The rattle and clatter of broken crockery and bottles spurred the crowd on. Some were already drunk, gulping, downing, guzzling rakι or any other alcoholic drink they could get their hands on. The pandemonium reached its peak when a group of riot police arrived on the scene to control the frenzied crowd. Word spread that churches had been set on fire.
An older woman with a black scarf tightly covering her head, out of breath, deliriously brandished one of her shoes at the mob and shouted obscenities at the top of her voice. A company of roughnecks with Turkish flags wrapped around their chests stood still on the opposite pavement, displaying no sign of emotion. One of them, through a red megaphone daubed with a star and crescent, let out a loud, scornful laugh and blustered at the woman, ‘Get lost Madame Atina, Katina, or whatever your name is, and all Greeks like you!’ Then, assuming the air of a village mayoral candidate, using his megaphone, he began to barnstorm. He was dressed to impress the crowd: a pair of brown pants, light brown shoes with high soles, a brown checked jacket and a pink shirt with a large white starched collar. The knot of his brown tie was larger than the tie itself. He alerted the crowd, ‘Cyprus is ours. It belongs to us Turks.’ Before he had finished the guy next to him raised a gigantic photo of Atatürk, as large as a piece of medieval armour-plate, and began giving people a piece of his mind. The one with the megaphone pushed him out of his way. Nobody stopped to listen to him.
Tomas wasn’t sure whether to keep going or to return home. He watched the ghastly developments unfold as if in slow motion.
The marauders roared rhythmically, ‘Cyprus is Turkish ... Will stay Turkish ... Cyprus is Tur ... kish ... Will stay ... Tur ... kish ...’
The savage roar rose high in the darkening sky and cloaked the city, devouring all other sounds, expunging all that was peaceful, sweeping away the so-called harmony that had enveloped the country since the declaration of the Republic in 1923.
Tomas felt utterly worn out, as if he had just finished running another difficult Olympic trial. Would it be possible to get back to college instead of going home? The roads must be blocked and the telephone lines down.
The delirious mob, with clenched fists, pillaged the businesses all along the Grand’ rue de Péra. They torched churches; they burned the Greek patriarchate, the consulate and the Olympus Airlines travel agency, and they burned houses ... Like vultures, they gorged themselves on Christian and Jewish merchandise. Muslim shopkeepers grabbed as many pictures of Atatürk as possible and placed them in their shop windows, frantically waving their identification certificates and shrieking, ‘I am a Turk. Elhamdűlillah, thank God, I’m a Muslim. I’m one of you. Don’t touch. Don’t come in.’
Despite the pictures of their saviour in their windows, on their chests, on their backs, and despite their declarations of Muslim-Turkish identity, the hoodlums broke their locked doors and tore their metal shutters like pieces of paper, blasting into their shops, wrecking shelves and smashing windows, not even sparing the owners who hadn’t managed to flee. The police looked on helplessly.
The deranged masses multiplied and streets, alleys, public squares trembled with fear, not only in Istanbul but in the surrounding towns as well. Shop signs came down; vehicles were overturned and telephone lines lay scattered all over the cobblestones. The pavements were piled high with a foot or two of debris produced by the looters: plundered goods, lengths of silk and satin fabrics, cheeses, salamis, shattered glass, flowers, telephones, sandwiches with cheese, salami, anchovy, broken chairs, grilled chickens, kebabs, crushed hardware, torn suits, skirts, books, magazines, love stories, centuries-old histories of the city, of the country, all strewn everywhere, under everybody’s feet, from Taksim Square down to the mini underground station of Tünel.
Caught in the current of the masses, which advanced inch by inch, Tomas had no way of breaking free to return to college. He walked, like the rest, on the gluey, gummy Grand’ rue de Péra. It felt as though he was kneading dough with his feet.
‘Cyprus is Turkish and will stay Turkish!’
