Once he made his decision, he slept very comfortably that night. In his dream, the dervish came again. He repeated his question: “O Hasan Bey! A very great calamity will befall you. Should it come in your old age? Or in your youth?”
As Hasan Bey was shouting “In youth, in youth…” he woke up. Uluç Bikem and the two girls had also awakened. He didn’t tell them anything. Only, “Go to sleep. It was a dream state, I shouted, take your rest,” he said, and didn’t close his eyes until morning.
When morning came, he ordered his horses to be prepared. He wanted to get some air, to take a long ride. As he was leaving the tent’s garden with his men, he saw five or ten beggars. These poor wretches’ clothes were in tatters. Their emaciated bodies were visible through the tears in their robes, they were swaying as if unable to stand from hunger. He put his hand in his bosom. He took out a handful of gold. Saying to himself “For my head and eyes as alms…” he threw it to these poor people.
He thought they would scramble for it. However, none of them moved. Then Hasan Bey asked, “Poor souls! Why don’t you take my gift?”
They all answered in one voice, “We are not beggars…”
Hasan Bey was astonished: “What is this wretchedness of yours? Then who are you?”
One of them came forward. And opening his hands said, “O my lord, look at my face,” he said, “if you pay attention, you will recognize me. We were the stewards of your eastern properties.”
Hasan Bey startled and recognized them all.
“What happened to you? What is this state of yours?” he cried. These men he had thought were beggars told their adventures one by one. The Chinese, the highwaymen, the Persian cavalry had plundered everything in the east. They had killed all the Turks they could get their hands on. With a thousand difficulties and hardships, only these five or ten people had escaped. The loss and damage was beyond calculation. Hasan Bey did not despair, “Don’t worry, there is no remedy but resignation to fate from God,” he said.
For exactly one month, every morning foreign beggar clusters came to the tent and said they were from the tent’s men. Hasan Bey had nothing left. His countless properties in Azerbaijan, in the Caucasus, in Turkestan, in Baghdad, in Damascus, in Rum were all destroyed, all plundered.
Misfortune was raining on this tent every day.
One day Hasan Bey’s men also rebelled. They broke, burned, demolished, and plundered everything they got their hands on. Hasan Bey fought with them with a few loyal servants. He saved his wife and children. He was forced to leave his ancestral home. For two days and two nights he crossed mountains and hills. Finally he came to a Turkish city. There, with the gold on him and his valuable weapons, he bought a house. He was as learned as he was brave. He would bring the mullahs to their knees before him. He became a teacher at a new school in that city. In his house, there was no one but his wife and the twins. Every evening he would come home, thinking that the calamity that would come in his youth was only this much, and giving thanks.
One day he was at school. Uluç Bikem had also taken the twins out for a walk. Voices of “There’s a fire, there’s a fire” were heard. The city people were running toward the neighborhood where Hasan Bey lived. Hasan Bey also ran. And what should he see? His own house was burning.
Saying “There is no remedy but resignation to fate from God!” he embraced the children who threw themselves into his arms.
Summer had also come. In summer, the school children dispersed. Since he had no place to stay, Hasan Bey retreated to a village. There he found a tiny hut for himself. He was working as a cowherd.
This village was on a large road. Every day travelers would pass, caravans would flow.
During the day, Uluç Bikem would stay in the hut with the twins, wash travelers’ laundry, and give them buttermilk and yogurt. Anyway, this village consisted of a pleasant inn and twenty or thirty huts. Hasan Bey would gather his sheep and goats and cattle early and leave the village, returning close to sunset…
One day, the Persian envoy returning from Rum had stopped at the stone inn, which was the village’s largest building, and had sent his laundry to Hasan Bey’s wife to be washed. Uluç Bikem washed these clothes and after drying them the next day, gave them to the envoy’s servant. When this servant saw Uluç Bikem from the hut’s fence, he was astonished. He immediately ran to his master, “Ah mirza, if you saw the one who washed these clothes, you would go mad…” he said and described Uluç Bikem’s beauty. And the envoy fell in love with her without seeing her.
Hasan Bey, as every morning, gathered his herd and went off toward the rising sun.
The hut’s fence was knocked on.
Uluç Bikem was feeding Turgut and Korkut. She dashed from the hut. She ran to the door. The poor woman thought another traveler had brought laundry. However, this was the Persian envoy’s servant. He said: “O lady! My lord the mirza was very pleased with the clothes you washed. He wants to give you this tip.”
And he showed the few gold pieces in his hand. Uluç Bikem didn’t want to take them. The servant insisted. Finally, when she blushed and extended her hand from the door opening to take them, the servant grabbed her and pulled her outside.
Uluç Bikem screamed and tried to resist. She had no weapon on her. The children had also arrived at this commotion. A few more Persians appeared. They all jumped on Uluç Bikem. They tied her up, gagged her. And putting her in a horse’s saddlebag, they galloped at full speed behind the Persian envoy who was going ahead, disappearing in the dust and smoke they raised among the hazel thickets of the road going to Persia.
