Ebüzziya Mehmet Tevfik
Mehmet
Tevfik was a prolific Ottoman writer and publisher during the
last quarter of
the 19th century and until his death in 1913.
Better
known as “Ebüzziya Tevfik”, the pseudonym he adopted to be able
to
write while in exile and imprisoned in a ruined castle of the Knights
Hospitaller on the island of Rhodes in the mid-1870s, he was a close
colleague
and confidante of İbrahim Şinasi, Namık Kemal, Ahmet Rıza,
Ahmed Midhat and
Mehmet Murad, the liberal thinkers who laid the
foundation for the ‘Young Turks” and the “İttihad ve Terakki
Cemiyeti”
(Committee of Union and Progress/CUP).
In fact, Ebüzziya Tevfik
was exiled to Rhodes with Ahmet Midhat by
the regime of Sultan Abdülaziz for,
among other things, their
involvement in an incident involving Namık Kemal’s controversial
play
“Vatan Yahut Silistre”, which advocated for patriotism to the nation
rather than to the Sultan (Namık Kemal was exiled to Cyprus at the
same time).
While
on Rhodes, Ebüzziya Tevfik wrote a
letter to a friend about the
grim situation he faced there, describing his
distress, his prison cell
and his pet pigeons
The English translation of that letter is Part One
of this paper.
After
Sultan Abdülhamid II ascended to the throne in Istanbul in 1876,
his general
pardon allowed Ebüzziya Tevfik to return from Rhodes to
Istanbul. But shortly thereafter, because of Istanbul
politics, Ebüzziya
Tevfik was shipped off to Bosnia for a year, after which he
returned to
Istanbul and resumed his journalistic and publishing activities,
not to
mention perfecting his expertise in the Kufi (Cufic) form of Arabic
caligraphy and producing Kufi works to adorn the Sultan’s palace
and Istanbul
mosques.
Sultan
Abdülhamid II appointed Ebüzziya Tevfik to head the “Mekteb-i
Sanayi” (School
of Industry) in 1891 but after a “journal”
(incriminating letter) about him
surfaced related to a bit too much
Westernism at his school, Ebüzziya Tevfik
was made a member of the
Council of State and after that he tried to keep a low
political profile.
Nevertheless, between
1893 and 1900, when he was exiled to Konya
for eight years, Ebüzziya was
arrested ten times.
In
December 1894 he wrote a narrative about probably the first of those
arrests,
which had occurred three months earlier, and he made 12 copies
of it,
distributing these to the Prime Minister, the Minister of Public
Security and
three “Young Turks” in Paris - Ahmet Rıza,
Ali Kemal
and Mehmed Murad. Ebüzziya
Tevfik subsequently published the
narrative in serial form in his newspaper Mecmua-i Ebüzziya in 1911.
Part Two (in multiple sections) here is the English
translation of that
narrative, which reflects the at times tragic, and at times
comical,
details of Abdülhamid II’s “hafiyelik” (secret police) organization
and its operations.
In
the English translations below, footnotes, words and sentences in
single-parenthesis are Ebüzziya Tevfik’s and those in double
parenthesis are
the translator’s.
Part
One – Exile on Rhodes (1873-1876)
The island of Rhodes is the
large island just off the coast
of southwestern Turkey
Dear Friend!
For the first time, in the tenth month of
my time abroad, I received your
letter and the written works in the enclosed
consignment, via the Lloyd
agency.
Before I thank you for your generosity and the elegance with
which you
chose the contents, I want to answer the questions you posed
in your letter.
For eleven months my world has been
comprised of a room 3-meters
wide and 4-meters long and high. Even if my observations within these
four
walls are limited and my gossip nonexistent, the reality of my ideas
and
imaginings is boundless. Nevertheless, I
cannot keep quiet about
how my senses have been dulled for these past eleven
months. Because
in my 25 years of life I
have seen much and become acquainted with
many beautiful things so I am loath
to have been relegated to the two
seconds it takes my eyes to measure the
confines of my room, the
proportions of which have succeeded in stymieing my
every wish.
In particular, the lost opportunities and
dearth of information have
been dreadful.
