He slowly whispered. “Suad,” he said. “Why have you come? Why don’t you leave me alone? All day and night you’ve been harassing me! Enough already! Let me be.” As he spoke, his trepidation left him, to be replaced by a bewildering feeling of revolt. “Just leave me alone already!” Then he regretted having addressed a dead man with such irreverence.
“Why shouldn’t I come, Mümtaz? I’ve never left your side anyway!”
Mümtaz nodded his head. “Indeed, you haven’t! You’ve been a veritable plague on me. But more intensely since yesterday. Last night I saw you on that hill. And in my dreams. Do you have any idea how strange it was? I was watching the nightfall. More exactly, evening was falling and frantic preparations were being made. Purple, red, pink, and lilac-colored boards and beams were brought out and assembled on the horizon. Then they raised the sun with ropes and pulleys. Yet, you know, it wasn’t the sun at all, but you. Your face was beautiful, as it is now, and because it was more sorrowful, you appeared even more sublime. Then they just crucified you there like some sort of Jesus . . .” He suddenly began to cackle. “If you only knew how bizarre it was, your state of sorrow like that, and your crucifixion like Jesus . . . You, a man who believes in nothing, a man who mocks everything . . .” And he laughed at length again.
Suad, his eyes fixed on Mümtaz, listened.
“As I said . . . I’ve never forsaken you. I’m always by your side!”
Mümtaz continued walking for a while without saying a thing. He had the sensation that he was walking in the glow of the one beside him rather than the light of daybreak. And this was quite distressing.
“Very well then, what is it that you want from me? What’s the reason for this insistence?”
“It’s not insistence . . . but obligation. It’s my obligation to be with you. I’ve now become your Guardian Angel.”
Mümtaz laughed yet again, though at the same time he recognized that his laughter was rather strained.
“This can’t be!” he said. “You’re a dead man. That is, you’re a person.” He felt the need to further clarify his thoughts. “It’s so difficult to converse with the deceased . . . I mean to say that you were a person. Meanwhile, this business is actually the concern of angels.”
“No, they can no longer keep up. In recent years the earth’s population has greatly increased. The politics of population growth is on the rise. Now angels are having the dead see to these matters . . .”
At first Mümtaz didn’t respond at all. Then he objected. “You’re lying!” he said. “You can’t be an angel. It’s impossible. You’re the very devil himself!” And it rent his heart to speak to a dead man in this manner. Despite this, he continued. “For the sake of deceiving me, you’ve put on these airs. I’m onto your game.”
Suad gazed at his face in a state of sorrow: “Were I the devil, I’d have whispered from within you. You wouldn’t be able to see me.”
“However,” Mümtaz began, “do you know how pleased I am to see you? I’m overjoyed even.” Then he again looked at Suad’s face fearfully.
“How beautiful you’ve become! Exceptionally beautiful! This sorrow suits you. Do you want to know what you resemble? The angels of Botticelli ... you know, the ones that give Jesus three nails during the Passion – ”
Suad interrupted him: “Stop making these absurd comparisons . . . Can’t you speak without comparing one thing to another? Haven’t you yet realized how you’ve made matters worse due to this vile habit?”
Like a child, Mümtaz begged: “Don’t scold . . . I’ve suffered so much. I haven’t done anything all that indecent. I’ve only found you beautiful. How have you become so sublime?”
“Things that exist in the mind are always sublime.”
At first Mümtaz wanted to protest. “Just now you said, ‘Were I the devil, I’d have whispered from within you’!” but suddenly another idea entered his mind. I’m unable to follow the train of my thoughts . . . How dismal! “But I can now see you with my own eyes. Not to mention that I’m conversing with you . . .”
“Yes, you see me through your own eyes! And you’re conversing . . .”
A notion passed through Mümtaz’s mind at lightning speed. “And I can touch you, can I not?”
“Of course . . .” Suad had now passed before him and had raised his arms as if to say, “Go ahead and examine me,” and laughed at Mümtaz within the sparkle emanating from his presence. Mümtaz turned his bedazzled eyes away.
