Hungarian Rhapsody - Three Books

The Good Master, by Kate Seredy

World Wars I and II redrew world maps, broke apart empires, and wiped out tens of millions of people.   During the three decades spanning the assassination of Grand Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, by a Yugoslavian nationalist, to the surrender of Germany and Japan in 1945 the human condition – for most Europeans, and Jews in particular – was about survival, one day at a time.  Many factors led to the conflicts which snowballed into the hellish battles that determined territorial boundaries, but  it was the collision of imperialistic empires vying for global domination that caused the chain reactions which devastated the entire world.  In all, 80 million human beings perished, roughly four per cent of the total population of 1945, some in conflict, some by hate, and others by chance.  The survivors suffered physical and emotional wounds, and many left behind ancestral homes and beloved traditions in order to escape death.

Hungary found herself in the middle of the World Wars by virtue of geography.  Long before artificial boundaries defined it as a separate country, nomadic “Magyar” people from the Ural Mountains began migrating eastward;  and around 865 AD a group under the leadership of the legendary Árpád split off and conquered the Carpathian Basin, north and east  of the Black Sea.  Over time, the Magyars developed a unique cultural identity which gave rise to a rich tradition of folklore, artistry, music, and horsemanship.  As western civilization arose with vast industrialized cities, territorial battles evolved into centuries of wars of aggression across much of Europe.  During all this turmoil, the Magyars held onto their way of life and Hungary retained its cultural identity. 

Three books – The Good Master, Between the Woods and the Water, and The Invisible Bridge  –  taken together, describe Hungary’s cultural , geographic, human, and political losses during the World Wars.  The Good Master,  by Kate Seredy, was a Newbury Honor Book in 1936.  In it, the author tells the story of her childhood when her father sent her to live with his brother’s family out in the vast Hungarian plains in the early 20^th century.  My fifth grade teacher read this book out loud to our class and to me it was magical in a way that Harry Potter can never be.  Kate was a skinny, spoiled little girl whose widowed father couldn’t handle by himself, so he sent her to the country hoping she might stay out of trouble.  From the moment of her arrival, announced by her “tin whistle scream”, she created a stir wherever she went.  Her Uncle Martón, the “Good Master”, being an expert horse trainer, knew exactly how to bring out the best in young Kate.  This book is a love story about him as well as her aunt and cousin plus the people and traditions unique to Magyar culture.  Kate Seredy immigrated to the United States in 1922, and eventually became a prize-winning illustrator and author of children’s books. 

During the World Wars Hungary was caught in the middle of the European power struggles.  Under the terms of Treaty of Trianon, at the end of World War I, Hungary gained sovereign status, at the price of 72 per cent of its historical territory.  The treaty gave vast tracts of land to Romania and the newly formed Czechoslovakia, as well as the combined kingdom of Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia.  Three point five million ethnic Hungarians thus found themselves living in exile even though they hadn’t moved an inch. 

During the interwar period, Hungarian right-wing nationalists fought with those wishing to revert to the aristocracy over who should be king.  While the nation struggled to form a new government, interim regent Miklós Horthy appointed Count István Bethlen Prime Minister.  Bethlen proved to be a master politician who succeeded in bringing order to the country by engineering a series of compromises and payoffs to calm the anti-Semitic and right-wing radicals.  Under Bethlen’s leadership, Hungary joined the League of Nations and signed a peace treaty with Italy.  The Great Depression exacerbated Bethlen’s economic policy weaknesses, leading to devastating shortages and unemployment; anti-Semitism and fascism once again became popular movements.  Being tribal people, the Magyars had no love for the tribe of Israel;  even so, Hungary resisted Hitler’s policy of annihilation.  In the wake of economic devastation, Horthy replaced Prime Minister Bethlen with Gyula Gömbös, a right-wing nationalist who aligned himself with Hitler’s Germany, gambling that Hitler would prevail in any future conflict between nations.  Thus, anti-Semitism became the law of the land and Hungarian Jews suddenly found themselves stripped of their civil rights.

Between the Woods and the Water, by Patrick Leigh Fermor, is based on a diary he kept as he traveled on foot, and the occasional bummed ride, from “the hook of Holland to Constantinople” – at the age of 18 – shortly after Hitler had come to power in Germany.  This book begins where his first book in the series, A Time of Gifts, leaves off:  at the Danube River as he crosses the Mária Valéria bridge from Slovakia to Hungary.  With the eyes, mind, and heart of a young man, Fermor recorded the details of every person, place, and thing he encountered on his trek.  While in Hungary, he traveled with Magyars and Gypsies on a borrowed horse and, like Kate Seredy, recognized the intrinsic value of these cultures as something precious and irreplaceable.  During his travels Fermor misplaced his diary which contained rich and detailed descriptions of a world that was on the brink of vanishing, although he didn’t know it at the time.  Decades later, workers in a Romanian monastery found the diary and tracked down its author. 

During World War II, Fermor worked undercover for the Grecian Nazi resistance movement.  His war experience coupled with his knowledge of classical cultures, gave him great insight and perspective about human history.  Many years later, when he read his own journal about traveling through Europe when the “old world” still existed, he decided to reinterpret it through the lens of a seasoned war veteran and scholar.  Between the Woods and the Water paints a poignant portrait of the aristocracy, city dwellers, peasantry, and gypsies whose ways of life were sacrificed along with millions of Jews in service to Hitler’s ugly hatred and megalomania, and then later to Josef Stalin’s Soviet style Communism. 

