CHAPTER 25

Tales from the Journey to Smyrna

In May the weather can be delightful, but sometimes the days are already too hot, and the roads are beginning to generate the fine white powder that clogs the traveller’s eyes and nostrils, and makes a glue of the sweat on the flanks of the horses. Dust also begins to hang over the sea, so that Rhodes becomes obscured to Carians, and those in Cilicia lose sight of Cyprus, that island where no one ventures without falling in love. At that time the spring flowers are beginning to wither, and the red-backed butcher birds have long since arrived, setting up their gibbets and larders in the trees by impaling their catch of small animals on the long spikes of thorns. The snows have undertaken the beginning of their tactical retreat to the pinnacles of the Taurus Mountains, and the few wolves that remain have returned to higher ground, along with the bandits and brigands, and the wild deer that follow the growth of fresh new grass.

In March there are still rains and cold nights, quaggy patches of red and grey mud in the roadways, and the wind known as El Hossom whipping up the equinoctial gale that blows for eight long days. In the pastures the colossal Sivas Kangal mastiffs with their iron-spiked collars do nocturnal battle with subtle lynxes and desperate wolves, and the green sandpipers have not yet returned to the marshes and woods of the north.

In April the days are bright and gentle, and the showers sweeter, so that when Rustem Bey let it be known that he was travelling with an armed retinue to the famous infidel city of Smyrna, there were many who eagerly jumped at the chance to take advantage of his protection.

In those days the provinces were full of desperadoes who were mainly deserters. The machinations of the Great Powers, and the immemorial turbulence of the Balkans, had dragged the Ottoman state from one impoverishing, bruising and demoralising war to another. Those who were conscripted found themselves serving for indefinite numbers of years in vile and hostile places hundreds of miles from home, whilst the womenfolk broke their own health in the desperate attempt to run their farms and homes alone. They were hundreds of thousands of Penelopes waiting, sometimes forever, for the men who were blown by fate from one misfortune to another. What made it worse was that the Christians had won equal rights, and were no longer exempt from military service as they had been in the past, and so it was that the wild places of Anatolia were crawling with outlaws, most of whom had more than adequately mastered the arts of brutality, and all of whom were thieves. Harassed though these were by the gendarmerie and the occasional military expedition from Constantinople, it was still unsafe for anyone to travel the great roads alone, so that when Rustem Bey decided to go to Smyrna in the spring, there were many errands and missions that had been stored up against such an opportunity.

Rustem Bey told no one why he was going. This was not the kind of world where men unveiled their hearts to anyone, and in any case the aga had no one in whom to confide, but the truth was that Rustem Bey was looking for a woman. His brief time with Tamara had provided him with inklings of what might be between a man and a woman, and his heart, his stomach, his loins and his throat yearned for something that he could not articulate even to himself. He needed someone to meld with. He knew himself to be something like a garden where the only flowers were those of potatoes, ragweed and neglected onions, but where a true gardener would have been able to drape the trellises with vines, and coax up tulips from the earth. It would be too simple to say that Rustem Bey was looking for romantic love, because in reality he was looking for the missing part of himself, and these are not often the same quest, even though we sometimes think they are. Rustem Bey had conceived the idea that if only he could find himself a Circassian mistress, amusing in demeanour, accomplished in music, red-lipped and fair of skin, excellent and enthusiastic in the techniques of physical love, then his life would be transformed. Every night he lay sleepless, tormented by the implacable songs of the nightingales, reaching out the arms of his imagination to the Circassian odalisque whose face and arms would light up his chambers like the moon. He was going to Smyrna so that he could buy himself several clocks, some patent leather shoes, some black trousers, a Stamboul frock coat of the highest quality and a new red fez. From Smyrna he was going to continue by train to Constantinople, and he was determined that when he arrived he would not be garbed like a provincial lord, in baggy shalwar, his waistcoat and sash crammed with armament. He would arrive in the capital dressed as a thoroughly modern gentleman, with a trimmed moustache, and he would return with a beauty worthy of his state, who would be the only woman in the vilayet always to know exactly what time it was. He had decided that if God should see fit to let him find a truly marvellous woman, he would build a new mosque at the southern edge of the town, and pay for its upkeep too.

Early that morning the meydan buzzed with activity as the many travellers arrived with their animals, provisions and bedrolls. Iskander the Potter, lean and sinewy, was to make the voyage on foot, as was Mohammed the Leech Gatherer, who had agreed with Ali the Snowbringer that the latter’s donkey should carry his harvest of leeches in return for a small share of his takings. Ali did not have to come far for this assembly, since he and his family had taken up residence in the vast hollow of a plane tree on the square, which now boasted a roofed extension and a proper door.

