by Moris Farhi
Marko readily agreed to help us. But he would not hire out his boat. He pointed out that we not only knew nothing about the vagaries of the Aegean Sea, but also were totally unfamiliar with the Thracian coastline. If we were chased by Turkish or German patrol boats, we would not be able to give them the slip and would either get captured or blown out of the sea.
There was only one way we could succeed: he would smuggle us in and out of Greece personally. He was an experienced sailor who knew the region like the back of his hand. He could put us ashore very close to Salonica, for instance at Acte, the easternmost promontory of the three-tongued Khalkhidiki peninsula where the monasteries of Mount Athos were situated. In fact, operating near the monasteries would be wise; in case of mishaps, the monks could be expected to provide us with food and shelter. Last but not least, he, Marko, was an irrepressible romantic who believed that saving people was a sacred duty; consequently, he would do the job for a pittance, say, a month’s supply of raki.
His evaluation made good sense; his enthusiasm lifted our spirits. We could finally leave the realm of ‘if only’ and enter the world of action. So we agreed.
We set the date for Sunday 6 September. We would return, we calculated, a week later, on the thirteenth.
‘Accounts made at home never tally in the market,’ say the Turks. True enough. In no time at all, everything went wrong.
Our request to go on a week’s camping with the boy scouts elicited little enthusiasm from our fathers. Naim and Can’s, desperately trying to keep their businesses afloat, needed their sons for odd jobs and refused them permission outright. My father, stuck in Ankara and loath to leave my mother alone with her depression, insisted that I stay by her side. Only Bilâl’s parents acquiesced – with indecent haste, according to Bilâl. Their marriage, as everybody could see, had turned sour; they welcomed the opportunity to give their son a respite from their bickering.
Two days later Marko had second thoughts. An operation that entailed the rescue of five people of different ages, he reasoned, was beyond the capabilities of youngsters, no matter how bright or brave. Moreover, we were too many – almost a crowd. We would be conspicuous. We would get caught and would probably be executed on the spot. (We hadn’t told him that only Bilâl had permission to go away; we still hoped that we might prevail upon our parents to change their minds.)
Marko suggested a new plan. He would go on his own. Like every Levantine, he spoke fluent Greek. And he knew his way around Salonica: before the war, he had had a wild time there with the lusty koritzia. Ah, those girls – Aphrodites, all of them! Just hand over the passports and he’d be in and out in a flash. He wouldn’t even ask for additional payment.
We were devastated. We asked for a day or so to reconsider. Our first thought – certainly mine – was that, all along, Marko’s sole interest in our project had been the passports. I could picture him selling them to the highest bidder, making hay for a while and eventually reappearing with a cock-and-bull story about how he had very nearly succeeded but had suddenly, tragically, been struck by misfortune. But since, except for Bilâl, we had been reduced to non-participants, what counter-arguments could we offer?
At the next meeting, Bilâl confronted Marko with a sang-froid that surprised us all. ‘You’re right. All of us would be too many. So we’ll be just two. You and I.’
Marko chuckled and ruffled Bilâl’s hair. ‘My little brother. Fellow spirit. Lovely boy. No.’ He sipped his raki and chased it with mineral water. ‘I must be alone. Only way. In and out. Finished in no time.’ He flexed his biceps. ‘Marko can do it. Word of honour.’
Bilâl, half-teasing Marko, flexed his own muscles. ‘You and I.’
Marko stared at Bilâl’s thin arms and roared with laughter. ‘Oh, little brother ...’
Bilâl poured more raki into Marko’s glass, then proffered his hand. ‘Deal?’
Marko pushed Bilâl’s hand away angrily. ‘No!’ He gulped down the drink, then leaned menacingly across. ‘You don’t trust Marko, little brother? Even when he gives his word of honour?’
‘I do. But they won’t.’
Marko turned to us, even more menacingly. His thick, perfectly groomed moustache bristled. ‘You won’t?’
Bilâl punched him on the shoulder. ‘Not them, Marko. My family in Salonica.’
