The Dark Moment

by Ann Bridge

  It would be idle to pretend that the two young women’s hearts did not sink when, having at last reached their journey’s end, they were introduced into the abodes which their respective husbands—young, inexperienced and overworked—had prepared for them. Prepared is indeed hardly the word—the young men had looked at the houses, rented them, and that was that. Orhan’s and Féridé’s was within the citadel, tucked right in under the great wall and partly built out on top of it, commanding a tremendous view; Nilüfer’s and Ahmet’s was on the steep glacis just outside, and almost immediately below the other—actually from her upper windows Féridé could throw pebbles or flowers into Nilüfer’s courtyard. On foot it was barely a hundred yards from one to the other—along a narrow alley, out through a great vaulted gateway,, and down a steep passage and a flight of steps: but what a hundred yards! Rough cobbles, cruelly steep and cruelly hard to the feet, the channels between the stones grey with slops, and both the lane and the steps dirty and slippery with vegetable refuse, which tame sheep, tethered by a cord to their various doorposts, turned over and nibbled at with their sensitive muzzles. (Ankarians invariably keep a sheep as a household pet, like a cat.)

  All this, of course, they did not realize on the day of their arrival. Externally, the houses had a certain charm; typical old Ankara buildings, half-timbered, with red tiles set slantwise in plaster between uprights of grey wood, and carved wooden harem-shutters shielding the windows. A door with a ring-shaped knocker in a high blank wall led into a small courtyard, with a well and a carved marble well-head-Greek, and covered with acanthus-leaves, in Féridé’s case; there stood also a tree, slanting out over the paving-stones. But how the courtyard smelt! Various doors opened off it; Orhan led his wife up two steps to a large double pair, roughly but agreeably carved and panelled, threw them open, and led her in. She found herself in a long low room, half hall, half sitting-room, with four doors leading from it, and two windows at the further end; at one side a wooden staircase led up to the floor above. Chairs, a sofa and a table or two stood about; there were some rugs on the floor, which was again made of huge beechen planks, a cylindrical iron stove stood against one wall. Orhan flung open two of the doors—“Your room; my room,” he said proudly. Peeping in, Féridé saw a strange mixture of furnishings, typical of the rooms in Ankara bourgeois houses, which are always used as bedrooms and sitting-rooms at once. There was a brass bedstead with a hideous quilt; the usual hard stuffed divans under the windows, with truly ghastly embroidered linen antimacassars fastened along their backs over the charming hand-woven upholstery of harsh brightly-coloured wool; an appalling sort of side-board with a mirror above it, a few chairs. What gave beauty and dignity to all the rooms were the big built-in cupboards with painted double doors, elegantly panelled, along one wall, and between them a sort of recessed niche with shell-shaped vaulting above and a shell-shaped basin below, over which depended a tiny metal spout—this however did not work; a door, in each case, led off into a stone-floored cabinet de toilette for washing.

  Anything more different from the yali could hardly be imagined; but in these dwellings our two young women proceeded to settle down and build themselves homes as best they could. “Where there are houses, there must surely also be servants,” Féridé had said airily to Réfiyé Hanim—but this proved to be by no means the case. Orhan and Ahmet each had his soldier-servant, or batman, who slept in one of the rooms off the courtyard and made himself as useful as he knew how—drawing water from the well and carrying it into the house, fetching charcoal for cooking, and cutting up wood into lengths suitable for the small iron stoves; he also learned in time to sweep out the downstairs rooms and to wait at table, and cleaned the yard after his fashion. But that was all. Dusting, bed-making, marketing—worst of all cooking—had all, it seemed, to be managed somehow by the youthful wives themselves— that, at any rate, appeared to be the husbands’ notion.

