Farewell: A Mansion in Occupied Istanbul (Turkish Literature)

by Kulin, Ayse

  As he reached Sirkeci he could see the armor-plated warships anchored in the distance. In order to prevent the smuggling of arms and volunteers to Anatolia, the English had begun raiding police stations, and had now reduced Istanbul to the status of captive city. But, as he’d told his nephew, Ahmet Reşat was one of those men who truly believed that every misfortune harbors a blessing. If he hadn’t personally witnessed the massacre at Şehzedebaşı Police Station, hadn’t learned of the letter written by Fehime Sultan, he would still be firmly on the side of the Sultan. But recent events had shifted his point of view; he now found himself hoping for help from the liberation movement in Anatolia. There was hope, however faint. He wouldn’t be able to fight in Anatolia, but, in Istanbul, in his position as Finance Minister, he would do everything in his power to aid the cause.

  Turning his head to avoid the sight of the anchored warships, he walked briskly and prayed: “Allah, swiftly deliver us from this degradation. Watch over Kemal. Spare his life and bring him home to his bride.”

  Prayer had always comforted Ahmet Reşat, but, this time, his heart remained as heavy as before. He wondered if his entreaties had reached God. Very well then, he would go the mosque at noon and repeat his prayers there. And later that day, at afternoon prayers, he would try again. And at last, Allah would hear him, would hear him and would save his city. And his nephew.

  By the time the carriage arranged by the organization arrived to take Kemal away, the evening call to prayer was resonating across the city. The first person to spot the phaeton waiting in front of the garden gate was Mehpare, who had been scanning the street from the window for much of the day. She screamed.

  “What is it, what’s going on?” Saraylıhanım asked.

  “There’s a carriage at the door,” Mehpare moaned. Her face was chalk-white.

  “Time to go then,” Kemal said.

  Behice and Saraylıhanım rushed over to the window; Kemal went to his room on the same floor and shrugged into the maşlah readied for him the night before. Mehpare had restitched the hem so that it would be long enough to cover his feet. As she had busied herself with needle and thread, Kemal had reread the hand-delivered letter directing him to dress in women’s garments. Under the worried gaze of Mehpare, he tore the letter into tiny pieces and tossed them into the brazier.

  The women and children of the house followed Kemal into the large anteroom. Everyone spoke at once; everyone had something important to say. When Kemal began descending the stairs to the tiled entry hall, there was much pushing and shoving on the staircase. Zehra and Housekeeper Gülfidan had been given the day off; the only servant was Hüsnü Efendi. He stood by the door, frowning deeply, muttering prayers.

  First, Kemal kissed the hand of his weeping grandmother, who was too distraught to scold him, too spent even to speak. After they’d exchanged kisses, she stood across from him and muttered a long prayer, which she then ritualistically breathed onto his face. After Saraylıhanım, it was Behice’s turn. Now that the nephew she had been so eager to remove from the house was actually leaving, she felt vaguely guilt-stricken. She held Kemal tight and began sobbing loudly. “If I’ve been at fault . . .” But that was as far as she got.

  “Aunt! How can you say that! I’m the one who’s been at fault, time and again. I brought trouble into your house, disease . . .”

  “All I’ve done for you, I’ve done freely, and before Allah, I now release you from any claims I might have on you,” Behice said, echoing the leave-taking of her husband.

  Leman and Suat were crying, tugging at Kemal’s shirt-sleeves. Suat tried to climb up into his arms.

  “You’re a lot heavier than the last time I picked you up, you little rabbit; I don’t think I can manage it now,” Kemal said. “When did you get so big?”

  Behice pulled her daughters off Kemal. If Mehpare was the only dry-eyed person there, it was because she’d shed her tears in secret over the past few days. She stood in the corner and watched Kemal take leave of his family. Kemal covered his head with the hood of the cloak and squeezed his hands into a pair of women’s gloves; before he lowered his veil over his face, he took Mehpare by the arms, pulled her a bit closer, and kissed her neck, cheeks and eyes.

