We afterwards went up the staircase to the invalid’s apartments. To my surprise, we found her seated on a wide divan, supported by cushions. It was difficult at first to believe that she was so near the end.
“Alas!” said Mustapha Kemal, “her suffering has come through me. She is paying back now the tears and anguish she spent for me in exile.” There was sorrow in his voice, too heart-broken for many words.
“Now you can take part in his victory,” I said. “How proud you must be of your son. His is a wonderful story. I am proud only to have spoken with him and seen his work.”
She thanked me with great feeling, and said she believed “God had sent her this son to save the Fatherland—but my son is always kind to me.”
Whilst giving me a beautiful silk handkerchief, scented with her favourite perfume, she asked whether she had not seen me before, ten years ago, in Constantinople.
“She has a marvellous memory,” the Pasha murmured.
In a few days there were to be no more opportunities for any of us to see this dear lady!
When, later, in Constantinople, I ventured upon some allusion to the great devotion he always evinced to his mother, a Turk said: “That is only natural—Oriental, if you will. The man whose hands are steeped in blood, whose soul is black with crime, yet bows in respect to his mother. You might as well be surprised that the sun shines.”
The story of M. Kemal’s youth and of his brilliant career is, of course, well known in Anatolia. He was born in Salonica in 1880, and there are legends that many who saw the boy, “fair as the corn,” at his games, would say: “Look well at that little fellow. He will one day be the saviour of his country.”