CHAPTER 62

The Letter to Karatavuk

I do not know the correct manner of addressing someone such as yourself, never before having had to write to the son of a potter, and one of the infidel persuasion at that, and so I beg your indulgence for beginning this letter with no greeting at all. I suspect that, given these trying circumstances, letters such as this are unlikely to arrive at their destinations in any case, especially when one considers that often they did not arrive even in times of peace. One also has to consider whether, as in this case, a letter’s recipient will be alive to read it, since you are a soldier, and there are many mishaps in war. I have found myself in the irksome situation of becoming your parents’ amanuensis, since the other letter-writers of the town, those that have remained at any rate, customarily write in the Ottoman script, which, I understand, you are unable to read. I must say I was very surprised when I was told by your parents that you have learned to read and write Turkish in the Greek script, apparently taught by one of my own erstwhile pupils. I had become accustomed to believing that Turks are intellectually idle to the last degree, and it was salutary to discover that there is at least one among you with both brains and initiative, causing me to speculate as to whether the backwardness of your race is more explicable in terms of deficient education than natural inability. I have always thought it odd that this education consists entirely in uselessly memorising pages in Arabic that no one can understand.

I have to tell you that it sits very ill with me, having to write to you in Turkish using the Greek script, which I would prefer to remain unsullied and unadulterated, although I know that this is an ingrained habit in many places around here, presumably where the original Greeks have been degraded by mingling for too many hundreds of years with their interloping Turkish neighbours. I have not had to read such stuff before, let alone write it, and it is indeed difficult to locate myself within a discourse whose rules and grammar are unknown, since they have never hitherto been laid down by scholars. One has to invent spellings for oneself, according to a system of guesses and approximations. For me it is like having to use a golden spoon to clear out a drain, since my own language and my manner of writing are so much superior to yours in every manner of expression. I concede, however, that the letter you wrote to your parents, and which I have had to read to them, much against my initial inclination, did possess some considerable poetic force, and I was moved by it, somewhat against my will.

I write to you then, reluctantly, at great expense to my time and patience, but at the insistence of your parents, who are most unrelenting. Your father has presented me with various pots, and so I am obliged to him, and your mother is tearful, which is also hard to endure. Your father has in addition given me one of those birdwhistles with which you and your friends used to torment the town, as if we did not have bulbuls and nightingales enough to keep us awake at night. He advised me to pass it on to any child of which I might be fond, whereupon I declared that, since I am a schoolmaster, there are no longer any such.

Your parents instruct me to write:

We pray to God that He and His Angels watch over you and keep you from the bullets and the darkness of the Devil. We pray that there is an angel that spreads his wings above you and around you and protects you. We pray that no bad djinn comes by you. We pray that danger sees you and looks the other way and passes on the other side. We pray that you are well, and not ill, and that you are rewarded with sleep when weary. We pray that you have food for your stomach and water for your throat. We pray that Mary Mother of Jesus also watches over you. We pray that amid hardship you find peace and whatever joy is to be found within it. We pray that if death finds you, there will be a white shroud to carry you to paradise, and a green turban, and that you will be at the gates of paradise to meet us when we come. We pray that no harm will happen to your companions. We pray that you remember us, and do not forget us, and pray for us in this hard and unforgiving world. We pray that God forgives you for the deception of your father, as we have forgiven you, because now we are able to carry on. We pray that the Sultan himself rewards you, and God also, as we will reward you when you return. We pray that if things go well for you, you will not suffer the evil eye.

There is much trouble in this place. We who had nothing now have even less. Everything that was bad is now worse. Nothing is mended, no good things arrive by road or sea. We are lucky if there is one onion to eat, the tradesmen have no one to trade with.

The good thing is that Leyla Hanim plays the oud, and the sound of the strings floats out over us and brings us peace. Another good thing is that we of this town have seen an aeroplane for the first time, which flew over our heads making a great clattering noise, and all of us ran outdoors, and some people were most afraid, and the dogs were going mad with barking and jumping up and down. But Rustem Bey knew what it was, and explained that it was a machine that flies with a man in it, and when we looked we saw the man, who waved to us, and he flew once or twice around the town and over our heads, and we have been talking a great deal of this because it is like a miracle, and none of us knows who the man was. I expect that by now you will have seen an aeroplane also, and we wonder what you think of such things. We are not sure that they are good, because God gave it to birds to fly and to us to walk. If we are to become like birds, what will the birds become? What if a man flies so high that he reaches Heaven? What will God do?

A very bad thing is that the gendarmes have arrived and taken away many of the Christian boys who were forbidden to fight because of the jihad, and there were scenes of the greatest sorrow and alarm because it was all so sudden, and it was said that the boys were taken for labour battalions, who will build roads and bridges and dig holes and put up buildings. We have heard that the life is very bad in the labour battalions because the Christians have been turned against, and they are being worked almost to death and are living in terrible places. Your friend Mehmetçik who taught you to read has been one of the taken, even though he requested to be a soldier, and his mother and father are frightened by it and say that there is no hope, but we have tried to comfort them, and they us, because we are all losing our sons. Now the girls and women that are left are performing the men’s work, and many are thin and ill from the work and the lack of food.

