3 Nisan 2019 Çarşamba

TNT Matchbox Diary: A Turkish POW in Russian Prison Camp (1915-1918)/Part XLIV

//Ed. Note: These passages are probably Fuad Bey's most
reflective and intimate, as he wrestles with the depression
of captivity.//


vetluga ile ilgili görsel sonucu
                                      The Vetluga River


15 September 1916 Friday

Today has come and gone. Yet another day subtracted from my life. 
Part of my youth has been snuffed out. Ah…My God, what is this? 
For the longest time I haven’t laughed and my heart hasn’t had a 
peaceful moment. I wanted to laugh and I laughed. But the other 
calamity is made up of previously understood emotions. I had hoped 
to be comfortable with some lofty desires and I thought I had succeeded.
But the other one is no different from magic. Fortune, you have 
blackened everything with bad luck: in every direction friends are 
becoming nightmares…existence, you are so aggrieved with deep pain
that all around is covered in darkness. Youth, you are so desperate that
you are bouncing back and forth between despair within vast unknowns 
and curses that extinguish hopes and the aims of humanity. Everything 
is showing me the limit of hope and the borders of thought and desire. 
What kind of furtune is this? Again I’m starting to see the face of bitter 
truth…existence, know yourself, tell me what you think and show me a 
path to happiness. Tell your heart and letit beat for true support. Tell 
your soul to gather sublimity and purity not within whirlpools like
this but rather within loftiness. Know yourself because, by making any 
and all sacrifices during this timeof calamities, you are living for your 
family which comforts you and which will love you forever, which will 
celebrate your dreams with you, and for your country, which awaits you 
with great hopes…the weather is bad today. I was a bit gloomy in the 
evening and it made me cry. I didn’t sleep at all at night. The weather 
was beginning to clear as I lay down and tried to sleep.

16 September 1916 Saturday
The sun was about to rise (9 o’clock). I was still in bed but I couldn’t 
sleep much. I got up at nine thirty. I sewed a bit and went to the garden. 
Halis was sitting and working on his lessons but he was feeling low 
under the weight of a number of secret emotions. I tried to console him.
He’s continually thinking, probably about his family and what their 
current situation is. Finally, I was able to comfort him. I asked him to 
engross himself in some serious work in order to avoid being crushed 
by these empty and painful thoughts. I added that it’s pointless to just 
kill time during captivity, that idle times like these foment boredom and 
trouble, and that the best thing for us to do is to immerse ourselves in 
language study. The weather is bad but no rain. Time is passing whether 
we like it or not with discomfort rather than peacefulness. Mostly 
Istanbul and my wonderful family are in my mind. As I think of them I 
start sinking and this sinking results in such an emotion that I feel almost 
as if storms will erupt from my eyes. Nevertheless, this feeling doesn’t 
last a long time, it just returns now and again. In other words, I’m able to
overcome the distress. But when I’m idle it grips me again. The cause of 
such distress is related to the health of my conscience and the degree to 
which my life is linked to humanity. Today Halis and I walked together 
in front of the well. We had a German lesson. We worked a bit at night 
and talked for a while with Saffet. I went to be early.

17 September 1916 Sunday
So, another day of life in captivity. It is such a cursed, nasty day that 
there’s nothing one can do but moan under the protracted discomfort. 
Suffering distress, virtually grieving. God save me…because our mothers 
and fathers couldn’t give us a solid education in our homeland and since 
we weren’t taught in our schools about social training today in this place,
 although all of us are children of one nation, we’re always fighting with 
one another, forget about even the twenty five of us just coexisting 
together. Ah, nothing to think about and nothing to do are the main 
reasons for this.God, make us better people…today that fool Kazim 
blurted out something. Supposedly a group of a few people will prevent 
Halis and me from talking and they will humiliate us at the first 
opportunity. Later, a few impertinences. What lowlifes! What’s the 
reason for embarrassing us? And who will be shamed and why? I got 
very annoyed. But I sense that his real aim is something else. Who 
knows, if I were to separate from Halis and become friends with Kazim
would it make life easier for him? Perhaps that’s a very good possibility
…when Halis heard this he was very distressed. Right away he wanted
to grab Kazim by the throat and beat him…Ah God, I’m the cause of all
these problems. I wish that I were deaf and that I had not heard this 
mannerless jerk’s words. What thoughtlessness have I done! Why didn’t 
I put my fist in his mouth at that moment and shut him up! Now I’m 
being crushed under  the virtual responsibility. Ah what stupidity, what 
foolishness I’ve committed. God please forgive me. Mye dear Halis, 
don’t get mad, don’t  be cross with me. Forget this mistake. Because
when I think about this situation I feel like I’ll go crazy.


My Existence is Foundering in a Sea of Confusion

18 September 1916 Monday
Another  distressing day for me. ..because today I moaned in the face of
the effect of these days of captivity. My soul is continually grieving, my 
heart is crushed, my existence is foundering in a sea of confusion. The 
hours are stretching between stifling minutes and turning them into
centuries. Whichever way I look my vision sees nothing but distress. 
Whatever I think my thoughts reflect ideas that vex my existence. In 
short, I’m condemned to be a prisoner of this anxiety and cannot be 
saved. 

The weather is better than it has been. The sun is warming the outdoors. 
Today a house-changing problem occurred. Twelve people from the 
house next to ours left, as did Arap Hamid, Captain Şevket and his 
brother Müştak from our house. So two or three people from our house 
had to go to the house next door. All the fellows gathered together in 
the evening and a secret ballot was conducted. Kazim got 12 votes, 
Erzurumlu Hasan got 11, Hurşid got 4, Zileli Mustafa got 3, Rıfkı got 
3 and Süleyman got 1. Kazim and Hasan, who got the most votes, were
told they would go. Kazim didn’t agree to this. Hasan has been in the 
hospital for four days anyway. Because he is an immoral, ill-mannered, 
shameless person, Kazim raised some senseless objections and claimed 
that he had scores to settle with many people here. He didn’t want to go
and although Osman said some things to try to shame him into it he still 
wouldn’t go. Finally, he was told that he would be forced by everyone
to go to the other house even if he wouldn’t go willingly. At night 
Osman gave us some information about discourse/wrestling.  He showed 
us a few games. Rıfkı and I tried to do it.

19 September 1916 Tuesday
Today passed rather distressingly among some thoughts that occupied 
my mind. Sometimes I’m Able to console myself thanks to Zühdü’s solid 
support and I experience a freedom from distress. But at other times I’m 
confronted by a debilitating, killer distress that involuntarily confuses my
mind and I feel like I’m under the fiercest psychological torture and am 
living in hell. My God, what is this?...I’ve never had distress like this in 
my life. There’s such a torment that everyone shares everyone else’s 
calamities. Dear God, save me from this distress with your grandeur. 
Make a poor creature like me happy and give me a more beautiful soul, 
a better and sturdier heart so that I don’t hurt others; give me the means, 
the reasons to achieve this or at least the possibility thereof ?until there’s 
nothing left of me?.  Please God, accept this wish of mine…the weather 
is somewhat overcast compared to yesterday. It rained a bit in the 
afternoon. Halis and I went for a walk after lunch. We discussed German 
and had a short lesson. At night, after some conversations I went to bed. 
I had some confusing, strange dreams. Salah and I were fighting and I 
was quarreling with Saffet. They wanted to foment hatred between Halis 
and me. I know that it’s no one other than Salah who plays this role. 
Poor Saffet has been entrapped in this slander. They think that if Halis
and I break up he will go over to their side. I desperately hope that 
Halis’s sincerity and eternal faithfulness will keep us together until death.

//END of PART XLIV//

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