The Silence of Scheherazade Read online

  From there, the noise from the seafront sounded like distant, surreal howling. The patients sitting on the benches in the shade of the giant trees were conversing in low voices, seemingly unaware of what was happening in the outside world. With its French flag flying from the rooftop, the hospital was a haven, an oasis in the chaos.

  Edith ran up the marble staircase. Her grandmother’s room was on the second floor and she stopped at the door to catch her breath. Juliette was in front of the window overlooking the courtyard; from her profile, she appeared to be frowning at the piece of paper in her hand. Grandmother Josephine was watching her daughter with a surly look on her face; there were coarse white hairs growing from her chin. She’d had a stroke three months earlier and was no longer able to speak; she could only express herself on paper now, but holding a pen in her right hand was difficult.

  ‘Maman, have you heard the news?’ Edith’s voice came out higher than usual and her grandmother’s sour expression became even more puckered.

  In exasperation, Juliette handed the note to her daughter as she stood in the doorway. ‘I swear, I cannot understand what she wants any more. Her handwriting gets more like chicken scratch every day. Have a look at this. If you can make it out, tell Nurse Liz to bring her what it is she wants. She’s been lying there with that sulk on all morning.’

  For a moment Edith forgot what was happening outside and looked at the piece of paper. Like all the women in the family, Grandmother Josephine’s handwriting was as confusing as Arabic script; her letters were indecipherable even though written in French. Edith couldn’t understand a thing.

  ‘Maybe she wants water.’

  ‘We brought her that. We’ve brought her everything. Nurse Liz, bless her heart, even brought some sherbet from the maternity ward. She didn’t want that either. I don’t know what else we can do. Your brother was here – we came in together on the eight o’clock train – and he suggested we hire a nurse and move Grandmother into our house. What nonsense! This hospital is so well equipped, how could we manage with just one nurse at home?’

  Then she added in a low voice, ‘I think your brother was just being stingy. He really is the limit! He lives like a prince in Bournabat, but when it comes to hospital fees for his grandmother, he gets all miserly. It’s all done to please Philippe, that son-in-law of mine, if you ask me. And he—’

  ‘Maman, it seems you have not heard the news.’ Edith balled up the little piece of paper in her hand and looked into Juliette’s face.

  ‘What happened? Did Madame Lupen manage to get her ugly daughter engaged?’ Juliette gave one of her vinegar laughs. On seeing Edith’s frown darken, she added, ‘I heard, darling, I heard. Nurse Liz told me a little while ago. Venizelos has landed his soldiers in Smyrna. Lloyd George has finally got what he wanted, eh? Our people are gathering over at the Sporting Club. When we leave here, let’s go there too. We can watch the festivities from there. What do you say? Did Venizelos himself come as well?’

  Edith looked at her mother in astonishment as footsteps came echoing down the corridor.

  Juliette shrugged. ‘Ah, here comes your brother. He went to Kraemer’s for lun—’

  Before she could finish her sentence, Jean-Pierre burst into the room, shattering her cool detachment, his eyes wide with fear, his cheeks red from running. Taking no account of either his bedridden grandmother nor the quiet of the hospital, he shrieked, ‘They killed people right in front of us! In front of our eyes, while we were sitting eating together at Kraemer’s, all of us, including the city’s most important businessmen – the Whitalls, the Girauds. How could this happen? They killed civilians too. They snatched the fezzes from their heads and tore them to pieces. Unbelievable! Maman, are you listening? They took Rauf Bey prisoner. Our neighbour, Rauf Bey – he’s an accountant at the bank, for God’s sake! We saw him being beaten out in the street and we all ran out. At least he has some loyal friends among the Americans; they pushed the Greek soldiers aside and saved the poor man. Then someone opened fire on the Greek soldiers from the top floor of the hotel and we all ran back inside. Poor Rauf Bey couldn’t speak. He happened to have been passing the Turkish barracks just as the fighting began, so he took cover inside. When the Turks waved the flag of surrender out the window, the Greek soldiers rounded up everybody inside the barracks, treated them like prisoners of war and threw them out onto the street. What a disaster! I’ve never seen such barbarism.’

