by Ahmet Altan
Then, suddenly, a few soldiers appeared at the gate, they were pushing each other, when he looked closely he saw that they weren’t pushing each other, they were beating someone they’d encircled. When the soldiers moved apart slightly, he saw that the man they were beating was naked from the waist up, and the blood that flowed over his chest from his face was like a red wound. The man didn’t even raise his hand to protect himself, even from a distance you could see he no longer had the strength to move. Whatever happened, he moved at that moment, or he turned his head toward Ragıp Bey, something happened and Ragıp Bey realized this was the handsome lieutenant from the second unit, the soldiers had called him “Gorgeous Ihsan Bey” because he was so handsome.
One of the soldiers leaned the lieutenant against the wall, when he saw two of the soldiers point their guns at him with a smile, only then did he realize, the mutiny had been discussed for days and it had been said that “it might be a catastrophe,” you could realize that a catastrophe was coming, you could describe it, say it, but nothing you said or described was enough to convey the frightful plainness of reality. You could talk about chaos, catastrophe, horror with great, broad statements, in this broad narrative there was a place for each person, each move, each feeling, but catastrophe itself was simple, very narrow, very tight, impossible to enter or exit. This moment, for instance, these soldiers who a few days ago had stood at attention before him, who listened to all his commands, who always obeyed, who he’d thought would fight shoulder to shoulder with in a war, were leaning the young lieutenant against the wall and getting ready to kill him with a smile, perhaps without even feeling any anger toward him.
There was no sound, no shouting, no sharp movement that would remain in the memory, everything was simple and plain, it was almost like a joke, Ragıp Bey realized that the mutiny meant the disappearance of the sense of catastrophe, people losing their sense of terror, everything including death seemed ordinary.
The sun was rising, the square in front of the barracks was filled with rainwater, and the mud was crisscrossed with the tracks of carriage wheels and the prints of soldiers’ boots; as the sunlight struck the puddles, an ashy color was reflected on the undulating mud, the square seemed to be surging like an undulating brown sea in which millions of fish swam. For a moment, grasping the handle of his gun, Ragıp Bey considered diving into this sea of mud and rushing toward the soldiers, but he figured they would notice him and shoot him before he got there; he waited in desperation for the rifles to explode and for the lieutenant to fall into the mud.
As he waited for the moment of the lieutenant’s death, he sensed that the soldiers who were about to kill him would not do so out of anger, rage, or resentment but simply from the desire to satisfy the sense of infinite freedom a mutiny gave to those who took part in it. This mutiny dragged them far from their pasts and their identities like branches that had been broken in a storm and swept into a river and abandoned themselves to the current believing that all responsibility lay with the river that was dragging them away with a pleasure that could be called childish; it was as if they were in the ecstasy of the fervor that grips those who are swept up in momentous events; there was no boundary to impede them, and they rushed headlong toward the last point to which this boundary could extend, toward death.
As he waited for the sound of the rifles, he heard a sergeant who’d come out the door shout at them; the soldiers left the lieutenant they’d just leaned against the wall to shoot, making crude, lower-class jokes as they made their way inside, they hadn’t cared about the lieutenant’s death, and now they didn’t care if he was alive. The lieutenant remained like a red dot at the foot of the wall across the vast square. Even though Ragıp Bey knew he should get out of there, he couldn’t, and he continued to look at the man; the lieutenant started to bend forward slowly, when his body was almost parallel to the ground he fell facedown into the mud.
Ragıp Bey walked away, toward the narrow streets behind Pera. He’d decided to go to the Ministry of War in Beyazıt, there was no other place he could follow what was going on. A deep roaring, a frightening sound, was coming from the city, but the streets were deserted, it was as if the sound was coming from underground. Keeping to backstreets and avoiding main streets as much as possible, he made his way down from Tepebaşı and reached Karaköy square; the roaring seemed nearer, but the square and the bridge leading to Eminönü were deserted, there wasn’t a soul to be seen. The Golden Horn flowed green under the bridge like an emerald dagger God had thrust into the city, dividing it in two, one side cheerful, amusing, playful, and wealthy and the other resigned, quiet, solemn, and poor, two ways of life, two religions, two styles.
There were large stains on the bridge, and as he approached he saw that they were the bodies of officers who had been torn apart with bayonets, the blood in which they were covered had dried and darkened; they’d been killed and left there. Even though he knew the mutineers would kill him if they saw him, he dragged them one by one from the middle of the bridge to the side. There was a strange, bitter taste like well water in his nasal passage; he had clenched his teeth and made a face in disgust at the mutineers; not long ago he and these mutineers had fought the enemy together and trusted each other with their lives in the mountains, they’d broken the sacred oath they’d made in the face of death and had killed their officers. He felt belittled by this betrayal, they had to kill the men who’d killed those officers, they had to take revenge in order to overcome this sense of disparagement, he knew that they would kill them, they would make these soldiers pay for what they’d done, and the two sides would never have the same trust in each other.
