Love in the Days of Rebellion

by Ahmet Altan

  Dilara Hanım came over to him and took his hand.

  “You’re cold.”

  When he heard her voice he was almost filled with gratitude, it was as if he’d heard a number of things he’d wanted to hear in these words; Dilara Hanım said this in such a way that with this ordinary phrase she’d also managed to say, “I missed you, I was worried about you, I wanted you.” Her face was like her voice, as at that moment, it could express a number of different things simultaneously. On her almost motionless face, which was like the tranquil lake, reflecting the silver moonlight, that he’d come across suddenly while horseback riding with friends in Germany on a full moon night, there was sarcasm, compassion, love, lust, longing for Ragıp Bey, all of these remained together, but if you focused on one of them, that feeling would withdraw into the depths and disappear; this strange flight added a magical motion to her tranquil face, made him want to hold it tightly between his hands.

  All he said was, “It’s raining heavily.”

  “Do you want to eat right away or should they make tea?”

  “If it’s possible, I’d like to have tea first, it will give us a chance to talk a bit. There’s something that I don’t want to talk about in front of Dilevser . . . ”

  Without asking what it was he wanted to talk about, Dilara Hanım clapped her hands and told them to bring tea. She’d long since learned not to take what men considered important seriously, but this didn’t prevent her from listening seriously to what they said, she’d seen that they occasionally said something that was truly important.

  After gesturing to the servant to put the tray on the coffee table, she poured tea into Ragıp Bey’s glass.

  “Shall we add a little cognac?” she asked with a smile. When Ragıp Bey said, “Please,” he didn’t recognize in her voice the mockingly compassionate tone that old ladies use when talking to a young relative; if he had, he would have been very curious about what Dilara Hanım thought about him, but he was only curious about her feelings. It didn’t even occur to him to be curious about what she thought. Like all men who dismiss the possibility that women could have an opinion of them or make decisions and be led to commit such a betrayal, he would have been surprised to learn that she had an opinion of him.

  When one day Dilara Hanım, with a polite smile, told Osman what she thought of Ragıp Bey, he was also surprised, he hadn’t expected that much; in any event, Dilara Hanım surprised him more than any other of his dead. The one who shook him most was the one he’d thought would be easiest to get to know and to understand.

  It was as if she was protected by a wall of intelligence and elegance between her true identity, thoughts, emotions, and the world, she didn’t allow her thoughts to reach people or people to reach her emotions. There was only one passage through this wall, and this was pleasure, but there was a tinge of revenge in the aggressive lust she expressed in bed, in the way she took pleasure from life, it was as if she had an enemy and every pleasure she derived wounded this enemy, but even Dilara Hanım herself didn’t know who this enemy was.

  Sometimes this enemy was everyone, then she would use sarcasm, intelligence, and wittiness to decimate whoever she was with, sometimes the enemy was herself, then she locked herself in her room, saw no one, didn’t smile, was incredibly rude to the helpers and servants she usually treated well and called them names that didn’t suit the lips that usually smiled kindly; sometimes the enemy was life itself, and in this case she dragged the man in her life at the moment to bed and made love until morning.

  Dilara Hanım’s secret anger at an enemy that may or may not have existed was completely unlike Ragıp Bey’s easily combustible anger; the same feeling was present in two people as if it was two different feelings. Ragıp Bey’s anger was blunt, open, and attacked immediately, whereas Dilara Hanım’s never grew sharp, never appeared openly, never frightened people, but constantly made them restless and drew them to her in a mysterious way, people didn’t see that anger but the anxiety they felt in her presence made them want to come close to her, approach her, and besiege her with love and attention in order to free themselves from this anxiety and be loved by her.

  Once Osman had not been able to contain himself and did something he shouldn’t have done, he told Dilara Hanım what he thought of her.

  “But it’s impossible for you to love anyone.”

  With her creative sarcasm, Dilara Hanım spoke as if she was saying something very tender to him.

