Farewell: A Mansion in Occupied Istanbul (Turkish Literature) (35 page)

“Kemal’s alive. You’ll see, he’ll be here soon, within a few weeks.”

No one took any notice of Saraylıhanım. “It’s not as simple as that, efendim,” Mahir explained to Behice. “Re
ş
at Beyefendi may not have actively opposed the Sultan but he was of great service to the winning side and to the liberation of our country . . . Behind the scenes, of course. And none of us expected the Sultan to flee.”

“It was suggested that he might,” said Ahmet Re
ş
at. “That may well be. But he didn’t have to flee.”

“Anyone in his position would have done the same. Am I not fleeing myself?”

“You’re not the sultan.”

Behice tactfully changed the subject. “Mahir Bey, the army barracks have always harbored resentment for the Sultan. Why is that?”

“That hasn’t always been true, efendim. Only since the reign of Abdülhamit. And, really, can you blame them?”

Ahmet Re
ş
at was preparing to weigh in when Leman and Mehpare arrived. Leman’s long hair curled down past her shoulders; a hint of kohl had brought out her eyes; she wore a pale lilac dress with a lace collar. All else forgotten, Mahir stared at the girl framed in the doorway, smiling at him.

Ahmet Re
ş
at was as impressed by his daughter’s beauty as Mahir—and considerably more surprised. He thought back to the swaddled baby in his arms. He’d missed so much of his eldest daughter’s life and now he might not be there to see his younger girls grow up.

“Welcome, efendim.”

Both men snapped out of their reveries at the sound of Leman’s voice. Mahir drew her extended hand to his lips. Leman seemed equally taken aback and pleased to have received her first kiss. Pleased to be the center of attention and perfectly aware that her beauty had enchanted Mahir, she realized that everyone in the room had now accepted her as an adult.

“Now that everyone’s here, we can go in to dinner,” Behice said.

Mahir stood up. “This morning, I received your permission to propose to Leman Hanım,” he said. “And so, here and now, in your presence, I would like to formally request the hand of Leman Hanım in marriage.” He turned, looked into Leman’s eyes and asked, “Would you accept me as your husband?”

Saraylıhanım stirred furiously on the divan, outraged that a marriage proposal would be made directly to a girl, even as her elders were present and available to give their consent. So, the family would have yet another member recklessly enraptured with all things modern! Everyone was silent for a moment. Leman kept her eyes bashfully lowered. Mahir’s heart leapt to his throat.

Finally, in a low voice: “If my father deems it suitable . . .”

“But what about you, Leman Hanım?” After a momentary show of reluctance, prettily feigned, “Yes, efendim,” she said.

Turning to Re
ş
at Bey, Mahir asked, “In that case, would you now permit us to be become engaged?”

“They already have,” said Saraylıhanım. “But anyway, Kemal was always so fond of you.”

Mahir smiled and pulled a diamond ring out of his pocket. “Then may this engagement bring blessings upon us all.” Mahir slid the ring onto Leman’s finger. He pulled a second ring out of his pocket and handed it to her. With shaking hands she slid the silver ring onto Mahir’s finger. It was the first time Saraylıhanım had seen a girl place a ring onto the finger of her betrothed. The family elders were supposed to do it! Was the man mad!

“Leman Hanım, in two days I will be coming to visit you again, accompanied by my elder sister,
Ş
ahber Hanım, to bring our family jewels and our engagement gifts. Forgive me for not having been able to complete all the preparations today,” Mahir said.

“You’ve prepared everything wonderfully, efendim. All right everyone, please go in to dinner,” Behice said, leading the way.

They were all just about to sit down at the table when they heard a baby crying overhead.

Mehpare rushed off.

“Is that Halim crying?” asked Mahir.

“No, that would be Sabahat. It’s feeding time, you see,” Leman said.

When Behice remained seated Mahir murmured, “Behice Hanımefendi, we’ll wait for you to come back . . . I trust I’m now considered a member of the family . . .”

“You’ve always been like a member of the family, Mahir Bey,” Behice said. “There’s no need for me to go upstairs. Mehpare’s nursing Sabahat, bless her. My milk has been in short supply.”

“Poor Mehpare has a baby at her breast all day long,” Leman said. “And they’re both so chubby.”

“Mehpare Abla’s turned into a cow,” Suat giggled.

