A Mind at Peace

by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

  Two elderly men took ablution at the mosque fountain. Which of the prayers will they perform? A disheveled elderly woman wearing a black chador crouched, cooling herself by awkwardly bringing a palmful of water to her face. Her shriveled hands appeared to be roasted by fire. Stray pigeons dawdled atop the marble slabs of the courtyard as if roaming through a garden of abstraction. “Like the beloveds in old miniatures . . .” Annoyed with himself, he struck out this comparison uttered in Suad’s voice: Not even close! If anything, they’re thoughts wandering through a mind in solitude . . . This wasn’t accurate either; they’re inklings before the onset of actual thought. Voilà! Pigeons on the portico traced mysterious shapes through ephemeral flights of lacey design.

  By the other courtyard gate, he again observed elderly men performing ablutions and the expanse of the quadrangle. As Yahya Kemal had put it, this space had been an open casement for the soul since the mosque had been founded in 1506. This was what should persist. I wonder if women in chador would come here in the past? But this wasn’t the only transformation. As he’d passed through the courtyard he’d noticed a lone electric bulb burning as if to augment the dimness of the mosque from beneath the thick, half-raised entryway drape. Old men performing the ablution at a classical mosque . . .

  Everything that might be termed national is a thing of beauty . . . and must persist eternally.

  Then, thinking of the porter, he again retorted: Don’t think I’m making wagers on your head! I’m also speaking on behalf of your convictions.

  This time the porter wasn’t alone. He’d been joined by Mehmet, who’d been doing his military service in Ereǧli, and the coffeehouse apprentice at Boyacıköy.

  Outside the entryway another elderly woman begged for alms in a thick Rumeli accent, though in a gentle voice. She had small hands, as small as a child’s. Her eyes resembled mountain springs on her wizened face. As Mümtaz handed the woman money, he wanted to peer into her eyes. But he could discern nothing there – such had they been occluded by pain and longing. Next he stopped in front of the prayer-bead seller peddling the final and paltry mementos of his boyhood Thousand and One Nights Ramadan celebrations, having reduced this realm of his genesis to a few prayer beads and two or three misvak toothbrush sticks in a small case. Last August, he and Nuran had purchased two strings of prayer beads and chatted with the man. He again bought two strings; but was scarcely able to keep them out of Suad’s clutch. I’m dreaming, I’m seeing things while wide awake . . .

  II

  By viscous light of summer twilight the coffeehouse seethed in sound and fury. A gathering of every ilk and class – including expectant ferry-goers, neighborhood locals soon to return home, and day-trippers chatting with friends after the beach – had braved the evening sun filtering through the acacias like the fourteen children of Princess Niobe and were discussing the current state of affairs: They display a true heroic resilience in this sun! Virtually Homeric.

  Mümtaz walked on as the names of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and Chamberlain flitted through the air. While passing one table, he overheard the vociferous commentary of an acquaintance: “My dear man, today’s France can’t fight. Its inhabitants have become decadent . . . One and all they’re like André Gide . . .”

  A las Gide, alas France! If France can’t fight, of course it isn’t Gide’s fault. There must be other reasons! That this man could today still recollect a France without Gide was truly bizarre. Mümtaz immediately thought of a book comprised of comments and predictions made at each café table. What a testimonial. To simply convey opinions on the verge of war – if it comes to that! Read after the fact, it’d be an accurate and fascinating record of the vagaries of human thought. But documented in the thick of things . . . it ought to be written tonight! Should these same citizens later try to write down what they’d honestly thought now, intervening events would distort their state of mind and perspective. Because we change along with events; and as we change, we reconstruct our histories anew. The human mind functioned like this. Humanity would continually reformulate time. The knife’s edge of the present carried the weight of history while also transforming it, word by word.

  Prophecies of other voices rose from other tables: “My good man, England isn’t as weak as you might suppose” or, “You’ll see, the actual victor will be Mussolini! The man could be in Paris in twenty-four hours!”