  “I’ll be back, Mehpare. Don’t be upset. Take care of our son,” he whispered.

  The last person Kemal embraced was Hüsnü Efendi, who opened the door for him. He pretended not to notice the tears in the servant’s eyes as he lowered his veil, pulled his cloak close, picked up his small valise, and walked toward the waiting carriage.

  Sitting next to the driver was a man with a handlebar moustache of the sort affected by the kabadayı of Istanbul—the rough and ready neighborhood toughs led by Cambaz Mehmet of Topkapı. When he saw Kemal coming through the gate, he leapt out of the carriage, took his valise, helped him in, and sat across from him.

  Mehpare raced into the garden with a bucket filled by Hüsnü Efendi. Together, they poured out the contents of the bucket as the carriage began driving off.

  As the pool of water grew into a dark stain on the street, Mehpare caught a glimpse of Kemal’s face and the gloved hand he was waving through the tiny carriage window.

  “I entrust you to Allah, my darling,” she said. She had never used such a term of endearment in Kemal’s presence. She repeated it to herself, again and again: “My darling, my darling, my darling . . .”

  The carriage turned left at the bottom of the street, and slid from view.

  – 12 –

  On the Farm

  Arriving at the farm after a grueling journey, Kemal slid his valise under the bunk bed that had been allocated to him, and, as he stacked his books in a neat pile beside it, immediately began looking forward to the day he’d be able to leave this place. The dormitory stank. Though the windows were open, a layer of grey tobacco smoke hovered just below the ceiling and, mingled with the stench of dirty socks pulled on after hasty ritual ablutions, was the overpowering odor of sweat and of breath permeated with garlic. He knew what it was to share a crowded dormitory with other men, but he’d been accustomed to sharing them with the sons of bureaucrats and wealthy tradesmen, men who, like himself, had grown up in stately homes, in mansions. Men who smoked, but whose breath and feet never stank. Men with clean underclothes. Not for the first time, Kemal cursed the years he’d spent shut up in the refined atmosphere of an Istanbul mansion. He thought back to his army days. At the beginning, he’d been struck with a strange sense of regret, as he was now. But when they’d been shipped to the East it was as though a silken cape, white and icy, had obliterated all lesser discomforts. The only thing he remembered from that war was the cold. Endure the cold, overcome the cold, don’t succumb to the cold, don’t fall captive to the cold! Was it possible that this long and narrow room, this unbearably smoky, packed and airless room, would make nostalgic even for that misery? An hour later, Kemal was astonished to find that he no longer even noticed the reeking, stuffy dormitory. What a remarkable creature, man, he thought. How quickly he adapts to any terrain, no matter how inhospitable, the moment he senses there are no avenues of escape.

  And yet he was astonished at how quickly he found himself missing his home. If he had the chance, he’d run back to the house where, despite the presence of Mehpare, he’d been counting the days like a prisoner pining for release. He yearned for the well-aired, well-scrubbed, well-dusted little room in the attic. He felt drained and his head ached here, among these coarse and vulgar men, his bunk-mates. And think how eager he’d been to come!

  The journey had gone reasonably well.

  The carriage had been stopped a few times by the municipal police, at which the mustachioed fellow sitting across from him and the driver had leapt down to answer some questions before the carriage was allowed to drive on. He’d resented having to sit there in a woman’s cloak, absolutely helpless and of no use to anyone, and couldn’t help asking his escort why he’d been instructed to do so. Couldn’t he have dressed as an ecclesiastic, for exampl
e? He hadn’t minded putting on a çarşaf the day they’d hidden at Azra’s house, but he’d been mortified at being introduced to the men at the farm dressed head to toe in women’s clothing.

  “Heard about how they’ve taken to bothering our women, and the big brawl over it?” his companion in the carriage had asked.

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “Well, how would you, with the papers censored and all. It’s not like the heathens are going to write up their own devilry, is it? Anyway, last week three French officers had a few drinks too many and began hassling some women in Gülhane Park.”

  “And?”

