by Kulin, Ayse
When Behice remained seated Mahir murmured, “Behice Hanımefendi, we’ll wait for you to come back . . . I trust I’m now considered a member of the family . . .”
“You’ve always been like a member of the family, Mahir Bey,” Behice said. “There’s no need for me to go upstairs. Mehpare’s nursing Sabahat, bless her. My milk has been in short supply.”
“Poor Mehpare has a baby at her breast all day long,” Leman said. “And they’re both so chubby.”
“Mehpare Abla’s turned into a cow,” Suat giggled.
“Suat! If your father wasn’t leaving tomorrow I’d send you straight up to your room! Not another word out of you, do you hear!” scolded Behice, who had gone red with embarrassment.
“Mahir Bey, you’ve been deceived by the outer appearance of my daughters into thinking they’ve grown up; they’re still children, I fear,” Ahmet Reşat said.
“Impertinent children,” Saryalıhanım added for good measure.
Leman’s eyes filled with tears.
“Then I’m a lucky man indeed to have a fiancée with the guile-lessness of a child,” Mahir said.
“Come on,” Ahmet Reşat said, “Let’s speak of pleasant things at dinner this evening. I want to smile when I look back at this, my last meal with my entire family.”
“What do you mean ‘last meal’? We’ll have many more meals together,” Behice said. Her husband’s decision to flee abroad had already begun the transformation of a coddled, delicate creature into an iron-willed woman prepared for adversity of any kind. Ahmet Reşat flashed his wife a look of gratitude.
Despite their best efforts, the dinner that evening was shrouded in sadness. They all knew it could well be their last meal together. Mehpare didn’t speak at all. Ever since Kemal’s death, she’d taken to speaking only when necessary. Try as she might to maintain a veneer of gaiety, Behice’s spirits were clearly sagging. Conversation at the somber engagement dinner was mostly between Reşat and Mahir, and focused almost exclusively on the state of the nation and the future of an empire without a sovereign. An empire?
“We should stop referring to the Ottomans as though they still had an empire,” Ahmet Reşat said at one point. “We’ve lost our empire; a handful of land is all that remains to us. God willing, Mustafa Kemal Pasha will be better at defending it from the rapacity of foreign states than we were.”
Immediately after dinner, Mahir made his excuses and asked permission to go home. He would, of course, be getting up early the following morning.
“Mahir Bey, please don’t trouble yourself tomorrow. I’ll slip out of the house first thing in the morning. I’m joining some colleagues at the quay,” Ahmet Reşat said.
“I will most certainly be standing on the quay to wave you off, efendim.”
Ahmet Reşat accompanied his future son-in-law as far as the garden gate. Leman waited in vain for him to turn round and wave. But as he strode off into the darkness that night, Mahir’s thoughts were solely of Ahmet Reşat’s dawn journey into what could be permanent exile.
When Ahmet Reşat returned to the sitting room he found Leman in front of the window.
“Why haven’t you gone to your room yet, my dear?” he said, stroking his daughter’s hair.
“Father, why do you have to go? No one’s given me a proper explanation. I’m an engaged woman now, not a child. Can’t you tell me?”
“Sit down, Leman” Ahmet Reşat said wearily. Father and daughter sat across from each other on the divan.
“There’s a list, Leman. The men on the list are considered traitors to their country. I haven’t seen the list myself, but I’m absolutely certain that all of the members of the last cabinet and all of the signatories to the Treaty of Sevres are on it. The Ankara Government has issued a death warrant for everyone on the list.”
“Father!” Leman stifled a scream with her hand.
“You must never lose your fortitude, my girl. You’ve got to look after your mother, your grandmother and your sisters. Keep your composure at all costs. Having entrusted the entire family to you and Mahir Bey, I’m able to leave with a heart less troubled. One day, they’ll understand that we’re not traitors and we’ll be able to return. You’re the daughter of an honorable man who has given his life to the service of his country. Never forget that.”
Leman leaned her head on her father’s chest, her body wracked with sobs. Ahmet Reşat allowed her to cry for a moment, then, in a soft voice, he said, “Come on, let’s go to our rooms. Don’t let your mother see you crying like that.”