The Invisible Bridge – a work of fiction by Julie Orringer – is set during the second World War in Budapest and Paris, and is loosely based on the story of author’s Hungarian Jewish grandparents who immigrated to New York at the end of World War II.  Andras is the second of three brothers whose ancestral home is in a rural village called Konyár.  Andras and Tibor, the eldest, are living in Budapest while waiting to emigrate for their college educations, Andras to architecture school in Paris and Tibor to medical school in Italy.  Their younger brother, Mátyás, is still in secondary school at the time.  On the eve of Andras’ departure for Paris, Elza Hász, an upper-class Jewish woman of his family’s acquaintance asks him to take a package to her son who is already living in Paris.  Andras agrees and while he is picking up the package, Elza’s mother slips him a letter in secret to be mailed once he reaches Paris. 

The mysterious letter eventually leads Andras into a new and exciting world full of romance and mystery, as well as jealousy and misunderstanding.  Meanwhile, the winds of war grow stronger, and life in Europe for educated Jews during World War II underwent a rapid sea change.  Almost everyone in Europe suffered food and fuel shortages, but Jews also suffered discrimination and persecution at the hands of their former friends and neighbors.  Conditions in the Hungarian labor camps where Jewish men worked as de facto slaves were only somewhat less abusive than in Germany’s death camps.  Survivors returned home looking like skeletons and covered with lice, only to be recalled as soon as they were healthy again.  That anyone survived is a testament to the strength and durability of the human spirit.

Those Hungarians who opposed the Nazis suffered the loss of their communities in silence, because to voice opposition was suicide.  They watched the gradual fraying of their social fabric as did their counterparts in other countries which fell under Germany’s power.   Prime Minister Bethlen held Hitler at bay and promoted tolerance of Hungarian Jews, but his successor, Gyula Gömbös, aligned Hungary with Germany and pandered to Hitler in the hope of retaining some degree of autonomy when the wars ended.    

A common saying during times of war is “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, and in World War II the Allies needed socialist Russia in order to defeat Hitler.  The Soviet Union under Josef Stalin had entered into a mutual non-aggression pact with Germany, but Hitler reneged and this proved his undoing.  After Hitler’s defeat, Soviet troops maintained their occupation of much of eastern Europe including, Hungary.  The Warsaw Pact of 1955 codified the Soviet occupation of eastern Europe as a response to West Germany’s joining NATO.  Russia, having been invaded by Napolean and Hitler, viewed western Europe and the United States as a clear threat; an occupied eastern Europe provided a strategic buffer against any future invasion attempts.

While we cannot know what might have happened had Hungary continued to resist Hitler, by aligning herself with Nazi Germany  the nation was trapped in the Soviet bloc at the end of World War II.  Under Communism, tradition and religion had no place and so, what little remained of Hungary’s cultural heritage following the wars, went deep underground.  During the Communist Era (1947-1999) several hundred thousand Hungarian intellectuals and free-thinking individuals “disappeared”; and yet, some independent spirit remained and in 1990, the opposition was strong enough and organized enough to force the USSR to loosen its grip.  Today, Hungary is a member of the European Union and NATO and enjoys hard won autonomy as a sovereign state.

As a metaphor, the “invisible bridge” works on many levels.  First it refers to the bombed out Chain Bridge in Budapest:  the pillars remained standing, but the spans and road bed were under water.  The metaphor also describes connections between people across time and distance.  Many such “invisible bridges” exist when worlds are torn apart by war and devastation.  These three books featuring Hungary paint a devastatingly beautiful portrait of a people and a place – a world – that has mostly disappeared, but can still be reached over the invisible bridges of memory, culture,  and history.  If The Good Master  and Between the Woods and the Water are what was, then  The Invisible Bridge takes us to what is:  a world shaped by triumph and tragedy, love and hate, beauty and ugliness, war and peace.

Copyright 2012 Teresa Friedlander, all rights reserved

Rin Tin Tin - The Life and The Legend

By Susan Orlean

What makes a legend?  That question is the subtext of Susan Orlean’s new book Rin Tin Tin – The Life and The Legend.  Legends and myths both require good stories that get better with each telling; but what differentiates a legend is that it is based in fact.  Rin Tin Tin, the orphaned German shepherd puppy rescued from a World War I battlefield who then went on to become a movie star, is a perfect example of a legendary hero.  He was famous in his day and his fame lived on long after his death.  The legend was beginning fade away with the Baby Boom generation and might have disappeared completely had the dog not caught Orlean’s fancy.  In the abstract, this biography of the famous dog is a study of how legends come to be, but it is even more interesting than that.  What happened to Orlean while she was writing the book is that she became part of the legend herself in a way that respects and even enhances the story of Rin Tin Tin, adding yet another dimension to the life of one of Hollywood’s most enduring stars.

