The Daughter of Smyrna
by Halida Edib Khanum (English Translation by Muhammad Yakub Khan)
Chapter 5
EVERY day as I left office I would take the road to Aysha’s house situated in the Kadak Pasha Street. In the Sicilian block and in our own house, Aysha was absolutely forgotten. My mother had given out that she had left for Smyrna and she never worried to find out her whereabouts nor did I ever mention her name to her. As for myself, I had taken a vow that day that I would make Jamal and his sister my brother and sister and I was true to my word.
Every new day that came revealed Aysha to me in an absolutely new colour which could not but command the meed of love and adoration from me. She was the self-same lady who ten years ago struck me as a plain country woman and I had to run away to Europe lest I should be wedded to her. Now her personal virtues dawned on me which none of our Unionist women had. She had her intellect and wits cultivated on the simple and sound principles of hard experience free from any shadow of doubt or ambiguity. Besides, she was well-educated and could freely talk in foreign languages.
Aysha’s mode of life was the most striking feature about her. She lived alone in a double storeyed building and Zainab, the green-groceress, was the only person in the locality she knew. Her black dress was patched here and there and she was busy with her needle work. Now she would do knitting work. Again she would prepare clothes for the children of the Smyrna warriors. She lived on the earnings from her handicraft or coaching-fee. Whatever of cash she possessed was reserved for the question of Smyrna and as far as possible she did not spend a penny on anything else. In this connection she went on a round of visits to several houses for coaching purposes but at none of these houses the inmates could get any inkling of the mystery that enveloped her.
People took Aysha for the widow of some officer killed during the Great War and as she preferred simplicity to ostentation, her ways and manners did not attract public notice. Notwithstanding these private engagements, she took full part in the Smyrna movement and rendered help to Jamal and others who in their leisure hours sent messages to Aysha.
Aysha was possessed of all those virtues that go to make a patriotic woman. She was an embodiment of vigour, determination and smartness, sincerity of purpose and spirit of self-sacrifice. She combined these with the important habit of regularity. Notwithstanding all these virtues, however, she had the attraction of children which won her the devotion of the people and inspired them with sympathy and support. Her distinguishing trait was that she scrupulously eschewed picking holes in others.
Ihsan remained in Constantinople. His brothers considered it useful for him to stay in the town. Aysha had great expectations of the disaffected tribes. She loved the youths of Smyrna and the tribes that were keeping up warfare in the hills. But Ihsan looked at it from a soldier’s point of view and would say:
“A regular and organised army alone can successfully tackle this problem and such an army can overwhelm even the English, to say nothing of the Greeks.”
Aysha, however, considered the mobilisation of a regular army as nothing short of a miracle. Nevertheless the irregular forces would at least cripple the Greeks for a retreat into Anatolia. Aysha felt sceptical about a regular army but Ihsan would smilingly’ reassure her, saying that, as soon as conditions called for it, these very people who were now directing the tribal disturbances would form themselves into a regular army. Was it not a fact that these disturbances were engineered by the military people? As Ihsan thus assured Aysha, his eyes reflected his intense longing to follow her as well as his grief at the thought that an officer of his rank and experience should be made the head of an irregular rabble. To Aysha, however, this did not matter in the least. To her all workers in the cause of Smyrna were equal.
We daily went out for a stroll, Ihsan and myself. This grave dignified soldier had palish cheeks, sparkling eyes and a breast aglow with the fire of freedom. As I pondered over these feelings that swelled in his bosom and looked at the emblem of War Office stuck on his collar, it seemed to me as if underneath his uniform he was wearing a shirt made of flames. I knew how these flames consumed the whole of his inner being. For, like Ihsan, I too had a shirt of flames around my body and it was a habit with Aysha to fan the flames of this mysterious shirt, so that the spark of independence within the hearts should not get extinguished nor should the storm of restlessness in the bosoms subside. This was a shirt which banished all exhaustion and all indolence and besides Ihsan there were many who were to wear that fiery shirt. The pair of a woman’s eyes which attract men with the strong ropes of love and scatter them in all directions may at times even fling them into the raging flames of Hell.
Such was the state of things till the beginning of March. The Anatolian movements came to be known as the “nationalist movements” and these had even found a leader to direct them. The centre of these movements was the nucleus round which the scattered forces of unrest and freedom coalesced. Aysha did not know the leaders of these movements. A section of the people there undoubtedly was which kindled the fire of disturbance, then recklessly and heroically jumped into its gigantic flames. Aysha was a member of this organization.