Though the training camp was only sixty kilometers from his home, to him it felt completely foreign. Here he could become whoever he wanted. After an embarrassing medical exam, during which he stripped naked for a man with a peculiar accent and spectacles, Kemal was given his very own uniform: a fez, a jacket, pants, a pair of woolen socks, a water canteen, rawhide sandals, and a pair of puttees—strips of cloth that wrap around his ankle to his knee. All six items were his and his alone, and they gave him a new sense of ownership and importance. But the thrill of being in full uniform disappeared when he remembered she would never see it. Now the uniform only makes the heat more unbearable. Where it once fit snugly around his shoulders and middle, it now hangs loose.
Competing with the heat and hunger is a third discomfort characteristic of his new life: monotony. Morning drills are almost always preceded by a breakfast of weak tea. Bayonet drills and rifle marksmanship take up his afternoons, and evening drills are only rarely interrupted by immunizations and the rare first-aid lesson. And of course, there is the marching. Every time an officer wishes to take a nap or go to the coffee house, the trainees are asked to march. Marching, it seems, is the Ottoman army’s answer to everything.
“Damn it!” Tekin’s massive hands have accidentally clipped the finch’s wings with the carving knife. Grunting, he throws the pine bird into a nearby bush and walks away.
The wingless bird falls from one branch to another until it lands in the mud. The trainees leave for yet another marching drill, but Kemal does not join them. He picks up the wooden creature, tracing his fingers over its crudely carved body. Tiny slashes imitating feathers cover the entire surface, but its eyes and beak are barely visible. Kemal takes a pencil from his breast pocket. He cleans the dust and debris off with the linen; then using his pencil, he begins to revive the pathetic bird. First, he works on the creature’s eyes, creating an expression of such fragile beauty that the more difficult task of refashioning its wings becomes a necessity. He ignores the break in the wood where the wings once were and decides to render the bird at rest instead of in midflight. Soon a pair of wings graces the sides of its breast, and expertly drawn tail feathers are etched in its rump.
“Get up, boy.” His commanding officer, Nurredin Pasha, stands against a cloudless sky with Lieutenant Hikmet at his side. Kemal stands up, looking straight ahead, back straight, arms at his side, the finch in one hand and the pencil in the other.
“What are you doing here, soldier?” Nurredin asks.
Kemal knows not to answer.
“Why are you not marching with the rest? Who do you think this training is for?”
Kemal says nothing.
“He has a pencil in his hand, sir,” Hikmet says. “And a kerchief.”
Nurredin snatches Lucine’s kerchief from Kemal’s hand. He turns it over with disinterest, then throws it back at Kemal.
“A peasant with a pencil,” Nureddin says. “Interesting.”
“Like a woman with a sword.” Hikmet chuckles.
“Tomorrow you will report to the officer’s tent for a literacy test,” Nurredin says. “But for now, a lesson in obedience. Whip him,” he tells Hikmet.
When the first blow lands on his bare back, it makes a noise that rings in his ears and vibrates all the way down his spine. Kemal winces but does not scream. Each time the leather belt lands on his skin, he squeezes the bird in the palm of his hand. And when the thrashing is over, Kemal suddenly decides it will not go to waste. He swipes his fingers across his lower back and spreads the warm red liquid of his insides all over the finch’s belly.
Kemal limps to the barracks, carrying the red bird over to the straw mat where Tekin is resting.
“What the hell happened to you?” Tekin asks.
“For your son,” replies Kemal, handing him the red-bellied bird.
Tekin stares at Kemal, then at the bird in disbelief. “How?” he begins but does not finish. “Thank you,” he says finally cradling the bird in one massive palm.
That evening, Tekin strokes the wooden finch as they listen to the other men talk. In the cover of darkness, Kemal tries to forget his stinging back. He holds Lucine’s kerchief to his nose. The faint smell of lavender is all but gone, replaced by the smell of his own sweat.
Hüsnü, a merchant from Istanbul, who on the first day naively demanded sugar with his tea, is complaining again. “How do they expect us to learn how to fight on an empty stomach?” he asks.
“What’s a little hunger when you are doing God’s work?” Mehmet the Babe, so called for his childlike face and small frame, answers him. “Soon the Prophet himself will open the gates of heaven and present us with seventy-two virgins.”
“You can keep your virgins. I’ll take a good whore and a long life,” Hüsnü says. Peals of laughter rip through the room.
“The keys to paradise are no laughing matter,” Mehmet says. “We took an oath of martyrdom on the Koran. We are guaranteed a victory by Allah himself and will be rewarded accordingly.”
“Yes, and what will you do with that reward, Mehmet?” Hüsnü asks. “You wouldn’t know what to do with one virgin, never mind seventy-two.”
Tekin laughs.
“I know plenty,” Mehmet says.