Rin Tin Tin, the dog, was a purebred German shepherd whose intelligence and talents were obsessively documented by his owner, Lee Duncan.   However, the “Rin Tin Tin” of television and movie fame was a larger-than-life hero played by not one but by many dogs and who was the subject of fanciful press releases.  Rin Tin Tin is as a much a story of the dog as it is of his owner, his agent, and a handful of other true believers.   Duncan, was an odd young man who had been scarred by a sad and lonely childhood in Los Angeles, California, and never quite learned the social skills necessary to form meaningful human relationships.  Rinty and his littermate, Nanette, gave Duncan a sense of belonging and connection which he did not have with people.  When the war ended, he could not face leaving the dogs behind, so he waged an intense lobbying campaign up and down the military chain of command which ultimately succeeded.  Nanette did not survive the trans-Atlantic crossing, but Rinty did and returned with Duncan to California. The horrors of war had taken a toll on Duncan, who retreated into his own private world with Rinty and Nanette II (also a German Shepherd).  Instead of finding a girl and settling down to family life, Duncan lived in his parents’ home and spent hours every day training the dogs.  Duncan was convinced that Rinty was a genius among canines and set out to prove it.

During the 1920s and ‘30s silent films created legends out of actresses and actors, and Lee Duncan decided that Rinty belonged in the Hollywood pantheon of movie stars.  He created screenplays with the majestic dog as the leading man and, surprisingly after knocking on hundreds of doors, Rinty got a break playing a wolf in the 1922 film, “The Man From Hell’s River”.  Rin Tin Tin starred in more than 20 films across ten years of working and was such a superstar that his name appeared before his human co-stars’ on movie billings.  Perhaps it was because Rinty never came across as phony or overly dramatic.  He was a dog being a dog, on screen and off.  Actors and actresses, on the other hand, had to use outsized gestures and extreme facial expressions in order to communicate without words.  This plus the dichotomy between their real lives and their on-screen personae also made them less appealing than the always faithful, always constant canine.

In the course of researching Rin Tin Tin, Susan Orlean traveled to the French battlefield where Rinty was born, hoping for some kind of epiphany about the dog’s life.  What she came to understand, instead, was that she was losing her ability to be objective about  Rin Tin Tin:  he had stopped being a dog and had become the object of her obsession.  This is the point at which an undisciplined writer becomes irrevocably bogged down.   Another trap that Orlean narrowly avoided was making the book about herself even though she wrote herself into the book by necessity.   Obsessiveness characterized almost everyone in Rinty’s inner circle.  This ability to inspire a passionate following seems to be another hallmark of a legend, and with Orlean, Rinty had one more true believer to keep his story alive.

The story of the legendary dog is also that of Hollywood and the ever-evolving entertainment business.  Before Hollywood became associated with film making, it was largely undeveloped, with a smattering of ranches and orange groves.  By the end of the 1930s, it was a bustling part of Los Angeles, a Mecca for aspiring movie stars, directors, and producers.  The original Rin Tin Tin lived 13 years, but Lee Duncan kept him alive by continually promoting the dog’s pedigreed offspring with limited success.  The canine hero was reincarnated in the 1950s by ABC in “Adventures of Rin Tin Tin” starring Jim Brown and Lee Acker alongside Rin Tin Tin IV (or reasonable facsimile thereof).  The show ran for four years and Duncan, nearing the end of his life, was only marginally involved.  He would have been shut out altogether had it not been for Bert Leonard, an executive with Columbia Pictures whose story is inextricably linked with Duncan’s.  Orlean’s discovery of Leonard’s involvement with Duncan and Rinty is a fine example of investigative journalism.  She had heard the name, Bert Leonard, but had been unable to learn much about him until reading his obituary.  This piece of luck led her to a treasure trove of documents about Rin Tin Tin, “Rin Tin Tin”, Lee Duncan, and others, including plaintiffs and defendants in the tangle of litigation which left Leonard penniless and homeless while he slowly died from cancer. 

According to legend, the original Rinty could clear an 11 foot hurdle and follow Duncan’s complicated voice commands.  Sadly, most of his silent films are lost forever because no one thought to preserve them.  What we know of these films  is what can be pieced together from existing historical records.  As talented as the original Rin Tin Tin was, his progeny were not the stuff of legends, however, and so a number of stand-ins played the part of “Rin Tin Tin” while Lee Duncan, took Rin Tin Tin’s offspring on publicity tours and visits to schools and orphanages.  It was Leonard’s job to work the studio deals and find the sponsors.  He was a man of vision and enthusiasm who was never able to hang onto success due to numerous character weaknesses.  Leonard could easily have taken advantage of Duncan, but protected him and his interest in the Hollywood phenomenon instead, probably to his own detriment. 

After Lee Duncan’s death, ownership of the rights to “Rin Tin Tin” as well as the pedigreed progeny and fan club became the objects of lengthy and expensive lawsuits.  Lee Duncan famously said, “There will always be a Rin Tin Tin.”  Susan Orlean, in writing this book has rekindled interest in “the greatest dog ever”.  If Rin Tin Tin the book is made into a movie, there is an excellent chance that the many-headed litigation monster will reawaken, and the legend will become a myth.

