The Silence of Scheherazade

by Defne Suman

  Hands from the crowd – hard hands with calluses; rough hands that had known grapes and figs and earth – carried Meline to the carriage and sat her down on its red velvet seat. The coachman urged his horses forwards and their shoes clattered across the cobblestones. In the darkness behind the carriage, hands rose all at the same moment, like birds taking to the air. The village bade farewell to the midwife who had brought them together as a family.

  ‘May Holy Panagia protect you, Midwife Mother. Tomorrow we go to Greece. Stay safe here. May God help you.’

  Towards Punta, the quay regained its usual calm, fashionable atmosphere. Fishermen with fishing lines and nets in their hands walked slowly to their colourful boats.

  Dawn was about to break.

  Behind the fishermen, small groups of villagers who’d been walking all night were making their way down to the docks. Most of them were seeing the sea for the first time in their lives. Placing their suitcases, trunks and bundles on the ground, they stared at the European ships anchored in front of them; this was the image that had filled their imaginations as they’d walked, giving them strength through the torturous journey.

  ‘We are saved,’ they were thinking. ‘Mother Greece, Mana Ellas, will send her ships and tomorrow they will take us away.’ For a moment they forgot the horrifying sight of their neighbours’ villages being burned to the ground.

  ‘We are saved!’

  From within the carriage, Meline watched the scene around her as if it were a silent film. Her heart tightened. What would happen to her and her family, the Armenians of Smyrna? She tried to take comfort from the tiny little lights of the European fleets anchored out beyond the harbour. British, American, French and Italian battleships – Allies waiting to protect their own citizens. Since it was those Europeans who were responsible for the whole catastrophe, it was their duty to protect the city’s Christians, was it not? No, nothing bad would happen to them. They’d been living in Smyrna for so many generations. She rested her head on the back of the seat. The horses were breathing heavily. The coachman urged them on.

  Everything as it was in the past.

  Let the ships come and take those poor, miserable wretches away; then their dear Smyrna would return to its old self again. To the squeaking of the carriage’s wooden wheels and the rhythmic tossing from left to right, Meline closed her eyes.

  ‘Madame Juliette, I beg you, listen to me. I know how we can keep our agreement. You will tell Edith, “The baby was born dead.” You will say we buried it. I swear to you on my honour, on the souls of my children, that our secret will go with me to my grave. I beg you, Madame Lamarck, do not plunge yourself and me into sin. Do not make me take a life that God has spared. I promise you, you will never again have cause to think of this baby. Trust me. Let me set out now, before daybreak, with the baby. Please allow me to do this. The baby will be dead to you.’

  That night, as she travelled to Smyrna on the back of a donkey, the sky was just as it was now, like a purple blanket covering the city. What a hot and humid September night it had been. So hot that even the morning breeze had carried the scent of jasmine from Bournabat to the city.

  Meline raised her head from the red velvet seat of the carriage rattling over the cobblestones of the quay and smelled the air.

  What day was it today?

  Thursday.

  What was the date?

  All at once she understood why that piece of the past which had burned in her conscience for many years had appeared in her heart tonight of all nights.

  This night was that night. The night joining the sixth of September to the seventh.

  If by chance the poor thing had lived, Edith’s daughter would have been completing her seventeenth year today.

  Vasili Street

  As the carriage carrying Midwife Meline was slowing to a halt in front of Hayguhi Hanim’s bakery, Edith was looking down from the window of her bedroom onto the garden turning pink in the first light of dawn.

  That day had come around again. No matter how much hashish she smoked or how many secret ingredients Gypsy Yasemin added to it, whenever this date came around, that long-ago memory returned, like the sun shining through fog. That poor infant. Edith had never even held it in her arms. It didn’t have a grave because it was never baptized; it would have been buried anonymously in a mass grave in the churchyard. Edith remembers the difficult birth from behind a curtain of opium. She’d not had another child, and the absence of that child pricked her heart like a thorn every September. It angered her that motherhood had been stolen from her.

