Birds Without Wings (44 page)

Iskander paled. “I’ve done my service. I was in Arabia. You can check. I’ve done my service.”

“I know, I know,” said the clerk, “but you must realise that you are still in the ihtiyat. You remain in the active reserve for six years, and you have only done five years and nine months.”

“It’s nearly six,” replied Iskander, aghast. “What will happen to my family? How will they live?”

“What will happen to us? How will we live?” wailed Nermin when her distraught but stoical husband came indoors to tell her the news. “What
about the children? What will we do for money? We’ll starve. There’ll be no one to save us. It’ll be like it was when you were in Arabia. We were skeletons. What if you die? I can’t go through it all again. Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!” She rocked miserably where she sat, and wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve.

“It’s a holy war,” said Iskander resignedly. “It’s been declared a holy war. God will provide, God willing. What can I do? I’ve got to go. The Franks have declared war with us, and tomorrow I’ve got to go. If I die I go to paradise, God willing.”

“What use are you in paradise?” demanded Nermin tearfully.

At this point Karatavuk stepped out of the shadow and knelt before his father, touching his father’s hand to his lips and forehead. “Baba,” he said, “let me go in your place.”

Iskander looked down at his son and said, “You’re only fifteen.”

“I’m strong. I can fight. I have courage. Let me go. They’ll call me up anyway before too long. So let me go now. For the sake of my brothers and sisters, and for Mother’s sake.”

Iskander stood speechless, looking down at his favourite son. He knew that there was nothing he could say. If he said “yes” then he would feel that he had been a coward who was prepared to send his son into danger. If he said “no” then his wife and family would have no means to live. Nermin also found nothing to say. She went on her knees beside her son, and took his hands in hers, kissing them and pressing them to her cheek so that he could feel the warm trickle of her tears.

“I will not give you permission,” said Iskander at last, as pride conquered his common sense. “I have to do my duty. It’s a holy war, and I don’t have the choice. God will protect His own.”

Karatavuk stood up to protest, and his father silenced him with one hand raised. “Enough,” said Iskander. “God will surely remember what you have offered to do, as I will remember it. You are a most excellent son.”

So it was that shortly afterwards Karatavuk went to find his friend Mehmetçik, and the two went together to see Sergeant Osman and the clerk at their desk under the plane tree in the meydan. The sergeant, standing at ease with his fingers linked behind his back, raised his eyebrows in enquiry as their turn in the queue came up, and scanned them sceptically.

“We’ve come to volunteer,” said Mehmetçik.

“Why?” asked the sergeant bluntly.

“For the empire and the Sultan Padishah,” replied Mehmetçik.

“How old are you?”

“I am eighteen,” lied Mehmetçik.

“Your name?”

“Mehmetçik.”

“Son of?”

“Charitos.”

“So, you are Mehmetçik, son of Charitos? So Mehmetçik, I suppose, is a nickname?”

“Yes, beyefendi, my real name is Nicos.”

“That’s a shame. Mehmetçik is obviously such a good name for a soldier. You and your father are Christian, then?”

“Yes, beyefendi. But I still want to go and fight, as long as I can stay with Karatavuk. For the empire and the Sultan Padishah.”

An expression of puzzlement passed over the sergeant’s face. “Who is this blackbird that you want to stay with?”

“It’s my nickname,” said Karatavuk, stepping forward. “My real name is Abdul.”

The sergeant assessed the boy: dark-eyed, golden-skinned, a little taller than the norm. “This business of nicknames is an irritation,” he exclaimed at last, waving his hand in a small gesture of exasperation. “Everyone seems to have one even though the Prophet expressly forbids it. Who are you the son of?”

“Iskander the Potter.”

“I see,” said the sergeant. “But let’s do this one at a time.” He returned to Mehmetçik, stockier and shorter than his friend, but oddly similar nonetheless. “So you are Nicos, son of Charitos, and you say you are eighteen. And a Christian, yes?”

“Yes, beyefendi. But nowadays Christians aren’t exempt.”

