Ayshe grabs Connor’s arm. ‘Be careful! Do not frighten him!’
Looking back at her, Connor seems a little put out by her apparent lack of concern for his welfare. He begins to edge his way carefully towards where Ibrahim teeters, a hair’s-breadth from calamity. The old man continues to rant and rail.
‘What have you done to our city? What have you done to your people?’
‘What’s he saying?’ Connor calls out to Ayshe as he continues to sidle towards the old man.
‘He cries for everything we have lost.’
Her father continues to wail. ‘Caliph of the Faithful, Emperor of the Ottomans! Seize the sword of Osman, restore our fortunes!’
Reaching Ibrahim, Connor gently but firmly takes his arm and says calmly, ‘Why don’t we sit here for a while?’
Ibrahim turns his head and looks deeply into his eyes, uncomprehending. Ayshe watches on with trepidation as Connor carefully seats himself on the tiles and indicates for Ibrahim to join him. The old man looks out across the city and sighs. Bending his knees and guided by Connor, he reaches out behind him and rests his hands on the rooftop, lowering himself down to find a seat beside the Australian.
Once settled, Ibrahim speaks. ‘Yes. Yes. Good. Let us watch the parade together . . .’
This is not the first time Ibrahim’s manic nightscape has been populated by apparitions and phantasms. The pomp and splendour of the Ottoman court fill the streets in his mind’s eye with a triumphal march. ‘How magnificent . . .’
Ibrahim turns to Connor and his daughter with tears in his eyes.
‘We shall not see the like of this again.’
After coaxing him back onto the terrace and into the house, Connor helps Ayshe escort Ibrahim to his room. While she settles her father to bed, Connor waits outside, sitting on the steps at the top of the landing. He tells himself she may need his help again. As he sits there listening to the low murmurs coming from behind the heavy timber door, he wonders at the growing attraction he has for this woman. When he married Lizzie it was for life. He was sure he would never feel this way about anyone else. But he can’t help feeling abandoned, that Lizzie chose to leave him.
And now, the quiet strength and determination of this Turkish woman, her resolve, and her deep love and loyalty for her son and her father, triggers something long buried in Connor’s subconscious.
The door opens quietly and Ayshe steps out into the hallway. She turns to Connor apologetically.
‘He had a great mind once. My father was a physician at the Sultan’s court.’ She pauses, lost in memories.
Looking up, they lock eyes. Connor feels his heart leap.
‘I thank you for your help, Mr Connor.’
‘Joshua, please.’
‘Thank you, then, Joshua.’ She turns to leave.
‘Wait, I have something of yours.’ Connor strides down the hall. Opening his door, he scans the room, spying Art’s diary on the bedspread where it slipped from his chest when Ayshe woke him. The journal falls open at the spot where he had placed the photograph Orhan gave him before he left for Chanak.
When he returns, Ayshe has found a seat on the top step of the stairway where she leans wearily against the timber balustrade. Connor hands her the photo.
‘Orhan asked me to look for your husband at Gallipoli.’
Smiling sadly, Ayshe gazes closely at it.
‘I hate this photograph. Turgut is a musician – never a soldier. What did they think he would do – waltz them to death?’
‘How long were you married?’
‘I am married – ten years . . . My mother had arranged for me to marry someone else but my father fought her.’ She laughs. ‘He told her: “Why would we want our daughter to be as miserable as we are?” and she agreed.’
Ayshe looks into the distance. ‘It is not easy to marry for love here.’ She smiles resignedly. ‘Maybe my mother was right – Turgut was mad. Bills up to the roof not paid, music all hours, parties, lazy friends – oh, but how I miss the chaos.’
Connor takes a seat on a step further down the staircase, leaning his strong back against the wall with his legs bent and feet resting against the balustrade.
‘I wish my mother had arranged my marriage for me.’
‘You did not love your wife?’
‘I adored Lizzie. But I was so bad at courting. So clumsy. It took forever.’ He recalls his awkward attempts at attracting Lizzie’s attention. Widely recognised as one of the district’s best catches, she had no shortage of suitors. He could never quite understand why she chose him.
‘Everything I said would offend her. My tongue would stick to the roof of my mouth. I think she only married me out of impatience.’