  She leaned out of the window that overlooked the street. Flocks of families, villagers carrying suitcases, bags and bundles, were still streaming past the house. Some of the women wore trousers, some were wrapped in colourful fabric, and some were enveloped in black robes like Muslim women. Almost every woman had at least two children hanging onto her skirt. Many had babies tied to their backs.

  Some of the villagers, on seeing that other evacuees had set up camp in Edith’s garden, shoved open the wrought-iron gate, decorated with a leaf design, that Christo had padlocked the evening before, and tried to enter. There were women, children and old people curled up everywhere in the garden. Many of them were asleep on bedspreads and rugs that they’d carried from their village homes and that were now laid out around Edith’s stone pool with its waterspout in the shape of a lion’s mouth, under the fruit trees, even in her flowerbeds.

  The previous morning, when Edith had woken to this scene beneath her bedroom window, she hadn’t been able to believe her eyes.

  A column of people was flowing down Vasili Street towards the sea in ghostly silence, listless, endless. At first it was the sight of the soldiers that struck her. Thousands of Greek soldiers, their feet bare, their bodies wounded, heads wrapped in bloody bandages, bent over, their ribs showing beneath torn shirts, their hands and faces black with soot, not even bothering to pick up rifles that had fallen to the ground. They shuffled like sleepwalkers towards the sea, towards ships which would take them away from defeat and disaster and back to their homeland. Some had open wounds soaking the sleeves of their coats red, others could not walk a single step without the support of fellow soldiers. It was clear that on the other side of the mountains, in the barren lands of Asia Minor, the Greek army had suffered a great defeat. Those who had survived had made it this far.

  Joining the soldiers on their wretched walk were Greeks and Armenians who’d fled their villages. Hearing that the approaching Turkish army was set on massacring the entire Christian population of western Asia Minor in revenge, they had set out, fearing for their lives. Children clung to their mothers with eyes wide from the terror they’d witnessed along the way; big strong men sobbed at every step; old women were carried on the backs of boys no taller than them; elderly grandfathers with glassy eyes rode on donkeys. In among them were dogs, goats with bells tied around their necks, dilapidated oxcarts carrying a family’s worldly goods. Everything passed under Edith’s window in horrifying silence.

  How had the powerful Greek army of 200,000 soldiers been reduced to this? Such was the relaxed tempo of life in the city, made even more beautiful in the autumn light, that no one around Edith had given much attention to the war, for it had not been sufficient to distract them from the daily pleasures that gave their lives meaning. As they strolled along the quay at sunset or sat in cafés or beer halls, Smyrna’s residents, when discussing the war, never mentioned the possibility of such a monumental, crushing defeat. Even the news that Mustafa Kemal’s forces were nearing the Mediterranean was passed over indifferently in the cafés as rumour with no basis in reality, gossip not in harmony with truth.

  Furthermore, the Greek newspapers were filled with good news from the front. Retreat was merely a strategic tactic. A great victory had been achieved at Afyonkarahisar. The army would not stop until Constantinople had been taken. No one was aware that the soldiers sent to Constantinople had returned to Smyrna long ago, or that, because th
ey had not wanted to come into Smyrna itself, they were now on ships anchored beyond the harbour, waiting to return to Greece.

  There was such an enormous gap between what was whispered from person to person and then forgotten amid the milky tea and biscuit crumbs at the quay and the scene she saw beneath her window that Edith was eager to find out more. With Zoe’s help, she dressed quickly and hurried out into the garden. Even at that early hour of the morning, the weather was hellishly hot and extremely humid. Opening her parasol, she walked up to the wrought-iron gate that opened onto the street. Seeing her approach, a group of women began to flow towards the gate, like a river finding a new course.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘We do not know.’

  ‘Where will you stay?’

  ‘We do not know.’

  ‘What happened to your villages?’

  Silence. A thick, hot silence full of suppressed tears, ready to burst with a scream.

  A young woman with a black headscarf came through the crowd and approached the gate where Edith stood.

