by Tariq Ali
The coach contained two generals, one of whom was very short. The four young officers, one of them much younger than Selim, were on horseback. They jumped off as they ran and saluted Halil. Then my brother went down the stairs to receive his fellow generals. They saluted each other and laughed, but underneath it all even I, far removed from political intrigues, could detect the tension. Selim was introduced to the newcomers, though I observed that no names were mentioned. I led them into the house and then the dining room where breakfast was waiting to be served. Halil had insisted on total secrecy. Petrossian alone was entrusted to serve the meal. My brother did not want even the identity of the officers present to be known to anyone. The Baron and Memed were upset at being excluded, but accepted the decision with bad grace.
I, too, was about to leave when one of the officers, the youngest among them, stopped me.
“Is she your sister, General Halil?”
My brother nodded. “Yes and she is the wife of our new friend.”
“Is she on our side?” asked the same officer.
I looked him straight in the eyes. “I am.”
“Good,” he said in a deep and very serious voice. “Then you must stay. We want to end the situation where women are considered good only for the affairs of the heart or the home or, indeed, for purposes of procreation. We want them also to become experts in organising the affairs of the state. We want to stop encouraging them in the trivial activities they have invented to keep themselves busy while we work. The only reason my wife is not with us today is that her father is seriously ill. Are we agreed?”
The others smiled and nodded. How strange, I thought to myself, that this young man with a pleasant face and a thin moustache can speak with such authority in the presence of three generals. Where does this confidence come from?
The discussion during breakfast was deliberately low-key. They kept referring to the Committee. At first I thought it was the code-name for their leader, but it soon became clear that the Committee was a secret society to which they all belonged. I was angry that Selim had not mentioned it to me before and since the young officer had made such a fuss when he insisted on my presence I felt that my voice should be heard again.
“Excuse me, gentlemen, but what is the Committee?”
The young officer looked at Selim and Halil in disbelief. “Neither of you has told her?”
Both men became sheepish and avoided my eye.
“The Committee, madame,” said the officer, “is the name of the largest secret society ever created in the entire history of this Empire. It is the Committee of Union and Progress to which we all belong. It is secret, but they know we exist and their spies are everywhere. It is not restricted to soldiers, though we form the largest component within its ranks. There are many writers and officials who are members. Some of our best people operate from Paris and Salonika. Namik Kemal, whose play Vatan you may have seen or read, is one of our inspirers. After today, if you agree with our aims, we shall invite you to join the Committee. My wife is a very active member in Istanbul. She teaches at the Galatsaray lycée and is organising other like-minded women.”
I told them I was honoured to be considered and they would have an answer from me by the evening. It was the older of the two generals who replied in a voice so soft and feminine that I seriously wondered whether he had been accidentally castrated. Unlike his colleague, he was not one of nature’s more imposing generals. He was short, clean-shaven and possessed a paunch whose size attracted attention. Because he was different from the other officers, I took a liking to him, but something must have gone wrong at some stage in his life. He spoke in the squeaky voice of a young girl and the effect was frankly disconcerting. I found it extremely difficult to maintain a serious face while he spoke.
“We are delighted to have made your acquaintance. We must now retire to discuss certain logistical details in case there is an unforeseen emergency and we have to take action without the luxury of widespread consultation with other members. Unfortunately this discussion is exclusively for officers, but we shall be finished after lunch and would be delighted if you joined us in the afternoon.”
I smiled and left the room. Outside in the garden I heaved a sigh of relief, sat down on the bench and began to laugh. I had been so taken with the morning that I had not noticed Uncle Memed comfortably seated on his favourite armchair underneath the walnut tree. He had been absorbed in a book and had initially frowned at the disturbance created by my laughter, but smiled when he saw that it was me. I was summoned with an imperious gesture of his forefinger. The Baron, who was never too far away from Uncle Memed, emerged from the other side of the tree, adjusting his pince-nez.
“Share your joke with Favourite Uncle.”
I explained why I was laughing and Memed, who had an infectious giggle, joined in as well, which made me laugh even more. I looked at the Baron, fully expecting a brief lecture on the human voice and the conditions that caused it to change or not to change, but he had suddenly become very distracted and thoughtful.
“Baron?” asked Memed, worried by his friend’s demeanour.
“An awful thought crossed my mind on hearing Nilofer’s story, but it is of no consequence. Now, young lady, are you aware that your children have been taken sailing by Salman?”
“No. He never asked my permission. Neither of them can swim.”
“They won’t need to. Just look at the sea. It is so calm today. I have been watching them through my binoculars and they all seem perfectly happy. Here, you have a look.”
I borrowed the binoculars and walked to the bottom of the garden for a better view. It was as he said. They were not far from the shore, the sea appeared benign and all was well. None the less I felt nervous at the thought of them out at sea in my absence. I had never thought of death before Dmitri was murdered. Now I am often worried. What if I die? Who will take care of them and love them as I do? Sometimes I have dreams of anxiety in which the children are in danger and I am unable to reach them in time. These dreams are so powerful that I always wake up and rush to their bedchambers to make sure they are safely asleep.