Marko chuckled. ‘Don’t worry, little brother. They will trust me. Instantly – they will love me. They will kiss my hands. They will kiss me everywhere.’
At moments like these I felt that Marko, beneath all his manliness, was a simpleton.
‘They are Jews, Marko. They have to be introduced before they can kiss.’
Marko stared at him. ‘You’re joking ...?’
Bilâl nodded. ‘Yes. But it’s also true. My relatives don’t know you. They won’t trust a stranger. Not after what’s been happening to them.’
Marko shook his head mournfully. ‘But I can save them, little brother! I am ready to save them!’
‘They know me. They will trust me. I’m family. Then they’ll kiss your hands. Kiss you everywhere.’
Marko became ebullient. ‘They will?’
‘Especially the women.’
Marko looked up suspiciously. ‘Only one woman, little brother. Your aunt. The girls are too young.’
Bilâl smiled. ‘Fine! The girls can kiss me!’
Marko grinned and clasped Bilâl’s hand. ‘Right! You and I then!’
They left on Sunday 6 September, as scheduled, from Beşiktaş, at the mouth of the Bosporus, where Marko normally berthed his boat. Naim, Can and I sailed with them as far as Florya. We arranged to meet a week later at the same place. Did any of us believe Marko and Bilâl would succeed? I don’t know. I have suppressed a great deal since then. I would say Marko, ingenuous as ever, did believe. The rest of us, I imagine, pretended.
The day of their return, 13 September, came and went. We waited on the beach, at our rendezvous, until dawn the next day. We smoked countless cigarettes and slunk into dark corners to weep. Finally we admitted that we would never see them again. We were inconsolable.
Later all hell broke loose.
Ester, distraught at her son’s failure to return home, contacted the boy scouts and was told that Bilâl could not have joined an excursion since, due to lack of funds, none had been organized.
She and Pepo then contacted our parents, who duly summoned us to an inquisition. My father managed to extricate himself from Ankara and rushed over. My mother, too distressed – she had been very fond of Bilâl – confined herself to her room.
We saw no point in hedging. Desperate to save Bilâl, if this were still possible, we told them everything.
Much to our surprise and despite harshly reprimanding us for being so immature and foolhardy, they understood us, even sympathized. Bilâl’s parents, in particular, for once equable, muttered praises, in between sobs, for our compassion and courage. I believe my father, too, felt proud of me even as he told me that I must not expect him to intercede on my behalf when the legation put me on trial for stealing the passports.
Several decisions were taken. The consulate would approach the Turkish immigration authorities and ask them whether there had been entry records for the five Turkish passports – fortunately, we had noted their numbers. If, by some miracle, Ester’s relatives had reached Turkey or were being held in custody at a border post, then my father, with the ambassador’s blessing, would prevail on the Turkish government to grant them asylum. The parents of Naim and Can would, in turn, make inquiries in the Levantine community about Marko’s fate.
On Saturday 19 September Tomaso came up with some news. His father had had reports that Marko’s boat, the Yasemin, had been seized by German patrol cutters in a cove in the bay of Kassándra, in the Khalkhidiki peninsula, on 12 September, the day before he and Bilâl were due back in Istanbul. The seizure itself, the sources insisted, was due to bad luck: a plank nailed over the Yasemin’s name and port of registration, Gelibolu, had worked loose an
d a sharp-eyed German official, intrigued at finding a vessel with Roman lettering instead of Greek, had gone to investigate.
As far as the sources could ascertain, there had been no arrests. That suggested that the boat was empty when the Germans discovered it.
It was likely, therefore, that Marko and Bilâl were lying low, conceivably with Ester’s relatives – Salonica was no more than fifty kilometres from the bay of Kassándra – or somewhere on the peninsula.
We held on to this hope.
Four days later, we heard about Marko’s death. He had appeared, the previous evening, inside Bulgaria, near the Svilengrad rail-bridge close to the Turkish border. He had acquired a mule and was galloping towards the Meriç river.