  ‘My lady, three days and three nights we’ve been walking. Look at me – I walked here from Bursa with my babies. Just let us catch our breath in your garden. Take pity on us; let us eat two bites of your bread.’

  Her eyes were red from crying. Her children, a boy and a girl, were hiding under the skirt of her torn dress, which was the colour of dust. From under their mother’s legs they were eyeing Edith’s pink parasol. The woman stuck her hands through the iron bars of the gate – joints swollen, skin blackened – and grabbed hold of Edith’s skirt.

  ‘I do not know where my husband is. The Turks captured my brother in Afyonkarahisar. I had to leave my mother and father on the road. Their feet had become open sores, their shoes were torn to pieces and they couldn’t endure the thirst. They set me free. “Take your children and go,” they said. And I, my lady—’

  Edith opened her gate wide. The crowd out on the street responded immediately and within moments was snaking its way into the garden of Number 7, Vasili Street. Edith ordered the servant girls and Butler Christo to give the refugees water, bread, cheese and grapes. She commanded that a pot of rice and beans be cooked and everyone fed.

  Seeing the crowd of people pushing and shoving as they struggled to get themselves inside, Christo decided to say something to Edith, even though he knew it would make her angry. ‘Mademoiselle Lamarck,’ he murmured, ‘we must close the gates now. We cannot look after any more people. You know best, of course, but for the safety of ourselves and the people already inside, we must put a lock on the entrance.’

  He was right. After just ten minutes there was not even enough space to stand a chair in Edith’s garden.

  ‘Very well. You may lock the gate, but if someone comes seeking refuge you must open it and feed them. Are we agreed? Zoe, go to the market. Buy several sacks of flour, wheat, barley, lentils and dried beans. Hire a cart and a porter to carry it all. Then come directly back and get to work in the kitchen. If we do not have enough pots, tell Christo to go to the coppersmith and buy more. If necessary, you can light a fire in the garden. I shall go now and fetch a doctor to care for the sick and the wounded, and to apply ointment. One of you go and tell the midwives at the French Hospital that there are many women here with bellies swollen up to their noses. When I return, I shall help you all. Come, hurry. We have much work to do.’

  It was now the following morning, and as she stared down at her garden full of villagers tucked into every nook and cranny, she felt exhausted but happier than she had in her entire life. An old man was leaning over the stone pool to wash his face. She would get a temporary toilet constructed in the back garden, behind the wood and coal shed perhaps. How long would they stay, she wondered. Who would rescue these poor people and how?

  She was grateful for having been blessed with the good fortune and affluence that made it possible to help these poor, miserable souls. It was as if, after long years of not even knowing how hungry she was, someone had put a bowl of food in front of her; only now did she understand the real meaning of hunger and satiation. She felt so satisfied inside. It was how she imagined motherhood must feel – tiring but gratifying. When she recalled what date it was, as she somehow did each year like a precision clock, for the first time ever, she did not feel angry.

  If the poor thing had lived, it would have completed its seventeenth year today.

  When she left the house and turned onto Aliotti Boulevard she saw that not only her own garden but also the courtyards of the churches and hospitals, the bazaars, the inns, the hotels and the stations were filled with refugees. There was no end to the human flood pouring into the city from every direction. Several foreigners had locked their doors and left the city, but there were many families who had done as she had and invited refugees into their gardens.

  The boulevard’s wealthiest residents had hung British, French, Italian or American flags from the gates of their mansions. She would have to send Christo out to find a French flag as soon as possible. Or Zoe could quickly sew one. If Edith had been on her own, it would never have crossed her mind to be so patriotic, but there were now at least a hundred people whom she was protecting on her property. Looters would never dare break into a residence occupied by French citizens.

  Hopefully.

  At the corner by the French Hospital a shirtless Greek soldier was carrying a wounded comrade on his back. Although it was not her custom, Edith made the sign of the cross.