In the late afternoon, when Hasan Bey dispersed his herd and returned to his hut, he found Turgut and Korkut at the door. Both said in one voice, “Father, today the Persian envoy seized and carried off our mother.” Hasan Bey understood that the most terrible of calamities had come. But he was not astonished. He did not cry.
“Very well, my children,” he said, “there is no remedy but resignation to fate from God.”
And he took the children’s hands. After putting a piece of bread in his satchel, with his eyes on the ground, his shoulders drooping, slowly, slowly, he took the road to Persia. They were walking on horseshoe tracks that were not yet spoiled. As Hasan Bey walked distractedly, the children were rejoicing, saying, “We’re going to find our mother, aren’t we?”
Night, day, morning, evening, valley, hill, plain they went, sleeping in the hollows of forests, drinking water from crystal springs.
One day Hasan Bey saw a wide water ahead of his path. The right side of this water was forested. He found the crossing place. He couldn’t cross if he took both Turgut and Korkut in his arms.
“First I’ll carry one across and leave him on the other side, then I’ll return and take the second one and cross,” he thought.
He took Turgut in his arms; to Korkut he said, “My child, watch us. I’ll leave your brother and return for you,” and he walked into the water. The water was passing his waist, approaching his shoulders. He was being careful not to be caught by the water’s current. He heard a bitter scream from behind. Korkut, who remained on the shore, was shouting. He turned his head. He saw a large bear seizing the child and walking toward the forest. He too began to scream. He hurried to reach the forest side again. His foot caught on stones, he staggered, fell, and the water also seized Turgut from his arms and carried him away. No matter how much he tried to swim and catch up, he couldn’t succeed.
Finally, he crossed to the other side all alone. There he sat on a stone. He took his head in his hands. He thought, five minutes ago he had lost both of his dear twins whom he had been holding by the hands, in one moment. Again he was not astonished and did not cry. He said to himself, “There is no remedy but resignation to fate from God!” and resumed the Persian road he had been following.
When he went to Persia, he asked and searched for the envoy. No one knew him. And this time it was said he had gone to India. For ten years he wandered everywhere in Persia. He couldn’t find a trace of his wife, finally he came to the capital. There too he started searching for his wife.
One day he was passing in front of an assembly. Inside, mullahs and mirzas were arguing. He listened, paid attention, it turned out that by the shah’s order, a Turan epic was to be written as a nazire to the Iranian Shahnameh. These scholars were making noise among themselves saying “You can’t write it, I’ll write it.” Hasan Bey said from standing, “O brothers, I too am one of the pen folk, if you wish, I’ll write this epic.” All the mirzas and poets there thought Hasan Bey was crazy, they laughed.
“Hey fellow! You’re a Turk! You know nothing but riding horses and swinging swords, go away to your business…” they said. Hasan Bey answered: “I’m a Turk, but my hand holds a pen as well as a sword. Try me once. Let me write, if you don’t like it, you tear it up and throw it away, you drive me out.”
The mirzas, aghas, ahunds gave paper and pen to this strange Turk for amusement. Hasan Bey sat down. In one stroke he wrote the first canto of the Turan epic. Those who read it were astonished.
The Persians had presented this epic to the shah as if they themselves had written it. The shah was a very well-mannered old man who knew very well the degree of skill and mastery of his own poets.
“There is no one in our realm who writes such verse. Find whoever wrote it and bring him to me…” he decreed. The Persians couldn’t hide the truth. They pointed to Hasan Bey. And the shah made Hasan Bey his chief poet as a reward for his capability and assigned him to write the Turan Shahnameh.
Hasan Bey was now saved from poverty. He didn’t think about his properties or possessions, but he couldn’t forget his beloved wife Uluç Bikem and Turgut and Korkut, as if he were in a dungeon in the shah’s palace, he spent his life desperate and wretched.
The bear that had seized Korkut had not eaten the prey, had not killed it, had carried him to its den and started to raise him. When summer came, this child found an opportunity. He escaped to a village. There he entered a lord’s farm. Turgut, whom the water had seized, had not drowned either. The water had caught him in a mill’s wheel. When the wheel stopped, the miller had run, saving this child the water had brought and adopting him as his own son…
Summers and winters passed. After ten years these children grew up, they became more and more beautiful. Perhaps because they were twins, at the same time they both remembered that they once had a mother, that their mother was seized by a Persian envoy, and that their father had gone to Persia to search for this envoy.
Both set out on the Persian road on the same day. And they met each other. And greeting, they inquired: “Are you Turkish, brother?”
“I’m Turkish!”
“Then we’re compatriots.”
“Of course.”
“Where are you going?”
“To Persia.”
“Me too.”
“Then let’s go together, let’s be companions.”
“Very well…”
“Very well…” they said. They began to cross valleys and hills.
They entered the capital of Persia. These young travelers were so beautiful, so handsome that even the palace heard of their beauty and the shah took both into his palace school.
Turkishness and kinship love bound these two brothers to each other so much that even though they didn’t know they were truly brothers of one mother and one father, they couldn’t stay apart, they rode horses together, studied their lessons together, did their training together.