Levon the Sly, Armenian, apothecary, and one of the astutest merchants of the town, arrived with three camels laden with goods that he had accumulated through half a hundred small but careful deals during the winter, which he would trade in return for drugs and potions, cosmetics and aphrodisiacs.

Stamos the Birdman, his nose red and streaming as usual, carried a cage in which he held a pair of exquisitely colourful bee-eaters. They were green, russet and yellow, with long grey beaks, breasts of Aegean blue, and eye-stripes and collars of black. He reckoned that from one of the great houses that lined the harbour at Smyrna he would be able to obtain a high price for them that would make it worth his while to spend this journey scratching in the barbarous undergrowth of the verges for insects that they could batter to death before eating. Dead insects, he had discovered, were of no great interest to the birds, and it made him smile to think of the rich people’s servants having to go out looking for live ones every day as long as the birds lived.

Daskalos Leonidas was also to make the journey on foot, and was already imagining the dreadful blisters and weariness with which he would soon be afflicted. He was determined upon visiting his family, even though it was not one in which there existed much mutual affection. More importantly he was to attend a meeting of his clandestine society that devoted itself to plots of Byzantine complexity, whose ultimate aim was to restore to Greece the lands lost to the Ottomans so many centuries before. Britain no longer mourns the throne of France, Spain has no project to reclaim the Netherlands, and Portugal has no ambitions on Brazil, but there are those who are incapable of letting the past pass on, among them the Serbs who will always be obsessed by the loss of Kosovo, and the Greeks who will always be obsessed by the fall of Byzantium. Leonidas was one of these, and he was very far from alone. He was possessed by beautiful visions of Constantinople restored to its place as capital of the Greek world, and, like all who have such beautiful visions, his were predicated on the absolute belief that his own people and his own religion and his own way of life were superior to others, and should therefore have their way. Such people, even those as insignificant as Leonidas, are the motor of history, which is finally nothing but a sorry edifice constructed from hacked flesh in the name of great ideas.

There were perhaps twenty souls in this caravan, which was to be conducted in the customary manner. It would travel from khan to khan, each one day’s journey apart, and it would be led by a man on a donkey, who would proceed at a regular pace whilst smoking copiously and admiring the scenery. In this case the man on the donkey was a character who went by the name of Veled the Fat. Veled was a perfectly spherical man whose short legs stuck out quite straight on either side of his donkey’s flanks, and whose cratered face betrayed an early encounter with smallpox. Fortunately for his donkey, Veled was hardly more than four feet tall, so the fact that he was also four foot wide at his greatest diameter did not entail too great a burden.

After the faithful had made their prayers in response to the dawn call from the minarets, the train made ready to depart, except that very little actually happened. Veled and his donkey started off, but the first camel refused to move. Veled wheeled his donkey about, and prodded the camel’s flank with his foot. “Son of a bitch,” he exclaimed, but not in an unfriendly manner, “what’s the matter now?”

The camel eyed him sorrowfully and disdainfully, and Veled prodded it again, to no avail. “Damned camel won’t go,” he explained to the travellers, as if they may not have noticed. Veled rolled a cigarette, lit it and, with a theatrical flourish, inserted it in one corner of the camel’s nostril. “All right now, are you?” he demanded. “Can we go?” The beast heaved itself up and sighed contentedly, inhaling the fume of the cigarette. Veled turned to the other travellers. “It’s from always walking behind me. He got used to the smoke from my cigarettes, and then he got to like it, and now he won’t do anything unless I let him have a smoke first.”

“It’s an expensive camel, then,” said Stamos the Birdman.

“But a good one nonetheless,” replied Veled over his shoulder as the train moved on.

“What happens when the cigarette is finished?” asked Iskander. “Doesn’t it burn his nose?”

“When it gets too hot, he sort of sneezes and blows it out. You’ll see in a minute. Once he blew it out and it landed on my donkey’s arse, and before I knew it I was on the ground and my donkey was a little cloud of dust in the distance. Generally it’s a good donkey though.” Veled patted its neck and flicked his hand back and forth between its ears. “There’s something nice about donkeys’ ears,” he observed.