“If you so desire and if you have no fear!”
“Why should I fear? I’m no longer afraid of anything! But he was reluctant to extend his hands toward Suad. He thrust them back into his pockets as if to say, “In case of any eventualities!”
Suad laughed the way he had that night in Emirgân. “I knew you’d be afraid,” he said. “Why don’t you inform that porter so he can come and touch me! Or Mehmet, or the coffeehouse apprentice in Boyacıköy! The people that you’ve condemned to death today.”
Mümtaz staggered. “What business could they possibly have with us?”
“They’d touch me in your stead.”
“I’m not sending them off to war alone. I’m going as well.”
“But without taking your death into account. You’ve seen their deaths as an absolute certainty and you’ve duped them into dying.”
“No! Not at all . . .”
“Yes, indeed . . .” Suad leaned over him with a cruel jeer, chastising him. “Or the wife of the porter. Let her touch me in your place.”
“No, I’m telling you. I intended to go as well. I will go. I don’t see them any differently than I see myself.”
“But you do, you do. You were bargaining over their deaths. You were trying to dupe them!”
“Lies . . . you’re lying.”
Mümtaz came to his senses. This argument was futile. İhsan was waiting at the house. He pleaded like a child: “Suad,” he said, “İhsan is very ill! Be so kind as to let me pass and be on my way already!”
Suad laughed fitfully. “But how quickly you’ve grown tired of me!”
“No, I haven’t grown tired. But there’s a sick man awaiting me at home. I’m exhausted, not to mention that you’re no longer one of our kind. I was dishonest with you previously. I do fear you. And furthermore, just get out of my damn way. The streets will soon become crowded! You’re an anomaly in the world of the living. You’re a glaring ghost, why roam in our midst? Isn’t what we suffer from our own enough?”
“Weren’t we in each other’s company only yesterday?”
“Yes, but you’re no longer the progeny of the sun!”
“Don’t worry about that. Since last night, all the dead have been out and about.”
Mümtaz gazed down the street, trembling. They were only twenty-five or thirty steps from the house.
“Why is that? What good does that do? This is the realm of the living. Everything here is for the sake of life! At the very least, all of you dead should quit haranguing us!”
“Impossible,” he said. “I can’t let you be. You’re coming with me.” He spoke with bitter derision.
“Without Nuran, in the midst of such misery . . . impossible.” And Suad spread his arms and tried to embrace him. Mümtaz stepped backward.
“Come . . .” His summons was pierced by a blood-curdling laugh.
Mümtaz implored, “At least don’t laugh! Please, stop!”
“How is it possible? You’ve reduced everything to the limits of your own self to such a degree; everything resembles you . . . You’re so bound by your puny existence and its concerns. Not to mention your limited devotion to life, your measured compassion, your trivial torments, your hopes, your states of withdrawal and worship . . .”
Mümtaz let his arms hang down and said, “Don’t be vindictive, Suad. I’ve suffered plenty.”
Suad again laughed expansively. “Very well, in that case, come with me and let me be your salvation.”
“I can’t, I have work that I must see to.”
“You won’t be able to accomplish anything! Come with me. You’ll be delivered of the whole lot. These are burdens that you can’t bear . . .”
Mümtaz once again stopped in his tracks and stared at Suad. “No,” he said. “I need to take on my responsibilities. And if I can’t, I’m prepared to be crushed beneath them. But I can’t go with you.”
“You will!”
“No, that would be cowardice.”
“In that case, remain here in your cesspool ...”
Suad spread his arms and struck Mümtaz forcefully in the face. He staggered and fell to the ground.
When he stood again, his face was bloody. The medicine bottles were broken in his hands. Despite this, he wore a strange, almost imperceptible smile. From one of the nearby windows, a radio announced the order for attack that Hitler had made that very night. Mümtaz had forgotten about the entire ordeal.
