Without a Country

by Kulin, Ayse

  He threw his arms around her. He still smelled like the sun and the sea. Arms linked, they walked to the house. When my mother tripped on a bag resting near the doorway, Korhan caught her by the waist, and they kissed.

  He didn’t ask my mother if there was anyone in her life or how long she planned to stay. It was as though she’d been gone for a day, not a decade or so. He got out a chilled bottle of liqueur and a couple of glasses. Later, he brought his flute and her violin. Like always, they went out into the courtyard and started a flute concerto by Mozart—no need for sheet music, no need for words.

  When the piece was done, my mother looked at Korhan and said, “When did you tune my violin?”

  “This morning. Life’s full of surprises. It pays to be prepared.”

  They stretched out in bed with the bottle of cherry liqueur. My father opened the curtains all the way to let in the sea air. And then they made me.

  “I suppose that’s why you can be a little sour sometimes,” my mother always says at this point in the story. “It’s those sour cherries that steeped in the vodka.”

  “You don’t think maybe I’m sour because my father never wanted me?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “If he’d wanted me, I’d have grown up in his house, not Grandmother’s.”

  “It’s not that he didn’t want you. He didn’t want a child,” my mother said. “He always said that the world was no place for a child.”

  Mother wanted to have me to herself. She thought I’d be happy to hear that. Well, I suppose it’s better than being conceived just to complete a family tableaux: husband, wife, dog, baby.

  “I want a baby,” my mother had told Korhan.

  “Don’t let me get in the way,” he’d said.

  In short, my father is as self-centered as my mother.

  I had the double misfortune of being the product of this selfish couple and of coming into this world during what are euphemistically known as “interesting times.” A ceasefire with the PKK was in effect the day I was born, but fell apart not long afterward. I was only sixteen days old when Turkey was plunged into mourning over the untimely death of President Özal. About two weeks after that, a garbage dump exploded in Istanbul, killing thirty. I was still in the womb when a car bomb killed investigative journalist Uğur Mumcu. Even years later, Grandma Suzi and Grandpa Demir would get tears in their eyes when they talked about him. When I was old enough to understand, my grandparents told me that good things had also happened in 1993.

  “It was an important year for women,” Grandma Suzi said. “The president presented Matild Manukyan with a plaque for being that year’s top taxpayer. Now, it’s true that part of her fortune came from brothels, but she was a real estate investor, too. And I’ll always remember 1993—or was it 1992?—as the year that Parliament rejected legislation that would have required women to get their husband’s permission to work. I spent a lot of time protesting against that bill.”

  “Is that when Tansu Çiller became Turkey’s first woman prime minister?” I asked.

  “That was definitely in 1993. She could barely speak Turkish. Her stint as prime minister was never something I could celebrate, woman or not.”

  “We’re forgetting a major milestone that happened not long before you were born,” Grandpa Demir said. “Sephardic Jews first arrived in Istanbul in 1492. In 1992, they held a ceremony to mark the community’s having been in Turkey for five hundred years.”

  “Is that so important?” I asked.

  “Of course it is. Where else in the world have Jews have been able to live in peace for that long? And they’ve been able to preserve their language and their traditions. It’s funny. You’re just like your mother at your age. She was always asking questions about the year she was born. And when she got a little older, she decided it was a terrible time to be alive and that she’d rather hide from it.”

  Until I was eight years old, I would see my grandparents and great-grandparents only when they came to Side in the summers. My mother was always busy teaching summer school or guiding tourists, so they looked after me. When the season ended, everyone would leave, and I would be alone with Mother again. She’s the one who showed me how to paint and crochet and who taught me the alphabet before I’d even started kindergarten. My father taught me how to catch fish, play the shepherd’s pipe and flute, and polish shoes.

  Father never lived with me and Mother. He had his own house, where I was allowed to stay only if Mother was away.