  Each set about solving her problems in her own way. Nilüfer in a very short time turned into an astonishingly good cook; this was a quiet unobtrusive occupation which she really enjoyed. Her “Française” had not been a scholar, like Mdlle Marthe, but given to the domestic arts, and she had taught her pupil to cut out, sew, iron, and even learn a little cooking; But Nilüfer could not bear going to the market to buy things—bargaining was a horror to her, and she was quite incapable of it. When she had come back once or twice with a basket of comestibles for which she had paid ridiculous prices, the wife of her landlord —a woolmerchant called Faik, with a shop down in the market filled with bales of silvery Angora wool and a strong goaty smell—took over the business of shopping for her. She lived two doors off, and took the liveliest interest in the doings of her young tenants. Her name was Güli, which means Rose, but she was by no means a rose without a thorn—a keen-tempered sharp-tongued woman, shrewd and masterful, she all the same soon developed a strong protective affection for the pretty creature who rented her house, and quickly routed out a peasant woman called Fatma to act as her servant. Between Fatma and the batman—who came from Thrace, and was called Demir—Nilüfer managed somehow.

  Féridé, on the other hand, set about organising her household herself. Her landlord was a clerk in the bureau of the Vali of Ankara, called Ibrahim, with a fat round-faced merry little wife who bore, strangely enough, the same name as the old kalfa at the yali who had died four years before, Sitaré—for a long time, whenever Féridé addressed her it called up memories of that summer of 1914, Fanny’s last summer with them!—when poor silly Sitaré had got into such trouble for showing Nilüfer Ahmet’s photograph. So long ago, all that seemed now! On the very first morning Féridé went with Sitaré Hanim to the market, bought herself a basket, and then watched how to buy what was needed; she soon came to be a rare hand at a bargain, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

  One only had to buy and bring home certain things, she found. Milk came to the door daily in chiselled pewter jars of beautiful shapes, and the man who brought the milk also brought eggs; another individual came round once or twice a week with chickens or turkeys— his cry resounded between the high walls of the alley, announcing his arrival. What one had to bargain for and carry home was meat—mutton, rather tough and stringy, a few vegetables, and salads. And oh how-heavy the basket seemed, toiling up from the market outside the citadel, some considerable distance down the hill; how her feet ached from the cobble-stones, and her arms and back with the unwonted tasks of dusting, emptying things, making beds, and washing-up. Poor Féridé greatly envied Nilüfer her Fatma, stout ham-handed peasant that she was— but Sitaré Hanim seemed to have no ideas about procuring a servant for her tenants.

  Help arrived at last in a very casual fashion. Féridé was just leaving the market one morning when she noticed—not for the first time—a rather pretty young woman, delightful in her flowered cherry-coloured trousers and bright jacket; as so often with Anatolian women, her veil only partly concealed her face. Something moved the girl to speak to her, and ask her what she did.

  “Nothing. My husband is at the war; I have no children; I am alone.”

  On an impulse, Féridé asked her if she would like to come and be her servant? The woman agreed at once, and followed her home, carrying the market-basket; she was shown the house, a room off the courtyard was arranged for her, and next day she moved in. Kezban was her name, and at first it seemed to Féridé impossible that a grown woman should have so little idea of how to set about doing things in a house!— she herself, though she had never actually done them before, at least knew how they should be done from watching Ayshé and the other well-trained maids at the yali. However, mastering her natural impatience as well as she could, she taught and trained Kezban: to sweep before you dusted, to shake the rugs in the yard and not in the hall, to wash up cups and glasses before the greasy plates, not to throw slops all over the courtyard, but down the drain in the corner. Really they got on very well; Kezban, a peasant from the plateau, who had lived all her life in one of those rammed-earth hous
es, where conditions differed little from those in the animals’ stalls next door, was at once amused by the fanciful notions of her young mistress, and full of admiration for her domestic skills—so the innocent creature regarded them—and for the beauties of her house. For Féridé quickly set about beautifying it. She was shocked by the absence of curtains, and when other things were more or less in train she went to the street in the market devoted to fabrics and bought thin woollen stuffs patterned in bright colours, stitched them into curtains, and made Temel, Orhan’s Laz batman, stretch wires across the windows to hang them on, since curtain-rings were not to be had.

  Kezban soon took over part of the marketing. The bread, rice and so forth she could fetch alone, though Féridé usually went down to choose the meat and vegetables. But the young mistress still had to do the cooking herself, in the curious archaic kitchen, opening off the courtyard, with the built-in earthen oven in which fowls and turkeys were roasted, and the charcoal brazier for grilling small pieces of meat on spits; boiling of vegetables was done either on a flat space above the oven, or over the brazier. It was all very uncouth and inconvenient; when charcoal ran out Féridé had to cook on dried dung, and the smoke got into the food and made it smell, to Orhan’s great disgust-young as he was, he cared about his food.

