by Orga, Irfan
‘Ey gaziler yol göründü
Yine garip serime
Dağlar taşlar dayanamaz
Benim ah u zârima … ’
Then they turned the corner, out of our sight, only the sound of the cheering and the singing voices and the noise of the band, coming ever fainter back to us.
CHAPTER 7
Weekend Leave and the New Bride
We did not know where they were taking my father, and although we asked Bekçi Baba, he could only say that the Recruiting Centre might have some information.
The next day Feride was sent to enquire and came back to tell us that my father’s age-group were at the Hasan Paşa Mosque, waiting to be sent away. My mother was excited and bade my grandmother get ready to accompany us to the mosque, as perhaps we would be able to catch a glimpse of my father before he left. We made our way through the crowded streets, my mother and my grandmother heavily veiled, the latter volubly protesting at having to walk, and lamenting loudly for the vanished Murat and the phaeton.
Hasan Paşa Mosque was built in a garden, high above the street. When we got there there were many other women and children, also come to try and see their menfolk before they left İstanbul. Crowded in the garden were the soldiers, looking down at us and searching for their loved ones. One of the soldiers shouted down to us, calling my grandmother by name and telling us that my father was somewhere in the garden. We looked at the soldier wonderingly, for who was this rough-looking person who dared to call my grandmother by her name? Suddenly my mother recognised him, telling us that it was the man who lived opposite us. I could hardly believe her. That soldier in his drab, grey uniform, with his hair cut close against his head, could surely not be the elegant gentleman from across the way – who had so proudly carried his wife on his arm each evening, when taking her for a stroll? It was impossible: where was the similarity between this soldier and the frock-coated, fezzed man from across the street?
Tension increased as I saw my father walking to the edge of the garden. There was quite fifteen feet between us and the garden stood so high from the ground that it was not possible to see each other clearly.
My grandmother called to him, asking if there was anything he wanted but he shook his head and said, sternly: ‘Take the children home and do not come here any more.’
So we waved our handkerchiefs to him and left. There was nothing else to do. We could not wait there all night and we could not bring my father home again. A few days after this we learned he had been moved to Selimiye, on the Anatolian side, for training, and one day my mother took me there with her, hoping to see my father. But it was impossible and we returned wearily home. When we arrived home, we found that Madame Müjğan and her children were with my grandmother and my mother begged them to stay for dinner, for I think she felt their presence would help us forget our father’s absence. It seemed odd to have guests without my father being there, and to see my mother sitting in his place, at the head of the table. The talk was naturally about the war and their absent menfolk. My grandmother inclined still to grumble over changed conditions. She was horrified by the war-lust manifest in the bloodthirsty youth of the district, the only youth she ever saw and those only from her window, for she could not be persuaded to go out on foot. And she was piously indignant that the Sultan and his Government should be so inconsiderate as to leave all the women without their men to protect them.
But we others were growing accustomed to the idea of war, and even to the absence of my father. My mother seemed a different person without him, more competent now that she had not his shoulder to lean on, more decisive and less inclined to sit doing pretty, useless embroidery. She made an effort to instil some scholarship into me, since there was no school to which I could be sent, but it was not a success. She had not the teacher’s patience and I no inclination to learn from her. She was very affectionate with us, but curiously detached, and it was not possible for a child to want to run to her or sob against her shoulder his small fears. We children appeared to be the merest incidents in her life and my father a sort of god.
One day Aunt Ayşe came to visit us, bringing a tall, gaunt maid with her as chaperone. She looked very thin and was distressed at having to travel without my uncle, saying that the noise and confusion in the streets frightened her. She asked for news of my father and my mother told her where he was and she replied that Uncle Ahmet was outside Turkey altogether. Then sat twisting her hands, as though that knowledge was a fearful knowledge to hold and to be outside his country the most terrible thing that could happen to Uncle Ahmet. During dinner that night she ate little, although Feride had been at pains to prepare all her favourite dishes. She sipped a little red wine and coughed continuously, apologising blushingly, saying that she had had this cough for many months now and that it would not go or respond to the various herbal treatments her cook had recommended.
During dinner Feride appeared with a letter for my mother. It had been brought by the batman of a certain captain, whom we knew very well. He said that my father was well but unable to write, for he was undergoing a very rigorous officers’ training which for some reason or another made it impossible for him to communicate with my mother himself. The captain went on to say that at the end of the initial training period, probably by the coming weekend, my father would be given a few days leave.
Feride stood by whilst my mother read this out to us and she was as excited as the rest of us and there and then began to plan what my father would be given to eat. My aunt smiled wistfully. But my grandmother triumphantly held out her glass for more wine and said: ‘You see! They will make him an officer. Did I not tell you that always?’
Then we all drank my father’s health and felt proud and happy. İnci was despatched to tell Madame Müjğan of the good news and to request that she should come and drink coffee with us. Mehmet and I were taken to bed but the women sat long in the salon, their happy voices floating up the stairs and my mother’s laughter now and then ringing out purely – just as in the days when my father had always been with us.
