Many and Many a Year Ago

by Selcuk Altun

  I passed the old music store. I’d heard that it shut down when the boss’s wife threw him out. Now a “Kebab and Pizza Palace” occupied its neglected premises. Just beyond it was a quiet bookstore. I ducked in to find out something about my new neighbourhood.

  As I looked at the blurry photographs of mosques and synagogues, it occurred to me that I had never been to Balat. But why would anyone go there when the Agora Tavern no longer existed? I hailed a cab in front of Galatasaray. How naked I felt in my civilian clothes when I ordered the unshaven driver to turn off the awful music pouring from his radio. He told me I was the first customer for Balat that he’d had in ten years. He made a terrifying right turn at the Unkapanı Bridge. Suddenly on our left appeared the old city walls, with a row of desolate buildings leaning against them. I was moved by the baroque sense of sorrow emanating from these abandoned houses. The driver dropped me at the mosque at the fork in the road.

  “I went into that alley over there once and barely found my way out,” he said and sped away.

  I slipped through an opening between a kebab house and a tripe-soup restaurant and dove into the labyrinth of narrow streets. I felt like I was on a movie set depicting 1970s Anatolia. The names of every village in the Black Sea region could be seen on the signs attached to tiny coffeehouses and cafes. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw shoe and stove repair shops. Was there only one doctor in the whole district? A “For Rent” sign hung on the glass door of a charming Internet café, and the windows of the famous Agora Tavern, which had opened in 1896, were boarded up.

  But I felt close to these simple folk who spoke to each other in low voices and walked slowly along the two-foot-wide sidewalks flanking streets too narrow for even a single car. They all looked like they were getting ready to go back to the villages they’d left for temporary work. The only woman at the marketplace not wearing a headscarf was the middle-aged one who poked her head out the door of the synagogue to joke with the shopkeepers. I asked the sniffling boy selling lottery tickets which town near the Black Sea he was from.

  “Cide,” he said.

  I bought two tickets from him.

  “I’ll give you a cut if I win,” I said.

  “Sure,” he said. “Good luck.”

  I ducked into a nameless cafe for a bite to eat. The toast was bland. To avoid eating it I mentioned to the proprietor that I was thinking of moving to Balat. He asked where I hailed from. Figuring I’d need to be a Black Sea man to want to live there, I told him “Samsun.”

  These Black Sea folk had taken over Balat house by house, he claimed, but could neither adjust to the city nor give up their rural ways, and worked mostly in construction.

  “If you really want to dig into Balat,” he said, “turn south and follow the side of the hill.”

  I took his advice. In this, the second stage of my quest, the deserted shops seemed smaller. I’d seen hardly any trees since entering the neighborhood. I felt like I’d walked out of the bazaar and into a toy city—synagogues, mosques, and churches were all of a size that matched their diminutive surroundings.

  On emerging from the arcade of shops, I found myself in an area full of dilapidated Greek houses painted so that from a distance they looked like a watercolor. As I turned another corner, there were more and more abandoned houses, their bay windows still intact, jutting out onto the street. Just as I began to feel like I was wandering the back streets of Venice, the ezan rang out. I took it as a sign to begin my descent.

  Meandering among the chador-cloaked women, it occurred to me that perhaps the reason why the Jews had never developed a distinctive architecture was that they never knew where and how long they would settle in a given place. The streets here, full of the high-pitched cries of children, took me back to my own childhood in L. I looked at the innocent faces looking back at me from the pavements and windows and said a prayer: Let them not have dreams, if those dreams are to be shattered in the midst of coming true. On the way back to my hotel I began to suspect that my inner voice might have been hiding my place of refuge from me.

