The Dark Moment

by Ann Bridge

  Chapter Thirteen

  Long before the Battle of Inonü, which took place in January, winter marched in on Ankara. Winds from the east and north, Asiatic in their icy ferocity—the harsh bitter winds that blow across the greatest land-mass in the world, untempered by ocean moisture—swept over the bare plateau across which Féridé and Nilüfer had driven in the spring, to whistle through the aged window-joints and harem-shutters of the old houses up on the citadel, and chill the marrow of those who ventured abroad in the narrow draughty streets. All four—Ahmet, Orhan, and their two young wives—suffered cruelly from the unaccustomed cold. There was no fuel for the cylindrical iron stoves which stood in each room but wood—when wood was to be had; freshly stoked they blazed up furiously at first, making the room insufferably hot, but as the fire died down the insidious cold came creeping in again, round the windows and under the doors, till the two girls, even in their fur coats, shuddered with it. When the man with the cart of small tree-trunks, one of which he dropped off outside the door of each house every so often, was heard approaching, Fatma and Kezban would run out with loud cries of joy— and then run in again to inform their mistresses of the glad tidings. But the girls could not wield a saw, and unless Demir or Temel was about they had to shiver till the batmen returned. As the evenings drew in light became a problem too. One paraffin lamp was allotted to each household, which the girls carried from room to room: to their bedrooms to wash and tidy, to the sitting-room to sew by—there always seemed to be so much mending to do! Féridé borrowed a tiny fairy-lamp affair from her landlady, Sitaré Hanim, for the kitchen, but really it did little more than cast huge shadows about the cavernous walls and ceiling, in the end she took to cooking all she could by daylight, and warming it up for the evening—which made Orhan grumble: “Light of my Eyes, is not this rice very dry?” [It was dry, of course.]

  During that long harsh winter Féridé gained her first experience of the problems and troubles that sooner or later beset all young married women, whether western or Turkish. Her husband—young, brilliant, passionately absorbed in his official duties and grotesquely overworked— was often unreasonable in his demands, and she saw this, and was troubled and vexed by it; it disturbed her conception of him as nearly perfect. Actually the Turkish tradition of obedience and subordination from wife to husband made things easier for her than our western ideas of equality could have done; the proper, the customary thing was to accept—and as the old copy-book saw says: “Custom Commonly Makes Things Easy.” It was tiresome and sad that Orhan was unreasonable, but she had no moral sense of grievance, which is what really eats into one. All the same Féridé had a high spirit and temper, and the long months of that first winter were hard for her in every way; the endless unaccustomed household tasks, the bitter cold (she had chilblains all over her hands and feet), the lack of comforts, and the shortage of even the most necessary things, such as adequate light, and warm underclothes. Neither she nor Nilüfer had ever worn the thick woollens which cold climates demand in their lives, and naturally had never thought of bringing any. When the postal service between Ankara and Istanbul was reopened in the late summer of 1920, and letters began to pass between her and Réfiyé Hanim, she asked at first for such things as good tea, coffee, and caviare to be sent up, when anyone was coming; stockings and handkerchiefs for herself, and shirts, collars, and socks for Orhan. But by December her requests were for woollen stockings, and woollen vests and knickers for herself and Nilüfer—and old Mdlle Marthe, down in Istanbul, pattered out with Dil Feripé to buy the things. The two girls laughed over them when they arrived, they were so coarse and ugly—but they wore them thankfully.

  They also suffered a great deal from home-sickness, as the novelty of their new surroundings wore off, and the circumstances of their lives became steadily more unpleasant. Home-sickness for relations first and foremost, for someone to talk to; but also for Istanbul itself, with its extreme beauty and elegance, and the sense, so dear to all Turks, of living in a great capital city—for that nation tends to hate and despise provincial life. In Ankara Féridé and Nilüfer had no real confidantes but one another; they could chatter about the price of turkeys or meat to their uncouth maids or to Sitaré and Güli Hanim, but they missed the perpetual gay easy informal meetings with women friends, the books, the whole gracious happy flow of civilised life. “Really, we might be soldiers living in barracks!” Nilüfer often exclaimed to her sister-in-law. And above all Féridé, in particular, missed Réfiyé Hanim more than she could say.