‘But it was happy?’
‘Very. Until the boys were lost. In the first year, every week she would head into town – twenty miles – and wait for the train. Just in case. Now I’ve found two of our sons she would be more at peace. It is good to know where they are – they’re not lost or nameless anymore.’ At last Connor had the opportunity to share his exciting news. ‘And I have been told my eldest boy was taken prisoner . . .’
‘So he is alive?’
‘I have no idea. No one else seems to think so.’
‘But you have hope?’
‘Hope is a necessity where I come from. It’s hard country, the Mallee – most of it just dust.’ Connor laughs. ‘My wife used to call me her Mallee Bull. A big, dumb brute – impossible to shift. I believe things when I see them.’
Ayshe gets to her feet. ‘That is good news, then.’ She turns to re-enter her father’s room. ‘Good night, Mr Bull.’
She sits on the end of Ibrahim’s bed, holding the photo in her hand. Ayshe looks at her husband and son and weeps, tears streaming down her cheeks and falling in dark pools on her chiffon gown. Her father twitches and murmurs, his visions continuing to pursue him in sleep.
She knows she no longer has any choice. Steeling herself, she wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. Standing, she moves to the head of her father’s bed, bowing to kiss him lightly on the forehead.
Ayshe speaks to him under her breath.
‘I understand why you prefer to be lost in the past, Father. But unfortunately it’s a luxury I can no longer afford. Forgive me.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Hasan shifts impatiently in a hard timber chair. The anteroom in Topkapi Palace is decorated in gauche and lavish Rococo style, from a time when the Ottoman sultans sought to mimic the gaudiest French and Italian fashions of the day.
For centuries the Turkish rulers have felt compelled to prove their bona fides by outdoing their Continental counterparts. In the early years of the Empire, with incalculable riches flooding into the city along the Silk Road and the spice routes, the opulence of the Ottoman court was without equal. But once the Western European powers rose to prominence, keeping up with the neighbours became a very expensive exercise. Nowadays the sultans seem to spend most of their time successfully frustrating their treasurers and viziers by sapping the public coffers.
Hasan has never understood the fixation Turkish rulers have with being European, when in reality they were and are so much more. Ultimately their vanity has been the undoing of the Empire.
Today he wears his finest tunic, braided trousers, gleaming knee-high boots and a dress sword that rattles against the chair leg whenever he shifts his weight. A cylindrical woollen hat, his serpuş, rests on his knee. On his left breast he wears the Harp Madalyasɩ medal for Gallipoli veterans: a silver crescent over a red enamel star. The Germans he fought with nicknamed it the Iron Crescent after their own medal of honour, the Iron Cross. The European compulsion to believe they invented everything mystifies Hasan. Above it hangs an impressive medallion with a seven-pointed star and an enamel centre decorated with Arabic calligraphy. It is the Order of Osmania, one of the Ottoman Empire’s highest honours, but today its significance escapes the low-ranking French and British officers who bustle in and out and eye Has
an with suspicion.
Sultan Mehmed V, a man whose own jacket breast groaned under the weight of self-awarded medals, had bestowed the Order of Osmania on Hasan. He pinned the medal on his tunic, kissed him on both cheeks and headed off to bed feeling poorly. A week later the Sultan died, only months before the war ended. Hasan imagines that Mehmed died of a broken heart, unable to bear the imminent downfall of the Empire.
After half an hour of waiting Hasan is becoming tetchy. Things would be different if Jemal were here. Which is exactly why Hasan elected to come alone. His staff sergeant has many fine qualities but diplomacy and patience are not amongst them. He smiles at the thought of Jemal huffing and bellowing indignantly on his behalf; a raging bull in a bazaar. Yet as his frustration rises, Hasan is beginning to wish he had brought him.
The chanting that seeps in from the street momentarily distracts him. Constantinople’s Christians – half the city’s population is Greek and Russian – are cheering the British soldiers. The Greeks, especially, imagine this is the beginning of the liberation of the city that was once the capital of Greek Byzantium. Heated conversations in kafeneions across Constantinople begin and end with, ‘What do they expect? This city was founded by the Greek king, Byzas – ‘twas all Greece, you know.’
