by Ann Bridge
Since Irish tact, English calm, and the threat of Dominion troops—to say nothing of the British Fleet—were combining to bar the military way to Thrace, Kemal sought to gain his ends by diplomacy; in politics he never allowed himself to be swayed by either temper or pride, and was always ready to switch from one method to another, if the second appeared more likely to succeed. The Entente, towards the end of September, issued an invitation to the Kemalist Government to a Conference at Mudania, the port for Broussa, to discuss an armistice, and made it clear that they were prepared to offer a good deal, chiefly at the expense of the unhappy Greeks. Mustafa Kemal accepted, and the delegates met on October the 3rd. To Mudania also hastened the busy M. Franklin-Bouillon, where for forty-eight hours he spent his time persuading the Turkish delegation to ask for much more than the English would give; these efforts resulted in a deadlock. This appalled the French and Italians—they were ready to surrender anything and everything to avoid a further conflict. But the English held out, and started to prepare an ultimatum. Supple and wise as ever, Kemal resumed negotiations, and this time an armistice was concluded. He got most of what he wanted, and got it very cheaply: Eastern Thrace up to the Maritza immediately, and the removal of the Allied troops and fleets from Istanbul as soon as the permanent peace treaty should be signed. Turkey, in fact, had regained practically all the territory inside her actual ethnographic frontiers—those frontiers within which, as Kemal had told the deputies at the first Assembly two-and-a-half years before, they must work for the nation’s happiness and well-being.
But it was quite clear to Mustafa Kemal that no very rapid progress could be made towards national well-being with two governments in the country, the Ottoman Government under the Sultan down at Istanbul, and the Nationalist Government up at Ankara. The Sultanate must be abolished; and if possible the Khalifate—the hereditary headship of the Musulman faith—too, and the way left clear to turn Turkey into a modern state. He began at once to feel his way towards these two ends. But what was clear to him was by no means always so clear to the National Assembly, and now that victory was won and the immediate danger over, the deputies became truculent. Among the more conservative elements there was fierce opposition to the abolition of the Sultanate—fiercer than he had reckoned on. Quietly, Kemal dropped all idea of touching the Khalifate for the moment; that could wait. He manoeuvred skilfully to get a decree passed separating the functions of the Sultan from those of the Khalif—hitherto the same person had automatically held both. Next a relation of the Sultan, Abdul Mejit, was appointed Khalif in his place, and on November the 1st, after some violent scenes, Kemal rammed through the Assembly, almost by armed force, a further decree abolishing the office of Sultan of Turkey altogether. Vahdeddin, the last ruler, slipped on board an English cruiser and was carried away into exile—after five centuries of conquest, corruption and misrule the Ottoman Empire had come to an end.
There had been considerable public feeling against Vahdeddin and his Ministers for their subservience to the Entente Powers, but to the more old-fashioned Turks the abolition of the Sultanate came as a terrible shock. One evening Orhan found Féridé more silent than usual, with a troubled expression; when he asked her what was the matter—“I have had a letter from my Father,” she said.
“Is there bad news? Réfiyé Hanim is not ill?”
“No, no—it is about the Monarchy.”
“Let me see it—if I may?” he said, abrupt but courteous.
“Orhan, really I would rather not show it to you. It—it is a terrible letter.”
It was indeed, and had upset Féridé very much. The Pasha, for once abandoning his usual moderation, wrote angrily, almost violendy, especially about Mustafa Kemal—he spoke of wickedness and impiety, and expressed horror at Féridé’s being connected with anyone who had a hand in such things—“as I must reluctantly believe that your husband has.” She had never imagined herself receiving such a letter from her own father, and was quite shaken.
Orhan had been half expecting this. He had listened to the debates in the Assembly and heard the private views of the more conservative Ministers and generals—he could imagine what Asaf Pasha s letter was like. But he hated Féridé to be distressed, and he wished in all things to carry her with him, to convince her that what was being done was right; so he sat down now and began, at first very calmly and gently, to explain the position, and why Kemal had felt it necessary to abolish the Sultanate. “Our enemies are conquered and our country is saved, thanks to him. But what will have been the good of saving it, of all our efforts and sacrifices, if we are to sink back into the weakness, the corruption and scandals of the old régime? Kemal Pasha sees what so many of the deputies do not see, what your Father does not see, that to live in the modern world we must be a modern nation—and to do that, we must learn to understand and share the ideas of the modern world.”
