“What destination was marked on them?”
“Istanbul, madam. She has also given to me a letter to deliver to the Hotel Tirsoni,” he added, pleased to show his importance, “but for that I am to wait until the ship sails.”
“For whom is the letter?”
“I don’t know, effendim. I was to give it to the clerk in the hotel. The name is written down on the envelope, but English writing means nothing to me.”
I looked at the envelope and read my name. “That is my name. You can give it to me.”
“I was told to give it to the clerk at the hotel.” The porter clearly wanted the pleasure of entering such a hotel.
“This is the lady named on the letter,” Hakki confirmed. “Let her have it.”
I handed the porter a gold sovereign. “Give it to me and it will save you the trouble of making the trip to the Tirsoni.”
The father gave the son a greedy nudge, and the letter was handed over. A moment later the two men disappeared into the crowd.
I led Hakki to a café a short distance from the pier. Dockworkers, along with hangers-on who looked as though they made their living in secret ways, were gathered in sullen clumps around a handful of tables. They were clearly outraged that a woman should invade their café. I led a protesting Hakki to a back table and ordered coffee from a nervous waiter, not because I wanted the coffee but to get rid of the waiter, who was trying to find a polite way to ask us to leave. I tore open the envelope.
Dear Julia,
I have traveled among the Arabs for thirty years. They are my friends. I will not have interlopers come to their country to scavenge about for spoils. I have known from the beginning what all of you wanted. My “kidnapping” in Jerud was to give me an opportunity to inform the Arabs of your greedy errands. From Jerud the Metawilehs followed us about like good angels to do my bidding.
Your father came here to do the dirty work of England’s Foreign Office, looking about to see what he could steal for the empire. It was a pleasure to watch this messenger of English lust grow weak and uncertain with my poison, a poison concocted from the plant of a country he would barter away and administered by Mastur, my friend and a loyal Arab. I am only sorry it did not do its job.
It was the same with Louvois, who crept about seeing where the French might move in as if this country were just another pretty trinket he might steal. I arranged for him to be allowed to keep his little collection of antiquities so that it would appear he was the one to betray Geddes, but be assured the customs officers will not be so generous, for they will be ready for him.
Hakki is nothing more than a spy sent to keep an eye on us for the Turks. I was pleased to denounce him to Watson & Sons so that he can no longer act the part of the informer; nor will the Turks be pleased with a spy who has failed.
By having Mastur delay the carriage while you and your father were in Ain el Beida, we were able to take care of Mohammed, who should not have betrayed his fellow Arabs by doing Geddes’s work for him.
As for your friend Geddes, he thinks he is for the Arabs but he is for the Ottoman Empire. If Geddes’s Young Turks are successful, they will forget the concessions they have promised to the Arabs—and the Greeks, Armenians, and Jews as well. The leaders of the Young Turks are, after all, Turks; and Turks will not be willing to preside at the dispersal of the Ottoman Empire. When the Arabs ask for the independence they have been promised by well-meaning fools like Geddes, do you believe for a moment the Young Turks will give it to them? The Young Turks are more nationalistic than the sultan. Geddes will die in Mersina, but he will not die quickly. I made sure Professor Ladamacher, who wished to betray the Arabs to the Germans, learned the same deadly lesson.
By the time you read this, the Poseidon will have sailed. Put Geddes out of your mind. He cares nothing for you; he is in love with his own ambition.
You ought to do something with your sketching: you are really quite passable, and under other circumstances we might have remained friends.
One day Turkey will be overthrown by the Arabs. It is well known that in north Africa there are Arabs who have kept hanging on their walls for four hundred years the keys of houses in Spain’s Seville and Granada, cities that once were theirs.
As for me, I will ship my finds to the Royal Botanic Gardens and then I will disappear into the desert. It is where I belong and where I wish to die.
Edith
I clenched my fists to keep my hands from trembling and turned my face aside so that the men in the café who were staring at me should not see my tears of rage and frustration. Graham would be taken off the boat at Mersina, and then what? A Turkish prison? Torture? A firing squad? I recalled how close Mastur and Edith had been and how Mastur had always served Father first. She had meant Father to die.
“Miss Phillips says bad things?” Hakki put a consoling hand on my arm. “I think you had better return to the hotel and allow your father to give you help.”
I let Hakki put me into a carriage, but against his protestations I refused to go back to the hotel. The moment I was alone, I called to the driver to ask him if he spoke English.
“Ah, and French and many German words. Today we are one country; tomorrow we may be another. It is well to be prepared.”
“Can you take me to the the garrison?”
He gave my a wary look. “You have business with the soldiers?”
“Take me there,” I commanded him, my voice so insistent that this time I had no need of giving baksheesh. He turned from me and signaled his horses. A moment before, he would have been my friend; now I had made of him a sullen servant, but I didn’t care. My fear for Graham destroyed any last bit of patience I had.
I ordered the driver to leave me at the small, shabby administration building, where a slovenly orderly looked unsurprised by my request to see the commandant.