Leman composed herself, wiping away her tears and the first kohl she had ever worn with the back of her hand. With her streaked face and elaborately curled hair, she resembled neither a child nor a woman. Still in mourning for her beloved uncle, she’d suddenly become engaged and learned of the death warrant against her father. Her large eyes looked perplexed, as though she had not yet puzzled out how she was meant to endure all that had come her way. It was with both sorrow and love that Ahmet Reşat gazed at the sixteen-year-old girl whose shoulders, at the fall of a single sentence, had been burdened with the responsibilities of a lifetime.
Once Mehpare had finished nursing Halim, changed his diapers and put him in the cradle at the foot of her bed, she leaned over the decorative cradle to her right. Eyes tightly shut, Sabahat appeared at first glance to be sound asleep, but her tiny lips puckered and worked, a sure sign that she would soon wake up and cry. Mehpare wiped her nipple with some moist cotton, bent over the cradle and picked up the tiny girl. Eyes closed, the baby snuffled hungrily, nuzzling and craning its neck until she soon found her wet-nurse’s nipple and began sucking noisily. Mehpare ran her fingertips over the downy hair. She’d loved the other girls, especially naughty, talkative Suat. But there was a special place in Mehpare’s heart for the baby now in her arms—this little girl, who, like her own Halim, would grow up without knowing the love, the tenderness, the well-meaning gruffness of a father. Mehpare herself knew only too well what it was like to be viewed by others with that subtle mix of pity, scorn, and disdain reserved for fatherless girls.
In her first years in this house she’d been so envious of the way the girls were spoiled and petted by Reşat Bey. While everyone else would rush about making themselves and the house presentable if they knew the master of the house had turned into the street on his way home, the girls had never been the least bit scared of him. They’d come tumbling down the stairs and leap straight into his open arms.
“Où est mon petit cadeau?” Suat would ask, and each time she’d be praised for having added a few more words of French to her vocabulary. Saraylıhanım had always objected, warning, “You’re spoiling the girls, Reşat Bey, my boy. They’ll never be able to adapt when they go off to live with their husbands.”
“I’m not sending my girls away,” Reşat Bey would say. “When they get married, their husbands can come here and live with us.” He’d finally notice the pair of eyes peering through the crack of a door or down from the landing, and turn his attention to the dejected little girl who wasn’t his daughter. “I’d even have second thoughts about giving Mehpare away to just any suitor.” Mehpare’s nose would tickle and her eyes sting. She’d wanted so much to be Reşat Bey’s real daughter. That had been impossible, of course; but now here she was, not only his daughter-in-law but his daughter’s wet nurse. And if God had taken Kemal away from her, he’d also given her two babies to hold close to her heart. It was early still, the sun hadn’t yet risen above the horizon; a time said to be the most auspicious for prayer. If she vowed to God never to suckle Sabahat again, never to hold her or so much as caress her silken skin, would He allow Reşat Bey, the man she now regarded as her father, to stay here in this house?
After twenty minutes of nursing, she sat Sabahat on her lap and burped her. Then she gently put her down in the cradle, nappies unchanged so that she wouldn’t wake up, and drew aside the curtain. A coupe was waiting in front of the garden gate. Soon, Ahmet Reşat would walk through the
front door, small valise in hand, board the coupe and disappear into the morning gloom. And, just like Kemal, those who remained behind would never know where he’d gone, what he’d endured, where he was buried. As Mehpare fought back her tears she heard a creak on the stairs. Someone was tiptoeing down those stairs, careful not to wake anyone. It could only be Reşat Bey.
He’d wanted to leave without any fuss, leave the house as everyone slept. Later, they would all wake up at the usual hour as though nothing had happened and go on with their daily lives. That’s what he’d wanted . . . what he’d requested of each of them . . . asking that his last wish in this house—until he returned, of course—be honored.