A strange procession emerged from a side street: half a dozen young women in white dresses and large flowery hats, one of them waving a large flag, followed by a small group of men wearing homemade-looking grey theatrical beards, dressed in ancient European frock coats. They leaped nimbly into the air chanting a song with no refrain. One of them, with thin contemptuous lips and a yellowish face, suddenly left the group and attacked a young boy who was trying to escape. The yellow-faced man held the boy by the collar and tightened his grip. As the boy tried to pull away, some things fell out of his pocket and rolled along the ground; they were pieces of plundered jewellery from one of the shops. The women, in the meantime, shook their tambourines and chanted much louder than the men to rouse the ruffians. Their show didn’t last long for they were pushed aside by another group of enthusiasts ready to take down a giant billboard advertising British European Airways. At one point, cars with yards and yards of fabric attached to their rear bumpers streamed past: a grotesque parody of a parade. People who stepped on the fabrics were thrown off and tumbled under the feet of the agitated crowd or in front of the sluggish traffic. At last, on that black Tuesday, known as Septemvriana to the Greek inhabitants of Istanbul, the zealots had managed to besiege the country with the heaviest of warnings: the past could never make peace with the new republic.
When Tomas returned to the apartment around five that morning he was close to collapsing with exhaustion. He looked around fearfully, as if expecting, once through the wrought-iron door of the building, to plunge back into more nightmares. Even the pigeons in front of Yani’s grocery shop were disturbed. They wheeled up into the sky before he went in.
*
The following day, after a roundabout trip by taxi, Tomas managed to get to the girls’ college. The rioters hadn’t dared to attack the American institution.
‘I’m happy you’re here. I was so worried. All the lines have been cut,’ Anya said.
‘I know. I tried to call; it was impossible.’ He put his arm around her and they left the library building.
‘Did you talk to my parents?’
‘Yes, they’re fine,’ Tomas lied. He hadn’t even thought of finding out how they were. He didn’t know that, except for the exterior neon signs, the Novotni supper club was still intact.
‘I heard everything on the radio.’
Tomas detected pain in her voice. ‘I’m sure the radio couldn’t report everything.’
Anya was well informed. Miss Mackey, the assistant librarian, had arrived from the city that morning and told her everything. The campus was all but deserted – classes had been cancelled – and those who remained were in the common room listening to the radio.
They were halfway to the cafeteria. Tomas locked his eyes briefly on the Asiatic shore that stretched out on the other side of the straits. There was an unnatural quietness about the place. Even the ferries seemed afraid to make noise as they shuttled back and forth.
‘For years we’ve heard nothing but stuff about the war and the Wealth Tax,’ Tomas piped up. ‘You’d have thought people would have expected it. But no! And a decade later there’s panic again, chaos ... Why? I’m asking you, Anya, why? It’s insane. We’ll never learn. The past repeats itself. We’ll never learn.’
‘It’s frightening.’ Anya held Tomas’s hand tightly. ‘Our parents should’ve learned a long time ago and left this place for good,’ she said in a soft voice.
Tomas couldn’t resist saying, ‘At least you’ll soon be leaving.’
Her joy at being with Tomas came to an abrupt end. ‘I think I’d better fail my exams and stay here, at least for another year.’ Her voice was about to crack.
Tomas smiled bitterly. They had already reached the cafeteria.
‘I can turn down my scholarship and study at the University of Istanbul.’
Tomas didn’t think she could be serious; all the same, he told her it would be sheer madness.
‘Sometimes madness
supersedes wisdom.’ She was crying, ‘I love you, Tomas. I’ll always love you.’
He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer. ‘I’ll try to join you soon, Anya.’
Soon ... soon ... soon ... Words that could never soothe present pain. Tomas asked if she would like to go back to town with him.
‘I’d prefer to stay,’ she hesitated, ‘and study.’
Tomas forced another smile.
