Atatürk, Kemal, 1881-1938; Turkey -- Description and travel; Turkey -- Politics and government -- 1918-1960
He was always amused to see me “hunting” in the dictionary; and as I
could _never_ get used to “beginning at the end and reading backwards,”
my most painstaking researches often produced strange results.
Like most of the Nationalist ministers, Feszi Bey is a man of about
forty, tall, well-built, dark, with large dark eyes. He is one of the
richest men in Asia Minor, owning about eighteen villages in Diarbékir,
and is immensely proud of his sons. His house in Constantinople was
“requisitioned” for English officers and left almost in ruins; but he
has large estates and many houses in his native land. Here, in Angora,
he was paying what seemed to be a heavy rent for somewhere to live,
considering the scanty furniture and lack of comforts in this house.
The ground-floor was occupied by kitchens and another room which the
merciful man had given up to his horses, leaving his carriage outside in
the rain and snow. Though not in any way like a stable, the animals were
clearly well-cared-for here. A very steep wooden staircase, certainly
_not_ built for ladies’ high heels, leads to a central room—almost a
“lounge”—which opens into four others. It was dimly lit by candles, a
survival from war-days when petrol was worth its weight in
gold—literally two hundred francs a litre.
Feszi Bey has been in Angora ever since the movement began, and has
acquired that striking expression of a set, firm resolve which I notice
on the faces of all his colleagues. I asked him whether he did not
“sometimes tire of living in this bare and rough Asiatic fortress, so
far from all means of culture or distraction.”
“We have our work,” he replied; “too absorbing and too important to
leave us time for complaint. We do not even ‘miss’ our comforts, or need
more than an hour or two’s sleep. There is so much to plan for our new
country, the day, and most of the night, are not long enough.”
Here one naturally feels far more in “New Turkey” than at Smyrna; the
impression grows on one day by day. At Lausanne I tried to make them
understand that they were still busying themselves over a Turkey that is
dead.... “You can’t talk to these people as you were accustomed to speak
under the Sultans, they would not understand you.”
They only smiled at a woman carried away by her emotions. But they were
wrong; this is no question of sex. The very ramparts, clear-cut in the
distance like gigantic razor-blades, the very remains of the Roman, even
the Seldjoucide and Osman, civilisations which halted among these hills,
will bear witness to the birth of a new nation!
As I gaze out over the mountain-tomb of Timourlin a voice seems to cut
through the chill air: “Here is a glory that will not perish. Here,
where the civilisations of the world’s childhood have flourished; here,
on the ruins of the great Empire of the Ancients; here beginneth a new
Turkey, the democrat of democracies!”
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Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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