself, and of course she’s bringing the children. She sent word to say that she wanted to see that old man having his nose rubbed in it with her own eyes. The old man, you may have guessed, is his majesty the Sultan.”

  For his father to have repeated his mother’s mocking words about the Sultan showed that the effect of constitutional monarchy had spread even to the palace.

  “How is the Sultan?”

  “How do you think he is, he’s distressed about being betrayed by the very army he put so much effort into building, it seems to have aged him suddenly.”

  “Please don’t do this, father, you know as well as I do that he’s been bathing this nation in blood for years, that he’s destroyed the lives of so many officers and intellectuals, please don’t speak of him as if he’s an innocent old man, we only did what had to be done, and indeed as far as I’m concerned it wasn’t enough.”

  The Pasha didn’t seem to want to engage in this argument, indeed he even seemed secretly pleased that his son was on the winning side even if he was on the losing side.

  “I don’t want to argue with you about this, Hikmet, but don’t forget, this man you say has blood on his hands gave us everything we have, even if no one else feels this way I have a debt of gratitude to him and I’ll never forget it.”

  Just as his father was secretly pleased that his son was on the winning side, Hikmet Bey was secretly pleased that his father hadn’t changed sides, that in these tumultuous times he hadn’t sold out his former master to save his life.

  “How are things in the city?”

  “Very chaotic, the Sultan isn’t in control of the situation, you know that parliament has opened but no one is in control of the situation, your friends thought about proclaiming constitutional monarchy but they didn’t think about what to do next, I could go as far as to say the declaration of constitutional monarchy was more of a surprise to them than it was to the Sultan, they’re not prepared in any way to govern the country, everything is even more out of control than it was before . . . I’m afraid this can’t last long, dark and evil days are coming, if you ask me.”

  “Dark for whom?”

  “For everyone, Hikmet. Believe me, for everyone.”

  Silence reigned in the carriage, neither of them wanted to upset the other by getting into a pointless political argument.

  “Anyway, never mind all that now, whatever happens we’ll all see it together, let’s go directly to my house, the housekeeper had all your favorite dishes prepared, they’ll move your things into your mansion while we’re eating.”

  Hikmet suddenly worried about his father.

  “Are you alright?” he asked in a low voice.

  The Pasha sighed, looked at his son, and gave him a smile that was slightly nonchalant and full of fatherly love.

  “I’m getting older, Hikmet, I no longer expect anything from life, I have nothing to console myself with, after all these years of living with the Sultan it’s as if I’ve started to resemble him, when he suddenly got old, I got old too, but I don’t think I’m upset about this, on the contrary I’m happy about getting older, about feeling as if I’m a guest in this world, I don’t care about the issues that used to be important to me, maybe this is what old age is like, who knows.”

  Hikmet Bey realized his father was trying to embrace old age in haste to pull himself aside before life itself pulled him aside, but even though he’d fought for the abolition of the palace his father was a part of, he couldn’t stand to see Reşit Pasha accepting old age and changed the subject.

  “Did my mother say when she was coming?”

  “You know how your mother is, she could be waiting for you when you get home, she might have said she was coming at once and not appear for years . . . To tell the truth I don’t know when she’s coming, but don’t worry, she’ll be here before long, she hasn’t forgotten that the Sultan exiled her, she won’t let that go without taking the chance to tell the Sultan, ‘You see, you sent me away, but here I am, I’m back.’ She’ll be here soon.”

  Reşit Pasha fell silent and closed his eyes, he seemed to be hesitating about what he was going to say.

  “In fact this isn’t a good time for her to come here, I didn’t want you to come either, these are dangerous times, the whole empire is restless, new uprisings are on the point of breaking out in Arabia, Kurdistan, and the Balkans, no one has any power here in the capital, even your committee is split into two factions, one of them is establishing a new party, there are going to be new showdowns here.”

  Hikmet listened, and like all children he thought his father was exaggerating, but what he would experience within a few months would show him how right he’d been.

  That night Hikmet Bey stayed at his father’s mansion. When he saw how much the housekeeper and his now quite elderly Ethiopian nanny had missed him, how much they loved him, and how sorry they were for him, it wounded him to realize how he’d hurt those who loved him and once more he felt humiliated by what he’d had to experience.

  His father tried to conceal the pain he felt for him, he knew how wounding this was for a man because he’d lost his wife too. Only a few times did Hikmet Bey catch his father looking at him in helpless sadness, as if he was looking at a cripple who’d lost part of his body.

  They ate in silence as they were accustomed to do: the cooks, under the stern and rigorous supervision of the housekeeper, had prepared the most distinguished Ottoman dishes for their Pasha’s son. Hikmet Bey ate like a child who’d come home from boarding school, gorging himself on pilaf with cream, seared cutlets, and Kayseri dumplings so tiny that forty could fit in a spoon, and his father, who was trying not to let on that he was examining his son as a doctor examines a patient, was pleased.

