Slow Boats to China

by Gavin Young

  ‘You’re not black enough. I was going to say Congo.’ We laughed and I asked him what he did.

  ‘I was born here, but one day a few years ago a Belgian film critic came here and took me to Brussels to make a film. I made two films, actually. Not much good, I guess. I went to Paris, too. I had to come back because of work-permit troubles there. Also I had to do my military service here.’

  ‘You haven’t done it yet? You look –’

  ‘I’m twenty-four. I could be in big trouble, so I leave on the Istanbul bus at eight o’clock tonight, register at the barracks there tomorrow, begin my training the day after. For the first forty-five days nothing but physical exercise – you can imagine how tough the Turkish army is on recruits. All that long hair shaved.’ He laughed again. ‘Like a nut. But that’s the least of it.’

  ‘It’ll pass,’ I said to console him. ‘Forty-five days of exercise, no drink, no women. You’ll be the better for it.’

  ‘I see military service as a mountain that has to be climbed. I confess I feel like a man facing a firing squad, and you are like the priest taking my confession. My name is Metin.’ He held out his hand.

  ‘I’ve had so many girls here,’ he said. ‘After all, I worked at the Club Méditerranée, then as a guide, then in Belgium…. I’ve done some strange things.’ He grinned.

  ‘Old women, too? Men? Sheep?’

  His grin broadened. It was not unpleasant. ‘You’ve met Ugandans like me before?’

  ‘You’ll need another beer if you’re going to Scutari tomorrow to start a new life. Is it Scutari barracks you’re going to?’

  ‘Yes. Uskudar. Yes, thank you, one beer. You know, I could get a doctor’s certificate and avoid that mountain.’

  ‘Yes, a sharp attack of syphilis would probably get you off.’

  He held up his hand and rubbed the tip of his first finger against the tip of his thumb. ‘Money. That’s easier, less painful.’

  ‘Too late now. You’ve decided to be honest.’

  ‘Too late, yes.’

  We sipped the beer. The man led the dripping sheep out of the sea and rolled down his trouser bottoms. The sheep shook themselves and followed him slowly down the road, leaving parallel trails of water in the dust.

  ‘I like Brussels better than Paris,’ the young Turk said. ‘I’ll tell you why. It’s the Parisians. Turks, as you know, are a bit quiet, reserved, but Parisians are much more so. I don’t like that. Here’s a true story. One day I was in a crowded Paris street and a girl in front of me tripped and fell hard on the pavement. Not a soul stopped to help her. I gave her a hand up. She was shaken. Her knees were badly cut and bleeding. I helped her to a café nearby. I put her on a chair, ordered her a cognac and asked the patron for a cloth or something to stop the bleeding. Do you know what? The patron – one of those bald, arrogant sons of bitches – said, “This is not an infirmary. Take her down the second street on the left, and after three hundred metres you’ll find one. The cognac is twelve francs, and kindly don’t put blood all over the floor.”’

  Metin frowned and shook his head in disbelief. ‘Turks wouldn’t do that. We can be selfish bastards, believe me, and tough. But not in that way. Never.’

  I said, ‘I’m going to have a fish lunch here. Join me?’

  ‘Thanks. I ate earlier. I have to prepare for that bus. We might have a beer here at seven, yes?’

  ‘I’ll see you here,’ I said. But for some reason I wasn’t able to meet him. Three months later, in Colombo, just before I boarded an old Tamil sailing ship for southern India, a postcard with a Turkish postmark reached me. It was from Metin. He had begun his training at Scutari barracks, the towering early nineteenth-century barracks on the Bosporus that was once the hospital where Florence Nightingale tended the British casualties of the Crimean War. He sounded quite cheerful. He was not going to let the mountain defeat him, he said. He hoped we’d meet again.

  The thought of Scutari and what Metin had said about the harshness of life in the Turkish army reminded me that a few years ago, as a correspondent for the Observer, I was given permission by the Turkish general commanding the Istanbul region to attend a military court he had convened in the Scutari barracks. Bombs had been thrown in Istanbul; there had been shooting, kidnappings, deaths, and martial law was in force. Hour after hour I sat in a white chamber with an arched ceiling and amazingly thick walls as the trial of the alleged terrorists went on. I had been told that once in the courtroom I would have to stay until the court adjourned for lunch. My wooden chair was uncomfortable; its seat felt like iron and its back was too upright. Quietly I crossed my left leg over my right. The proceedings, in Turkish, dragged gloomily on. Soon I saw that the presiding officers of the tribunal, medals flashing beyond a long table, were staring in my direction. The buzz of a voice giving evidence continued, but not only were the officers staring at me with hostility, they were also putting their bullet-shaped heads together and conferring about something – evidently something to do with me because their united and angry gaze never left my face. Then all talking ceased: a silence fell in court. Even the prisoners were staring at me.

