Birds Without Wings

by Louis de Bernières

  When I came into his house he threw his arms around my neck and kissed me on both cheeks, which was most uncharacteristic behaviour, since he was normally as reserved as a German, and then, even more uncharacteristically, he began to sob, his shoulders heaving as he took in great gulps of air. I was somewhat disconcerted.

  Leonidas told me that he had had to endure a series of humiliations, the least of which was that whenever he bought a songbird to put in the little cage outside his window, someone would immediately replace it with a sparrow, and the greatest of which was that he had been abducted and abased in front of a substantial proportion of the townsmen.

  It’s a complicated story, but it appears that it was all because a substantial minority of the townspeople were Alevis, the people who believe in the twelve imams and that Mohammed passed on special knowledge to Ali. Don’t ask me to explain it all, I’m a Christian, or perhaps I should say that I was supposed to be one, and it’s all mysterious to me. I just know that there are an awful lot of Alevis, they’re different from other Muslims, and you can scratch your head wondering, should you feel so inclined, whether they’re really Muslims at all. A lot of the men there were called Ali, if that is of any interest.

  These Alevis, it transpired, used to have secret drinking parties called “muhabbets,” and because of the general confusion of the population in that place, all the intermarriage and changing of faiths and so on, a lot of people who weren’t Alevis at all, or maybe just a bit Alevi, used to get to go to these parties. The puritanical Leonidas was disgusted that so many Christians were there, acting like infidels, but it seemed to me to be perfectly understandable that all sorts of people should like to gather together and get paralysed with drink and hilarity. It’s the sort of thing I used to do myself when I was young and silly, which Leonidas unfortunately never was.

  At these muhabbets there was always someone who was in charge, who would order people to start drinking raki, and would then order people to drink more. If you defied him or left the table without his permission, you were fined a bottle of raki and a cockerel, an imposition that for some reason they called a Gabriel.

  The party in question had been going for some time, and they had drunk a great deal whilst listening to drinking songs and tragic dirges about the death of Ali, when the inebriated conversation of the men turned to deciding upon who was the most unpleasant and least popular person in the town, and, I regret to say (although I am not surprised to find myself saying it), that Leonidas was elected unanimously.

  What happened was that two strong young men were sent out to bring him in, and he was dragged in his night attire through the streets, struggling and shouting, witnessed by all those who came to their doors and did nothing to intervene. He was hauled into the house where the muhabbet was taking place, thrown down on the floor, and heartily mocked and abused. Then he was ordered to drink raki, which he refused, so it was poured down his throat whilst he was forced to his knees and his head held back by the hair. Then the saki ordered him to dance, and when he failed to comply they started to stamp on his toes so that he would have to dance in order to avoid his feet being crushed. He was forced alternately to drink and dance until he could barely stand, so he said, and his heart was thumping so hard that he thought he was going to die. With a pistol at his head they made him recite lists of dreadful insults against himself, and then someone fetched a donkey’s pack saddle, saddled him with it, and forced him to dance and drink and vomit until he was so insensible that they disposed of him simply by throwing him out in the street, still besaddled, where he crawled a short way before falling unconscious, and where at dawn he was found in a pool of his own effluents by the imam, who fetched two Christians to carry him home. Before long someone called Ali the Snowbringer, stupendously drunk, turned up and without the slightest hint of compunction reclaimed the saddle.

  Naturally I was horrified by this history of assault, but I did try to explain to Leonidas that he had probably helped to bring it upon himself by his intolerant and supercilious manner. This provoked an argument, as you might imagine, even though I was much his senior, and I came imminently to understand why his own father had disowned him. He called me a traitor and a heathen and a philistine and a vulgar materialist and a Turkish Dog and an Ottoman Lackey, and a False Greek. He hurled an inkpot at my head with serendipitous inaccuracy, and demanded somewhat hysterically that I should leave, which I confess that I did with some relief, because by then I had been offended quite enough, and had legitimate excuse to stay in the khan rather than in his dreadful little house.

  I never saw Leonidas again, and nor did I ever want to, even though I came quite often to the town to develop my trade with it. Like his father, I decided that he was a lost cause, and avoided his quarter quite conscientiously. I took pleasure in seeing other people instead. Iskander the Potter became almost a friend despite our differences of station. I liked the imam too, a magnificent, white-bearded, green-turbaned fellow who rode around on a coquettish white mare that was decorated with ribbons and little brass bells. Sometimes I would see that prettiest girl, happily walking arm in arm with that plainest. I always thought that that, too, was a metaphor for something, but I never decided what.

