The Dark Moment

by Ann Bridge

  “Never, with my consent!” Kemal said curtly. He had already drunk a good deal. “Has this nation not suffered enough from bribery and corruption, and the soft easy life? Our new state must have its new capital—here!—where the air is clean.” He whipped round on Féridé with one of his sharp questions: “What is your opinion, Féridé Hanim?”

  She asked a question in reply, a thing few of his entourage ever ventured to do. “How will matters be managed with the Embassies and Legations? I should have thought it useful to have the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at least, within reach of them. They all have their establishments at Péra and Therapia.”

  “They must come up here,” he said. “If they wish to deal with us— and they do wish it, now,” he added with a boyish grin—“they must do so in our capital. I will give them land to build on, free—the best sites, up here on the slopes. But come they must.”

  And very much under protest, bit by bit they came, grumbling at the climate and the lack of amenities—after the Assembly, for once docile, had voted a law proclaiming Ankara the capital of the Turkish State. Just over a fortnight afterwards another vote proclaimed Turkey a Republic; fourteen minutes later Mustafa Kemal was pronounced its first President.

  . . . . . .

  In the following February Féridé went down to the yali again. Mdlle Marthe had written more alarming accounts of Réfiyé Hanim’s health, and she wanted to see her; Orhan was anyhow about to go off with Mustafa Kemal to assist at the Army manoeuvres at Smyrna. Orhan knew, but did not tell her, that one purpose of this journey was to sound out the extent of the Army’s loyalty to his master —if it was sufficient, Kemal intended to abolish the Khalifate forth-with, and so free his hands for the prosecution of the educational reforms which lay so near his heart. But this would be touching the religion of a fanatically religious people; he recognised that he would meet with fierce opposition, which he could only risk arousing if he could count, in the last resort, on the Army.

  Féridé found her grandmother much aged and weakened. She was now close on ninety, and had suffered from heart trouble for years; her mind was as acute as ever, her tranquil benevolence unimpaired, but the iron control which she had exercised over her body all her life had, at last, to be relaxed—she rose late, went to bed early, and there were little rests and naps during the day, and little nips of this or that restorative, brought in at all hours by Ayshé or Dil Feripé. These two faithful attendants were now themselves very old, so was Mdlle Marthe—Féridé was curiously oppressed by the sense of living in a household of old old people, so different from the ardour and vigour of Ankara. For the first time she felt that the Ghazi had probably been right not to transfer the seat of government to the old capital— a decision which had greatly disappointed her when it was taken.

  On this visit she instituted what she had often wished for in the past, namely a daily paper for herself. It was Little Ali who now fetched the afternoon paper for Asaf Pasha, instead of Osman—who like the rest of the inhabitants of the yali was getting rather old—but in addition he brought a morning paper for her too. And before lunch on March the 4th, 1924, she read that the previous day the National Assembly had passed a decree abolishing the Khalifate, and the Ministry of the Culte as well.

  “Tiens!” she exclaimed, laying down the paper—“Now I am in for trouble! I wish this had not happened just while I am here. I wonder if Orhan knew of it? Yes, he must have done. Really, he should have warned me!”

  Orhan of course had not known of it for certain, since it depended on the attitude of the Army—during the manoeuvres Kemal’s discussions with Fevzi, Ismet, Kazim Pasha and other officers had convinced him that he could take the risk; they were all agreed on the necessity for a better system of education, if only from the military point of view. Having come to a decision, as usual Kemal acted at once. But Féridé could not know all that, and she was still feeling rather indignant with her husband when she went to the salon. Réfiyé Hanim now only appeared at tea-time; after tea would be the danger-point, when the Pasha would come stalking in through the dining-room door, probably with the afternoon paper in his hand, and as she poured out a cup and handed it to her grandmother the young woman considered again, now that the trouble was imminent, whether she ought not to tell the old lady—a point which she had been debating with herself all the afternoon as she walked about the koru among the leafless bushes and under the dark conifers. She glanced at the old face, which now had a sort of transparent fragility about it. Darling Niné! —for the first time she saw her as rather helpless. Yes, she must not meet the Pasha’s anger unwarned.

