Birds Without Wings

by Louis de Bernières

  Father Kristoforos processed through the kneeling people, and stopped before Sergeant Osman. “Sergeant Efendi,” he said solemnly, “you will not drive my flock. I will lead it.”

  There was one of those moments that sometimes pass between two people, when they look into each other’s eyes and come instantly to a kind of understanding which is akin to the recognition of oneself in another. Osman looked at Kristoforos, with his haunted and unhappy face, and his tatty black robes, and realised that in the priest’s position he would have demanded exactly the same thing. He found it admirable that the priest had found the courage to address him so directly, when there was such a disparity of power between them. Normally a gendarme would have had no reason to take notice of any demand or request from the likes of Father Kristoforos. Kristoforos, for his part, thought that he detected a certain humanity, a lack of self-consequence, in the gendarme that made it easier to approach him so directly. The two men regarded each other for a while, the one downcast but proud, and the other weary but humorous. “As you wish,” said Osman, eventually, “just as long as we arrive in Telmessos. If you want to play the shepherd, my men and I will be happy to play at being the dogs, as long as it is understood that in this case it is the dogs who are in charge.”

  “We will arrive in Telmessos,” assured the priest. He turned about and raised his voice. “Be comforted,” he called, “and follow me. We are all in the hands of God.” With great dignity and at a measured pace, he set off in the direction of the entrance to the town, holding out the icon before him, reciting the kontakion to the Mother of God: “… Do not despise the voices of us sinners as we pray. In your love, haste to help us who cry to you in faith. Hurry to intercede, make speed to entreat, O Mother of God, for you ever protect those that honour you.”

  The crowd began to drift in his wake, with the bemused gendarmerie bringing up the rear, but no one had gone much more than fifty paces before the first small drama had occurred. Polyxeni, already deeply distressed by the inexplicable disappearance of her daughter, Philothei, when there was so much to carry, was incapable of walking any further, because of the burden that she had taken upon herself. She and Charitos had argued about it for much of the night, but there had been no possibility that she would ever agree to leave behind her ancient great-grandfather, Socrates, or, God forbid, do away with him as a matter of mercy.

  Socrates had gone past the age when it was possible to age any further. For years he had remained the same, propped in a corner of the house, repeating the same senescent inanities, and mulling aloud over the same memories. He was tiny and wizened, his birdlike bones shining through the yellow and mottled skin of his face and limbs, his few wisps of hair concealed under the same rotting turban that he had been wearing for decades, and from which he had always refused to be parted. Finally Charitos had agreed that he would carry the heavy bundle of essentials, and the bones of Mariora too, but Polyxeni would have to carry the venerable Socrates on her own back.

  Socrates was delighted to be out in the light, surrounded by so many people. “I’m ninety-four, you know,” he said, in his small, cracked voice.

  “You’re much older than that, Socrates Efendi,” said somebody, but the old man’s mind was away on its own. “I’ve got twelve children,” he said.

  Polyxeni was not a big woman, and she was by no means young herself, but even so, it had seemed to her that it ought to be possible to carry her great-grandfather on her back all the way to Telmessos. He was as light as a straw, after all.

  However, with his arms tightly around her neck, so that she felt she would choke, and the weight of his body bearing down on her arms, she stumbled almost immediately over a stone down by the new wash-house at the entrance to the town, and she and her great-grandfather fell together to the ground. Despair gripped Polyxeni suddenly, and she sat up in the dust and began to wail, her hands over her face. She rocked and howled, and everything came to a halt around her.

  Sergeant Osman hurried over, saying, “Get up, woman, get up. Keep moving.”

  “Oh God, oh God,” cried Polyxeni. She had fallen face down on the stones, unable to protect herself because of the greater need to protect the old man. Her nose bled, and her cheeks were cut. One knee of her shalwar was slashed, and underneath she could feel a wound beginning to bleed. “Come on, get up,” repeated Osman, and old man Socrates lay on his side, parroting, “I’ve got one hundred and twenty great-grandchildren.”