The retinue began in a burst of chatter, but an hour’s trudging was enough to subdue the travellers somewhat. Some of them kept their eyes on the ground, as if they might find a coin there, and some gazed around, as if seeing the Taurus Mountains, or pink poppies, or a caper plant in full flower for the first time. All of them cast glances at Rustem Bey, the aga, because by now most of the men of both faiths had been to the brothel to try out his rejected wife, Tamara. It was said that she would only consent to begin if the shutters were closed, and that the experience of being inside her was like one of those dreams where you are searching for something without knowing what it is. You came out disconcerted by those liquid, unfocused eyes that gleamed in the dark, and infected by her loneliness and stillness, and it made you nostalgic and sorrow-shot. There had been, it turned out, little satisfaction in using the wife of the landlord. People wondered if he knew what had been going on, whether he had heard about the queues for that motionless, unresponsive flesh, and whether or not any feelings about it had stirred in that proud breast.

Those walking were shifting their bags from one shoulder to another, and Daskalos Leonidas was already feeling tetchy and hard-done-by. Stamos the Birdman snatched at flies to feed to his birds, and Levon the Sly silently did mental arithmetic as he calculated over and over again the amount of profit that might be expected from this trip. At their first stop, which was by a domed water cistern, Mohammed the Leech Gatherer swigged ayran from his leather bottle, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and said, “I’ve got an idea.”

“Oh no,” said Ali the Snowbringer, “I know all about you and your ideas. May we be spared this one, inshallah. Your ideas ought to be strictly haram, both forbidden and punishable. I am surprised that the Prophet, peace be upon him, did not foresee the terribleness of your ideas, and forbid them in advance.”

“This is a good idea, Ali Efendi,” protested Mohammed. “It is an idea that is both recommended and meritorious.”

“A good idea is not a good idea just because the one who has it says it is,” said Iskander, running his finger along the line where his turban lay across his forehead. This was a mannerism that he employed every time that he believed himself to have come up with a particularly good epigram.

“Doesn’t anyone want to hear my idea?” demanded Mohammed.

“I’ll hear it,” said Rustem Bey. “A landlord has his duties to his tenants, after all.”

“All right. My idea is that this is going to be a long and boring and weary journey, and each one of us should tell a story to while away the time.” He looked around triumphantly, and the travellers raised their eyebrows and exchanged glances.

“It’s an excellent idea,” declared Rustem Bey. “When we reach Smyrna I shall give a new yataghan to the man with the best story.” Rustem pointed to Mohammed. “And as it was your idea, you can be the first.”

“Me? I don’t want to be first. I only had the idea.”

“It’s too late,” said Ali, rubbing his hands together. “It’s been decided.”

“I won’t be telling any stories,” said Leonidas, abruptly.

“We didn’t expect you to,” said Rustem, “and in any case we don’t want any stories from a sour-faced infidel wretch like you. Our lives give us enough bitterness without having to listen to you.”

Leonidas set his face grimly and walked on ahead, whilst the others gathered in a knot around Mohammed, nudging and pestering him until finally he announced, “I know a good Nasreddin Hodja story.”

“We’ve heard it,” said Ali and Stamos together.

“There are hundreds,” replied Mohammed, “you might not have heard this one. It’s about when Nasreddin Hodja was riding along with his donkey’s saddle on his shoulders, and someone stops him and says, ‘Hodja, why are you riding along bareback with your donkey’s saddle on your shoulder?’ and the hodja says, ‘It’s because my poor old donkey was getting tired, so I thought I’d carry the saddle for him.’ ”

“We know that one,” said Iskander.

“Everyone knows that one,” said Ali.

“Well, you might not have.”

“It’s probably the most famous one,” said Levon.

Rustem Bey was mildly outraged. “You call that a story? When we’ve all heard it before and it only lasts twenty paces? At that rate we’ll need a hundred thousand stories before we get to Smyrna. Hasn’t anyone got a decent one?”

“I know another one about why nomads won’t eat cabbage,” offered Mohammed, and the others sighed and shook their heads. “All right, I won’t tell you,” said Mohammed, much aggrieved.

“I know a story,” offered Ali the Snowbringer. “I was told it by a dervish when he was drunk. He said it was true.”

“There’s nothing like a drunken dervish for good stories,” observed Iskander, “except that half of them don’t seem to have any meaning.” He turned to Ali. “Give us your story, then, and let’s hope it’s a better one than the last.”

“Well, this one is about a good woman of Mecca. She was very rich and very respectable, and she had two hundred camels of her own because her husband had died and she was running a business, and these camels carried spices and brass pots all over the place …”

“What about clay pots?” demanded Iskander.

“Clay pots, too, for all I know,” said Ali, “and dates and dried figs and fine cloths, and Korans decorated with gold, and gold jewellery for the Sultan’s wives, and fine boxes made with cedar of Lebanon.”

“This is more like a proper story,” commented Rustem Bey.

