-To Dr. Abdullah Cevdet Bey-
A small red book that the Greek maid had given him just as he was about to sit down at the table in the evening had upset all his nerves. This was a propaganda pamphlet. On every page it said, “O Turks! Do not give your money to local Greeks. They themselves say that three-quarters of the Greek navy was built with Turkish money. Trade with your brothers, with Turks. Otherwise we will be ruined, we will die of hunger, bells will ring in mosques instead of the call to prayer. Wake up, wake up…” What did this mean? How far would the audacity of these scoundrels go? They were even knocking on the door of a civilized and gentlemanly man like himself who was completely free from religious and especially nationalist fanaticism. His appetite was blocked. He couldn’t eat a bite. In fact, he couldn’t sleep at all that night. He got up early in the morning. He took this harmful and dangerous book to the neighborhood police commissioner and demanded that he find these criminals who were sowing seeds of discord among the “Ottoman elements.” The commissioner was a blond and plump gentleman. He looked at his tall height, his narrow chest flat as a board, his clipped mustache, his black and full eyes.
“First, please calm your anger a bit, sir…” he said and asked with surprise:
“Is leaving this book a crime, sir?”
“Of course it’s a crime…” he shouted. His hands were trembling. He was chewing on the overcoat on his arm and raising his head with the majesty of a hero who had laid his enemy on the ground. The commissioner was still hungover because he had just woken up. He was startled. He looked at him again deeply. Could he be a great man?
“Who are you, what is your name, sir?”
“Mahmut Yüsri…”
“Are you an officer, sir?”
“No.”
“A clerk?”
“No.”
“Surely you’re not a merchant. Or are you a boarding house owner?”
“No, I’m a journalist.”
When the commissioner heard he was a journalist, it was as if he felt sorry for having paid him any attention. He treated him worse than kicking him out, saying “It will be sought, if found it will be found, if not found, what can we do, now search, get out! You have no business here…” He left the police station. There was still time before the ferry. He entered Orfanidis’s pastry shop. He drank two glasses of liqueur. Ah, this press law… If there were the old freedom that lived thanks to deputies like Büyük Boşo and Büyük Kozmidi, he would have reduced this animal commissioner to nothing with a leading article. This commissioner was not a commissioner, he was practically a boycotter. Because he knew he wouldn’t be against him, he didn’t give him as much importance as a wet chicken. And on top of that, an implicit insult… Or are you a boarding house owner, eh… So only boarding house owners loved Greeks. What a terrible disaster this mentality was! Was civilization, humanity, literature, science, philosophy and science nothing but love of Greeks and Rums? Was there any nation more noble than this nation, more gentle than this nation, more refined than this nation in the world? He was drinking his liqueur, looking outside at the street shining with the heatless sun of a late, lazy spring, thinking. Existence, happiness, poetry, music, pleasure… everything, everything was Greek, was Greekness… To deny this was barbarism. Our ancestors didn’t shout “Turan, Turan…” like today’s vagabonds, they called themselves “people of Rum,” they gave their poets the name “poet of Rum.” And Nedim… Was it even possible for such a great poet to emerge today? This genius, how beautifully he described “Greek love” like a pure Greek with Arabic and Persian compounds, how he sang with divine and mythical enthusiasm the sweat that formed on a young boy’s body in the bathhouse. The nationalists wanted to kill the Greek and Byzantine “Dersaadet” and replace it with a crude “Istanbul.” What a cannibalistic act this was. Turkishness meant crudeness; Greekness meant refinement… Even Larousse gave the meaning of “crudeness, boorishness” to the word “Turquerie…” While odes were being sung to their Altays, their Turans, their Kültigins, their Kızılelmas, their Grey Wolves, their Fallow Deers, their Çamlıbels, the ominous boycott was also bristling against sacred Greekness. He brought the glass to his mouth. He drank it to the end. While wiping his lips with his white handkerchief with blue edges, he said in a low voice:
“Ah cruel Europe, will you still sleep?”
And he signaled to the small waiter in white clothes looking at his customer with blue eyes at the buffet to bring another glass. If Europe gave up the struggle for interests for a moment and united, couldn’t it save this beautiful Istanbul from the hands of barbaric fanatics? Five or ten control officers would suffice. Ah, then how this delicate and perfect race of the Marmara would progress! In boundless freedom, everyone would immerse themselves in their work, their pleasure, their fun, their enjoyment. The old happy days of Byzantium would be born again with all their poetry, pleasure and joy would become religion. But alas… Europe was still giving them money to live, allowing them to become strong. How Istanbul had changed in two or three years! A few vagabond New Language people, with their homeland, hearth, oven, chimney noises, had awakened an ominous excitement, a nationalist fanaticism that Byzantium had never heard before. These people were pursuing an ambition of Turkishness against the Ottomanism that the Tanzimat, whose motto was the famous “without distinction of race or religion,” used in the sense of “internationalism,” even “inter-communalism.” As one writer wrote, they wanted “to completely Turkify us Ottomans, from our language to our spirit.” Two years ago, was there anyone who hadn’t heard of “Turan,” which no one knew what it was? The more he thought, the angrier he became and he trembled with rage. He had already forgotten how to laugh from his sorrow, spite, and hatred. He was always distracted. He talked very little as if he had fallen into melancholy. And in his narrow chest beat an endless desire for revenge. He would grind the heads of those who brought up the word Turkishness like a pomegranate seed, and he wished for Hercules’s mythical strength and gnashed his teeth. He brought the glass to his mouth again. This time he drank it all at once.