Hasan’s countrymen have taken to the streets in protest. How dare the British dissolve their parliament? How can Sultan Mehmed VI be so chicken-hearted as to allow it? What happened to the man who wields the sword of Allah? His predecessors had honorifics like ‘The Conqueror,’ ‘The Warrior’ or ‘The Thunderbolt.’ Mehmed has the heart of a librarian or an accountant. After Friday prayers, when the city’s disillusioned Turks have had time to stew on the events of the week and their disappointment boils over, Hasan overhears the nicknames they have coined for Mehmed: ‘The Worrier,’ ‘The Puppet’ and ‘The Thundercloud.’ Even in dire times his countrymen have not lost their sense of the absurd.
Nor have they lost their penchant for theatre. Black bolts of fabric are draped from the minarets of the Blue Mosque, mourning the death of young Nationalists hanged by the British for attempting to smuggle arms out of the city. Perhaps the fabric billowing in the breeze signals the hastening death of democracy in Turkey. The despair rises in Hasan’s throat like acid and he can sit no longer. A small group of French officers file into the room and occupy the remaining seats. They look him up and down with smug smiles, whispering with each other behind raised hands and sniggering like schoolboys. When an adjoining door opens and they are ushered in, it is the last straw for Hasan. He yells through the open door.
‘I have an appointment with Admiral Calthorpe. How much more of this must I endure?’
Hasan hears a distant door slam followed by the clatter of boots on marble approaching at speed. Captain Brindley appears at the door in front of Hasan, speaking formally without a hint of sincerity.
‘I apologise, Major. I really do. But Admiral Calthorpe will have to reschedule your meeting. Something rather urgent has come up, I’m afraid. Perhaps Tuesday next week? Would that suit?’
‘Yes – if your admiral could also reschedule the Greeks,’ spits Hasan sarcastically. ‘Perhaps ask them to tear Anatolia apart the week after that.’
‘Major, we are simply trying to restore order here,’ says Brindley lamely. ‘And your friend Mustafa Kemal and his Nationalist rabble are not helping.’
His insult cuts fast and deep. Hasan’s thoughts immediately go to his young countrymen swinging outside the palace walls, hanged for daring to challenge the division of their homeland, its various parts handed over to the highest bidder. But rather than anger, a sudden wave of self- loathing washes over him. He realises he has been played for a fool. Any hope he’d harboured that his cooperation at Çanakkale might have made the British more amenable to Turkish interests and aspirations has been shattered.
‘If we don’t help ourselves, who will?’ Hasan asks – of himself as much as Brindley.
Brindley holds his hands together, palm against palm, in front of his chest, head bowed and eyes closed patronisingly.
‘Allow us to handle the Greeks through diplomatic channels, Major. You can rest assured we have no intention of giving this marvellous city back to them.’
‘And the rest of my country?’ snaps Hasan, now incensed.
‘Come, now, Major; let’s not have another war.’
His sanctimonious tone is too much for Hasan. ‘It’s the same war,’ the Turk yells. ‘It hasn’t ended.’
Hasan’s sword hilt crashes against the doorjamb as he storms from the room. Thrusting his jaw forwards with fury, he marches double-time down a long corridor, trying to put as much distance between himself and Brindley as possible before he does something regrettable. At least now he knows where he stands. And he knows what he must do.
Outside, Connor is walking towards Brindley’s office beneath the colonnaded verandah when he sees Hasan crashing towards him with his fist clenched tight around the hilt of his sword. Connor smiles and holds out his hand.
‘Major Hasan, hello. Can you tell me . . .’
The Turk flashes him a murderous look. ‘No. I can’t tell you anything. I have finished helping.’ He barrels past without stopping.
Bewildered, Connor watches Hasan stride into the distance. He thinks of a hawk riding a current until it disappears in the shimmering midday sun. He could swear the two men had left Gallipoli on good terms. Nothing seems straightforward to Connor in this country. When he turns back, an agitated Captain Brindley is standing before him, grimacing like he has a mouthful of broken glass.
‘Ah, Mr Connor. Welcome back. Do you have your passport with you?’
