Children of War

by Ahmet Yorulmaz

  Kiriya Evthimiya loved to meet us at the door. She doted on her husband. The two hours we sat around the table were as enjoyable and relaxing for me as they were for them. For we Turks, becoming an island minority after our forefathers had ruled the roost for so many years was an open wound. But rather than deepening that wound, it felt as if Kiri Vladimiros was inserting his keen blade to lance the poison. His education, wisdom and clear reasoning had a calming effect on me, giving me the strength to carry on the struggle and sending me home with a bolder heart. Kiriya Evthimiya was always delighted that I had accompanied her beloved husband home and excited that I would be spending the evening at their table. She couldn’t tolerate any space on my plate, always filling it with another morsel, saying, “You haven’t tasted this yet,” or “You haven’t had any of that.” I knew full well that the appetising display adorning the table on those evenings had been prepared especially for me as she placed barely more than a mouthful on to the plate of her husband.

  “Vladimir, don’t be upset with me. I’m only giving you this much because I’m thinking of your health. I don’t want to lose you. Stop looking at Hassanaki’s plate – he’s still young. He can eat what he likes now, but he’ll have to cut down when he’s older as well.”

  I was working hard to look after my family and, with an eye to the future, I was also occupied with buying and renovating houses whenever possible. But in the background, I was aware of some significant developments, such as the request by the Ottoman ambassador in Athens that Macit Bey arrange a consignment of money from Crete for Enver Pasha’s brother, Nuri Pasha,* who was stuck with his legion between Egypt and Tripoli.† Realising what was happening, the British captured Macit Bey mid-ocean on his way back from Athens on a ferry he had boarded with the help of a French warship. First, he was sent to Malta and then, twenty-seven months later, he was transferred to Alexandria to stand trial. He was released after the trial and returned to Crete. It was the day he arrived back on the island, when I was planning to welcome him home, that I received some terrible news that pierced my heart like a bullet: “Kiriya Evthimiya’s dead!”

  I couldn’t believe that the kind, jolly Kiriya Evthimiya was suddenly gone. My world collapsed. The area around their home teemed with the comings and goings of tearful neighbours. I found Kiri Vladimiros crumpled in a chair in the corner. We embraced. I felt the streams of our tears flow together into a great river as we gripped each other tightly. The women there prized us apart. We sat with her all night, staying until the priest came to make preparations for the religious rites in the morning. Kiriya Evthimiya’s world had been changed by a sudden heart attack, but even in death she looked cheerful, as if she were saying, “Don’t neglect your old boss. Drop by and check up on him now and again.”

  The church was bursting with people attending her ceremony, those who remembered Kiriya Evthimiya’s warm, cheery face and others who knew Vladimiros through business, their bodies squeezed in all the way to the door. As the coffin was covered in earth, my heart bled at the sight of Vladimiros, the dignified, sharp-witted man who had taught me so much about life. He seemed to have shrunk in stature and his hair looked even greyer. The foreman of the print house held one arm and I the other, but we could barely keep him on his feet. That night I didn’t leave his side. In the morning, I knocked on the neighbours’ doors to ask if they could help me find a woman to take care of the housework and look after him. They found someone. In less than two hours, there was a knock at the door and a neighbour arrived with a lean, sprightly woman a little older than Aunt Evthimiya. I handed Kiri Vladimiros over to her care. After that, we would be together every weekend, but he had to become accustomed to the meze from the taverna rather than the hand-prepared delights of Aunt Evthimiya, and adapt to my mother’s different style of cooking on the days when he came to our home.

  On the Saturday evening following Evthimiya’s death, I met Vladimiros at the print house. Partly to keep him from dwelling on things and partly to relieve his loneliness, I took him to Nuri’s taverna. As we made our way there, linking arms from time to time, who should we bump into but Daggerlad, whom I hadn’t seen for several years. I was in a quandary. Here was the man who had filled us with courage when fear rose all around us like mist from the mountain slopes, who without batting an eye had stuck his knife into a slew of people. This madcap adventurer was suddenly standing in front of me! I was curious as to where he had been all this time, and apart from anything else, I owed him a debt of gratitude – for protecting us when we needed it, for buoying us up by offering his protection when we arrived in Chania. That was all well and good, but how was I to introduce him to the dear, elderly companion whose arm was linked through mine? How could I talk to him? My thoughts whirled: here I was with one man who killed and another who utterly opposed it, believing instead in mercy, although it was true that Daggerlad did not engage in wanton violence – far from it, his actions were provoked by retaliation to the revolts and murders of Turks.