Copyright 2012, Teresa Friedlander, all rights reserved

The Great Gatzby

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, and their literary contemporaries belonged to the “lost generation” of Americans who came of age in the late 1910s. When young American men should have been going to university, beginning careers, and getting married they went instead overseas to fight in the Great War, leaving behind young women who waited anxiously for their return. Entire industries sprang up overnight to supply the war effort, fueling a period of economic growth which abruptly ended with the Treaty at Versailles in 1919. A brief recession occurred in the United States largely due to the lack of a plan for a post war economy on the part of President Woodrow Wilson (term, 1913-1921). The laissez-faire policies of President Warren Harding, elected in 1920, spurred a heady period of economic growth as munitions factories retooled to make consumer goods. Suddenly, America found itself in a hyperactive state of flux, a period which came to be called “The Jazz Age”, when social mores and women’s fashions finally broke free from Victorian era strangulation, and money seemed to grow on trees. Harding’s policies in service to an unregulated economy set the stage for the stock market crash 1929, but only a handful of “Chicken Littles” could see that the sky was going to fall.

Jazz, a fusion of African rhythm, Ragtime, classical music, Negro spirituals, and other influences, provided the soundtrack for the social and economic evolution taking place in the United States in the 1920s. With freedom and full citizenship a birthright, Blacks began migrating en masse to big cities such as New York and Chicago to work in factories, bringing their musical traditions and creative energy with them. Automobiles completely replaced horses for transportation, widening horizons for movement and spawning new industries and career opportunities. Prohibition drove liquor sales underground adding an element of danger and exclusiveness to the increasingly hedonistic party scene, while enriching the so-called “rum runners”. The stock market soared, leading to speculation and a sense that the party would go on forever.

New York – Wall Street – was the center of the universe and the sons of old money families flocked there to learn the stock and bond businesses. Their summers were spent on Long Island in grand homes facing the water, attending lavish parties where contraband liquor flowed freely and women danced to the new music with abandon. Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (1896-1940) found himself a part of this milieu when his success as a writer catapulted him into New York society. He was simultaneously enamored of and disgusted by his new friends, who were beautiful and charming as well as deceitful and shallow.

The Great Gatsby, published in 1925, is a searing portrait of elite society during the Jazz Age, with echoes from Fitzgerald’s own life. An upper class Catholic, Fitzgerald attended but did not graduate from Princeton University. Despite his literary gifts he was a mediocre student, and dropped out to enlist in World War I. As a youth, he had met and fallen obsessively in love with a southern belle named Zelda Sayre who refused to marry him until she was confident in his ability to keep her in the style to which she was accustomed. This Side of Paradise, published in 1920 made Fitzgerald wealthy enough for Zelda and the two were married in New York city. The marriage was stormy due to heavy drinking and Zelda’s latent schizophrenia as well as her insatiable material needs. Fitzgerald “prostituted” himself by writing for magazines and Hollywood producers so as to stay two steps ahead of his creditors. While he, himself, did not resort to criminal activity in order to keep his wife happy, he understood the temptation and toyed with the idea in the person of Jay Gatzby.

Fitzgerald struggled to understand the nature of love in his own life and recognized the corrupting influence of money and social position. Nick Carraway narrates the story of Jay Gatzby, a mysterious man who throws parties worthy of Bacchus in his waterfront mansion in West Egg, Long Island. East Egg was the realm of the old money aristocracy and while Nick belonged there, he chose to live in a bungalow next door to Jay Gatzby. Prohibition notwithstanding, Gatzby never seemed to run out of liquor for the constant stream of party guests who came through his door. Nick was too well bred to invite himself and so he waited for an invitation from his mysterious neighbor whom he had only observed at a distance, staring across the bay at East Egg.

Another important theme in The Great Gatzby is the uniquely American phenomenon of the overnight success. Like or not, established old money aristocrats found themselves in the company of vulgar new money people and had to devise ways of being civil while keeping a distance, even when friendships would have been financially advantageous. East Egg rarely ventured into West Egg, but Gatzby’s parties were reputedly so awash in liquor that the temptation was too great to resist. Eventually Nick receives an invitation to Gatzby’s home and discovers that none of the guests know their host; they don’t even know what he looks like. In a telling bit of social commentary, a guest referred to as “Owl Eyes” observes that the books in the library are real, indicating that Mr. Gatzby might in fact be an educated man, unlike most “new money”. The source of his wealth is the subject of much gossip and when the truth comes out it reveals how love can devolve into obsession and madness.

Women in the 1920s liberated themselves from corsets and heavy garments and began revealing their legs, arms, and décolletage. Dresses were cut to exaggerate dance movement and the lively young women wearing them were dubbed “flappers”. This was all very scandalous to the older generation and marked the beginning of profound social changes which eventually led to working mothers and the freedom to divorce. Men had always been able to indulge in sexual affairs with little consequence; keeping mistresses was not uncommon in the highest echelons of society, and wives had no choice but to tolerate their husbands’ infidelities. Inspired by the likes of Isadora Duncan, Georgia O’Keefe, Martha Graham, and Imogene Cunningham, women began appreciating their natural bodies and pushing the limits of sexual mores by taking lovers and posing in the nude for artists.

Daisy Buchanan, the object of Jay Gatzby’s obsession, is an unflattering example of a young society woman during this time. Driven by narcissism and materialism, Daisy married a rich man with a good pedigree, Tom Buchanan, rather than the poor but ambitious man with whom she had been passionately in love. Gatzby, refusing to accept Daisy’s rejection, spent several years reinventing himself in order to be worthy of her. The fact that Daisy is married and has a child is of little consequence to Gatzby; he knows they are meant to be together. Daisy’s husband, Tom, keeps a mistress in town but that doesn’t stop him from being jealous of the romance between his wife and her mysterious lover. Nick, in his narration, makes the point that while aristocrats look beautiful, they often do not act that way, leaving others to clean up after them. The Buchanans did not concern themselves with the feelings of others, all that mattered was getting what they wanted, when they wanted it. Their false sense of entitlement and superiority was a birthright.

