by Ahmet Altan
With the fragility of young people who are inclined to feel completely powerless and alone when the smallest conflict with a loved one arises, to the same extent that when they encounter someone they love and trust they feel secure and at ease believing they possess this loved one’s power, Rukiye felt alone, vulnerable, and even an unwanted burden. To realize that someone she’d belittled might be very strong eroded her self-confidence.
As she climbed the stairs to her bedroom she encountered Mihrişah Sultan, the tails of her red dress sweeping down the stairs, clearly on her way out for the evening. As the Sultan passed she asked, as always, how Rukiye was, but then she suddenly saw the fear, desperation, and loneliness in the young girl’s pale face. That young girl was incapable of concealing emotions she didn’t even know she had.
“What happened, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing, ma’am.”
Mihrişah reached out and took Rukiye’s hand with a gentleness she would never have expected.
“Come with me.”
As they descended the stairs together, Rukiye tried to object.
“You’ll be late, ma’am.”
“It doesn’t matter, Rukiye.”
They entered the large living room to the right of the entrance hall and sat next to each other in the armchairs in front of the fireplace. As Mihrişah Sultan took off her long, white gloves and gently touched Rukiye’s hair, the tenderness she felt for this young girl, whose paling face suddenly reminded her of her father the Sheikh, helped conceal her lack of experience in comforting children.
She realized from the state Rukiye was in that she’d been shaken by a pain that was out of the ordinary, and she was surprised to realize she felt a similar pain, though she didn’t understand the reason.
Either Rukiye’s resemblance to her father reminded her of the love she’d once felt for Sheikh Efendi, and traces of which she still carried, or she’d encountered such clear sorrow in a child who felt neglected, or the damage to her soul caused by concealed repentance for not showing her son love and tenderness suddenly broke down the walls of her selfishness when she saw another child in pain, or the need she felt within to love someone unconditionally, which was awakened by the selfish loneliness that was occasionally depressing even for her, or for some reason we’ll never know, she felt an unmeasurable love and tenderness when she saw the pain emanating through the cracks in Rukiye’s self-confidence.
She caressed Rukiye’s hair silently and softly as if she was caressing herself, then took the girl’s hand as she closed her eyes to conceal the tears that had suddenly begun to form. She held Rukiye’s hair and her hands.
They sat together in silence, losing track of time, experiencing the unique pleasure and trust of loving like a mother and being loved like a mother.
That evening in front of the fireplace, these two women, one young and one growing old, who almost never showed their feelings and who were always distant toward each other and everyone else, experienced a silent and exhilarating adventure that neither had ever imagined, expected, or foreseen.
Rukiye, who since childhood had born, her sense of abandonment and loneliness without even confessing it to herself, wept with her head on Mihrişah’s chest as she’d missed being able to do since childhood, not trying to hide her tears or even stop them, trembling and sobbing as Mihrişah Sultan stroked her hair.
For her part, Mihrişah Sultan, who had always been indifferent to the feelings of others, and indeed even mocked them, experienced for the first time the strong pleasure of sharing the feelings of someone who’d been hurt by her own loneliness, of being a shelter and a consolation for that person.
That night they became a grandmother and a granddaughter in the truest sense, they loved each other in a way that would never diminish.
One careless word from Professor Koncharov had caused Rukiye to establish a new relationship with Mihrişah Sultan and to see her father Sheikh Efendi with new eyes, had changed the course of her life and led her to carry her future to another city, to another man, to another terrible sorrow.
6
Day by day the area around the mosques, which with their round domes and slender minarets made the Ottoman capital’s magnificent skyline look like God’s signature on earth in Sufi calligraphy, was becoming more crowded.
The unemployed, the poor, the destitute, the hungry, the fool-saints; in the shady stone courtyards of these historical buildings, each of which reflected an earlier reign, they dressed in shabby clothes, hungrily waiting for the soup with rice and chickpeas that the soup kitchens would distribute, their angry murmuring steadily growing louder as they expressed their grievances and dissatisfaction.
