by Kulin, Ayse
As you know, hostilities with France ended last October. The French troops stationed in and around Adana have all been demobilized and Jean Daniel has returned to France at the head of his regiment. I refused his offer of marriage—refused to accompany him. He left these lands disappointed and angry. He desires no further correspondence with me and says he wishes only to forget me and to get on with his life. He’d hoped for us to return to France together, to marry and start a family. If it weren’t for this war, that might have been possible. He’ll never understand why I couldn’t bring myself to marry an officer from an army that was occupying my country. So be it, I have no regrets. And, like you, I now have a great love I will never forget. I will love Jean Daniel for as long as I draw breath.
While he was still in Maraş I requested transfer to a place other than Ankara. My transfer to the Western Front coincided with King Constantine ordering his Greek troops to march on Ankara. Vehicles and wagons loaded with soldiers, the wounded and the fleeing filled the roads. It was a grinding journey but it was worth the hardship. I was there to share with others our great victory in Sakarya.
I stayed in Eskişehir for a while. As our National Army launched a major offensive I was given a position as a nurse at a field hospital behind the lines.
It was smart of us to attend those classes at the Red Crescent in Istanbul, Mehpare. If I hadn’t learned how to dress wounds, how to change bandages and give injections, what would I have done? There were other women here from Istanbul, seven of us in all, nursing amid the shelling and gunfire, sometimes for days on end, with virtually no sleep. During twenty days of continuous counter-attacks, we did everything we could to help, from working in the field hospitals and kitchens to gathering fruit from the trees and vegetables from the fields, from rolling bandages to assisting at surgeries. With God’s help, every single counter-offensive ended in victory.
Undoubtedly, Reşat Beyefendi has long since been informed of the most recent development, but I’ll share it with you nonetheless: Greek Commander in Chief General Nikolaos Trikoupis and his retinue were captured last week. We wept in the streets, embracing one another and singing together. Then we all followed the army corps as it advanced towards İzmir, which is how I eventually came to be in this beautiful place. As we neared İzmir, the entire city was in flames. They wouldn’t allow any women to go to the port, where there were reports of utter chaos. We waited at a village not far from Manisa and were able to enter İzmir only two days later. I don’t know if you’ll believe this, but as I looked out over İzmir for the first time, from a hilltop, I felt as though Ali Riza and Kemal were there with me, shedding tears of joy. They have not died in vain. Every life we lost brought us a step closer to liberation.
Mehpare, this might not be of much comfort to you, but the telegraph lines Kemal successfully put in place are now proclaiming victory to the four corners of our land.
By the end of this month, Western Anatolia is expected to be purged of the Greek army. I’m preparing to rent a small house in the district of Karantina, not far from the school where I will become an English teacher. I’m arranging for my mother to come and live with me. The summers here are said to be sweltering, but for the rest of the year the climate is mild. When school is recessed for the summer, we’ll be coming to Istanbul in any case. We’ll probably rent out part of our enormous house. And we’ll have the opportunity to see you all.
There is much talk of eventually expelling the enemy forces from Istanbul as well. I would like to be there with you when it happens.
Please reply soon. Send me news of Halim and Sabahat, of Behice Hanımefendi, Reşat Beyefendi and the girls. Has Leman improved on the piano? Has Suat grown taller and more beautiful? I wonder about all of them. I learned from my mother that Saraylıhanım has not been herself since the news of Kemal’s death. I’m terribly sorry. May Allah heal her.
May God bless us all; I kiss the hands of all my elders and the eyes of all the children.
Thinking of you always, your devoted friend,
Azra
When Mehpare had finished reading the letter she folded it and put it in the pocket of her apron. Saraylıhanım’s voice was reverberating down the stairs.
“Mehpare, have you brewed Kemal some linden tea?” she cried.
Walking over to the foot of the stairs, Mehpare replied, “I have. I’ll bring it in a moment.”
There were days when Saraylıhanım’s faculties were clouded, when she thought Kemal was still alive. The rest of the household would placate her by acting as though Kemal was still with them. Mehpare had even begun to enjoy this little charade: it pleased her to imagine that her husband was still among them.
