Birds Without Wings (80 page)
So it was that, long after they had entered the serene and scented pine forest below the town, the fearful Christians began their odyssey into hardship and loss with the heart-rending lamentations of those who
remained still echoing in their ears. In the trees they passed the Muslim dead, melding silently and obliviously into the earth in their tilting whitewashed graves. The people gazed at everything they saw with that special intensity brought about by the knowledge that only in precious memory would they ever behold the face of their homeland again.
Ahead of them, leading them away, almost unable to see through his tears, bearing the icon before him, pausing in his orations to kiss its silver frame, Father Kristoforos continued to intone every prayer for mercy that he could remember. “Chief Captains of the heavenly armies, we the unworthy implore you to protect us by your supplications, with the shelter of the wings of your immaterial glory, as you guard us who fall down and insistently cry out; deliver us from dangers …” he sang, acutely pained by the irrepressible suspicion that his prayers were winging up to an empty sky.
CHAPTER 89
I Am Philothei (15)
When the committee came to value our property none of us was very concerned. We didn’t think we would be deported anyway, because we didn’t speak Greek. Only Leonidas Efendi knew Greek, and Father Kristoforos.
And we said, “We aren’t Greek, we are Ottomans,” and the committee said, “There’s no such thing as Ottoman any more. If you’re a Muslim you’re a Turk. If you’re Christian and you’re not Armenian, and you’re from round here, you’re Greek.”
We said, “We ought to know who we are,” and they just ignored us and carried on valuing our property.
So when the gendarmes arrived with an official firman, and we were given almost no time to get ready for leaving, it was a terrible shock to all of us, and no one knew what to do, and what to take with them, and I can’t describe the panic.
Most people were looking for neighbours to sell their property to, but because everyone was trying to sell, no one could get a good price. My father Charitos was walking about like everyone else, laden down with pots and carpets, trying to sell them. My brother Mehmetçik was an outlaw because he’d deserted the labour battalion, and there was no way to get a message to him. My mother Polyxeni was weeping and clutching at her head with both hands even as we tried to sort out our possessions and gather provisions. In the end she decided to leave her trunk with Ayse, widow of Abdulhamid Hodja, in the hope that one day she could come and get it. I helped her carry it to Ayse’s house, and Ayse Hanim was very upset and we had to reassure her.
The worst thing for me was that I was torn in half because I was betrothed to Ibrahim, and he was far away in the rocks with the goats and Kopek, his dog. I was a Christian, but if I married him I would be a Muslim. I didn’t know what to do. I loved him but I knew he was still not in his
right mind, but I also knew that he very nearly was. I loved my father and mother and wanted to leave with them to our new home, but I also wanted to stay and be married to my beloved if he got better.
I was revolving these problems in my mind until I couldn’t bear it any longer, and I thought I was going to go mad with the distress, and when my mother wasn’t looking I ran away up the street, past the grand houses that used to belong to the Armenians, and then I ran through the thorns and the tombs, and I came across the Dog and I said to him, “Please, Dog Efendi, where has Ibrahim taken the goats?” and he pointed over the hill towards the sea, and he wagged his finger at me as if to say “Don’t go,” but I went anyway.
CHAPTER 90
Leyla Hanim’s Letter to Rustem Bey
When Drosoula had run to Rustem Bey’s house to make her hurried farewells to the mistress that she and Philothei had served for so long, she can have had no idea that Leyla would react as she did. Instead of the shock and dismay that everybody else had expressed at the arrival of Sergeant Osman and his gendarmes, Leyla Hanim had evidenced excitement and agitation.
“Are they really taking you all to Greece?” she had kept asking. “Where in Greece? How are they transporting you? How long is it going to take?” and Drosoula had been obliged to shrug and repeat, “Nobody knows, nobody knows. We have to gather in the meydan with all the things we can carry. That’s all we’ve been told.”
“Greece,” Leyla had said, wonderingly, “they’re taking you to Greece.” There had been a light in her eyes that was like the prospect of intoxication.
Drosoula had had no time to linger and deal with Leyla’s strange wonderment. She had returned to her mother, who was trying to deal with the paterfamilias, who was already drunk and incapable on account of the raki that he consumed each morning in order to suppress his perpetual toothache. In addition, Drosoula had had to await her own husband’s decision about what they should do. Gerasimos had a plan that seemed both mad and the only possible course of action. Accordingly, Drosoula had embraced Leyla Hanim, each promising the other that they would meet again if God willed, and then Drosoula had hurried away through the gathering chaos of that improvised departure.
Shaking with excitement, but horrified by the foolish actions that she knew she was about to commit, and the perilous misadventures that she was about to bring upon her own head, Leyla had sat for a moment in the haremlik, and attempted to think sensibly.
Rustem Bey was away for a few days, hunting in the foothills, and now it wrenched her heart to think about what she was about to do. She called for paper and a pen, and sat at a table to inscribe, with painstaking care. Tears running down her cheeks, she wrote:
My Lion,
I write this in a terrible hurry, because I have so much to do in a very short time. I think that very probably you will not ever be able to read this, but I would feel very bad if I were to leave you with nothing. I still don’t know if you can read. I never found out. Anyway, I have to write in Greek, with the Greek letters, because that is all I know how to write. I don’t have time to work out Turkish in Greek letters, and I don’t know the Turkish letters at all. It occurs to me that I am, after all, writing this letter to myself.
