CHAPTER 4 – HALIDE EDIP AND YAKUP KADRI
159
At this moment the light beams of the projectors started an unconcerned
stroll on top of the mass of the victims of the disaster whose number
exceeds the hundred thousand.
Twenty four hours had not passed after the night of the fire tragedy. As
we were driven in a military car from the headquarters of Western Front
Command to the Uşaklıgil summer mansion in Göztepe where Gazi
Pasha was staying as a guest, we found that the Cordon, which we had
left in a state of doomsday two nights before, was altogether empty and
deserted. The houses one after another were in their place but there was
no one in them. There were still warships in the sea but their lights had
been put out. There was no sign left of the doomsday crowd, as if
everything had been blown by the wind and taken by a flood.
When we were approaching the Governor’s Office at the other side of the
Passport Office and especially when we passed Kemeraltı, truly it was as
if the night of the fire had never happened. It was like one of the
terrifying dreams I see in my feverish sleep. Because Izmir, Izmir of my
childhood, the school where I went, the horse drawn trams, the clock
tower in the Kışla Meydanı, the shops in Kemeraltı looked as I had left
them so many years ago.
Time came and I arrived in the district of Yalılar; starting from Karataş
all my memories from the recent past began to be wiped away. It was as
if I was living again the period of my first youth. As if – it was not only
last night’s fire – the Armistice of Moudros, the occupation of Istanbul,
the capture of Izmir, the enemy reaching almost at the gates of Ankara,
as if none of all the national tragedies which filled these three years
never happened. As if the country which stretches from the valleys of
Sakarya to the shores of Gediz had not become an endless ruin
throughout with its scorched and razed cities, towns and villages.
The overflowing exuberance and joy I felt took away all my sufferings.
Halide Edip and Yakup Kadri held each other in great esteem and continued to do so
until the end even though they had different political views. Halide Edip said that
Yakup Kadri was the only person who through his artistic intuition had sensed how
unhappy she was at a very early stage and when noone else had done so because he
immediately perceived in her
Handan
the autobiographical elements in the
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |