Austrian woman (it didn't come true.) More tumult in
the Russian parliament, as fateful 1917 approaches. //
3 December 1916
Sunday
The weather is
cloudy all the time anymore. Today it’s colder than
yesterday. News: a force coming from the
Carpathians has met up with
another one north of Bucharest. Since today is Sunday the
priest gave
a sermon at the church. He said ‘good news people! Peace has been
agreed upon. And
in our favor. Pray to God. Come again next week and
let’s pray for the souls of our brothers who died in the war.’ We were
glad to hear
this news (because of peace) but we didn’t believe
it…may
God grant a beneficial peace soon. I had a dream at night. It seemed that
a cavalry
rider (my father) was coming along a road that dipped and rose
suddenly. His horse was not a
good one, sometimes lazy, sometimes wild.
A train is coming but the engineer, seeing father
struggling on his horse
along the rail line, stops the train and waits for
quite a while. At this
time,
father jumps off his horse. The horse runs away and the train starts to
move. The horse
leaves the road and rolls down. The train passes. Then
father comes down too. I followed him and
we talked.
4 December 1916
Monday
The weather is
cloudy. Cold. The newspapers are writing that the
Russians have affirmed the Polish kingdom
and accepted the annexation
of Serbia Montenegro and Hungary to Austria. It is known that
the
Russians will make peace for sure since the other enemies have now made
it clear that they
want war. In the afternoon Tahir, Nuri and Hasan came to
visit us. After a
while, Hasan, Hikmet,
Mehmet Ağa and I went to the
other houses together. I gave a German story to Hakkı there to be
translated and I got back the ones I had previously given him. We
understand that Russia has
agreed to all demands but has reservations
about reparations. Just before
bedtime at night Salah was
again
whispering to Saffet. I pricked up my ears a bit. It was all against me;
now and then I heard
the words ‘Fuad’ and ‘Halis’. What does this dirty
lowdown fellow want from us? Or does he suspect
us of something else?
Is he probably hatching another plan to separate us from one another? I’ll
tell Halis about this and recommend once again that he not converse with
these types (fellow
townsmen though they may be). Enough of this
whispering!...
5 December 1916
Tuesday
The weather is
still cloudy, the bitterness of the cold is 17 degrees. News:
Van is in Turkish
hands. The Russians have
dropped their arms and run
away. Some 17,000 Armenians are moving from one country to
another.
The Russian newspaper calls this the ‘Armenians’ third calamity’.
Forces
have advanced to
12 kilometers from Bucharest. Five or six of us went to
visit Tahir in the
afternoon. We chatted for
quite a while, drank tea. Halis
and I discussed the whisperings against us and
studied some words in the
evening. We didn’t work on German very much this evening. A bit later
we went to bed.
6 December 1916
Wednesday
The weather is
cloudy. It’s cold, too. News: Betman Havlov said in his
speech that although
the whole world is
helping our enemies God is still
with us. Bucharest is under bombardment. We
went to the Command
after
lunch and each of us got our 50 ruble salaries. I’ve gotten 490.5 rubles
up
to now. Upon our
return we paid the servants 16 rubles each for the table
d’hote. We also
settled some other small
debts. At night, the fellows
played national games and sang songs. We had a lot of fun. I
worked on
German by myself. According to a dream I had at night, I’ll marry an
Austrian.
7 December 1916
Thursday
The weather
remains cloudy. The bitterness of the cold is increasing. The
length of the
daylight has shortened quite
a bit. The sun rises at about 8
o’clock and sets before 4 o’clock. When the weather is cloudy
we get, at
best, five or six hours of daylight. We got tobacco, matches and
paper
from the market in
the morning and in the afternoon we went to the main
barracks bath. There were five of us and we
got a good scrubbing with
rough cloths. But we got tired and hot. We drank
water and perspired. On
the way back to the house we felt cold. We drank tea again. My head was
thumping. I lay down until
the evening meal. I got up but soon after the
meal I lay down again and
sweated. I got up again and
sat until the late
hours. News: a lot of tumult in the Russian Parliament. The
leader of
Parliament,
Kogbur, and the Parliament which previously wanted peace,
have rejected the
Russian government’s
proposal. One minister is saying
that the war is lost and that the dream of
seizing Istanbul from it’s
thousand-year enemy the Turks has been extinguished. He added that
peace is now inevitable.
8 December 1916
Friday
The weather is
cloudy. But compared to yesterday it’s not as cold. Şerif,
Sadık and Basri came
to visit in the
afternoon. Şerif said that he wouldn’t
be able to pay back the 10 rubles he
borrowed this month but
that he
would next month. News: Russian newspapers are writing that Bucharest
was abandoned by
the Romanians on 6 December and that Romanian
troops have joined with the Russian army to
escape toward Boğdan. This
means that we’re in Bucharest. Good…I got angry about a small
thing in
the morning and as it was about to fade away it suddenly worsened. My
good mood
evaporated and I became quiet. Halis didn’t come over to me,
which made me feel bad and I went off
to a corner. I passed the time by
memorizing some words. Although all the other fellows
played games and
had fun at night, I was the only one who didn’t join in. I
went to bed early.
Saffet
came over to me and asked why I was in a bad mood but regrettably
he couldn’t find out anything
beyond ‘there’s nothing wrong.’ I was lost
in thought during the night, mostly about the past and
I fell asleep in this
fashion.
9 December 1916
Saturday
The weather is
like it always is. It’s cold, too. Another strange thing
happened: it was
before noon. I was sitting on
my bed, busy writing in
my diary when Halis came by and left a paper. I didn’t
pay it any mind
and
after I finished my work I read it. He wrote asking why I was so
quiet and said
that this would not
have any effect on him. I took issue
with some of his points and wrote a long
note in reply. In it,
after
criticizing a number of things, I said that he ought not harbor such an
attitude any more; that I
didn’t hate him; that my intentions were only
directed toward his welfare; that
I didn’t have any problem
and there’s
nothing extant in this regard; that I wanted him to be happy and
not
fret; that my
sincerity for him was eternal; and that I would always be
faithful. Evening
came around. He was laying on
his bed, feeling bad.
I told him to get up. Franz came a bit later and four of
us studied
German.
Then, a bit later, we went to bed. Before sleeping, Halis and
I had a serious
talk. I would bet that
those who saw us would judge
that our former closeness was continuing. But all
of this is the
irritating
consequence of captivity. I saw my mother and brother in a dream
last
night.
10 December 1916
Sunday
The sky is
overcast. The cold is like it always is. There’s frost all over.
There’s hope
that Greece will join the war.
Supposedly, the citizens of
the Allied Powers’ nations are leaving Athens and
heading for their
respective countries. Four of us gave Franz five rubles in the evening
and I
handed it to him myself. He was
pleased. We had a German lesson.
I went to bed rather early tonight. The reason was the effect of
a cigarette
I smoked. First my head ached, then my stomach became nauseus.
Consequently, a
bit later I vomited. I lay down but I couldn’t sleep. Halis
and I had a long
talk. Halis asked about my bad
mood of the past couple
of days and came up with an explanation for it. I Repeated what I
had
said yesterday and asked him not to bring up the subject again. I felt
badly.
But it was no big
deal.
//END of PART LVI//
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