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CHAPTER 5 – TWO SHIRTS OF FLAME
166
illness. In
Yaban
not only is the notebook half burnt but the villagers did not know
anything about its owner because he was a stranger like the members of the
delegation who were asking them. It is also striking that the narration in Halide
Edip’s novel is declared at the end to be a hallucination while
Yaban
is written as if it
is one.
The fragments of Yakup Kadri’s
Ateşten Gömlek
also have a first person narration
and the concluding scene consists of a visit by the narrator to a dying man in
hospital.
Another striking similarity and association is between the published excerpt from
Yakup Kadri’s
Ateşten Gömlek
and a real life episode in
The Turkish Ordeal.
For this
to become apparent and because the passage by Yakup Kadri is not well known, they
are quoted here in full. Yakup Kadri’s text has not been previously translated and the
version here is mine. The first instalment starts with an introductory note by the
editorial committee
13
:
The Shirt of Flame
How well Rüşen Eşref Bey spoke. Yakup is an eternal traveller and
creates all his works in his travels and returns to Istanbul from every
country and from every place with a new flavor. This time also he
returned from Anatolia with the novel The Shirt of Flame in his hands
which is the poem of Anatolia’s fearsome mountains, of deserted valleys,
of noises, of rebellions and of freedom’s and the nation’s common
exuberance.
13
Dergâh, vol. II, no. 18, 5 January 1922. The full text is in Appendix 1, Fragment A.
CHAPTER 5 – TWO SHIRTS OF FLAME
167
Publishing Committee
Woman and Punishment:
In these grey Anatolian villages, these Anatolian villages which are far
from any other place, forgotten, oppressed and oppressive, why am I
afraid of the wanderings of this phantom which does not leave me for a
moment? Why can I not place her inside this bare decor, in this grey
decor of poverty and solitude? What is the fear from these barefoot
women in red garments? These women who are probably her equals in
their femininity. ...maybe… They are better than her, and, in their sex’s
disposition, may be more powerful than her.
Cennet, is one of the village's sweethearts, who, despite her cracked and
black heels, who knows how many men she had subjugated! She is only
a nineteen year old woman. She was married three times. First in her own
village, then in another village, then here… They say that her first
separation was because of a murder. The second was more mysterious,
one day her husband left the village without telling anybody and without
leaving any trace behind and never to return. It is for this reason that in
that village they consider her to be a witch and in order to protect the
young men who were left behind from evil they no longer let her inside
their borders.
Here Cennet belonged to a man with two wives. This man was in the
army when I came here. And Cennet was living in great trouble between
the two jealous fellow wives. Essentially, it was not only these two
fellow wives but all the villagers were against this poor woman. It is
because of her that the village’s tranquillity was immediately a case of
perpetual impossibility. Cennet said that, Cennet did this, there is such an
uproar sometimes in the threshing place, sometimes at the fountain that
the echoes of the voices reach us, and I am obliged to send one of my
privates almost as if on a police duty. One day the echo of the far away
cries reached us at the hill where we were, followed by a sudden big
commotion. As I was preparing to send my sergeant again and my
privates to the event in the neighbourhood I suddenly saw Cennet falling
in front of my tent’s door with the flutterings and the hoarse voice of an
injured bird.
Her hands and her face were covered with blood, her clothes were torn in
pieces, she was crying, she was moaning, she was trembling.
As soon as she saw me she threw herself at me: My Pasha, my dear
Pasha, my life is entrusted to your hands, save me, she was saying. All of
them, all of them want to kill me. There is nothing I have not suffered
from their hands since my husband left for the army. If he was here I
swear by God they could not touch a hair of mine. Now, now look what
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