  Polyxeni was immovable. She knew that it would be utterly impossible to carry the old man, and the desperation and grief of it overwhelmed her completely. Osman prodded her with his boot, and was beginning to think that he might have to beat her. “They’re all shit,” said Socrates, triumphantly.

  “Oh God, oh God,” moaned Polyxeni.

  “Will no one carry the old man?” asked Sergeant Osman of the people who had gathered around. It was impossible. Everyone was fully laden. No one spoke, but each of them felt a pang of guilt.

  It was at this point that Ali the Snowbringer intervened. He had been planning to go and fetch ice after the Christians had gone, and was stationed at the entrance to the town, preparatory to his own departure. He had found himself feeling increasingly upset as he began to realise the full import of what was happening, and now he was quite suddenly moved to action. He came forward with his donkey, bent down, and placed the rope of its halter into Polyxeni’s hand. She felt the strange sensation of the rope’s roughness between her fingers, and looked up through her tears, to see Ali the Snowbringer leaning over her.

  Initially she was puzzled. Ali the Snowbringer was not someone with whom she had ever shared any discourse. For many years he had lived in the meydan, in the hollow of a gigantic tree, with his wife, children and donkey. He was among the world’s poorest and lowliest of beings, an emaciated old man now, his teeth broken yellow stumps, his face creased and baked dark brown by his lifetime’s treks into the mountains. His clothes were barely better than rags, and more often than not he went barefoot.

  He indicated his donkey with a wave of his hand, and said humbly, “In the name of God.”

  Polyxeni took some moments to understand what he meant. “In the name of God,” he repeated, gesturing again towards the donkey.

  “You are giving me your donkey?” asked Polyxeni incredulously.

  “Not giving, Polyxeni Efendim, lending. When you arrive at Telmessos, inshallah, let her go, and she will find her own way back, inshallah. She is a good donkey, and she has been lost before, and found her own way back.”

  “Get up, woman,” said Sergeant Osman, “you will never receive such an offer again. I for one am glad that I lived to see it.”

  Polyxeni did not get up. On her knees before the Snowbringer, she took his right hand in her own, kissed it repeatedly and pressed it to her forehead, all the while sobbing with gratitude. She looked up at him at last and said, “Snowbringer, for this one good deed you will rest forever in paradise.”

  Ali the Snowbringer had never previously had his hand kissed by any other than his own children and grandchildren, and the unexpected respect nonplussed him. He was moved by it, and his lips began to tremble. It seemed to him that his life had been worth living, now that this point had been reached. “Apart from Rustem Bey I have no customers any more,” he said, sotto voce, as if to excuse his self-sacrifice.

  Charitos, who had dropped his own bundle in order to attend to his wife, began to help her to her feet, now that she had recovered her hope, and with it her strength. Then the two men lifted Socrates on to the donkey, and some of the load with which Charitos had been laden. Into the ice bags Polyxeni put the bones of Mariora.

  Polyxeni kissed Ali’s hand again, and then Charitos kissed it, saying, “Blessings be upon you.”

  “And upon you be peace,” said Ali.

  “I have sixty grandchildren,” interjected the bemused old man astride the donkey.

  This scene had produced a great effect upon everyone present; it had brought hom
e the true significance of what was occurring, and caused a welling-up of emotion in the witnesses. A woman’s voice rose up clearly and desperately into the morning air, echoing from the stone walls of the buildings: “Don’t go! Don’t go! Don’t go!”

  It was Ayse, widow of Abdulhamid Hodja, who had lost all her sons in the war, and now understood that she was losing many of those who had kept her going in the subsequent years of want and despair. She had made her farewells with Polyxeni only an hour before, and they had already wept together, but now she was confronted by the reality of this final departure. She would never see her life’s best and most long-standing friend again. Never again would she enter Polyxeni’s house through the haremlik door, and throw herself down on the divan, sighing and giggling in their gentle conspiracy of intimacy and affection. “Don’t go!” she cried. “Don’t go!”