“Suat! If your father wasn’t leaving tomorrow I’d send you straight up to your room! Not another word out of you, do you hear!” scolded Behice, who had gone red with embarrassment.

“Mahir Bey, you’ve been deceived by the outer appearance of my daughters into thinking they’ve grown up; they’re still children, I fear,” Ahmet Re
ş
at said.

“Impertinent children,” Saryalıhanım added for good measure.

Leman’s eyes filled with tears.

“Then I’m a lucky man indeed to have a fiancée with the guile-lessness of a child,” Mahir said.

“Come on,” Ahmet Re
ş
at said, “Let’s speak of pleasant things at dinner this evening. I want to smile when I look back at this, my last meal with my entire family.”

“What do you mean ‘last meal’? We’ll have many more meals together,” Behice said. Her husband’s decision to flee abroad had already begun the transformation of a coddled, delicate creature into an iron-willed woman prepared for adversity of any kind. Ahmet Re
ş
at flashed his wife a look of gratitude.

Despite their best efforts, the dinner that evening was shrouded in sadness. They all knew it could well be their last meal together. Mehpare didn’t speak at all. Ever since Kemal’s death, she’d taken to speaking only when necessary. Try as she might to maintain a veneer of gaiety, Behice’s spirits were clearly sagging. Conversation at the somber engagement dinner was mostly between Re
ş
at and Mahir, and focused almost exclusively on the state of the nation and the future of an empire without a sovereign. An empire?

“We should stop referring to the Ottomans as though they still had an empire,” Ahmet Re
ş
at said at one point. “We’ve lost our empire; a handful of land is all that remains to us. God willing, Mustafa Kemal Pasha will be better at defending it from the rapacity of foreign states than we were.”

Immediately after dinner, Mahir made his excuses and asked permission to go home. He would, of course, be getting up early the following morning.

“Mahir Bey, please don’t trouble yourself tomorrow. I’ll slip out of the house first thing in the morning. I’m joining some colleagues at the quay,” Ahmet Re
ş
at said.

“I will most certainly be standing on the quay to wave you off, efendim.”

Ahmet Re
ş
at accompanied his future son-in-law as far as the garden gate. Leman waited in vain for him to turn round and wave. But as he strode off into the darkness that night, Mahir’s thoughts were solely of Ahmet Re
ş
at’s dawn journey into what could be permanent exile.

When Ahmet Re
ş
at returned to the sitting room he found Leman in front of the window.

“Why haven’t you gone to your room yet, my dear?” he said, stroking his daughter’s hair.

“Father, why do you have to go? No one’s given me a proper explanation. I’m an engaged woman now, not a child. Can’t you tell me?”

“Sit down, Leman” Ahmet Re
ş
at said wearily. Father and daughter sat across from each other on the divan.

“There’s a list, Leman. The men on the list are considered traitors to their country. I haven’t seen the list myself, but I’m absolutely certain that all of the members of the last cabinet and all of the signatories to the Treaty of Sevres are on it. The Ankara Government has issued a death warrant for everyone on the list.”

“Father!” Leman stifled a scream with her hand.

“You must never lose your fortitude, my girl. You’ve got to look after your mother, your grandmother and your sisters. Keep your composure at all costs. Having entrusted the entire family to you and Mahir Bey, I’m able to leave with a heart less troubled. One day, they’ll understand that we’re not traitors and we’ll be able to return. You’re the daughter of an honorable man who has given his life to the service of his country. Never forget that.”

Leman leaned her head on her father’s chest, her body wracked with sobs. Ahmet Re
ş
at allowed her to cry for a moment, then, in a soft voice, he said, “Come on, let’s go to our rooms. Don’t let your mother see you crying like that.”

Leman composed herself, wiping away her tears and the first kohl she had ever worn with the back of her hand. With her streaked face and elaborately curled hair, she resembled neither a child nor a woman. Still in mourning for her beloved uncle, she’d suddenly become engaged and learned of the death warrant against her father. Her large eyes looked perplexed, as though she had not yet puzzled out how she was meant to endure all that had come her way. It was with both sorrow and love that Ahmet Re
ş
at gazed at the sixteen-year-old girl whose shoulders, at the fall of a single sentence, had been burdened with the responsibilities of a lifetime.