Jay Gatzby, despite his efforts to become worthy of Daisy, ends up a tragic figure who makes the ultimate sacrifice for the woman he loves. The narcissistic Daisy coldly accepts this as if she deserves it, leading one to ask at what point did Gatzby’s love become madness? F. Scott Fitzgerald was likewise tragic: his marriage to Zelda was a torture chamber of codependence and he died young from alcoholism, believing himself to be a sell-out and a failure. Zelda had always suffered from delusions that she was a great writer, dancer, and artist; in truth she was a beautiful but overindulged dilettante with an enviable pedigree. Her behavior was erratic but the smitten Fitzgerald blamed himself for her unhappiness until, at some point, he realized that his wife was mentally ill and had her committed to a mental institution. For the rest of her life, Zelda cycled in and out of psychiatric hospitals, publishing a single novel which was poorly received by both the public and her husband, who accused her of plagiarism and character assassination. Whatever sympathy Fitzgerald once had for Zelda’s fragile mental health was obliterated by his scathing critique of her talents in the wake of her “tell all” book. The failure of Save Me the Waltz devastated Zelda; however, the book was resuscitated after her death when literary scholars recognized how underappreciated Fitzgerald’s work was, and provides a valuable counterpoint to his version of their life together.

The Great Gatzby is an enduring classic which is required reading of most high school students. It is important both as a historical document and as a great work of literature because of how it brings us into a time and place that was uniquely American, a window into our national character. F. Scott Fitzgerald, captured the essence of human nature within the world he was describing: the delusions, hypocrisies, and character defects which prevent all of us from transcending ourselves. By the time Jay Gatzby saw the truth about himself and Daisy it was too late, but he took a bullet for her just the same. Disillusioned and dispirited, Nick did what Fitzgerald wished he could have done: returned to the middle west of his youth to search for lost innocence.

Copyright 2011 Teresa Friedlander, all rights reserved

Dreamers of the Day

Dreamers of the Day
by Mary Doria Russell

Book review by Teresa Friedlander, copyright 2010

According to “The Washington Post” the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is already five or six times larger than the Exxon Valdez catastrophe of 1989; and will continue to spew for at least two more months, or longer if the relief wells fail. We are starting to see the devastating and depressing pictures of fish, birds, and turtles coated with the sticky, slimy crude and could very well see entire ecosystems collapse. So who is to blame for this disaster?  BP?  The Minerals Management Service?  President Bush (2nd)?  Vice President Cheney?  President Obama?  To find the answer, we need to go back in time to the early years of the twentieth century, when the burgeoning automobile industry created a demand for petroleum that shows no signs of stopping. Today the United States is the third highest per capita consumer of oil, after Saudi Arabia and Canada. With China and India producing cars for their growing middle classes, competition for this dwindling resource could soon be as ugly as the Gulf oil spill.

Dreamers of the Day is not a great book. It is written well enough, but the story is a little silly as the narrator is speaking from beyond the grave. If you can tolerate a few clichéd plot devices, the reason to read this book is that the author, Mary Doria Rusell, provides a clear and succinct early history of the Middle Eastern oil industry as well as British efforts to retain control of Iraq and Jordan following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. It was this critical moment in history that set the stage for the world’s current addiction to oil and the consequences that continue to play out.

In the aftermath of World War I, western Europe, Specifically Britain and France, redrew the maps of eastern Europe, Asia Minor, and the Middle East.  British colonial secretary, Winston Churchill, called a meeting, in Cairo in 1921, with Middle East experts to decide how to re-organize newly liberated Mesopotamia and Transjordan. T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) was one of the attendees, given his knowledge of the Arabic world, as was Gertrude Bell, a woman of great stature who was also an expert on the Middle East. Colonel Lawrence and Miss Bell both acted as mediators between the various Arabs and the British, carefully winning the respect and trust of the former and educating the latter. The result of this meeting was the installation of Faisal bin Hussein as Iraq’s first king. Faisal was given this honor out of gratitude for helping the British during the first world war by entering Damascus, Syria, at the height of the Arab Revolt against the Turkish Ottomans. Churchill, on the advice of Miss Bell and Colonel Lawrence, recommended Faisal because they believed he could gain the support of Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds. This was a cunning choice as Faisal was from a prominent Sunni family and was also a direct descendent of Prophet Muhammad’s great-grandfather, Hashim ibn Abd al-Manaf. The Cairo Conference had expected Faisal to be more of a puppet than he turned out to be; and Faisal, for his own part, discovered that bringing different religious and ethnic groups together into a single government is much harder than it sounds. Further complicating matters was the on-going rivalry between France and Britain over the entire region known as The Levant.

Meanwhile, demand for petroleum and its byproducts grew exponentially as industry and technology evolved in Europe and North America. Oil producing and exporting companies formed and used Basra, Iraq, at the northern end of the Persian Gulf as their main depot. Britain retained control of Iraq until 1932, granting it independence in exchange for land and natural resources, Royal Air Force bases, and a coordinating role in foreign policy for twenty-five years. During this period Iraq suffered a series of coups d’état and a British invasion; and perpetrated a pogrom against its Jewish citizens. The opportunistic oil companies continued their messy business by lining the pockets of whoever was in power.

