Young Turk (38 page)

I also started trying to write poetry and published a couple of poems in the college magazine. Sadly, they turned out to be pathetic parodies of Hikmet’s verses – even I could tell that. Indeed, I might well have given up poetry then, had not Âşιk Ahmet pronounced that some of the metaphors had contained ‘sparks of originality’.

Within a year or so, I became the principal distributor of Hikmet’s poetry to all the secondary-school students along the Bosporus’ European shore. On two occasions, I was caught red-handed and arrested – denounced, according to Âşιk Ahmet, by some retrograde teachers from those schools. The first time, I ended up at the local police station and the duty officer released me with a caution. The second time, I was taken to the district station, where the chief of police decided that I needed to be taught a lesson. So I was roughed up a bit. The blows, threats and insults barely hurt, but the state of fear, which carries with it a taste like rotten meat, induced in me a paralysis that still afflicts me today. I was also warned that I now possessed a dossier, entirely allocated to my august little self, prominently placed in the ‘pending’ tray of the National Security Organization; a third offence would see me looking at the sun from behind bars.

Then, in no time at all, it was 1950.

May brought Adnan Menderes and his Democratic Party to power. Those of us who swaggered as Hikmet’s
aficionados
felt our spirits rise. There would be an amnesty; the gaols would be emptied; that was the convention after elections. And since, for some time, influential groups and student organizations had been campaigning for Hikmet’s release, we believed the new government would disregard its abhorrence of communism and free him forthwith. We held on to these expectations even when old-timers warned us that the growing paranoia against any leftist views, churned up by the US’s mighty propaganda machine – and pushed into a frenzy after the outbreak of the Korean war – was even more virulent than the one that had led to Hikmet’s imprisonment.

Matching this hysteria with fulminous ire, we mimeographed even more fervently.

July came. Reports that Turkey had been invited to join NATO began to fuel further anti-communist delirium. Those who cautioned that the price of admission to that ‘elite organization’ would be countless soldiers’ lives because Turkey would be coerced into participating in the Korean war were hounded and, in some cases, prosecuted and gaoled.

Then, on 15 July, as we began to despair of an amnesty for Hikmet, he was released.

Our joy was unsurpassable. It made us believe that defenders of the word could never be defeated, that Fate somehow contrived to protect them, sometimes even used, paradoxically, repressive regimes like that of Menderes, to give them back their pens.

I spent the rest of the summer mimeographing. Some weeks I barely slept. But I didn’t care. I was permanently euphoric. My hero was free; even more importantly, so were hitherto unknown batches of his work. Hikmet, anxious to publish again, was collecting the poems he had written in prison from those relatives and friends to whom he had given them for safekeeping. Many of these found their way to Âşιk Ahmet. He, in turn, passed them on to us, the mimeographers. Soon, people heard of these poems and inundated us with requests for copies. This provoked the ever-active reactionary worms to defame Hikmet even more savagely; we, his devotees, were branded as his ‘
moujiks
, odalisques and catamites’.

But we, his
moujiks
, odalisques and catamites, laughed at them. We bared our chests and challenged them to engage us. We told them they were a dying breed; that we had no sympathy for their death throes; we were Atatürk’s children engaged in important work. We even claimed that Atatürk had dearly loved Hikmet and that, but for his death, he would have protected him from the fascists who had gaoled him. And we proclaimed Hikmet’s famous poem from prison to his first wife, Piyale, as our anthem:

They are the enemies of hope, my love,

enemies of running water

of trees fruiting in their season

of life spreading itself and maturing.

Because death has stamped their foreheads –

the rotting teeth, the flaking flesh.

And certainly, my darling, absolutely certainly,

freedom

will roam this beautiful country

swinging its arms

dressed in its most glorious habit,

its workers’ dungarees.
³

Would youth of such calibre give a fuck about armoured generals, bloated politicians and godless men of god?

The rest of the year streaked away in a gallop.

My devotion to our clandestine press soon propelled me into Hikmet’s orbit. Here and there, I attended the readings he gave for his friends. Occasionally, I even spoke to him; or rather he spoke to me and I stared at him in awe. As Âşιk Ahmet had described him, he was Orpheus reincarnated.