  I was eight when Mother went to Thailand for a months-long yoga retreat. I was thrilled to finally spend time living with my father. Unfortunately, I came down with measles. Grandma Suzi came to Side and nursed me in my great-grandfather’s house. When I got better, she took me to their old apartment in Istanbul. They’d moved back there after many years in Ankara. Father didn’t even try to stop Grandma from taking me away. He just smiled and said they could discuss it with my mother when she got home.

  I still don’t know quite what happened, but from then on, I went to Side only for the summer holidays.

  When Mother finally got back from Thailand, I remember how she tried to explain to me that, of all the men she’d met in her life, my father was the most decent one, with the best genes. That’s why she’d chosen him, even if he didn’t want to be much involved with raising a child. Anyway, she said, a clever girl like me should stay in Istanbul and get the benefit of the good schools.

  I had no idea what she was talking about. All I knew was that I’d been forced to leave everything behind.

  My mother had been desperate for a baby before having me. But I suppose that by then, she was desperate to throw off the shackles of motherhood.

  That must be why I was brought up by my grandparents. To me, Grandpa Demir and Grandma Suzi were the dearest people in the world. I sometimes called them Demdem and Su.

  And as for my mother, I saw her every summer. She’d arrive at the family vacation house at the beginning of June with a suitcase full of presents and a fascinating new friend or two. If Su and Demdem liked them, the friends would stay in the big house with us. But if they didn’t, off the visitors went to Father’s little stone house.

  One summer, there was a man and a woman covered in tattoos. They were instantly dispatched to the stone house, but they painted a peacock on my arm in watercolors, and Su didn’t even make me wash it off. Another time, Mother came to Side with a blond woman even taller than her. She had huge feet and a voice like Demdem’s. She was banished to the stone house. The giant lady taught me how to belly dance, and I can still undulate like a snake if the music is right. The Australian couple with the little baby, and the German archaeologist, were allowed to stay in the big house. And so was the African woman with skin as dark as her hair.

  Another thing I loved about the summers was seeing my great-grandparents, who came from Frankfurt, and my other great-grandparents, who came from Istanbul, along with uncles and cousins and all sorts of relatives from America. Great-Grandma Elsa and Great-Grandpa Gerhard would stay all summer, but the others only ever stayed for a week or two.

  Demdem and Su’s apartment in Istanbul was busy, too. Their old students visited sometimes, and they were always involved with NGOs and charities and environmental groups, especially after they retired. Unlike my mother and father, Demdem and Su believed they could make a difference, whether by planting a tree or leaving a bowl of water in the street for the stray cats. They were so full of love and a sense of purpose. Grandma Su retreated from the world a bit after she lost Grandpa Demir, but she’s still always there for me.

  She was the reason I decided to become a doctor. In a sense, I felt I owed it to her and to my great-grandfather Gerhard. I want to repay the world for the generosity and love those two have always shown me.

  A Broken-Winged Bird

  It was a Saturday, my favorite day of the week. I’d started at the Austrian school in Istanbul. But on Saturday, there were no classes, no German grammar, no tests,
and no uniform. I could even leave my homework for Sunday. How nice to sleep in, to have time for the movies, TV, and friends.

  Demdem and I were playing backgammon in the kitchen. Su brought us glasses of fresh-squeezed orange juice and a plate of peeled, sliced apples. We’d just finished breakfast.

  “Don’t complain if we’re not hungry for lunch,” Demdem said.

  “Oh, you’ll be hungry,” Su called out from the living room. “I’m making dumplings.”

  “Yeah!” I shouted. “Did you hear that, Demdem? Dumplings!”

  Su must have switched on the television.

  “Shh! Be quiet in there. Something terrible has—”

  There was a deafening bang, and the whole building shook. The mirror fell off the wall and shattered. The panes of glass enclosing the balcony cracked. There were books all over the floor. Demdem and I ran to the window. Sheets of paper and strips of fabric were floating through the air. We could hear sirens, screams, cries, moans.

  “Get away from the window!” Su screamed. “It could be an earthquake.”

  “It’s not an earthquake. It’s a bomb,” Demdem said.