  Orhan shared the home-sickness for Istanbul, though his sense of isolation was less, since he was working all day with men he knew; but he too secretly loathed what he regarded as the uncouth provincialism of Ankara. It frequently happened that paraffin ran out, except for the official buildings; and then precisely two candles were allowed per household—one for the kitchen, one for the sitting-room. When Orhan had sat for an hour or so after supper, putting his eyes out over his work by the light of the solitary candle—“Oh!” he would exclaim, throwing his papers together, “I am blinded! Let us go to look at the station, and get some air.” And muffling themselves up in coats they would go out into the narrow street, where the stars shone with a splintering cold glitter above the dark roofs, down through the great gateway, and out along the dusty track which led round outside the citadel walls, till they reached a point whence they could look down on the railway-station, with its six paraffin lamps backed by tin reflectors blazing along the platform, down in the valley. “Ah, there are the lights,” Orhan would say, gazing at them hungrily. “But oh, my Soul, the lights of Istanbul! How beautiful they were!” And Féridé, holding his arm, would tell him, each time, of how she had last looked on those lights, as the ship on which she sailed for Inebolu gathered way and steamed up the Bosphorus. Then, faintly comforted by the sight of those six paraffin lamps bravely shining out in the empty Anatolian night, they would walk home again and go to bed. Foolish; pathetic; but for the first two years at Ankara those six lamps played an extraordinary part in the lives of the patriotic exiles.

  If the Greeks had not learned anything from their defeat at the battle of Inonii in January 1921, the Allied Powers had; they decided at last to revise that monument of unreality, the Treaty of Sèvres, and called a conference for the end of February for that purpose. Orhan came bounding into the house one night, while Féridé sat shivering by the stove, cold and hungry, darning his socks with stiffened fingers by the light of her single candle. “Oh, my Life, such news!” he exclaimed; he was radiant.

  “What is it?” she asked in wonder.

  “They have asked us—us!—to this Conference in London! We are to send a delegation. Aha, they have had to recognise him at last!” He was fairly bursting with triumph.

  “But this is wonderful!” she said, putting down her work. “Who goes? Does he go?”

  “No, no—that would be impossible; he must stay here. The delegation is being chosen now—I shall know tomorrow.”

  “Why can he not go? I should have thought it well.”

  “My dearest, you do not understand. He is head of the State—such do not go on delegations at the summons of foreign powers! And besides, there is an infinity to do here, that only he can tackle.”

  “The deputies again?” Féridé was familiar by now with the difficulties perpetually created by the ignorant and recalcitrant deputies.

  “Oh, they! Yes, they are always with us!” Orhan laughed. “No, but the Greeks are bound to try conclusions with us some time this year; they are set on it, we know that. At the moment they have had a knock on the nose, and have drawn back, but—” he paused.

  “Should we not attack them now, then?” she interjected.

  “Dji-djim, you talk like a deputy yourself! No; that is where Kemal Pasha is so wise, so patient. For the present he is letting the terrain and the weather fight his battles for him; the Greeks are becoming demoralised, they are sick, there is great attrition of their troops, they suffer from the c
old. Brrr!—so do I!” he said, moving across to the log-basket—it was empty. He raised his voice. “Temel! Bring wood!” A distant voice answered “Swiftly, swiftly, my Captain.” Orhan turned to Féridé again, and went on airing his views; he had got into the habit of doing this with his young wife, finding her still hands, her beautiful eyes raised to his, her air of calm concentration a stimulus and a relief.

  “But whatever their difficulties, ours are greater. They have considerable superiority in men; in armaments great superiority. We must use every second of time that we have in preparation. We must get more men; that is Ahmet’s job!—and train them, and arm them; and the arms must be got up behind the front, and supplies and ammunition too. There is everything to do—and only he can ensure that it is done. Do you know what slings our infantry-men are using for their rifles?”

  “No.”

  “Lamp-wicks!” he said, with a kind of snort of finality—“rifle-slings of lamp-wicks!—belts of lamp-wicks! And this against an army equipped with everything of the best, by the accursed English and French.”