  “And all three of them got knifed. One was hurt pretty bad. I don’t know if he croaked or not.”

  “Their soldiers are out of control, that’s what you’re telling me.”

  “That they are. Their commanders don’t want any trouble and have warned their men not to do it again. That’s why we wanted you to dress as a woman. The stabbings were just last week, and with the memory still fresh in their minds we figured they wouldn’t dare touch you.”

  Satisfied with the explanation, Kemal had kept his coat closed until they reached the inner courtyard of the farm, but he did take off his maşlah before getting down from the carriage. He’d walked through a garden shaded by towering trees, and through the front door of a large house built of yellow stone, out the back door of the same house into a second courtyard, through another garden and, finally, arrived at the building where he’d be staying.

  The dormitory housed seventeen men. These fellows in breeches, with bushy moustaches and rough stubble beards, bore no resemblance to any of Kemal’s friends from the resistance. They were the sort of men Saraylıhanım would have dismissed as “rabble rousers.” As Kemal began lining up the bottles of pills he’d removed from his valise he became aware of scornful sneers from his roommates.

  “Got them monthly pains then, do you, brother,” one of them grinned.

  “My kidneys were damaged and my lungs caught a chill at Sarıkamış. I’m required to take daily medication. If I didn’t keep myself healthy, I wouldn’t be of any use to you,” Kemal explained.

  “You fought in Sarıkamış?” asked Dramalı.

  “Unfortunately, most of us froze to death before we had the chance.”

  “Well how did you manage to get home all healthy then?”

  “Apparently, Allah wasn’t ready to settle accounts with me. I fell captive; then I was sent home.”

  “You look pretty young, is all.”

  “Appearances can deceive,” said Kemal. And how true that was: these roughnecks and ruffians were already becoming the stuff of legend—weren’t at all what they seemed. Most of them were stevedores and coachmen; all of them were prepared to risk their lives to smuggle arms out of warehouses, to give a good dressing down to any of the minority members of the municipal police force who got out of line, to badger and bedevil the occupiers at any time and in any way they could. Black Sea fishermen in single-mast boats had boldly gathered mines laid at the start of the war in the waters of the Bosphorus, turning them over one by one to the War Ministry. Now, in Galata, stevedores and coal porters employed their strong backs for the clandestine shipment of weapons and arms to the resistance forces in Anatolia. If the invasion of Istanbul isn’t going smoothly for the invaders, Kemal thought to himself, it’s because of these men. He found himself warming to his rough companions. And hadn’t Mahir told him that the underground relied not only on porters and carriage drivers, but on pickpockets and crooks as well? These were the common criminals whose light fingers served a noble cause by plundering armories, helping to send the stolen munitions to the Nationalists. How could he possibly look down his nose at them? Still, he couldn’t help shuddering as he hoped to himself that there were no thieves among his roommates and decided, on the spot, that he wouldn’t ask about their occupations.

  And although Kemal did indeed refrain from any pointed questions of a personal nature, his companions had no such scruples, and he was able to learn a great deal about their colorful lives and shady backgrounds, as well as the organization itself, during his stay at the farm. He’d been enlisted into the resistance, which operated on a secretive cell system, by Mahir. All he knew was that an underground shipping line had been established for the sending of people, arms and supplies to Anatolia. The person responsible for running this line so vital to the cause was a footman. Here, the sterling education Kemal had always prided himself on, his courtly manners, which had always been such a source of pride and joy to his grandmother, meant nothing. The tales repeatedly told by the men in his unit were a constant source of amazement and new information.

