by Ann Bridge
“Ah, I wish I could go too. It will be tricky work, and so interesting. Kemal Pasha will have to get the senior officers on his side, as well as Kiazim Kara Bekir, and the Valis and Kaimakams also; and many of them are old men, linked all their lives to the régime—and in the Army there is still prejudice against him.”
Féridé asked who Kiazim Kara Bekir was?
“The Corps Commander of the Eastern Army Corps. It is only a skeleton, that Corps—really just the cadre; and it is supposed to be occupied in handing over its arms to the Entente, or seeing that others do so!” Orhan laughed, a little gay laugh; his blue eyes twinkled delightfully. “I expect he will soon stop that!” He looked pleased, secret. “But even if the arms do get into the Allied dumps, they may get out again!” His laugh was as clear as a young boy’s. But then he looked grave.
“My heart, you must not tell your Father anything of Ahmet. He is too much in touch with the Cabinet, and the Court—all these feeble creatures, young and old!”
“He does not know?” Féridé was really startled.
“No—Ahmet did not even bid him adieu.”
“But—he will ask!”
“Then you must not answer. It will be better not even to say where he is gone.”
Féridé frowned. “This will be difficult.”
“My dearest one, you have wits—God the All Powerful had seen to that! Use them.”
Féridé had to use her wits quite soon. Within three days of Ahmet’s departure the Pasha became aware of his absence, and began to worry and ask questions. Nilüfer, beautiful and gentle, knew nothing—“My Father, he said he would write—but so far I have not heard.” And remembering how at the same time her young husband had said that he loved her, her immense beautiful eyes filled with tears. Asaf Pasha knew that she was speaking the truth. But it was all most strange—to go, and not take leave of his own father! He tried his mother next—she had a marvellous way of knowing what went on; whether it was because her calm benevolence invited confidences, or that her watchful old eyes missed nothing, he did not know—perhaps, as he sometimes told her, with his grim charming smile, she had the gift of divination! But Réfiyé Hanim, apparently, knew nothing either. “My son, he told me that he was making a journey, and did not know how long he should be absent.”
“But where to, this journey?” the Pasha fretted.
“My son, he did not say.” (The old lady omitted to mention that Ahmet had told her that he did not wish to say where he was going.)
Thwarted—with a faint sense, which he often had with his mother, that he was being ménagé, treated almost as a child—the Pasha next tackled his son-in-law. There he fully expected to draw a blank, and he did. These young fellows all stuck together! “Effendim, I cannot say,” was all he got out of Orhan, very firmly and politely said; not wishing to provoke another breach in the family peace, which was so repugnant to all his ideas of Tightness and dignity, the old gentleman left it at that with the handsome stubborn young man, who stood there before him, so slim and graceful and well-bred. But when Orhan was out, he took occasion to visit his daughter. This was a thing he enjoyed doing anyhow; it gave him immense pleasure to sit with her in her own apartments, where she received him with such an eager happy graciousness, offering him cigarettes, bonbons, setting his chair just right, sending for coffee. Très grande dame, she was nowadays, his little Féridé!
“So Ahmet has gone away,” the Pasha began conversationally, leaning back in his chair, his thin legs as usual stuck out in front of him, and gazing at the lovely Persian-patterned painted ceiling, where faint gilding brought out the colours—his grandmother’s ceiling. He brought his eyes down, and looked intently at his daughter as he asked—“Did you see him before he went?”
“Yes, my Father.”
“So. And did he tell you where he was going?”
Féridé looked him straight in the eyes. “Yes, my Father,” she said again.
“And where has he gone?”
She rose and went to him with the utmost gentleness.
“My dear, my good Father, I beseech you not to ask me that.”
“And why not?”
“Because I cannot tell you.”
“My daughter, I desire you to tell me,” the Pasha said, stiffening. He had already been slightly suspicious when he came to her, but this attitude in his own child—his wild, but loving and biddable child—affronted him strangely, and made him more suspicious than ever.
