by Ahmet Altan
“How are the men?”
“There are no problems, commander.”
Ragıp Bey examined the sergeant’s face carefully.
“They’re all strong, they’re prepared, don’t worry, they’ll show those in the capital who disrespected our caliph what’s what.”
Ragıp Bey went into his tent and lay down on the narrow camp bed and clasped his hands behind his head, if all went well he’d see Dilara Hanım in the evening. He thought about his military high school history teacher from Aleppo, he’d said, “Discovering the taste of sugar ruined the Hunnic soldiers, an officer should stay away from the sweet side of life, he should abstain from sugar, drink, and women, otherwise, God help you, he’ll end up like the Hunnic army.” There was a smile on his face as he was somewhat absorbed in thoughts of Dilara Hanım, his history teacher, and the Huns when a soldier entered and said that there was a message from headquarters. Ragıp told him to come in.
The wizened soldier entered, saluted wearily, and gave Ragıp Bey a letter from the leather bag that hung from his neck.
“They said it was urgent, commander.”
After he dismissed the messenger, Ragıp Bey opened the letter and saw that it was an order to move within the hour.
Headquarters, which had sent news to the Caliph telling him that he would not be touched and guaranteed that he would keep his throne, assessed that it would be dangerous to wait any longer and had decided to move.
Ragıp Bey went out at once and called for the cross-eyed sergeant.
“Come on, cross-eyed guy, tell the men to get ready, we’re going, the fight is on.”
The tent city started to ripple with movement, the tense silence gave way to loud commands, shouting, clanking bayonets, neighing horses; the order to attack had suddenly invigorated the troops. A unit that had received the order sooner passed Ragıp Bey in lockstep and moved toward Bakırköy, they would board a train there and move to Sirkeci.
Ragıp Bey rubbed his hands together and tightened his bandolier, a weight had been lifted from him, he felt lightened, almost cheerful. As he later told Osman, “The worst thing in war is waiting, it lowers the men’s morale.”
Fifteen minutes later they started to march toward Edirnekapı according to the order given to them. They marched along a narrow dirt road toward one of the largest cities in history, it smelled of wet soil and oregano. In the silence, he heard the stumbling of soldiers who were not yet fully awake; the metallic sound of rifle butts hitting the canteens on the soldiers’ belts spread into the night. Toward midnight they reached the great walls of the queen of cities, this great and magnificent city that had been attacked by Greeks, Roman emperors, Byzantine Caesars, Bulgarian kings, Russians, Crusaders, Arabs, Ottoman Sultans, and rebellious generals and who made prisoners of whoever captured her, pitch-black and silent behind the walls, awaiting the newcomers.
Giant cypresses, centuries old, spread across the area between the road, paved with ancient Greek stones, and the walls, which seemed higher, blacker, and more threatening than usual, standing frighteningly still like celestial sentries that awaited the souls of those who died under the walls; the soldiers were frightened by the magnificence of what they saw, listening intently in case of a possible attack, and moved toward the walls, taking care not to make even the slightest sound.
Under the gigantic cypresses were thousands of stone dwarves with large quilted turbans, here and there among them flickered a few oil candles with strange flames that smelled of sorrow and death, in the long shadows cast by the small flames of these abandoned candles, some of the quilted stone turbans seemed to move, to lower or raise their heads.
The soldiers suddenly stopped.
When Ragıp Bey heard occasional whispers in the night he realized the soldiers were praying, they were afraid. He called to the men in a low voice.
“These are the tombs of Mehmet the Conqueror and the martyrs who conquered Istanbul. They watch over Muslim soldiers when they set out on a campaign. Recite the al-fateha . . . pray for an auspicious battle.”
Even though the soldiers knew they might be attacked at any moment, they hung their rifles over their shoulders and recited the al-fateha, rubbed their faces with their hands, and sent their prayers to the souls of the martyrs and asked for mercy. They knew that when they went into battle there was no one but God in whom to take shelter, God may have agreed to share life with the devil, but didn’t share death with anyone; this is what warriors believed.