“Boycott, eh…” he said, “wretches…”
His throat was burning and he felt a bitter heat in his stomach. He himself was living in a Greek house. His cook, his servant, even the wet nurses of the nursing children in his house were Greek. Until now, he didn’t know that he had ever done business with a Turk and Muslim in his life, and he wouldn’t do so again. His friends, his tailor, his shoemaker, the owner of the restaurant where he ate during the day, his bookseller, his starch maker, even his shoe shiner were Greek. What would they do? Even if they killed him, he wouldn’t break his habit. His “Neo-Byzantine” friends like himself loved no one but Greeks and enemies of Turks, they had relations with no one. But they couldn’t yet reveal their doctrine. The environment was not yet suitable for this. Now they were only trying to create a national literature, that is, a Byzantine, a Greek literature with Arabic and Persian words and compounds. In their poems, they always used Greek mythology, Greek history, Greek legends, Greek traditions as subjects. Satyrs, Centaurs, Dianas, Thetises, Peloses, etc… There was not a column-length writing of theirs where at least twelve of these imaginary Greek captivities’ names didn’t appear. They kept writing and saying. But they still couldn’t say:
“We will create a Greek literature in Turkish…”
Later they would first remind everyone that they were free, then talk about Alexandrian literature, New Platonism, finally they would say:
“We are creating ‘Mediterranean Sea’ literature.”
All civilization, humanity, poetry, music, life came from there.
In this village without dogs called “literature” of the Turks, they would walk without a stick, they would try to Hellenize all their souls, tastes, feelings, and ambitions. But now they were seeing the Turcists in front of them.
He asked for another glass from the waiter. He himself was a complete “Neo-Byzantine.” He would say, “My language is Turkish, but my blood must certainly be Greek.” The boycott against his beloved nation, his blood relatives, the Greeks was driving him mad. He must definitely prevent this savagery, not weaken the beautiful Greekness in Istanbul. When the waiter brought the glass, he drank it immediately. He gave money and a tip. Taking his overcoat and cane, he went outside. He was walking looking at his crooked shadow. Those getting off the arriving ferry were passing on both sides of him. But because he was very angry and distressed, he didn’t see anyone.
He had developed a grudge against everything because of the nationalists. There was nothing left that wouldn’t anger him. He was angry at birds, women, men, children, the sea, the ferry, the cabin, the bridge, in short, all of life. A hand held his arm:
“Where to, Mahmut?”
“To the press…”
“It’s Sunday, man…”
“Sunday?”
The crises he had been going through for several days had made him forget his days. The holiday of the newspaper published in Turkish letters to which he belonged was Sunday.
“Where are you going?”
“I came to stroll to Moda.”
This was Nihat, one of his dearest friends and one of the leaders of the Neo-Byzantines. For how many years he had been propagating to everyone he met to spread Greek literature, Greek spirit, Greek taste, awakening a humanitarian and cosmopolitan current against Turkism. He was very thin and very dark. But he was taller than Mahmut. And like him, he had no doubt that the blood in his veins was Greek blood, because most of the population of his birthplace was Greek. And he could speak Greek perfectly. He was a poet. He was a Greek poet writing in Turkish. He was an apostle of the literary Greek religion. Now he was gathering disciples from young people who had denied their nationality. And he was writing, not publishing. One day would come, with the sun of his genius he would make this great Greekness rise again in Byzantine horizons, would revive it. He took Mahmut’s arm:
“Come on to Moda,” he said, “let me read you a chef d’oeuvre of mine that I’ve completed a quarter of.”
He would write his poems half a line, half a line and always start from the rhyme side. They linked arms. They walked past the Union Club. They had passed Rıza Pasha’s lot. Mahmut Yüsri told about the book the barbarians had left last night, then about the village commissioner’s treatment, that his nerves were shattered again. This boycott savagery had become unbearable. He should start making noise in the newspaper’s leading article and draw distracted Europe’s attention here. He would tell the editor-in-chief tomorrow. And if he didn’t write against the boycott, he would withdraw from this newspaper he had entered with such great and humanitarian, that is, Hellenic ambitions. They were approaching Mühürdar. Nihat consoled him:
“You’re upset in vain, Mahmut, you’re giving these scoundrels more importance than necessary, hmm… They’ll arm a fleet and extinguish the light of Greekness, eh, I’m amazed at their minds… A bunch of people aren’t listening to their books, their announcements. Greeks are still happy and rich as before… But soon they’ll see their Altays, their Kızılelmas.”
