Читать книгу Tribes with Flags: Adventure and Kidnap in Greater Syria - Charles Glass, Charles Glass - Страница 11
Оглавление“Everybody is Turk,” the general said. He was speaking in English with a strong Turkish accent.
“Everybody?”
“Everybody,” he repeated impatiently, “is Turk.”
General Sami Oytun was the Turkish governor, or vali, of the last Arab province ruled, as almost all Arab provinces had been for four centuries, by Turks. He did not resemble the man in the large portrait behind his desk, the sophisticated and handsome, even dashing, man with blue eyes, dressed in white tie and tails, the familiar Moustafa Kemal Atatürk. Atatürk stared, as he did in one costume or another from walls in every government office in Turkey, over the shoulder of his vicar in the region he had forfeited but not forgotten for twenty years, Turkey’s southernmost province of Hatay.
General Oytun was short, wore gold-framed spectacles and had hair, cut close where it grew at all, nearly the colour of his brown striped jacket and trousers. The civilian suit was the new uniform of Turkey’s military rulers, and in it he might easily have been a small businessman or a brewer. A century earlier, his predecessor would have worn a red tarboosh, or fez, on his head and sported an imposing black moustache. He would have worn the uniform of an officer and ruled the province only long enough to make himself a rich man, before returning to a villa on the Bosphorus.
General Oytun was one of many retired military men rewarded since Turkey’s latest coup d’état with sinecures in the provinces. Fifty years old, speaking softly but forcefully, General Oytun governed more than one million people in nine districts covering 5,000 square kilometres. His seat was an 18th-century Ottoman palace in the centre of Antioch. “Except for the court,” a Turk explained, “he is responsible for everything.”
“Syria claims this province –”
“This is not our problem,” the governor interrupted.
“Does Syria do anything here about its claim?”
“You have seen that Syria puts Hatay on its tourist maps?”
“Yes.”
“That is all it does.”
On either side of the large door to his assistant’s office hung large maps of Hatay, the map on the left plastic and multi-coloured, the one on the right in relief and painted green and brown. The relief map gave the better impression of the Amanus Mountains towering over the shore and the depression through them to Antioch. In all maps published in Syria, the border was drawn further north to include General Oytun’s province, just as all Syrian maps called Israel Palestine.
“What are the percentages of Muslims, Christians and Jews?”
‘Ninety-five per cent are Muslim.”
“Sunni Muslim?”
“Of course,” he said. When he pressed a buzzer under the top of his large oak desk, I feared the floor beneath my chair might open. It didn’t.
“And the other five per cent?”
“They are Jews and Christian Orthodox.” In response to the buzzer, an assistant came into the office, and the general asked him to bring us tea.
“Any Shiah Muslims?”
“No.”
“Any Alawis?”
“No.”
I looked across the governor’s imposing desk and into his eyes. He was not a man to be contradicted.
“Everybody is Turk.”
The assistant returned carrying the tea, two small, clear glasses on a silver tray. I took a sip. With an inch of sugar at the bottom, it was as sweet as treacle. The governor, who had apologised for his English, offered me one of his Turkish cigarettes and lit one himself. He told me to enjoy the tea and wait for an interpreter before we continued.
I had arrived the night before, driving through the dark over the Gates of Syria, the Bailan Pass. The sun had set behind us, and where the mountain road took a sharp turn to begin its descent, we saw the moon. It was a sudden, spectacular vision, the full moon larger than I had ever seen it, its light reflected in the flowing waters of the wide Orontes and shining on the fertile plain below. The moon cast shadows from the high mountains which protected both sides of the vast plateau extending south through Syria and Lebanon, where it was called the Bekaa, to the Red Sea, and then on to the Great Rift Valley in east Africa. Ours was the northern pass east to Aleppo, but there were others which, like steps holding a ladder together, had since antiquity joined vibrant seaports with inland trading cities – Latakia with Hama, Tripoli with Horns, Beirut with Damascus and Jaffa with Jerusalem. The passages had always been open for caravans, invaders and refugees travelling in either direction. The larger, more powerful inland cities had always dominated the coast, a fact of history ignored at their peril by the Crusaders in the Middle Ages and by the United States of America when it stationed US Marines in Beirut in defiance of Damascus in 1983.
We continued along Alexander’s invasion route, guided by the moonlight. In the middle of the vast plain, straddling the overgrown riverbanks, lay the silent, ancient city of Antioch.
In the last century, the gates of the city were locked at night. Each quarter inside the walls had its own iron grilles locked shut by watchmen to keep marauders out. If I had arrived after dark in any century before this, I would have camped outside the walls. No one, whether native or foreign, would have travelled alone, and I could have had as many as fifty armed escorts for protection. In the morning, we would have requested permission to enter.