Following the second World War, the United Nations annexed Palestine, dividing it into Arab and Jewish States in 1948. The creation of Israel – a homeland for the Jewish people – was unacceptable to the Arabs in the region, especially the displaced Palestinians even though the land in question was mostly unpopulated, barren desert. Israel quickly became the Arab world’s main enemy and has been in a state of preparedness for war ever since. While the creation of Israel had no direct bearing on the production and distribution of oil, the fact that the region became dangerously unstable meant that access to that oil was constantly at risk.

After World War II, the strategically located Suez Canal became critical to the shipping of oil to consuming countries such as the United States. Britain maintained a military presence of 80,000 troops at the Suez Canal in order to protect its access under the terms of the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936. Across the next two decades, anti-British sentiments grew as Egypt struggled with inflation, unemployment, and an unstable economy. In October of 1951, Egypt decided to abandon the treaty and demanded Britain’s withdrawal from Suez. This led to increasing violence and rioting in Cairo and ultimately to a military coup d-état led by Muhammad Neguib and Gamal Abdul Nasser, who would one day be Egypt’s president. Before, during, and after this period, Egypt routinely intercepted cargo destined for Israel as it passed through the Suez Canal. In spite of harsh criticism from the United Nations Security Council, interference with Israel-bound ships increased steadily under Egypt’s new regime. During 1955 and 1956, Britain and Egypt engaged in a growing power struggle as Egypt sought total autonomy. In addition to direct conflict, Nasser engaged in negotiations with communist countries to obtain arms. Britain sought help from the United States but President Eisenhower decided to stay out so as not to offend Saudi Arabia, a key supplier of oil. In a series of chess-like moves, Egypt did the unthinkable and officially recognized the People’s Republic of China. This so angered the United States that Secretary of State John Foster Dulles revoked American financial support for the Aswan Dam project. With the United States out of the way, Nasser claimed that Suez belonged to Egypt and demanded that British forces withdraw.

In 1956, Britain, hiding behind Israel and aided by France, declared war against Egypt in a bid to regain control of Suez. Each of these nations had separate motives: Britain needed Suez to control its remaining colonies; France wanted to weaken Nasser so its North African colonies would not grow restless; and Israel wanted to use the canal for shipping. Britain calculated that Nasser’s alliance with communist countries would cause the United States to support the invasion once it began. In this, they were mistaken. Tension between the United States and the Soviet Union was growing and the threat of another global war, should the Soviets back Egypt, kept President Eisenhower from engaging militarily. In a surprise move, Nasser asked the United States for assistance in finding a diplomatic solution to the crisis. The United Nations then demanded an immediate cease-fire and the removal of the invading forces. Britain and France had no choice but to withdraw; and Israel had learned important lessons about waging offensive wars. In order to enforce the cease-fire, the United Nations stationed a peace-keeping force on the Sinai Peninsula.

This uneasy peace held for the next decade, but Egypt began a massive military build-up along its border with Israel and closed the Straits of Tiran to any ship flying the Israeli flag. With no access to the Indian Ocean, Israel began a parallel build-up of forces and arms. In spite of UN presence, Israel was continuously under attack by Syrian and Palestinian guerillas – or terrorists. Adding to the tension was the need for water for Israel’s growing population. The River Jordan delimits Israel’s eastern border with Jordan and Syria, and in 1964, Israel opened its National Water Carrier system to bring water to the arid central regions. This had the effect of reducing the water flow into Syria and Jordan. In retaliation, with financial support from Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Syria and Jordan began construction of canals to divert the River Jordan’s headwaters from the Sea of Galilee. Beginning in April of 1965, Israel launched a series of air attacks to stop construction of the headwater diversion projects, because Israel’s water supply would have dropped significantly and the salinity of the Sea of Galilee would have increased as well. On May 30, 1967, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria signed a treaty pledging mutual support should Israel attack again. President Nasser, who for years had tried to be a peace-maker in the region, said: “Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel. The Arab people want to fight.”

On June 5, 1967, feeling that an attack by Egypt and other Arab nations was imminent, Israel made a preemptive strike on Egyptian forces amassed on the Sinai Peninsula. Within three days, Israel had succeeded in capturing Sinai. Meanwhile, Jordan and Syria made a series of attacks from the West Bank region. Israel, however, was fighting for its life and quickly decided to take the Old City of Jerusalem as well as the Palestinian West Bank territory surrounding it. Syria, acting on false reports that Israel was losing the war, began cautiously conducting air raids across their shared northern border. The Syrians, however, were caught off guard by the vastly superior and fully deployed Israeli Air Force. In spite of a cease-fire being called by Syria and Jordan, the Israelis attacked Golan in retaliation for the years of attacks sponsored by Syria and also because this area was difficult to defend, given its geography. Six days later, the war was over and Israel was in control of the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights. In addition to vastly increased territory, Israel also became home to approximately one million Arabs.