“And anyway,” continued Ali, “this woman lived in Mecca, just on the outside, and she was the very finest example of womanly chastity in the world. She had never had an unclean thought in her life, and even her shit smelled of rosewater and cinnamon.”

The company laughed, and Ali waggled his shoulders with pleasure. “So just imagine,” he said, “her shock and horror when one night she dreamed that she fornicated with every one of all the pilgrims who came to Mecca on the haj.”

“Every one of them?!” exclaimed Veled the Fat. “This sounds like my kind of story! Do you happen to know where she lives exactly?”

“It was hundreds of years ago,” said Ali.

“So what happened?” asked Rustem Bey.

“Well, she woke up, and she was so ashamed and embarrassed, even though no one else knew, that she was red from head to foot all day, until she went to bed. And that night she had the same dream again, and when she woke up she was so distressed that she poured ashes over her head and went and sat on the top of a dungheap. And then the next night she had the same dream again, and it went on like that for forty days and forty nights, until she couldn’t stand it any more, and finally she decided to go and see a very wise mullah who might be able to advise her.

“Now, she goes in, all in fear and trembling, and not knowing how to say it, but she veils herself and speaks in a funny voice so that the mullah won’t know who she is, and she weeps a bit, and beats her own chest with her knuckles, and finally the mullah gets impatient because he has hundreds of things like this to clear up every day, and he says, ‘Daughter, tell me what it is, because God is merciful and forgiving, but I don’t have much time,’ and so finally she says, ‘Mullah Efendi, every night I dream that I fornicate with every one of all the pilgrims who come on the haj, and I am so ashamed, and I don’t know why I have such a dream, because I am a respectable woman.’

“ ‘Yes, I know you are,’ says the mullah, ‘your husband used to be a friend of mine.’

“Anyway, she nearly faints with shame, and she starts to cry and flap her hands about, and then the mullah sits and thinks for a while, and he strokes his long white beard, and he drinks a cup of mint tea with a medium amount of sugar in it, and he smokes his narghile, and then he strokes his long white beard again, and then he goes out for a piss, and then he drinks another cup of tea, and then he gets a little polished stick that he keeps for the purpose, and he puts it up inside his turban and scratches his head with it, and then he says, ‘Daughter, I think I know what your dream means,’ and she says, ‘Mullah Efendi, take away my shame,’ and he says, ‘Daughter, it’s like this. You are a good Muslim woman, and what you should know is that when a woman wants to make love with a man it’s the best thing in the world for him, apart from going to paradise, inshallah. So what this dream means is that you have a great desire to do something wonderful for all the pilgrims on the haj. Now, making love makes life, and water also makes life, so in my opinion what the dream means is that you should make a well by your house so that all the pilgrims can drink from it when they come into the city.’

“ ‘Ah, yes,’ she says, ‘they always look worn out and thirsty.’ So anyway, she goes away and she calls some labourers, and she has them dig a well, and the well is still here today, and it’s named after her, and all the pilgrims drink from it on the way in.”

“So what’s the name of this well?” asked Rustem Bey.

“That I can’t remember,” said Ali.

“I think it’s important for the story,” advised Rustem. “There is a certain frustration in not knowing, and it spoils it somewhat.”

“It was a good story, though,” said Veled. “I know one a bit like it, except it has a judge in it.”

“Go on then,” said Rustem Bey.

“Well,” said Veled, lighting another cigarette and depositing it carefully in the left nostril of the leading camel, “there was a married couple, and they’d been married for five years, but there weren’t any children. I can’t remember their names, but this is a true story, and it was told to me by a man I met in Antiphellos when I went there, but I can’t remember why. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is, that they’d been married for five years and they had no children, and everyone was getting at them about it. The girl’s mother would arrive, and say, ‘Why don’t you have any children?’ and then the man’s mother would arrive and say, ‘Why don’t you have any children?’ and then the woman’s sisters would arrive and say, ‘Why don’t you have any children?’ and then the man’s cousins would arrive and say, ‘Why don’t you have any children?’ and in the coffeehouse the man couldn’t play backgammon without someone putting him off at a vital moment by saying, ‘By the way, why don’t you have any children?’ and in the hamam the other women would ask the poor wife, ‘Why don’t you have any children?’

“So obviously the couple get very upset because they don’t have any children, and everyone keeps asking them why, and they feel uncomfortable about going out of the house or visiting their relatives.

“One day the wife says, ‘Let’s go and ask the advice of Ismail Hodja,’ and her husband replies, ‘What? The famous Ismail Hodja who is renowned all over the world for his wisdom?’ and she says, ‘Yes, that one,’ and he says, ‘But I’ve heard that it’s very hard to get to see him,’ and she says, ‘But he only lives next door,’ so he says, ‘Well, all right then, we’ll give it a try.’

