by Ahmet Altan
The fighting continued for a long time; twice, the men in the barracks attacked suddenly, sending out units of twenty-five to thirty men, and succeeded in capturing one or two light cannon and bringing them back into the barracks, but the forces of the Movement Army were strengthened by reinforcements from other districts of Istanbul, and new cannon batteries approached the barracks step by step.
At one point the men in the barracks flew a white flag, when some of the soldiers who saw this flag stood and began advancing they were cut down by fire from the barracks; this inflamed the anger and resentment on both sides.
Toward evening, Ragıp Bey was with the first units to enter the barracks, he didn’t know that he would witness a second incident that day that he would never forget. They captured the barracks building by building and suffered many casualties due to fire from the barracks.
In the end the mutineers were confined to the last building. They could no longer either fight or flee.
Ragıp Bey saw some of the windows on the top floor being opened, just as he was telling his men to aim at these windows, a mutineer appeared on the windowsill. He stood for a moment with his hands spread, then allowed himself to fall into the void; as he hurtled towards the concrete floor of the courtyard, his fez flew off and glided after him like a red bird. Others followed the first jumper and allowed themselves to fall from the windows into the void one after the other. They heard the dull sound of the falling bodies hitting the ground and saw the soldiers shudder and die as blood spurted from every part of their bodies and their brains broke into pieces.
This strange mutiny that caused the entire nation to quake in fear and that was remembered darkly for a century as the “religious uprising” ended with soldiers falling through the air.
17
That morning, as the sudden warmth of spring brought out the smell of flowers, Sheikh Efendi stood on the shore of the Golden Horn, which lay like a faded, rose-colored velvet cloth, and watched the columns of ash-smelling smoke rise from the four corners of Istanbul into the hyacinth-colored sky that was swollen with layers of clouds.
The first order given by Mahmut Şevket Pasha, who would govern the empire and Istanbul like a complete dictator with an authority that no sultan had possessed for some years, was for the denunciations that had been collected in several buildings in Istanbul to be burned; millions of sheets of paper were piled into stacks and set on fire. There were so many of these terrifying letters of denunciation that had been accumulated over thirty-three years that it took a long time to burn them; these pieces of paper that had darkened the lives of thousands of people and that had nourished and increased the unjustified fears of an apprehensive sultan spread over the capital as ash and smoke like a pus that had accumulated in the collective bloodstream of an entire society, reminding everyone of their guilt and complicity.
No one objected to the burning of these documents, because among them there were even denunciations written by the officers who had come with the Movement Army to dethrone the Sultan. And Mahmut Şevket Pasha said he aimed to clear the past and save everyone from past fears by burning these documents that proved almost everyone had taken part in the tyranny of this period.
This city of rumors and legends, this city nourished by gossip, was not satisfied with this statement, it was already being whispered from ear to ear that the real reason the Pasha had ordered the documents to be burned was to destroy them before the denunciations he’d written were brought out into the open.
In any event, there were two main topics of gossip being discussed, one was the Pasha’s denunciations and the other was the incredible amount of money the mutineers were found to have had. The Committee spread the word that the money had been distributed to the mutineers by the Sultan, but no proof of this was ever found; even though this was talked of for days, months, and indeed years, it was never clear who had given the mutineers this money.
Most of those who had stirred up the mutiny fled, and the peculiar strangers who’d been seen among the crowds before the mutiny disappeared. Apart from Derviş Vahdeti and a few of his cohorts, no one important was arrested for provoking the mutiny, and they awaited their execution in the dungeons of Bekirağa Division. The people knew that the gallows would soon be erected.
There was distress in Sheikh Efendi’s soul, the nameless disquiet of someone who expected something to happen but who didn’t know what it would be or how it would end.
The previous night he’d learned that Mehpare Hanım had returned to Istanbul with a fat Greek woman and had settled in a small wooden house in Aksaray that she’d inherited from her aunt.
One morning, after Constantine had gone to the city, Mehpare Hanım left the mansion with Sula, all of her jewelry, and the money she’d saved and set out for Istanbul; there hadn’t been any fight between them, they hadn’t even had an argument. Perhaps he was the man who’d made her happiest, he’d enriched their lovemaking with love games and desires that wandered through the darkest corners of savagery, he’d responded to Mehpare Hanım’s carnal passions with passions and desires as strong as hers, none of it had been forced, he’d done it all instinctively, without thinking.
The reason Mehpare Hanım left Salonika without so much as a farewell, without even leaving a letter, was not that she was dissatisfied with their lovemaking or that she was bored with Constantine, it was just that she could no longer endure the alienation she always felt in that city, to which she’d never become accustomed. Lust alone, despite its power, was insufficient to ease that sense of alienation. She missed the smell of Istanbul, being among people who spoke her own language, and the life that seemed to be a natural part of her, when she could no longer endure this longing she made a sudden decision to leave Salonika.