When Behice had noticed that Mehpare was behaving like Saraylıhanım, she’d alerted her husband and Reşat Bey had spoken to Mahir.
Mahir had been deeply concerned by Mehpare’s behavior. Saryalıhanım’s delusions could be put down to her advanced years, but he strongly advised that Mehpare be put under immediate psychiatric observation. A nerve specialist had been contacted and a thousand and one pretexts found to send Mehpare for a consultation with the renowned doctor.
It’s difficult for any woman to cope simultaneously with the loss of a husband and the birth of a child. Would it be possible to arrange a change of scene for Mehpare, some place far away, unconnected with her memories?
The household discussed various alternatives. But Mehpare was nursing two babies. Where could she go and who could take her? Behice thought of sending Mehpare and the babies to Beypazarı. She’d go with them, see her father and return to Istanbul. Mehpare could stay on at the farm for a couple of months, benefiting from the clean air and the fresh food.
But when they brought up the subject with Mehpare she was vehemently opposed. She was not going anywhere, she told them. No one could tear her away from the lingering scent of her husband and the memories kept alive in the rooms he’d once inhabited.
“Mehpare dear, we only want what’s best for you,” Reşat Bey had pleaded. “It’s not right to shut you up here with my old aunt, whose mind isn’t what it used to be. The dead are gone, my dear, and the living must go on with life. Think of your son if not yourself. You need to be healthy for his sake.”
“I am healthy, efendim.”
“Spiritually healthy then.”
“I’m spiritually healthy as well. If I act as though Kemal is alive, it’s only to make Saraylıhanım happy. It does me good as well.”
“And that is precisely the danger. He’s dead. You mustn’t pretend he’s still alive.”
“Fine then! I won’t do it again!”
Mahir advised them not to push her, and they didn’t insist she go to the farm. And for her part, Mehpare stopped acting as though Kemal was alive and never again played along with Saraylıhanım. And now, as Mehpare poured out a glass of brewed linden from a long-handled copper pot, she smiled to herself. They all thought she was crazy. Well let them. She heard Saraylıhanım’s tread on the stairs.
“Why are you coming down here, dear? I’m bringing up the tea.”
“You’ve remembered to add some honey, to soften up his chest?”
“I have,” Mehpare assured her in a low voice. “Now go back upstairs, don’t let them see you down here.”
She watched as the elderly woman dragged her feet back up the stairs. It was as though the authoritative woman who had taken over the birth of Halim until the midwife arrived and who had single-handedly managed the administration of the household over the following weeks had decided her duties were done, and become a deli saraylı, a former palace woman gone typically mad.
As Behice and her daughters become increasingly exasperated with Saraylıhanım, Mehpare’s love and tenderness grew by the day. She knew that Kemal’s death had scorched the elderly woman’s heart just as intensely as it had her. They understood each other. Mehpare would not leave this house until Saryalıhanım—may Allah grant her a long life—had been recalled by her maker. And when she did
leave, she wouldn’t go to Beypazarı, but to İzmir, to live with Azra.
And they would take to the air together, on broken wings.
– 22 –
Flight
It had been seventeen days since Sultan Vahdettin had lost his title as the thirty-sixth padişah, or “Master Shah” of the House of Osman. Ever since he’d received notice of the abolition of the sultanate on the night of November 1, 1922, he had remained in the palace in his remaining capacity as Caliph. And as the Caliph sat in one of the pavillions in the royal park of Yıldız, his eyes traveling across the hundreds of domes under which his illustrious ancestors had gone to their eternal rest on the seven hills of Istanbul, it was impossible to know if he was lamenting the treachery of the Arab leaders he’d always believed would eventually come to the aid of the “Commander of the Faith,” or if he was bitterly regretting the missteps and miscalculations of the past years. It was impossible to know because the normally taciturn Vahdettin was no longer speaking at all. His despondency spoke for itself: in the deep lines etched on his face, in his sagging shoulders.
