“What’s that? The novel you’re writing?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“A few epics.”
“About war?”
“About the lives of old heroes.”
My young relative, who had gained fame very quickly, sat down beside me informally. At the beginning of the war, he was a novice doctor fresh out of school. But by going to the most distant borders, working without stopping… by finding vaccines for typhoid, cholera, typhus, within one year he had been promoted from “extraordinary” and had become a major.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“To Haydarpaşa.”
“To the faculty?”
“Yes.”
I laughed: “What, another discovery?”
“No. Just an observation. A hypothesis…”
“About what?”
“About the treatment of tetanus. I think we’re finding a clue. Today they called me about the ‘opinion’ I sent a week ago. I think they’ll want details.”
Before finishing his words, he turned. He took the notebook that was closed in my hand. “Let’s read these epics,” he said and opened it.
“What kind of writing is this? All crooked and twisted…”
“Give it, I’ll read, you listen.”
“Go ahead.”
I took my notebook. I opened a verse tale I liked best. I began to read slowly. This was the story of an old cavalryman who, while being captured by two armored enemy horsemen, attacked them with a broken shield he found on the ground and cut off their heads. To make the young doctor properly feel this hero’s bravery, I was reading by giving my voice a melody, stopping at places describing the excitement of the duel. Because the wind was a bit strong, the deck was deserted. A thin man with a hat sitting on the sofa across from us wasn’t listening to us at all, was looking with attentive eyes, as if seeing for the first time, at the crowded shores of the beautiful harbor. When I finished my three-page epic, I asked, “How was it?”
“Good…”
“Hey, how about it, are there such heroes now?” The doctor laughed. He shook his head. “There,” he said, “the delusion of the poor novelist who thinks he’s ‘examining life’ at a desk, inside a closed room!”
“What do you mean?”
“Is your old cavalryman with the broken shield a distinguished hero according to today’s life?”
“Of course.”
“Then let me tell you—you’re extremely mistaken.”
“Why?”
“Today’s soldiers, officers, commanders—not just them; doctors, medical orderlies, even transporters, muleteers are a thousand times more heroic than your cavalryman.”
“That’s quite an exaggeration…”
“I’m telling the truth.”
How strange man is! When he encounters something contrary to his idea, hope, desire, he immediately gets upset. The doctor’s not liking my hero whom I loved so much almost hurt my feelings. I fell silent for a moment. I felt the sorrow of an artist whose work isn’t appreciated. This sorrow somewhat resembles mourning. The mourning of a poor father who sees his beloved child’s worthlessness, being humiliated, being killed… Yes, the doctor had no idea about art, about the soul’s need for romance. He didn’t know that when an artist can’t feel his ideal with all its excitement in the present, he turns to the romantic past. There are thousands of tribes living their eternal legends there. History gives these tribes colors and shapes in its imagination. He becomes enamored with them. He sings their epics.
“Alas, my dear, you’re a man of science,” I said, “you can’t feel the pleasure of the past.”
“And you’re a man of fantasy. You can’t see the truth of the present.”
“What beauty is there in the present?”
“What is there in the past?”
“In the past there are lights that today’s civilization, materialism have extinguished,” I said, “there is sublimity. There is the greatness of spirit. There is sacrifice for the sake of ideas. There is honesty, loyalty, faithfulness, virtue, generosity, compassion, love, passion. There is the ideal that is the true meaning of life. Then there is romance… Ah, now…”
“Are these not present now?”
“No, no,” I moaned. The doctor laughed. He looked at me as if pitying: “What a bad, what a wrong belief…”
The ferry was passing the Maiden’s Tower, the north wind was hitting us from the left, opening the pages of the notebook in my hand, as if wanting to give an answer to the young doctor who didn’t like my hero. I asked again: “Tell me, is there the warmth of the past in the present?”
“In the present there’s not warmth, there’s fire, fire…” he said.
“I don’t see it.”
“Because you’re a fantasist. Your eye doesn’t see reality. Just as the cart in the past is now in the form of an automobile, the warmth you ask about is in the form of fire. The arrow in the past is today a machine gun. The hut in the past is today a magnificent monument. The raft in the past is today a dreadnought. The storyteller’s dream in the past of getting in a box and flying from country to country is today a reality. There are the airplanes, there are the zeppelins…”
“But the spiritual virtues…” I wanted to interrupt.