  Meanwhile outside Féridé’s house and kitchen great things were happening. The first meeting of the National Assembly, which Mustafa Kemal had announced in March as a counterblast to the Allied closing of the Ottoman Parliament, was to take place in the still unfinished Assembly Building on April the 23rd, and for days beforehand Orhan, who was now a sort of political A.D.C. to Mustafa Kemal, was working early and late on the arrangements; when he came home in the evenings—having toiled up the hill on foot along the muddy roads—he could think and talk of nothing else. Seats and tables for the deputies had to be improvised somehow—Orhan was thrilled when someone hit on the device of collecting and using desks from the children’s schools. The semi-circular tribune for the President, up four or five steps, with a desk and chair, was ready, and the paraffin lamps to fit into the rather hideous chandeliers which depended from the ceiling in the big bare room, with its high galleries at each end.

  The deputies themselves were rather a mixed bag. Some were members of the old Ottoman Parliament from Istanbul, who had escaped the fate of Fethi Bey and others of being captured by the Allies and interned in Malta, where they languished for nearly two years; some were provincial members, hurriedly elected—but with a very conscious and serious intention—in March for the new assembly to be held a month later. Among the former group was a fairly high proportion of men of the old school—stiffly religious, supporters of the Sultanate, who would never have attended a Parliament in Ankara if there had been any other for them to attend; they were to give a lot of trouble later on. But by no means all were present at the opening—they arrived bit by bit, in driblets. Meanwhile accommodation had to be found for those who had come, and these arrangements too formed one of Orhan’s many tasks. Numbers were accommodated in a school just opposite the Assembly building, whence the scholars had been ejected and where—to their disgust—they had to sleep ten in a room. It was known, laughingly, as “the School for Deputies.”

  The great day came at last. Féridé and Nilüfer—of whose presence there could of course be no question—leaned from Féridé’s upper windows above the citadel wall, and watched the assemblage gathering far below, between the school and the new building, on the dusty stretch of road leading from what there was of the lower town to the station. Troops held back the gaily-coloured crowd, and in the middle they could see the knot of deputies, darkly clad below their red fezzes, grouped outside the building; there they prayed, standing, and then moved in through iron gates into a sort of garden, up a flight of steps, and so into the council-chamber.

  What happened after that was later recounted to Féridé by Orhan. who in view of his official position was able to slip in, and watch and listen from the gallery. Mustafa Kemal Pasha mounted the dais overlooking the sea of school-children’s desks, and standing very upright, his hands clenched on the table in front of him—a mannerism that was to become a familiar feature of the Assembly for the next eighteen years-he gave a lucid and detailed exposition of the political situation, both internal and external. As his habit was, he started from first principles— Kemal Pasha was never a man to shrink from stating the obvious; on the contrary, he knew how to give it a touch of grandeur. So on this occasion—

  “Life,” he said, “is a series of struggles and combats, and success in life is only possible to the victorious; which means that one must rely on power and force.” He emphasised, however, that the task of his hearers was to work for national happiness and prosperity within their own frontiers, and not to waste the nation’s time in pursuing extravagant or external ends. But he was never one to pull his punches, and left the slightly astonished deputies under no illusions about the problems which faced them along their borders. Invaders must be repelled on not less than four fronts: the Allies at Istanbul, the Kurds and Armenians in the East, the French in the South, the Greeks in the West. Surely no man ever set out to try to build a new state under greater handicaps! Moreover there was the tricky and delicate internal situation to be managed somehow: a Sultan of the royal line still ruling, theoretically, in Istanbul, who was also the Khalif, the titular head of all who held the Moslem faith; but he was under the thumb of the Allied occupation forces, had no real power, and while still commanding the loyalty of many Turks, had condemned the country’s real leader, Kemal Pasha himself, to death.

