Birds Without Wings (42 page)

Abdulhamid Hodja, on account of that instinct that all of us have, suddenly became aware that there was someone present, and turned his head quickly. He caught sight of the interloper and exclaimed, “Salaam aleikum, salaam aleikum! I do believe you have just caught me talking to my horse. It’s the madness of old age. You should ignore it, out of charity.”

“It’s all right,” replied Rustem Bey, “sometimes I talk to my partridge, and lately I have been finding myself confiding in a cat.”

“Ah yes, the white cat with the one yellow eye and the one blue eye. What’s its name?”

“Pamuk.”

“Ah yes, Pamuk. Fortunately it is quite reasonable to confide in an animal. It’s when you do it to trees and stones that people call you mad.”

Rustem Bey smiled. “And when you talk to your horse, efendi, does she say anything sensible in return?”

Abdulhamid waggled his head as if in thought, shrugged, and said, “Well, she flares her lips and bares her teeth and gums, and tosses her head and rolls her eyes. I have found that this is all she has to say about pretty much anything. She finds it eloquence enough for most purposes, and the odd thing is that I usually know what she means.”

“Pamuk has many more things to say,” observed Rustem Bey. “So many chirrups and miaows. She seems quite certain that I understand her.”

“And what about you? What do you have to say?” asked Abdulhamid. “Did you want something? Anything I can help with?”

Rustem Bey was silent for a moment, and then said, “I have heard that there’s going to be a war.”

“Another one? God help us! What is it this time?”

“A matter of battleships. Apparently the British sold us some battleships, and now, because of their own war, they are keeping them back from us. You remember, the money was raised by public subscription, and so everyone is very angry.”

The two men looked at one another for a few moments, and Abdulhamid Hodja finally broke the silence: “But, Aga Efendi, you didn’t come here to talk to me about a war, and I am sure that I’ve paid the rent on my land.”

“No,” agreed Rustem Bey, “I didn’t want to talk about the war.” He breathed deeply and said abruptly, “Efendi, how does one know when one has done something wrong?”

“Something wrong? How does one know?” The imam paused for reflection, furrowing his brow and stroking his white beard. “Well, you must understand that some things can only be understood with reference to some kind of opposite. Night, for example, is only night because it stands against day, and male is only male because it stands against female. Do you follow me?”

Rustem Bey nodded seriously.

“So wrongdoing must be understood by standing it against righteousness,” explained Abdulhamid, holding out his hands, “like right against left.” He turned one hand over and then the other.

He paused to take note of whether Rustem Bey was still with him. “Righteousness is good morality, but it is also that about which the soul feels tranquil and the heart feels tranquil. This is what the Prophet said to Wabisa ibn Mabad.

“As for wrongdoing, Nawwas ibn Saman said that he overheard the Prophet saying that wrongdoing is that which wavers in the soul and which you dislike people finding out about, and Wabisa ibn Mabad said that he heard the Prophet say that wrongdoing is that which wavers in the soul and moves to and fro in the breast, even though people again and again have given you their legal opinion in its favour.

“Both of these traditions came from imams with a good chain of
authorities, one from Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal, and the other from Imam ad-Darimi, may God be pleased with them both, so no doubt these things are what was said by the Prophet, peace be upon him.”

Abdulhamid, initially pleased by this impressive display of erudition, then looked Rustem Bey in the face and saw the trouble and distress in his dark eyes. He placed his hand on the aga’s forearm, shook it gently, and in a voice full of compassion enquired, “Rustem Beyefendi, do you feel a wavering in your soul? Let us say, even though everyone agrees you were in the right?”

Rustem Bey looked away, as if expecting something to appear on the horizon, and then cast his eyes down to the ground, scuffing at a stone with the toe of his boot. He hung his head, and said, “I feel a terrible wavering in my soul.”

CHAPTER 49

Mustafa Kemal (11)

It is November 1913, and it is the first time that Mustafa Kemal has lived in a European capital, and he is enchanted. In Sofia there are wide boulevards, and parks. Life is orderly, there are dinners and salons, there is sparkling conversation with intelligent and cultivated ladies. Sofia is like Vienna on a more intimate scale.

It takes time for Mustafa Kemal to adapt. He has to learn to become a European, he has to acquire the nuances of manners, he has to bring himself to make small talk, he has to drink his alcohol with a little less virile gusto. He becomes adept at the tango and the waltz, and the ladies find him intriguingly attractive. He goes to the opera, is introduced to King “Foxy” Ferdinand, and afterwards, enthused by the opera rather than the monarch, is too excited to go to sleep.

He writes frequently to Corinne, sometimes in clumsy French, and sometimes in Turkish written in Roman letters. He likes to assure her that there are no beautiful or attractive women that have caught his attention.

He has the Justice Minister to dinner, and this leads to a dinner with his erstwhile enemy, the Bulgarian Minister of War, General Kovatchev, who had fought against Kemal in the second Balkan War. He and Kemal become close friends, and talk the nights away in reminiscence and in discussion of military affairs. The general has a pretty daughter, Dimitrina, and Kemal begins to notice her.

The general is Kemal’s entrée to high society, and soon he is courted by everyone who is anyone. He becomes an habitué of the drawing room of Sultana Ratcho Petrova, Sofia’s most sought-after hostess. He receives the congratulations of King Ferdinand for having the best fancy-dress outfit at a masked ball. He has sent an orderly away to Istanbul to borrow a janizary uniform from a museum. He has the spectacular headdress, and a sword that sparkles with jewels, and he is a sensation. The King gives him a silver
cigarette case. Years later, when Ferdinand’s foxiness has run out, and he is in exile, Mustafa Kemal will remember the compliment, and send him a gold one.