  Covering her mouth with her hand, Juliette turned away from the window. ‘What fighting? Did fighting break out? What are you saying, Jean-Pierre? Who shot whom?’

  ‘Somebody opened fire on the Greek soldiers. Witnesses said the shots came from the sea, but the Greek soldiers rushed straight to the Turkish barracks, the Sari Kisla, and opened fire with their machine guns. The Turks responded. They had a good supply of weapons, but finally they ran out of ammunition and surrendered. Meanwhile, anybody, anywhere wearing a fez was arrested and taken away.’

  Suddenly he stopped talking and ran to the window. ‘Where is Mustafa, Maman? Where is Mustafa? Why is he not down there in the courtyard waiting for us? We have to find him – urgently! Something might have happened to him. Someone must go and find Mustafa immediately.’

  ‘Brother, calm down, please. You’re frightening Grandmother. Come, sit down for a minute. Nurse Liz, could you please bring a glass of water. I’ll go out right now and find Mustafa.’

  Juliette let out another scream. ‘Edith, you cannot just go running about out there. Say something, Jean-Pierre, for the love of God. Are you both insane? Are you going to send your sister out all alone into the streets on such a day?’

  Paying no attention to her mother, Edith sat her brother down at the table in front of the window. A muscle in his right cheek was twitching from nerves. He spilled some of his glass of water on the table.

  Juliette, one hand on her forehead, was walking in circles between the window and the door, speaking rapidly. ‘What do we do now? Is it safe to stay here? Let’s take the first train back to Bournabat. Mon Dieu, the station is very near the Turkish district. Or should we go to your sister in Boudja? Edith, what time is the train? No, that’s impossible. What can we do? A motor car! Jean-Pierre, I beg you, arrange for a motor car immediately. Quickly, I say. Tell Mustafa to go and find your brother-in-law. Philippe must send the company’s private motor car for us. Or should we go to the Sporting Club? We’ll be safe there. Here in the hospital we have only women around us. Oh, my God, why did I have to choose today to come to the city!’

  Edith shook her head. ‘Maman, I beg you, please calm down. You know no harm will come to us. First of all we must find Mustafa. He will arrange a vehicle to take you to the station and you can catch the first train home. I’ll stay with Grandmother. No one will touch this hospital with the French flag flying from its roof. Besides, I’m sure that at the first sign of fighting, Mustafa immediately thought to arrange a vehicle to take you to the station.’

  Juliette, cutting her circuit between the door and the window in half, shouted, ‘What are you saying, Edith? You’re going to stay here by yourself, among these bandits, surrounded only by women? No! I most certainly do not permit this. Enough is enough! Are you not aware, daughter, of how much the local communities here have grown to hate each other over the years? Can you not see that disaster is leaning on our door, that a tragedy is brewing? Absolutely, not! I am not leaving you on your own in Smyrna!’

  ‘We are locals too, Maman. We’ve had no quarrels with anyone. Please do not make such generalizations.’

  Edith walked cautiously to her brother’s side. Juliette was having another of her hysterical fits. Jean-Pierre was sitting with his elbows on the table, head between his hands. She sighed. Unfortunately, once her mother got herself into a state, there was no getting her out of it. Even so, she said, ‘Maman, trust me, please. Nothing will happen to us in Smyrna. If you’d seen the ships anchored in the harbour, you’d feel comforted. The British fleet is there, along with
American and French ships. They’re all there, in the harbour. Do you think they would just close their eyes and let us come to harm?’

  Jean-Pierre raised his head from between his hands and looked at his sister. His eyes were bloodshot. Juliette’s younger son resembled her very closely. They had the same watery, blue-green eyes, the same freckled skin that tanned in the sun, the same sharp features. As he got older, the resemblance became more marked. He spoke softly.