He had been spotted by German and Bulgarian motorcycle patrols, who had given chase. When he started scampering across the river, the Bulgarians, respecting the neutrality of no-man’s-land, had stopped chasing. Not the Germans – they had opened fire. Turkish border guards, appearing on the scene, had asked the Germans to stop firing and threatened to fire back. An argument had ensued. Meanwhile, Marko had reached the bank. The Turkish soldiers, rushing to help, had found him mortally wounded. He had died shortly after, delirious and repeatedly asking after Bilâl.
Weeks passed.
We visited Bilâl’s parents every day. We told them we were mourners, too, that Bilâl’s loss was equally unbearable for us because he was our brother in every sense of the word, except by parentage. I imagine we were insufferably insensitive. Yet Bilâl’s parents, particularly Pepo, clung to our company gratefully. As if wanting to know their son all over again, they asked endless questions about him. They laughed and cried at all the crazy, boyish things he had done and begged us to repeat his more outlandish capers. We recounted as best we could, often exaggerating details, invariably glorifying the deeds. They listened avidly. They no longer quarrelled; they even held hands dumbly. As Naim bitterly commented on one occasion, Bilâl had had to sacrifice his life to reconcile his parents.
During these weeks, my father – and the Turkish authorities – continued to investigate Bilâl’s fate through various channels. But all these efforts led to dead ends.
Then it was mid-November. And we, the British, were cock-a-hoop. Military analyses confirmed that, after El Alamein, Germany was no longer a threat in North Africa. The end of the Third Reich was near.
As if this were the news she had been waiting for, Ester started avoiding us. Did she, with her Jewish imagination, think that a wounded Germany would be even more ruthless towards its victims? Whenever we went to see her and Pepo, she decided either to go shopping or to drop in on a friend. Pepo, who had to receive us on his own, looked increasingly tense and apologetic.
Soon we started hearing that Ester was not going shopping or calling on friends, but was roaming through Istanbul. Sometimes she would undertake these rambles methodically, district by district, at other times, she would move about aimlessly. Inevitably, this mysterious behaviour spawned all sorts of rumours. Some said that she had a lover, others that she had several; still others, that she could no longer bear Pepo’s company; one or two implied that she was losing her mind. The grief of losing her son, the guilt from having lost him because he had tried to save his parents’ marriage by rescuing her family, would be unbearable for any person, they said.
Pepo sold his business to pay the Varlιk Vergisi, or Wealth Tax. He went to work as a caretaker in a textile factory, a job that kept him away from home at nights and much of the day. This appeared to satisfy Ester. She stopped roaming. However, she still avoided us.
Pepo continued to see us, almost daily, but in the afternoons, after school.
The year 1943 arrived.
Churchill, seeking to lure Turkey into the ranks of the Allies, met with President İnönü.
February brought news of the Red Army’s victory, after months of heroic resistance, at Stalingrad. Confronted by the Soviet counter-offensive and the merciless Russian winter, the Germans now faced a cataclysm similar to that suffered by Napoleon.
The economic situation deteriorated. Naim and Can, increasingly required to help their fathers, began to miss some of our meetings with Pepo. I strongly objected to their truancies, even accused them of betraying Bilâl’s memory.
Pepo explained the prevailing situation. Anti-semitism had finally seeped into Turkey. Some senior politicians, still nostalgic for the Turco-German alliance of the First World War, believed that a new alliance with Germany would repair history and restore the old Ottoman glory. So they had been easily captivated by Nazi ideology. Consequently, aided and abetted by lackeys and opportunists in important government departments, they were blaming the Jews for Turkey’s economic problems. Unscrupulous journalists were competing with each other to revive the hackneyed Christian lies about the Jews’ time-honoured pursuits of usury, speculation, exploitation and the conspiracy for world dominion. Cartoons inspired by that Nazi publication, Der Stürmer, and depicting the Jews as monstrously obese, long-nosed profiteers, counterpointed these slanders. As a result, since last November, the Turkish National Assembly had levied a discriminatory tax on all Jews – and, for good measure, on certain other minorities. Known as the Varlιk Vergisi, this tax was so inflated that few Jews could pay it. The penalties for non-payment were extremely severe. Consequently countless Jews were not only having all their possessions seized but were also being deported to labour camps where they would ‘work off their debts’. Pepo, who had sold his business in order to pay the tax, thought that sooner or later he, too, would be sent to a camp.