When Mehpare was certain he had descended as far as the ground floor, she threw on her dressing gown and rushed down the stairs to the kitchen. She paused at the door. In the dimness she could make out a ghostly apparition in a white nightgown: it was Behice, doing exactly what Mehpare had come down to do. Mehpare crept inside and fumbled for a basin; finding one, she filled it at the faucet. As she left the kitchen with Behice, they came across Saraylıhanım. A moment later, the three women, none of them speaking, all of them bearing a basin of water, stepped through the front door and silently followed in the tracks of Ahmet Reşat. He didn’t look back, either because he actually didn’t hear them or because he simply chose not to. Nodding to the driver holding open the door, he stepped into the coupe. The previous night, his wife had wept in his arms. He didn’t have the strength to look upon that face drawn with pain and into those eyes shot with blood, to bid her farewell yet again. The driver climbed up onto his seat and flicked his whip at the horse’s bony hindquarters. As soon as the coupe began rolling away, the lips of the three women formed soundless prayers as they splashed their basins onto the street.
“Go like water and return like water, my husband.” Behice’s anguished cry mingled with the receding clicks of hooves on cobblestones, and was gone.
The minute the coupe turned the corner onto the main street, Behice, who had been able to remain on her feet only with the support of Mehpare and SaryalıHanım, sank to the ground and burst into tears.
Mahir was agitatedly pacing back and forth in front of the port authority when he saw a coupe drawing up to the curb on the opposite side of the street. He hurried over and took the small valise from the driver.
“Mahir . . . What have you done! You shouldn’t have come,” said Ahmet Reşat.
“How could I not come, Reşat Bey! How could I let you go without saying goodbye?”
“Have any of my colleagues come?”
“I see a few of them. Look, just over there on the corner; it’s Cemal Beyefendi and Hazım Beyefendi.”
“Let me go and say hello to them; I’ll be right back.” Ahmet Reşat had only walked a few paces when he suddenly spun on his heel and returned to Mahir’s side. “Come with me, Mahir. I’d like to introduce my new son-in-law to my friends,” he said. A smile spread across Mahir’s troubled face. The two men walked side-by-side towards the gathering crowd.
An official from the Lloyd Triestino shipping company came up to a small group of passengers chatting on the quay as they waited to board an Italian ship bound for Brindisi; he informed them that he’d brought their travel documents. With long faces, the last Ottomans followed the official into the customs house. The disgraced ministers of a defunct empire were to travel with papers arranged by Count Caprini, who had enjoyed close ties to the palace and was a personal friend of many of the men he was now helping to flee.
When Count Caprini had heard that the Ankara Government had drawn up a list of men condemned to death, and that it contained the names of every minister in the last cabinet, he’d called on his old friend Ahmet Reşat, personally traveling all the way to the mansion in Beyazit.
Most of the cabinet members and members of parliament had already left on the British steamer, Egypt, bound for the country of that name. Among those still remaining were several of the Count’s friends. A steamer would be leaving for Brindisi in two days. If Ahmet Reşat and his friends missed that boat they would have to flee by train, meaning identity checks at every border they crossed. That could be dangerous.
A decision was hastily made. Those unable to obtain passports in the brief time allotted would have to get them on the quay, just before the ship sailed.
As Ahmet Reşat and his friends followed the Italian official into the customs house, Mahir began walking towards the stern of the anchored steamer. The ship stretched on and on, like a vast floating apartment block. It was only when he reached the end of the ship that he was able to see the opposite shore. A few lights were still burning over by Yenicami; in the twilight of early dawn, the city was slowly shaking itself awake with mutters and murmurs and groans. Welling up into the morning sky, drowning out the clacking of the first tram, the putt-putting of motorboats heading for harbor, the weary cries of fishermen unloading their catch, was the call to prayer. Eyes closed as he listened reverently to the melodious chanting of the muezzin, Mahir entreated Allah to help Ahmet Reşat.
At the touch of a hand on his shoulder, he jumped.
It was Reşat Bey, now standing next to him, saying, “It’s time to say good-bye.”
Mahir looked at his friend’s face, that kind, handsome face, now worn and sallow in the pearly first glow of dawn. But when Ahmet Reşat spoke, his voice was as strong and firm as ever.
“Mahir, I’m entrusting my family to you. I’m certain you’ll cherish Leman. Don’t delay the wedding on my account. And my offer remains. You’ll be discharged from the military for being my son-in-law. I urge you to set up a clinic in the selamlık.”