“The husband sends a little boy to the famous judge, saying, ‘Can we come and see you?’ and before you know it they’re sitting in front of this famous judge who knows every bit of the sharia backwards, forwards and sideways, and is notoriously full of common sense as well, and the husband strokes his moustache and says, ‘Kadi Efendi, we have come to see you because we don’t have any children, and it is beginning to upset us when so many people ask us why not.’

“The kadi blinks his eyes and he says, ‘What have you been doing about it?’ and the husband says, ‘About what?’

“ ‘About making children.’

“The husband and wife look at each other, and she says, ‘What do you mean, “making” them?’

“ ‘Well, you have to make them,’ says the kadi, ‘or they don’t arrive.’

“ ‘Really?’ exclaims the husband. ‘Are you sure?’

“ ‘Of course I’m sure,’ says the kadi, and the husband turns to his wife and says, ‘Did you know anything about this?’ and she shrugs and lifts her hands, and so anyway it turns out that the couple didn’t know anything about how to make children because no one had ever told them, and they’d never worked it out for themselves, and the wife says to the kadi, ‘Perhaps you could give us some hints.’

“So the kadi stands up and lifts his robe, and he shows them his kamiş, and it’s about a foot long and hard as a rock, with a great bulging purple tip like an aubergine …”

“Spare us the details,” said Rustem Bey.

“… and it’s standing up like a soldier, and the wife says, ‘God save us,’ and the kadi says to the husband, ‘Does yours ever get like this?’ and he replies, ‘Well, yes, it does, but mine’s more like a carrot than a cucumber,’ and the kadi says, ‘Well, that’s an advantage, because not many women can cope with one like this,’ and he turns to the wife and he says, ‘You’ve probably noticed that you’ve got one mouth in your face and another one elsewhere in the darker regions. Well, the one in your face is for eating food, and the other one is for swallowing one of these, but you’re only allowed to use it to eat your husband’s, and you’ll both find fairly quickly that you like it, and that’s how you make children.’

“The husband says, ‘But what if she bites it off? How am I going to piss?’ and the kadi replies, ‘Don’t worry, because it doesn’t have teeth, and when you come out you find there isn’t any damage.’

“The woman is still looking at the kadi’s gigantic kamiş with her eyes popping out like this and her mouth open, but the kadi puts it away, and then they all make their salaams, and off they go, and lo and behold a few months later they’ve got a child, and they call it after the kadi, even though it’s a girl, and that’s why in Antiphellos there was once a girl called Osman, who was the only girl with that name in the entire known world.”

Stamos the Birdman sighed and said, “You can always rely on Veled to come up with something filthy.”

“It’s a true story, I swear it,” protested Veled.

“Does anyone know a story that isn’t filthy?” asked Rustem Bey. “I ask just out of curiosity, and not with much hope.” He looked around at the company and caught the eye of the potter. “Ah, Iskander Efendi, I am prepared to bet that you don’t tell such tales.”

“I don’t know any proper stories,” said Iskander the Potter, “but I like to tell people things that really did happen. Perhaps you would like to know the story of why I am coming to Smyrna for the fourth time, when I don’t even have anything to sell and I don’t know anyone who lives there.”

“Somebody must have told you about the brothel on the waterfront,” suggested Veled the Fat, and some of the others laughed.

Iskander pursed his lips and raised his eyes to the heavens, and Rustem Bey said, “Ignore him.”

“Everyone else does,” said Mohammed, who was still somewhat prickled after the poor reception of his Nasreddin Hodja story.

“Well, I’ll tell you if you’re interested,” said Iskander, and he paused before commencing, as if to gather his thoughts. “As you know, one of my sons is called Karatavuk because once I made him a whistle that sounded like a blackbird, and he started to make a big pretence of being a blackbird, and he put on a black shirt and liked to have black things, and he would run about flapping his arms and leaping about on the rocks behind the town where the old tombs are, with that whistle in his mouth.

“Well, Karatavuk has a friend, one of the Christian boys, and I made him a whistle too, that sounded like a robin. With these whistles it’s really a matter of luck what they sound like, and you never know until you’ve tried it what it’s going to resemble. Sometimes they sound like a bulbul, for example, or a song thrush.

“Karatavuk’s little Christian friend, he’s the son of Polyxeni and Charitos, you know them, and that pretty girl Philothei is one of his sisters, well, he’s a strong boy, and anyway he decided to call himself Mehmetçik because if Karatavuk is a blackbird, he thought, ‘Well then, I am a robin.’