He hadn’t been particularly surprised when he’d been notified of the decision to abolish the Ottoman Dynasty.
The Sultan’s first aide-de-camp had greeted National Government representative Refat Pasha in Kabataş with the words, “Welcome, efendim. I convey to you—and to the National Government which you represent—the royal salutations of His Majesty.”
Refat Pasha had responded with the words: “Please convey my respects and gratitude to His Exalted Shelter of the Caliphate.”
Sultan Vahdettin was astute enough to infer from the wording of that greeting that the sultanate had come to an end. And as he considered his future, he would have found it impossible not to ponder the violent end suffered by other European rulers.
The French monarch Louis XVI had been guillotined; King Charles I beheaded with an axe; the Russian Tsar Nicholas II shot, along with his entire family. Those would have been the first murders that came to the former Sultan’s mind. The sovereigns sitting on the thrones of overturned empires had all shared a common fate: execution. And, closer to home, hadn’t many of Vahdettin’s own ancestors and relatives also been murdered?
Most had been killed on the orders of their brothers—but some had been dispatched at the request of sons and mothers, and one had even been put to death by his own father. If that was to be his fate, he should accept it with dignity and grace.
In this modern age, surely more humane methods would be visited upon him than those reserved for his ancestor Genç Osman, in 1622. Surely, Sultan Vahdettin would either be shot or hanged.
But then again, there were no signs of preparation for his execution. There was nothing to do but wait patiently. And so he waited. He hadn’t yet considered either suicide or flight.
Then he was informed of a deplorable incident and changed his mind.
Ali Kemal Bey, a leading journalist at Peyam-ı Sabah, a prosultanate gazette that had consistently opposed the Ankara Government throughout the occupation and the war of liberation, had been having a shave at a barber’s shop in Beyoğlu when agents from the Special Force had abducted him, taking him first to Kumkapı, then by motorboat to İzmit.
There, this burly and defiant columnist had been attacked by an angry mob armed with sticks and stones, and finally—when Nurettin Pasha, the commander of the unit assigned to protect him, had failed to issue orders to keep him safe from the crowd—he had been lynched.
The day of the Friday Prayer Procession was fast approaching. Vahdettin was terrified at the thought that he too would be thrown to the crowd: was his execution to take the form of a public lynching? Under no circumstances should he mix with his subjects. After all, the people had been slowly crushed under the boot of the foreign enemy for four long years and had every right to demand a reckoning from their sovereign. If only Sultan Vahdettin could tell the people of his own sufferings, could explain that he had taken the only possible course of action, could describe the torments he had endured as he resigned himself to his fate.
If only he could tell them that he regarded the victory of the National Army as a miracle wrought by Allah and that he was at least as grateful for this triumphant army as they themselves were. But Vahdettin knew he would never have the opportunity for any of this. Some lunatic would leap out of the crowd, others would follow, and God forbid . . . He couldn’t bear to think about it. He couldn’t allow his royal station to be degraded by a repeat of that mob scene in İzmit.
So he decided to flee before Friday Prayers.
From what he’d been able to ascertain, the National Government would not object to abdication and self-exile. No one wanted any bloodshed, unrest or harm to the Caliphate. Ankara had deeply regretted the lynching of the journalist. The best solution was to flee the country with the security afforded by the title of Caliph.
On November 17th, dressed in ceremonial costume, and prepared, along with his fellow dignitaries, to join the procession, Ahmet Reşat took his place in front of Yıldız Mosque in the area reserved for Ottoman ministers. Standing at attention as they awaited the arrival of the Sultan’s carriage were the Royal Guard, in colorful uniforms and white gloves, and the officers, with their gilded decorations, kalpaks and shiny boots. The carriage was behind schedule. The call to prayer echoed from the minarets. Minute followed minute, one after another. An impatient gelding began kicking and stamping under a mounted guard. Others joined in.