  Over coffee they chatted like friends in a way they’d rarely done before: they didn’t mention Mehpare Hanım, they gossiped about Mihrişah Sultan, Reşit Pasha loved to make witty remarks about his ex-wife, as well as about the Pashas’ greed and bad manners. They talked about how Bulgaria’s declaration of independence while the Ottoman empire was experiencing the turmoil of constitutional monarchy, the ceding of Bosnia-Herzegovina to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the annexation of Crete by the Kingdom of Greece might lead to war in the Balkans.

  They both took care to avoid domestic politics; if Reşit Pasha was upset that his son was a member of the organization that had overthrown the Sultan, he didn’t let on; perhaps he was pleased that his son had chosen to struggle for liberty rather than live off the treasury as other Pashas’ sons did, but he didn’t say so.

  They both felt the most important thing was to be honest and ethical, and the only way they could be honest was by completely opposing the other’s ideas. They accepted that destiny had toyed with them like this and had made them experience such contradictions.

  Towards midnight Reşit Pasha announced that he was going to bed.

  “Your room is ready too, the housekeeper will help you.”

  Hikmet Bey told him to let the housekeeper sleep, he knew where his room was, but the Pasha either didn’t hear him or pretended not to; he left the living room without answering, walking with the cheerful liveliness he experienced whenever he
passed through the harem, no matter what was going on in his life.

  After his father left, Hikmet Bey lit a cigarette and looked at the Bosphorus, flowing pitch-black under the falling snow; now for the first time, being with his father brought him a sense of peace, and he felt secure in the house that, as a child, he had always associated with missing Paris and being bored with where he was.

  After finishing his cigarette he stood, went to the living-room door to go to the room in which he hadn’t slept for years; as he made his way toward the door he remembered the happy, carefree days of childhood and for a moment thought about the shame and torment that weighed him down; he remembered reading Faust when he was young, and smiled at the thought that he would have to make a bargain with the devil to undo what he had experienced. Later he would tell Osman, “Sometimes you want to bargain with someone over your destiny, but as God doesn’t bargain, who else can you bargain with except the devil?”

  That night there was no devil to bargain with either, or, at least until he passed through the living-room door he thought the devil would have no interest in him.

  As he passed through the living room door, the housekeeper, who’d been napping in a chair by the door, stood, rubbed her eyes, and picked up the oil lamp beside her.

  “Why didn’t you go to bed, I haven’t forgotten where my room is, do you think I have amnesia?”

  There was the same gleam in the housekeeper’s eyes as when she used to give Hikmet candy when he was a child, she didn’t pay attention to what he’d said, and she answered as she made her way down the corridor.

  “Oh, my dear Hikmet Bey, how could I go to bed before settling you in your room, you’re a strange one, do you think I would leave you in the living room like an abandoned sack and go to bed?”

  They made their way down the corridor to the sounds of waves striking the boathouse, the windows rattling in the wind, and the creaking of the wooden house, which seemed to increase at night. As he made his way down the dim corridor he heard the same sounds he used to hear as a child, when he used to worry that the “bath mother” his Ethiopian nanny had invented to frighten him might jump out at him; he noticed that this fear that had been instilled in him as a child was still there, even though it had diminished he still felt a tingling in his spine; the childhood he’d thought he’d lost had not vanished completely, there were still traces of it in the walls, the corridors and the sounds of the house where he’d lived so long ago.

  When he reached his room, the housekeeper partly opened the door and made way for him. He bade her good night, and she replied, “Just call me if you need anything, I’m awake, now good night, my brave young man.”

  After the chilly corridor, he felt the warmth of the pinkish-green, pot-bellied glazed tile stove burning in the center of the room; as he looked around the room, he saw the girl waiting for him by the window; he went back to the still partly open door, threw it open, and shouted for the housekeeper.

  As the housekeeper made her way down the corridor she answered softly, without bothering to turn around or hide the mockery in her voice.

  “A gift from his excellency the Pasha.”

  For a moment Hikmet Bey stood in front of the door, at a loss for what to do; the housekeeper had already reached the end of the corridor and had disappeared from view, there was only the faint light of the oil lamps that had been placed at intervals but that provided little illumination. Then, as there was nothing else to do, he went in and closed the door.

  The girl was wearing shiny white baggy trousers of ruffled silk that ended just above her ankles, a white tunic of the same cloth that came to her knees, a thick, silver Circassian belt around her waist, and white, flat heeled, pearl-embroidered shoes that left her pink heels exposed. Her thick black hair, rubbed with musk, and with a line of glass beads on the ends, fell over her shoulders; right away Hikmet Bey noticed the greyish-blue eyes under her long, black eyelashes and her shiny, black, violin-bow eyebrows that became thinner at the ends and that almost met in the middle. The mist of the bathhouse she’d clearly just left still clung to her, and the flush on her fine-boned cheeks was from hot, soapy water rather than from shame; she clasped her thin-fingered hands just below her belly and bowed her head.