Once Mehpare had finished nursing Halim, changed his diapers and put him in the cradle at the foot of her bed, she leaned over the decorative cradle to her right. Eyes tightly shut, Sabahat appeared at first glance to be sound asleep, but her tiny lips puckered and worked, a sure sign that she would soon wake up and cry. Mehpare wiped her nipple with some moist cotton, bent over the cradle and picked up the tiny girl. Eyes closed, the baby snuffled hungrily, nuzzling and craning its neck until she soon found her wet-nurse’s nipple and began sucking noisily. Mehpare ran her fingertips over the downy hair. She’d loved the other girls, especially naughty, talkative Suat. But there was a special place in Mehpare’s heart for the baby now in her arms—this little girl, who, like her own Halim, would grow up without knowing the love, the tenderness, the well-meaning gruffness of a father. Mehpare herself knew only too well what it was like to be viewed by others with that subtle mix of pity, scorn, and disdain reserved for fatherless girls.

In her first years in this house she’d been so envious of the way the girls were spoiled and petted by Re
ş
at Bey. While everyone else would rush about making themselves and the house presentable if they knew the master of the house had turned into the street on his way home, the girls had never been the least bit scared of him. They’d come tumbling down the stairs and leap straight into his open arms.

“
Où est mon petit cadeau
?” Suat would ask, and each time she’d be praised for having added a few more words of French to her vocabulary. Saraylıhanım had always objected, warning, “You’re spoiling the girls, Re
ş
at Bey, my boy. They’ll never be able to adapt when they go off to live with their husbands.”

“I’m not sending my girls away,” Re
ş
at Bey would say. “When they get married, their husbands can come here and live with us.” He’d finally notice the pair of eyes peering through the crack of a door or down from the landing, and turn his attention to the dejected little girl who wasn’t his daughter. “I’d even have second thoughts about giving Mehpare away to just any suitor.” Mehpare’s nose would tickle and her eyes sting. She’d wanted so much to be Re
ş
at Bey’s real daughter. That had been impossible, of course; but now here she was, not only his daughter-in-law but his daughter’s wet nurse. And if God had taken Kemal away from her, he’d also given her two babies to hold close to her heart. It was early still, the sun hadn’t yet risen above the horizon; a time said to be the most auspicious for prayer. If she vowed to God never to suckle Sabahat again, never to hold her or so much as caress her silken skin, would He allow Re
ş
at Bey, the man she now regarded as her father, to stay here in this house?

After twenty minutes of nursing, she sat Sabahat on her lap and burped her. Then she gently put her down in the cradle, nappies unchanged so that she wouldn’t wake up, and drew aside the curtain. A coupe was waiting in front of the garden gate. Soon, Ahmet Re
ş
at would walk through the front door, small valise in hand, board the coupe and disappear into the morning gloom. And, just like Kemal, those who remained behind would never know where he’d gone, what he’d endured, where he was buried. As Mehpare fought back her tears she heard a creak on the stairs. Someone was tiptoeing down those stairs, careful not to wake anyone. It could only be Re
ş
at Bey.

He’d wanted to leave without any fuss, leave the house as everyone slept. Later, they would all wake up at the usual hour as though nothing had happened and go on with their daily lives. That’s what he’d wanted . . . what he’d requested of each of them . . . asking that his last wish in this house—until he returned, of course—be honored.

When Mehpare was certain he had descended as far as the ground floor, she threw on her dressing gown and rushed down the stairs to the kitchen. She paused at the door. In the dimness she could make out a ghostly apparition in a white nightgown: it was Behice, doing exactly what Mehpare had come down to do. Mehpare crept inside and fumbled for a basin; finding one, she filled it at the faucet. As she left the kitchen with Behice, they came across Saraylıhanım. A moment later, the three women, none of them speaking, all of them bearing a basin of water, stepped through the front door and silently followed in the tracks of Ahmet Re
ş
at. He didn’t look back, either because he actually didn’t hear them or because he simply chose not to. Nodding to the driver holding open the door, he stepped into the coupe. The previous night, his wife had wept in his arms. He didn’t have the strength to look upon that face drawn with pain and into those eyes shot with blood, to bid her farewell yet again. The driver climbed up onto his seat and flicked his whip at the horse’s bony hindquarters. As soon as the coupe began rolling away, the lips of the three women formed soundless prayers as they splashed their basins onto the street.