“My Father, I cannot tell you until my husband gives me permission. At present he forbids it,” Féridé replied now.
The Pasha rose, and walked up and down the small beautiful room. So this was what it meant, to marry off one’s darling daughter, the light of one’s eyes, the treasure of the heart! Oh, it was so correct! She was perfectly right. The Pasha was a good and religious Mahometan; he knew the duties of a wife to her husband. But it is sharp, when the husband—younger than one’s own son—usurps the position that has been one’s own, as father, for so many years. On that head, however, there was nothing that he could say; she was doing her duty. But it was the first occasion of an open clash of wills between them, and the pain of it was astonishingly keen. In his pain, his irritation broke out; he stopped in front of her and said—
“Ah, it will be some idea, some plan, of this famous Mustafa Kemal Pasha’s, I don’t doubt. You are all besotted about him!”
“We believe he wishes to serve our country,” Féridé said, as calm as her grandmother.
“And do others not wish to?”
“My Father, you do; you have served it,” she said, gently now. “Let me offer you some more coffee.”
She closed that conversation. She, his little child, closed it in his face!—perfectly, gracefully, sitting in her own boudoir, entirely mistress of the situation. Angry and upset as he was, Asaf Pasha could not withhold a grudging admiration, tinged with pride.
The Pasha learned fairly soon what was going on, and realised presently that of course Ahmet was mixed up in it. Mustafa Kemal lost no time when he reached Anatolia. Nine days after he landed at Samsun he circularised all Military Commandants and Civil Governors, calling on them to promote more vigorous nationalist demonstrations in favour of independence—which was not quite what the Ottoman Government had intended when they sent him there. By the third week in June he was summoning a Congress of Delegates to meet at Sivas in September, for the express purpose of considering the best means of promoting Turkish independence. Early in July he went to Erzerum to await the opening of a similar Congress there—in this case from the Eastern Provinces; and while there he sent out, in the Sultan’s name, an order to all Military Commanders to cease surrendering arms to the Allies. Foreseeing what the reaction of the Government in Istanbul must be to such a step, which was an open and flagrant flouting of the terms of the Mudros Armistice, a few days later he sent in his resignation both from his new post of Inspector, and of his commission in the army. “I am promoted,” he told his entourage, with a grim smile, “from being an Ottoman General to being a Turkish private!” (Ahmet heard him.)
But this was by no means all. There were at that time two Turkish Army Corps—much reduced, but still existent—in Anatolia: that in the East commanded by sturdy old Kiazim Kara Bekir, of whom Orhan had spoken to Féridé, the other in the West, based on Ankara, commanded by Ali Fuad. Kemal Pasha persuaded both these commanders to come to see him at Amasya, and there succeeded in convincing them that there was a hope for Turkish independence after all—Sultan or no Sultan, Armistice or no Armistice—if they could reassemble their respective Corps and keep them in being. But that was vital; force would be needed, and force must exist. It was no easy task to convince them; they were old soldiers, loyal servants of the Sultanate all their lives. And where were the arms to come from? Mustafa Kemal whispered in their ears of the groups all over the country, headed by young officers loyal to him, who were raiding the arms dumps night after night, and hiding away safely what they took. (That w
as in fact Orhan’s task, which Ahmet had told Féridé was more dangerous than his own—which was true.)
Somehow he did succeed in convincing them; persuasion was always one of his great strengths. They returned to their bases pledged to reorganise their armies, and bring them up to strength. Ahmet, and others like him, set about rousing the country—riding from village to village, sleeping where they could; hot, wet, tired, dirty, sometimes hungry. As Ahmet had foreseen, it was not always easy at first to persuade the peasants, after four years with the colours, to leave their homes and farms, their women and their families, and go back to the army again. There was great discouragement; they had been beaten, and they knew it; the country was exhausted and poor; a sullen resignation had set in. Without the barbed and envenomed provocation of the outrageous Italian swoop on Adalia, and the insane, the criminal folly of the Peace Conference in allowing the Greeks to land at Smyrna, the task of young men like Ahmet might have proved an impossible one. But facts were their best, their unanswerable argument. The natural courage and pride of the Turkish people rose in them afresh as they heard of burnings and massacres, and of the occupation of their own soil, not by the conquering English, but by two nations whom they had long been wont to despise.