  At another time Hikmet Bey would have been angered by this imposition and found it insulting to be given a woman as a gift, but he had become accustomed enough to desperation to realize it was his father’s desperate attempt to alleviate his son’s suffering even though he knew he was being pathetic; he accepted the gesture without anger, and indeed with the gratitude of knowing someone was worried about him. In addition to his tolerant maturity, there was a part of his body that had not touched a woman in months.

  He walked toward the stove.

  “What’s your name?”

  She had a harmonious voice, it sounded as if she was singing.

  “Sir, they told me you were to call me whatever you wanted.”

  “Don’t you have a name? Is it up to me to name you?”

  “No, sir.”

  Hikmet Bey didn’t insist, he realized she would insist on doing as she’d been told, it was clear she’d been told that if she pleased the gentleman it would save her life. The poor girl was ready to relinquish her entire past to save her future, she’d give him her name, her past and her body, and if he wished, Hikmet Bey would take care of her and make her life secure. The bargain was open and clear. Hikmet Bey made a face, but then accepted the bargain that had been made for him.

  He sat on the bed.

  “Then let your name be Hediye.”

  As soon as he sat, she came over to him, knelt, and began taking off his shoes. He hurriedly pulled his feet away.

  “Please stop.”

  She rose to her feet in fear and gave him a pleading look.

  “Come, sit next to me. I can undress myself. Where are you from?”

  “I’m Circassian, sir”

  “That’s clear from your beauty.”

  He felt the mortification of being a woman’s absolute master, but at the same time he felt a boundless excitement that was open to any kind of desire. Having a woman without making any effort and knowing that this was not his privilege alone, that it had nothing to do with his past, his intellect, his knowledge or his personality or any of his adventures, none of his pain had anything to do with the girl sleeping with him, and knowing that someone else could have slept with the girl that night stripped him of his past and all the values that made him Hikmet Bey and transformed him from someone who had gained his place in society through his own efforts to a man who had only been created at that moment.

  His body was tingling, and he noticed that his hands shook slightly with the strange embarrassment of knowing that a woman who had no interest in his past or his future would give him all she possessed that night without question and without evasion, and this aroused a physical lust that was unconcerned with thoughts or feelings.

  When he’d slept with prostitutes in Paris in his youth he’d always felt both a wretchedness that was like falling off a cliff and a pleasure that was like rising up to the sky, untrammeled by any moral or emotional concerns, and the tension of being pulled in opposite directions gave him a boundless and unnamable animalistic gratification to which he didn’t give much thought.

  Suddenly the room seemed too bright.

  “Please douse the lamps, except the one by the bedside.”

  Hediye sensed that Hikmet Bey desired her; when she stood, her hips were level with his face; summoning nearly all her power to her body in a way that only women can do, she walked slowly, confident as she extinguished the lamps that the powerful light emanating from her body would touch the man’s flesh. As the light dimmed, the brilliance of her white silk clothes increased, and when there was only one lamp left burning she turned and sat next to Hikmet Bey.

  The large, tiled stove burned hotte
r and hotter, trembling from time to time as coals settled and the constant sound of the waves and currents of the dark waters of the Bosphorus crashing against the boathouse echoed through the deserted corridors of the waterfront mansion.

  After most of the lamps had been extinguished the room sank into the dimness Hikmet Bey wanted, everything lost its true form in this shadow realm, all of the furniture, the stove, the consoles, the mirrors, closets, and carpets flowed out of their forms and beyond the boundaries that constrained them in the light, flowing into each other like melted glass, they gained such a magical mobility that they could seem completely different each time you looked at them.

  In this warm, dim room in which shadows grew larger, Hikmet Bey could change form just as the furniture did, from the pale, pansy-faced aristocratic patient of the nuns in Salonika to the “perverted” Pasha’s son seeking “deviant” pleasures among the red-gartered prostitutes of the Paris brothels.

  There was no one in the room but himself to feel ashamed before; in his mind, which was shutting down in the fog created by his increasingly impassioned desire, all feelings including shame vanished. He told Hediye to undress and lie naked on the bed and looked at her for a while. He told her to open her legs, close them, then open them again; he undressed without taking his eyes off her body, touched one of her small feet, then took both feet in his hands, kneeled at the foot of the bed completely naked, and rested her feet against his cheek.

  It snowed until morning, and throughout the night they tried everything Hikmet Bey had learned from the prostitutes in Paris as well as what he and Mehpare Hanım had discovered together. From her first man, Hediye learned many pleasures and games many women in that city had never known, never would know or even hear of, moaning sometimes in pain and sometimes in pleasure, she did whatever he wanted of her and in addition managed to derive pleasure from everything she did; she understood how women who were cast aside by day could bind a man to them at night.