“Thank you. Don’t allow your heart to grow heavy, efendim. Know that all will be well here. Your family is now my family.”
“I may be overstepping here, but Mehpare and Halim are also members of this family, Mahir, and I must ask you, please, not to view them any differently than you would Behice Hanım, Sabahat or Suat.”
“Of course not, efendim.”
“Now make your farewells.”
Ahmet Reşat placed one hand on his future son-in-law’s shoulder, gripped his arm with the other and looked for a time into his face, as though to draw strength from those honest, brown eyes. Then, without a word, he turned and swiftly climbed the gangplank to the ship.
Mahir was suddenly very much alone at the base of the enormous steamer, the welfare and security of an entire family resting on his shoulders. He didn’t even notice the other passengers ascending the gangplank. He gazed up, seeking a last glimpse of Ahmet Reşat, but there was no sign of him.
Reşat was at the back of the ship, both hands resting on the rail as he looked out over the sea, the domes and the minarets. Seagulls dipped their white wings into the water as they scavenged for food. Soon, the rising sun would paint the domes gold. The city would awaken, coming to life with its stevedores, its vendors, its civil servants, its students, its fishermen. After the steamer had slowly moved away from the quay, turned toward the open sea and bid its farewell to Istanbul with a strange animal cry, the city would soon be left behind.
He’d blamed the Sultan for having fled aboard a British warship; it was wrenching to think about that now. Ever since his twenties, Ahmet Reşat had been serving the state as an honorable, judicious, industrious subject of the empire and now, like a traitor, like a criminal, he was forced to abandon his country, holding a foreign passport. It was a dagger in the heart, twisting. He couldn’t still the pain, the shame, the outrage. The previous morning he’d imagined walking into the sea with a boulder. Now he imagined jumping off the ship. If he didn’t strike his head on the way down, would he reflexively start swimming the moment he hit the water? He could imagine the screaming headlines the following day: Disgraced Finance Minister Botches Suicide! What would Behice do when she heard about that? Or his aunt?
He reached into his pocket for his cigarette case and was startled when his fingers came into contact with something. Strange, h
e only carried his tobacco in that particular pocket! He pulled out a hard object wrapped in a handkerchief. Fingers trembling with excitement he unraveled the silken knotted corners, upon one of which “BR,” his wife’s initials, were embroidered in silver thread. Gleaming in his hand was the family heirloom Behice had worn on their wedding night, a diamond-studded brooch shaped like a bird. A tiny slip of paper had been carefully folded and placed in the bird’s beak.
“I realize your funds are limited and if you ever find yourself in need please don’t hesitate to sell this bird. My heart is with you, always.”
He was moved to tears. Banished were the dark thoughts that had been swirling in his head just a moment earlier. He didn’t have the courage to kill himself while there were people he loved, and he was too pious to betray the soul Allah had entrusted to him for safekeeping. So, until the time came to surrender that soul, he would endeavor to survive in a foreign land. He might obtain a position somewhere, perhaps as a translator. His French and Persian were good, and he spoke some Italian. Or he might become an accountant. Surely a man who had once managed the finances of a vast empire would be sufficiently versed in figures to attract the attention of a merchant. He’d work and meet his needs, exchange letters with his family, follow his children’s lives from afar, miss them and Istanbul terribly, be filled with longing but go on living. And maybe one day he would pin the brooch back onto his wife’s breast with his own hands.
Suddenly, there was a deep-chested, full-throated, drawn-out hoot: the ship was leaving port. Ahmet Reşat tightened his grip on the wooden rail and, confident that he would be drowned out by the ship whistle and oblivious in any case to possible onlookers, he roared with all his might:
“Farewell Istanbul! Farewell my city!”
– 24 –
The Letter
June 1924, Bucharest
To my beloved wife, Behice,
I wept with joy as I read your most recent letter about of the birth of Sitare; how sorry I am that I couldn’t have been with you. May her name, the Persian for ‘star’, herald a life and destiny forever bright. I ask God that the child be healthy, dutiful, long-lived.