Aunt Ayşe left for Sarıyer and we had two more days to prepare for my father’s arrival. In those days the Muslim weekend was Thursday and Friday and no cleaning could be done during that time. Thursday morning dawned clear and cold and İnci had no time to waste with Mehmet and me. Once we were dressed we were severely cautioned not to get ourselves dirtied, but a twinkle lurked behind the severe voice for today was a happy day, not to be spoiled by tears. That day the house was enchanted. Clean curtains were hung in the main rooms, a great orgy of polishing went on and silk cloths and lace cloths were put everywhere – just as at Bayram. But this was better than Bayram for our father was coming home.
Many neighbours called and my mother drank endless cups of Turkish coffee with them. My grandmother held a sort of court among them, all five fingers of one hand decorated with exquisite rings and jewels blazing about her neck. She was her old, arrogant, despotic self again and commanded royally.
Feride and İnci worked like slaves. Flowers were found and arranged, glasses polished until they shone with a thousand eyes and silver made a note of glory against the mellow walnut of the great buffet. Morning slipped by into afternoon and still my father did not come. Mehmet and I waited for hours in front of the door, until finally the raw air drove us shivering indoors. Everywhere in the house was a sense of expectancy. The hall was all a-glitter with the sheen from the freshly polished floor and with the reflection of the giant silver trays in the patina of the table – an English table my great-grandfather had once brought back from his travels. A copper mangal – a sort of brazier – gave off heat to thaw a cold and weary voyager and the chrysanthemums from Sarıyer glowed brightly in a corner. The house waited for its master and nothing more remained to be done. But still the afternoon flew until it was evening and time for İnci to light the six tall lamps in the salon and the smaller ones in the hall.
Mehmet and I were disconsolate. Would our father not come after all? W
e opened the front door, for a last peep into the evening gloom, letting in such a gust of cold air that İnci sharply ordered us to close the door immediately. But I had seen a soldier turning the corner and I thought it was the captain’s batman come with another message and I shouted to my mother to come. The soldier called to me and then I knew it was not the captain’s batman after all, but my father. I ran to him, throwing myself with violence into his outstretched arms and Mehmet came flying after me. We went into the house together and there was my mother in the hall, all a-tremble with happiness and flushed rosy red, wearing a wine velvet dress and rubies to glorify her neck.
Such laughter and tears there were suddenly, such excited question and answer, for the master of the house was home again, and the old house creaked in its joints and sat back content to shelter such radiance.
My father looked drab in his uniform and said he only longed for a bath and a change of linen, for the coarse Army under-linen chafed his skin.
He was gay and talkative, glad to be home again, hiding his unhappiness at being in the Army. He said he would be training for several more months, adding that that was all to the good since it meant he would remain at Selimiye and might occasionally be permitted to come home. He mentioned the Commanding Officer, a man who had been a great friend of my grandfather’s but he only touched lightly on him, saying that one could not expect favours in the Army. German officers were attached to the unit, Prussian upstarts he called them, adding that there was no love lost between the Turkish officers and the strutting Germans.
My mother shone quietly for the two days he was at home but on the last evening I wandered into the salon on a conversation that was to puzzle me for a long time.
‘ … anything may happen,’ my father was saying earnestly, adding, ‘but if I am not here at that time, I would like the baby to be called Muazzez – or Arif, if it is another boy.’
Here I saw the ever-alert İnci look across to them – she was pouring coffee at a side table – and I was intensely curious, wondering what baby they were talking about. I had not the courage to ask questions and, in any case, the subject was abruptly dropped since my father noticed the proximity of İnci and my own staring face.
When my father left to return to his unit everyone was cheerful, for this time we knew that he was only going as far as Selimiye and might soon be again with us.
‘Au revoir,’ my mother called gaily to his hand-wave and Mehmet and I remained to watch him out of sight.
Then we went back to İnci and daily routine and we none of us knew that this was the real goodbye.
Some weeks later a letter was brought from my father. My mother kept that letter all through her life and it is in my possession today – almost the only souvenir left from those times:
… so you see we shall be leaving Selimiye almost immediately. Our training is not finished and what they intend doing with us nobody knows, so for the time being we march with the rest. We shall leave by train so come to the railway track tomorrow morning. I cannot give you a time but I would like one more glimpse of you before I go. Let the children come too. There is nothing more that can be said here, but I pray God all goes well with you. I leave you and my unborn child in the hands of God and kiss from your eyes …
My mother cried over this letter but my grandmother was offended because my father had not mentioned her and sulked a little for the ingratitude of all sons when they take a wife. Mehmet and I were excited to be going to the rail-tracks. They ran across the bottom of the big waste field behind our house and although they could not be seen from the house, very often one heard the rumble of the infrequent trains. It seemed very romantic to us that our father should travel in such a fearsome monster as a train and we bitterly envied him. İnci said to me that day: ‘Perhaps soon you will have a baby brother or sister; shall you like that?’
‘No!’ I replied, appalled by the thought of a new baby in the house for perhaps some subconscious memory lingered from Mehmet’s babyhood, when I had been continually hushed into silence.
‘But perhaps it will be a lovely baby sister,’ persisted İnci until she finally aroused my curiosity.
‘Who will bring it?’ I wanted to know.