Israel’s military success only served to heighten the tension in the region and in October of 1973, members of the Organization of Oil Producing and Exporting Countries (OPEC), plus Egypt, Syria, and Tunisia, declared an oil embargo against the United States for providing supplies to Israel’s military during the Yom Kippur War of 1973. This caused gas prices to skyrocket and supplies to fall. Panic swept the United States and waiting in long gas lines became the national pastime. Bowing to pressure from the United States to negotiate with Syria, Israel agreed to give up the Golan heights. OPEC in turn lifted the embargo after a year but the threat remained.

President Jimmy Carter understood the long-term consequences of America’s dependence on foreign oil and put in place an energy policy designed to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels and to increase our use of renewable resources such as solar power. He was, unfortunately, several decades ahead of his time and his immediate successor, Ronald Reagan undid every one of President Carter’s innovative energy incentives almost immediately upon taking office. Three decades later, the Gulf of Mexico is dying from our oil addiction. While it might feel good to place the blame on a single president, CEO, or corporation, in reality we are all guilty. We Americans have known for a long time that our wasteful consumption would have to end and yet we failed to demand more fuel efficient cars and freedom from our oil suppliers. Instead, we demanded gas-guzzling sport-utility vehicles, high-performance sports cars, pick-up trucks, and Hummers.

At some point, the Gulf oil guyser will be plugged and the real work of cleaning up will begin. Will this catastrophe be the catalyst for our nation to break our oil dependence? Or, will we instead be like drug addicts who lie, steal, cheat, and kill in order to feed our disease until it kills us?

Copyright 2010 Teresa Friedlander all rights reserved

Birds Without Wings

Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernières

“A man is a bird without wings and a bird is a man without sorrow.” – Iskandar the Potter

From the very beginning of time, man has envied birds’ ability to fly free from the bounds of gravity and over insurmountable obstacles. It wasn’t until the 20th century, after thousands of years of dreaming and experimenting, that we conquered the skies and beyond. Looking at photographs of planet earth taken from outer space, one notices the significant absence of boundary markers. Other than land forms and bodies of water, the familiar continents and island nations, it is hard to tell where one country ends and another begins. The notion of national boundaries is a human invention and one that has been a source of conflict throughout history. Take the nation we know of as Turkey: one hundred years ago, it did not exist per se, but was part of the once powerful Ottoman Empire. Before the Ottomans, the Romans controlled this melting pot of western civilization and long before them were the Greeks. Viewed from orbit, this land shows no scarring from the wars fought over it, but on the ground, deep within the collective psyche of the people whose ancestors waged those wars, the scars are still there.

At its height, the Ottoman Empire incorporated Anatolia (Turkey), Armenia, the Balkans, the Black Sea, the western half of the Adriatic Sea, Greece, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and most of northern Africa and the southern Mediterranean Sea. Of critical strategic importance was The Bosporus, where the Black and Aegean Seas connect, because it was eastern Europe’s and Russia’s gateway to the Mediterranean. On the Western side of this narrowing is one of the world’s great cities. This city, first called Byzantium, was an important Grecian port for almost 1000 years until it was seized by the Romans and renamed Constantinople in honor of the Roman Emperor, Constantine (ca 330 AD). Constantinople eventually replaced Rome as the center of imperial power due to its location at the crossroads of the world. For the next many centuries the Romans continued to expand their empire until it began collapsing under its own weight. In 1453 the Arabic Ottomans took Constantinople, and the remains of the Roman Empire fell like a row of standing dominoes.

Under Ottoman rule Christians, Muslims, and Jews, mixed and mingled with Greeks, Turks, and Armenians. Given the rise and fall of first the Byzantine and then the Roman Empires, tribal, religious, and ethnic loyalties became secondary to the multi-cultural communities which developed. Birds Without Wings is the story of one such community: the fictional village of Eskibahçe, located in south western Anatolia. In this village, Christians of Greek and Armenian origin celebrated holy days with great frequency and even greater quantities of wine, and welcomed their Muslim neighbors to join in. While drinking was frowned upon by The Prophet, it brought a certain festive quality which many Muslims tacitly appreciated. So integrated was this society that Muslims and Christians often intermarried. In the words of Iskandar the Potter, the villagers “were very much mixed up, and apart from the rantings of a few hotheads whose bellies were filled with raki and the Devil [everyone] lived together in sufficient harmony”.

Unfortunately, the good times did not last. Empire builders in Eastern Europe and Russia had their eyes on Anatolia and The Bosporus. This required constant vigilance on the eastern border and the Black Sea, taking attention away from Greece. Greece used the opportunity to wage a successful war of independence from the Ottoman Empire, sparking a nationalist movement which slowly spread across Asia Minor. From 1829 to 1908, the Ottoman Empire continued to weaken, and religious and ethnic intolerance began to flare up. Turkish Armenians were first to be persecuted by the Muslim Ottomans who formed a dangerous alliance with Germany in order to resist the hostile Balkan states and the aggressive Russian Empire. The presence of German troops on Ottoman soil ushered in an era of suspicion and distrust. Political instability during this period provided the opportunity for a Grecian Turk, Mustafa Kemal, to rise through the military ranks and lead the brewing jihad – the holy war – aimed at reclaiming Turkey for the Turks by driving out the Christian Greeks and Armenians.