  ‘Edith, I just saw a high-ranking Turkish officer being shot in the back. He was simply strolling by, holding his small son’s hand, not doing anything else. One of the Greek soldiers pressed a rifle butt into his back. Blood spurted from his mouth as he fell, and the child was right there, staring at his father. They took the boy to the ship where they’re holding all the prisoners. He was ten years old, at most. This happened right in front of all of us. Those European admirals you mentioned who were at the shore watching the fleet arrive were there. We closed the curtains at Kraemer’s so that Rauf Bey wouldn’t see what was happening. We were trying to soothe him with whisky, and the poor man was crying and saying, “I would never have expected such savagery from a European country.” Ah, how the Turks worship Europe. Europe sucks the marrow from their bones and still they cry for Europe. Look at the pitiful state of the great Ottoman Empire. What a shame.’

  With a nervous wave of her hand, Juliette interrupted her son’s speech. ‘Stop talking about such things now, Jean-Pierre. We must leave here immediately. If Mustafa cannot be found, stop a child in the street, write a note and send it to your brother-in-law. He must obtain a motor car for us. Let us get away from this hell.’

  Passing behind her brother, Edith looked out of the window into the courtyard, where proud mothers were sitting on benches under the fig trees, showing each other their new babies. It was a scene as far removed from hell as it was possible to be. She worried about Zoe and her daughter – where had they run to when the bloodshed had started, she wondered. May they not have been trampled by the crowd. Suddenly she was overcome with despair. Maybe her mother wasn’t hysterical; maybe a great disaster really was knocking at their door this time. The whole country had been divided up and parcelled out, so what was to stop the same thing happening in Smyrna? She left the room without saying a word, determined to find Mustafa. Juliette’s screams echoed down the high-ceilinged corridors.

  The streets were empty and the sky had clouded over. Looking neither left nor right, she took short, swift steps and soon found herself at the little square. Her own butler, Christo, lived somewhere around there, she thought. The ominous silence that had descended on her servant-less house that morning came to mind. A group of young boys with knives in their hands shot out of a street and disappeared in the direction of the Church of Agia Ekaterini. The coffeehouse owner was gathering up the tables under his arbour. Could Mustafa be in there, or had something happened to him? Where had those boys been going with knives in their hands?

  Jean-Pierre had said that the Greek soldiers were snatching fezzes from the heads of Turks and ripping them to pieces. Mustafa was always very attentive to his appearance. He wore his blood-red fez with its carefully combed tassel proudly. Pressing her hands to the steamy window, she peered inside. There was no one in there except two men playing backgammon in a smoky corner. She heard the sound of gunfire in the distance. The windows of the police station on the southern edge of the square had been broken and the open door was banging.

  The wind coming in off the sea suddenly gathered force; leaves swirled in the air and were joined by bits of rubbish. Edith struggled to stay upright as raindrops began striking her face like a whip.

  The rain began to fall in torrents.

  Her umbrella blew inside out.

  A window opened in the top floor of a house across the street and small white hands quickly gathered clothes from the line. She had to find a place to shelter. In her search for Mustafa, she had come quite a distance from the hospital. The rain was bucketing down with such force that the streets had already become rivers; the water coursing down the middle of them was picking up speed at a tremendous rate.

  A milk-seller goading his donkey turned the corner.

  Edith was soaked from head to toe. She again cursed the beige summer shoes she’d put on when she left the house that morning.

  Following the milk-seller, she wandered into one of the streets that opened off the square and took refuge under an eave, pressing her back against the wall of the house and leaning on her umbrella. The street was so narrow that in some places the eaves of the houses touched, shutting out the sky. Suddenly a confused and sopping wet dog appeared. Seeing Edith, he raced to her side, wagging his short tail. His black lips seemed to be grinning under his yellow fur, as if he’d seen a friend. He came closer, sat up very straight to begin with, and then, sliding slightly, leaned against her leg.

  The woman and the dog remained side by side in their waterlogged world.