*
The riots had continued until the early hours of the following morning. The foreign press called it Constantinople’s Kristallnacht. The Turkish government, to demonstrate its interest in Cyprus at the time of a tripartite conference between Britain, Greece and Turkey, planned and organized riots against the Greek residents of Istanbul and Izmir. They managed to explode a bomb in the Turkish consulate in Salonika, Greece, followed by a false report that Kemal Atatürk’s birthplace had been bombed and destroyed.10 Squads of marauders, waving picks and crowbars, were driven in trucks to the city’s shopping area. Priests were circumcised, women raped, and the Greek cemetery was attacked, mausoleums opened, graves dug up, crosses smashed ...
The government tried to erase what they characterized as an isolated incident from the country’s collective memory.
*
Less than a year earlier Tomas had had a heated argument with his father, insisting that the minorities, especially the Armenians, should shed the victim mentality and consider themselves true citizens of the nation. How ironic, he thought, covering his disheartened face. Turkey had once again reminded everyone that injustice would remain like a malignant birthmark. Nobody would dare remove it. How he hated politics!
Tomas’s red eyes betrayed another sleepless night, but their boyish lustre remained. He walked out into the city’s empty streets. They were unrecognizable. It was difficult to walk with all the broken glass and debris. Two army trucks were parked in front of police headquarters. Other military vehicles, including light tanks, patrolled the streets. He looked for a familiar face, a piece of routine landscape, a speck of the old quarter. He was in another city altogether.
Municipal workers and soldiers were cleaning up. Tomas too had much cleaning up to do, as he planned to leave Turkey as soon as possible. It exhausted him just thinking about what was to come. This was a generation he didn’t feel he belonged to.
19
The months pushed ahead. Only two terms and two full sets of finals were left before graduation. There were good days, bad nights, dreams, flashbacks and 10,000 metres of overrun regrets. Tomas had decided never to return to competitive racing. He felt like one of those musical prodigies who folds away years of lessons and practice, recitals and competitions and, once and for all, forgets what he had hoped to become.
Anya was achieving extraordinary academic results. Tomas was busy reading and writing and studying just enough to pass his exams. He would have loved to leave with Anya and do a Masters in comparative literature, but it was a question of money. He had not thought about it for almost a week for he was busy reading War and Peace. He had lived through a war, a world war. He also had a Russian girlfriend but Anya was not Natasha Rostova and he was not Pierre Bezukhov, a misfit, but Bezukhov had money; he had received a handsome unexpected inheritance. If his family had not been deported and their properties not confiscated Tomas would also have relished a giant legacy.
*
It was almost noon when Tomas left the main library building for lunch. They were well into autumn. The leaves from the great oak trees that lined the campus had formed a rusty gold carpet on the ground. He crossed the old track that circled the football field. Would he ever be on that track again, warming up before heading to the country road to meet Anya? He felt nostalgic. There was a message for him stuck on the bulletin board at the cafeteria. He should call the Turkish Sports Federation. Was it about his appeal against their unfair decision?
Only a few students were eating in the dining section reserved for the graduating class. He sat alone. He put the message out of his mind. He was going home at the weekend. He and Anya were invited to dinner with Aram’s parents. They were like family. Tomas had loved them ever since he was a child. After finishing high school Aram had found a steady job at the glass factory in Paşabahçe, a suburb on the Asiatic side of Istanbul. He worked as a shipping clerk. Although not terribly satisfying, it was the best-paid job he could find in or around the city.
The Turkish Sports Federation should have responded to Tomas’s appeal months ago. But Tomas soon found out that he was wrong. The Federation had chosen him as athlete of the year as a result of his impressive 10,000-metres national record. There would be a special ceremony to honour him. After his bitter disappointment at the finish line he couldn’t accept it. He thanked them and declined. But he was quickly reminded that it wasn’t up to him to refuse; the decision was already official and would soon be announced to the press.
He received a medal and a modest cheque for one hundred Turkish liras at a ceremony in the Federation building. He expressed his thanks and underlined the fact that in sports nobody could or should expect to win all the time, and that holding a national record might even play against an athlete if his or her name sounded a little alien to certain delicate ears. He then regretted his words but it was too late. The press had a field day. Two weeks after the ceremony, the college weekly published an article entitled ‘Athlete of the Year Denied a Chance to Run in Melbourne,’ written by Anya Novotni.