The orderly shrugged his shoulders and did not so much lead me as herd me into a small, dusty office almost entirely taken up by file boxes. An officer sat at a battered desk whose surface was dusted with cigarette ashes and decorated with rings from innumerable coffee cups. He held a pencil as if it were a weapon.
He rose to greet me, taking in my tumbled hair, my blouse half pulled from my skirt, the dusty shoes. “Mademoiselle,” he said, bowing.
I blurted out, “You have an English subject under guard on the Poseidon. Surely you have no jurisdiction over him.”
The man gave me a long look. “Everyone who comes to this country is under the Turkish law. If I were to come to your England, would I not have to follow the laws of England?”
“What do you mean to do with him?”
“You have an interest in this man? A relative, perhaps?”
“No, but he traveled with us. He is a friend.”
“Ah,” the man said. His tone made me blush. “What is it you would have me do?”
“Let him go. Whatever you are accusing him of, I am sure he meant no harm. All you have to go on is what Miss Phillips said, and she has a grudge against Graham Geddes.”
The officer sipped at his coffee, watching me all the while. “My superiors at Mersina already know of this Geddes,” he said. “If the ship arrived there and he were not on it, they would would be angry and I would bear the brunt of that anger. If I did not give them your Mr. Geddes, I would have to give them something else.” He had a look of hunger on his face. “Would you have something for me?”
I knew what I must do to save Graham—I must betray my father. I must say that a member of the British Foreign Office had been traveling incognito through Syria and was now here in Alexandretta. I must identify him as Carlton Hamilton and say he was in Turkey to find out what the Arab tribes think of Britain—whether they still trust Britain more than the French and the Turks. I must say Father hoped to make friends with the Arabs against the Turks. That was what I should say, but I could not speak the words. I could not betray Father, even for Graham.
Somehow I got out of the chair and stumbled from the room.
The orderly gave me a bemused look. “Who will be the next English person?” he said, more to himself than to me.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“First there was the British gentleman and now you come.”
“What did the British gentleman look like?”
He described my father.
The officer had tried to trick me into identifying my father to add to what he already knew, and I had nearly given in to him. My father must have been there pleading for Graham.
The trip back to the hotel was the longest journey of my life. When at last I walked through the entrance, I saw Graham standing at the lobby desk, his luggage like small friendly creatures nestled about his long legs. He was without a hat, and his hair was rumpled. Somewhere along the way he had lost his tie and jacket. He appeared shrunken, and his tan had faded to a jaundiced yellow. I stood there for a long minute, afraid to approach him lest he turn out to be some sort of phantom who would disappear when I reached out for him.
The presence of the clerk, ostentatiously shuffling papers while secretly watching us, made my greeting of Graham awkward, so instead of showing how relieved I was to see him, I could only clasp his hand and hang on to it. His lack of response made even my slight show of affection seem overwrought.
“Have they let you go?” The evidence was there before my eyes, but I wanted to hear it from Graham.
“As you see,” he said, “thanks to your father. I must say I didn’t expect help from that quarter.”
Much to the disappointment of the clerk Graham moved away from the desk, directing me to a corner of the lobby. I sank down on a couch and waited for him sit down next to me. Instead, he continued standing, so that in order to avoid the awkwardness of distance, I had to get up again. I saw that he was in a hurry.
“Edith had thought to have me all dried and pressed like one of her posies,” he said. “As soon as she opened the door to my cabin and I had a look at the pleased expression on her face, like a cat with a bowl of cream, I guessed she was behind all our trouble. But you should have seen her expression change when the Turks escorted me off the boat. That woman is capable of murder.” There was something like admiration in his voice.
I asked “What do you mean ‘thanks to my father’?”
“Your father got on to the Foreign Office by wire and London suggested to the Turks that there might be a diplomatic dustup if they didn’t let loose of me. Your father then went to the Turkish officers who had arrested me and demanded my release. I’m afraid that will mean trouble for your father back home with the Foreign Office.”
My world was turning upside down. It was father who had saved Graham. I could only guess what he had sacrificed to do it.
“Your father’s superiors—though indeed they are not—will be unhappy with having to waste some of their influence with the sultan on a creature as trivial as I am, and not only trivial, but a nuisance for England, for your father knows perfectly well I have no intention of giving up my fight for the Young Turks. I’m afraid I underestimated your father; he’s been rather good to me.”
Thinking of my near betrayal of Father, I felt sick. Because I cared for Graham, my father had risked his career to save him. “What will you do now?” I had seen Graham’s luggage.
He lowered his voice. “I don’t suppose the Turks are anxious to have me underfoot in Syria. I’m going to attempt to get into the Jebel Druze, which is the homeland of my Druze tribes. I’m going by steamer to Haifa, and I’ll try to make my way overland by way of Jerusalem. Once in the Jebel Druze, I’ll know how to lose myself. I think I can promise you next year at this time the sultan will be doing what the Young Turks tell him.”
I had been waiting for some mention of myself in his plans. Now, trying to make it sound like a pleasantry, I said, “Will I see you again?”
“Your father’s been awfully decent to me.”
“Was promising not to see me a condition of your release?”
“Certainly not. But I know your father doesn’t approve of my way of life, and I’m not about to change. He does not want you involved with me.”