My room is like a grave in this sparse world, making me
feel half-dead,
so I pass my time in anger and grief! We
have a saying
to the effect that “a person can even get used to a grave” and
that seems
appropriate here. Yet, in
this transitory world, the creature we call
human cannot really get used to
anything. But I suppose I have gotten
used to it. It seems to me that one of
the most solid pieces of evidence
about human stupidity must be the fact that
we never stop trying to fool
ourselves.
Since I have not yet become able to
perceive living just for the moment,
if being “caught in the exile snare” is a
harbinger of the afterlife and
resigning oneself to it, then I understand this
feeling and this perception.
I must say,
though, that I have still not gotten used to this abominable
room and I know
that as long as I am here I will never get accustomed
to it.
“We have fallen into this world of
bondage; where cruelty is suffered;
certainly no one can be at peace
here!” But what good is considering
the
path of a poet who translates the addiction of humanity to be some
sort of wisdom?! It is impossible for me to really get used to
this torture
of confinement, which has even made me hate my best and most
faithful
friend of the past five years – my pen!
I opened your letter before I opened the
box you sent and as I read your
letter, the events you related of the past 11
months and your questions
of me made me feel as though I had emerged from my
grave for a couple
of minutes to have a conversation with my best friend and
that, albeit
briefly, I had regained the freedom that was violently ripped away
from
me! But what good is it? I suddenly realized that even though I am
better off than the unfortunate shackled ones beneath my room and the
others
subjected to the chain of horrific punishments here, I am only
able to bear up
by convincing myself that my calamity is some sort
of terrible dream.
In any event, let me provide answers to
your questions one by one,
and then I’ll relate to you the delight I felt from
the things you have
sent me! Your first
question is “how are you living?” If I
say that
“fate has determined one’s life in this world, so I am living what
I’ve
been destined for.”, will that suffice for you as an answer?
As I said, my room is like a grave but
don’t envision it to be
underground. The
reason I call it a grave is because it’s sparse and
silent, together with the
seeming impossibility of getting into it or out
of it. Actually, sometimes the monstrous guard
charged with
implementing torture will come into my room but I cannot look him
in the face. Even though he smiles, a
friendly chat is out of the question.
I
confess that this is somewhat hypocritical on my part but for some
reason I
don’t feel ashamed by it.
he be trying to console me? It’s difficult not to discount this
possibility
when one has certain ideas about humanity. Yet, I know I am a human
with a conscience so
I cannot discount this possibility altogether, with
regard to another’s
disposition. Anyway, the guard comes to
my room
a few times each day, as is his duty,
but it seems from his attitude that
he doesn’t want to leave me in
solitude. This is sort of like hypocrisy
fighting hypocrisy. Because, whereas his
duty is to inspect and
scrutinize me, his demeanor is
kindly! As for me, I hate this scrutiny
but my expression is respectful! This is
what I mean as an example of
the contradictions.
With regard to my living conditions, first
let me describe my quarters:
The building I’m in is on the northeast
side of the island. It is a ruined
castle remaining from the time of the Knights Hospitaller. There is a
fortress tower and another tower
outside the fortress. Our castle is
within the walls but because one side is adjacent to the fortress, the
second
wall only surrounds three sides. The
Knights Hospitaller
“metr” lived in this castle in those times. Today, though, nothing is
left except for a
bastion and the two circular towers at the entrance.
Beyond the building’s ruins, there are ten
underground storerooms
made within the four walls of a support structure.
These storerooms are cages for those in
shackles! In the evening, the
gates are closed and locked and everyone sleeps
like birds perched in a
cage. In fact,
since the toilet is located outside of these dungeons,
rather than living
quarters these are more appropriately called cages.
My cell is situated on the garden side of
a small dungeon that was
subsequently added to the support structure. There is a wooden partition
that divides the
cell in two. My room’s door opens to a
hall, where
there is an interior walking area and a window. There are two large
dormitories accross from
my room, one of which we have made into
a kitchen. The other one is where the soldiers assigned
to guard us
used to stay. Now that it’s empty
I keep my pigeons there.
So despite the fact that I would rather not talk about my quarters, I
have nevertheless described them to you.
With regard to your second
question “how do you spend your time?”, if I
were to say that I take
advantage of every minute I know that would be untrue.
Because, alas,
as the time passes I cannot banish the grief from my mind and I
become
cross. Unfortunately, when a man
is deprived of his freedom he cannot
think of anything other than this
deprvivation. Those who find fault
with
this might say “well, just call it a change-of-station and we’ll
talk about it
later!”.