My lion, you should know that, after you bought me from Kardelen, I loved you first out of fear and out of necessity. Then I grew to love you completely with all my body and my heart. Those were our years in paradise. Then our love eventually became like the love of brother and sister, and those were our years of contentment and peace. Because of this, because of what our love has become, it is now possible for me to leave this place, and to continue to love you without too much grief. I will miss you, and there will be a hole in my heart forever in the shape of Rustem Bey, and I will remember you every time I play the oud, or eat garlic, or do all sorts of things that we used to do together. I will miss you, but my sorrow will not be unbearable, because our love is now of brother and sister, and not of lovers. I hope that there will always be a hole in your heart that is in the shape of your Ioanna.
My lion, I am not Leyla. I have deceived you for a long time. I am not Circassian either, and I know that you prized me more greatly because you thought that I was. I must tell you that I am not after all a Muslim either, and my name is Ioanna, and I am a Greek. I am from a little place called Ithaca, and ever since I left it I have been longing with all my heart to return. I have always had a hole in my heart which is the same shape as Ithaca. Now that there is passage organised to Greece, this is my chance to go home to Ithaca. I think now that I will never have children, and this is a reason for me to seek what relatives are left, so that one day my bones will rest in the right place.
My lion, when I was a little girl I came from a good family. As you see, I can write, which is the proof. I was abducted by bad men who found me hiding in the olive grove behind my parents’ house, after they had beached their boat, and come ashore, and beaten my mother and father, and taken their goods and their animals, and destroyed their house out of wantonness. They treated me badly and I was very much abused, and I was traded first in Sicily, and then in Cyprus, and then to Kardelen in Istanbul. I suppose that you did not realise what Kardelen really was, as you are not wise to the world even though you are the aga hereabouts. You have never been corrupted in a city. Kardelen was a man who was also a woman, he was one of God’s victims, but he was the first to treat me well, and he made me what I am. He arranged for me to learn the oud, which has been the great pleasure of my life, and he taught me how to be a good hetaera and how to appreciate luxury. He gave me a lot of the money that you bought me with, and you didn’t know it.
My lion, you have been fooled all these years, and in more ways than I would like to confess. I am ashamed of my deceptions, but I have made up for them by means of the very many pleasures that we have enjoyed together.
My lion, I am longing to hear Greeks call me by my real name, to speak my own language, and to hear the sweet melody of it in my ears. I was disappointed when I arrived here and found that the Greeks did not speak Greek. Now they will have to learn it.
My lion, if I had stayed here, I would have died with the name “Ithaca” on my lips. Now, however, in Ithaca when I die the name on my lips shall be yours. I shall say “Rustem, my lion,” and then I shall die. When you die, let the name on your lips be mine, and the face in the eyes of your mind be mine also.
My lion, please do not come after me. I am going to find Ithaca, which has occupied my dreams for so many years, and which has been fastened to my heart like an invisible rope, and is now drawing me back, even against my will. May you also find your Ithaca, if you have one. If you do not have one, you should raise one up before you.
I am leaving you with Pamuk, who is too old and idle to travel, and too used to blissfulness, and has come to love you more than she ever loved me. You must be good to her because she never tried to eat any of your pet partridges, despite your fears. Remember to feed her with cheese, and pieces of liver, and to comb her so that the fur does not mat, now that her teeth have all fallen out and she cannot remove the matting herself. When she dies, cause her to be buried decently under the orange tree in the courtyard, in the place that she likes, and do not cast her out to be eaten by dogs or birds. I am taking only necessities and my oud, and the string of gold coins to go around my forehead, which was the first present you ever gave me, and which is the thing in the world that I prize the most, and I am taking other gifts you made to me, so that I can remember you, and not so that I can use the wealth.
My lion, farewell with a full heart, and with love and gratitude forever, and until we meet again in Heaven, this is your Ioanna who was Leyla, and who loves you under all names she has ever had, and regardless of names.
She waited until the very early dawn of the day after the Christians’ departure, and then, having picked up Pamuk and, for a long moment, pressed her face into the fur of her neck for the last time, she slipped out before the servants were awake. With her oud and a small cloth bag over her shoulder, dressed in the least immodest of her mistresslike clothes, and with her thickest-soled slippers upon her feet, she set off in the wake of the refugees, secure in the knowledge that she could catch them up, but terrified in case she should fail to do so.
When Rustem Bey finally returned from his hunting with a deer slung over the saddle of his horse, he was astounded to find the town half empty, and many of his servants gone. Those that remained were almost too terrified to explain what had become of Leyla Hanim. In the haremlik he found the letter. He sat down heavily on the divan, and stared at it as if he could make it speak by sufficiently tenacious scrutiny. Angrily he went out into the town to find somebody who could read it, but in any case there would only have been Daskalos Leonidas, and he had left. For some reason he did not set off in pursuit of the Christians, as if he knew in his core that Leyla had forbidden it.