Mustafa Kemal tours Bulgaria to see for himself how the Turkish minority lives. He is surprised but gratified to find them running businesses and industries, becoming rich by their own efforts, sending their children to schools where there are proper curricula, and not merely the recitation of the Koran in Arabic. The women are unveiled. Mustafa Kemal becomes ever clearer about what he wants for Turkey. He attends the Bulgarian parliament in order to witness the modern practice of politics. He involves himself with more or less clandestine projects involving the Turkish community. However, the most impressive thing is how far the ordinary Bulgarians have advanced in the few years since they threw off the Ottoman yoke. Once upon a time they were regarded as savages, but now they have forged ahead.

Kemal is disappointed in love, perhaps, but only he and Dimitrina know the truth. Perhaps he has fallen for her, this pretty daughter of his friend General Kovatchev. He dances with her all night at a ball, and they talk of music. Then he speaks passionately to her of his ambitions for Turkey, of how women will be unveiled, about how their marriages will no longer be an enslavement, of how they will become as captivating and free and educated as Dimitrina herself. It is said that Mustafa Kemal sounds out how the general would feel about a proposal of marriage, and is discouraged. The general pointedly but politely refuses an invitation to a ball at the embassy. In any case, Mustafa Kemal will never see the sweet Dimitrina again, though equally she will never forget him.

Enver and his companions are enjoying the salad days of power, and they are doing unexpectedly well. Enver has been promoted from major to colonel to brigadier within nineteen days, and he has ousted the War Minister and taken his place. “It is impossible!” exclaims the Sultan. “He is much too young.” With marvellous energy Enver is reforming the armed services, allegedly purging the old-fashioned ignorant time-servers among the officer corps, but apparently sacking every influential officer equal to or above his own rank. Enver gives over the reform of the army to the Germans, and General Liman von Sanders arrives with a large number of officers who will take control of all sorts of vital commands. The Germans find that the Ottoman soldiers are barefoot and in rags, that their destitute families have to eat in military canteens, that there is no care for the men on the part of the officers, that military hospitals are squalid, and
that the horses and mules are sick and useless. Von Sanders and his men set about their Herculean task, and all goes well.

Only hindsight will reveal what a catastrophe this dependence on Germany will bring in its train. The Archduke Ferdinand has been assassinated in Sarajevo, and now Enver and an inner cabal of the Cabinet have agreed on a secret treaty with Germany, with the intention of presenting a united front against Russia, the eternal enemy and arch-devil. All attempts to seek assistance and assurances from Great Britain and France have failed, and the Germans had seemed the obvious last resort. Enver keeps the Great Powers in the dark about his agreement, until he is ready to take the offensive.

Mustafa Kemal thinks that the Germans will probably not win, and in any case he mistrusts them. He sees great danger coming from the Bulgarians, who have allied with Austria and still have dreams of a Greater Bulgaria. Enver, however, is enthusiastic and impulsive. By means of public subscription the empire has commissioned two battleships from the British, and the British are withholding them because Churchill has not been deceived about Enver’s intentions as war breaks out. The Ottoman public is outraged and two German battleships synchronicitously turn up, having gallantly run the gauntlet of the British fleet. The Germans generously, but not entirely disinterestedly, sell the ships to Enver, the sailors exchange their caps for fezzes, and Germany becomes ever more popular with the Turkish people.

Enver is convinced that he can get the entire Muslim world behind him by playing the Islamic card, thus disabling much of the Russian, British and French empires. Unfortunately the Kaiser believes the same thing. Enver thinks that a war might be a very fine and profitable enterprise, and so, without telling anyone else, he arranges for the two new battleships plus the valiant old
Hamidiye
to enter the Black Sea. In his pocket the German admiral has a secret order, which states: “The Turkish fleet should gain mastery of the Black Sea by force. Seek out the Russian fleet, and attack her wherever you find her, without declaration of war.” They bombard the Russian ports of Odessa, Novorossik and Sevastopol, and sink some Russian warships.

Enver’s colleagues are appalled and amazed by what he has done behind their backs. The Grand Vizier tries to resign, but the Sultan begs him to remain so that he has at least one reliable person in the government who is not insane. He and the Sultan are weeping together when the French and British ambassadors arrive to request their passports.

Thanks to Enver’s idiotic adventurism the Ottoman Empire is now at war with Russia, which is at war with Germany and Austria-Hungary. As if this were not bad enough, because Russia herself has allies, the Ottoman Empire is now at war with Britain and France as well. The reluctant Sultan, who also has the misfortune to be the head of the Muslim world, is persuaded to declare the war a holy one. This he does in the great hall of the Topkapi Palace where the relics of the Prophet are kept. It is expected that the declaration of jihad will be received with much public enthusiasm, but in this case the empire is inexplicably siding with some Christian countries against some other Christian countries, and not many Muslims can make any sense of it. The Arabs in particular will prove disloyal and useless. At the Battle of Shuaiba they will hold back from the fight so that they can pillage whichever side is the loser, causing their Turkish commander to shoot himself in his disillusionment, anger and despair.

Enver tells Mustafa Kemal to stay in Sofia, and Kemal is frustrated. He thinks that the war is a foolish one because it has no military object, but he still wants to be in it. He sets about trying to ensure that Bulgaria will come in on the side of the empire, but he chafes in his exile. He writes to Enver demanding to know whether the latter considers him an incompetent soldier, and he even considers leaving his post and enlisting as a private soldier, but, just in time, he is finally summoned home to be commander of the 19th Division.

CHAPTER 50