When he reached the other side of the bridge, the ground was trembling from the roaring, but the square in front of Yeni Camii was also deserted, only at the very end of the bridge there was a military guard hut and a machine gun. When he looked inside the hut he saw the body of a captain who’d been shot in the neck, the mutineers had left after killing the captain without even taking the machine gun. He grew angry at them once again for leaving the guns behind, for years they’d been told not to leave guns behind but they still did it.
After he’d made his way around the mosque and started up Babiali Hill he encountered a group of mutineers, they were making their way down the street in a disorderly manner, shouting “Long live the Sultan! We want sharia!” and some of the riffraff of the city watched them as they walked along beside them; a few of them were wearing turbans and could have been mullahs. The crowd moved like a drunk on the verge of falling, staggering from side to side, trying to force open the doors of some of the newspaper buildings, but not trying too hard and moving on when they failed, occasionally they shouted, “Long live constitutional monarchy!” unaware that they were shouting contradictory slogans. They seemed indecisive. Ragıp thought he could scatter them like a flock of birds if he had a squad of good soldiers.
He followed the mutineers as far as Hagia Sophia square, which roared like a deep well that had been carved out under the city, and there he saw the real crowd. The majority of the crowd, which was like a colorless slurry with a heavy human smell, were vagrants and ne’er-do-wells who’d come to see what was going to happen. There were no more than a few thousand mutineering soldiers. Nor was there the excitement he’d expected from a major uprising, it was as if they were bored because the show they’d been expecting hadn’t started yet.
From the rows of glistening bayonets, he realized that the parliament building was surrounded by soldiers. An experienced officer could see from the alignment of the bayonets that the soldiers were disorganized. The soldiers lined up by the side of the road were better organized. There didn’t seem to be any officers around, sergeants were in command of the units. He made his way through the crowd toward the parliament building, keeping away from the soldiers to avoid being seen by anyone who knew him; people with hungry faces and frozen expressions didn’t object when someone pushed past them, they made way
with a gesture of indifference.
As he neared the parliament building, he saw a carriage approaching from Çemberlitaş, parting the crowd; the crowd surrounded the carriage before it could reach the parliament building; soldiers opened the carriage door, a pasha appeared and the crowd looked at him.
Then he heard someone shout,
“That’s the minister of war! Shoot him!”
The crowd swirled around the carriage like a whirlpool, it pulled the pasha in and swallowed him; he could see the row of bayonets moving up and down; when the crowd retreated, the pasha’s bloody body lay on the pavement. When Ragıp Bey looked at the body, whose white beard was stained with blood, he saw that it wasn’t the minister of war but the minister of justice. They’d killed the wrong man.
After killing the pasha, the crowd once again became calm, it was as if they hadn’t just murdered someone; people moved slowly as if they were drugged, but, as had just happened, they could suddenly become inflamed, then, after killing someone, return to a state of calm, it was as if they weren’t aware of what had just happened, it was as if they were all having the same nightmare together.
The trembling crowd didn’t shout, but as they murmured among themselves they created a frightening roar, there was no leader to make them move or stop, if someone had shouted for them to disperse, they would have dispersed, if someone had shouted for them to attack they would have attacked, but there was no one giving orders. Mullahs in dirty turbans could be seen in the crowd, but there was no one from the ulema who people knew and respected. From time to time one of the mullahs shouted, “We want sharia!” and the crowd would pick up the refrain.
Ragıp Bey wanted to get to the ministry of war and warn them to act at once so once again he took backstreets, a determined unit with a machine gun could put down this uprising in a quarter of an hour, he realized that if he needed to he could find Mahmut Muhtar Pasha, Commander of the First Army, and volunteer to put down the mutiny if they gave him a unit.
The entrance to the Grand Bazaar, which was usually an array of colors and nationalities including Ethiopians, Arabs, Kurds, Gypsies, Jews, Armenians, Greeks, and Albanians, moving up and down like colorful clouds emerging from a rainbow, was deserted; scarf-makers, wicker-weavers and jewelers had pulled down their shutters and closed their shops and the peddlers of sherbet, halva, and fruit had disappeared. Even the stray dogs that were usually seen everywhere all the time were gone. He made his way through the deserted streets until he reached Çemberlitaş, where he noticed that the crowd had thinned out a bit, and soldiers were standing around in disorganized groups. Then he saw a reconnaissance unit, under the command of Colonel Spathari Efendi from the First Hassa Regiment, marching in lockstep toward the mutineers; he could recognize the sound of boots hitting the ground in unison even through the nebulous roar.
When the reconnaissance unit came face to face with the mutineers, both sides hesitated. Either because he had so few soldiers with him or because he had strict orders not to engage, the Greek colonel made a mistake that would cost him his life within a few minutes; instead of ordering the mutineers to disperse in a determined voice, he tried to admonish them in a friendly manner:
“Disperse, don’t rebel against the state, return to your units, you’re soldiers, behave like soldiers.”