Luckier than an earlier generation of travellers or the first wave of Crusaders who laid siege to Antioch for months before massacring the Greeks, Armenians and Arabs inside I roamed undisturbed for hours on foot through the narrow, curving walkways that made up the streets of the old quarter. The ancient Zenginler Mahalesi, or Rich Quarter, had become the poor section long before my arrival. The place was deserted, and I wandered through an enchanting labyrinth of streets sometimes so narrow I could touch both sides at once, streets whose shade would keep the quarter cool on summer days and whose closeness would hold the heat of coal fires on winter nights.
The houses were arranged in winding terraces along narrow alleys. Overlooking the alleys were a few lighted windows, through which I could see huge armoires and large steel-frame beds. On the walls, painted in drab shades of green or grey, hung cheap calendars and posters, sometimes of Atatürk, more often of Sylvester Stallone. Most of the houses presented only a stone wall and closed door to the street, their windows opening onto central courtyards, with fountains and trees, flowers growing in rusted tin cans, tables and chairs for dining in warm weather, some with laundry strung on a line or children’s toys scattered on the tiles. The doors of the various rooms of each house led, not to other rooms or to a hallway, but onto the courtyards. The enclosed garden was the heart of family life, open to the sky above, but closed to the world outside. Some of the houses had been divided into two or more dwellings, with makeshift walls across their once lovely gardens.
At one turning out of the Rich Quarter was the Hamman, or Turkish Bath, still open for late-night bathing. Beyond was a wider shopping street, where cars were parked in front of shabby restaurants and shops which in the morning would sell everything from meat to newspapers. At another turn was a wide avenue built during the French Mandate years and at its end a large plaza. There, behind an ornate wall, stood a two-storey stone structure with a grand arcade and beautiful arched windows, the imposing Ottoman palace of the Governorate of Hatay. The palace, like the houses and the courtyards, was dark, and only the dawn would reveal the life within.
Antioch was the most “oriental” city I had ever seen in the Levant, on this or any other journey. Poverty had no doubt spared it the attentions of property developers, who had wreaked such havoc on Beirut and Damascus. I went back to my hotel, the shabby Atahan Oteli, looking forward to the morning’s exploring, and lay down to read the copy of A Tale of Two Cities I had bought in Alexandretta. “A solemn consideration,” Dickens had written, “when I enter a great city by night, is that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!
“Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this.”
The governor’s interpreter turned out to be a plump, dark-haired teacher named Ayfer Ozmen, who had a high-pitched voice and an unusual approach to translating between Turkish and English. Before she sat down on a couch, she coyly told me Ayfer meant “Moonlight”. Two men in green military uniforms came in a moment after her. She explained they had an appointment with the governor, but would wait until we had finished. “The governor told me before you came that Hatay was easy to govern,” I said. “Why is this?”
She spoke to him in Turkish, and he answered through her, “We don’t have any terrorism in this area as it is in Europe. We have economic power, and the people of Hatay are hard-working.”
“In the governor’s experience, has he ever seen any conflict among the religious sects?”
“I don’t understand what you are asking,” she said.
“Any problems?”
She and the general exchanged some Turkish. “Thanks God, nothing happened. These two gentlemen,” she said, indicating the two officers, “are in charge of security, and they agree too.” The two men nodded without smiling.
“I understand the Catholics have been denied permission to say Mass at St Peter’s Church.”
“I don’t understand.”
I explained that in the ancient church, hewn into the rock outside Antioch, where St Peter the Apostle reputedly held services for the early Christians, the governor had forbidden the saying of Mass.
She translated, “He would like to explain that St Pierre Church is not a church. It is a museum now. At the regular churches, there are services now.”
The general talked about Turkey’s application to join the European Community. “There is an Atatürk’s order,” she said, “that says every time you will have contact with Western countries, it’s nice.” The general smiled at this, as she did. The security officers did not.
I asked about security problems. “Accidents are the main problems,” she said, apparently translating the governor’s reply. “They get the girls in an unlawful way, to get married. I mean, families don’t agree, to let them take the girls to get married.”
“Is that illegal?”
“Of course,” she said, without reference to the governor, “it is illegal. This is done sometimes because the gentlemen who want to get married to the girls are not rich, they are poor. And we have the traditions, of course. The families want certain things from the bridegrooms. Since they cannot afford to buy them, they do this in this way.”
“Do they go to prison?”
“If they struggle, if they fight, of course.”
“Do you have sister killing, as in Lebanon, if a girl loses her virginity and her brother discovers it?”
“No,” Miss Ozmen answered immediately. General Oytun, who understood the question, corrected her in Turkish. “He says, ‘It’s not so common, but we do have the problem.’ “
For centuries, Levantine travellers have had to rely on translators, or dragomen as they were known from the Arabic word for translator, turjuman. Only those who had taken the trouble to learn Turkish were able to avoid my difficulties or the kind of scene described in his book Eothen by the English traveller Alexander Kinglake, who toured the Ottoman Empire in 1835. This is Kinglake’s account of a typical meeting between the pasha, or local ruler, and the visiting feringee, or foreigner:
PASHA. – The Englishman is welcome; most blessed among hours is this, the hour of his coming.
