The Daughter of Smyrna
by Halida Edib Khanum (English Translation by Muhammad Yakub Khan)
Translator’s Foreword
اسلام زندہ ہوتا ہے ہر کربلا کے بعد
BEFORE the Great War, Turkey was considered “the sick man of Europe.” Hardly a decade passed but, thanks to the machinations of the Foreign Offices of Europe, some slice or other was cut off from her European territories. If she still enjoyed a lease of life on the soil of Christendom, it was due to the mutual jealousies of the European Powers which could not agree upon the distribution of the booty. The Great War came as the last nail in her coffin. The mighty Ottoman Empire, once the dread of Europe, shrank to the walls of the city of Constantinople. The Sultan and the Khalifat- ul-Muslimin was a virtual prisoner in the hands of the Allies and the Sheikh-ul-Islam issued edicts at foreign dictation declaring Ghazi Mustafa Kamal and his band of gallant patriots as rebels, outlaws and kafirs who might be shot dead at sight. The “sick man” was now in his last gasps. The centuries-long struggle between the Cross and the Crescent was now over. The Crescent was no longer to “pollute” the sacred soil of Christendom. And as the British Prime Minister declared at the fall of Jerusalem, the Allies had accomplished what the Crusaders had failed to.
Man, however, can only propose; it is for God to dispose. While the last nail was being driven into his coffin, the Turk, animated by a miraculous spark of life, burst open the coffin, turned at bay and manfully faced the world. Out of the jaws of death, there sprang a nation far more virile, far more formidable.
The Daughter of Smyrna or the Fiery Shirt, as it is called in the original Turkish, is a story of this re-birth of the Turkish nation. Not content with driving the Turks bag and baggage out of Europe, the Allies let loose the Greek scourge upon their homes and hearths on the Asiatic soil. This “scum of Europe” left no indignity, no barbarity which he did not inflict upon the Turk. The sanctity of homes was violated. Venerable grey-bearded men, innocent babes, defenceless women were shot dead in cold blood. They carried fire and sword wherever they went. But out of evil cometh good. This very national humiliation roused the Turk to a new life. A wave of indignation swept over the length and breadth of the land and the whole nation — men, women and children — was burning with the passion to vindicate national honour. In the words of the story
“the nation had donned the crown of thorns. This was guarantee enough that everybody would rally to its succour.”
Aysha is the central figure, the heroine of the story. In Smyrna, her sweet little babe is shot dead in cold blood by the Greeks. Burning with a passion for the freedom of her motherland, Smyrna, she kindles the same spark in the bosoms of young officers and soldiers who take a solemn vow at her hand that in the defence of motherland, they would shed the last drop of their blood. Thereafter they plunge in the thick of the struggle and in common share and enjoy the thrills, dangers and hardships of warfare.
The name of Halida Edib Khanum, the writer of this most thrilling story of the re-birth of the Turkish nation, stands in need of no introduction. The most gifted novelist of modem Turkey, she undoubtedly occupies a place of honour in the band of patriots who are responsible for the liberation and creation of modern Turkey. In fact, under the garb of Aysha, she depicts her own patriotic fervour and her own adventures during the Turco-Greek War. During those dreary days when every inch of Anatolia was infested with danger, Halida Edib Khanum in person ran from one theatre of war to another and braved all dangers. After the war, she was the first person to hold the portfolio of Education in the Cabinet of Ghazi Mustafa Kamal.
The story is put in the mouth of a Turkish officer, Biyami, who has received a bullet in his head in the battle of Sakariya and lying in a precarious condition in the military hospital at Angora. Two of his thighs have already been amputated and the bullet is yet to be extracted. Being on the point of death, he wishes to record his own adventures from the end of the Great War up-to-date. This book is thus the memoirs of this wounded officer.
Needless to add that I venture to present to the public this English version of the patriotic fervour, sufferings and sacrifices of our Turkish brothers and sisters in the cause of national freedom and national honour in the hope that it may kindle something of that noble spark in the bosoms of the sons and daughters of India which is just now passing through the travail of a re-birth.
Lahore (India),
Muhammad Yakub Khan