Once, in the grounds of an admirer’s villa, he put his arm around me as if I were his compeer and suggested, as we walked around the orchard, that we free-associate with the feelings that the various fruit trees elicited from us. I stammered some inanities like the mulberry being a nipple that gushed answers to life’s mysteries, the peach a symbol of the perfection of the world and the fig a depository of seeds capable of repopulating the earth. He generously praised these pretentious associations and then remarked that while a fruit was a miracle in itself, the tree that bore it was an even greater miracle. And pointing at the trees around us, he showed me how each one with its singular strength and beauty stood witness to the great, but mysterious design of Creation. His praise of the trees reminded me of the famous lines from
Kuvâyi Milliye
, his epic about the War of Independence:

To live like a tree single and free

And in brotherhood like a forest

That is our aspiration ...
⁴

Physically, too, he was the most striking man I have ever met: tall, lively, with a large elongated head, thick Titian hair like a perpetual sunrise and a natural elegance. An ever-present pipe that he either sucked with relish or used like a conductor’s baton enhanced his authority. For me, the trait that really summed him up was the way his eyes constantly smiled – as if he were witnessing a new miracle every time he looked at something. How had the clear blue depths of those eyes withstood, one wondered, the desolation of long years in prison. (A joke doing the rounds at the time thanked Providence for keeping Hikmet and Atatürk apart even though they had been forged in the same crucible, Salonica. For both were so dazzling in appearance that anybody seeing them together would have been confused as to whom to worship.)

Soon, however, we began to be concerned about his future. He had a heart condition and needed to avoid stress. But, short of funds, and unable to find employment within an Establishment that treated him like a pariah, he and his second wife, Münevver, had had to accept hospitality first from a close comrade, then from his mother. Eventually an old friend had offered him work in a film studio and the Hikmets had moved in to a basement flat.

Our greatest fear was the constant threat that he might be rearrested and sent to prison again. The government saw his popularity, particularly among intellectuals, left-wing organizations and students, as a likely source of opposition. Consequently, the police kept him under permanent surveillance and, to emphasize the menace, did so openly. Moreover, the fact that he had become an international celebrity – the 2nd World Peace Congress in Warsaw had just awarded him, together with Pablo Neruda, Pablo Picasso, Wanda Jakubowska and Paul Robeson, its peace prize – made him an even more charismatic adversary. (Needless to say, because of the government’s anti-communist stand, he could not travel to Poland to collect the award. Neruda had accepted it on his behalf.)

By spring 1951, which should have been an exceptionally happy time because his wife had just given birth to their son, Memed, we were at our wits’ end. We kept hearing, on the grapevine, that in defiance of international opprobrium, the authorities were seeking new ways to indict him.

In response to this threat, some of Hikmet’s closest friends began investigating the possibility of smuggling him out of the country. The USSR was mooted as the most likely country to offer him asylum.

Then, early in June, the government struck. Hikmet received call-up papers informing him that since his years in prison had interrupted his military service, he was now required to complete that obligation at a posting in eastern Anatolia.

A day or so later, Âşιk Ahmet summoned me to his office. He related all the events leading to Hikmet’s conscription: how the poet’s earlier efforts to secure exemption from military service on the grounds of ill health had failed; and how a specially appointed, and therefore skewed, medical committee had found him fully fit. We all knew that eastern Anatolia, where he had to serve, was a mountainous region with extremely harsh winters. Given Hikmet’s heart condition, the posting was a death sentence. He would be dead within six months.

Then, swearing me to absolute secrecy, Âşιk Ahmet informed me that he and his friends had devised a plan to whisk Hikmet to the USSR. Bearing in mind the round-the-clock surveillance on the poet, the plan was quite convoluted and required a few auxiliaries to act as decoys. Since these auxiliaries would not be involved with the actual escape, they would not, in all likelihood, face any danger. However, every covert operation, by its very nature, carried a degree of risk and the same held true of this one. If by some mischance something went wrong and the decoys were spotted, they might be arrested, even maltreated.

There he paused and scrutinized me.

I engaged his eyes. I had read the question he had left hanging in the air. My heart began to beat frantically. ‘You want me to be one of the decoys?’

He smiled. ‘You lovely Jew, you!’

He had addressed me in this manner God only knows how many times. But, on this occasion, it riled me. ‘Why do you always call me that?’

He stared at me in surprise. ‘Call you what?’

‘Jew.’

‘Does it offend you?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Why?’

‘It sounds anti-semitic. Coming from someone like you, it doesn’t make sense. You don’t address any of the other boys by their race. You don’t call Agop “you lovely Armenian”, or Takis “my devilish Greek” ...’

‘I do.’

‘I’ve never heard you.’

‘Haven’t you? I’m sure I do. I certainly do in my mind.’

‘In your mind ...?’

He became as passionate as when reciting a poem. ‘I do it in celebration. I swear to you. Because it’s like being in a beautiful garden and calling every flower by its name. The joy of pluralism. Of difference. Of diversity.’

‘I see.’

‘You don’t look too convinced. And you have a valid point. Why do I call you “Jew” out loud – often without even realizing I’m doing it – and address the others only in my mind?’

‘It’s all right, sir. It doesn’t matter ...’