  “How banal you are, mein lieber, to try to make decisions about people rather than accept that your inability to know people makes you a vulgar and commonplace fool. Of course I loved people, there were even some I loved a lot . . . The point isn’t whether I loved them, the problem was that they never realized it. Even when they believed I loved them they had deep doubts. If you were as intelligent as I thought you were, what you could have said was, ‘You like to instill doubt in people, moreover you do this as if you’re trying to ease their doubts, and for this pleasure you forgo other pleasures that might have been sweeter.’”

  Dilara Hanım sat across from Ragıp Bey after she’d poured cognac into his glass.

  “Have you warmed up a bit?”

  Ragıp Bey stirred his tea before answering, then suddenly raised his head and said, in the calmest, coolest tone possible, “Dilara Hanım, I want you and Dilevser to get away from here for a while.” Dilara Hanım was taken aback.

  “Why, what happened?”

  “Nothing has happened yet, but it will. A bad fate awaits Istanbul, it’s possible there’ll be an uprising in a day or two, it’s not clear where it will lead or what will happen. I probably won’t be able to concern myself with you, you two women can’t stay here alone.”

  “I’ll go if you come too.”

  Ragıp Bey shook his head.

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m a soldier, Dilara Hanım, I have to do my duty.”

  Dilara Hanım smiled.

  “Then I can’t go either, I’m a woman and I have my duty.”

  The answer that surprised Osman so much that time surprised Ragıp Bey as well.

  “What is your duty?”

  “To be where you are.”

  When Ragıp Bey looked at Dilara Hanım he expected to see a mocking expression, but instead he saw a decisiveness masked by a melancholy smile, and as he later told Osman he believed that “happiness can emerge from a single sentence at an unexpected moment.” He felt a gratitude to this woman, for loving him and making sacrifices for him, that he would carry for the rest of his life, and, trying to conceal how pleased he was, gave a deceptive answer about saving her.

  “You can’t stay here. Things can happen in this city that would be impossible to predict today, this city is famous for its looting, there’s no telling when a group of religious fanatics take to the streets, moreover, as a woman, who would defend you, who would protect you? No, I can’t allow this.”

  “Then come with us.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  After a pause, Ragıp Bey continued in a soft tone that surprised even him.

  “I would very much like to come, but it’s truly impossible, I can’t leave my friends.”

  Dilara Hanım stood, came over to him and put her hand on his, and addressed him by name, something she never did except when they were in bed.

  “Ragıp, how could you think I could leave you behind when you can’t leave your friends behind, is that what you think of the woman whose bed you’ve shared, is that what you think of me.”

  Ragıp Bey didn’t know what to say at first.

  “I beg your pardon, of course not . . . How could I . . . But the danger is great, and there’s also Dilevser. I’ll be thinking about you every moment.”

  Dilara Hanım stood and let out a cheerful laugh that could almost have been called coquettish.

>   “I’ll take the risk if that’s what it takes for you to think about me, if it takes a war for you to think about me, let’s get the war started.”

  Ragıp Bey wished she hadn’t laughed like that or made that joke, he wanted her to continue being the way she’d been when she addressed him as “Ragıp,” but he didn’t say so.

  “But . . . ”

  Dilara Hanım shook her head.

  “The subject is closed, Major. Let’s tell them to get dinner ready. You must be hungry. I’ll have them call Dilevser as well.”

  Ragıp Bey stood and tried once more to convince Dilara Hanım. “But Dilara Hanım . . . ” She put her fingers on his lips.

  “Hush . . . Do you want to upset me?”

  They couldn’t continue their conversation because Dilevser came in just then, holding a book, her place marked by her finger; when she greeted Ragıp Bey, the dreaminess in her voice revealed that she was still lost among the lines of her book, that she had not emerged from the words and sentences in which she was wrapped into what people called the “real” world but that didn’t seem lifelike to her.

