Petersburg is ramping up and Fuad Bey even hears that
the Russian camp commander will set the POWs free
(in bold below.) Nevertheless, Fuad Bey is still
preoccupied by the state of his friendship with Halis.//
16 March 1917
Friday
The weather is
still overcast but the cold isn’t so bad. News: as we had
heard yesterday, all
of the ministers in
Petrograd have been imprisoned,
100,000 soldiers have taken up arms. The police and Gendarmerie
have
joined them. The Czar has escaped to an unknown place. It seems that
the rebels have
won the day…the outcome is still unknown…
today the new Assistant Commander came and told the
ustarşi
(Russian supervisor) to set us free.
I was faced with an odd problem
today,as follows: Ethem
wrote me a
long note supposedly because I looked at him with a long face and at
the end of it
he says an odd thing: ‘the mountain man is coming, chasing
away the man in the garden.’ As soon as I saw it I felt badly because
these words really made me mad and I got
angry. I called Halis and
said
‘this is the second time Ethem has done something like this. I don’t
understand
anything from what he’s written. If you really are a close
friend of his you
should tell him the truth
because I don’t want to come
between two friends. Otherwise, give him a harsh response.’ Halis
started to say something like he sees only me as a dear friend and tht he
had
an old and
unbreakable friendship with Ethem but nevertheless he
would respond to Ethem’s words. He drafted a
refutation but all of a
sudden he fell into a deep silence, forgetting about
the refutation. This
was a mystery.
17 March 1917
Saturday
The sky is still
overcast. It’s rather cold, too. Today Müştak and Şevket
moved to our house
from Malaşova…Burhan
and Fahri went from our
house to there. I wrestled with yesterday’s problem again today. I
wanted
to understand the truth. When Halis said something (that he was shaken
up because he’s close
with me and prefers me to Ethem) and then tried
to alter it, this completely shook me up. Using
strong words, I said that
there should be no hypocricy. Halis responded by assuring me tht I
was
his only close friend but he requested that the refutation that he would
write not contain
harsh words, in light of his old relationship with Ethem.
He asked me
sheepishly to let him forego
this. I didn’t press the issue and
we solved the problem with a refutation written in an
advisory manner.
Nevertheless, I was hurt by this to some degree. I was also mad that Halis
was
gloomy for a while after the problem had been solved…
I screamed mightily because
of a nightmare that befell me at night. In the
dream my father sent two letters, one to my
brother and one to his friend.
He wrote another thing, like a letter, to someone else
for me. My name
was written in blue above a word that was scratched out there. When I
asked someone if he was my father I got strange answers. Afraid that he
may have died, I woke up. I saw Halis in the dream too. It
seemed that
we were hugging each other to confirm
our friendship.
18 March 1917
Sunday
The sky is still
cloudy. It’s rather cold. News: the revolt in Petrograd
continues to spread contagiously all
over. But this time the rebesls are in
the driver’s seat. In fact, the Czar’s brother Pronovich
Alexander has
been put in his place. Because of the ongoing rebellion in the Caucasus
all the police have been sent there…good…the mayor and 17 despotic
people have been
removed from Vetluga and Captain
Leyipsan, who
watches over us, has assumed
control of the city’ property and the
military command. Our army has raided a Russian
army command
center in the Caucasus and seized a wounded general.
Today I collected
some money to close out the deficit existing from an
old problem. During the day two
fellows from Çerkifa house came to
visit. At night we drank one of Mehmet Bey’s teas in the
small room.
Halis was still a bit gloomy today. Anymore I get mad at him for this
and feel
badly.
//END of PART LXXIV//
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