  “Niné dearest,” she said, taking another of the delicate Sèvres cups herself, and sitting down on a small chair—“something has occurred which will distress and infuriate Baba. I think I had better tell you now, for when he comes in, there will be a thunderstorm!”

  “Is it some fresh performance of Kemal Pasha’s?” the old lady asked.

  Féridé laughed.

  “Yes, it is—naturally!” Then she became grave. “But this time it is really serious—you will mind, too,” she said with concern.

  “Tell me then, my child,” the old lady said. She spoke calmly, and Féridé, not for the first time, blessed her grandmother in her heart for that priceless quality of calmness. It was something which the new generation at Ankara, for all their energy and vigour, were apt to lack.

  “The Assembly has passed a decree abolishing the Khalifate,” she said slowly, with a hesitation unusual to her.

  The old lady received this in silence. After a moment or two— “Do you know why?” she asked. “There must be grave reasons for such a step, and I imagine that Orhan is acquainted with them—I understand that he is very much in Kemal Pasha’s confidence.” Réfiyé Hanim never spoke of “the Ghazi”; she was not a person given to new titles.

  “Yes, there are reasons, Niné. It is the question of education, chiefly. So long as this is principally given in the medressés, our people are denied all knowledge of modern culture, modern science—why, in some of them they do not even learn to read or write!” she said energetically, quoting her husband. “In this century, to know the Koran by heart does not really suffice!”

  The old lady mused, looking out across the Bosphorus to the oudine of the Chamlidja hills; Féridé waited in a strange anxiety for what she would say.

  “No—I suppose it does not suffice,” Réfiyé Hanim said slowly at last. “We live now in a new world; and I think Kemal Pasha is perhaps wise in recognising this. I am very old, my darling,” she said with a tiny sigh. “I am not skilful at assessing these modern needs, which nevertheless I recognise, old as I am, I wish they could have been met without a step which will affront the susceptibilities of simple people —for our people are very religious.”

  “Niné dearest, they could not!—really they could not. The Culte has exercised a positive strangle-hold over our intellectual life,” Féridé said urgently.

  Réfiyé Hanim sighed again.

  “Perhaps—yes, possibly. I thought there had been reforms some time ago, under the Committee of Union and Progress. I suppose they were insufficient” She paused, with an air of fatigue. “Really, I do not know! I have a great admiration for Kemal Pasha—he has saved us from annihilation,” the old woman said. “But this will trouble your Father very much.”

  “Do I not know it?” Féridé exclaimed. “That is why I wished to warn you in advance.” She jumped slightly as the dining-room door opened, but it was only old Dil Feripé, who sidled in, as she always did —she looked very excited.

  “Hanim Effendi, have you heard the news?” she cried. “Oh, the wickedness!—oh, the audacious profanity! They are going to kill the Khalif, God’s Shadow on Earth! Ah, what disasters will fall upon us for this!”

  “Nonsense, dadi,” Réfiyé Hanim said brusquely. “Who talks of killing the Khalif?” But her eyes were anxious, Féridé saw.

  “It is in the paper—Osman saw it when he brought it to O
ur Master.”

  “Dadi, this is all rubbish,” Féridé said sharply. “There is no question of Abdul Mejit being killed. Osman should know better than to spread such tales.”

  “Ah, you are all mixed up in it, I don’t doubt,” the dadi retorted, with the privileged freedom of an old nurse to one of her children— “You and your husband! Orhan Bey is a fine young man, no one doubts it, and Kemal Pasha is a great general—but they should leave holy things alone!”

  Before Féridé could answer the door from the dining-room opened again, and this time it really was the Pasha who entered. His brow was like thunder—at the sight of him Dil Feripé scuttled away through another door. Sure enough, he had the newspaper in his hand; he was greatly agitated; nevertheless he did not omit his formal greeting—“I trust, Ané, that your health is good?” And—“By the mercy of God, my son, I am very well,” the old lady replied, as she had been doing for half a century and more.