This crowd had been oppressed for years by severe tyranny, they’d had to keep their mouths shut and had been poisoned by their own silence, but now they were finding the opportunity to speak for the first time; they hadn’t decided where to direct their anger, they hadn’t even really thought about that, and because they were not yet prepared to commit the sin of expressing anger at His Majesty the Caliph, the shadow of Islam on earth, they forgot what they’d suffered during his reign, saw constitutional monarchy as the source of their current tribulations, and directed their anger at the Committee.
Hasan Efendi, who hated the infidels of the Committee who’d rebelled against the Caliph and Sultan of the World, left the tekke toward noon and wandered through Istanbul from one mosque to another, he was a big man who seemed as if he could never eat enough and he had a tremendous appetite, he ate at three or four different soup kitchens and as he did so he chatted with the people around him and gathered intelligence for the Sheikh.
Even though he sensed that his Sheikh didn’t support the Sultan, his upbringing prevented him from confronting him about or even mentioning the subject, his odd conception of loyalty enabled him to remain loyal to both the Sultan and the Sheikh and he hoped that one day the Sheikh would come to share his opinions.
Recently a fool-saint named Blind Ali who loitered in front of the Fatih Mosque had caught his attention. He was partially paralyzed, could only walk with the help of two people, was blind in one eye, and wore a greasy turban, and as soon as he appeared in the courtyard people gathered around him.
Blind Ali began by saying, “There have been revelations,” as if he was in a state of ecstasy, then went on to say, “The saint has been seen under the curtain,” implying that he was the saint who had appeared.
Hasan Efendi went to the mosque early again that Friday, took a zinc plate of food, knelt next to a distressed-looking man who was eating at the far end of the courtyard, and said, “Peace be with you.” In the slowly falling snow the man shivered as he ate, his hands were trembling from the cold, his spoon kept clinking against his plate, and each time he lifted his spoon to his mouth some of the pilaf fell back onto his plate.
The man had no coat, robe, or cloak and his fez, which had been blackened by dirt, had clearly not been re-blocked for years. Over his singlet he wore a dirty shirt with tattered cuffs and a navy-blue broadcloth vest that had probably been given to him as charity. His torn shalwar had been inexpertly mended with white thread, and under a rip that hadn’t been mended his skin was raised with goose bumps, arousing a sense of compassion mixed with disgust in everyone who saw him.
“Are you here for Friday prayers?”
“Yup, for Friday prayers.”
“I haven’t seen you around here before.”
“No, I’ve never been here before, they say a saint appeared, and according to what people say, Blind Ali Hodja saw the Prophet Mohammad in a dream.”
The man finished his pilaf, trembled as he put his plate down, folded his arms across his chest, and lowered his voice.
“They say they’re going to raise the green flag.”
Hasan Efendi frowned.
“Against His Majesty the Caliph?”
“Heav
en forbid . . . Against the masonic infidels who rebelled against our Caliph.”
The man gave Hasan Efendi a pleading look.
“If only I had a little tobacco.”
“If I had any I’d give you some, but I don’t smoke, I freed myself from that addiction a long time ago. Don’t think I was a light smoker, when I was in the navy I smoked like a chimney, but in the end I didn’t see that it was doing me any good, toward the end, I swear to God, I coughed so much when I woke in the morning the sailors thought the engines had been fired up.”
Hasan Efendi leaned in toward the man as if he was about to tell him a secret.
“It’s not good for your manhood, you should quit. Look, since we’re talking, where are you from, who are your people?”
For a moment the man seemed to have forgotten who he was and where he was from, then, as he remembered who knows what distant dreams, a happy and indeed arrogant smile appeared on his face; anyone who saw the man dressed the way he was would have difficulty believing that a man in his state could smile like this, that this expression could exist in his vocabulary of smiles. But the smile didn’t last long, it gave way to a weighty melancholy and he sighed deeply.