Connor fishes his travel documents from inside his coat and holds them out. Brindley inspects them cursorily and then tucks them into his own tunic pocket.
‘Thank you.’
Before Connor can object Brindley is marching away.
‘This way. Now.’
Brindley’s tone is ominous. All Connor can do is follow, riding in the officer’s wake until he tires or his anger subsides sufficiently to explain what the hell is going on. Connor is here to find out what he can about the Turkish prison camps Hasan mentioned. He is sure the British must have a map – names of survivors, lists of men registered for Red Cross POW packs, something like that. But the further Brindley marches into the labyrinth of offices and storerooms, the more unsettled Connor becomes.
They climb a narrow set of stone stairs and Connor pauses at the top to look through a timber screen into a small courtyard below. Guards have barricaded a wooden gate with crates and barbed wire and stand with bayonets poised. It seems like overkill to Connor.
‘You can never be too sure,’ warns Brindley over his shoulder.
The captain cuts through a room where four junior officers sit chatting and smoking while a fifth man pushes on typewriter keys with his index fingers and curses the carbon paper that is caught in the roller. They snap to attention and salute as Brindley passes and waves his fingers across his forehead.
As Connor closes on Brindley the officer turns to face him.
‘You were specifically ordered not to go to Gallipoli.’
‘Well, I’m not in your army.’
Brindley continues curtly as he walks. ‘That man . . . the man you attacked – yes, we heard all about it – is a Turkish war hero. He was there on our invitation, to help our expedition down there. The sole reason you are not in prison right now is that he refused to file a complaint. From what I’ve heard, he had every right to.’
Connor has no intention of apologising to Brindley. It was a dispute between two men. It had nothing to do with the government or the army. Nor was he going to give Brindley the satisfaction of an explanation. They are passing an open double doorway. Across Brindley’s shoulder, Connor catches a glimpse inside of a table covered in rolled-up charts and maps. He stops abruptly.
‘He told me my son was taken prisoner. Show me where the prison camps were and I’ll be out
of your hair,’ promises Connor. It doesn’t seem an unreasonable proposition.
‘All the prisoners of war were repatriated,’ says Brindley bluntly. ‘If he did not come home, the sad reality is that he is dead.’
‘So you’re telling me there was no one too sick, or too badly injured that –’
Brindley cuts him off, slamming his peaked cap against his leg in frustration. ‘No, there is not, Mr Connor!’ But he can see that the Australian is unmoved. He grabs Connor by the arm, and frogmarches him into the adjoining map room.
Connor finds himself staring up at a vast, hand-painted map that occupies almost an entire wall. Laid out before him is the Ottoman Empire at its zenith. The piece is so immense and exquisitely detailed in gold leaf that it could only have been commissioned by a regent determined to awe visiting dignitaries with the extent of his domain. Snakelike Arabic calligraphy edges the map’s border, as elegant as it is utterly impenetrable to Connor. However, it seems an overzealous British bureaucrat has nailed small signs with the English translations alongside the map and each of its features. Connor reads, ‘Sovereign of the House of Osman, Sultan of Sultans, Khan of Khans, Ruler of Rulers,’ it reads. ‘Commander of the Faithful, Successor of the Prophet of the Lord of the Universe, Protector of the Holy Cities of Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem, Emperor of Constantinople and the cities of Damascus, Cairo and Baghdad, of Cyprus, of Rhodes, the Black Sea, Greece, Albania, Tunisia, Georgia, Turkistan and many other countries, forts and castles.’
Brindley steps closer to the map and speaks without turning to Connor.
‘The Ottomans had one of the biggest empires of all time.’ He points. ‘From the gates of Vienna to Mecca, from Casablanca, here, to Tehran – and right now you’d be hard pushed to find a more dangerous place on earth, Mr Connor.’
Connor’s eyes dart across the wall. Even to his untrained eye, this is much more than a map. The brilliant blue seas, the lush green lands and the golden desert sands affirm God’s greatness, while the fortified cities with their magnificent domes and minarets show the Sultan’s dominion over man’s greatest creations. The Ottoman Empire brings together earthly and heavenly treasures and the Sultan is both ruler and Allah’s curator.
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