‘One of the pigeons in the garden, one of your pigeons, will bring it from your father.’
‘This morning?’ I asked, ‘or tomorrow when we go to the tracks to see my father?’
‘No, silly!’ said İnci.
I lost interest immediately, uninterested in the arrival of such a remote baby.
‘Did my pigeons tell you?’ I asked finally, not quite able to entirely dismiss the subject, and when İnci replied that they had I sat and thought about her words, then dragged Mehmet off to the garden to look for the knowledgeable pigeons. They strutted at the bottom of the garden and thought we had brought bread for them. And to all my questions they only answered ‘Coo-coo’, in their soft, throaty voices. Mehmet maddened me by rushing at them, his arms flapping, and they took fright and circled irritatingly above my head.
‘Tell me!’ I shouted at them, and they replied, ‘Coo-coo’, ‘coo-coo’, curving and diving and circling and I sadly decided that İnci must have some very special knowledge of pigeon-language.
Next morning we were wrapped in heavy overcoats and scarves and taken with my mother and my grandmother to the bottom of the waste field, where we could see all the passing trains. It was bitterly cold and many trains passed that day, all of them overflowing with soldiers who shouted and sang and waved to us but my father was not amongst them. Trainload after trainload passed us and still he did not come and after two hours we children were almost crying with the cold, stamping our feet in an effort to keep warm.
‘Perhaps he had already gone,’ said my mother, her voice despairing. ‘Perhaps he passed this way when we were still sleeping.’
On came the thundering trains bound for Edirne and God knew what hell afterwards. On the other line we saw a Red Crescent train come in and I felt my mother shiver beside me, as she said to my grandmother: ‘An ambulance train, mother! I wonder if they are sick or wounded soldiers?’
And my grandmother replied: ‘Stop tormenting yourself like this.’
The Red Crescent train slipped past with its weary travellers and then another train, coming in the opposite direction, caught our senses. With such suddenness that we were almost startled, we saw my father’s face at a window and his white handkerchief waving to attract our wavering attention.
‘Look!’ Mehmet shouted. ‘It’s Baba!’
My mother waved to him and threw reckless, last-minute kisses, half laughing, half crying in her excitement. As the train roared past, my father leaned far out of the window and shouted: ‘Goodbye! God bless all of you!’
And my mother cried back to him, ‘Not goodbye, Hüsnü!’
But the train had passed on so perhaps he never heard what it was she said to him, those last, poignant words which she did not know were to be her last words to him.
One little moment more we saw his outstretched hand and the waving, waving handkerchief, then that too was gone and he was gone and the cold morning seemed suddenly colder. We returned home to a warm fire but the chill that was in our blood took a long, long time to thaw.
But life had still to march on and the slow, agonising days of waiting for news to be lived through. Then other problems began to present themselves, creeping insidiously into the normal pattern of life and disrupting it. Firstly arose the problem of food. For weeks past Feride had been using our reserve stocks and my mother became alarmed by the rapidity with which they ran down. Six of us to be fed several times in a day made great inroads on flour and sugar and rice. Feride spent more time hunting open shops than she did in the kitchen. Our bread consumption was cut to the minimum. Sweets with luncheon became things to be remembered and fresh milk was scarce and costly. When it could be bought, it had to be boiled for several minutes before it was safe to drink and was almost half water. The odd-job man was dismissed,
since formerly he had always had all his meals in the house. The washerwoman was, for the moment, retained since she only ever came once a week and she was deemed a necessity.
My grandmother professed to take no interest in these domestic problems but many times I heard her grumbling voice declaring that in her time six servants had been necessary to run her house and that now my mother expected to get the same results with two and a washerwoman. My mother ignored her. She had ceased to be a lady of leisure and was frequently to be found in the kitchen these days during Feride’s shopping expeditions. Prices had suddenly become fantastic, and when food could be bought, treble its normal price was asked. But in those days our trouble was not one of money. When my father had sold his business he had brought all the money home to us, in notes and in gold, and it was decided to keep this large amount in the house, since banking systems were deemed to be too intricate for my mother to understand. So the undefended money lay in the house, many thousands of liras dangerously reposing in a flat wooden box in my mother’s bedroom. And none realised the danger of that arrangement.
My grandmother had no money of her own. My grandfather, according to old Turkish custom, left everything with my father, merely stipulating that my grandmother should be cared for all her life. Since this was the usual manner of leaving possessions or property, my grandmother felt no resentment. She had many fine pieces of jewellery and the lack of ready money was no drawback to her. She had never been allowed to handle money in her life, rarely went out anywhere and had no knowledge of the value of anything. She got impatient if my mother complained of the dearness of things and could not be made to understand why no sweets were nowadays served with luncheon. She had a great appetite for the heavy, syrupy Turkish sweets, made with butter and eggs, and accused my mother of trying to starve her, now that there were no menfolk in the house to defend her. She would imperiously demand fruits or bon-bons and sulk when she was told she could not have them. And she complained that her Turkish coffee was not sweet enough and took to secreting little packets of sugar about her person, tipping a little surreptitiously into her cup when my mother was not looking.