  There was in fact the most feverish activity in and around Ankara all through the spring and summer of that fateful year 1921. The existence of the nation was at stake, and the whole people knew it; the efforts they made were superhuman. After the Moscow Agreement the Russians had started shipping a little surplus war material to the Black Sea ports, Trebizond, Samsun and Inebolu; cagnés came in along the road over the plateau, and continued further westwards, towards Afion-Karahissar, Kiitaya, and Eski-sehir, behind the temporarily static front. Ahmet was absent all the time, gathering in men, training them, equipping them, and sending them on; from Féridé’s upper windows, on the citadel wall, she and Nilüfer used to watch the small contingents marching in and being drilled, and then marching out again towards the west—always towards the west! And as the two young women watched, they prayed; prayed for the safety of the men, for their country’s preservation. Faith and piety are a natural and spontaneous growth among the Turks; in every house in Ankara—as in Féridé’s and Nilüfer’s—in at least one room a little velvet wallet, embroidered in silver thread with a holy text, hangs from a hook on the wall; it contains the Koran, the holy book.

  Ahmet’s perpetual absences from home became, by April, a source of anxiety to Féridé, for in March her sister-in-law started a baby, and, fragile creature that she was, Nilüfer’s pregnancy took her hard. She was exceedingly sick; she was ailing, nervous, pale, and as the weeks passed became, Féridé thought, frighteningly unwell—she did not at all like leaving her sister-in-law alone in the house at night with only stout ignorant Fatma, even though that thorny rose, Güli Hanim, lived only two doors off. “Orhan, she must come to us, while Ahmet is away,” said the nineteen-year-old wife seriously.

  “My dearest, if you say so, she shall—but can you do more for her than Güli Hanim, out of your great experience?” he rallied her.

  “I can give her comfort and support,” said Féridé, more seriously still— “My husband, she should not be alone.”

  “Let her come, then. Perhaps she will be well enough to cook—she is a wonderful cook!” he said gaily.

  But Nilüfer would not come, then. Ahmet never could—or at any rate never did—give notice of his occasional returns, and the young wife could not bear the thought of his coming home to an empty house. So she stayed where she was—which meant, for Féridé, a constant trapesing up and down over the steep dirty steps and cobbles between the two houses, and a constant fretting anxiety. Though inexperienced, Féridé had a good deal of practical common sense. “We should secure a mid-wife,” she said. “Now, at once. November, is it? When in November?” Nilüfer said, about the 15th. “Very well—I will see to it. We must arrange for a doctor too.”

  But doctors and mid-wives were not so easily come by in Ankara then; they were mostly at the front, the latter acting as nurses. With much trouble, and running to and fro, Féridé secured the services of two who would, she hoped, be adequate. She had tried to persuade her sister-in-law to go down to Istanbul to the yali for her confinement; but Nilüfer would not hear of it. What!—leave her home, leave Ahmet? Impossible!

  When she was not worrying over Nilüfer’s affairs, Féridé’s mind was wholly given over, housekeeping apart, to the political situation. Those little dinners with Mustafa Kemal Pasha continued; he was extremely fond of Orhan, and had taken rather a fancy to his Aide-de-Camp’s tall, graceful, aristocratic wife, with her quick grasp of affairs and her lively uninhibited manner of speech. Kemal Pasha’s paths had not lain much among the old Turkish aristocracy, in fact he rather despised them; he was amused and interested to find in a sprig of that aristocracy the qualities that he found in Féridé Hanim, as he always called her—he was a stickler for the formalities. Féridé too gradually shed both her awe of the great man and her embarrassment at appearing unveiled in mixed company, and talked away to the nation’s leader with all her untutored native wit and liveliness. Kemal was enchanted; her husband was delighted. Those evenings were the only relaxation that Mustafa Kemal allowed himself, in days of stupendous effort. He was working sixteen or eighteen hours a day now—with a concentration, and at a speed, that left his colleagues and subordinates gasping; as for them, his furious energy and rapid methods drove them almost to a standstill. Even Orhan’s young face was becoming drawn and haggard; his fair skin threw up the dark shadows under his eyes. His chief looked ghastly— for years he had suffered at intervals from kidney-trouble, and the strain and pace of his work had brought it on again. He should of course have dieted and avoided alcohol; but avoiding alcohol was the last thing Mustafa Kemal would ever do. Wine (to Féridé’s infinite astonishment) flowed at his table; hesitantly, at his instance, she learned to drink a little of it. But there were occasions when Orhan dined with the head of the state and she did not; from these the young man came home at three or four in the morning, exhausted and hilarious. “I am late, my Life; forgive me,” he would apologise, when hearing him come in she slipped into his room to see that he had all he needed.

