“Really? Well, then let’s talk about this, shall we?” says Hüsnü, and he begins a graphic discussion of the pleasures of heaven, with heavy emphasis on dark-eyed houris.
Kemal smiles to himself. They are a sorry bunch, as far as soldiers go, but brave. Like him, their training consists mainly of marching under the Anatolian sun, but in their company he goes from being an only son to a brother. Here he is one of 370 conscripts, all born at the tail end of the nineteenth century, to one father, the Ottoman nation. Three hundred seventy young men sleeping in one barrack, eating in one mess hall, training and marching endlessly as one. And though the heat, exhaustion, and monotony are sometimes unbearable, Kemal is cured of his loneliness.
Six weeks later, Kemal is riding a train toward Aleppo and then Baghdad. They are to fight in the Mesopotamian campaign against the British and British India. At certain points on the road, their paths run alongside the deportees, who are being driven to the Syrian Desert. The sight of this collection of displaced humanity, whatever their crime might be, causes Kemal’s stomach to turn. He scans the slow-moving crowd, looking from one hollowed-out face to the next. Dirty rags hang like wet laundry from their bones, and their vacant eyes look for death or mercy. He takes comfort in the knowledge that Lucine would not be among them. Her family has money and plenty of connections. Even so, the sight of one woman in particular, her hair tied in a style he recognizes to be a familiar French twist, reminds him of Mrs. Melkonian. Though the woman is a stranger and not his former employer, the sight of her tattered European dress causes Kemal to vomit his breakfast of black bread and tea. He bends over, but the crammed quarters of the railcar make discretion impossible.
“Donkey fucker!” Hüsnü says, shoving him a little. “Get away from my boots.”
“See something you can’t handle?” says Tekin.
Kemal wipes his mouth with his sleeve but says nothing.
“Before you cry for the Armenian,” Tekin continues, “remember he would gladly hand a Russian the knife to slit your throat. The only reason they’re out there and you’re in here is because we beat them to it.”
“It’s true,” Mehmet adds. “They say hundreds of Armenians have joined the Russians in the eastern province of Van. They store guns and celebrate every time we lose a battle. They even shed Muslim blood on our streets.”
Kemal takes another look at the people on foot. There seem to be a thousand or more, mostly women and children, huddled together. Walking against the wind, their backs hunched under bundles, they look more like burdened mules than revolutionaries. He tells himself that the Melkonians are no revolutionaries. Lucine is probably somewhere in the West by now, practicing her English with a prissy young man, someone with new boots and a last name. Suddenly Kemal realizes what the enemy is truly after. If we don’t stop them, he thinks, the West will take away more than just our land. They will take our women and our pride, our mosques and our manhood.
Kemal turns his gaze away from the deportees. He studies the uniformed men around him like he would a landscape or tapestry, with an eye toward detail. He notices Hüsnü’s clipped fingernails and pomaded mustache, and the way Tekin’s face softens whenever he’s whittling. He sees Mehmet’s grip tighten on his bayonet whenever he speaks of the enemy or death. White knuckles on brown wood grain.
The details give Kemal an insight into the most tender parts of his new friends. His heart aches for them and for himself, and there is a part of him that hopes this war is truly holy and sanctioned by Allah, because how else can they bear it, really?