Birds Without Wings is a tragedy and a love story with moments of comedy; in other words it is a very human story. This book is also a blistering critique of ideology and religious extremism and the hatred they spawn. Louis de Bernières, best known for his novel Corelli’s Mandolin, tells the story of modern Turkey from several perspectives. The main narrator is an illiterate potter named Iskandar who has a poetic soul and speaks in proverbs. Iskandar has a son named Abdul. Abdul’s best friend is a Christian boy named Nicos who is the brother of Philothei, a girl of legendary beauty. The two little boys give Iskandar so much delight that he makes them clay whistles in the shape of birds which, when filled with water, imitate the calls of the blackbird and the robin. Abdul and Nicos take to wearing red and black shirts, respectively, while running about making bird calls, and soon come to be called Karatavuk (robin) and Mehmetçik (blackbird).

Mehmetçik, being Christian, knows how to read and write Greek, as well as Turkish in Greek characters. Karatavuk’s education on the other hand is limited to memorizing verses from the Koran in Arabic, a language no one, other than perhaps the imam, understands. After a bit of boyish negotiation, Mehmetçik agrees to teach Karatavuk to read and write Turkish in Greek characters, a skill which will prove invaluable later in life. While the boys are busy learning and playing, one of their contemporaries, Ibrahim, falls so deeply and obsessively in love with Karatavuk’s sister, Philothei, and is so relentless in pursuit of her, that both families agree to the marriage when the two come of age, with the understanding that she will become Muslim.

Mr. Bernières tells many stories within the 551 pages of this epic novel. He illuminates the plight of women in an illiterate Muslim society, he describes how truly cosmopolitan and civilized the Ottoman Empire was, and reveals how easily civilizations can succumb to self-inflicted wounds. Woven into the fabric of the tales from Eskibahçe is the life story of Turkey’s iconic leader, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Depending on whom you ask, Ataturk was either a liberating hero or a war criminal. Emotions aside, he was an opportunistic and charismatic leader with a talent for being in the right place at the right time. He was bold and courageous, frequently leading battle charges and miraculously surviving while all around him bodies piled up into mountains of rotting corpses. The ten year period following the Greek war of independence from the Ottoman Empire was when the western European nations were spoiling for war against the imperialistic Germans. The Ottomans, being aligned with Germany were therefore considered enemies of Britain, France, and Italy. Conflicts with the Balkans left the Ottomans weak and Greece, seeking to re-create its ancient glory by annexing Anatolia, attacked. Ataturk possessed a rare political genius that enabled him to play many factions against each other. He enlisted the Germans to help vanquish the Greeks and then used that relationship to re-equip the Turkish troops sufficiently to chase out the British and French who, like the Russians, wanted control of Asia Minor. The Italians wisely left of their own accord. Ataturk understood the threat posed by Germany and, had it not been so completely defeated in World War I, was prepared to fight to the death for independence.

A major theme of this book, and the one that makes it important to read, is the bitter hatred that still lies between the Turks and the Armenians. Each endured atrocities at the hands of the other which resulted in genocide nearly as horrible as that perpetrated against the Jews in Nazi Germany. Many Armenian soldiers volunteered to serve in the Russian army during World War I given how they were treated in the late Ottoman Empire, but the Bolshevik Revolution halted Russia’s western expansion leaving a population of Turkish Armenians at the mercy of the vengeful Turks. The horrific bloodshed between these two peoples went largely unnoticed by the greater world because, at the time, it was not important to the redrawing of European maps following The Great War.

In Birds Without Wings we see how ideology – big ideas which appeal to small minds – can take the heart and soul out of a society. Pursuit of ethnic purity – laced with nationalism, religious intolerance, and tribalism – caused suffering and hardship in Greece, Turkey, and Armenia. Turkey chased out the Christian Armenians and Greeks and in so doing lost the people who knew how to grow, make and do things, leaving only the consumers who then had nothing to eat or buy. A similar thing happened in Greece and both nations had huge refugee populations to absorb who had no possessions and did not speak the language.

In spite of the bloodshed and tears so viscerally described in Birds Without Wings, this book is also a celebration of the human spirit. In the same way we so often fail to learn from history, we also have the capacity to forgive and forget. Eventually, the Grecian Turks learned to speak Turkish and the Turkish Greeks learned to speak Greek. Turkey succeeded as an independent nation and Greece gave up on annexing it. A new normalcy settled on both nations and life went on. The Armenians, however, had no such resolution. United States President Woodrow Wilson redrew Armenia’s border with Turkey in Turkey’s favor, forcing hundreds of thousands of Armenians to flee. The resulting diaspora means that today there are more Armenians living outside of Armenia than within its borders. Armenians have neither forgiven nor forgotten.

It was the philosopher, Hegel, who said “the only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history”. I am inclined to agree with him as rhetoric heats up in our own country about the problems we have with immigration control. Most of us don’t have sufficient understanding of the social and economic impacts of undocumented aliens – positive and negative – to suggest constructive ways to address the problems. Birds Without Wings is a cautionary tale, a lamentation over humans’ inability to absorb the lessons of history into our DNA so that we stop hurting ourselves by hurting each other. The lesson for us here in the land of the free, if we choose to learn it, is to be careful that we don’t create a flock of sad, angry, and resentful birds without wings by applying simplistic solutions to complex problems. Rather than being carried away by ideology, perhaps we can engage in a thoughtful discussion about how to secure our borders so that we don’t inadvertently lose what makes America the world’s beacon of hope.

Copyright 2010 Teresa Friedlander, all rights reserved.