I had had enough of people believing they knew what was best for me. “Why should it be you or my father who feels he must decide things for me?”
Graham looked around, embarrassed at my outburst. “I’m afraid I’ve made trouble for you, Julia. The truth is I’m not very good with people one by one. I do better with causes, but I don’t apologize for that. If there weren’t men of my kind, where would the world be? If you take people one by one, they’re seldom worth fighting for.”
“That’s a terrible thing to say. How can you be so cynical? If that’s how you feel, why should you think any better of a mass of people?”
“All the individual nastiness gets hidden in the crowd.” His voice took on the angry intensity I had heard before. “Don’t think because he got me out of a Turkish jail I don’t still oppose your father.”
I thought my father was right to say romanticism leads to disappointment. “I am sorry for you,” I said. I was glad to leave him.
I found my father in his room. He was sitting in a chair doing nothing. This inactivity, so unlike him, was unsettling. I saw he was sitting there waiting for me. To have all his attention was intimidating. I had practiced my confession, but faced with his quiet watchfulness I could only blurt out, “I nearly told the officer at the garrison what you were doing in Syria.”
“Ah, but you didn’t. However, I am now persona non grata in this counntry. The Turks are anxious to have me out of here. They’ll keep an eye on me until we sail tomorrow. The Turkish Foreign Office will have got on to the British Foreign Office by now to protest my being here. However, that doesn’t matter, for I have already sent my resignation in to the Foreign Office.”
“What do you mean?”
“When we talked last night, you seemed very keen on getting Geddes away from the Turks. I wired the Foreign Office this morning, and they established a liaison with the Turkish government. By the time I went to the officer in charge of the garrison, everything had been worked out. Geddes must have been released at about the same time you were on your way to the garrison. Of course I had no idea you would go to the Turkish army with the thought of turning me in.” Father looked at me with something between dismay and admiration, as if I were a child who has displayed some outrageous behavior that is both loathsome and interesting.
“Why didn’t the officer tell me that you had already spoken to him and that Graham was being released?”
“He must have believed letting you think otherwise might get him useful information.”
I flushed. “But it didn’t.”
“I’m glad of that.”
“Why must you resign?”
“Without badly compromising my principles, I could hardly ask the British Foreign Office to go to great lengths to release a man who was bound to do England nothing but mischief.”
“Did you make Graham so grateful for your help, he would agree not to see me again?”
“There was no request and no agreement.”
“But you guessed at what he would do.”
“I knew what he would do.”
“You may be pleased to hear that I am altogether disappointed in him.”
“You are surprised by Geddes’s priorities; I am not, but I am sorry someone for whom you cared has disappointed you. Graham will go elsewhere and create another muddle out of the best will in the world, and someone will have to mop up after him just as I did here. Whatever you may think now, you will eventually see I acted in your best interests.”
“Why didn’t you just let him be carried off by the Turks?”
“He would have remained forever a martyr in your eyes, a romantic figure against whom you would measure the commonplace men of the world. At least this way you have seen Geddes for what he is.”
I smiled. “I’m not sure I should I thank you for that.”
“I didn’t do it for your thanks. To te
ll you the truth, I was getting to rather like Geddes. It is not all bad to have impossible dreams when you are his age. Certainly there will be no time for them later.”
I showed Father Edith’s letter. He read it slowly, as though it were in some obscure language.
“The woman is mad,” he said. “We’ll send the letter on to the authorities, of course, but I don’t suppose they will give it much notice. Anyhow, I expect Edith will soon be on her way to some distant Bedouin encampment.” He looked at the letter again, and a smile played about his lips. “She might have killed me.” He was enjoying a little rush of excitement.
“Where will we go now?” I asked.
“Wherever we like,” he said. “I am sure with your romantic tendencies it is only a matter of time before you find another chap like Geddes. I may as well enjoy your company while I can.”
“I’ve always wanted to see the pyramids.”
“Then you shall,” he promised. “You will find Egypt a country full of surprises.”
EPILOGUE
IN 1909, TWO YEARS after this story takes place, the Young Turks compelled Sultan Abdülhamid II to reinstate the Turkish Constitution of 1876. One of the leaders of the Young Turks, Envar Bey, said, “We are all brothers. There are no longer Bulgars, Greeks, Roumanians, Jews, Mussulmans [Muslims]; under the same blue sky we are all equal, we glory in being Ottomans.”
Shortly thereafter, the Ottoman Empire began to fall apart. Austria advanced on Bosnia and Herzegovina. Greece took Crete. Albania declared its independence. Italian troops landed in Tripoli. The Kurds and Yemenis and the Armenians rose up, as did the Arab countries.
The Young Turks, seeing their Ottoman lands dwindle, began to tighten the reins of empire in an effort to choke the nationalistic forces they had let loose. They became more oppressive than the sultan had been, punishing any group wishing its independence.
During World War I, Britain, Italy, France, and Russia met secretly to divide the Ottoman Empire among themselves. France took over Syria, dividing it into six parts. The French language became compulsory in the schools, where students of all nationalities were required to sing the French national anthem, “La Marseillaise.”