  It was disconcerting. I tried to think what I had done wrong. I had my permit to attend the court in my breast pocket; further, I was accompanied by a Turkish official. I checked my fly. I wasn’t wearing a hat; I was wearing a tie. What could it be? The official with me seemed unaware of anything unusual. Finally one of the presiding officers beckoned a soldier to him and whispered into his ear. The soldier headed for us. At last the official at my side noticed something. He leaned forward, and the soldier lowered his brick-red face and crew cut and gabbled something into his ear before making an about-turn and marching stiffly away.

  The official, a pleasant young civilian, looked embarrassed. He said to me in a low tone, ‘The tribunal wishes to inform you that you are showing it contempt. You are not being respectful. It wishes to tell you that a military tribunal has powers to deal with disrespect to the armed forces of Turkey. It is giving you a warning.’

  ‘What have I done, for God’s sake?’ I hissed back. ‘I’ve been sitting here without stirring, not breathing a word. What do they mean?’

  ‘You are sitting with your legs crossed. You must sit at attention in a military court. With both toes and heels together on the ground and your back straight. It shows proper respect.’

  Luckily, I had to sit at attention for only two or three more minutes before the court adjourned for lunch. ‘Are you going back to the court this afternoon?’ the official asked.

  ‘No, we’ll visit Florence Nightingale’s sitting room instead. We won’t have to stand at attention to show respect to her memory.’ The official smiled. He hadn’t wanted to go back among those officers either.

  The corner room that the Lady with the Lamp had used as a study when the rambling barracks became a temporary hospital was almost directly above the chamber where the military court would resume its session that afternoon. It was the spotless, sparsely furnished room of a busy and practical woman. The famous lamp she had carried through the scandalously overcrowded wards that stank of bodies and excrement stood on a table. It was not the Aladdin’s lamp I had expected, nor was it the kind of Victorian lamp they called a bull’s-eye. It looked like an expanding Japanese paper lantern and resembled a small concertina standing on end.

  Four

  I bade Mr Akman farewell and caught a morning bus to Ephesus. There I toured the ruins before continuing to Smyrna by taxi. I found Ephesus full of ancient remains in fair condition, tourists – and cats.

  Turkey is a cat country. In Ephesus you come across them everywhere: mother cats leading families down old Ephesian triumphal ways; gangs of cats in small temples to ancient pagan gods or big temples to Artemis; cats stalking the hillsides like miniature pards of Bacchus. (In Kusadasi I had seen groups of cats staring at the moon, wide-eyed, blinking lazily as if it warmed them.)

  With Mustafa, a short, pear-shaped Turkish guide in dark glasses,
I skirted the Gymnasium and made for the Upper Agora. Between the Upper Agora and the Odeon we became hopelessly entangled with tourists.

  I had seen at least twenty large modern motor coaches parked near the ruins while the drivers drank tea in a string of coffee shops and snack bars. Near the Odeon we caught up with a group of Swedes and edged past them – Mustafa delivering his spiel as we did so – only to run up against a block of elderly Americans. To pass them would have meant a long detour halfway up a hillside and down again. In any case, I could see yet another group, possibly two, behind the Americans.

  The situation was confused and the noise deafening. Our skins frizzled in the sun among soaring columns and burning slabs of historic stone. A Swedish-speaking lady guide was uttering loud uncouth sounds as if to invoke – or provoke – a god, and the gentleman guide of the American group followed suit. The two harangues rose into the air and grappled in cacophony. A third voice was that of Mustafa, who seemed to see a ghostly ear trumpet in my hand and at the ready.

  I sensed trouble. ‘I can hear you better if you speak lower, Mustafa.’ At intervals I murmured, ‘Lower, lower.’