  “There is shocking news, terrible news,” he said, sitting down. “I hardly like even to speak of it to you, Ané.”

  “My son, ill news is better spoken than hidden—in the light one may see its true colours more clearly,” Réfiyé Hanim said.

  He looked at her sharply, a little surprised at her speech.

  “No amount of light can show these tidings as anything but black,” he said bitterly. “The Khalifate has been abolished—by a decree of this upstart Assembly in Ankara! First the Sultanate, now the Khalifate! What do you say to that?”

  Féridé listened eagerly for her grandmother’s reply. She was a little frightened: in spite of his visible efforts to master it, the Pasha’s anger was evident; it would certainly be directed against Mustafa Kemal, and therefore also against his trusted henchman, her husband, whom she was bound to support and defend—and yet she loved her father dearly. It was a cruel moment.

  “This is very grave news, my son,” Réfiyé Hanim said, seriously. “You are sure that it is true?”

  “But perfectly sure—it is here!” He struck the paper with his hand. “Oh, it is too much, this! First he was shorn of his proper powers and pomps, and mulcted of his revenues; now he is turned out of the country, deported like any criminal—yes, put across the frontier at Chataldja, with a ticket for Switzerland! The Khalif!—the earthly deputy of the One True God! It is a fearful impiety.”

  Both women, the young one and the very old, had only one wish at that moment—to calm Asaf Pasha. Féridé was really afraid to speak— her father’s state shocked her. His fez had come askew in the violence of his agitation; the tassel fell over his eyes; he brushed it aside angrily. Réfiyé Hanim took charge of the situation. “Tell me more, my son,” she said quietly—it is always better to let an angry man talk till he runs down. The Pasha talked on; he ran down finally with the words— “Ah, this Kemal will have much to answer for!”

  Féridé’s natural impatience got the better of her, as often happened.

  “For giving our country its rightful place among the nations again, he is answerable already,” she said—gently, but with a sort of implacable firmness. The Pasha snorted—this was something he could not deny. “And you have not yet told Niné that the Ministry of the Culte is also abolished—which is really the root cause,” she added unwisely.

  “Ah, you are well-informed!” the old man exclaimed, with bitter sarcasm. “Doubdess your husband has had a hand in it all! So perhaps you can explain to me why this monstrous profanity has been considered expedient?”

  “Yes, I can. It is to make it possible to liberate the minds of our people, and give them a true education, not the parrot-memorising of the hadis, which is all that they get in the medressés,” Féridé retorted briskly. “Today, in the twentieth century, this is not enough.”

  “It has been enough for many centuries, when our nation was great,” the old man said angrily.

  “Our country has not been very great in this century, so far as I know,” she returned energetically. “It was the Sultan’s Government which signed the Armistice of Mudros and the Treaty of Sèvres, was it not? The terms of the Treaty of Lausanne are rather different, as I think you will agree—and for that, undoubtedly, Mustafa Kemal Pasha is answerable. Has he served his country so ill? Should we not trust him in other matters also?”

  The Pasha almost choked. Féridé was a shrewd hitter, and it is always hard on the old when the young manifesdy have the best of them in an argument. While he paused to think of a reply—and really there was no easy reply to her points—a small sound from the divan under the window made both the disputants, father and daughter, look round. Réfiyé Hanim had her hand to her breast; her breath was coming in little gasps. Féridé flew to her, while the Pasha moved across and rang a small silver hand-bell which stood on a table.

  “Where are your drops? On your dressing-table?” Féridé asked.

  “Yes—and fetch Marthe.”

  But the sound of the bell brought Mdlle Marthe hurrying in, followed by Ayshé, who had the drops and a medicine-glass in her hand. That small circumstance alarmed Féridé more than anything had yet done; evidently the little bell was often rung, and those within earshot knew what it signified. Miserable, penitent, anxious, she watched while the elderly maid and the elderly governess ministered to the old lady—presently they led her away to her room. The Pasha had withdrawn while all this went on; presumably to the dining-room, for when the door onto the upper hall closed after them he came back into the salon, where Féridé still stood, looking as troubled as she felt.