  I wonder what became of them all.

  CHAPTER 46

  Mustafa Kemal (10)

  By the time that Mustafa Kemal reaches Istanbul, the war is already all but lost. The supplies of the Ottoman troops always seem to have gone to the wrong places, and they cannot work out how to operate the wonderful modern weapons with which the Germans have supplied them. They are outnumbered almost two to one. A German battleship has moved the Sultan and his wives to the Asiatic side of the Bosporus. Macedonia has been lost, and Salonika is occupied first by Greek and then by Bulgarian troops. The Albanians suddenly find themselves cut off from the empire by various Balkan armies, and take the opportunity to declare independence.

  Istanbul is well defended, and Adrianopolis is still holding out against siege. The empire’s only battleship, the antique Hamidiye, in despite of a large hole in her side, has slipped past the Greek fleet in the Dardanelles, and is single-handedly and quixotically sinking Greek cargo boats and bombarding Greek towns. Its crew and its improbable commander are becoming national heroes.

  The government decides to sue for peace, and the Grand Vizier considers ceding Adrianopolis and Thrace to the enemy, but the romantic, handsome and unintellectual Enver Pasha persuades the Committee of Union and Progress that Adrianopolis must not be given up. At the head of a patriotic crowd he enters the council chambers of the Sublime Porte. The Minister of War, a cigarette dangling lackadaisically from the corner of his mouth, admits Enver, but the former’s bodyguard shoots one of the intruders, and so someone immediately shoots the Minister, who falls down to the ground, exclaiming “The dogs have done me in!”

  The Grand Vizier gives up his job with no apparent regret, remarking laconically, “I suppose you want the Grand Seal.”

  Enver Pasha and his comrades assume absolute power, thus completing the usual trajectory of the revolutionary, who begins as a liberator and ends up the same as, or worse than, the tyrants he has displaced in the name of his liberal ideal.

  Mustafa Kemal is dismayed and disgusted, but for the moment the coup is a popular one. Enver has a dashing scheme for saving Adrianopolis, which includes encircling the Bulgarian army via the Gallipoli peninsula, where Mustafa Kemal is Director of Operations. The attack is a shambles, and breaks down amid the mutual recriminations of its commanding officers, including Mustafa Kemal, who resigns. Adrianopolis falls, not least because a Serbian army has arrived, and inside its walls there are large numbers of Greeks and Bulgarians who are able to subvert its defences. Enver is forced to accept the very conditions that his coup was intended to prevent, whereupon his new War Minister is promptly assassinated. At Adrianopolis, the conquering Serbs and Bulgarians put 20,000 captured Ottoman troops on the island of Sarayiçi, where they die of disease and starvation.
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  Enver forms a triumvirate military dictatorship, and sets about hanging his rivals. Most fortunately for him, but inevitably and predictably, since they have never done anything else, the Balkan states start to quarrel and fall out over the carving up of the conquered territories. Bulgaria declares war on her Allies, the tide of refugees begins to flow again, and Enver is able to take advantage of the mayhem. His armies retake eastern Thrace, and he enters Adrianopolis in triumph at the head of a unit of cavalry, thus deeply irritating Mustafa Kemal and the other commanders who have actually done all the fighting and planning. Enver preens himself as the hero of the hour. He finally marries the Sultan’s niece, and goes to live in a palace on the Bosporus. In the meantime, Greece and Serbia have joyously divided between them what was taken from the Bulgarians. The latter sign a treaty with the Ottomans, arranging for an exchange of populations, supposedly of Turks and Bulgarians only, but Enver’s government takes the opportunity to expel 100,000 Greeks at the same time. Shortly afterwards they will take the further opportunity of expelling 200,000 Greeks from the Aegean coast. All is quiet until the assassination of the Austrian Archduke in Sarajevo in June of 1914. Salonika remains in Greek hands, and becomes Thessaloníki. Mustafa Kemal says to his brother officers, “How could you leave Salonika, that beautiful home of ours? Why did you hand it over to the enemy and come here?” He will always be angry and ashamed that it was surrendered to the Greeks without a shot being fired.