Moreover there was another element, one which nations and the rulers of nations overlook at their peril—the factor of moral sanctions. The Turks are a religious people; right and wrong mean much to them. Fairly beaten in a war which many of them felt they had had no just cause for entering at all, and subsequently treated with justice, they might, in their weariness, have remained quiescent. Instead they were treated by the Peace Conference with harshness and contempt— so much so that after Smyrna and Adalia Justice, in Winston Churchill’s immortal phrase, had changed camps, and now sat, a refugee in rags, beside the bivouac fires of the poor men who would not accept injustice, and were trekking back from their homes and their livelihoods to the centres where, once again, they would take up arms to defend their country. There were endless stories, true ones, which Ahmet told later to Orhan and Féridé, of sergeants and corporals rounding up the men in their villages, drilling them for a week or so, and then marching them off to Erzerum or Ankara to re-enlist; there were the prisoners of war, released by the English and sent home from Istanbul, who were met as they got off the train (in their decent new clothes provided by the Ottoman Government) and told to fall in and march to the local headquarters, without so much as greeting their wives and families—and who went, with a good heart, without a murmur. Courage, devotion, self-sacrifice—these are great things; if ever a people displayed them, in their darkest hour, the Turkish people displayed them then.
This courage and devotion of a whole nation is a simple thing, always; the political manifestations of it are, inevitably, far less simple and clear. From the political angle the whole early period of the revolt in Anatolia was tremendously confused—a welter of meetings and Conferences and Committees with long names. These gave concrete form, which in the modern world is necessary, to the practical reality. But in this welter a few things stood out. The first was the adhesion to Mustafa Kemal of the two Corps Commanders; the second was the Congress of Erzerum, which opened on July the 3rd, and sat for a fortnight; the third was the Congress of Sivas in September.
One of the things which made the Erzerum Congress important was that it gave Mustafa Kemal some sort of recognisable status. When it opened, apart from the prestige of his military record and his tremendous personality, he had none. The Ottoman Government, usually so tardy in action, promptly deprived him of his army rank and his Inspectorate alike—he was, as he himself had said, a Turkish private; but a private in an army which had no official existence! The Congress made him its President—but as it only lasted a fortnight, that was insufficient. However it brought into being a permanent body, “The Action Committee for the Defence of National Rights,” and of that too Mustafa Kemal was elected President. The title may sound pompous, but the reality it represented was far from pompous: the reality was those little groups of poor, war-weary, ragged men marching away from their homes to fight again, led by youths like Ahmet.
The Congress of Sivas, which took place in September, was even bigger and more important than that of Erzerum. Delegates came to it from all parts of the country, even—secretly and by stealth—from European Turkey. It called itself by an even longer name—The Association for the Defence of the Rights of Anatolia and Roumelia.” (Roumelia was Turkey in Europe.) But like its predecessor it called into being a smaller, permanent body, the “Representative Committee,” and this became henceforward the acting Government of the new Turkey. Kemal Pasha saw to it that all was done decently and in order, and as constitutionally as was possible to what was technically still a rebel organisation. Principles were set out, as they had been two months earlier at Erzerum: “The Country is one whole, and no parts of it can or shall be detached from it”; “The Nation will resist unanimously any foreign intervention or occupation, even should the Ottoman Government disappear”; “National Forces will go into action, and the National Will shall exert its sovereignty”; “There can be no question of accepting a mandate or a protectorate.” And the day after the Congress closed Mustafa Kemal telegraphed to Istanbul, breaking off all relations with the Ottoman Government.