Knowing that the men couldn’t pass the tombs of the martyrs without reciting the al-fateha, he took the risk of allowing them to do so, then gave the cross-eyed sergeant an order in a low voice.
“We’ll go through the gate in a double column, everyone keep an eye on the man next to him, no one is to make a sound, if anyone’s rifle butt hits his canteen I swear to God I’ll kill you first and then the man who did it.”
They went through the high-arched gate carefully, as soon as they were through, each man found cover and lay down. Ragıp Bey turned his back to the inside of the gate, waiting for the men to pass through and glancing around. They were happily surprised when they realized no one was waiting for them. After they’d taken cover, the units behind them began to pass through the gate. At the same moment, the vanguard of the Movement Army entered Istanbul from four different points.
They stood at the foot of the walls and looked at the city.
This strong and unpredictable city, that had experienced innumerable bloody massacres, with its mosques, churches, palaces, domes, minarets, crosses, streams, seas, cypresses, plane trees, and people, was wrapped in the darkness of the night, it had turned off all its lights and quieted all its voices; not a single person in the city was asleep that night, but the houses of the city were darker and quieter than the cemetery outside the city gates. In that silence, the propeller of a barge sailing up the Bosphorus to the Black Sea could be heard in Edirnekapı, the entire city listened to the sound of this small barge at the same moment.
In the midst of this terrifying darkness, the Sultan’s palace on Yıldız Hill shone like a ball of fire; the Sultan, who’d been afraid of the dark since childhood, had all of the lights of the palace lit that night as usual. The most frightened person in the city, shriveled by terror, had lit all of the lights in his house in such a way that it could be seen from everywhere and had placed himself in the middle of those lights. While his slaves hid in darkness, he hid in the light.
From within these lights, he too looked out at his city.
“Look at the capital of the empire,” said the Sultan, “look at this inky darkness, was this how I was supposed to see my city, was it this gloom?”
Even the houses of the palace staff in the vicinity of the palace were empty and dark. When they heard the news that the Movement Army had reached Çatalca, most of the staff had abandoned their masters and taken their families and whatever they could carry and fled to Üsküdar by caique.
“Even the houses of the palace staff are dark, even they have gone. There’s no need for Mahmut Şevket Pasha to enter the city, just hearing his name was enough to send people running.”
As usual, Reşit Pasha looked for words with which to console the Sultan.
“In any event they’ll come back, my Sultan. Didn’t Mahmut Şevket Pasha declare his fealty to you, didn’t he tell you many times that your throne is safe, that he didn’t harbor any malevolence toward you?”
Very frightening and powerful people have a soft and loving face that they conceal from the crowds and that is different from their tyrannical face, they only show this face to those close to them, those who see it become attached to it, those who see this warmth become almost enslaved to it. The Sultan gave his fatherly, loving, but slightly condescending look that had always affected Reşit Pasha.
“You’re a good doctor, but, as I always say, you’re a child when it comes to politi
cs.”
The Sultan stopped talking and lit a cigarette. He put it in his cigarette holder. As he did so the look on his face changed, it hardened and solidified, the lines on his face, which had grown deeper of late, seemed to sag.
“Can a sultan who seeks assurances about his future from a pasha who is subordinate to him still be considered a sultan, doctor? Yes he can, of course he can, but is it really sovereignty?”
It occurred to the pasha to ask, “So why don’t you stand up to them, why don’t you do anything?” but even then he didn’t have the courage to do this. With the intuition that had always frightened him, the Sultan answered as if he knew what the pasha was thinking.
“Then why don’t I stand up to them, doctor, why don’t I act while I’m still sitting on the throne?”
The Sultan stood, went to the window, and looked out at the city that has put out its lights as it waited in silence.
“Why don’t I do anything?”
Then he answered his own question.