Another very bad thing is that people have been here from the Sultan taking our animals. They have taken many mules, donkeys and horses, saying that the army needs them in the jihad against the infidels, but how do we know who these people are? They give us papers that we cannot read, and tell us that when we present these papers at a later time we will get our animals back, or animals that are equal. Some say that these men are outlaws and thieves and come not from the Sultan at all. People hid their mules when they heard what was happening and so thank God Ali the Snowbringer still has his mule, but it was most terrible for Abdulhamid Hodja, who has lost his Nilufer. You know how much he loved and defended that horse. She was old but she was still strong, and she was the most beautiful silver horse of all, more beautiful even than the horses of Rustem Bey. It was wonderful to see her with her mane braided, and the green ribbons in her mane and the brass bells, and the brass breastplate engraved with verses, and the Yörük saddle that he bought from the unwashed. And it was wonderful how proud and lovely it was to see Abdulhamid Hodja mounted upon it. When the people from the Sultan saw the horse and the imam upon it, they roughly bade him dismount, even though he is venerable and a hafiz, and they made him part with the horse, and he threw his arms around the neck of the horse and lamented so that everyone heard it and everyone was sorry beyond reason, and he called upon God to spare him the horse but they tore his arms from around the neck of the horse and he fell to the ground, but he stood up and embraced her again and recited in her ears and the horse pricked her ears and stamped her feet, and then two of the people held the imam until Nilufer was led away, and he was shouting and weeping.

Now Abdulhamid Hodja is very ill on account of despair and sorrow, because he loved the horse, and a horse is a most important thing to anyone that has one, especially if it is good. He says that Nilufer will be worked to death and the army starves such horses until they eat the paint from carts and houses, and he remembers this from when he was a soldier. Now Abdulhamid is on his pallet and will not eat, and he has pains in his sides and says that he will not be long for us in this world, and his wife says that he cannot pass water, so God knows if he will recover. There are no doctors here now because they were all Christians and they have gone to look after the soldiers even though no Christian is allowed to fight, and we are helpless if we are ill except for the cures passed down to us. Abdulhamid Hodja says that he will never see Nilufer again, and that the earth has opened before his feet so that he might lie down in it. Ayse Hanim wrings her hands and weeps, but there is nothing to be done. Abdulhamid Hodja lies upon his pallet and recites the Holy Koran, and he says that when he has finished it and spoken every word that is in it, then he will close his eyes and put on the white shroud and be laid down in the earth among the pines. And if he dies, who will lead our prayers?

Another thing that has happened is that we thought we had a ghost, because every night there would be crying and wailing after midnight, and it would wake us all up, and we would listen on our pallets shaking with fear, and the wailing would go through the streets and not stop for hours. The dogs would bark and the owls would fall silent and so would the nightingales. We were all talking and wondering what it means, and then Rustem Bey went out at night because he has authority and duty, and he went with Father Kristoforos the priest, but not with Abdulhamid Hodja because he was very ill and in despair, and Father Kristoforos had holy oil and water and an icon and other such Christian things, and there were two servants with them and Rustem Bey had a pistol. It turned out that the ghost was a woman who had lost her husband a few years ago in Macedonia, and now she has lost all her sons in Mesopotamia, and she has gone drunk with grief, and was wandering at night, and so there was no ghost after all, but it was very frightening whilst we thought there was. Now the woman is tied to her doorpost at night to stop her going out, and in the morning she is untied, and she wails and grieves inside her house, so that there is less noise in the streets. You will remember that in the last war there was another woman who was the same.

Your father says that a soldier is like one of the fingers of a potter and his comrades are the other fingers, and the soldiers of the enemy are the fingers of the other hand, and they work in opposition because no pot was ever well made with one hand, and the potter is God, and God moulds the world like clay by means of soldiers, so he says you should be proud to be one of God’s fingers, and if not proud, resigned. Your mother says that it is important to wash your clothes whenever possible or else your skin will become itchy and inflamed. And she says that she wishes you were a child once more and did not have to go away to war.

This concludes the letter of your parents, which has caused me much inconvenience and trouble to transcribe, since both of them talk at once on different topics in a language which unfailingly grates upon the ear and intellect. I have left out much of your mother’s advice and many of her exhortations, since I am sure that you will already have them by heart, having heard them so often repeated whilst you were still among us. It is clear to me that they hold you very dearly in their hearts, suffering much anxiety as to your safety, and so it would be well for them if you were able to write back soon, even though this would no doubt cause me further travail and perplexity.

I would like to add that I have long been aware that it was you and your friend Mehmetçik who used to steal the linnets and finches from my birdcage, and replace them with sparrows. I also know that it was you two who stole everybody’s shoes from the niches outside their back doors, and swapped them round, causing such confusion and bother. Therefore I say that life is quieter and more equable without you, but I do not say that it is better.

Leonidas, Schoolmaster.