  ‘Harry ap. Shake a leg. Gat a move un,’ the voice of the Swedish party’s lady guide rang angrily across the Nymphaeum. It was a duel; she was addressing the Americans’ guide over our heads. In response, the Americans’ guide closed disdainful eyelids over disdainful eyes. But his party began to move forward at what was a brisk amble after the snail’s crawl of a moment before.

  Irritable American voices began to be heard. ‘Hey, aren’t they kind of rushing us?’ A bony lady, whose face seemed to have melted into the folds around her neck, glared at Mustafa. ‘Pipe down,’ she snapped at him. But Mustafa was in full stride; nothing could stop him in mid-duty. ‘The Temple of Diana, one of the Seven Vonders of the Vorld,’ he bellowed confidently into my invisible ear trumpet. ‘Please looking at Temple of Westa, the Place of the Westal Wirgins.’

  As if he had risen from the very stones, a dark, willowy figure appeared from behind us, moving briskly like some emissary of Diana herself. A jaunty creature among dejected foreigners, he tootled on a flute ‘Rain Drops Keep Fallin’ on My Head’, and people made way for him. It was uncanny. They fell in behind him, and soon a single file of Americans and Swedes headed rapidly toward the Theatre, singing as though raised from the dead.

  ‘Now they clear out,’ said Mustafa with satisfaction as he watched the crowd bobbing away like the children of Hamelin behind the Pied Piper. In the distance the fluting changed to ‘The Sound of Music’.

  ‘Yes, more better.’ He was back on the job again. ‘Now, please, you look,’ he yelled. ‘This is the largest brothel in the world. Was made to protect the girls of the East from the lusty seamans.’

  *

  ‘Sheep full op! Sheep full op!’ In the wide deck area in front of his office the purser of the Turkish motor vessel Samsun was booming genially at a European couple who wanted to be shifted from second class to first class. I was in Smyrna, an hour before sailing time. ‘Big problems. Sheep very full op.’

  I had been referred to him by his assistant, who advised me to check my ticket with the ‘poncer’. He was a cheerful man with a Cyrano de Bergerac nose who took my ticket in exchange for a radiant smile. That the ship was very full I could see from the crush on deck and the number of people still boarding. The two Europeans were out of luck.

  For safety’s sake, I had confirmed my second-class booking a few days before sailing. I had walked along the long seafront of Smyrna, past the Greek consulate, past the Ataturk Museum, past the big grey filing cabinet that houses ‘NATO HQ Landsoutheast’, to the pierside offices of Turkish Maritime Lines, and there a helpful lady had said, ‘You have second class with a cabin for four persons. Second class is not good for you on Samsun. I want to change you to a better thing.’

  ‘No, please. You are very kind. I’m quite happy –’

  ‘Unfortunately, here we cannot make tickets or reservations,’ she went on as if she hadn’t heard me. ‘We must telex or telephone Istanbul.’ No ticket or reservations at Kusadasi or Smyrna? Turkish Maritime Lines have certainly centralized their system, I thought. ‘However’ – she smiled a smile of infinite sadness – ‘today the electricity is out of order between Istanbul and Izmir, so telex is impossible. Telephones are also not working. But I will try later.’

  ‘Please don’t.’ I would have three nights on Samsun before we reached Mersin, the port of south-eastern Turkey. I thought of the heat and socks of the Alcheon’s four-berther, but I saw no reason to move. I was more concerned about my course once I had reached Mersin; that was more important than cabins. At the moment my intention was to reach a port – perhaps the Syrian port of Latakia or Beirut or Haifa – where, with luck, I might find a freighter to take me through the Suez Canal, the first great obstacle, nonstop. Perhaps Turkish Maritime Lines had something….

  ‘No, we cannot help with that,’ the lady said. ‘To Haifa, no. To Latakia, no. Better for you to take the ferry from Mersin to Magusa – Famagusta, you call it – in Cyprus. Then cross to the Greek side in Cyprus. Maybe from Limassol you can find something Greek for the canal crossing. Maybe.’

  I took a typed letter from her to the company’s agent in Mersin, advising him to please issue me a ticket for the ‘feri-bot’ from Mersin to Magusa. Then I returned to the waterfront.

