‘In the midst of war,’ he says, ‘I think that people believe they have become part of something greater than themselves. But often they have become something less. Less human. They become part of a machine; and a machine has no morality. I do not speak about any particular army when I say this.’ He lowers his voice. ‘I could be court-martialled for saying this, but I have little doubt that there have been atrocities committed by all sides. Now we have to relearn how to see one another as people.’
It reminds her of something, she reaches for it. The Persian poet, Rumi. He wrote of seeing each other across states, of seeing them for who they are. Actually: seeing was not the precise word he had used. It was loving.
‘I do not mean in any way to paint myself as a hero. Believe me … I am not that.’ He gives a short, joyless laugh. ‘Before, when you told me of your husband, I was perhaps not as honest as I might have been. For these few years at least, half of me has been a soldier; has thought as a soldier. I am certain that I was not involved in any way in his death: I was not part of the main offensives. But I have carried a rifle, a knife. I have not used them as much as some. And I did use them, once, when I had to.’ At this she feels the shadow of some unspoken memory pass over their heads. ‘But the other half is a doctor. And it is what we are taught. To save life, no matter who our patient is, with no qualifications. And so you see the problem. You brought the boy to me. I have treated him, and he is my patient now. I urge you in the strongest terms not to remove him from my care.’
As she makes the journey back to the apartment she is filled with a new resolve. To make Kerem understand, to appeal to the kind, gentle schoolteacher that must remain in some small hidden part of him. In return, to try to understand him, what has made him the man he is now, even if she is not certain she has the stomach for it. Most importantly, to try to remember how to love him.
The Prisoner
He hears of a place where others like himself congregate. Men who have given everything to their homeland and returned to find themselves shunned by those they fought for, treated not as heroes but pariahs. It is on the outskirts of the city, in Eyüp: conveniently out of the way enough that it has been overlooked by the occupiers who are wary of any gathering of Ottoman men. They have been known to arrest groups in the cafes along the quays, smoking their narghile pipes, for the mere crime of ‘looking suspicious’.
Here the hopelessness that he feels, hiding in that tawdry place with his grandmother and insensible mother, while his sister goes out into the city … here it vanishes. Here his experience, as a soldier, as a survivor, is valued. His physical degradation, his wasted limbs, his scabs, his abscesses, are viewed not as something repellent – he is certain that Nur is disgusted by them, though she tries to hide it from him – but as badges of his endurance. And he is certainly not alone in bearing them. If they were visited in the Russian camps variously by hypothermia, frostbite, malaria, the survivors of the English camps in the desert knew heatstroke and starvation. The starvation was the worst, for if men did not die of it alone it found new ways to blight them. Pellagra: a disease with a rather pretty name, the name of a young woman – yet with consequences as ugly as could be imagined. The skin rotting upon the bone. Its sister, trachoma – which made men go blind. His own various scars will fade, perhaps, but these men will never regain their eyesight.
Mostly the men talk of the past they have shared. They mourn dead friends – so many Babeks – and boast of glorious moments of personal heroism. Or seduction: amorous Russian women in the villages near the prison camps there, whores who refused to take payment from men so virile. Most of these stories are too preposterous to be believed. But no one would think to challenge them. They are the last comfort accorded to their tellers. None of them speaks of the things that happened in East Anatolia, toward the border with Syria; none of them mentions the Armenians. But he thinks that he can see it in some of them; they wear it upon them. When brief mention is made of the names of places – Bitlis, Erzurum, Van – there is an almost palpable tightening of the atmosphere, as though two thirds of the men present are holding their breath.
Perhaps they are all waiting, like him, for one of them to find the courage to speak of it. But none of them does. How would one even begin to articulate it, after all this time? So it lingers about them, shadows in the corners of the room.
‘I hoped that I would one day see you here, old friend.’
It is the officer from the prison camp. The elegance that had been palpable even in that desperate place is now evident in the neatly pressed clothes, the small gold ring upon his hand, the expensive shine of his leather shoes. ‘The war hero.’
He looks at the man sharply. Is he being mocked? No – he doesn’t think so.
‘I do not feel that way.’
‘No. But you must remember that you are.’
‘I keep thinking of them. I