The soldiers looked at the captain with mocking smiles, their brief surprise at coming across a disciplined unit disappeared when Spathari Efendi took a friendly approach. They hated the officers so much that they weren’t going to be appeased by a few friendly words; on the contrary they saw this approach as a sign of weakness and they became more arrogant and angry; for years they’d experienced the oppression of having to take orders and submit, and the fantastic freedom of the mutiny erased all emotions, only hatred and fear remained; any voice that didn’t frighten them only increased their hatred.
The soldiers started to mock him in a crude and impudent manner.
“Look at him, look at how much the infidel knows.”
“Have you been circumcised, Captain Efendi?”
“Come on, let’s circumcise him.”
Spathari Efendi’s handsome Greek face froze and paled like a wax mask; he realized death was approaching in the manner officers most feared, destroying his honor.
All he could say was, “Friends.”
That was the last word he spoke, one of the privates raised his rifle and shot him, shouting, “Shut up, infidel,” they fired their guns joyfully, as if they were at a festival; after each explosion, the bullet penetrated the already dead captain’s body with a sound like a stick hitting wet laundry, the impact of the bullets made the dead body quiver and twitch like a large fish washed up on the shore.
When they saw that their commander had been killed, the reconnaissance unit under the captain’s command threw down their rifles and disappeared into the crowd.
Ragıp Bey was disgusted by the cowardice of the privates in the reconnaissance unit and by the way the mutineers had turned soldiering into brutality, his face darkened with hatred; for a moment he considered pulling out his gun and shooting the soldiers who’d killed Spathari Efendi, but he feared being caught himself. This wasn’t fear of death, he wasn’t afraid of death, he’d always lived with death, he’d never considered it something separate from himself, it was not an enemy but a part of his being; his relationship with death was like the relationship of a truly religious person with God, he didn’t flee it but rather took shelter in it; what frightened him was the prospect of being killed in a mocking manner by someone he didn’t respect.
He walked quickly toward the ministry of war, when he reached Beyazit Square he saw the main crowd; the mutineers had surrounded the ministry, a large crowd, many of them wearing turbans, were lined up behind them. They were pulling at the iron fence that surrounded the ministry, bending the bars down to the point where it seemed as if the fence would collapse. The crowd was livelier and more enthusiastic now that they were facing a target, they were blowing horns and shouting, “God is great,” and, “We want sharia.” Here too a heavy human smell rose above the square. Soldiers were lined up in two rows behind the ministry fence, they remained orderly under the command of their officers and faced the crowd. Ragıp Bey felt that if this continued the soldiers in the garden might join the mutineers. They were impressed by the crowd, the turbaned mullahs, the shouts of “God is great,” the black flags with Koranic verses emblazoned on them.
He started to think about how he could get into the garden; it wouldn’t be possible to push his way through the crowd, they would have torn him apart and scattered his limbs before he got there.
Then he became aware of a commotion over toward Vefa, a maxim unit with machine guns was coming to support the forces in the ministry of war. Ragıp Bey began moving in that direction. He was able to catch up to the unit before it entered the ministry garden, when he saw that the commander was Major Şükrü Bey, who’d been his classmate, he shouted his name at the top of his voice to be heard over all the noise, at first Şükrü Bey didn’t recognize the man in civilian clothes and muddy shoes and wrinkled jacket, but when he drew closer he realized who he was.
“What happened to you, Ragıp?”
“I’m trying to get into the ministry.”
“Come with me.”
They all went into the ministry together and closed the iron gate behind them. Şükrü Bey placed his units under the trees and said to the sergeant, “I’ll be back, let the soldiers rest until I get here,” then turned to Ragıp Bey.
“What are you going to do?”
“If I could find a decent uniform first . . . I feel strange in these civilian clothes.”
“I’ll find Muhtar Pasha and let him know I’m here, our classmate Rıfkı from intelligence is here, go see him in the meantime, you’re about the same size, he’ll find a uniform that fits you.”
“O.K., tell Muhtar
Pasha that I can scatter these jackals with a cannon battery and a maxim unit, I’ve just come from Hagia Sophia, this is an ignorant crowd, they have no commanders, a determined sortie would scatter them like partridges.”
“Let me get the Pasha’s orders first.”
As he was leaving he turned back to Ragıp Bey. “Do you know Muhtar Pasha, have you ever served together?”
“I know him from Germany, we were on maneuvers together there.”
“O.K., I’ll mention you to him.”
Ragıp Bey went into the ministry building to look for Major Rıfkı Bey. Long stone corridors echoed with the sound of officers’ boots as they ran from one office to another, telephones rang, orders were barked out in loud voices, weary-looking privates stood guard outside doors. Ragıp Bey excitedly asked one of the young officers who was passing by where the intelligence department was, and the officer answered without looking at him.
“Take the stairs at the end of the corridor and climb to the second floor.”
All hell was breaking loose in the intelligence department, officers were turning the rotating armatures of their magneto telephones, trying to reach military units in various districts of the city, privates brought notes and left them on the desks, spies disguised as mullahs, beggars, or peddlers walked with a briskness that differed from their torpor in the street, whispered something to one of the officers, and then went back out into the square. When he asked one of the privates for Rıfkı Bey, he pointed to an officer sitting at a desk by the window shouting into a telephone.