But Mahmut was very nervous.
“Ah mon cher, ah mon cher…” he was saying, gnashing his teeth, clenching his very thick and yellow hands. It was impossible for him to describe the hatred he felt towards Turks and Turkishness. When they came to the casino, they sat at a table by the shore. They had turned their backs to Istanbul. They fixed their eyes on the blue and white horizon where the Marmara met the sky. Nihat laughed:
“A toilet, a toilet…” he said. Mahmut repeated, wrinkling his pale face and colorless lips:
“A toilet, a toilet, a filthy toilet…”
This word “toilet…” was Nihat’s invention. He would call Istanbul “a full toilet.” And he would claim that everyone in Istanbul lived in filth. This elegant and brilliant comparison that this Greek poet writing in Turkish had found for Istanbul had driven the Neo-Platonists mad. A toilet… They found this image so exquisite, so clean, so extraordinary that in fact one of them had said to the nationalist opponents: “Even if Nihat doesn’t publish a line in his whole life, this ‘discovery’ alone is enough to prove his genius, his poethood.”
They asked for beer from the arriving Greek waiter. Very polite, chic and gentlemanly Greeks were sitting at tables with their women, constantly talking and laughing with their high but inaudible voices. A ferry coming from the Islands was swimming with an instinctive haste as if it would sink and drown if it stopped, and was shuddering a white and wavy line on the open blue surface of the sea. Mahmut took off his fez; his head looked just like a wooden doll’s head. It was pointed and crooked. He arranged his black and sticky hair with his hands.
He leaned back. Nihat was looking into the distance, his arms crossed, at the Mediterranean whose literature he wanted to create, at the Greek homeland. When the waiter left the beers and went, he turned to Mahmut:
“Mon cher, you’ve become very nervous…” he said, “if you don’t go for a change of air, you’ll get sick.”
In his opinion, the toilet had started to stink completely after the war. Those whose heads were spinning, whose stomachs were nauseous, who were feeling sick should catch their breath either in Europe or at the sacred Acropolis. They talked about this all the time, drinking their beers. Mahmut’s wife was rich. She could give him travel money. Ah, yes, the Acropolis… Athens, Argos… Agamemnon’s tomb… As Nihat told, the Greek spirit was coming to a boil, overflowing.
“From the toilet to a pure and gloomy tub full of Bilitis’s, Mnasidika’s, Criton’s intoxicating and stimulating, fainting scents, with love and pleasure dirt…” he said. Mahmut suddenly began to plan this Greek trip he had never thought of until now. Was it right for a poet who read and memorized Homer, who worshipped Greekness, to neglect the sacred Acropolis pilgrimage? And why hadn’t he gone to that country of color and light until now?
“I should go, I should get out of this toilet, even for a moment,” he murmured.
And Nihat started to read his poem.
They were emptying their glasses frequently, they wanted to get drunk. Two seagulls were flying as if chasing each other, landing on the rocks at the edge of the shore and immediately taking off and flying again.
Aphrodite… Aphrodite…
Aphrodite…
Nihat was reading his great and long poem consisting of two lines, gesticulating with his hands. The running and playing small Greek children were stopping and looking at them from behind.
“Ti telis vire, ti telis?…” they were laughing and joking. A light and cool breeze was undulating, bringing a sweet and dreamy mythical scent mixed with moss and sea smells.
Aphrodite… Aphrodite…
Aphrodite…
Mahmut’s head was spinning, a blue sun was opening in his darkening eyes, then from within white and bright lights he seemed to see the Acropolis hill, the Parthenon, the Pinakothek, the Erectheion.
Aphrodite… Aphrodite…
Aphrodite…
Life, pleasure, poetry, taste, truth, serenity, everything, everything… was there. He should run there, should take poetry and art from its source, from Greekness. Could an artist like himself live in this toilet? He needed the tireless and true temple of the old gods. He would enter this temple, would become aware of the secrets of beauty and art.
Aphrodite… Aphrodite…
Aphrodite…
The blue and white mirage in front of him melted. Venus was standing before him with her marble body. Around her, many young goddesses, completely naked – just like the girls in the famous Maison Americaine – were bending their waists and sticking out their breasts, making coquettish and exquisite reverences. Venus was walking towards him. Her white and tender feet stepping on a purple and very transparent path were about to touch his face a little more. Involuntarily, he pulled back. Suddenly he opened his eyes. He woke up. The beer bottle his arm had touched had rolled off the table and his heart had jumped from the noise. He collected himself. He came to his senses quite a bit. Nihat still hadn’t finished his poem. He was still reading from memory, gesticulating with his hands, narrowing his eyes, shaking his head.
Aphrodite… Aphrodite…
Aphrodite…
Ömer Seyfettin