“They too,” he said, “they too, passing through paths of evolution through centuries, have become so magnificent as not to fit in your narrow imagination… Imagine the pistol next to the forty-two. The sublimity of the past, the virtue of the past naturally remains like a child’s toy before the greatness of the present. The sapling in the past is today a great plane tree. Wait; for example, the most romantic virtue… isn’t it love? In the past it was felt toward an individual, a family, finally a tribe. Now this love has grown so much, has grown so much that within it the individual, family, relatives have disappeared like raindrops falling into the ocean. Think of today’s love of nation, homeland, humanity. What isn’t sacrificed today for the ideal? Beloved? Family? Hearth? Life? What? What? The individual in the past, through centuries, has grown in feeling, has moved very far from animalism, from physicality, has changed… Now his soul, his conscience is a world in itself encompassing a great universe…”
I was seeing: This young doctor, like many of his colleagues, was also somewhat of an orator. Three years of ceaseless struggle had steeled his nerves; performing operations without losing his composure for years in hospital tents over which bombers constantly flew, seeing terrible wounds, severed arms, split bellies, shattered heads, horrible deaths had made him completely a different man.
He was describing the moral value of the new war, its sublime greatness, its high sacrifices with felt excitement. His descriptions were mixed with abstract terms peculiar to men of science. He wanted to tell me not exactly what he saw on the fronts, but as if the synthetic result he derived from what he saw; in his opinion, the greatness of spiritual virtues in humans was proportional to the capacity of the mind. The social environments of old people were limited. Family, tribe, clan, finally people… The capacity of their minds was also at the level of the scope of their social environments. That is, it was narrow. In these narrow minds, in brains whose horizons hadn’t expanded, necessarily, virtues were also narrow. Even religion, divinity, the sacred were very limited. Civilizations had expanded the horizons of minds. The individual had begun to feel, to think with the consciousness of the society he belonged to, even of all humanity. Now virtues had also fit the capacity of minds, had grown to unbelievable degrees.
I was silent, playing with my notebook, smiling and listening. We were in front of Selimiye. Vagrant seagulls were flying over the foamy sea, a sailing barge was passing beside us. The doctor greeted someone on the sofas on the right side. Then, suddenly changing the conference tone of his words, he asked me: “Among your old heroes in your epics, are there any wounded in the battlefield?”
“Of course there are,” I said.
“Their wounds were in how many places?”
“According to the severity of the battle… Three, five, even sometimes…”
“Sometimes?”
“Even ten places!”
“Is this a lot?”
“Isn’t it?”
He laughed. “Look over there,” he said. He was pointing to the far end of the sofa on the left side.
“Did you see, that officer?”
A very chic, very young, very thin, tall, delicate, brown-haired officer with a large fur cap…
“I saw him,” I said, “the one you just greeted, right?”
“Yes… A strange coincidence brought me face to face with him at Çanakkale, on the Caucasus Front, in Baghdad, in Syria, in Macedonia. Always in the hospital, on the operating table…”
“So he was always wounded?”
“And in how many places? Guess.”
I calculated the war fronts. “Five places,” I said. The doctor laughed again: “No.”
I added one more to the number of fronts: “Ten places…”
“No.”
“Fifteen…”
“No.”
“Eighteen…”
“No.”
“Twenty…”
“No.”
“Twenty-five places…”
“No. Go higher.” Hesitantly, I said, “Thirty…”
“No. Go higher.”
“Thirty-five…”
“No!”
I couldn’t say “Forty…” This wasn’t possible.
“You’re joking, doctor…” I laughed.
“No, absolutely not joking. Shall I tell you, how many places?”
“Tell me.”
“Exactly forty-nine places…”
I turned in amazement. I looked at the young officer. He was tapping his cane on his shiny boots, watching Istanbul’s drowsy horizons smoking in a very bright mist.
“Lie.”
“By God, I’m telling the truth.”
I looked at the young officer again. Without turning my face, I asked: “Did he receive all these wounds separately?”
“No. In almost every battle, five or ten wounds at once… Once in Baghdad they brought him to me with eighteen wounds. A machine gun rain had passed through his feet, when he lay on the ground a shrapnel had exploded on his head.”
I turned: “How didn’t he die?”
“He doesn’t die. He has a faith; from his head to between his legs, four fingers lengthwise, between his shoulders four fingers widthwise, he draws a cross-shaped border. He says, ‘If there’s no hit in these areas, there’s no death.’ In Syria a bullet had touched his spinal cord. His feet weren’t working. I removed the bullet. His feeling came back again. Within a week he pulled himself together. He rushed to the fire, such determination… such strength… I can’t describe it to you… During operations he absolutely never lets himself be anesthetized.”
I looked at the young officer again. I couldn’t believe my ears, in such a delicate, such beautiful, such frail body, such a strong spirit…
“Where is this young man from?”