I shouted at Salman when they came back, but the children rushed to his defence. Over the last few weeks he had spent more time with them than us and I was sure he talked of Selim and how good it was that I had married again and was happy, because I noticed that Orhan had become friendly again.
Curiously enough, Emineh, who was much closer to her father than Orhan, had shown no signs of resentment or hostility. In fact her relationship with Selim, which had barely existed before, was now warm and she was losing her shyness towards him. I gave them the binoculars so they could see the sailing boat in which they had just returned go further and further out to sea. Salman took my arm as we began to walk in the garden.
“Is the conspiracy proceeding well, Nilofer? When can we look forward to our liberation?”
“I will have a better idea by this evening, but you, who are knowledgeable and have travelled so much, should join the Committee.”
He shook his head firmly. “On this subject I am in agreement with my father completely. It is another reason for our closeness to each other. We both feel that the Committee is too heavily dominated by uniforms. Getting rid of the beards and the eunuchs is a big leap forward, but replacing them with uniforms might not take us as far forward as we need to be if we are ever to catch up with our rivals.”
“Who else is there to effect the change? The poets?”
“Heaven be praised,” he laughed. “Nilofer, you have become one of them?”
“I am thinking of it.”
He talked of other fears. The last period of reform had been constructive. “Replacing the robe and the turban with the stambouline and the fez may have been symbolic, but it was a start. Most importantly, the edict of 1839 announcing the reforms was of an egalitarian character. It was also generous insofar as it offered the same opportunities to all the subjects of the Empire. Now the mood has changed. There are
people in your committees who believe in purity and they, my dear sister, frighten me. I find that all talk of purity is very dangerous.”
“Why?” I asked for the sake of argument. “Nobody accuses the Greeks of being dangerous when they want their purity and want to be separate from everyone else. In fact, most of Europe supports them.”
“The question is,” said Salman, “are we going to slit the throat of every Greek who wishes to stay here? Just like your late husband? Is every Armenian going to be driven out of his house? Petrossian’s family have lived in their village for over five hundred years, just as long as the Ottomans have ruled these lands. Are we going to purify Petrossian’s village? These are the new questions that need to be answered. Ask your new friends what they mean to establish after they have put Sultan Abdul Hamid on a boat and pushed him in the direction of Britain.”
Salman had forced me to think seriously about these matters. I was for a complete change, but I was not for purity at all, especially if it meant driving out all the Christian subjects of the Empire. Salman was surely right about that, but it is also true that there is always chaos when Empires begin to crumble.
Would the Prophet Memed and his followers have been able to make such rapid progress if the Roman Empire had not been in a state of terminal decline? The Muslim armies had taken Spain with a few thousand soldiers. That would never have been possible if Rome had still been powerful. And our own Osman. Could he have prospered if the Eastern Empire had not begun to decay? What we had gained in the past was now being taken away from us as we began to decay. That was the way of the world. Britain and France were ahead of us as we were once ahead of the Romans and the Byzantines. There would be chaos when the Sultan fell. I did not have to be a deeply profound thinker to understand what anyone could see. The Committee was important because it might be able to control the chaos and minimise the confusion that lay ahead.
I was about to join my new friends in the library when I noticed the Baron and Uncle Memed deep in conversation with Halil, who had been shaken by something the Baron had said to him. I saw him nod earnestly as the Baron spoke and then rush back into the house.
An hour later, the Committee was in full session in the library. Halil appeared to be calm again. The general who had not spoken before cleared his throat, and we fell silent.
“We can no longer look away from our own history. Our tendency is always to boast. We constantly look backwards and say to ourselves: we who once were nothing built a great Empire for the glory of Islam. Our children are constantly being taught of our victories and, it is true, there were many in the past, but our failure to understand our own decline is why we are now at an impasse. I do not wish to speak for a long time, but let me map our decline briefly. We have now been on the retreat for two centuries.
“Our failure to take Vienna in 1683 was the turning point in our fortunes. The result of that was the Treaty of Karlowitz, which we signed exactly two hundred years ago in 1699, giving up Hungary to the Habsburgs and retreating to Belgrade. In 1774, it was Ottoman imbecility that gave the Russians the power to protect the interests of our Christian subjects. Why did the Sultan or his Vizier not ask in return for the right to protect the Russian serfs, since their treatment was an affront to our entire population?
“More defeats followed in 1792, when the French were preparing to execute their King, and then we suffered again in 1799, 1812, 1829 and then just twenty years ago when we lost Serbia, Romania and Montenegro and the Austrians even took away Bosnia and Herzegovina. The French and English navies send in their ships to the outskirts of Istanbul and threaten us with punishments unless we follow their dictates. It is the end of this Empire. We must act now to limit the scale of the disaster. We could move in army units next week and take the Sultan, but it is pointless unless we are agreed as to what we shall put in his place. That is all I wish to say for the moment.”
This general had spoken very clearly and in a strong voice had said what we all knew already, but the starkness of the decline had never been so visible to me before. One question had always bothered me.
“Forgive my ignorance, General, but why were we unable to take Vienna?”