  The Smyrna waterfront is spectacular. Modestly storeyed buildings face the wide expanse of a bay embraced by hazy wingtips of land. Behind the seafront the city begins to rise into clusters of tall buildings – banks mostly, hotels, apartment blocks. The statue of Kemal Ataturk gazes out to sea amid ranks of red Turkish flags fluttering in permanent celebration of the founder of modern Turkey, whose ghost haunts the souls of his countrymen as Lenin haunts millions of Russians and Eva Perón many Argentines.

  The Ataturk Museum is the house the Grey Wolf moved into when the army drove Smyrna’s Greek population into the sea and a great fire destroyed much of the city. The first thing you see in the museum’s hallway is a huge frowning bust of the great man, and inscribed on its base ‘1881–1938’.

  The museum has a moribund appearance. Ataturk’s study contains a large, plain wooden desk, some high-backed, rather ecclesiastical-looking chairs, a wicker table and a smell of mothballs. You can see his double bed of varnished wood, dull carpets and dingy furniture, inlaid tables for trik-trak, the Turkish backgammon. Glass cases display Ataturk’s velvet overcoats lined with fox fur; dark metal statues of Seljuk or Saracen warriors pose under crudely ornate chandeliers of Paris, 1910.

  The finest photograph of Ataturk in old age was not to be found here; I saw it in the shipping agent’s office in Kusadasi. It showed him grey-faced and haggard, his expression not the official one of virile confidence but one of anxiety and pain. A little out of focus, it showed a human being, and one at the end of his tether. By then he must have begun his slow decline into terminal cirrhosis of the liver. The heavy-drinking Turks are not hypocrites; they have never held the manner of Ataturk’s death against him.

  Izmir, or Smyrna, is the third largest city and the leading port of Turkey, as any guidebook will tell you. The guidebook may not mention that its waterfront is notable for cafés and music. The music, from radios in the cafés and from television sets, is frequently interrupted by advertisements for banks or deodorants. Turkish music is the perfect Oriental music for Westerners. Much Arab music is too snaky, but the Turkish variety thumps along merrily with zithers, or slows to a gentle berceuse for lutes and two-foot flutes; it is, on the whole, simple and melodic and can be whistled. It issues from the cafés over the heads of the hubble-bubble smokers – the elderly men who sit in silent rows, sucking on their gurgling waterpipes like clarinet players negotiating a difficult passage in a score. From them it wafts across to the nut sellers, whose barrows at night are lit by pressure lamps, to the men toting samovars like silver pagodas, and to handcarts of plump red apples. It mingles with the smell
of aromatic kebabs on portable charcoal grills, and, of course, fish of every kind, fresh in baskets or cooking on the grills.

  At one end of the waterfront the sailing boats and fishing smacks draw up alongside the restaurants and food stalls, opposite the outdoor tables where waiters scurry with tumblers of buttermilk and pints of chilled raki or yeni votka, an old Turkish vodka that they drink with fresh lemon juice. Here the countrymen of Ataturk, who possess one of the world’s finest cuisines, choose to eat and drink twenty feet from oily water slopping against the stone wharf, red flags with the Turkish crescent fluttering from mastheads, and seagulls fighting for scraps. At night they watch the ferryboats, full of lights, passing and repassing, looking like jewel boxes, on the dark surface of the bay.

  *

  The motor vessel Samsun is a big ship, six thousand tons or more, built in Genoa in 1950. A tall ship, too; it was a long drop from where I stood on the wing of her bridge to the quayside, from which Turkish stevedores were off-loading cartons of cigarettes.

  At 1800 hours we were assisted out into the Bay of Izmir by a tug called Kusadasi. On the waterfront the only identifiable building was NATO’s dull-grey filing cabinet.

  I was glad that the helpful lady in the shipping office had been unable to change my second-class berth. Going below with the steward I found a cabin not much larger than the four-berther on the Alcheon, but a good deal cooler. It had one porthole, a washbasin with a mirror above it, a fan and four curtained wooden bunks. On each bunk the good-natured steward, all nose and eyebrows, laid a folded sheet, a small towel and a pillow; he showed me the four tall cupboards, opened one with a proud gesture and said, ‘All the needful for your goodself.’

  The cabin was still empty except for me, but someone had left a battered suitcase and a cardboard box on the deck near one of the lower bunks. I dumped my anorak on an upper bunk near the porthole like a prospector staking a claim in the Klondike. When I tried the reading-light switch over my bunk, nothing happened, but the steward promised to find a bulb.