“From Istanbul… Let me tell you briefly who he is. The valuable, only child of a very rich family… Before the war he was studying in Germany. I didn’t listen. But I heard from his neighbors living in Erenköy, he was an extraordinary artist… When war was declared, he rushed to enlist. He took the sword in the hand that left the bow of the violin… Now in the whole army there’s no one who hasn’t heard his fame. Ask anyone you want.”
“What’s his name?”
“Ferhat Ali Bey.”
The ferry was entering Haydarpaşa harbor.
“I haven’t heard this name. I haven’t seen his picture in the newspapers either,” I said. The doctor laughed again, “That’s your mentality!” “You can never understand the new heroes, the civilized, that is, national heroes. They don’t condescend to noisy celebration, flattery, pomp, in fact they’re disgusted by such publicity. They say their heroism belongs not to themselves but to the nation, to the army. For example, this Ferhat Ali Bey absolutely never has his photograph taken. One night on the Caucasus Front, he had come to my hospital with sword wounds from Cossacks he had raided during reconnaissance. I wanted to take his photograph to send to the War Magazine. He refused. He said, ‘Showing the honor of the people, of the army as if it’s a quality particular to my own person is theft.’ I too didn’t understand at first, like you. I told him the heroic deeds he did. He said, ‘These are all duties…’ ‘Millions of soldiers are doing their duty, so we should take all their photographs and print them in newspapers…'”
“Wanting complete obscurity, oblivion… This is a strange desire!” I said.
“No, he doesn’t want complete oblivion. I talked with him at length in my hospital. I understood his soul. He says, ‘Reward for the dead is the memory of the living.’ In his opinion, a hero should be celebrated after dying, after mixing into eternal life. Celebration and reward while alive spoils the disinterestedness of heroism, of sacrifice. Virtue passes from an unconscious state, free from consideration of benefit, to a conscious state. It belittles, degrades its owner.”
The ferry was docking, passengers were standing up. The doctor said, “Come on, get off at Haydarpaşa… let me introduce you to him as we leave.”
“Okay!”
My heart was beating…
We got up, he was also standing, leaning on his cane.
The doctor went before him. He shook his hand: “How are you, Ferhat Bey?”
“Very well, sir.”
“I saw you, I couldn’t come to you, I couldn’t leave my nephew. Let me introduce you…”
“Thank you.”
“Reserve officer Ferhat Ali Bey!”
“Thank you,” I said, shaking his nervous hand.
The doctor began talking with this nameless hero. I was standing with the silence of a sinful believer feeling a religious pleasure before a sacred body, looking at his large blue eyes, his high forehead, his refined face that resembled no one, feeling a deep shiver inside me.
“Are you here now, doctor bey?”
“Yes, you?”
“I’m probably here for a while too…”
We started walking, the young officer was limping slightly. The doctor asked: “Is your leg numb? Let’s stop, let the people go out.”
“No, let’s walk,” he said, “it’s not numb. This time in Galicia a cannonball got it.”
“Your leg?”
“Yes, my right leg!”
We both froze. He was smiling, “But thank God, what I feared didn’t happen,” he said.
“Yes, I was terrified that during this war I would be retired and thrown into a corner, assigned to supplies or something.”
The doctor, paling, suddenly losing his cheer, asked with sorrowful compassion: “But how will you go to war now?”
“Very comfortably… Not by car, not on horse, and not on foot…”
“How?”
“By airplane.”
“?”
“Yes, yesterday the ministry approved my request. They assigned me to the aviator class. In aviation there’s no need for legs. A person will wage war while sitting, comfortably… And thousands of meters up, among the clouds… What pleasure, what pleasure!”
The doctor’s voice, my voice wouldn’t come out. We were descending from the pier. Looking at this new, this civilized, this national hero who couldn’t yet use his artificial leg well, I wanted to throw my notebook of old heroes’ epics into the sea. As if it were something to be ashamed of, involuntarily I folded this lowly notebook and hid it in my pocket. We passed through the wooden railing where tickets were collected. At the entrance of the station’s wide marble stairs, he shook our hands. As he was leaving, he said to the doctor, “Besides, my dear, I was tired of being wounded,” he said, “in airplanes there’s none of this… I’m most happy about this.”
Walking beside the station garden, the doctor asked: “How about the new heroes?”
I couldn’t answer. I was thinking that these heroes flying with the wings of science in the eternal blues of the high sky would never be wounded; that the certain death waiting under the clouds would never make them feel any lasting pain, any physical sorrow.