Everyone sighed in exasperation as if this was something they had been discussing all their lives and now, of all things, a woman wanted to know the answer. It was the young officer from Salonika who replied.
“As you can imagine, this is something our military historians have been discussing for a long time and there is no real agreement. The defeat of our army outside Vienna in 1683 was understandable. The Habsburgs and the Poles were in possession of new Western techniques of warfare. Our soldiers were demoralised and in a state of some discontent. I think by then it was a bit late for us. The real question is what happened when we were at the height of our strength and Sultan Suleman’s armies were sweeping aside everything in front of them as they took Belgrade, Rhodes, Hungary and Transylvania but stopped at the gates of Vienna in 1529. Why did we lift that siege when the city was in our grasp? That is the real mystery. For at that time we were militarily dominant and politically in alliance with the best people in Europe: German and Dutch Protestants as well as the Jews and people of our own faith being expelled from Spain. If we had taken Vienna we might have defeated the Catholics decisively and changed the face of Europe. Think what might have happened if we had reversed the trend in Spain. The victory might have forced us to modernise ourselves two hundred years ago, along with the rest of Europe. Suleman’s failure to take Vienna was the decisive moment, in my opinion. And everyone here is likely to give you a different reason for the failure. We would be here for weeks and even then we would not reach agreement. If you are seriously interested in Ottoman military history we will plan an evening in Istanbul and bring all the experts together. I think...”
My brother Halil interrupted the discussion. “Always the past. Always the past. It’s what we usually accuse our enemies of doing. Let us discuss the future. Before we proceed, however, I have something important to report to you. There is an old family friend staying here. He was once a German tutor, but on the death of his brother, he inherited the family estates in Prussia and became a Baron. He claims that there is a person present in this room, who is spying on behalf of the palace. He knows this because he was present in Berlin when this same person negotiated a secret treaty between the Sultan and Prussia, committing us to support them in any future European conflict. In return they would help preserve the Sultan in power. This is treachery on two different levels. The first is against the interests of our country. The second is directly against the Committee. If such a person is actually present it would be useful at this stage if he could identify himself.”
These remarks created a sensation. The young officers rose to their feet in anger. The general with the squeaky voice was beginning to tremble. He was looking at the floor, but everyone was looking at him. His voice cracked even further.
“This is a complete misunderstanding. It is true I went to Berlin on behalf of the Sultan, but how could I refuse without betraying our cause? I did as I was told by the Grand Vizier. Is that a crime?”
A long silence followed this remark. The other general looked at his colleague with a sad expression. “Orders have to be carried out. We know that well, but why did you not inform me at the time? I was your senior officer. And why, when you established contact with the Committee, did you not inform its members in Istanbul? I think it would be best if you told us the truth, general.”
Then the young officer spoke again. “Have you given our names to anyone?”
“How could he?” The menace in Halil’s voice was completely new to me. “He has never met you before, but he could have given the names of the two generals who approached him to join the Committee. Did you?”
I began to feel sorry for the man with the woman’s voice. He was shaking his head in disbelief as he began to shrink and disappear in the corner of Iskander Pasha’s large, faded green leather armchair. I suppo
se he was amazed by the coincidence of a Prussian junker with links to the military leaders in Berlin being here on this particular day and recognising him. Who can blame the poor general? Very few people, including some who were very close to the family, were aware that Uncle Memed and the Baron had been lovers for thirty years. Even the most brilliant spy could not have foreseen such a disaster, but, at the very least, he might have been better able to pull himself out of the morass by inventing a story that created a doubt in the minds of some of those who were present. Not this man.
Never in my life have I seen someone disintegrate so completely as did the eunuch-general on that day in the library of our summer house in August 1899. Everyone was looking at him. Nobody spoke. He was cowering in fear. Slowly a smell began to pervade the room. Our noses began to twitch. I realised then that the wretched man had soiled his trousers. I think this act disgusted his stiff-backed colleagues even more than the treachery. Halil ran out of the room and returned with Petrossian, who stepped back as the stench assaulted his senses.
“What one is, one does,” said the other general in a tone of total disgust.
The eunuch-general had begun to cry. He pleaded for mercy. He sought our forgiveness. He swore on the Koran that he would tell us everything, including the names of all the spies in the Committee, provided his life was spared.
“Go and change your clothes first, you wretch,” said the young officer. “You deserve to be executed for this act alone. We will determine your fate on your return. Your very presence in the army is an outrage.”
Petrossian lifted him out of the room. We all rushed to breathe the fresh air of the scented garden. Usually I find the scent of jasmine too cloying. How welcome it was on that day as I inhaled its sweetness! Halil and the other general were walking together, deciding what to do with their colleague. The officers, including Selim, were in a huddle closer to the house. I was looking at the sea, unable to take in every possible angle of the events of the afternoon. Even if the eunuch-general gave us a list of the spies there would be no guarantee that he was telling the truth. He might deliberately mislead us to create more trouble within the Committee. It was difficult to think of him doing anything intelligent, given the scale of the earthquake that had shaken his life, but he might be thinking now as he cleaned himself up in the bathroom.