  “It might be a plane crash,” Su said. “Like in Ankara that one time. Don’t open the window!”

  A brown cloud had settled over the street.

  We all went to the television. While we’d been playing backgammon, a bomb had exploded at the Bet Israel Synagogue in Şişli. Now, they were reporting, another bomb had just exploded at the Neve Shalom Synagogue on our street. Two synagogues, minutes apart. We stared at each other with our mouths open. Su grabbed her jacket from the hook in the hall.

  “Stop! Where are you going? Wait for me!” Demdem said. He ran down the stairs after her. A second later, he came back and said, “Don’t leave the apartment! Lock the door and stay inside until I come back.”

  Still in my nightgown, I sat down on the sofa in front of the TV and cried as the death toll rose.

  The phone rang. My father was calling from Side. He sounded so shaken. He kept asking if I was okay and told me not to be scared. He wanted to know where my grandparents were. He asked if I wanted him to come to Istanbul and get me. Maybe we should all stay in Side for a while. He kept talking and talking.

  “You should all move here,” he said. “There are schools. They might not be as good as the ones in Istanbul, but you’ll be safe.”

  For the first time in my life, my father was treating me like his daughter. I wanted him to keep talking. But it had to end. A moment after I hung up, my mother called from overseas. I think she must have had an English boyfriend. She’d been living in England ever since she sent me off to my grandparents. (Su always got angry when I said Mother sent me away. She claims my mother didn’t want to let me go.) My mother was crying too hard to talk. Between hiccups, she asked me the same questions my father had, and asked if her parents were okay, too. She insisted we all move to England. She’d find a school for me. We’d rent an apartment and live together, the four of us. Turkey wasn’t safe anymore, she said. When I hung up the phone, I felt like a girl whose parents loved her a lot.

  It was a nice feeling.

  The phone rang again and again. There were calls from Ankara, from Germany, from Side. I repeated the same things to all my relatives and friends. When I was finally able to return to the TV, I learned that over three hundred people had been wounded and at least twenty had been killed.

  My grandparents came home a little while later. I’d never seen them so defeated and helpless. They’d aged fifteen years. They tried not to cry, but I wasn’t fooled.

  “My father called,” I told Su. “He wants us to come to Side right away.”

  “Oh, well, that’s nice of him!” she said.

  “Suzi! Not now,” Demdem said.

  “And my mom called, too. She wants us all to go to England.”

  “There’s no reason to panic,” Demdem said. “When was it, Suzi, 1986? Gunmen opened fire during a Shabbat service at Neve Shalom. They killed about twenty worshippers. It was early September and a lot of families were still on holiday. It could have been much worse. And then what happened? Life went on. We can’t let them terrorize us.”

  “This was two synagogues. Two simultaneous bombs. How can we go on as though nothing has happened?” Su said.

  “Your grandmother’s just upset right now,” Demdem said, looking over at me. He hugged her. “Come on, darling. Let’s go to the bathroom and splash some water on your face.”

  Five days later, I was in math class waiting for the bell to ring when something exploded. “Get under your desks!” the teacher shouted. We could hear sirens and screams for a long time. When it got quieter outside, we were allowed to get up. Everyone was talking at once. This time, we knew it was a bomb. Parents came rushing into the building.

  “Was it the synagogue again?” I asked Su.

  “No. This time it was the British consulate. A truck bomb,” she said.

  It wasn’t until we got home that we learned about the second truck bomb, the one that had exploded at the HSBC headquarters just minutes before the attack on the consulate. At least thirty people were dead, including the theater actor Kerem Yılmazer, a friend of my grandparents.

  After that day, my grandmother started hovering over me all the time. She wouldn’t let me walk to school alone, even though it was just around the corner.

  “Why are you so worried?” I asked her. “Whoever’s doing the bombing doesn’t like English people and Jewish people. I’m neither, so I’ll be fine.”

  Su and Demdem exchanged glances. “Everyone needs to be careful these days” was all she said.