  Daggerlad flung his arms around me and I hugged him tightly. Introducing him as the man who had been our guardian when we fled the village, I invited him along to the taverna. The black ribbon that Vladimiros was wearing on his sleeve made it clear that he was in mourning. Daggerlad cut a very different figure with his Cretan laced headscarf, two knives sticking out from his waistband and shalvar breeches tucked into knee-length boots. My drinking companions Badoyan Mustafa and Grand Mehmed were waiting for us at the table. They knew I was bringing Vladimiros, but of course they knew nothing about Daggerlad. Ahmet Agha arrived after us. It was the first time Badoyan and Grand had met my old boss, whom they held in such high regard, and they made a big fuss of him. They were all soon engrossed in conversation, while I filled Daggerlad in on all I had been doing since we last met. Of course, I explained in detail how Vladimiros had looked out for me, how favourable he was towards Turks, in fact making no distinction between Greekness and Turkishness, how he believed in humanity and was in favour of good relations between us all. I also told him about Kiriya Evthimiya, who had been a good person just like her husband, and had passed away just a week ago.

  Visibly moved by what he had heard, Daggerlad turned to Kiri Vladimiros.

  “Chief,” he began, “it’s the first time I’ve ever met a Greek like you, one who behaves like a human being. I believe that’s how you are because it was told to me by the son of Ali Agha, God rest his soul. Until today, I’ve never kissed the hand of a Greek, but I will kiss the hand of anyone who’s done and said what you have, anyone like you, who’s as decent and untainted as the day they were born.”

  He immediately got to his feet, took the hand of Vladimiros and kissed it. Daggerlad’s words and actions touched every one of us around the table, especially Vladimiros. One by one, Ahmet Agha, Badoyan and Grand kissed the old man’s hand as well. Tears trickled down Vladimiros’s cheeks on to his beard and he tried to dab them with his handkerchief, saying, “Bless you all. May God bless you with lots of children who respect you and kiss your hands. Anything I’ve said or the little things I’ve been able to do are nothing. To be more precise, they’re things that come naturally to me. If the politicians, leaders and all the people of the islands thought like us and reflected it in their actions, we’d all be happy. And what happiness that would be! As beautiful as honey from the slopes of our biggest mountain, Psiloritis.”

  Nuri, the taverna owner, left his counter and came to our table. We rose our glasses into the air in unison and our hands reached for the meze together. Infected by the high spirits, Nuri grilled Spanish smoked herring for us. Placing it on the table, he said, “It’s on the house.”

  __________

  * Ottoman Captain Nuri Efendi was sent to Libya with gold to organise operations against Italian and British forces.

  † Egypt and Tripoli were part of the Ottoman Empire.

  17

  The huge assortment of peoples and trades to be found in Splantzia Square made it the hub of Chania life. On
e of its finest features was our Hünkar mosque, which was later turned into a church when the Greeks took full control of the island. Regardless of whether it was Muslim or Christian, it was a jewel in the crown of all faiths. Another of its famous spots was Floru’s coffeehouse, with its friendly service and spacious, stylish layout. This was the venue for the most elaborate night entertainment during Ramadan, hosting the grandest tombola prizes, the funniest clowns and the best shadow plays. In all other months, the coffeehouse was where all the hookah smokers hung out. There were times when I didn’t go in because of the sheer numbers of smokers and the constant burble of hookah pipes under dense clouds of tobacco smoke. However, I adored the sweet smell of the tobacco after it had passed through the water. On the glass shelf around the coffee stove was a line of about forty hookah vases. Their hoses hung on two arms-width wooden nails at the side of the shelf.