“Because there’s nothing I can do . . . If I stand up to them, if I say, my sons, all Muslims, I have unfurled the flag of my caliphate, it’s time for jihad, yes, they would come, most of my soldiers would come, but then what would happen, brother would kill brother, if I lose I lose everything, if I win, I will have made that vagabond Derviş Vahdeti my partner, instead of the soldiers, the mullahs will be demanding their rights. No one is aware of it, but an age is ending, doctor, here, tonight, we await the end of the Ottoman dynasty.”
He went back to his armchair.
“Look, the state’s army has come to conquer its own capital. They’ve tasted this, they don’t want to give up this power . . . When soldiers get a taste of power, they don’t give it up, this isn’t like the Janissary uprisings. The Ottoman dynasty is ending, doctor . . . Ah, the Ottoman empire is ending.”
“Why do you say that, Your Majesty, they won’t touch you. Who can rebel against your power, the authority of the Caliph, what slave has that much power?”
“Perhaps, yes, I can keep my throne, but nothing will be as it was before. Moreover, I’m not even so sure about that, I’m not even sure they’ll let me live. I’m not sure about anything, no one is.”
For the first time the doctor realized so clearly how much the Sultan feared being killed.
“They wouldn’t dare touch you, Your Majesty.”
“I don’t know, doctor, but if I go I’ll take a few of them with me.”
As the Sultan said this he put his hand in his jacket pocket. The doctor realized that the Sultan had a gun in his jacket pocket and that he was determined to kill anyone who came to kill him, he saw what desperation was, how it turned a sultan into a gunman. The old Sultan was thinking about fighting like a gang leader, he no longer trusted his soldiers, his people, his friends, the only thing he trusted was the gun in his pocket. Reşit Pasha told Osman, “That was the moment I realized it was over, the moment he put his hand in his pocket, after that moment, neither the state nor the angry and frightened Sultan would recover.”
“Let’s tell them to get the carriage ready,” the Sultan said, “Go on home now.” For the first time, Reşit Pasha found the courage to stand up to the Sultan.
“I would stay if you commanded me to, Your Majesty, you might need something.”
The Sultan stood and patted the doctor on the shoulder.
“Go, doctor. This place isn’t safe anymore, go home. From now on only God can help us. We should pray for the best, none of us has the power to change fate.”
As the doctor walked toward the door, the Sultan called after him.
“Doctor.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.’
“Her ladyship was coughing today. I told them to boil some lemon flowers . . . What do you suggest?”
“I would have suggested the same, Your Majesty, you found the appropriate remedy.”
The Sultan nodded; even under these circumstances he derived a strange and inexplicable pleasure from showing off his knowledge of medicine.
“Yes, I thought so too.”
As the pasha left the palace he noticed that the guards had disappeared, the palace was completely undefended. Most of the mutineering soldiers had gathered at the barracks, some had fled to join the approaching Movement Army. The physician knew the Sultan was aware of this; he was certain he’d weighed everything, he wasn’t taking a stance because he knew he wouldn’t win. If he’d thought he could win, he would have been prepared to burn down the world to do so, he wouldn’t have cared if brothers shed each other’s blood. Even though he knew this was true, it didn’t diminish his love for the Sultan. When he thought that he was on the brink of death, this man who would do anything to hold on to power hadn’t wanted his physician to stay with him, he’d sent him home so he would be safe.
As he rode through the pitch-dark, silent streets, the pasha wondered if this was because he was growing old. “Would he have fought if he was younger?” As he thought about this he rested his head on the quilted back seat of the landau, and suddenly he found himself dreaming about Mihrişah Sultan; he had no idea when his thoughts had drifted from the Sultan to Mihrişah Sultan.
Later he said to Osman, “That’s how we men are, in difficult times we always think about women, we always want to take shelter in them.” Osman could have said, “But you thought about her at other times as well,” he also agreed that men always thought about women in difficult times and wanted to take shelter in them.