  Phone calls came from around the world again, if in a slightly different order. The first ones were from my great-uncle Peter and some relatives in Germany. When my parents got through, they each insisted again that we move to Side or England.

  “What’s the point in going somewhere else?” I heard Su say. “A bird with a broken wing can’t ever relax. We fled here from Germany, didn’t we? We’ll be outsiders no matter where we go.”

  Like always, Su came into my room that night with a cup of linden tea and honey. She stood there, waiting for me to finish it.

  “Were you scared?” she asked.

  “No. It was scarier the first time.”

  She stroked my hair.

  “Grandma, what did you mean by ‘a bird with a broken wing’?”

  “Don’t mind me, sweetie. I’m getting old and starting to say silly things.”

  “You never say silly things. What did you mean?”

  “It’s late. Let’s talk about it tomorrow.”

  She looked so tired, I didn’t want to pester her. I got under the covers. I was tired, too. She didn’t say anything the next day about birds with broken wings, and I didn’t ask her.

  About a month later, I was sitting at the table wrestling with my German homework. Der, die, and das. And all those different endings for different genders. In Turkish, a chair is a chair and a table is a table. Su was sitting at our plain old Turkish table with her glasses on, looking at her computer screen. Demdem was watching football.

  “Oh!” Su said in a funny, high voice. “Uncle Arthur passed away. Peter just sent me an e-mail.”

  “Who?” Demdem asked.

  “Uncle Arthur. I’m sure I’ve mentioned him before. He and his wife lived in Bebek when we were little. He even came and stayed with us in Side one summer. Don’t you remember him? He wasn’t my real uncle, of course.”

  “Was he a friend of your father’s? He must have had a long life.”

  “Peter says he was 105! Our dear old Arthur von Hippel.”

  “Wait, von Hippel?”

  “Do you remember him now?”

  “He was a famous scientist! I’ve read about him. They named an award after him. He had something to do with radar.”

  “Hang on a second while I search. Here’s an obituary. He died in Massachusetts. It says here that he was a codeveloper of radar during Wo
rld War II. And there is something called the Von Hippel Award. It says his wife, Dagmar, died way back in 1975.”

  Grandma wiped away a tear.

  “Suzi, the man lived to be 105, he has an award named after him, and he’ll never be forgotten. Why are you crying? We’ve all got to go sometime,” Demdem said.

  “I’m crying for us, for Turkey. I remember my parents talking about how badly von Hippel was treated at the university. I was a little girl, but I could tell how upset they were. Thinking now about what could have been, about where we’re going as a country—” Grandma Su looked at me. “Don’t pay any attention to me. I’m just emotional.”

  But I couldn’t help worrying about her. She seemed mixed up.

  Turkey was also mixed up in those days, undergoing the growth pains of rapid development. Economic indicators pointed to a prosperous future, but the series of unsolved, high-profile murders told another story. Apo’s PKK was going on killing sprees in the spring and hiding out in the mountains in the winter. People had grown battle-hardened by then, inured to death and not easily shocked. What I and so many others failed to realize was that something had settled over our country, something hazy and black, and it was muffling our speech and stopping us from seeing the world clearly.

  I was still in middle school and must have been nearly fourteen. I was old enough to know better.

  One day, I noticed that two of my classmates were pointing at me and whispering as I sat down at my desk. I stared right back at them. Then I looked at my blouse and hands, but I couldn’t find anything wrong. I even tried to check the back of my skirt. After class, I ran to the bathroom and saw nothing out of the ordinary. Why had they been looking at me like that?

  When I sat back down for my next class, I found that someone had left a piece of paper on my desk with a large Y on it. What did it mean? I had a classmate named Yakut and another one named Yusuf. But when I asked them about it, their faces went blank.

  I was leaving school when a couple of boys ran past me and yelled, “Yahudi!” They circled and came running back. This time, I stuck out my foot, and one of them fell on his nose. The other one ran away. I knelt on the boy on the ground, grabbed his hair, and said, “I don’t know why you’re calling me that, but I’m not a Jew. You’re the Jew, a scaredy-cat Jew!”