  Later she would think about how her mother’s decision had changed her life, made her life real, like a novel, but she didn’t know this at the time. However, Dilara Hanım was not aware that by making this decision she was acting in a way that would change the lives of the three people close to her, that would bring jubilation and deadly sorrow. If she’d known what this decision, which Ragıp Bey thought was based on love, and of course it was to a large degree, though in fact it was based on her moral code, her upbringing, a nature that hated to flee, and to a degree on her disregard and her curiosity about witnessing great events, would bring would she have made the same decision regardless, later even she herself wouldn’t be able to answer this; “But,” she said, “how could we live without our frightful ignorance of the future, if we knew what was going to happen and were able to change it, that might lead to other things happening, I think that in order to be able to carry on with our lives the future must always remain dark.”

  When Osman looked at all of this, he would have liked to ask Sheikh Efendi, “Is it fair for just one person’s decision to alter the course of other people’s lives? Isn’t it demeaning and frightening to think that a person’s future is in the hands of someone he doesn’t know?”

  But he knew that his great-grandfather would have answered that it was “God’s will.” Sheikh Efendi would say, “The Lord caused Dilara Hanım to act the way she did in order for everything to happen the way it did, it was God’s decision.”

  He knew that after he said this he would have wanted to ask why God’s will hadn’t manifested itself in his own life, why the woman he loved hadn’t said she would stay with him and alter his destiny, why something like this hadn’t happened at least once in his life, and then afterwards, of course, he would sink into the pain brought about by the sin he committed later.

  11

  When the thin, misty rains departed the city at first light like a delicately undulating, gleaming satin cloth being pulled off a jewelry box, slipping away through dark blue minarets, copper-red domes, and golden crescents that still clung to the groggy shadows of the night, the call of the muezzins summoning the faithful to the first prayer of the day echoed across the hills of the capital, when the calls to prayer all ended simultaneously, a sudden, reverent silence wrapped the city for a moment, as if it had truly witnessed the image of God. In that brief moment of silence, which seemed like an eternity, crystalline reflections of the city like mirages of pure light appeared on the surface of the purple sea.

  In that fleeting instant, the capital remained as silent and motionless as if it had been mesmerized by itself.

  Then this magnificent silence was broken as suddenly as it had started, the crystal image was shattered by the irregular stomping of soldiers’ boots, rifle butts hitting the ground, yelling, shouts of “God is great,” curses and terrifying screams and gunshots; disorderly soldiers spilled out of the barracks and attacked their officers at the headquarters, they dragged their captives across the courtyard, hitting their heads against the paving stones, tearing off their uniforms, and shouting “Death to the infidels.”

  The bloody mutiny, whose consequences would be felt for a long century, began on a sunny, spring morning; the Salonika battalions, which had been brought to the capital to prevent a religious uprising, rebelled and demanded sharia, and the city suddenly became frightened and elderly.

  As Ragıp Bey dressed to go to the barracks he realized, more from the tense, sharpened instincts of those who expect bad things than from the indistinct sounds in the distance, he rushed to the window, then turned to Dilara Hanım and said, “It’s begun.”

  He immediately put on his bandolier and grabbed the jacket he’d hung over the back of the armchair.

  Dilara Hanım, with the coolheaded attentiveness that women have during major events that agitate men, stopped Ragıp Bey as he was rushing out the door.

  “What are you doing? Take off your uniform, put on civilian clothes, if the soldiers have mutinied as you suppose, they could be going after officers.”

  Even though he knew this was the sensible thing to do, he couldn’t countenance taking off his uniform out of fear of the soldiers.

  “I’m going to headquarters, Dilara Hanım, should I make a mockery of myself by wearing civilian clothes?”

  Using the distant, mocking tone that she knew from experience was always very effective in taming Ragıp Bey, Dilara Hanım said:

  “I don’t think anyone’s going to be in the mood to laugh during a mutiny.”

