Ahmet Tanpinar - A Mind at Peace

His friends sat in the rear of the coffeehouse, their backs against the garden wall. A garçon who’d known Mümtaz for some time said, “They’re waiting for you.” Should war break out, he, too, would be sent to the front.

The lot of them were gloomy. Selim fiddled with an envelope. When they saw Mümtaz coming they called out, “How’s İhsan?”

“I haven’t seen him since about three. But he doesn’t seem to be in any real danger. Only, I worry about the night. They say that odd numbered dates are always more difficult.”

He took a chair. He sank his trembling hands into his pockets.

“You look quite pale. What’s bothering you?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Troubles.” And with a hand in his pocket, he fondled the prayer beads he’d snatched from Suad’s clutch. I’m nothing but a child! I’m driving myself crazy! “Have them bring me something, would you?”

“What would you like?”

Wiping the table, the garçon recited, “Coffee, tea, ayran , lemonade, soda. .”

Mümtaz gazed at the man’s face and perspiring mustache through the lens of his student years. He’d once lambasted him when he’d lost the satchel Mümtaz had entrusted to him. Later they’d become friends.

“A tea!” Then he turned to his friends.

“What’s going on with you all?”

“What d’you expect? We’re talking about the march to war. . or not.”

Mümtaz glanced at Orhan’s athletic shoulders. “Likely so,” he said. He, too, was surprised that he’d pronounced this verdict. “If not today, tomorrow. There’s no other way out. Now that matters have reached this impasse. .”

“Then what about us? What’ll happen to us?”

Selim extended the envelope in his hand. “They’ve called me up to the district military office. I’m going tomorrow.”

Maybe they’ve sent a letter to Emirgân for me. Once İhsan gets better, I’ll stop in at the conscription office!

“You haven’t answered to my question.”

Mümtaz looked at Orhan stretched out bodily over four chairs. His swarthy face, trained on the tree branches drooping from the mosque yard, awaited an answer in its usual state of composure.

“We’re tied to agreements: If France and England enter the war, we’ll enter.”

Nuri was the most distraught of the lot. “I was going to get married this week.” In Mümtaz’s eyes the wedding gown that he’d seen that morning could change a woman. But no, Nuri was well-off and his bride wouldn’t be caught dead in such a tacky dress. She’d wear a prettier, fancier, and more fashionable dress accented with jewelry — perhaps the jewelry he’d seen on display at the Bedesten. But if Nuri were indeed drafted, she wouldn’t be that different from the porter’s wife. In the midst of a more ordered, more comfortable life, she’d weep for him, yearn for him on quiet nights with stirrings of complete physical longing, and when his absence was reaffirmed, she’d become the enemy of all humanity.

Mümtaz had been friends with petite Leyla since university. He’d given her the nickname “Pocket Lady.” She’d once darned his loose jacket seam, lowering her small head to her chest while, in a moment of intimacy, he’d observed the softness of her nape between curly locks and the line of her dress. Leyla truly was delightful. Now she’d lower her head again, but this time to weep.

“You can still get married before you go. . Or else you’ll take leave. Besides, it’s not clear what will happen!” Then, as if wanting to deliver himself of these troubles, Mümtaz took refuge in loose speculation: “Maybe war won’t break out and some means of reconciliation will be found.”

Fâhir: “You just said there was no recourse!”

“Everything hangs on and is held together by a thread. Do you want to know what’s truly horrible?” He paused, recalling the phrase of a poet of his esteem: “ Pire. . Pire destin. . ” he repeated. “The worst fate.”

“Yes, what’s truly horrible?”

“This insecurity. Life can’t seem to decide on its path. And it won’t, either. We know nothing of the era before the last war. We were only children then. But when one reads about it, it’s absolutely shocking. The sense of security and stability then! Finance, labor, ideology, social struggle, all of it developed on roads that had been paved beforehand. Now, everything is a shambles. Even borders change from day to day and hour to hour. International crises, and our nervous tension, can skyrocket in an instant. Maybe they’ll come to a resolution. But that won’t solve the matter. Because this state of insecurity and fear has befuddled the politicians.”

Orhan, with the same absentmindedness: “True, if this war happens, it won’t happen by accident like the last one!”

“The last war didn’t happen accidentally, either. Some believe that it happened because Poincaré wanted it to! Whatever the case, it caught the entire world off guard. Everybody distrusted their neighboring country and more or less armed themselves against each other. But the people on the ground didn’t give war much credence. They believed that it wasn’t possible in this century of civilization, that consent for this magnitude of death couldn’t be given. But today. . today the world’s in the midst of a civil war. Ideas alone are at war. Ideas themselves have begun to run riot.”

“But isn’t that just a small faction?”

“Not at all! Because these persistent crises have also exhausted more moderate factions and groups that simply want to live their lives. That’s why war is a forgone conclusion.”

Orhan, after entertaining thoughts of hanging a fist-size lock on the door of the chemist’s shop that he’d recently opened, said, “Is it all worth it for the sake of a small harbor?”

“Of course not, but it isn’t simply an issue of the harbor. It’s uncertain what will follow! Not to mention that there’s the crucial problem of Nazi tyranny and aggression! The man’s a plague on humanity.”

“Mümtaz, do you actually still believe in humanity?”

Mümtaz gazed at Orhan. “What else is there?” He resembled the stray girl whom Suad had mentioned in his letter.

“I don’t believe in it. And the spilling of blood for the sake of humanity infuriates me. What’s it to me if Europe claims to be in dire straits? When we were in danger, did they give us a second thought? Did Europe even once think of preventing the catastrophe of the Balkan Wars? For centuries your Europe has performed cold-blooded surgery on us. An incision here, an amputation there. They uprooted us like grass from lands in which we’d lived for hundreds of years. Then they transplanted other nationalities in our place as if planting carrots in a field of rice. Didn’t Europe do all of this? Hasn’t Europe nurtured Hitler and the current state of crisis?”

“But we could come to a mutual understanding that violence unleashed against us and others should end! And it should end once and for all!”

“And you intend to do this through warfare?”

“Seeing that there’s the threat of military attack, of course through warfare… First I’d repel the threat at the doorstep, then I’d try to prevent its reoccurrence.”

“Two wrongs don’t make a right!”

“Sometimes another wrong is the only solution. Surgery cures gangrene. Skin cancer can be abraded with a scalpel. Operations are terrible, but at times they’re the only available option. Not to mention that establishing a new ethics and morality is laborious and time-consuming. We assume it can happen all at once like a rising sun. But it manifests by means of suffering and trial and error, and through the resulting process of socialization. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Value judgments get absorbed through our skin, that’s how common and invasive they are. But they’re good for nothing. Because society doesn’t simply adopt what the mind conjures up.”