Ahmet Reşat and his fellow ministers continued to wait respectfully for the imminent arrival of their sultan, even though they knew he would never again be coming to the Friday Procession. And as he waited, Ahmet Reşat studied the faces of the crowd: the enduring, the long-suffering, the deceived people of Istanbul.
He felt like embracing each and every one of them, these people filling the courtyard of the mosque; he wanted to tell them to stop waiting in the rain and to go home.
Because Ahmet Reşat knew that even as the people of Istanbul were standing in the rain at the Friday Prayers Procession, Sultan Vahdettin VI Mehmet Han was abandoning his country as part of an escape plan devised by General Harrington.
Early that morning five former government ministers and three former Grand Viziers had gone to Yıldız Palace. The Sultan had first bid farewell to his family and relatives in the harem; he had then gone to the selamlık to make his farewells to the personages gathered there to see him off. Wearing an official uniform bedecked with Ottoman and foreign decorations, and dark glasses that might have been meant to conceal his tears, he gravely shook the hands of those assembled and spoke in a qua- vering voice.
Five minutes after the Grand Viziers and ministers had proceeded to the courtyard of the mosque in their personal carriages, he and his retinue would board two automobiles with drawn curtains, exit the Beşiktaş gate of Malta Pavilion, and drive down an avenue lined with British soldiers to Dolmabahçe Palace.
After resting briefly in the harem of Dolmabahçe Palace, he would proceed to the royal pier, board a motorboat flying English colors, and, in a last cruel twist of fate, be conveyed to the waiting British battleship, Malaya.
With him were his two wives, his favorite concubine, his son, Ertuğrul, his private physician, Reşat Pasha, and a few trusted men who handled his personal affairs, chief among them first aide-de-camp Çerkez Pasha. Twelve people in all. And most probably, at that very moment, a military band was striking up The Sultan’s March as a double row of British sailors lined up on the deck of the battleship Malaya and took aboard the last Ottoman Sultan.
Ahmet Reşat hastily pulled his watch out of his breast pocket and checked the time. Yes, the ship bearing the Sultan was probably weighing anchor just about now. He put his watch back in his pocket. Bowing his head slightly, arms folded over his chest, he discreetly paid his respects to all of the illustrious sovereigns, and, in particular, to the last sovereign, of an empire whose glories and dignity had once been legend. When he lifted his chin there were
tears in his eyes. He hadn’t felt this wounded, hadn’t felt a stab of pain quite this acute, since Kemal’s death.
Ahmet Reşat joined the grumbling throngs shuffling towards the outer gate of the courtyard. The rain was falling more heavily than before. Which was good, because the tears were rolling down his cheeks, tears he was helpless to contain, tears that seemed such a natural part of him at that moment that he was barely aware that they were there at all. He felt like Emir Abdullah of Granada, who’d wept from the safety of the mountainside as he’d watched Spanish soldiers swarming the streets of a city going up in flames. Abdullah’s mother had turned to him and spoken those words that would go down in history: “That’s it, cry—crying suits you. Snivel like a harlot for the city you failed to defend like a man!”
Ahmet Reşat’s tears had come too late. Unlike Kemal and his friends, he’d failed to put his heart and soul into defending his city. But, thanks to those brave young men, Istanbul was on the verge of becoming, once again, his city. Insolent foreign troops would no longer be wandering the streets in colorful braided uniforms, and Ottoman officers . . . how foolish . . . which Ottomans? Were there any Ottomans left? In the handful of land remaining from a mighty empire that had once spanned three continents, Turkish officers would no longer be forced to salute those strutting invaders.
“And thank God for that,” he said to himself.
Ahmet Reşat walked all the way to Beyazit. By the time he reached the garden gate he was exhausted, physically and spiritually. Too tired to bother with a key, he rang the bell. He nodded a silent greeting to Hüsnü Efendi and they walked to the house together without a word. The front door swung open. It was Behice, looking utterly drained as she helped him out of his coat, took his fez and flashed a meaningful glance in the direction of the selamlık. “Caprini Efendi has been waiting for you for over an hour,” she said. “Count Caprini Efendi.”