“Oh, brother. Even I’m surprised to remember who my people are and where I’m from and even I suspect I invented it. Of course I wasn’t always as you see me now, I’ve been in better shape, I’ve had better days, but that’s all in the past now, all that’s left of the great forestry inspector Kamil Bey is Kamil the tramp who lives like a dog in front of soup kitchens.”
The man thought to himself for a while.
“In fact I’m from Uşak, my father was wealthy, after I married I became a forest warden, in time I was promoted to forestry inspector for Aydın province, which includes the Denizli, Menteşe, Manisa, Aydın, and Izmir districts. When I came to Istanbul during that period I went to express my gratitude at the Forestry Ministry. The minister received me, I thanked him and was about to leave when he told me to see the undersecretary before I left. To cut a long story short, I said fine and went to see the undersecretary, he received me graciously. As I was leaving he gave me a piece of paper with measurements on it and said, ‘Have three Uşak carpets made to these measurements and send them to me.’ I agreed. These weren’t small carpets, they were for large halls, anyway, I went to Uşak, looked around, found three of the best quality carpets, and borrowed money to buy them. I put the invoice and the cost of transport in a sealed envelope and sent it with the carpets. How stupid I was, I didn’t even realize I was being asked for a bribe. I started my job, a month passed, no money arrived, my debtors started pressuring me, I wrote one more letter to the ministry asking for my money. I got a paper in the mail saying I’d been discharged in recognition of my disability. I was meant to have bribed them and then got the money back in bribes from the foresters; how could I have known this, brother? I was unemployed and deep in debt, and I couldn’t find a job because I’d been labeled unskilled. I sold everything and paid my debts and moved to Istanbul. You can see the rest of what happened, three years ago my wife left me too.”
“Where did she go?”
“How should I know, brother, maybe she went to her father’s village, maybe she went bad, in any event she was barren. That’s the way it is, if you can’t feed a woman she leaves, a man who can’t put food on the table isn’t seen as a man. That’s how it is, I was left all alone, living a dog’s life . . . I don’t have two pennies to rub together, I live in a room in Tophane, I sweep the floors in return for my lodging, I eat at soup kitchens.”
The man suddenly fell silent, his hands were turning blue from the cold, he put his hands under his arms and looked around; while they’d been talking the courtyard had filled up, a ragged-looking crowd in faded robes, turbans yellowed with age, misshapen fezzes, and threadbare shalwar had begun to gather in front of the mosque.
In place of the peace one would expect to emanate from the courtyard of a house of worship, a smell of anger and restlessness spread out amid the falling snowflakes. The crowd began to surge, they saw Blind Ali, helped along by two people, murmuring something they couldn’t quite make out, then they all went into the mosque and took their places for prayer.
After the prayers were over the congregation didn’t disperse, they remained in the courtyard as if they were waiting for something but didn’t know what it was. The crowd was silent. The snowfall grew heavier. Seagulls who’d flown up from the Golden Horn circled above the crowd in hope of food.
Suddenly the crowd parted, Blind Ali was carried out of the mosque and placed on the coffin rest by the door, he squinted his only eye at the crowd, and the trembling that might have seemed pathetic in anyone else seemed at that moment like the otherworldly power of a divine shadow.
On the marble coffin rest, on which a new body rested every day at noon, his blind eye, crippled body, and angry courage made him seem like a solution to the hungry, desperate people who’d gathered in the snow.
He shouted to the crowd in a barely intelligible voice that sounded like water bubbling from a dark well.
“Believers, there have been revelations. A saint has been seen under the curtain.”
Even though everyone else was shivering from the cold, Blind Ali’s shirt was open, it was as if the cold didn’t touch him.
“We want a shepherd,” he shouted, “every flock needs a shepherd. The flock lacks a leader. Sharia commands that we go to His Majesty the Caliph.”