  Mümtaz was transported to the era described by Cabî İsmet Bey in his history of the reign of Sultan Selim III: “The general known to the world as Bonaparte sent word, ‘whoever be my sultan, I shall come to his aid with an army that could fill the Seven Seas . . .’” Of course, it wasn’t quite the same, but reminiscent of what he heard. The commentaries continued: “At the turn of the nineteenth century, we were experiencing a crisis with Europe similar to today’s. But back then we weren’t familiar with Europe or ourselves”; “How much this country has sacrficed in blood”; “In place of supporting France, if only we hadn’t left England’s side”; “But, my good man, history is done and over with.” At what lengths he’d discussed such matters with İhsan. İhsan, who lay ailing.

  His friends sat in the rear of the coffeehouse, their backs against the garden wall. A garçon who’d known Mümtaz for some time said, “They’re waiting for you.” Should war break out, he, too, would be sent to the front.

  The lot of them were gloomy. Selim fiddled with an envelope. When they saw Mümtaz coming they called out, “How’s İhsan?”

  “I haven’t seen him since about three. But he doesn’t seem to be in any real danger. Only, I worry about the night. They say that odd numbered dates are always more difficult.”

  He took a chair. He sank his trembling hands into his pockets.

  “You look quite pale. What’s bothering you?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Troubles.” And with a hand in his pocket, he fondled the prayer beads he’d snatched from Suad’s clutch. I’m nothing but a child! I’m driving myself crazy! “Have them bring me something, would you?”

  “What would you like?”

  Wiping the table, the garçon recited, “Coffee, tea, ayran, lemonade, soda . . .”

  Mümtaz gazed at the man’s face and perspiring mustache through the lens of his student years. He’d once lambasted him when he’d lost the satchel Mümtaz had entrusted to him. Later they’d become friends.

  “A tea!” Then he turned to his friends.

  “What’s going on with you all?”

  “What d’you expect? We’re talking about the march to war . . . or not.”

  Mümtaz glanced at Orhan’s athletic shoulders. “Likely so,” he said. He, too, was surprised that he’d pronounced this verdict. “If not today, tomorrow. There’s no other way out. Now that matters have reached this impasse . . .”

  “Then what about us? What’ll happen to us?”

  Selim extended the envelope in his hand. “They’ve called me up to the district military office. I’m going tomorrow.”

  Maybe they’ve sent a letter to Emirgân for me. Once İhsan gets better, I’ll stop in at the conscription office!

  “You haven’t answered to my question.”

  Mümtaz looked at Orhan stretched out bodily over four chairs. His swarthy face, trained on the tree branches drooping from the mosque yard, awaited an answer in its usual state of composure.

  “We’re tied to agreements: If France and England enter the war, we’ll enter.”

  Nuri was the most distraught of the lot. “I was going to get married this week.” In Mümtaz’s eyes the wedding gown that he’d seen that morning could change a woman. But no, Nuri was well-off and his bride wouldn’t be caught dead in such a tacky dress. She’d wear a prettier, fancier, and more fashionable dress accented with jewelry – perhaps the jewelry he’d seen on display at the Bedesten. But if Nuri were indeed drafted, she wouldn’t be that different from the porter’s wife. In the midst of a more ordered, more comfortable life, she’d weep for him, yearn for him on quiet nights with stir
rings of complete physical longing, and when his absence was reaffirmed, she’d become the enemy of all humanity.

  Mümtaz had been friends with petite Leyla since university. He’d given her the nickname “Pocket Lady.” She’d once darned his loose jacket seam, lowering her small head to her chest while, in a moment of intimacy, he’d observed the softness of her nape between curly locks and the line of her dress. Leyla truly was delightful. Now she’d lower her head again, but this time to weep.

  “You can still get married before you go . . . Or else you’ll take leave. Besides, it’s not clear what will happen!” Then, as if wanting to deliver himself of these troubles, Mümtaz took refuge in loose speculation: “Maybe war won’t break out and some means of reconciliation will be found.”

  Fâhir: “You just said there was no recourse!”