“So now we have two little boys who are running around pretending to be birds, and when they’re not pretending to be birds they’re often with me, because they like to mess around with the clay, and sometimes I let them make things out of it, and sometimes they come with me to dig the clay, and sometimes they get into the big tank of sludge and help Blind Old Dimos to get the stones out …”

“I’ve often wondered about that,” said Ali. “Why do you have a blind old man walking up and down in a tank of clay, getting all filthy and coming out looking like a cross between a leper and a demon and a corpse, all caked up?”

“Well,” said Iskander, “it’s because freshly dug clay is full of stones and grit and little bits of wood, and God knows what else, so you put it in a tank and stir it up with lots of water. As it settles, all the grit and stones sink to the bottom, and then someone walks about in it, picking it up between his toes. When you’ve got it all out you draw the slush out from a hole in the tank that’s a little bit higher than the bottom, and then you can dry it out and you’ve got clean clay that won’t explode or get big holes in it when you fire it in the kiln. Anyway, you don’t need eyes in order to walk up and down in a tank, and even blind people need work, and blind people get very sensitive with their sense of touch, and so I pay Blind Old Dimos to do it.”

“Don’t you think it’s bad luck to have a Christian walking up and down in your clay, though?” asked Ali. “I mean, it doesn’t seem right for a Muslim pot to have had Christian feet in it.”

Iskander laughed. “Feet are only feet, and in any case Blind Old Dimos is married to one of my wife’s aunt’s cousins, and I do it for charity, and I’ve never heard that charity should only go to those of one’s own kind. And in any case I sell my pots to anyone. Levon the Sly here has several, and I’ve sold them to the Jews, and even to the Devil Worshippers. Money has no religion except itself.”

Ali nodded doubtfully, and Iskander said, “Where was I?”

“You were telling us why you were going to Smyrna for the fourth time even though you have nothing to sell and you don’t know anyone who lives there,” said Rustem Bey, “but for some reason you were telling us about your son who pretends to be a bird, and then we got on to an old Christian who walks up and down in a tank of wet clay.”

“Ah, yes,” said Iskander, “now I remember. The thing about stories is that they are like bindweeds that have to wind round and round and creep all over the place before they get to the top of the pole. Let me see … Yes, this little boy Mehmetçik, one day he says to my son Karatavuk, ‘How come your baba doesn’t have a gun?’ and my son says, ‘I don’t know,’ and Mehmetçik says, ‘I expect he can’t afford one,’ and my son says, ‘Yes he can,’ and Mehmetçik says, ‘No he can’t!’ And my son says, ‘Yes he can,’ and Mehmetçik says, ‘No he can’t!’ You know what little boys are like. And Mehmetçik says, ‘My baba’s got a gun,’ and, ‘My baba’s better than your baba,’ and so my son Karatavuk gets very angry and he swipes Mehmetçik and gives him a black eye, and then Mehmetçik starts to cry and gives my son a good kick in the shins, and so my son is howling, and that’s when Abdulhamid Hodja comes by and grabs them both by the scruff of the neck and twists their ears for fighting in the street, and brings them along to me, and I get the story out of them.

“So, the odd thing is that after a while I begin to think about this gun that I don’t have. I say to myself, ‘I don’t need a gun. It’s a waste of money, what do I want a gun for?’ And then there’s this other voice in my ear, saying, ‘Yes, but you’d like one really, wouldn’t you?’ and the first voice says, ‘Don’t be stupid,’ whereupon the second voice says, ‘Every man has a gun, and in fact no man is a proper man unless he’s got a gun.’ ”

“That’s right,” interrupted Stamos, “that’s perfectly true. That’s why I’ve got one. It’s probably more important than having balls and a whole clutch of children.”

“Anyway,” continued Iskander, “these voices keep on and on at me, until finally I can’t even sleep at night because of them quarrelling with each other and ruling each other out, and abusing each other, and it’s worse than when the nightingales won’t shut up. Finally, I am at my wheel one day, and I am making a plate, which isn’t easy at the best of times, and suddenly it goes wobbly and collapses, and I get really irritated, and I pick up the spoiled plate and squash it in my hands and fling it back into the bucket of clay, because I have realised that I can’t even concentrate on my work any more because I am thinking about this damned gun that I don’t have. I decide there and then that the only way out is to get myself a gun, and then I can be at peace.”

“An excellent decision,” agreed Mohammed. “That’s what I would have done.”