  “We must avoid such arguments in your Grandmother’s presence,” he said, with a sort of stiff sadness. “She is not equal to them—she is rather delicate now.”

  Féridé went up and kissed him impulsively. “Oh my dear Father, yes! I am so sorry. What do all these things matter to us? Let us love one another in peace, as we always have.”

  The Pasha’s stiffness relaxed. He kissed her in return, and stroked her hair. “You are my dear daughter still.”

  When Féridé went a few minutes later to Réfiyé Hanim’s room she found the old lady propped up on a chaise-longue talking to Mdlle Marthe; she looked as bright as a button, and Marthe was actually smiling.

  “Well, my child, did you make peace with your Father?” Réfiyé Hanim asked, before the girl had time to speak.

  “Yes, I did. But are you better, Niné?” she asked anxiously.

  “Much better, my child, I thank you; it was a light attack this time,” she replied. Mdlle Marthe, a handkerchief to her mouth, made a sound like a discreet titter. The girl looked from one to the other.

  “Nine! Oh, wicked one! You frightened me terribly,” she said reproachfully.

  “Better fear than anger and strife,” said Réfiyé Hanim blandly.

  . . . . . .

  Alec Grant had been sent to Cairo on a temporary Staff job when the Allied forces left Istanbul in October 1923, and rather more than a year later he returned to England again. He went down to Oxford for Christmas, and while he was there he laid siege energetically to Fanny. Even his Scottish deliberation and patience were nearly at an end; he was due to be made a major at any moment, and then they could marry—he had been dangling after Fanny for nearly six years, and now that he was likely to be at home for some time he wanted to clinch matters. His quiet determination—and more than a hint of passion—succeeded; in spite of a lingering uncertainty Fanny yielded at last, and their engagement was announced.

  The next thing, of course, was for her to “meet his people,” which she had never done, and early in the New Year they travelled up to Inverness and went to stay with his parents. Fanny liked the nice unpretentious uncompromising old house, with its plain well-kept garden; and she liked Alec’s nice unpretentious uncompromising old parents even more—as for the Grants, they were charmed with Fanny’s intelligence and good sense, even more than by her prettiness and easy lively manners. “She will make you a good wife, Alec—no man could wish for a better,” Colonel Grant said to his son, with most
unwonted expansiveness; and old Mrs. Grant said much the same, in her own fashion, and more words. They petted and made much of her—the whole atmosphere was charming and beguiling to a degree. It is always charming to be petted and approved of, especially as a daughter-in-law. But all the same panic seized on Fanny in that solid comfortable house in the North, with its crow-stepped gables and blazing fires, and kind faces round the fires. The harsh grey skies, the biting north-east winds, the mud—even the rich agricultural land, stark and gloomy in its winter emptiness; above all the evenings, closing in at four o’clock and confining one to the fireside, however pleasant, for the next seven hours. All these together filled her with a sort of fear, revulsion, even. Oh for sun!—sun and bright skies, heat on the skin and dry baking soil under one’s feet, and dust in one’s nostrils. Dressing for dinner one night in her cosy room, its pleasant chintzes glowing in the firelight, she asked herself in a sudden terror if she had made a mistake? And there and then she decided that however soon Alec got his majority, she would not marry him until she had gone back to Turkey, and seen all that again. She might be disillusioned; it might all be quite different now that Turkey was a Republic—and Kemal Pasha, whom poor Ahmet had idolised so, its President. (She had heard both from Alec and in one of Féridé’s rare letters that Ahmet had been killed.) But whether it proved to be illusion or not, there was the place that had meant most to her in the world so far, and she would not embark on marriage, with Alec or anyone else—it was strange how that idea persisted—until she had seen it again, and seen Féridé again: Féridé, too, had meant more to her than any other person so far except her uncle, and now, she supposed, Alec. And on her return to Oxford three weeks later—alone, for Alec remained in the North with his parents—she persuaded Dr. Pierce to let her write to Féridé and suggest a visit in the summer.