“War’s begun . . .” he said. And he opened his palms, which still held shards of broken vials, and gazed at his wounds. Then he slowly plodded toward the house. Passersby at this early hour glared in shock at the odd grin on his bloodied face.
He unlocked the door. The foyer mirror had assumed once again its terrestrial face in the morning light. He stared at his own face for a time. Then he slowly climbed the stairs.
Macide was sitting with the physician in the hall, listening to the radio.
“Good God, Mümtaz, what’s happened to you?”
Mümtaz again opened and closed his aching hands before the window.
“You don’t want to know,” he said. “I had an accident.” That strange smile – which seemed to hold within it the mysteries of an entire life – persisted on his lips.
“The medicine bottles broke!” he said. Then he turned to face the doctor. “How is he?”
“So-so,” he said. “He’s better. He doesn’t need anything more. Have you heard the news?”
Mümtaz, no longer listening, had withdrawn to a corner where he stared at his palms, then darted from his spot and walked toward the stairs.
But he couldn’t ascend. There, on the first step, he sank back down with his head in his hands. The doctor looked at him as if to say, “Now you’re mine, all mine!” Wiping her eyes, Macide approached him. In the stillness of the house, a lone booming voice on the radio spoke for them all.
Chronology
1757 – 99: Shaykh Galip, Ottoman divan poet and Mevlevî sheikh, establishes himself in the Ottoman court. He is renowned for his mystic romance Beauty and Love.
1778 – 1846: İsmail Dede Efendi, a hafiz, a muezzin, a Mevlevî, and one of the greatest composers of Ottoman classical music, composes more than two hundred works.
1789 – 1807: Reign of Sultan Selim III, a Mevlevî, a patron of the arts, and a composer. Selim introduces the first military and political modernizing reforms into the empire under the Nizam-ı Cedid (“New Order”) and appoints the cosmopolitan painter and architect Antoine Ignace Melling (later landscape painter to Empress Josephine of France) as court architect. Among the regular attendees to his court is the poet Shaykh Galip. (In A Mind at Peace, Mümtaz’s unfinished historical novel is set during this era.)
1808 – 3 9: Reign of Sultan Mahmud II, who continues the legal and military reforms begun by Selim. Mahmud II abolishes the Janissary corps and replaces them with a modern standing army and institutes European-style clothing reform, including the introduction of the fez in place of the turban.
1829: Treaty of Edirne. Autonomy is granted to Serbia, Greece, and principalities under Russian protection. Beginning of secession movements and expulsion of Muslims from the Balkans, Crimea, and the Caucasus between the 1820s and 1920s. (A Refugee Commission, Muhacirin Komisyonu, is eventually established in 1860 to resettle Muslim refugees in Central and Eastern Anatolia.)
1839: On April 3, İsmail Dede Efendi performs the Mevlevî ceremonial suite in the new Ferahfeza makam (mode of classical Turkish music). This work was commissioned by Sultan Mahmud II, who listened to it only months before he died of tuberculosis. (The music is described in the “Suad” section of A Mind at Peace.)
1839 – 76: The Tanzimat, or “Reorganization.” Begins with the reign of Sultan Abdülmecit I (1839 – 61). This era of reform attempts to turn “subjects of the sultan” into “modern citizens” by creating a new centralized government and new educational and legal systems. Sultan Abdülaziz (r. 1861 – 76) continued on this path of reform, and under his successor, Sultan Abdülhamid II (r. 1876 – 1909), the era culminated in the promulgation of a constitution and parliament in 1876, the first modern constitution in the Muslim world. Though this constitutional sultanate lasted less than two years, it was reinstated in 1908, ushering in a second constitutional era. This era also witnessed the first novels in Ottoman Turkish.
1877 – 78: Russo – Ottoman War. Concluded by the Treaty of San Stefano signed with Russia. The Ottoman state loses sovereignty over territories in the Balkans and Eastern Anatolia.