  Ayse’s wailing was infectious, and others among the onlookers began to moan as the Christians passed them by. Before long the men were choking back tears, and the women were giving free rein to them. Soon it was like the howling and ululation of those who become carried away by grief at a burial, multiplied beyond understanding by the sheer number of people. Up in the ancient tombs above the town, the Dog cocked his ears to listen, and down among the refugees, Sergeant Osman felt that he had never heard anything quite so disturbing in all his life, not even when men are dying between the lines after a battle.

  So it was that, long after they had entered the serene and scented pine forest below the town, the fearful Christians began their odyssey into hardship and loss with the heart-rending lamentations of those who remained still echoing in their ears. In the trees they passed the Muslim dead, melding silently and obliviously into the earth in their tilting whitewashed graves. The people gazed at everything they saw with that special intensity brought about by the knowledge that only in precious memory would they ever behold the face of their homeland again.

  Ahead of them, leading them away, almost unable to see through his tears, bearing the icon before him, pausing in his orations to kiss its silver frame, Father Kristoforos continued to intone every prayer for mercy that he could remember. “Chief Captains of the heavenly armies, we the unworthy implore you to protect us by your supplications, with the shelter of the wings of your immaterial glory, as you guard us who fall down and insistently cry out; deliver us from dangers …” he sang, acutely pained by the irrepressible suspicion that his prayers were winging up to an empty sky.

  CHAPTER 89

  I Am Philothei (15)

  When the committee came to value our property none of us was very concerned. We didn’t think we would be deported anyway, because we didn’t speak Greek. Only Leonidas Efendi knew Greek, and Father Kristoforos.

  And we said, “We aren’t Greek, we are Ottomans,” and the committee said, “There’s no such thing as Ottoman any more. If you’re a Muslim you’re a Turk. If you’re Christian and you’re not Armenian, and you’re from round here, you’re Greek.”

  We said, “We ought to know who we are,” and they just ignored us and carried on valuing our property.

  So when the gendarmes arrived with an official firman, and we were given almost no time to get ready for leaving, it was a terrible shock to all of us, and no one knew what to do, and what to take with them, and I can’t describe the panic.

  Most people were looking for neighbours to sell their property to, but because everyone was trying to sell, no one could get a good price. My father Charitos was walking about like everyone else, laden down with pots and carpets, trying to sell them. My brother Mehmetçik was an outlaw because he’d deserted the labour battalion, and there was no way to get a message to him. My mother Polyxeni was weeping and clutching at her head with both hands even as we tried to sort out our possessions and gather provisions. In the end she decided to leave her trunk with Ayse, widow of Abdulhamid Hodja, in the hope that one day she could come and get it. I helped her carry it to Ayse’s house, and Ayse Hanim was very upset and we had to reassure her.

  The worst thing for me was that I was torn in half because I was betrothed to Ibrahim, and he was far away in the rocks with the goats and Kopek, his dog. I was a Christian, but if I married him I would be a Muslim. I didn’t know what to do. I loved him but I knew he was still not in his right mind, but I also knew that he very nearly was. I loved my father and mother and wanted to leave with them to our new home, but I also wanted to stay and be married to my beloved if he got better.

  I was revolving these problems in my mind until I couldn’t bear it any longer, and I thought I was going to go mad with the distress, and when my mother wasn’t looking I ran away up the street, past the grand houses that used to belong to the Armenians, and then I ran through the thorns and the tombs, and I came across the Dog and I said to him, “Please, Dog Efendi, where has Ibrahim taken the goats?” and he pointed over the hill towards the sea, and he wagged his finger at me as if to say “Don’t go,” but I went anyway.

  CHAPTER 90

  Leyla Hanim’s Letter to Rustem Bey

  When Drosoula had run to Rustem Bey’s house to make her hurried farewells to the mistress that she and Philothei had served for so long, she can have had no idea that Leyla would react as she did. Instead of the shock and dismay that everybody else had expressed at the arrival of Sergeant Osman and his gendarmes, Leyla Hanim had evidenced excitement and agitation.