  “Everything hangs on and is held together by a thread. Do you want to know what’s truly horrible?” He paused, recalling the phrase of a poet of his esteem: “Pire . . . Pire destin . . .” he repeated. “The worst fate.”

  “Yes, what’s truly horrible?”

  “This insecurity. Life can’t seem to decide on its path. And it won’t, either. We know nothing of the era before the last war. We were only children then. But when one reads about it, it’s absolutely shocking. The sense of security and stability then! Finance, labor, ideology, social struggle, all of it developed on roads that had been paved beforehand. Now, everything is a shambles. Even borders change from day to day and hour to hour. International crises, and our nervous tension, can skyrocket in an instant. Maybe they’ll come to a resolution. But that won’t solve the matter. Because this state of insecurity and fear has befuddled the politicians.”

  Orhan, with the same absentmindedness: “True, if this war happens, it won’t happen by accident like the last one!”

  “The last war didn’t happen accidentally, either. Some believe that it happened because Poincaré wanted it to! Whatever the case, it caught the entire world off guard. Everybody distrusted their neighboring country and more or less armed themselves against each other. But the people on the ground didn’t give war much credence. They believed that it wasn’t possible in this century of civilization, that consent for this magnitude of death couldn’t be given. But today . . . today the world’s in the midst of a civil war. Ideas alone are at war. Ideas themselves have begun to run riot.”

  “But isn’t that just a small faction?”

  “Not at all! Because these persistent crises have also exhausted more moderate factions and groups that simply want to live their lives. That’s why war is a forgone conclusion.”

  Orhan, after entertaining thoughts of hanging a fist-size lock on the door of the chemist’s shop that he’d recently opened, said, “Is it all worth it for the sake of a small harbor?”

  “Of course not, but it isn’t simply an issue of the harbor. It’s uncertain what will follow! Not to mention that there’s the crucial problem of Nazi tyranny and aggression! The man’s a plague on humanity.”

  “Mümtaz, do you actually still believe in humanity?”

  Mümtaz gazed at Orhan. “What else is there?” He resembled the stray girl whom Suad had mentioned in his letter.

  “I don’t believe in it. And the spilling of blood for the sake of humanity infuriates me. What’s it to me if Europe claims to be in dire straits? When we were in danger, did they give us a second thought? Did Europe even once think of preventing the catastrophe of the Balkan Wars? For centuries your Europe has performed cold-blooded surgery on us. An incision here, an amputation there. They uprooted us like grass from lands in which we’d lived for hundreds of years. Then they transplanted other nationalities in our place as if planting carrots in a field of rice. Didn’t Europe do all of this? Hasn’t Europe nurtured Hitler and the current state of crisis?”

  “But we could come to a mutual understanding that violence unleashed against us and others should end! And it should end once and for all!”

  “And you intend to do this through warfare?”

  “Seeing that there’s the threat of military attack, of course through warfare ... First I’d repel the threat at the doorstep, then I’d try to prevent its reoccurrence.”

  “Two wrongs don’t make a right!”

  “Sometimes another wrong is the only solution. Surgery cures gangrene. Skin cancer can be abraded with a scalpel. Operations are terrible, but at times they’re the only available option. Not to mention that establishing a new ethics and morality is laborious and time-consuming. We assume it can happen all at once like a rising sun. But it manifests by means of suffering and trial and error, and through the resulting process of socialization. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Value judgments get absorbed through our skin, that’s how common and invasive they are. But they’re good for nothing. Because society doesn’t simply adopt what the mind conjures up.”

  “Will it adopt it by force of war? We saw what happened between 1914 and 1918.”

  “True, the road traveled is no indication of what lies ahead.”

  Orhan, having finished with the lock, was lost in thought. During such moments, he’d be certain to sing a türkü. In fact, in place of answering Mümtaz, he mumbled:Imperiled between a rock and a hard place, One falls by bullet, the next by knife wound . . .