1901 : Poet, scholar, and novelist Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar is born in Istanbul. His father was a kadi (Islamic judge). Tanpınar graduated with a degree in literature from Istanbul University in 1923, then worked as a high school teacher and university professor, and served as member of parliament from 1942 to 1946.
1907: “Young Turks” in Paris establish contact with the Ottoman Liberty Society in Salonika, uniting to become the Committee of Union and Progress with the goal of restoring the constitution.
1908 – 20: Second Ottoman constitutional era, which begins after the Young Turk Revolution in 1908.
1912 – 13: First and Second Balkan Wars. Ottoman Empire loses most of its Balkan territories.
1914: Ottoman Empire enters World War I on the side of the Central powers. After Ottoman defeat, the Allied powers occupy Istanbul between 1918 and 1923 while former Ottoman territories are partitioned into mandates, nation-states, and kingdoms, giving rise to the modern Middle East.
19 1 9 – 22: With assistance from Allied powers, Greece invades Western Anatolia, and a mass exodus of Anatolian Muslims follows. (In A Mind at Peace, Mümtaz’s father is killed during the invasion and Mümtaz flees to the southern Mediterranean coast before moving to Istanbul.)
1922 – 38: The Kemalist cultural revolution (led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk) introduces a program of secular social engineering, including the abolishment of the Islamic caliphate and dervish orders, the institution of clothing reform, a change in the alphabet from Ottoman script to Latin, and the purging of Perso – Arabic words from the language. (Discussions on revolution and social change by İhsan, Suad, and Mümtaz in A Mind at Peace focus on the cultural revolution.)
1923: Establishment of the Republic of Turkey after the Turkish War of Independence against Allied occupations.
1938: Death of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the first president of the Republic of Turkey. (In A Mind at Peace, Mümtaz meets Nuran around this time.)
1939: Start of World War II. Turkey remains neutral until several months before the end of the war. (A Mind at Peace concludes with declarations of war in Europe.)
1942: Tanpınar publishes his famous literary history The History of 19th Century Turkish Literature.
1943: Tanpınar publishes his first short-story collection, The Dreams of Abdullah Efendi.
1944: Tanpınar’s first novel, Song in Mahur, appears in serial form.
1946: The beginning of multiparty politics in Turkey after decades of single-party rule by the Republican People’s Party. Tanpınar publishes his seminal collection of essays on art and urban culture, Five Cities: Istanbul, Bursa, Konya, Erzurum, Ankara.
1948: A Mind at Peace appears in serial form in the daily newspaper Cumhuriyet and is published in book form a year later.
1950: In the first free elections in more than twenty-five years, voters send the Republican People’s Party out of office, putting the Democratic Party in power. Tanpınar’s novel on the Allied occupation of Istanbul, Waiting in the Wings, appears in serial form.
1954: Tanpınar’s parodic novel of the Kemalist cultural revolution, The Time Regulation Institute, appears in serial form.
1956: Tanpınar publishes Summer Rain, a short-story collection.
1960: A military coup ousts the Democratic Party. The Constitution of 1961 replaces the Constitution of 1924. The “Second Republic” begins.
1961: Tanpınar’s collection of thirty-seven poems appears under the title Poems. He also publishes a monograph on poet Yahya Kemal Beyatlı (the basis for the character İhsan), his mentor.
1962: The Time Regulation Institute is published in book form. Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar dies of a heart attack. He is buried in Istanbul’s Aşiyan Cemetery, next to Yahya Kemal Beyatlı. Tanpınar’s tombstone is inscribed with his own famous lines of verse: “Neither am I inside time/Nor altogether without.” A novelist of later acclaim, his posthumously published works in book form include Essays on Literature (1969); Waiting in the Wings (1973, novel); Song in Mahur (1975, novel); Lady in the Moon (1987, novel, incomplete); As I’ve Lived (1996, collected essays); Between Two Fires (1998, screenplay based on Waiting in the Wings), The Secret of Gems (2002); Lessons in Literature (2002); and The Complete Stories (2003).
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