  She could not believe what she was seeing when she got to the quay. The waterfront, normally impassable because of all the trunks and bundles, and camels foaming at the mouth, was now filled with people from one end to the other. Among the soldiers – barefooted and wounded, some of them armless or legless, most of them with vacant stares – were thousands of women, children and old people lying, sitting, crying silently, rocking their babies, talking. They were all looking out at the sea.

  One of the Greek ships that had come to evacuate the luckless soldiers was just departing from the wooden dock at Punta; another was approaching to take its place. Desperate villagers were trying in vain to exchange their most precious possessions, brought with them all the way to Smyrna, for a small corner on one of the ships; they offered their women’s jewellery, even the gold in their teeth, but every request was rejected, without exception. The captains of the Greek ships were hitting and kicking the civilians who’d managed to get on board; they pushed the stowaways they found in the engine room back onto shore and threatened to throw those who resisted into the sea. The army had to be demobilized first. Other ships would come for the civilians. Fishermen, not wanting to miss an opportunity, had pulled in close to the shore where the villagers were camped and had already begun bargaining.

  Despite the refugees sprawled on the ground, the quay, by contrast, was its usual lively self. Ladies were twirling their colourful parasols and music swelled from the cafés. Young American sailors, who had not the slightest idea why they were there, were sitting on chairs brought outside from the bars and staring in wonder at the women and young girls passing in front of them.

  Avinash and Edith had made plans to go to the new film at the Théâtre de Smyrne that night. From the crowd gathered in front of the entrance, it seemed there’d been no change to the programme, but Edith was taking her new responsibilities seriously and felt that she should not attend. She could not desert all those people sheltering in her garden. Her heart again filled with compassion.

  Avinash looked exhausted. Edith guessed that he’d had a sleepless night. Things must have been very busy on that top-secret floor at the consulate that had been appropriated by the Allied spies. He was distracted and uneasy. He said nothing as he ate the potato salad served with his beer, pausing a long time between mouthfuls. Even though he was clearly preoccupied, Edith couldn’t resist telling him about the thrilling events of the previous day – the refugee camp in her garden, what the villagers had said to each other. She spoke excitedly
as she threw the fried sardines, head, tails, bones and all, into her mouth.

  ‘I’ve held more babies in my arms in one day than I have in my whole life. I wouldn’t have believed it, Avinash! Zoe and I even washed their bottoms with water we drew from the well. And that’s not all! One poor man had cut his leg with a rusty piece of iron and I helped the doctor treat it. Then do you know what Dr Arnott said to me? He said, “You will manage the rest of them, Mademoiselle Lamarck.” I cleaned and bandaged the wounds of several women and one young boy. You see, mon cher, I have become a nurse.’

  With a weary smile, Avinash looked into his lover’s black eyes. They were burning brightly, reminiscent of her younger years. Her pink cheeks were framed by curls of grey. As if reluctant to dispel her joy, he spoke quietly in reply.

  ‘My dear Edith, the situation is extremely dire.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. That is obvious.’ She gestured at the barefooted soldiers limping towards the ships.

  They were sitting outside at Café Ivi, taking advantage of the warm and sunny September weather.

  ‘What we are seeing is only the tip of the iceberg. Edith, it is very bad; an enormous catastrophe may be about to engulf us. The information sent to us by our agents in the interior is not promising. The American ambassador in Istanbul thinks that the Turks could wreak havoc in Smyrna as a way of celebrating their victory. He sent a telegram to the consulate saying that the British generals must act immediately to protect the city’s Christians.’

  ‘And what do your people say? For example, that old drunk, Maximilian Lloyd?’

  Avinash shook his head in displeasure. Edith had never forgotten that the man had made a pass at her, years ago, at Juliette’s dinner table.

  ‘Our people don’t seem to be listening to Morgenthau’s words.’

  Edith was surprised. ‘But the consulate formally declared that the Christian population of Smyrna would be one hundred per cent safe. One of your admirals – he had a very ostentatious name, which I can’t remember now – sent that assurance to all the newspapers, via a British preacher. As I recall, it was only the American Consulate that made no promises. Or have I remembered this incorrectly? What was that admiral’s name?’