reflective and intimate, as he wrestles with the depression
of captivity.//
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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