  ‘You think I’m going to save you, don’t you, foolish dog?’ Edith said, touching the animal’s wet yellow fur with a white-gloved fingertip. ‘But I can’t even save myself…’

  A fiery lump was rising in her throat. Resting one knee against the dog, she closed her eyes. In that lonely corner of a faraway neighbourhood, she allowed the lump to rupture and flow warmly down her cheeks. Like the rubbish floating in the rainwater, her tears brought hidden memories to the surface from the most remote folds of her brain.

  Her mind touched on an old wound, a very old wound.

  In a dark corner of her heart, the longing for a half-lived love still burned. As tears streamed down her rain-washed cheeks, the crease between her eyebrows, the one that drove Juliette crazy, disappeared momentarily.

  The yellow stray lifted his black-rimmed eyes to the sky and glanced suspiciously at the clouds.

  Frogs began to rain down into the street.

  The Uninvited Guest

  The evening when Sumbul saw Edith face to face for the first and only time, things in the house on Bulbul Street (where, three years later, they would find me in their garden) were very confused. The atmosphere was tense, nerves were strained.

  It wasn’t only because of the Greek landing, the looting of the shops in the Turkish district, the frogs raining from the sky. That day, other things had happened in the house inside which Hilmi Rahmi had not set foot for years. Much later, when Sumbul told me about them, she related them piecemeal, all jumbled up and out of sequence, as if recalling a dream. It was I who put them in order.

  As she was telling me the story of the day of the Greek landing in Smyrna, I could feel deep in my bones the turmoil, the fear that came seeping through the doors, the windows. A story is not told with words alone. Dozens, hundreds of minute details complement the words. Only someone like me, who has given up words, can know this. Those who speak are always thinking about what they are going to say next; they forget to listen. The speed with which the speaker talks, their tone of voice, the play of light or shadow on their face, the moments when your presence is forgotten, the moments when your eyes are sought, even the smells that come off their skin, all of these details help you enter the world of the story being told. As you listen, a taste sometimes fills your mouth, independent of the words; in your stomach you feel the storyteller’s unease, their hidden passions.

  On the evening when Edith came to Bulbul Street in her dress the colour of pomegranate flowers, there was another uninvited guest in the house. A youngish man with cold green eyes, a tall fez and a trim moustache – Tevfik Bey. A perfect Istanbul gentleman. I didn’t say a word, but Sumbul added, ‘Do not be fooled by his impressive appearance, for there was definitely something strange about him. Everybody has something strange, something off-key about them. Everybody. Who could say what his peculiarity might be?’

  On that one night when she slept under the same roof as this young man, was Sumbul yearning to find out what his personal peculiarity was? On that one night out of the dozens that Sumbul
spent alone while her faraway husband raced from one war to another, did she dream of climbing into bed beside the stranger whose breathing she could hear from the room downstairs? And why not? Should a young Circassian girl who had not been touched since her son Dogan dropped from her uterus not feel tempted by the prospect of holding a warm body in her arms? What else could explain the way her green eyes lit up with longing as she spoke of this Tevfik Bey?

  Or am I making all this up to justify my own sin, to ease my own conscience? Is it only me who creeps into a man’s bed at midnight – and into whose bed, of all beds! – to satisfy an unsated appetite? Maybe this hunger is hereditary. One should not forget my own grandmother, Juliette. On a jasmine-scented summer’s night painted silver with moonlight she slipped into the room of Nikolas Dimos, who was sleeping under her roof. Let us also remember my mother, Edith, who, although she shunned the idea of marriage, never evicted the dark-skinned foreigner from her bed. Still. Still? Compared to my sin, what the women of my family did – the family I never knew – seems rather innocent, does it not?

  At first, Sumbul thought Tevfik was one of her brother-in-law Huseyin’s Unionist friends. The man introduced himself as such, did he not? Not as a Unionist, of course, but as Huseyin’s friend. At that time, 1919 by the European calendar, no one had the front to say they were a Unionist any more. During the evening meal, which Tevfik had insisted the women also join, Mujgan asked where they had met. To which Tevfik simply replied, ‘I am an old friend of the worthy individual.’ Then, like a juggler, his stony expression changed into a charming smile, distracting the women’s attention.