“So,” continued Iskander, “I decided to go on the next caravan to Smyrna and get myself a gun. I had some trouble with my wife, who said it was a waste of money, and we were too poor, and all those sorts of things, but then I said I would bring her back a silver bracelet, and suddenly we had plenty of money, and wasn’t it all a wonderful idea, and a gun would be bound to come in useful eventually. I worked day and night to make enough pots, but there weren’t enough people to sell them to, until a party of Yörük nomads passed by, and they’d been selling carpets in Aleppo, and had lots of money, and it so happened that they needed pots. So I was lucky.

“I had some trouble in Smyrna because it’s such a big place, and there are so many people, and I was quite lost, and people kept giving me instructions and directions that I couldn’t follow, and half the time people spoke in languages I couldn’t even recognise, and I slept down on the wharf to save money, which wasn’t funny, because at night the rats come out, and I hate rats, and it’s also where the cheapest whores go and fornicate on the coiled heaps of rope with all the foreign sailors, so you can say that I didn’t sleep much.

“The day after I arrived I met a man who had a beautiful pistol in his sash, and I said, ‘Salaam aleikum, and please excuse me for molesting you, but please may I ask where you got that beautiful pistol? Because I am looking for something like it.’

“He tells me about Abdul Chrysostomos the Gunsmith, and points me in the direction of the Turkish quarter, where it joins up with the Armenian quarter, and he says, ‘I am warning you, it isn’t a simple thing to get any sense out of Abdul Chrysostomos. You’ll end up with a beautiful gun, but don’t expect results too fast.’

“After a little difficulty I find this Abdul Chrysostomos and he is definitely a peculiar character. He is like a Jew crossed with a Greek, crossed with an Armenian, crossed with an Arab, crossed with a Bulgarian, crossed with a Negro and a mad dog too. He speaks with an accent that’s like a donkey, if a donkey could speak, and he’s got his head shaved except for in the top of the middle of his head, and that’s made into a plait, and he’s got a gold ring through one nostril, and four or five gold rings in each ear. He’s got great big lips that spread from ear to ear when he smiles, and in one of his front teeth he’s had a diamond set in, so that it flashes all the time and it makes him hard to talk to, because you keep having this diamond flashing at you.

“He works in a shop that’s full of burning coals and furnaces and it stinks of hot metal, and it’s just like a picture of Hell, and everything is covered with soot, including Abdul Chrysostomos, so I still don’t know whether or not he’s a black man or an Arab or any of those other things.

“This gunsmith shows me all the different models that he makes, and the difference between a Damascus barrel and a bored barrel, and he tells me that he can make me a rifled barrel if I want and if I keep quiet about it, because it’s supposed to be illegal, and he says that actually a smooth barrel is more versatile, even though it’s less accurate, and he shows me all the beautiful inlay in ivory or silver or mother-of-pearl that he might or might not put into the stock, which might or might not be made of walnut or birch or whatever, and he talks to me about whether or not the gun will be muzzle-loading or breech-loading, and whether or not it will be single-shot or provided with a revolving chamber, until finally I am clutching my head in my hands, and I say, ‘Abdul Efendi, you are giving me so much choice that I am completely confused, and I think my brain has just stopped working.’

“He says, ‘Well, let’s just start from the beginning. Do you want a pistol or something to fire from the shoulder?’

“This is a difficult one in itself, because I had thought I wanted a nice pistol to wear in my sash, but now I begin to think, ‘A bigger gun might be nicer.’ I think about the expense, and this devil inside my head starts to say, ‘Who cares?’ and I say, ‘Actually, I want one of each,’ and his face lights up because I am the kind of customer he likes. Anyway, we finally decide that I am going to have a smooth-bored single-shot breech-loading pistol with a nice plain birchwood handle, and a rifled single-shot breech-loading hunting gun with a plain birchwood stock. You can see I was trying to be sensible in the midst of all my folly, because the guns would be practical and useful, but not too fancy or expensive. We haggle over the price, and even though it’s a lot, it’s not too much, and you can always hope for another party of nomads. They break a lot of pots because they travel so much, and their route to the south passes through our town, so there’s always plenty of trade. Abdul Chrysostomos says to me, ‘Come back in a couple of months, and they’ll be ready.’

“Naturally, I am in a ferment of looking-forward, and I can hardly concentrate on anything, and every pot I make falls to pieces between my fingers, and then finally I travel back with the next caravan, and I find myself in the shop of Abdul Chrysostomos, and he remembers me, and he says, ‘Ah, Iskander Efendi, how good to see you. You’ll be pleased to know that your weapons are ready, and I am sure you will be delighted with them.’ Even so, he has a sheepish expression, and I soon find out why. First of all, the pistol has a walnut handle inlaid with silver filigree, and he’s given it four muzzle-loaded barrels, and these barrels are splayed out like the fingers of a hand, and I say, ‘Abdul Efendi, what on earth is this?’ and he says, ‘It’s a mutiny pistol, a very classic design. You can kill four people with one pull of the trigger, as long as they are standing side by side.’