Anya received a definitive warning from Dean Allen shortly afterwards, advising her to keep her ideas to herself and reminding her that the only reason she wasn’t being expelled was her excellent academic record.
Anya felt like telling him to go fuck himself, but he was a little old.
Anya’s troubles didn’t end there. A more serious admonition came from her parents, who asked her to either stop or slow down her relationship with Tomas.
‘You’ll soon be leaving,’ her mother said. ‘He’ll stay here. It’ll create nothing but agony for both of you; it’ll get in the way of your studies and your ...’
Anya’s reply was quick and simple. ‘I love you both very much, but I love him much, much more.’
And that was the end of it. Her parents didn’t dare bring up the subject again and let her finish her final term in peace.
*
It was the first week of June. It rained throughout commencement week. The sun finally came out on Saturday, graduation day, to dispel Tomas’s melancholy.
Tomas and Anya crossed the campus and marched to Albert Long Hall together to receive their diplomas. They listened neither to the valedictorian nor to the president’s address. They turned a deaf ear to a thousand pairs of hands applauding, none more vigorously than those belonging to the proud members of the Novotni family. When the Alex Stevens Prize was announced, Anya walked to the podium with hesitant steps, as if embarrassed at winning the prestigious award for the highest average over four years of study. She thanked the Minister of Education and lied to him, stating that she was proud to be the year’s prizewinner.
Graduation was a time for congratulations, for dreaming ... of brilliant futures ... of glories ... weddings ... and it was a time for farewells. Tomas and Anya, holding hands as if afraid of losing each other, walked down the back road towards the ramparts, wishing to vanish forever before they reached the main road that bordered the sea.
20
Tomas was looking for a job that would enable him to make some money to leave with Anya for the States. One day he saw an ad in a Turkish daily for interpreters to work at NATO’s southeastern headquarters in Izmir. He applied immediately and had an offer within a week. Anya would stay in Istanbul to follow an orientation course organized by the college for scholarship recipients, eventually joining him for the month of August before leaving for America.
Not wishing to squander time or income, Tomas left for Izmir. After a fairly long train journey he arrived in that beautiful Aegean metropolis early in t
he morning. The streets were still deserted. He had to check into a reasonable hotel before reporting to NATO Headquarters, which were housed in a vast hospital-like complex on Atatürk Street, better known as the Kordon, which bordered the sea.
Tomas was delighted as he beheld the panoramic view of the gulf upon which the city was situated, and the imposing mountain chain overlooking the Aegean. He inhaled the invigorating salty air before stepping inside.
His job involved interpreting for American and Turkish military personnel and accompanying the Turkish officers in charge of the unloading of American vessels that were delivering aid shipments sent through the Joint American Mission.
His day-to-day expenses amounted to next to nothing. He would be able to put a lot of money aside. Even the thought of it was enough to put him into a receptive, jovial mood. He was amazed that he had been chosen from the hundreds of applicants. Luck, however, is the foster child of gamblers and his wasn’t permanent. Two weeks after assuming his duties something curious happened. Turkey accused Tomas and two American sergeants of currency violation by infringing the country’s foreign exchange laws. It had happened during three consecutive unloading operations. The charges were taken up by the Turkish press and in no time turned into a bilateral grievance between the US and Turkey. The sergeants’ charges brought the US Ambassador back to Washington. A military team was dispatched from Paris to Izmir to find out more about the incrimination.
A trial in Izmir’s packed courthouse ensued. The two sergeants involved had been treated roughly by the local police twice before. The police denied the allegations and the defence attorney eloquently pleaded for dismissal of the case on the grounds that the arrests violated agreements with NATO. The judge refused the request for dismissal, announced that the next session of the trial would be within a week then slapped a ban on further reporting of the proceedings in the Turkish press.
The Lamppost Diary Page 14