16
Once the Movement Army had reached Yeşilköy and it was clear that an advance on the city was inevitable, Mihrişah Sultan suddenly lost interest in what was going on. She couldn’t tell anyone, but she even began to feel inwardly sorry that the Sultan was going to be dethroned. She too felt that an age had come to an end.
A period that had defined her entire youth would end with the dethroning of the Sultan, and she, along with everyone else, would pass into a new age through a newly opened gate, and she was secretly frightened by this. It was as if this fierce change was a sign that her youth and beauty had come to an end; she sensed she would not be able to pass through this gate with the youth and beauty she’d had before. She’d reached an age when the new worried her; sometimes she longed madly for something new, yet she was also frightened that it would make her older, or rather that it would make it apparent that she’d aged.
Of course this vague, nameless anxiety whose existence she would never accept wasn’t the only reason her interest in these matters had lessened; like many beautiful women, she couldn’t remain interested in anyone or anything for very long, she was soon herself again. Her beauty was like an attractive garden with high walls that it pleased her to stroll through; though she left it occasionally, when she was outside she only sought what concerned her garden, when she couldn’t find anything she returned to her thick-walled garden and concerned herself with her own beauty. There was no room for anything but herself and her beauty; for her, her beauty was like a lover she couldn’t renounce, a paramour she couldn’t live without, she couldn’t countenance anything coming between her and her own beauty.
Behind the selfishness of her passion for beauty there was a gentle sensitivity and humor somewhere in her thoughts that was even distant from her beauty, and it was this sarcasm that took aim at everyone including herself and her ability to discover the laughable that made her beauty attractive. But further behind this there was an empathy and a desire to love that was particular to the reclusive, that only emerged with difficulty, she looked at everyone to see if this was the person she could love, but after a time she wearied of this and gave up.
Mihrişah Sultan never said any such thing, but Osman liked to repeat it as if he’d heard it from her. “People who have difficulty loving are partial to people who are difficult to love.” People like that loved murderers, madmen, dervishes, writers, rebels, seductresses; he pointed t
o Mihrişah Sultan as proof of this; she’d loved a father and daughter she should perhaps not have loved, Sheikh Efendi, who had no interest in carnal pleasures, who avoided sin, and who was impossible to tempt and difficult to approach, and who secretly loved another woman, and the rebellious, aloof, and sharp-tongued Rukiye, the daughter of Sheikh Efendi and the woman who had betrayed her only living son.
The love Mihrişah Sultan harbored for these two people lived, grew, and roosted in her because she saw one of them rarely and the other was always with her. She loved them the way she loved her own beauty, passionately, with the fear of losing them and occasionally growing weary of loving.
Loving taught her how to fear; she’d said this to Osman as well once: “If you love, you fear.” This stately woman who was never frightened for herself, to whom it never even occurred to be frightened, would tremble with fear when it came to Rukiye, she couldn’t stop worrying that something might happen to her. She told her everything she knew about men, life, and love, she wanted her to learn about life without the painful experiences, though she knew this was impossible.
This love showed her the sides of herself she hadn’t known, that she was even surprised to see existed; she caught herself looking at Rukiye tenderly, or insisting she eat a bit more, she saw this not as a sign of love but of aging and became irritated with Rukiye and grumbled.
In addition, Rukiye was the visible side of her other love, which she wasn’t able to see. She loved what she saw of Sheikh Efendi in Rukiye’s personality, it was as if she had transferred her love for him to Rukiye; in a strange way she wanted to raise Rukiye well so that she would be a suitable daughter for Sheikh Efendi; when she saw a side of Rukiye she didn’t like, she got angry not just because she didn’t like it but also because it was something unsuitable for Sheikh Efendi’s daughter. Sometimes, for whatever reason, mostly in the evening twilight as she stood by the window looking out over the sea as figures blurred and slipped into the shadows, she imagined that Rukiye was her daughter by Sheikh Efendi, she entertained dreams that embarrassed her, but even though she was ashamed she couldn’t keep herself from enjoying these dreams.