“ ‘Abdul Efendi,’ I say, ‘it’s beautiful, but I don’t need to put down any mutinies. In fact, I have never been on a ship and I’ve never been in the sea, and I am not a captain who needs to keep any order. I am a potter who needs a pistol to put in my sash when I walk about the town and when I celebrate the holy days.’

“Abdul looks very crestfallen, and says, ‘Don’t you want it then? I thought it was very fine, and that you’d be pleased.’

“ ‘Abdul Efendi,’ I say, ‘it’s absolutely beautiful, but it isn’t what I asked for, and I bet it’s more expensive too.’

“He puts on this voice like a little child, and his bottom lip begins to quiver, and a tear runs down one cheek, and this great big brute of a man starts to cry, and he says, ‘I thought you’d like it. I worked so hard, I made it with so much love, and it only costs twice as much.’

“I try to comfort him, and I say, ‘Abdul, it’s a masterpiece, and you should send it as a gift to the Sultan Padishah himself, because it is worthy of the Royal Armoury, but it is too good for me, and I can’t afford it. Have you got the rifle?’

“Abdul Chrysostomos wipes his face with the back of his hand, so that it’s smeared with wet soot, and he fetches the rifle, and I look at it, and I can hardly believe my eyes, because this one has six barrels all joined together, and when you pull the trigger they revolve one at a time. The stock is made of ebony, and it’s inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and it’s very beautiful, and it’s so heavy because of all the barrels that I actually can’t lift it to my shoulder. Abdul smiles and says proudly, ‘It’s my newest design.’

“I say, ‘Abdul Efendi, this is another one for the Sultan Padishah. It’s exquisite, but it’s too heavy to lift, and it isn’t what I ordered.’

“He looks at me as if I have just informed him of the death of his mother, and the long and short of it is that finally I agree to come back in another couple of months with the next caravan.

“So I come back the third time, and now he’s made me a pistol with a rifled barrel and a revolving chamber that takes seven bullets, and the calibre of it is so huge that it would knock over the wall of a house with a single shot. Honestly, I could get my first finger up the barrel. And he’s made a rifle that has a barrel six feet long because he says that it’s more accurate and with a barrel like that you could hit a single ball of rabbit shit from a thousand yards. We go through the whole process again, and he starts crying, and he says he’s an artist and he can’t help being carried away by his creative impulses, and I say, ‘Well, you could say that I am an artist too, but when someone commissions a pot, they get what they ask for, and I do it as well as I can, because the art is just as much in the making as in the conceiving, and a thing doesn’t have to be complicated to be finely made.’ ”

Iskander paused. “Now I’m going back, for the fourth time, in the hope that finally I’ll get the pistol and rifle I asked for, and I’ve been through all this trouble and inconvenience just because my son had a fight with his friend and made me feel bad about having no gun. I think I have been a fool.” He pointed to the sky. “I think that God is probably up there laughing at me.”

“Nonetheless,” Ali comforted him, “a man needs a gun to feel completely himself. That’s just the way it is. When you go back your wife will have greater respect for you, and your sons will be proud of you, and when you stroll around the town in the evening, you will be feeling as important as Rustem Bey himself.”

Rustem Bey smiled at this implied flattery, and Iskander admitted, “I do feel a certain excitement already.”

Stamos wiped his nose with his sleeve, and said, “That’s a story without an ending. I don’t feel satisfied. You will have to tell us what happens next when we make the return.”

“I liked the bit where you described the gunsmith,” said Mohammed. “I could just imagine him, with all those gold rings and the plait.” He looked around at his fellows, and asked, “Who’s next?”

Levon the Sly raised his right hand. “I know the one about the Forty Viziers.”

“Now that’s the longest story in the world,” exclaimed Iskander.

“It is if you can remember all of it,” said Levon. “I fear that many of the tales will escape my memory.”

“I expect we can remind you,” said Stamos.

So it was that for two days Levon the Sly related the lengthiest story that has ever been composed about the trickery and perfidy of women. Everyone laughed, and no one took the misogyny too seriously, except for Rustem Bey, who fell silent and unhappy, and curiously ashamed. Nonetheless, it was Levon the Sly who won the yataghan, which was perhaps a little ironical, since the Armenian merchant was the only infidel who told a story, and he was the only storyteller there who had no interest in weapons whatsoever.