“Yes—I see that this is right,” she said, slowly and thoughtfully. “But could we not modernise ourselves with a Sultan? I should have thought that other things presented greater difficulties than he. We are not like western nations; we are Mahometans, and have our own ways, especially for us women. Why, Fanny told me in a letter that now women in England who are over thirty can vote for their deputies! Imagine such a thing! And always there, women have mixed with men, and spoken their opinions freely—and have been listened to! We are not like that,” she said, rather stiffly.
Orhan surprised her by bursting into laughter.
“Oh my precious one, you looked so like Réfiyé Hanim, when you said that,” he explained. “But you must—you will” he went on, now deeply in earnest. “You will leave off the veil, and live like European women; you will see, he will bring it about.”
“Leave off the veil? Altogether?” She was incredulous.
“Yes; certainly. Do you not like the idea?” he asked curiously.
“In a way, yes.” She spoke hesitatingly. “It would be strange—but the çarşaf is very hot! And those wives of the French diplomats have such pretty hats,” she added irrelevandy.
He laughed again. “You too shall wear pretty hats, Light of my Eyes! Only wait—and we will go to Paris to buy them.” She laughed too, a rather unwilling laugh. “After all, has it done you any harm to meet strangers unveiled, dining at Çankaya?”
“Harm? No, I suppose not—though I still find it difficult,” she said, her brows drawn down. She paused. “The peasants here will not mind —they always do it in the fields. But there are many who will mind very much indeed.”
“Who?”
“The bourgeoises—women like Madame Talaat and Madame Ali.” (These were the wives of two deputies; Féridé had made the acquaintance of a good many of them by now, and knew what she was talking about.)
“Oh, the bourgeoises! They will have to put up with it, to learn. What is the bourgeoisie, after all?—in all nations, the greatest pest and bore, so far as I know!” he exploded. “No, we must modernise, whether they like it or not. Our education too—and for that, of course, the Khalifate will have to go.”
She stared at him aghast.
“Orhan, you cannot be serious! Abolish the Khalifate! It is incredible. For what conceivable reason?”
“Because of what I said—that we must share the ideas of the modern world; of Europe, that is to say. But how can we do that while so much of our education is based on the Koran, written centuries ago? In most of the medressés they teach little but the hadis” (the words of the Prophet) “and in Arabic at that! It is true that there are a few secondary schools, and places like the Galata-Serai—but except in those, what are our people taught of mathematics, of modern science, of medicine? Nothing—because all is dominated by the Culte! Do you know that not long ago it was solemnly proposed in the Assembly to suppress our Minister of Public Instruction and to attach his functions to the Ministry of the Culte? And the reactionaries who proposed this, though they failed to carry it, actually succeeded for a time in forcing the Minister to limit all musical
instruction to religious music!”
Orhan was rapidly talking himself into a state of exasperated excitement, as often happened. Actually he was opening up some quite new ideas to Féridé. She knew about the Galata-Serai, where most of the teaching was given in French, because Orhan had been educated there; and she and her friends all had their Mdlles Marthe, and met western thought and culture in the French books which they read all the time —oh the dreariness of these months and months at Ankara, with no new French novels or memoirs! But it had never occurred to her to wonder, still less to find out, what Turks in general were taught. Now she was learning, and her respect for knowledge was sufficient to make what she learned a shock. Meanwhile Orhan was going on—
“Why, in some of the medressés they do not even learn to read and write!—only to recite the Scriptures by heart; and all this because those schools are under the Culte. No—the Khalifate must go, and the Culte with it; we must have proper schools, where western learning is taught, and taught well, to our people. Not only science and medicine, I do not mean that: the classics, great literature, the whole European intellectual background—Homer, Aeschylus, Dante even. These things are the foundations of western civilisation—that is to say, of civilisation itself.” He was really passionate; she had never heard him speak quite like this before. She considered it all, and then—
“But would you have us abandon the Faith?” she asked.