Then it was 12 February, Bilâl’s birthday. This year it was also to be his bar mitzvah, the day he would have joined his community as an adult.
We had arranged to meet Pepo in our usual çayhane. Instead, unexpectedly, Ester summoned us to their home.
She greeted us warmly, almost as affectionately as in the old days. But there was a strangeness to her. Despite her thick make-up, she had a neglected air. Her hair, which normally shone like ebony – and which Bilâl had inherited – had lost its lustre. And she was in an unstable mood: very excited one moment, in a trance the next. I remember feeling uneasy and looking at Pepo for reassurance. He seemed to be in a reverie, eyes fixed on his folded hands.
Hurriedly, Ester served tea and cakes. For a while, brandishing a fixed smile, she watched us eat. Then, suddenly, with a flourish, she took out a letter from her handbag and waved it at us. ‘Bilâl is alive!’
I jumped up. We all did. We fired questions at her. Naim wept. Somehow Ester calmed us down. She kept on waving her letter. ‘From my sister. He saved them. Bilâl saved them.’ Then she placed the letter on the table. ‘You can read it yourselves ...’
This time we responded more coherently. One of us, noting that the letter had been written in Hellenic script, said we couldn’t read Greek. Someone else urged her to tell us what had happened. I kept asking, ‘Where is he? Where is he?’ And wondering why Pepo kept silent.
She related the events impersonally: ‘Bilâl found my sister. Gave her the passports. They’re in Macedonia now. My father. Fortuna. The children. In Skopje. Safe there ...’
I shouted. We all did. Skopje had a large Turkish minority. Turkey and Germany were not at war. So Turkish subjects were indeed safe. ‘Is Bilâl with them? In Skopje?’
She stared at us, at first distractedly, then with an amiable smile. ‘Oh, no, no, no. He and Marko were coming back. Well, you know: Marko’s boat was spotted. So they had to separate. Bilâl was wise. He didn’t run to the border. He decided to hide. In a monastery. On Mount Athos.’
After a very long silence, one of us managed to ask, ‘How do you know?’
‘Bilâl sent word with a priest. To Fortuna.’ She pointed at the letter. ‘It’s all in there. Read it!’
We saw very little of Ester after that – just occasionally, in the street. She never acknowledged us. We felt that having told us about Bilâl she had decided that she had discharged her last o
bligation to his friends and could now expunge us from her life.
Oblivious to Pepo’s pain and embarrassment, we continued to pester him with the cruellest question: had Ester told us the truth?
He always gave the same answer: ‘You saw the letter...’
Then the Wealth Tax claimed Pepo. He was sent to Aşkale, an infamous labour camp in eastern Turkey, where, we later learned, some twenty middle-aged inmates, unable to withstand the heavy work and the atrocious conditions, died of heart attacks.
Pepo survived and returned to Istanbul in March 1944 after the Turkish government, finally acknowledging the iniquity of the Wealth Tax, had abolished it and pardoned all the defaulters. By then I had returned to Britain. But my last moment with him, as we embraced at Haydarpaşa railway station before he was herded on to the train to Aşkale, both of us trying to ignore the stench rising from the tattered soldier’s fatigue he had been issued, will stay with me for ever.
The sixth of June saw D-Day.
My father was transferred to European Command for the big push to Berlin. My mother, having been coaxed by a friend into helping out in a rehabilitation centre for disabled servicemen, started to return to a purposeful life. I went to Scotland, to my father’s old school, to continue my studies.
Like every Briton, I lived through the last years of the war vacillating between grief and joy, anguish and hope. But every day I sojourned, sometimes briefly, sometimes at length, in my adopted Turkey, in the company of Naim, Can and Bilâl, my soul mates.