But before you criticize me for this
attitude, let me explain. I have
been
spending the last two months with those in shackles. There is a
particular tolerance that is
peculiar to prisons but it is completely
opposite of the tolerance we infer
from that word. In such places as
jails,
regardless of how small one’s cell is, the hope of making it more
spacious is
fraught with disappointment. Permission
is never given for
making one’s cell
even a bit more liveable.
Let me explain some more: compared to
those in shackles, our situation
is like that of a “kalebend” ((confined to the
fortress)) or a “cezirebend”
((confined to the island)). A “kalebend” cannot pass across the fortress
walls, but the same way a “cezirebend” can pass within the walls
whenever he
wants to, we, too, can leave our dungeon with two soldiers
and an artillery
officer, but only on Fridays, and enter the prison that the
shackled ones call
the “galley slave jail”.
As soon as I get up each day I go to my
pigeons, give them fresh water
and then some food. After this, our gendarme servant makes coffee
for
me and I smoke a cigarette to relax.
My pigeons are of the Aleppo
“demkeş” variety and they are all bluish in
color. Seven months ago
there was just
one pair but now there are five. They
are my family and
as the head of the family I try to do my duty toward them
each morning.
The pigeons never avoid me
and, on the contrary, whenever I enter their
domain they all come to me and, in
their own language, they ask me for
my kind attention. Whenever I tell one of them to perch on my
hand
they comply and I pet them, feeding them with the meal in my other
hand. I treat them all equally so
there’s not a trace of jealousy or
competition.
They know that I care for each of them.
Let me describe their beauty: their
feathers are bluish, as I have said.
But
don’t think of them as the pigeons you see around our mosques.
The shade of blue is more toward the shining
blackness of a raven.
It is as if each
fiber of their feathers has been dipped in a bath of
silver water and then
covered with a brilliant coat of paint. Their
bodies are larger than the biggest pigeons we are familiar with and
they have
feathered shanks. In particular, half of
their heads are
surrounded with these extra feathers so that when you look at
them
from the rear it appears that they are wearing an elegantly sewn gown.
Their gate is quite coquettish and the
chirping coming from them in
the morning awakens one’s senses.
So I am busy with them the first thing
each day. Afterwards I grab
my
cigarettes and head for the interior of the dungeon. But with each
entry or exit there is the
horrific sound of the gate clanging that rattles
every bone in my body. The gate is like a checkerboard made up of
iron bars that are two or three inches in diameter, with a padlock that
weighs
more than ten kilograms. The sliding
iron bolt is two meters
long and three inches in diameter! So you can now
picture what a jail
gate is like! The
horrific sound I referred to comes from the movement
of the sliding bolt.
The time to submit my mail is approaching
so I will end my letter here.
This is
all that I can write this week. “Baki
dua” (( I have nothing to add
but a prayer))
Date Fi 15 Zilkade 1293 Rhodes Prison
((2 December 1876))
NOTE: Dates are notoriously difficult to pinpoint with Ottoman
documents because of the varying calendars. Ebüzziya Tevfik’s
“Hicri” date of 15 Zilkade 1293 above converts to the “Miladi”
date of 2 December 1876, although he would have been back in
Istanbul by that time, thanks to Abdülhamid II’s general pardon
issued on 31 May 1876. Also, based on the first sentence of his
letter, it appears that he wrote it about 11 months into his detention,
which began in 1873. In any event, this copy of his letter was
published in his Istanbul newspaper Mecmua Ebuzziya on
15 Zilkade 1297 (19 October 1880).
“Ebüzziya” (‘Father of Ziya’, his eldest son) was, in fact, quite busy
and productive with his writings and activities while on Rhodes.
For example, he wrote articles under the name “Ebüzziya” that
were published in the journal “Muharrir” in Istanbul, he prepared
the “Numune-i Edebiyyat-i Osmaniyye”, a Western-style literary
anthology, and he collaborated with Ahmet Midhat Efendi to found
a school named “Medrese-i Süleymaniyye” for Western-style
education in Turkey.
Source for Part One: Mecmua Ebüzziya, 15 Zilkade 1297
(19 October 1880)
//END of PART ONE//
Hiç yorum yok:
Yorum Gönder