“No!” he almost shouted—“Of course not! Let us keep our religion, let us hold the Faith; but in Allah’s name, let our children be educated as those of other nations are! Why should their minds be starved, denied all intellectual sustenance?” He got up, and walked about the room in his agitation.
Féridé was slow to answer; she was thinking it out. At last she said—
“It is right, this. Yes, it should be so. Is it Kemal Pasha who has considered all this, and made these plans?”
“Yes, of course—who but he? Naturally some of Mustafa Kema of these educational reforms were adumbrated by the Committee of Union and Progress, long ago—but the Culte has always stultified them, in effect. The Law and Justice, too—these must be freed from this tyranny. Why have we had to submit to the Capitulations, to foreign lawyers and Courts of Law in our midst? Because our own are all mixed up with religion, with archaic rules and dogmas. Law and education must be independent of these interests—Kemal Pasha understands that.”
“It is really very remarkable,” she said slowly. “I cannot conceive how he has found the time to be thinking of such matters, with all the other things that he has had to do—the war, organising our troops, and dealing with the Assembly.” She sat, chin in hand, pensive. “He does really mean, I see it now, to open a new future for our people. Yes, it is right. He is greater than I thought.”
Orhan listened to this with keen pleasure. He had a great respect for the opinion of his beautiful young wife, and he had often been aware that her enthusiasm for Mustafa Kemal lagged behind his—she was amused, interested, often charmed by the great man, but she preserved a certain detachment in her judgements of him.
“Ah, now you see what I see!” he said triumphantly. “That is well.” “But do not speak of it,” he added—as he so often did. “The matter of the Khalifate will not happen yet. Have patience, as he has patience.”
Féridé was really in no great personal hurry for these drastic reforms, even if she approved of them in the abstract; her mind came back to her own private preoccupations, and her final word was a damping one.
“When it does happen, it will cause my Father infinite distress,” she said. Orhan gave an impatient shrug of his shoulders.
“My Life, the nation’s welfare cannot wait on Asaf Pasha s prejudices!” he said. She made no answer. He came over and caressed her. “You know that your distress distresses me,” he said tenderly—“And I have the greatest respect for your Father—his learning, his uprightness. I am sorry for him. Calm him as best you can, over this. The other will not happen for some time.”
The Pasha was in fact somewhat calmed by the opening, towards the end of November, of the Conference of Lausanne to discuss the final Peace Treaty between the Entente Powers and Turkey. He found it rather hard to understand why the Japanese should be there—or even the Jugo-slavs—in which he was by no means alone. But Turkey was meeting her late conquerors on equal terms, at last, as a sovereign power; Ismet Pasha, respected by all, headed the Turkish delegation in his new capacity as Minister for Foreign Affairs, to which he had been appointed shortly after the Armistice of Mudania. One bitter thought was constantly with Asaf Pasha; if Ahmet had been alive, he would surely have gone to Lausanne with his chief; have taken a part in public affairs, as his father had done. The Pasha could not altogether avoid a slight feeling of jealous irritation at the increasing importance of his son-in-law, as one of Mustafa Kemal’s right-hand men, but after he had incautiously let slip a remark on this subject to his mother, he was careful never to do so again; she was displeased, and for once allowed her disapproval to appear in a dignified silence.
Orhan’s position brought certain practical advantages. Nilüfer was anxious to go home, and Féridé really did not think her fit to face the rigours of a third winter in Ankara; she had never properly recovered from her confinement, and after Ahmet’s death she flagged more than ever. But though work was being done on the railway there was still a gap near Eski-sehir. So far only official cars existed at Ankara, and not many of those; Orhan however was able to arrange for one to take his sister-in-law down to a station whence she could complete the journey by train.