A year had passed. These two favorites of the palace school had entered their seventeenth year. Now not only their beauty but also their heroism, their prowess in horsemanship, in using weapons, in archery had also become famous.
One day the envoy going to Rum requested two champions from the palace school to guard the inside of his residence. The shah wanted to please his old envoy. He gave him these two heroes he loved most. The envoy also took these champions resembling each other that the shah had bestowed. He brought them to his residence. He gave them the keys to the harem quarters. And he himself mounted horses and withdrew to his new post.
Turgut and Korkut had been sitting like guards at the Persian envoy’s residence for three months. Summer had come, nights had shortened, nightingales had started to sing. In front of the harem door was a mother-of-pearl divan. On moonlit nights, they would both sit here, become absorbed in the silver waters spouting from the fountain in the pool across from them, in the moon’s reflections, talking about this and that. Right above this couch was a latticed balcony.
Again the moon was rising, melting the clouds, drowning everything in a blue light. Turgut and Korkut, absorbed in the sweet scents the flowers produced, in the purple darkness remaining among the tree branches, were standing like that.
Both were born poets. The fairy of inspiration was beginning to wake in their hearts. Turgut said:
Once upon a time, fortune smiled on me too I had a mother and father, I had a sibling Persians seized my mother from my homeland My father, I don’t know what impasse he fell into I fell into autumn before seeing spring My sky darkened before my dawn broke. Water threw me into the mill wheel. I wonder what the bear did to Korkut.
Korkut answered thus:
You lit a torch with one spark. You flashed like lightning in my soul. I stayed in the bear’s den for a time We lived together, it wasn’t terrible. Tell me, companion, are you Turgut? If you’re Turgut, where did you leave our father? I had set out to find my home. At the first step I met you immediately.
When the two brothers recognized each other, they said “Ah my brother…” and embraced. Now they were crying. Less than a minute later, in these sweet tears, they heard a rattle. They stopped, listened carefully.
An impatient hand was knocking on the balcony’s lattice. When the rattling finished, they heard a sobbing woman’s voice saying these words:
For ten years I’ve been in separation For the sake of my honor, I’m in prison My sons have come searching for me They’ve understood, I’m in Iran My heroic Turgut, my brave Korkut My heart is with your father, my hope is in you Ah come free me from chains I have no strength left, my body is finished
The two brothers in one leap broke down the mansion’s door, went upstairs, also overturning the room’s door and entering inside. A woman with pale color, her hair scattered on her shoulders, was extending her chained arms toward the door, waiting in tears. They immediately threw themselves into these sacred arms.
The woman was saying, “Ah my children, I am your mother…”
They were astonished. They couldn’t believe it, they thought they were dreaming. However, this was not a dream, it was reality. The envoy who had seized Uluç Bikem had imprisoned her in his harem because she remained faithful to her husband. Every time the envoy went away, he would leave two guards at his residence. Uluç Bikem, who for ten years had not submitted to the Persian and couldn’t sleep at night with the pain of her children, had listened to the poetry of the young guards talking below and understood they were her own sons. She took them inside. And they began to live together. Thinking of their poor father Hasan Bey, their joy was diminishing, they were praying for his well-being.
Uluç Bikem would say, “Don’t worry at all, my heart doesn’t believe he’s dead. Since we’ve met, our great God will reunite us with him too,” and would console her sons.
Happy days pass very quickly… One day the envoy came. When he heard that the two guards were in the harem, without even deeming it necessary to investigate in his fury and rage, he ran straight to the palace. He complained to the shah. He begged for the immediate execution of the two guards and his wife who had violated his honor. The shah was a very wise and thoughtful person.
He said: “There’s no execution without trial. Let’s have them brought here, let’s ask why they committed this crime. After listening to their answers, we’ll hang them.”
The envoy couldn’t object. Anyway, the shah’s council had assembled. Soldiers went. They brought Uluç Bikem and the two twin sons. The interrogation was very tragic. As Uluç Bikem was telling how she found her children, how the envoy had seized her from her nest, the entire council was crying.
At this moment, the shah’s chief poet Hasan Bey stood up. Saying “Ah my wife, ah my sons…” he threw himself on the necks of Uluç Bikem and Turgut and Korkut.
The shah was so affected by this adventure that without listening to Hasan Bey’s pleas for forgiveness, he immediately had the envoy hanged. And he gifted his residence to Hasan Bey. And that day he made Hasan Bey his grand vizier.
Hasan Bey, Uluç Bikem, their two children were now happy. They all forgot the calamities they had experienced in ten years. Calamities are forgotten very quickly anyway. Hasan Bey was grateful that he had requested this destined calamity in his youth. If he had requested it in his old age, could he now see such happy days, could he taste the flavor of happiness?
Hasan Bey didn’t just remain vizier. The shah had no offspring. He had made his grand vizier heir apparent. A year later he died and Hasan Bey became shah of the Persian lands. In this way, like all the thrones of Asia, the Persian throne had also passed to the great Turkish lineage. And still, as on all the thrones of Asia, on the Persian throne too sits an offspring of the great Turkish lineage.
Ömer Seyfettin