DRAGOMAN (to the Traveller). – The Pasha pays you his compliments.
TRAVELLER. – Give him my best compliments in return, and say I’m delighted to have the honour of seeing him.
DRAGOMAN (to the Pasha). – His Lordship, this Englishman, Lord of London, Scorner of Ireland, Suppressor of France, has quitted his governments, and left his enemies to breathe fora moment, and has crossed the broad waters in strict disguise, with a small but eternally faithful retinue of followers, in order that he might look upon the bright countenance of the Pasha among Pashas – the Pasha of the everlasting Pashalik of Karagholookoldour.
TRAVELLER (to his Dragoman).–What on earth have you been saying about London? The Pasha will be taking me for a mere Cockney. I wish to heaven that if you do say anything about me, you’d tell the simple truth!
DRAGOMAN. –[is silent].
PASHA. – What says the friendly Lord of London? is there aughtthat I can grant him within the Pashalik of Karagholookoldour?
DRAGOMAN (growing sulky and literal). – This friendly Englishman – this branch of Mudcombe, this head purveyor of Boughton-Soldborough – this possible policeman of Bedfordshire – is recounting his achievements and the number of his titles.
PASHA. – The end of his honours is more distant than the ends of the earth, and the catalogue of his glorious deeds is brighter than the firmament of heaven!
DRAGOMAN (to the traveller).–The Pasha congratulates your Excellency.
TRAVELLER .–The deuce he does! – but I want to get at his views in relation to the present state of the Ottoman empire. Tell him the Houses of Parliament have met, and that there has been a speech from the Throne pledging England to maintain the integrity of the Sultan’s dominions.
DRAGOMAN (to the Pasha).–This branch of Mudcombe, this possible policeman of Bedfordshire, informs your Highness that in England the talking houses have met, and that the integrity of the Sultan’s dominions has been assured for ever and ever by a speech from the velvet chair.
PASHA. –Wonderful chair! Wonderful houses! whirr! whirr! all by wheels; whiz! whiz! all by steam! – wonderful chair! wonderful houses! wonderful people! – whirr! whirr! all by wheels! – whizz! whizz! all by steam!
TRAVELLER (to the Dragoman).–What does the Pasha mean by that whizzing? he does not mean to say, does he, that our Government will ever abandon their pledges to the Sultan?
DRAGOMAN. –No, your excellency, but he says the English talk by wheels and steam.
TRAVELLER. –That’s an exaggeration; but say that the English really have carried machinery to great perfection. Tell the Pasha (he’ll be struck with that) that whenever we have any disturbances to put down, even at two or three hundred miles from London, we can send troops by the thousand to the scene of the action in a few hours.
DRAGOMAN (recovering his temper and freedom of speech).–His Excellency, this Lord of Mudcombe, observes to your Highness, that whenever the Irish, or the French, or the Indians rebel against the English, whole armies of soldiers and brigades of artillery are dropped into a mighty chasm called Euston Square, and, in the biting of a cartridge, they rise up again in Manchester, or Dublin, or Paris, or Delhi, and utterly exterminate the enemies of England from the face of the earth.
I asked general Oytun through Miss Ozmen whether he faced any problems with drugs. Apparently translating the governor’s Turkish, she stated flatly, “We, as Turks, don’t use them, as a nation.”
“I meant, is there much smuggling of drugs through this area?”
She and the governor talked back and forth for a minute in Turkish. Then she said, “The main source of drugs is Lebanon. He would like to emphasise that. Syria supports it, because Syria makes money from it. The drugs are discovered especially from the sea, because they are passing by the sea on our coasts. In the last two years, four tons of drugs were discovered. A great many smugglers were arrested on their way to Italy and Germany.”
“What were they smuggling?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Were they smuggling hashish or heroin?”
She asked the governor. “Heroin.”
“Four tons of heroin?”
The security officers interrupted her, and a discussion began among the four of them. After a few minutes, she said, “It was the hashish ...”
As I began to write down her answer, she added, “… which is made into heroin.”
“Hashish is made into heroin?”
“Of course.”
“I thought opium was the raw material of heroin.”
She conferred again with the governor and his security chiefs. Finally, she answered, though I was not certain on whose behalf, “A special acid is used to convert the hashish into heroin.”
The governor was smiling. He stood to escort Miss Ozmen and me out of his office through the main door opposite his desk. As we left, I saw him disappear with his security chiefs through a padded door next to the portrait of Atatürk.
DRAGOMAN.– The Pasha wishes your Excellency a pleasant journey.
So ends the visit.