  Mümtaz recognized the türkü. During the last war, while in Konya with his father, Mümtaz remembered that soldiers being transported by evening freight trains and peasants carting vegetables to town toward daybreak always sang this song in the station. It had a searing melody. The entire drama of Anatolia was contained in this türkü.

  “How strange!” he said. “It’s acceptible, even forgivable, for the masses to moan and complain. Just listen to türküs from the last war! What spectacular pieces! The older ones are that way too. Take that Crimean War türkü. But these songs aren’t liked by intellectuals. So they have no right to whine! That means we’re accountable.”

  Nuri returned to the earlier topic: “And how d’you know that things won’t run amok this time? Due to the absence or the surplus of the most insignificant thing, a piece of straw.”

  Mümtaz completed his thought: “I’m not defending war. What makes you think that I am? For starters, can humanity even be divided into the ‘victorious’ and the ‘vanquished’? This is absurd. This division is sufficient to bankrupt values and ethics and even what we’re fighting for. Naturally it’s a mistake to expect good or great things to follow in the wake of every crisis. But what’s to be done? You see, there are five of us here. Five friends. When we think independently, we find ourselves possessed of an array of strengths. But in the face of any crisis . . .” His friends gazed at him intently as he continued: “Since morning I’ve been debating this on my own.” Abruptly, however, he returned to the previous topic: “On the contrary, worse, much worse things could arise.”

  “What have you been deliberating since morning?”

  “This morning, near the Hekim Ali Pasha Mosque, girls were playing games and singing türküs. These songs have existed maybe since the time of the conquest of Istanbul. And the girls were singing them and playing. You see, I want these türküs to persist.”

  “That’s a defensive struggle . . . That’s different.”

  “Sometimes a defensive struggle can change its character. If there’s a war, I’m not saying we’ll rush into it at all costs. For nobody knows what the developments leading up to it will be. Sometimes, unexpectedly, a back door opens. You look to find an unforeseen opportunity! In that case, waging or refraining from war becomes a matter that’s within your own control.”

  “When one contemplates it, it’s confounding. The difference between those who controlled humanity’s fate at the start of the last war and today’s statesmen is immeasurable!”

  Mümtaz turned to İhsan in his thoughts as if to ask him something.

  “Of course there are a lot of differences. Back then humanity seemed to emerge out of a single mold. Values were still regarded
in high esteem! Not to mention that centuries-old diplomacy, its gentility and protocol . . . Today it’s as if a lunatic has moved into the neighborhood. Europe as we know it has vanished. Half of Europe is in the hands of renegades bent on provoking the masses, on vengeance, and on spinning new fables.” The more he spoke, the more he assumed he was leaving his fixed ideas and fabrications behind.

  “Do you know when I gave up hope on the current predicament? The day they signed the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact.”

  “But the leftists quite applaude it. If you could just hear them rave! They’re now all praising the Führer. As if the Reichstag Fire Trial had never happened.” Nuri’s face was yellow with wrath. “As if so much murder hadn’t been committed.”

  “Of course they praise him. But only until the next news flash. You get my drift, don’t you? Mind that one doesn’t lose his sense of ethics and value judgments ! Despite being opposed to war, I’m not afraid of it, and I’m waiting.”

  He spoke with unfamiliar certitude. From one of the neighboring coffeehouses a radio or gramophone cast another variety of turmoil into the evening hour. Eyyubî Bekir Aǧa’s version of the “Song in Mahur” lilted through the twilight, staggering Mümtaz on the spot. As he heard the melody, the version that Nuran’s grandfather had composed, that ominous poem of love and death, filled him. Tomorrow she’ll be leaving, and leaving full of resentment . . . Fury, so vast as to be unbearable, rose within him. Why did it have to happen this way? Why is everybody imposing on me like this? She’d been talking about her peace of mind. So then, where’s my own peace to be found? Don’t I count? What to do in such solitude? He was all but thinking through Nuran’s words: Peace, inner calm, huzur . . .

  “The entire matter hinges on this . . .” Orhan didn’t complete his thought.