“I know. Obviously I know. I am a soldier, you see. I have a tendency to know about these things. But haven’t you heard that this is a holy war? Haven’t you heard that we are fighting the Franks, and that the Franks are Christians? Didn’t you hear about the ships, and how they cheated us?”

“I am an Ottoman,” replied Mehmetçik proudly, “and one of the Frankish peoples is with us. I have heard that they are called ‘Almanca.’ ”

“Yes, the Germans are with us, but still it’s a holy war, and you can’t expect us to trust Christians in the army in case they turn against us. It’s only natural common sense. If you want to join up you will have to go to one of the labour battalions.”

“Labour battalions?”

“Roads, bridges, things like that,” said the sergeant.

“I want to fight,” said Mehmetçik scornfully, “not dig holes.”

“You’d better not volunteer, then,” replied the sergeant, with a glint of humour in his eyes. “We’ll come and get you sometime anyway, and then you’ll go in a labour battalion. Probably when you really are as old as you say you are. In any case, much of a soldier’s life does consist of digging holes. You would just be digging holes without being shot at, which is slightly safer.”

Mehmetçik’s eyes glowed with disappointed anger, but he could think of nothing to say, except, “I don’t want to be safer.”

“I am sorry, young man,” said Osman sympathetically. “In my opinion we’ll need all the soldiers we can get, and as a matter of fact one of my grandfathers was Christian, he was from Serbia, but it’s not up to me to decide these things. You’ll have to wait and see if the rules are changed. In the meantime, if you really want to help the Sultan Padishah and the empire, the best thing you can do is grow food and breed mules.”

“As for you,” said the sergeant, turning to Karatavuk, “you are a son of Iskander the Potter. You are not on our list. Your father is, however.” He turned to the clerk. “You have already spoken to him, haven’t you, Solomon Efendi?”

“I have.”

“I am offering myself in my father’s place,” said Karatavuk, “according to the tradition.”

“According to the tradition,” repeated the sergeant, regarding Karatavuk with particular respect. “Do you have your father’s permission to go in his place?”

“Yes,” declared Karatavuk, avoiding looking directly in the sergeant’s face. “It’s for the sake of my mother and my brothers and sisters.”

“You’re lying,” observed the sergeant, “but fortunately I have not noticed it.”

“Thank you, beyefendi,” said Karatavuk, repeating, “It’s for the sake of my mother and my brothers and sisters. Without my father they won’t live. Without me they will have more chance. I am strong. I can fight.”

“You are a good son,” observed the sergeant. “A man would be proud to have a son like you.”

Karatavuk’s shoulders seemed visibly to broaden beneath this praise. “Do you accept me, beyefendi?”

The sergeant sighed wearily. He had seen so many young sons making this sacrifice. It was always both moving and depressing. He wondered how many of the fine youngsters would ever see their mother’s face again.
“Very well, you may come in your father’s place, according to the tradition. Let it be on your conscience and not mine for deceiving your father, and may God forgive you for it.”

“Thank you, beyefendi, and, beyefendi, please don’t tell my father.”

The sergeant nodded. “I’ll send a message to your father to tell him that after all he has been exempted. He won’t know why. You must be here tomorrow in his place.”

As the two boys walked away, Mehmetçik cursed softly under his breath. He had tears of anger in his eyes. “Grow food and breed mules!” he repeated bitterly, and Karatavuk put his arm round his shoulder in sympathy. “They’ll probably change the rules,” he said, “if the war gets bad enough.”

“Let’s hope that it does, then,” said Mehmetçik shortly. They stopped by Abdulhamid Hodja’s house, and Mehmetçik took his leather purse out of his sash. He removed a few paras from it, which he folded back into his sash, and then leaned down and scraped up a handful of earth. He tipped it into the purse, repeated the action, and then drew the string tight. He held it out to his friend. “Wherever you go,” he said, “take this with you, and don’t empty it out until you return, and when you come back make sure you tip it back in exactly this place.”