  “Are they really taking you all to Greece?” she had kept asking. “Where in Greece? How are they transporting you? How long is it going to take?” and Drosoula had been obliged to shrug and repeat, “Nobody knows, nobody knows. We have to gather in the meydan with all the things we can carry. That’s all we’ve been told.”

  “Greece,” Leyla had said, wonderingly, “they’re taking you to Greece.” There had been a light in her eyes that was like the prospect of intoxication.

  Drosoula had had no time to linger and deal with Leyla’s strange wonderment. She had returned to her mother, who was trying to deal with the paterfamilias, who was already drunk and incapable on account of the raki that he consumed each morning in order to suppress his perpetual toothache. In addition, Drosoula had had to await her own husband’s decision about what they should do. Gerasimos had a plan that seemed both mad and the only possible course of action. Accordingly, Drosoula had embraced Leyla Hanim, each promising the other that they would meet again if God willed, and then Drosoula had hurried away through the gathering chaos of that improvised departure.

  Shaking with excitement, but horrified by the foolish actions that she knew she was about to commit, and the perilous misadventures that she was about to bring upon her own head, Leyla had sat for a moment in the haremlik, and attempted to think sensibly.

  Rustem Bey was away for a few days, hunting in the foothills, and now it wrenched her heart to think about what she was about to do. She called for paper and a pen, and sat at a table to inscribe, with painstaking care. Tears running down her cheeks, she wrote:

  My Lion,

  I write this in a terrible hurry, because I have so much to do in a very short time. I think that very probably you will not ever be able to read this, but I would feel very bad if I were to leave you with nothing. I still don’t know if you can read. I never found out. Anyway, I have to write in Greek, with the Greek letters, because that is all I know how to write. I don’t have time to work out Turkish in Greek letters, and I don’t know the Turkish letters at all. It occurs to me that I am, after all, writing this letter to myself.

  My lion, you should know that, after you bought me from Kardelen, I loved you first out of fear and out of necessity. Then I grew to love you completely with all my body and my heart. Those were our years in paradise. Then our love eventually became like the love of brother and sister, and those were our years of contentment and peace. Because of this, because of what our love has become, it is now possible for me to leave this place, and to continue to love you without too much grief. I will miss you, and there will be a hole in
my heart forever in the shape of Rustem Bey, and I will remember you every time I play the oud, or eat garlic, or do all sorts of things that we used to do together. I will miss you, but my sorrow will not be unbearable, because our love is now of brother and sister, and not of lovers. I hope that there will always be a hole in your heart that is in the shape of your Ioanna.

  My lion, I am not Leyla. I have deceived you for a long time. I am not Circassian either, and I know that you prized me more greatly because you thought that I was. I must tell you that I am not after all a Muslim either, and my name is Ioanna, and I am a Greek. I am from a little place called Ithaca, and ever since I left it I have been longing with all my heart to return. I have always had a hole in my heart which is the same shape as Ithaca. Now that there is passage organised to Greece, this is my chance to go home to Ithaca. I think now that I will never have children, and this is a reason for me to seek what relatives are left, so that one day my bones will rest in the right place.

  My lion, when I was a little girl I came from a good family. As you see, I can write, which is the proof. I was abducted by bad men who found me hiding in the olive grove behind my parents’ house, after they had beached their boat, and come ashore, and beaten my mother and father, and taken their goods and their animals, and destroyed their house out of wantonness. They treated me badly and I was very much abused, and I was traded first in Sicily, and then in Cyprus, and then to Kardelen in Istanbul. I suppose that you did not realise what Kardelen really was, as you are not wise to the world even though you are the aga hereabouts. You have never been corrupted in a city. Kardelen was a man who was also a woman, he was one of God’s victims, but he was the first to treat me well, and he made me what I am. He arranged for me to learn the oud, which has been the great pleasure of my life, and he taught me how to be a good hetaera and how to appreciate luxury. He gave me a lot of the money that you bought me with, and you didn’t know it.