Birds Without Wings (82 page)

I find it hard to tell you about the state she was in. When I think about Philothei I realise that there isn’t much to describe. I mean, she wasn’t intelligent or funny or particularly interesting. She didn’t have any knowledge or education. She didn’t really have any high spirits. She only had
two ambitions. One was to be beautiful, and the other was to marry Ibrahim. No doubt she would have lost the beauty after a few children, and she wouldn’t have minded by then, because motherhood makes you too busy for vanities. In lots of ways Philothei was nobody at all and she only lived in a very little world, and she was destined to be ordinary. I expect that if she had lived to old age, you could have written her biography in half a page, and I expect that if she had never been born, it would have made no difference to the world at all.

But the fact is that everyone who knew her loved her. She was very gentle and sweet-natured, and she had no complications and no malice, and on top of that she was exceedingly pretty, and she loved pretty things. You could tell from her face and her expressions that she was sweet of soul.

So when I saw her at the bottom of the cliff, I could hardly bear the horror, because the stones had scraped deep cuts into her beauty. The cuts were more like tears than cuts. They were V-shaped, and full of little pieces of stone. Her clothes had been torn open. Her face was scraped to the bone in places, and the tip of her nose had gone. I tried to wipe the blood from her eyes, but they kept filling up again. I was saying, “Philothei, Philothei, Philothei,” and I could feel my voice filling up with sobs and anger.

She heard me, because she said “Drosoulakimou” very softly, and she smiled a little bit as if she was remembering me, and when I cradled her head the blood came out of her mouth and ran down the sides of her chin. I remembered that Leyla Hanim had called me that, and Philothei had learned it from her.

After a moment Gerasimos put his hand on my shoulder and said, “She’s dead,” and I realised that he was right.

It was then that I saw that Ibrahim and his dog were at the top of the cliff, two little specks looking down at us, and my soul filled up. I felt as if I were possessed.

In this rage of possession I shouted curses at Ibrahim, and now they come back to haunt me, and I wake up hearing them come out of my own mouth. I said, “May you never have a son to lay you in your grave, may you never have a daughter to mourn for you, may your eyes well up with blood, may your ears be full of howling, may your bowels fill with stones …”

I don’t know where these curses came from, because I had never heard the like of them from anyone before. When I hear them in my memory, those Turkish words that don’t sound right in this place, with my own
voice ringing them out from somewhere deep inside my chest, I put my hands over my ears, but nothing blocks them out, and I can’t forget them. I was full of the white rage, and this rage has never entirely left. Sometimes it has made me strong, but I would have had a better life without it.

The only other time I have felt that rage was when I found my son Mandras on the point of violating a woman, and I told him that he was not my son. I said, “I disown you, I do not know you, you will not come back, never in my life do I want to see you, I have forgotten you, my curse goes with you. May you never know peace, may your heart burst in your chest, may you die alone.” I said to him, “Get out before I kill you.”

That was a strong curse, but it was nothing compared to the one with which I cursed Ibrahim, even though Ibrahim was a friend of my childhood and was well loved. I have often wondered whether these curses that welled up from inside me are a sign that I am an evil woman. I sometimes wonder if, because of me, Ibrahim walked accursed for all the days of life. When I had finished cursing he just stood there unmoving, and he was still standing there when we were out at sea.

Of course I didn’t forget my son Mandras. I loved him as a mother has to love a son, and you don’t forget your son even if you announce that you have done so in a curse. To lose a child is the hardest thing that a human has to bear. Mandras died in the sea, just like my husband Gerasimos, and now I am here in Cephalonia with no family at all. I was orphaned by my own decision in Turkey when I was faced by an impossible choice, then I was widowed by my husband, and then I was orphaned by my own child.

Even so, I am not complaining. Don’t misunderstand me. I have had some happiness, and I am grateful for a lot of things. Home isn’t only the place you come from, after all.

Now I will tell you how we got from Turkey to Cephalonia.

CHAPTER 92

I Am Ayse

On the morning after the Christians departed there were very many of us who were left bewildered, and we were very sorry, and we began to be frightened about what would happen to them. They had so many things to carry and such a long way to walk, and as well as that, we knew that when Levon the Armenian and the other Armenians were taken away, they were killed only a day’s journey away, because Stamos the Birdman found them when he was going to Telmessos with a cage of finches, and out of modesty he went into the woods to do his business. He said that he found skeletons with holes and cuts in their heads, and there was clothing, and he recognised the headscarf of the wife of Levon the Armenian, and he said that when he looked at her bones he saw that her feet had been nailed to donkey shoes, and I know I’m no one to have an opinion, but when I heard of that I thought it was a good thing that Rustem Bey had brought back the daughters of Levon the Armenian even though at the time I didn’t care if every Armenian in the world got killed, because we hated them so much, but now when I think about it, it wasn’t our Armenians in this town who ever did anyone any harm, but the ones who attacked our army when we were fighting the Russians, and Levon was a good man and his wife was a good woman and his daughters were sweet-natured girls.