Karatavuk took the purse and loosened the drawstring. He sniffed at the soil and sighed. “The earth of home. It has a particular smell. Have you ever noticed it? When I am far away I shall be able put this to my nose and be reminded.” He closed the purse, put it to his lips and kissed it. He placed it in his own sash, and then he put his arms around his best friend and dropped his forehead on his shoulder for a moment. He felt his throat constrict, and was overcome with an emotion that he could not name, because it was a mixture of so many. “Ah, my friend, my friend,” he said, drawing back and thumping his chest, “I have a heavy feeling in here. I feel as if I have a stone in my heart. I wonder what’ll become of us all.”

“I think we’ll be divided,” said Mehmetçik sadly. “Suddenly it matters that I am a Christian, where it mattered only a little before.”

“We won’t be divided,” replied Karatavuk firmly. “We have always been friends. We have always been together. You have taught me to read and write.”

“I don’t know how much use that will be,” said Mehmetçik. “When it comes down to it, there’s nothing to read, and in other places I hear that all the writing is a different sort, like that writing on the mosque that only Abdulhamid Hodja understands.”

Karatavuk reached once more into his sash and took out his birdwhistle.
“I’m taking this with me. If I break it I will write to my father and ask him to send me another one. When I return you’ll hear it and you’ll know I’m back.”

“God bring the day,” said Mehmetçik.

“Do you remember,” asked Karatavuk, “when we were little boys, and we decided not to piss down mouseholes in case the mice drowned? Well, now I’ve got to go out and put bullets through other men.”

“At least a mouse is innocent,” observed Mehmetçik.

“I wonder what it feels like,” said Karatavuk.

CHAPTER 51

The Sadness of Rustem Bey

“Why are you unhappy, my lion?” asked Leyla Hanim, coming up beside Rustem Bey, and placing a hand on his shoulder. It was early evening, and he was seated on a low wall that surrounded a flower bed in the courtyard, his hands limp in his lap, and a stricken look on his face. Pamuk the white cat lay curled up in her favourite place beneath the orange tree. She had lain in the same place so much over the years that she had created a cat-shaped declivity in the gritty soil. Near his feet a large tortoise crawled laboriously by, its shell draped in lava flows of solidified white wax, because Leyla had at some time in the recent past employed it as one of her romantic mobile candelabra.

“I am not so much unhappy, as sad,” he replied.

“There’s a difference?”

“I feel there is one, but it might be hard to explain.” “What is it that saddens you, then?”

Rustem Bey gestured inarticulately. “It’s the war. I ought to be in it, and I have bad feelings about it.”

“You’ve done all your military service,” said Leyla, appalled at the thought that he might be leaving. She added, somewhat thoughtlessly, “Aren’t you too old?”

Fortunately Rustem Bey was not in the mood for taking offence. “I have a great deal of experience, and a man is not too old unless he is no longer strong. I daresay I am stronger than most boys who go to war.”

“Of course you are,” agreed Leyla, meaning it quite sincerely. This was a man who disappeared for days at a time to hunt in the mountains. He could lift the dead deer up on to his horse’s back as if they were made of stuffed felt.

“I would go,” said Rustem Bey. “In fact, I made enquiries with my old regiment as soon as war seemed likely. However, I have had a message
from the governor asking me to raise a militia and maintain law and order. It seems that most of the gendarmerie will be called to the front.”

“A militia?”

“Old men and little boys and cripples,” said Rustem Bey, “and as soon as the little boys are old enough, they’ll be off to the front too, and then I will have to go and look for more little boys to replace them.”

“So you will stay?”

“Yes, I will stay. But not without some guilt and regret.”

“Oh, thank God,” she said. “Without you here I couldn’t live.” She knew that his presence in the town was the only reason for which she was treated with any consideration or respect.

“I am also sad just because there is a war,” said Rustem Bey, ignoring her, and speaking as if to himself. “In the first place, we are now at war with France, and France is the civilisation towards which everyone like me naturally aspires. In my regiment the officers all learned French and tried to speak it to each other. In the second place, we are at war with Britain, which has excellent soldiers and sailors, and the biggest empire in the history of the world, and which used to be our best friend, and in the third place, we are at war with Russia, which has always hated us and obstructed us and wanted to take Istanbul from us. On our side we have Austria-Hungary, about which I know very little, and Germany, about which I know less, except that she seems to be extremely good from a military point of view.”