  With a juggler’s skill, amounting almost to genius, Mustafa Kemal dealt with all these complications. The Assembly, with every possible juridical formality, voted themselves into being the “Grand National Assembly of Turkey,” in whom all power was vested, as the legal government of the country; the position of the Sultan-Khalif was taken care of by a masterly clause which stated that “once liberated from enemy constraint,” his position would be determined according to the Assem bly’s ordinances—which put that problem on ice for the time being. An Executive Council chosen by the Assembly would promulgate and carry out new laws; and Mustafa Kemal himself was elected President both of Assembly and Council.

  The effect of all this was electric, both within the Council chamber and through the country at large. There had come into being, in the brief space of four days, a new government with a new Head—not the decrepit and venal Ottoman institutions, but a living entity elected by the people. The civil war died away almost at once, for popular support for the Sultan was quickly withdrawn, and the nation rallied round their new leader. All the gloomy remarks of the young officer at Seydiler Köy to Hassan Bey were very promptly falsified.

  But the new government had to function under most peculiar and trying conditions. In 1920 the great lack at Ankara was buildings of any sort, and the only one available for its departments was the Bureau of the Vali, a modest provincial headquarters. So the Department of Justice, for instance, consisted of exactly one room, into which as many tables, chairs, and officials as possible were crammed somehow—and all the others were the same. Never was the government of a nation carried on in more rag-time surroundings. Mustafa Kemal worked—like a fiend—under the same handicaps. He was at once President of the Assembly, Prime Minister, and Commander-in-Chief, and in each of these capacities had to use different premises. As President of the Assembly he had two rooms in the building itself; a largish one to the left of the entrance door, with—later—handsome curtains and pelmets draping the high windows, where he sat at a deal table and held discussions with the deputies who came to see him, seated on wooden chairs, like English kitchen chairs, ranged round the walls; for more intimate and important conversations there was a very small cubby-hole of a room just opposite, across the main corridor, with a screen round the door, another little cheap table, and more cheap common chairs. Both rooms were heated by plain cylindrical cast-iron stoves, such a
s the peasants used, burning wood, and lit by a single paraffin lamp. Compared with Downing Street or the White House, these were strange quarters for the activities of the Head of the State.

  In his capacity as Prime Minister Mustafa Kemal Pasha had a room in the Vali’s Bureau, only a short walk away, where the heads of the various Ministries came to him with their problems—which he solved with astonishing speed. He would listen, question, listen to the answers —his light blue eyes probing into those of the man he was talking to, as if to see the answer before he heard it, and to judge if it were true and valid; not with his head cocked sideways, as most people listen, but holding it straight on his square shoulders as he sat erect in his horrid cheap chair. Then, swiftly, he arrived at his decision, and gave it in clear concise terms. His decisions were not always immediately acceptable, but his Ministers in time came to know that they were nearly always right. Moreover, though not by nature a patient man at all, Mustafa Kemal had a quite peculiar gift for persuading people, and converting them, very fast indeed, to his own view—partly by his acute commonsense, partly by an extraordinary personal charm, partly by what one can only call magnetism. Everyone who worked with him has testified to this last; but it was nothing like the screaming paranoia of Hitler, it was the quintessence of spiritual and intellectual force, basing itself on an almost supernaturally sharp appreciation both of the point at issue, and of the man he was talking to.

  As Commander-in-Chief he had to go further afield to work. The only building he had been able to lay hands on for his Headquarters was the old Agricultural School and model farm out at Kalaba, a large featureless white building on rising ground half-an-hour’s ride from the city; from the bare uncurtained windows of the big room where he and Ismet Bey sat at a curious table with bulging legs—it is still there—he could, if he chose to turn from studying the military situation on the big maps tacked to the white-washed walls, see the two hump-backed house-strewn hills of the old city, and the yellow flat of the valley below, threaded by the silver line of railway, with the shed-like roof of the station, and hard by the gabled outline of the ugly modern villa where he usually slept—when he did sleep! A bathroom with a painted bath on short legs opened out of this gaunt apartment on one side, a bedroom with a camp bed, a dressing-table and a mirror on the other; if military affairs were desperately pressing he could sleep out at Kalaba, and often did.