These were a new sort of words from a defeated nation which was supposed to be waiting submissively on the conquerors’ will, and being parcelled out in the meantime; somehow they resounded. They resounded in Paris, where the statesmen lifted their heads in irritation at this interruption of their more important labours—was not that Commission of President Wilsons going to “settle” about Turkey? They resounded even in Oxford, where his friends asked Dr. Pierce, over their port in the Common Room, who in the world this fellow Kemal was? They resounded most of all in Istanbul, where they rang like a tocsin or a knell, according to one’s point of view.
The Pasha really did not know which he thought. Smyrna and Adalia had angered him as much as the rest of the nation—it was all monstrous, insupportable. But surely the Government were the proper people to take steps, not a wild fellow from Salonika, who never had obeyed orders? And what language was this to address to members of the Government, such as Mustafa Kemal had used?—“You are nothing but cowards and criminals; you cabal with our enemies to betray the nation. You are incapable, I know, of recognising the force of will of your own nation…. But do not forget that that nation will remember your responsibilities, when she comes to pronounce sentence on the infamies that you are committing.” Surely no one had ever written thus to high officials before—they might have had them strangled or poisoned, but to talk like that, no!
The whole summer was tense at the yali, and the autumn became tenser still. The Pasha suspected that Orhan was in some way helping Mustafa Kemal’s movement, or at least that his constant and unexplained absences from the house were connected with the activities in Anatolia. The rebel government there was giving its own orders, and getting them obeyed; more and more of the country was coming under its control—by the end of September the authority of the Sultans government hardly extended further than the actual littoral of the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara. The Allied officials were constantly making angry representations to the Ottoman authorities that arms and ammunition were not being handed in in conformity with the terms of Mudros—not only so, but officers and men sent to collect them were frequently beaten up and even imprisoned, while the existing dumps were being steadily depleted by daring raids, night after night. The few who were caught doing this were savagely punished. But if the Pasha guessed that his son-in-law might be among those who were running these particular risks, he said nothing—not even to his mother; nor did he ask any questions, either of her or of Féridé. Indeed after his one experience of questioning Féridé about Ahmet, he had no desire to try again.
But he did talk, both to his mother and his daughter, about the state of affairs in Anatolia; bitterly to Réfiyé Hanim, rather
more restrainedly in Féridé’s presence. In spite of his restraint, there were sometimes awkward moments. One day he quoted, with indignation, the “cowards and criminals” telegram: “That is no way to address the government of one’s Sovereign,” he said.
“But my Father, if it is true? If the nation is being betrayed?” Féridé said, her grey eyes flashing. “Does not the nation come before Adil Bey?” (Adil Bey was the Minister of the Interior, to whom the savage telegram had actually been sent.)
“My daughter, there are certain loyalties which should be observed,” the Pasha said. “Mustafa Kemal has not observed them.”
“It is, I suppose, a question of where the greater loyalty is due—to one’s country, or to the Sublime Porte,” Féridé said, now looking modestly at the floor.
The Pasha rose and walked about, irritably.
“My daughter, you do not perhaps fully understand these matters.”
“My Father, you are almost certainly right.”
It was all very uncomfortable, in spite of the elaborate courtesy on both sides.
Féridé was having to learn discretion, not a thing which came easily to her. She had never been told, in so many words, what her husband was really doing; the hint thrown out to her by Ahmet when he left was the nearest she had come to it. But she guessed. She could not fail to. In the spring, before either Ahmet’s or Kemal Pasha’s departure, Orhan had often enough come home in the small hours, but he had come back neat and clean, as one who returns from a party with friends; now he came with clothes torn and dirty, and though he always bathed before joining her, his nails were broken, and oily grime, that soap and water could not remove, clung in the skin of his hands. He slept, too, like a dog after a days hunting, like a dead thing. In the mornings, when he had had his coffee, without a word she used to bring a pot of cream and her manicure things, massage the dirt out of his hands, and tidy up his nails; he would smile at her with unutterable fondness, but never said a word—only sometimes he attempted a caress. “No, Or-han!—put your hand down! I do not want all this cream on my hair, je vous remercie bien!” And he would laugh like the boy he really was still.