They arrived on an evening when the city was wearied by the uprising that had just been put down. They arrived at the little house in Aksaray just as it was getting dark, got the key from the neighbor, and entered the house that smelled of cambric and dust.
They couldn’t find a bakery or a grocery store that was open, so they went to bed hungry and tired. That night Mehpare Hanım experienced true regret and cursed her stupidity, she decided to write to Constantine at once the following day.
They got up wearily toward noon, and as they were tidying the house and uncovering the furniture there was a knock at the door.
A friendly-looking dervish asked for Mehpare Hanım.
“I am she; yes?”
The dervish handed her a pouch.
“They sent you this . . . And a mansion has been rented in Şişli, the rent has been paid.”
The Dervish gave her a piece of paper on which the address of the mansion had been written with the pouch and left.
Mehpare Hanım was not at all surprised, she’d inwardly expected something like this to happen when she arrived in Istanbul.
She smiled as she went to Sula, who was cleaning the kitchen. She showed the pouch to Sula, who she loved because she was the only person she could talk to with the congenial feminine levity that she’d become accustomed to as a child in the rooms, kitchen, and garden of this house.
“This man is still in love with me.”
“Which man?”
“The Sheikh.”
Sula grumbled,
“He sent you that because he feels sorry for you.”
Mehpare Hanım laughed.
“If he felt sorry for me he would have just sent money, but he also rented a mansion in Şişli.”
“Is that what love is, renting a mansion?”
Mehpare Hanım sat in a chair with the air of a lower-class girl, an identity that had always been present beneath all of her other identities.
“Oh Sula, you’re so . . . If he’d wanted he could have let me live here, provided for the basics, and left it at that. But he doesn’t want me to just get by, he also wants me to be happy. He rented a mansion for
me because he knows that living like this would make me sad.”
“Will a mansion be enough to make you happy?”
“Oh, it’s enough . . . I can find everything else I need in order to be happy, of course I’m not going to expect any of those things from the Sheikh, come on, get ready, I’m not going to spend another night in this house.”
The mansion in Şişli, with its large garden, footmen, and servants awaited her, and Mehpare Hanım entered it as a lady, no one except Sula ever heard the voice of the lower-class girl from Aksaray, it was as if, in the carriage, as they passed through every neighborhood between Aksaray and Şişli, the voice from her childhood was masked, by the time they arrived in Şişli, that voice was once again lost beneath the many voices, expressions, and behaviors she’d learned. She was now ready for her new life as an Ottoman lady.
Sheikh Efendi knew that by doing his former wife this favor he was helping her to commit new sins, that he was enabling her to live a strange life that would make him burn with shame and jealousy every time he heard about it, that would cause him to be angry at himself, that he would be jealous about what Mehpare Hanım experienced before she even experienced it, but he couldn’t bear for the woman he loved to be disgraced in a poor neighborhood by house raids, gossip, the impudent jokes of local shopkeepers, for her to be downtrodden; that woman was going to do what she did in any event, he preferred that at least she do so in a sheltered house, under sheltered circumstances.
The real reason for his disquiet was not his concerns about his former wife or the jealousy he felt concerning her, he expected something else to happen that day. There was no sign of what was going to happen, he just had a feeling that something would happen.
This feeling proved to be correct.
That afternoon an expensive, pitch-black landau with polished brass lanterns and well-groomed horses pulled up in front of the tekke, and the entire tekke suddenly fell silent.
It was as if everyone knew before they were told who the young woman in the lilac-colored abiya was who got out of the carriage, they brought her to Sheikh Efendi without asking any questions.
As usual, Sheikh Efendi was sitting in the dark zikr hall with two burning candles next to him; he stood without moving in his long black robe, with his long hair that seemed blacker with the three-inch-wide stripe of gray that swept back from his forehead like silver water cascading over his shoulder, the eyes in his transparent, white face like distant black lights that gazed into the depths.
The girl opened her abiya.
She asked in a voice hoarse from excitement.
“Do you recognize me?”
The Sheikh nodded.
“Yes.”
That morning Rukiye had a sudden and irresistible wish to ask the question she’d wanted to ask for years, and she went directly to the tekke without telling anyone.
“Why haven’t you ever reached out to me?”
The Sheikh’s face became paler, his eyes deepened.
“Did you go to all the trouble of coming here just to taunt the sinner with his sin?”
“No . . . I came here to get a close look at the famous Sheikh who helped thousands of people but wouldn’t lift a finger for his own daughter, who can’t touch his daughter, who didn’t want to see his daughter.”
“I’m not one of those people who needs to see in order to love, I’m capable of loving without seeing.”
“But I’m not someone who’s capable of knowing she’s loved without seeing, Your Excellency the Sheikh.”
The Sheikh smiled slightly. Rukiye thought she was being underestimated and gave him a petulant look.
“Why are you smiling?”
“It’s the first time someone has addressed me as His Excellency the Sheikh in order to punish me.”
“What would you want me to say?”
“I’ve forgotten how to want, my child, I’ve forgotten what it’s like to want.”