  I was hungry, so I made my way across the Golden Horn to Istiklal Avenue, thronged with young people. While wondering what I might do after a beef stroganoff at Rejans, I took a wrong turn and found myself in front of the Turkuaz secondhand bookstore. I went inside and, incrediby, staring out at me from one of the shelves was Great Instrumentalists, from Selçuk Ergene’s renowned collection. I hugged it to my breast and continued on to Rejans, with its timeless charm. There were six tables set up for dinner, and all the diners looked relaxed. For coffee I returned to my hotel bar, which had seen so many artists and kings from around the world. Cheered by the carefree chatter of foreign journalists, I delved into my book, nostalgic for the grand virtuosos. My hand started shaking when I attempted to underline a staccato passage of Prokofiev. I hid it under the table, then jammed it into my pocket, running upstairs to my room. I considered the part played by the Rejans vodka in the absence of a headache and smiled. That was the night, I believe, when I abandoned the notion that I could best adapt to civilian life by keeping away from civilians.

  I stood beneath the recalcitrant shower for half an hour before breakfast. I was lying on my bed listening to Boccherini when it started to rain. Scanning the ceiling for traces of the ninety-year-old tapping of Hemingway’s typewriter keys, I told myself, “Don’t turn into Suat, Kemal!” I decided to go to the little restaurant next to the English consulate for dinner because the impenetrable composure of the Pera’s headwaiter annoyed me. I was about to find out for real whether having one door closed in your face meant another one opening.

  *

  Fuat and I met in the lobby. He was obviously impatient to get this business over with. In clipped sentences he informed me that he stayed at the Pera whenever he came to town from Geneva. When I replied that I’d been there for two days he muttered something in French that startled me. We went to the Deeds Registry in Fatih in the Jeep of a real estate agent whom he introduced as a childhood friend. Fuat handed me an envelope containing a receipt showing the first monthly transfer to my new bank account. While the real estate agent loquaciously explained to me the intricacies of deed transfers, Fuat whispered into his cellphone. After a while he turned to me, the gleam in his eye indicating that it was time for his last declamation.

  “While my mother was working a woman named Akile looked after us. When we moved and she couldn’t come with us we cried for two days. She was an introverted person for whom questions about the past were off-limits. But about the time we graduated from middle school we happened to learn her secret. And three days later she died of cancer.

  “It turned out that Akile had had to flee her hometown because of an illicit relationship with a cousin, which had left her pregnant. Her widowed aunt took her in and the two of them raised the child, Sami, on their own. Somehow hearing this story made us feel a bit guilty. When Akile died, our grandmother assumed responsibility for young Sami, and Suat became the boy’s guardian.

  “In ten minutes you’ll own the top floor of Balat’s most fashionable building. Suat once owned the ground floor too, but he transferred the deed to it to Sami on our grandmother’s death. Sami is now a graphic designer. He’s apparently been operating a business as an art consultant and painting restorer out of his apartment.

  “It was he who called a minute ago. He’s waiting for us in his van in front of the building. He’s a very straight fellow. If you let him, he can become a real friend to you, not just a neighbor.”

  I took the title deed in my hand and felt a swirl of strange emotions, almost as if I were receiving a pass for a course I’d cheated in. We left the office and went outside. The diminutive stature of the man standing next to his van didn’t alarm me, but as I got closer I was startled by the strangeness of his face. It was as if, instead of a nose, a wax block had been stuck between his eyes. As we shook hands I noticed that his right arm was longer than his left. But even the way he periodically rolled his eyes i
n panic and lowered his gaze was somehow appealing. Fuat was relieved to see that I wasn’t disgusted.

  “Sami’s here to take you to your new home. He’s got the keys. If you need me, you know my address.”

  I somehow knew that this was the last I would see of him. As he said goodbye, the gold ring on his left hand attracted my attention. Had I seen that lion’s head with diamonds glued into its mouth and eyes on Suat rather than Fuat, I wouldn’t have been surprised at all.

  *

  As we drove along in Sami’s van, with its aroma of paint and varnish, he informed me that he had just turned thirty-one. “I was born almost noseless,” he went on. “Thanks to the plastic surgeon’s talent and three operations it’s much less of an eyesore now.

  “I’ve never seen the twins together. I never got to meet their grandmother either, to thank her for her generosity.”