  Then she added in a feminine, almost pleading manner:

  “Please, I beg you . . . For my sake . . . ”

  Ragıp Bey started to undress with a slight smile, and Dilara Hanım brought out the civilian clothes he’d left there in case he needed them and spread them on the bed one by one, she helped her man, who might never return, to get dressed and to tie his necktie. She left the room to tell the servants to get the carriage ready and prepare breakfast as quickly as they could, then when she returned and saw that Ragıp Bey had put on his bandolier and was wearing his gun she objected again.

  “Please don’t wear your bandolier, put your gun in your pocket, God forbid, if something should happen, if they see your bandolier they’ll know you’re an officer.”

  Ragıp Bey nodded and put his gun in his pocket.

  Breakfast was ready when they went down, Ragıp Bey wanted to set out at once, but Dilara Hanım insisted he eat something and have some tea.

  Ragıp Bey had never seen Dilara Hanım behave like this, it wasn’t like her to insist on anything, but it also pleased him that a woman dared to insist he do anything.

  “You remind me of my mother,” he said.

  Dilara Hanım tossed back her hair, which she hadn’t had time to tie up, and as she looked at her man, who was on his way to the center of a mutiny, who was going to face death, sorrow darkened and enlarged her pupils.

  As the time to part approached, the possibility that they would never see each other again sparked a divine fire, like a spark that ignited dry leaves in the depths of a deep forest, a fiery sorrow that was not created by humans but by God, which shared its glory as it burned in the deepest and most inner places and which we carry as part of our existence and conceal even when we are the most cheerful because we are mortal and surrounded by mortals. The sorrow grew and spread through their entire souls, touched each feeling in the places where it found them, and pulled them into the fire, all of these feelings tried to rise as fiery flames, they all became intermingled with the same sorrow and burned hotter than usual; love, compassion, worry, longing, pain, and even lust burned explosively like large-trunked, moss-covered trees, they were confused by a red pain and time lost its integrity and disappeared. The sorrow was so heavy it was as if they didn’t live th
e moment they were experiencing because they couldn’t carry it, they began to depart the future that had not yet arrived, the disappearance of the face they saw, already missing the face they saw.

  With the bumbling haste of someone who had to leave but didn’t want to, Ragıp Bey rushed to the door, knowing that later he would regret his haste.

  “I have to go now, Dilara Hanım.”

  “Of course . . . ”

  She reached out and touched his shoulder as if she was removing a thread that wasn’t there, then as she pushed him towards the waiting carriage she whispered softly, “Come back to me, Ragıp Bey . . . Spare me yet another sorrow.”

  Ragıp Bey hurried to the carriage and got in, he heard the driver shout at the horses and wheels clattering over the stones.

  Before they turned into the street, he turned to look out the back window to wave for the last time. Dilara Hanım had gone inside, the door was closed; for a long time the image of the empty steps in front of the house remained in his mind like a painful wound.

  The streets were deserted and the driver proceeded slowly, as Dilara Hanım had advised, so as not to attract attention. The doors and shutters of the mansions were closed; the trunks of the trees in the gardens, wet from days of rain, were a glistening brown like dark, sweating faces; he saw that there were buds on some of the tree branches, an early white flower had bloomed, hanging its head like a shy little girl. “Spring is coming,” he thought in surprise, as if he’d forgotten about the existence and the changing of the seasons as he dragged himself from one day to the next.

  As usual, Ragıp Bey was uncomfortable in civilian clothes, as he pulled at his jacket collar, which felt as if it might come off, he thought about what he had to do and what might have already happened, a few blocks from the barracks he decided to leave the carriage, proceed on foot, and observe the situation from a distance.

  As they neared the headquarters he stopped the carriage and got out, and after telling the driver again to get back to the mansion as quickly as he could and not to leave, and that they should close the garden gates tightly, he set out along the muddy streets, scanning his surroundings, and as his thin shoes and his trouser cuffs became muddy he got angry at the mutineers as if this was their fault; everything seemed quiet as he approached headquarters, it was silent, the only strange thing was that there was no sentry at the gate.