  Some mornings Kiriya Maria and I had our business meetings in the coffeehouse, always sitting at the marble-top table closest to the door. If she wasn’t at the table at our meeting time of 9 a.m., I would knock on the door of her nearby house and we would summarise the day’s business in just a few sentences. On the days when she was in the coffeehouse, we discussed our business in more detail. When she spoke to me from the top landing of the stairs, her head was uncovered, but whenever we met in the coffeehouse, she wore one of her numerous different hats. She had eight hats that she sent to Frangakis the milliner every five or six months to be laundered. When it came to her taste in hats, she surpassed all the other wealthy Greek women of Chania. I had a good idea about the way people spruced themselves up as my work regularly took me from one end of the city to another, and I observed them strutting down the street or rumbling past in their phaetons.

  It was not just wealth that characterised Kiriya Maria, she was also an educated, clever woman. Even way back in those days, on the rare occasions that she joined me in the coffeehouse, she brought along the previous day’s copies of the two Chania newspapers and read out the for-sale advertisements, municipal notices and decrees, explaining what we would try to buy from where and which properties we should try to sell. My boss and business partner, whom I now addressed like the Greeks as Kiriya Marigo, was in every aspect an impressive woman. She was also generous. A year after I started working for her, the two modest properties next to our home in Veneti Kastana came up for sale. Even with all my savings I couldn’t afford one, but with her additional support, for which she wanted nothing in return, I was able to buy both in one go. With her help, we went from one house to three overnight. I had them renovated and rented them out a few months later. I even had a drinking fountain fitted to the outside of one property, which provided water for our whole neighbourhood.

  After a time, due to the extraordinary increase in our work, it became clear that our brief meetings by the stairs or at the coffeehouse were not enough, and we rented an office in a street right by Splantzia Square. One table and five typical Cretan wicker chairs were all we needed. After that, people wanting to buy and sell came to the office to find us. When we needed to show land and buildings to potential buyers, Kiriya Marigo stayed in the office, while I set out with my walking cane to try and make a sale. We had a different strategy when it came to purchasing: I would whisper the real value of the land to Kiriya Marigo and the rest was up to her. She drove a hard bargain with feminine gentility, and her astuteness always ensured us a good deal. The properties we bought for a song later returned us high profits.

  All the while, there was no sign of a let-up in the relentless violence and killings. Mustafa Kemal Pasha had completely emptied Anatolia of Greeks, chasing them back as far as Izmir. This news, together with the spectacle of Anatolian Greeks arriving as refugees in Crete, incited more murders of Turks in the city and surrounding fields and farms; those they didn’t kill were beaten half to death. The violence that seemed for a while to have subsided and calmed, was now on the rise. At the same time, a declaration bearing the signature of Fağfurizade Hüseyin Nesimi* was circulated by the Muslim Committee: “Oh Muslim people,” it began, “from now on, you are permitted to carry any type of weapon to use for the protection of our religion, our people and our honour!”

  But that wasn’t the end of it, despite Hüseyin Nesimi and the Qadi going along to the Greek municipal governor to inform him of the declaration. It made no difference, the violence continued unabated. We were living through a hidden but very real civil war.

  In the middle of this turmoil, I was dealt another blow. My mother, whom I loved more than life itself, became paralysed. Nazire came to stay with us to help out but three days later, my mother died. This time it was the wizened Kiri Vladimiros who supported me. I remember him leaning towards me saying, “We lost Evthimiya and then Zeynep, now we’re completely orphaned, Hassanaki, both of us. There’ll be no more merry evenings round the table.”

  In all the time Kiriya Marigo and I had known each other, this was the first time she made physical contact with me. She linked her arm with mine in a natural, sincere gesture, clasped my hand in hers and said, loud enough for all to hear, “Try not to be sad. It’s God’s work. You loved and respected her when she was alive. You took good care of her. This is the way of the world. God rest her soul.”

  Amongst those who came to the funeral, I came across an old friend, Zambetula Ismail.* He had fled to Benghazi after seriously injuring a Greek; apparently the Greek had been pestering a foreign singer called Zambetta whom Ismail had taken up with. Ismail didn’t stay long in Benghazi, but ended up spending a long time in prison. He was a dashing figure with aquamarine eyes and a handlebar moustache beneath his fez and always dressed in a plush waistcoat with a chain watch. In the days following my mother’s funeral, some swashbuckling Greeks tried to set up a raid on the café he’d opened in Splantzia Square. They lived to regret it as Ismail had hidden one of the famous Gra pistols in a purpose-built cove next to his stove, ready to aim at would-be attackers within seconds. His fearless character in itself was enough to dissuade anyone else from meddling with him.