  We took a left in front of the Agora Tavern. Somehow I’d failed to notice earlier how the street widened where the bazaar petered out. We pulled up in front of a faded pink Greek house on A. Street and I fell in love with it at first sight. Across the street from my new apartment was a neglected building used as storage by a bank. The graffiti smeared across it, “Tear Me Down”, didn’t seem that unreasonable. Except for the girl eating sunflower seeds in the bay window of a dilapidated building, the street was deserted. I reverently followed, house by house, the via dolorosa of the exhausted buildings on either side of the street. Despite the inviting gestures of Sami, who stood waiting at our door, I found it difficult to pull myself away.

  The three-story house that I now entered with a Bismillah could have graced a postcard. As I climbed the stone stairs I was greeted by the smell of damp walls and cheap soap. A card over the doorbell of the second-floor flat read “Prof. Dr. Ali Uzel.” How pleasing, I thought, to have an academic as my only neighbor, as we continued upstairs to the door of the lottery prize whose deed I clutched in my hand. The raven-shaped door knocker was clue enough for me not to be surprised at what would greet me.

  Or so I thought. In fact the three-bedroom flat seemed to lack nothing except a staff of personal servants. The imported kitchen cabinets and refrigerator were fully stocked, down to the pastrami and wholewheat bread. In response to my quizzical look, Sami murmured something about instructions he’d received months ago from Suat. I had a little trouble reconciling the geometrical designs of the rugs scattered tastefully on the expensive wooden floors with the grotesque paintings on the walls, but I was quite receptive to the adagissimo sessions in front of the wide windows framing a view of the Golden Horn.

  I sat gingerly on the swivel chair at the antique desk in the study. I didn’t care how many thousands of books might occupy the shelves that covered the wall on my right, but I leapt up when I saw the Bang & Olufsen stereo equipment. I counted about 3,000 classical CDs on the tiers of glass shelves beside the massive system.

  “They were all brought over from New York.” Sami smiled.

  My hand went out to Pachelbel’s Greatest Hits: Canon, performed by eight orchestras. I carefully positioned my headphones and focused on James Galway, my eyes closed in adoration of the melody spilling from his flute. I felt my soul glide from my body cell by cell as his Affetuoso soared into the room. Just before the finale I began to sense that I was being watched. I opened my eyes. I was surprised to see that I had apparently overlooked a mysterious portrait hanging over the stereo: EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809–1849). His large eyes stared out at me as if he were warning and challenging me at the same time.

  I needed to bring these fits of suspicion to an end before my inner voice decided to speak to me again. If the recluse who was pleased to have my friendship had indeed committed suicide, I had no need to feel guilty over the inheritance he’d bequeathed me. And if I was about to be lured into some kind of schizoid trap, I didn’t want to come out of it defeated. I remembered the sentence about the house in Suat’s goodbye note—something like Now I think it’s time has come to bring some real luck, and the one who should benefit from this turn of events is you.

  *

  I went back to the Pera Palace for the last time with Sami, to collect my luggage. He clenched the steering wheel more tightly when I suggested he come in to the hotel for a look at its historic rooms. It recalled another dramatic moment when he had inexplicably put his carnival-mask face up to mine and hurriedly pulled it away.

  Maybe because I realized he’d seen that I felt sorry for him, I accepted his invitation to dinner that evening. His house was minimalist in design, and I didn’t mind the duet between varnish and sorrow that I found there.

  He had an apprentice, Mazlum, who had just completed his military service and who was spilling pieces of pide bread all over the place. In my sternest military voice I questioned him: “And just where in the Black Sea region do you come from?”

  “Inebolu, Commander.”

  With my first beer Sami was to learn that his new neighbor had once been the ablest pilot in the Armed Forces, at least until that moment when his plane fell out of the sky.