  It was at the farm that Kemal learned that life is neither unfailingly good and true nor unfailingly brutish and misguided. If he was, here and now, working to serve his country in its hour of greatest need, he owed a debt of gratitude to the Committee of Union and Progress, the very party for whom his initial wild enthusiasm had later turned to disenchanted disgust. It was CUP who, by setting up the Special Forces, had trained a generation of secret agents. After entangling the Ottoman Empire in the Great War, CUP had fallen from power; its leaders had been forced to flee the empire, its members either arrested or exiled, its Special Forces disbanded. But the few party members who had managed to return in secret had also ensured that intelligence-gathering activities continued and a new organization was formed. Kemal was now a member of that restructured organization, which was drawing on its experience to aid the National Independence Army. All across the districts and quarters of Istanbul, men of every description were enlisted in the cause, with each neighborhood attempting to outdo the others in acts of heroism. Local roughs with nicknames like “Rapscallion,” “Uncle,” “Big Brother,” and “Bully,” were more than ready to demonstrate their patriotism. Underground cells had filled with oarsmen, fishermen, stevedores, bakers, drivers, craftsmen, laborers, shopkeepers, civil servants, and intellectuals—the unnamed heroes of the resistance who, through their untiring efforts, blazed a path to victory, cobblestone by cobblestone. Kemal knew that without these men, who were smuggling soldiers in civilian clothes and arms stolen from Istanbul depots to the farthest reaches of Anatolia, the war of independence would have remained no more than a dream.

  Many was the night an exhausted Kemal climbed into his bunk and said a prayer of gratitude for the CUP, the force behind the new organization known as Karakol and—ultimately—by a multitude of other names.

  Kemal wasn’t a participant in the street-level actions and activities that were plaguing the occupation forces. He spent his days forging identity cards and decommission papers for the volunteers bound for Anatolia: it was only with the express permission of the Allied Passport Bureau that the citizens of Istanbul were able to travel even within the city limits—say, from Anadolu Feneri, at one extreme, to Pendik, at the other. Kemal was among those busily drawing up papers and stamping them, until his hands were cramped and his fingers numb. And as he prepared counterfeit certificates, records and papers for non-existent merchants, tradesmen, doctors and lawyers, he was counting the days until he would be assigned more dangerous duties.

  One evening, as he chatted with his fellows in the dormitory, grumbling about his desk-work, he received an earful from Dramalı.

  “Look at him, whining away,” Dramalı had said, “you’d think we could do what he does. There’s something for everyone. Do all five fingers look alike? No—but they work together, and each does its own thing. Which of us can write all fine and dainty? You! And who can forge those papers? You again! If they tell me to do it, can I? Forget it! The only thing my hand is good for is its trigger finger. So stop complaining and keep at it!”

  Without a word, Kemal went over to his bunk and stretched out. A moment later, Dramalı was standing there in front of him. “Have I gone and upset you?” he asked.

  “No, I’m not upset. You were right, Dramalı.”

  “Well, you’re right too, Kemal Be
y. You’ve been cooped up here and you’re sick of it. I’ll tell you what—we’re planning to take out this Binit fellow pretty soon. You can join us if you want.”

  “You mean Bennett? The Chief of Intelligence?”

  “The Brit. That’s him.”

  “Dramalı, you’d only be asking for trouble. They’d string you up if you got caught.”

  “We won’t get caught.”

  “If you kill him they’ll simply appoint someone else. But if something were to happen to you, who would raid the arms depots? Don’t do it. It’s not worth the risk.”

  “Scared, are you?”

  “Not at all. I think it’s unnecessary. Is there any need to slog through a cesspool?

  “We think there is.”

  “Does Pehlivan know about this?”

  “I suppose you were too busy living it up in some mansion to hear about the torture this Binit character dished out to our Nationalists.”

  “What’s all this about living it up in a mansion, Dramalı? The shortages hit every house in Istanbul. We suffered along with everyone else.”

  “Never mind all that, what I’m asking is this: do you want to be with us when we take this guy out, or not?”

  Kemal was sorry he’d ever opened his mouth. If he refused, his reputation would be in tatters.

  “Of course I’ll go with you.”

  “Do you know this guy’s language?”

  “I speak some English, yes.”

  “Good, you can tell him why we’re rubbing him out,” chimed in Börek Vendor Hasan, who occupied the upper bunk, and whose upside-down face swung crazily at Kemal’s ear. “We’re killing Binit ‘cause of what he done to our friends.”