  Mustafa Kemal and his friend Fethi are exasperated by Enver and his regime. Mustafa is too blunt and truthful to be a success under such circumstances. He writes anonymous pamphlets attacking Enver. He and Fethi want to dispense with the paid terrorists who operate under the auspices of the Committee of Union and Progress, and consequently it seems likely that they themselves will become candidates for disposal. Their lives are probably saved by an offer that neither of them is in a position to refuse, and they are both posted to Sofia. Mustafa Kemal has to leave behind his friend Corinne, the Italian widow of an old comrade. Whether they were lovers or not is a matter known only to them, but it is certain that in her charming and interesting salon his admiration and love for Western culture became ever deeper. In Sofia this love cannot but grow, and Mustafa Kemal begins to envisage that one day opera houses and orchestras will spring up in Ankara and Istanbul.

  CHAPTER 47

  I Am Philothei (9)

  I was once out working on the hillside, expecting Ibrahim to creep up on me at any time, when what should happen but his dog Kopek arrived instead.

  Kopek was a nice dog except to strangers, but even so I was frightened of him because he was practically the size of a donkey, and he had a metal collar with spikes round his neck, and his teeth were like big white daggers, and when he came to find me I jumped up on a rock. I was thinking, “Oh God, I hope he doesn’t bite me in my face, not in my face,” but Kopek wasn’t interested in biting anyone on that occasion.

  He kept coming up to me and then turning round to go, and then he’d look back over his shoulder, and it was obvious that he wanted me to follow him, and he wouldn’t give in, so finally it was me who gave in, and I followed him, and he kept looking over his shoulder to make sure I was there.

  That was how I found Ibrahim with his foot trapped in the narrow space between two big boulders, and he couldn’t get it out. I laughed at him and said, “How did you do that?” and he said, “I don’t know. Just stop laughing and go and get help.”

  I said, “How can I tell anyone I’ve been with you up here? What about the disgrace?” and he said, “Tell your brother, and make him swear it was him who found me.”

  So that is what I did. I told Mehmetçik that I had come across Ibrahim accidentally, and please not to tell anyone because of the talk, and he agreed, and so it was that a whole party of men had to go up and bash at the rocks and dig round them, and finally when Ibrahim got free he was very badly bruised and was limping for days.

  Next time I saw him he said, “Now I suppose you think I am very stupid,” and I said, “No, I’ve discovered that Kopek is very clever, that’s all.”

  Of course I did think that Ibrahim was stupid to get his foot trapped like that, but Leyla Hanim once told me that if you make a man feel stupid he starts to hate you, so I took her advice and kept quiet about it.

  CHAPTER 48

  Of Righteousness and Wrongdoing

  Rustem Bey walked slowly through the narrow streets, dodging the hawkers and beggars, and pushing past recumbent camels and overburdened donkeys. His head was aching, and he was feeling demoralised and unwell. Frequently he passed his hands over his eyes, as if he could wipe away the oppression of his mood. He noticed that the poppies that grew out of the interstices of the walls and pavements were at last beginning to come up red rather than pink, and he beheld them with that small but happy sense of recognition that one always experiences upon coming across something forgotten but familiar.

  He came to the front door of Abdulhamid Hodja’s house, and was about to knock when he heard the imam’s voice chanting softly in the lower part where he kept his horse, Nilufer, and where Tamara Hanim had lain in the straw after the stoning. He stopped and listened, realising that the old man was extemporising a prayer to protect his mare from the evil eye. It was not such a peculiar thing to do, for, despite her advancing age, Nilufer was still the most beautiful horse in the region, more beautiful even than any of those owned by Rustem Bey, and there were many who openly regarded her with envy. Besides, everyone knew that there were women in the town who could cast the evil eye without even intending it. Rustem Bey leaned on the door jamb, reassured by the sweet musty smell of horse and hay, unwilling to interrupt the verse, which struck him as quite intimately beautiful, and he watched with a kind of indulgent affection as Abdulhamid unselfconsciously braided the blue beads into the horse’s mane. “Nazar deymesin,” repeated the imam,

  “Nazar deymesin.

  May these beads divert the evil eye,

  May it never look upon you.

  My eyes, my soul, my heart,

  May I always keep you to myself.

  How beautiful you are.

  Let me wipe your eyes with the corners of my robe.

  Let me smooth your body with my sleeve.

  I am poor, my antelope, yet I raised you in my dwelling

  As if you were a child.

  I have never beaten nor chided you.

  I have always caressed you fondly.

  How sweet is your breath, scented with hay and with herbs.

  How deep and brown are your eyes, like those of a maid.

  God preserve you, beloved.

  You are lovely.

  How soft and white is your mane.

  How gentle and rich is your soul.

  How beautiful you are.

  My dolphin,

  God defend you from envious eyes.

  Nazar deymesin.”

  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 a
nything. 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?”