  “My army friend Suat decided to leave Istanbul and proposed to sell his apartment to me,” I went on, “I gave him a deposit before his discharge, and paid the balance to Fuat at the Deeds Registry.” I was pleased to see that my right hand declined to give me away. I had no doubt that the clumsy Mazlum would lose no time in spreading everything he’d heard at the table to the entire neighborhood. From here on it would be impossible for me not to be respected as a warrior hero throughout the district and to become everyone’s honorary “Commander.”

  Following my first leisurely breakfast I stopped by my old bank on Istiklal. There wasn’t a single employee left whom I knew. I withdrew half of my first transfer in Turkish lira. My request for a maximum-limit credit card was immediately honored, and I headed to the ritzy Akmerkez shopping mall to buy some respectable clothes. At a café frequented by rich women I called my mother to tell her that I was in town on a special assignment and would stop by after dinner.

  I went back to L. whistling improvised gothic overtures. I knew I would find my aunt and uncle waiting for me in that soulless living room. I was explaining to them how I was “retired on the advice of my doctors and senior officers” when my father leapt up, his face close to mine.

  “How could you do such a thing without my permission?” he said.

  I grabbed him by the collar of the shirt he’d worn for the last ten years and sat him back down on the couch.

  “Baba, I’m through listening to you,” I said, glad to see my right hand starting to tremble. “Otherwise you’ll go on treating me like a robot for the rest of my life. You forced me to become a pilot just because it was something you wanted to do yourself. If you’d asked me even once, you’d have known that all I ever wanted to do was become a musician like you. Instead, you brainwashed me so completely that I hated even to come home on weekends because I couldn’t handle civilian life.

  “I knew, as I came down in that parachute, that I would never fly again. But I thought to myself, okay, now I can become the musician I always wanted to be. What an empty wish! Look at this right hand! The doctors can’t fix it, Baba. I can’t even use it to take a piss, never mind play an instrument. I never know when it will shake and when it won’t, and sometimes I want to take an axe to it.

  “I can’t go to sleep without my pills. Then just when I think I’m relaxed, I’m struck down by a headache. You may be resigned to working at the cemetery, Baba, but I could never sit here pinned to a desk and rot just because I can’t fly. I might as well be sixty retiring, I feel that exhausted. I’m going some place far away where nobody can find me. I’ll work on getting used to civilian life and see if I can heal my wounds. Know this, Baba, I’m going to throw away my phone if you call me for any reason other than an emergency!”

  As I finished speaking I looked over at my mother. It was the first time I’d ever seen her cry, but her eyes seemed to say, “I’m proud of you, son.” The other three
people in that room were in a state of near collapse.

  *

  I delegated the logistics of the house to Mazlum and his mother, Aunt Cevher. He took charge of supplies while she took care of the housework. Between intervals of wrestling with the furniture she would wonder aloud why I wasn’t married. Professor Ali Uzel and I said hello when we ran into each other on the stairs. He appeared to be in his sixties and was always elegantly dressed. From the look in his weary blue eyes I gathered he bore a hurt of some kind. According to Sami, this university lecturer was always writing. The neighborhood shopkeepers knew little about him, but since nobody had seen him smile for twenty years they concluded that he had a secret which would probably do as the subject of a novel. Obviously the professor’s discretion as well as his gentle manners entitled him to respectability.

  I spent a number of mornings choosing pieces from the CD library and transferring them to my iPod. I experimented with the classical cookbooks in the kitchen and got up from the table half-full. I sallied forth to explore the Golden Horn. Fener, Balat and Ayvansaray were like three stepsisters living in the same waterside mansion. Fener, with its naturally dense and mosaic-like texture, seemed to be the most mysterious. The grand buildings on the east end of the Horn were poetic: the juxtaposition of the lonely and abandoned Greek lycée against the Vatican of Orthodoxy, the Patriarchate, was positively Felliniesque. The real monuments of the district were the ruined Greek houses. At every crossroads of those fairy-tale hillsides I gazed at their empty windows, wondering what they were seeing. Whenever a faint breeze wafted inland from the coast I hoped that it would bestow a bit of rain on this faded glory, but it was always denied me.