Even though the young girl sensed the sorrow and loneliness in his voice she acted as if she didn’t.
“Is that because wanting made you be like other people?”
“No, perhaps it’s because I couldn’t find anyone to want anything of, perhaps I didn’t realize that not wanting was also arrogant, that it was a sin.”
“Why didn’t you want to see me?”
“Do you think I’ve never seen you?”
“I’ve never seen you.”
Sheikh Efendi lowered his head and looked at the prayer beads he was holding.
“Someone who has spent his life believing in an invisible power might not have thought that to be seen was so important.”
“I’m your daughter, not the sheikh of a neighboring tekke, why did you treat me like a sheikh who doesn’t care about seeing or being seen, didn’t it ever occur to you that I needed to see you, did you think the gifts that were left in my room and the little miracles in my life were enough for me?”
“Weren’t they?”
Her answer was brief, definite and angry.
“No!”
The Sheikh smiled the melancholy smile that suited him so well.
“A sheikh, a saint, even a prophet can confess his mistake, but it’s very difficult for a father to do this, to admit he’s wrong in front of his daughter, but if this is what you want, yes, I admit that I wronged you, I knew I would pay for this mistake, for this wrong, but I never thought it would be my daughter who made me pay for it.”
“Am I supposed to be ashamed?”
“No, what have you done wrong? You grew up and asked what you had to ask, but you’re asking someone who doesn’t know the answer, I don’t know why I behaved that way, it was just that I wasn’t strong enough, sometimes a person just can’t do what he’s supposed to do.”
There was a long silence; Rukiye felt as if she couldn’t contain herself any longer, if they talked a bit longer she would lose the anger at this man that she’d been nourishing for years; even though she wanted to be free of this anger and to love her father, she couldn’t accept for it to happen so easily and so quickly.
“I should go.”
Perhaps for the first time in his life, the Sheikh asked someone to stay a bit longer in a pleading tone.
“Please stay a bit longer.”
“I’m afraid that if I stay longer it will be more painful for you.”
“Do you think your leaving will ease my pain?”
“Will it ease your pain if I stay?”
“Perhaps . . . ”
The Sheikh changed the subject in a fatherly tone as if they’d been living in the same house for years, as if it was natural they would each know what the other liked.
“We have some of the pomegranate sherbet you like, do you want some?”
Rukiye felt that the very thin armor of anger that shielded the desire to love, to like and be liked, was being torn and that Sheikh Efendi had an indispensable place in her life, from his expression, his voice, and his words, even during this brief conversation, and was strangely distressed to feel that the anger she’d nourished and fostered throughout her childhood and almost made a part of her personality was dissipating.
She also recognized the chaos of life and of emotions. As she later told Osman, “To see that no emotion existed on its own, that they were always experienced in tandem with other emotions, sometimes even contradictory emotions, always surprised me and made me curious.” It happened like this that day as well, an array of strange, contradictory emotions surprised her and wandered through her tangled thoughts as she tried to understand her feelings; as she regretted being so weak as to surrender so quickly, she was worn out like a child trying to catch a chameleon that changed color from moment to moment, the pride of having a father she could admire and the rejuvenating manner in which the road to love was being paved for her mingled with a sense of rejuvenation because of
the departure of a vindictive anger whose authenticity she’d always doubted.
The fear that her tense nerves would break abruptly from the sudden movement of so many accumulated feelings and she would suddenly burst into tears there made her want to run away at once and find a quiet place to order and weigh her thoughts and emotions.
She said, “Thank you,” with difficulty.
“I have to go now.”
She closed her abiya and left the hall without waiting for the Sheikh to respond.
She knew she would return to this place.
The Sheikh also knew that Rukiye would return, but “sometimes knowing is of no use.” Even someone who believed in the existence of God without seeing God, who had no doubt in his heart about that, could have difficulty understanding his own child’s visible feelings and actions, as the sheikh never said, though at least it occurred to him for a moment, “A child’s emotions are more complex and incomprehensible than God’s existence.”
The Sheikh closed his eyes and began praying, it was as if he was beseeching God to help the terrifying faith in him to fill the strange and melancholy void within him; it was as if this feeling of emptiness grew with his increasing love and longing for Mehpare Hanım, whom he was unable to forget, and now for his daughter from her. It was as if his feelings enlarged the void within him, he struggled to fill this void with his beliefs. He felt a deep anguish and loneliness after Rukiye left; despite his strength, an anxiety typical in weak people gnawed at his mind, he was afraid that something would happen to the young girl who was in such a hurry to leave him and that the pain he’d seen in his daughter’s eyes would lead her into folly; for a moment, yes, only for a moment, he thought of asking Rukiye to stay, but there was a power that dominated him and that was larger than his emotions and wishes, under the influence of this power that gave him both strength and weakness he lowered his head and continued fingering his prayer beads, all he did was whisper, “God help me, help your humble slave, grant him the power to carry his sins with propriety.”