Suddenly green flags emblazoned with Koranic verses rose above the crowd. Blind Ali was taken from the coffin rest and carried to the front of the crowd, and amid shouts of “God is great!” and “There have been revelations!” they left the courtyard and began marching toward Yıldız Palace. There was nowhere else they could go, nowhere else they could take shelter; they wanted someone to save them from this poverty, this abasement, so they went to the Caliph, the only savior they’d ever known. They’d forgotten that the very same Caliph had failed to save them for years, they had to forget in order to have hope.
The Sultan, whose intelligence-gathering organization had collapsed to a considerable degree, was unaware that a mob had set out from Fatih Mosque and he and his physician Reşit Pasha were examining the new pistols he’d lined up on the table.
“Look at these, doctor, how beautiful they are.”
The Sultan picked each of them up and weighed them in his hand, he pointed an unloaded pistol at the wall and pulled the trigger. It was clear that it delighted and amused him to touch them and play with them. Suddenly he stopped and gave Reşit Pasha a mocking look.
“You don’t like these very much, do you, doctor?”
“I’m not that interested, Your Majesty, perhaps because of my profession, I never had much interest in weapons.”
“That is, you say you’re a doctor and that you save lives instead of killing, but that we like weapons because we kill, is that how it is?”
Reşit Pasha was no longer as frightened as he’d once been of the Sultan, who no longer had the power over human life he’d once had, but he was ashamed and panicked about having been disrespectful, he didn’t want to seem like someone who was disrespectful when he wasn’t frightened.
“I beg your pardon, Your Majesty, that’s not what I meant to say.”
“Don’t worry, doctor, a sultan is not a physician, we know how to kill, and we kill when it’s necessary, to be a monarch is to constantly make the choice between life and death, sometimes you have to kill one person to keep another alive, yes, every Sultan has knowingly or unknowingly killed, but you keep some people alive. A good Sultan isn’t one who never kills, there are no Sultans like that, a good Sultan is one who makes the right decisions about who to kill and who to keep alive. It’s impossible to keep people alive without killing, doctor, even God, perish the thought, can’t do this, so how could we possible succeed?”
The Sultan put the gu
n he’d been holding back on the table and thought for a while.
“They call us a bloodsucker, stop, don’t object, I’m telling you what they say. But they praise our ancestors . . . When our ancestors went to war they gave orders that people be killed, we, at least, avoided wars, we didn’t allow Muslim sons to die in battle, were we wrong? Should we have gone to war and let thousands of our native sons die? Would they have loved us then? Would they not have insulted us then?”
The Sultan was defending himself, as he’d become accustomed to doing in recent months, not to try to say anything to the opposition, he’d made lists to convince himself he was right and put himself at ease, it was as if he thought that if he himself believed he was right, others would believe this too. Later Reşit Pasha told Osman, “He wanted to be his own judge and jury, he didn’t want to leave this to others, but when he saw that this was getting more and more difficult he tried constantly to prove he was right so he could better resist the judgements others would make.”
The Sultan picked up another of his weapons and changed the subject abruptly.
“Have you ever fired a gun, doctor?”
“I fired a gun once when I was young, but I missed.”
The Sultan smiled confidently
“Bragging is not an attractive trait, but I’m a good shot, ever since I was young I’ve been able to hit whatever I shoot at.”
“No doubt, my Sultan, everyone knows this, the whole world knows what a good shot you are.”
“This gun you see, doctor, it’s the only thing in life you can trust to keep you safe, it will never betray you, one day a woman from your harem who you take to bed could betray you, the brother you grew up with could betray you, but a gun will never betray you. Even when you’re a sultan there can come a time when a gun can save your life, a gun can save both a sultan and an empire. How many of our ancestors were killed in their quarters by useless ingrates, if they’d taken the precaution of carrying a gun they might have changed history, but they didn’t do this, they expected others to protect them. You can’t entrust your safety to others, doctor, look, no one can take my life in this room, if you ask me why, I always carry two guns in my pockets, I’ll kill anyone who comes to kill me, sometimes you can change your entire destiny if you gain five minutes.”