  Although my lifestyle meant I was rarely home until late, my mother’s death left a huge emptiness in my life. There was no longer anyone waiting for me to come home. As I approached home in the small hours of the morning, there was not even an oil lamp burning to light my way. My sister came to the house a few times a week to tidy up and do the laundry, but I still found myself at a loose end whenever I was home.

  By this time, I was only visiting Hüsnüye once a week, if that, sometimes even as little as once every ten to fifteen days. She had taught me everything about physical love and lived it with me, but now I only slipped off secretly to see her on the days when memories of her lust took hold of me. It was almost out of habit, and of course, this angered her, sometimes driving her into a rage.

  I tried to work out why I was gradually drifting away from Hüsnüye, but I couldn’t quite find a reason. I was still attracted to her fair, marble skin and her sensuality, but she had none of Kiriya Marigo’s solemnity, which everyone remarked on, not just me. I couldn’t help but compare her to the well-read Kiriya Marigo with her milky-coffee complexion. Hüsnüye had none of these qualities. Could that have been why I was growing distant from her? I didn’t know.

  Hüsnüye had trim little breasts whereas Marigo’s were huge. The tone of Marigo’s voice, the way she was with people… maybe it was all of these things or maybe none at all. I was caught in a great dilemma. Could it be that I had fallen in love with this woman and her elaborate hats, who was often at my side for hours a day and who I had been working with for two and a half years now? When I asked myself this question, I was unable to answer. At times I scolded myself in shame as I admitted to comparing Hüsnüye’s boisterous flamboyance with the silent stillness of Marigo’s looks and her low, tranquil tones as she spoke. Hüsnüye was clearly more beautiful and enticing, what was wrong with me? Was it because I was spending such long periods of time with Kiriya Marigo that I was seeing less
of Hüsnüye?

  While I was immersed in my work and the quandaries of my head, the day also came to say goodbye to a friend: Mustafa Kemal Pasha’s government had negotiated with the Red Cross to secure the release of my friend and Turkish teacher, Kemalettin of Bursa, and send him home. We walked as far as the ferry together and I stayed there at the port until it disappeared from view. He was so overjoyed at returning home to his family, and because the enemies had been thrown from Anatolia, that he could hardly keep still for one second.

  “If there’s peace, I’ll come and find you, Hassan. You take good care of yourself.”

  “I’ll miss you, Kemalettin Bey. I’ll miss you a lot.”

  “I’ll miss you a lot too, Hassan. I want you to know that I’ll never forget you. You tried hard to make me forget I was exiled. You brought me food when you hardly had money to feed yourself.”

  “No, Kemalettin, the things you did for me were more valuable. I didn’t know my own language and you tried to teach it to me; now I can honestly say that I speak Turkish. And even more, you gave me sound advice when I was trying to lay down roots in a homeland where I’ve become part of a minority. You showed me the way.”

  Kemalettin saved his most difficult and shocking words until the last minute: “I’ve heard some news that still hasn’t got around the island. I said just now that if there’s peace I’ll come and find you, but the reality is this, Hassan: Venizelos, the man who’s more responsible than anyone for the uprisings that tore this land from our hands, has been to Switzerland, to a place called Lausanne. He signed an agreement with the Turks, with Ismet Pasha, on behalf of the Greeks. In other words, after all these years of fighting, they’ve raised the white flag. But it looks like the victory means that you island Turks are going to be ripped from your roots again. There’s going to be a population exchange and I’ll tell you how it’ll work – about one, one and a half million Greeks still living in Anatolia are going to be deported to Greece and in return, all the Turks here on the island and in Macedonia will be moved to Turkey… Don’t pass out, brother! Europe made a mistake playing their greedy game to expand Greece and make it richer. It went wrong, and you and I have paid the price, and we’ll keep on paying it. It’s that simple.”