So some people decided to follow the Christians and help them on their journey by carrying things, and some of the men took their guns and swords because they wanted to make sure that the escort was behaving, and they followed on after the Christians and caught them up quite soon. Some of the women went, but I couldn’t go because, since Abdulhamid Hodja my husband died, I had no man who was a relative to protect me, and for the same reason my daughters didn’t go either, but we wanted to go very much and it caused me great pain that I might never see Polyxeni again, and so I gave an embroidered scarf and a coin to Nermin the wife of
Iskander the Potter so that she could give them to Polyxeni as another farewell gift, and I sent pitta bread stuffed with cheese and honey, and I asked Nermin to ask Polyxeni to come back whenever she could, and to tell Polyxeni that I would always keep the trunk she left in my care that has all the things from her dowry in it, and I will keep it until I die and after I die I will give it into the care of my eldest daughter, and like that it will be safe for all time. I am proud to say that even though the trunk is not locked I have never lifted the lid once, and neither will I ever lift the lid and that way my hands and my conscience will be clean and I will have no temptation even though I am poor. I wish I had had more money to buy things from her before she left.

It turned out that the Christians were not being badly treated, because the escort were gendarmes and not tribesmen, but they were still weary and desperate, and so it was that our people helped them to carry their things. They were astonished to find that Leyla Hanim was with the Christians, and she had nothing except a bundle and her oud, and I think to this day that Rustem Bey does not know why she went. They also found that Polyxeni was weeping and crying out because her daughter Philothei had vanished and had not come with them.

At Telmessos some Christians kissed the earth, and some Christians took a leaf or a flower or even an insect or a feather or a handful of the earth because they wanted something from their native land, and when the time came for the ship to leave the quay, there was much hugging and weeping, and promises were made, and the little boys who could swim swam out after the ship for a little way, and the women who had mirrors took them out of their sashes and they held them up to the sun so that the little flashes could sparkle on the ship until it was out of sight, and that way the sunlight of their native land followed the exiles even when they left it. And there were people who were saying, “A curse on all those who are responsible for this, we curse them and we curse them and we curse them,” but I never did find out who was responsible except that it was probably the Franks.

And it was said that the ship took our people to Crete, which is a land in the west, and it was from that land that some Muslims came to replace them, but not as many as the number we lost. And these Cretan Muslims are rather like the Christians that we lost, so that we wonder why it was necessary to exchange them, because these Cretans dance and sing as our Christians used to do, except that they have a new dance called pentozali which it lifts the heart to watch. A few of these Cretans speak only Greek.
At least all of our Christians knew how to speak Turk. Not that I am anyone to have an opinion of course, and one good thing is that my daughter Hasseki has found a good-looking husband among them who is a good Muslim and knows how to make locks and hammers and ploughs and all sorts of useful things made of metal.

And when our people came home from seeing the Christians leave, two very strange things happened. One was that the bell of the church fell off the bell tower of St. Nicholas, and broke into two pieces on the paving stones, and the other thing is that for days afterwards all you heard at night was the crying of the cats. They drowned out the bulbuls and nightingales, crying and crying, lamenting and complaining, complaining and lamenting. They were on the roofs and in the alleyways, they were on the walls and in the almond trees, in the courtyard of the mosque and in the cemetery of the Christians, and they were wandering about, distressed, crying that low moaning cry and some of them wailing, and it was a terrible sound and it was frightening, and I lay on my pallet listening to them, and I couldn’t sleep, and I understood why they were crying in the great sudden loneliness and strangeness of the town, and that is what I remember more than anything else, the crying of the cats.

CHAPTER 93

I Am Ibrahim

They like to call me Ibrahim the Mad, even to my face, because they think I am beyond understanding, but there is a little part of me that never went mad, and this little part is like a tiny man who lives in the corner of my head, and he watches the rest of me being mad, and thinks about it and makes comments about it, and sometimes when I am very mad he becomes frightened and hides in my head or somewhere else in my body, and doesn’t come out until the danger has passed. This tiny man knows that I am not completely mad, and it is he who is able to watch over the goats and return them to their owners at the right season, and it is this tiny man who cares for my dog Kopek, and he knows how to play the kaval out among the tombs and he uses the music to calm the rest of me down so that the mad part of me sometimes gets a rest. He is very good on the kaval, and the naked man they call the Dog who lives out among the tombs and near the tekke of the saint likes to hear him play it and sometimes he comes out and sits with me when I play, and he doesn’t say anything because he can’t speak, and anyway his mouth and tongue were destroyed by a red-hot iron. The Dog writes things in the dust with the end of a stick, and then he rubs it all out again, and he points at the dust where the writing was, and laughs. The Dog is the only friend I have now, because I am mad, and even Karatavuk who was my friend from childhood doesn’t talk to me any more because when he speaks to me it is the mad part of me that answers, and not the little tiny man who is not mad and hides in a corner of my head, watching.

When there were Christians here they used to tie the mad up in their church for forty days, and that would cure them, and after they left my family tied me up in there for forty days to see if it still worked, but there was no success.