Féridé went with her. She was getting very anxious indeed to see Réfiyé Hanim again—Mdlle Marthe wrote rather alarming accounts of the old lady s health, and she wished to see her father too. Orhan drove with them as far as the rail-head; at one point the road passed by one of the battle-fields, and he began eagerly pointing out the places connected with this or that encounter. Actually they were many miles away from the scene of the action in which Ahmet had lost his life, but though she could not see Nilüfer’s face, Féridé suddenly felt her distress—it was almost audible to her, as if all the strings of a violin had been harshly scraped inside the car itself. She twitched her husband’s sleeve, and signed to him to be silent. He sulked a little, but did as she wished.
Once on the train, the whole journey was rapture to Féridé. She sat gazing out of the left-hand window, watching for familiar landmarks. Here was the Gulf of Ismid, so blue, so blue; the line coasted along it, to emerge at last onto the Marmara. Now she watched for the Princes’ Islands, Büyük Ada and the rest—there they were, pine-crowned, their bronze and umber cliffs falling to the sea, and the gay white villas with their pink roofs, scene of so many summer excursions and holidays. As the train drew on towards Haidar Pasha she went out into the corridor to see the bare brown hills of Chamlidja, where they had so often picnicked at the house in the vine, with the black line of cypresses, like sable torches, which marks the great cemetery; then back into the carriage again, to look out over the water for the first sight of that wonderful profile of Istanbul—the domed mosques, the minarets, Seraglio Point, and Hagia Sofia towering above the rest. That city sky-line is to all travellers most beautiful, and to the majority also very strange—to Féridé it was deeply familiar, and the light of memory and affection lay over its beauty like an enchantment. Tears came into her eyes, she who so rarely cried, at the sight.
At Haidar Pasha Osman was waiting on the platform, his stolid brown face bright with joy. A brother was meeting Nilüfer, with a servant in attendance. The two girls clung together for a moment as they said goodbye. “You have been so good to me,” Nilüfer whispered; “no one will ever know how good! What I shall do without you I do not know.”
“Dji-djim, you will be with your family, safe, cared-for, comfortable,” Féridé said.
“They will not know, not understand, as you do,” Nilüfer said, with one of her rare bursts into reality; “we have been togethe
r through— everything! Oh, I shall miss you so much.”
“Chérie, we shall see one another very soon; we are so close. Look —your brother wishes to leave, I think. À bientôt dearest.”
Osman had the caïque waiting at the steps outside the station; for the Taurus Railway ends abrupdy on a quay, with a stretch of tossing water between it and the city it serves—the water that separates Asia from Europe. Féridé looked in astonishment at the three men who formed the boat’s crew, in their gay livery of full baggy trousers and brilliant embroidered Zouave jackets, sleeveless over their immaculate white shirts, and their tasselled caps; it was long since she had seen servants wearing livery. With a happy sigh she sank onto the cushioned seat at the stern—as the boat shot away to the rhythmic strokes of three pairs of oars she thought of Temel, in his stained shabby uniform, waiting on Orhan up at Ankara, and of Fatma and Kezban in their bright loud peasant trousers and quilted jackets, also faded and stained to a tenderness of hue which was less attractive in one’s house than it was picturesque! But she soon forgot Kezban and Fatma—for the time forgot Ankara altogether. Here was Leander’s Tower, squat and white, a lighthouse at night; there was Galata Bridge, with the ceaseless flow of traffic passing to and fro; above its southern end the slope of dark wooden houses, their windows like the whites of eyes, rose up to Péra, with the crenellated outline of the Fire Tower standing out boldly above them. The caïque’s crew bent to the oar, pulling hard, as they turned up into the Bosphorus and met the current; Scutari with its exquisite mosque fell away behind; presently the battlements of Rumeli Hissar rose ahead, climbing from the water to the sky, mediaeval, pale, very noble. She remembered the last time she had looked on them—in the cold light of dawn at the start of her voyage to Inebolu. That brought her thoughts back to Nilüfer—and she was suddenly aware of a strange lightening of her spirit when she remembered that Nilüfer was now safe in the care of her own family. She had never thought of her sister-in-law as a burden during the last two-and-a-half years, but now that the responsibility for her—for her well-being, her happiness, her health—was placed on other shoulders, she felt as if a weight had been lifted off her own. This surprised her; she was rather shocked at herself.