  “But Orhan, why are you so late? You must be up at eight!—you will get no rest.”

  “We were drinking,” he would answer, with a momentary return of the boyish gaiety that had so charmed her when they were first married. “Oh, Kemal Pasha was so entertaining! How he talks!—and the stories he tells! You would never guess it, seeing him in society. My Soul, have you got some aspirin? Give me two or three.”

  Féridé began by attempting some gentle remonstrances with her husband over these drinking-bouts, but she soon gave it up. She knew that Orhan only drank with his chief—by his wish, and to keep him company; and her simple arguments about its being forbidden were met, invariably, with the over-riding one that this was a new dispensation, where the old rules and prohibitions no longer held good. “People drank wine in the days of Omar and Hafiz,” he told her; “then illicitly, but you will see—presently they will do so again, and openly, and without trouble of conscience. Oh, not yet; he has great patience. But he knows the road our nation must travel, if it is to live in the world of today, and he will arrange it all, hodjas or no hodjas.” Féridé, alarmed, asked him what he meant, but he would only say—“You will see. And in the meantime, do not speak of it.”

  By the end of May it was already becoming very hot, up there on the arid treeless plateau, where the naked rocks and the baked soil threw back the sun’s heat with savage intensity; light airs moved at morning and evening up on the citadel hill, though even there the streets and houses were soaked in heat from noon till sundown—in the kitchen, off her enclosed courtyard, Féridé dripped with sweat as she stood over her primitive stove. But down in the valley, in the Vali’s Bureau and in the Station House, the heat and airlessness became insupportable; there was no real coolness even at night, and Kemal Pasha, strained, overworked, anxious and ill, suffered greatly. But where else could he live?

  The answer came unexpectedly. The wife of a member of his sta
ff took a walk late one afternoon up through the vineyards towards the hills beyond the town, in the direction of the district called Çankaya; a little path, winding up a narrow valley beside a small stream, between bushes laden with yellow sweet-scented pea-like flowers tempted her on and on, far beyond her intention, till she came to a spot where under a group of immense poplars the spring itself, the source of the stream, bubbled out, singing, from among the rocks. And close by stood a largish, solidly-built stone house.

  All Turks have a tremendous feeling for water—perhaps because for so many centuries the Prophet has forbidden them wine; they will, even today, drive as far to fill carboys and botdes with the water from a famous spring as Europeans will drive to bring home a case of Châteauneuf du Pape or Vouvray. This lady, then, looked about her—at the white-trunked poplars, their leaves talking softly in the evening air, at the bubbling spring, whose musical voice dominated the chattering leaves of the great trees; she went up and examined that low pleasant-looking house. And then she hastened back to the airlessness of Ankara, and told Kemal Pasha that she had found the perfect place for him. He went and looked at it, was enchanted, and bought it forthwith; he had shacks run up near by for Osman Agha and his troop of Lazes, who formed his personal body-guard, in their picturesque long Cossack coats and high boots; and in a very short time he entered into residence up at Çankaya. Thenceforward, there was a long uphill drive in the little Anatolian waggonettes for those who dined with the Head of the State —but they dined in coolness and beauty, now, to the music of water and whispering leaves. Mustafa Kemal never forgot the happy inspiration of that lady; long afterwards, when first the rather pretentious “Kiösk,” in which he lived for so many years, and finally the big imposing Presidential dwelling had been built on the slopes near the bubbling spring, he would say to her—“It was you who brought me to Çankaya.”