Many and Many a Year Ago

by Selcuk Altun

  Every tiny church that popped up on my path seemed to be assembled from stones cut from the same bottomless quarry, and I was charmed by the mosques that bore witness to the pious deeds of Ottoman pashas. It seemed ironic that as you moved west the rural layers grew thicker: nook-like tea gardens, labyrinthine alleys, dried-up ancient fountains, weary streets, and so many tombs of holy men. I memorized their inscriptions and used them as landmarks. I still wonder whether Ayvansaray is the Golden Horn’s most—or perhaps one and only—cheerful neighborhood.

  I was usually home by the time of the evening ezan. If it wasn’t the view of Beyoğlu from my window that lured me back, it was the symphonic sounds of traffic on the coast road. I was becoming increasingly fond of my house—how could I not?—but I wasn’t sure whether it felt the same fondness for me.

  I met Sami every week for dinner. He smelled of paint and didn’t say much except to complain about how tired he was. I wished evening would come sooner so that I could transport myself to the city’s concert halls: the music lovers at those obscure venues appeared to be retired civil servants and rich Jewish ladies, all in their sixties, who liked to pamper me. Or sometimes if a well-known director’s film came to town, I would seek out a quiet Pera café and wait there for it to start. If these were the pleasures of the single civilian life, I was pleased to make their acquaintance.

  *

  I made plans to expand my exploration of the Golden Horn. I decided to walk the territory street by street, from Edirnekapı to Sarayburnu on the Sea of Marmara. I would gradually unveil my old friend Istanbul. Long live idleness!

  The more I walked, the more rested I felt. I saw women standing as still as mummies behind their bay windows, steadily contemplating the street—their only other occupation when not immersing themselves in housework. I imagined that none of them had ever left their wooden houses, teetering on collapse after God knows how many earthquakes, to take a boat ride on the Bosphorus. I joked with the children who ran after me thinking I was a tourist because I had an iPod. My hunger was almost sated by the bland grilled cheese toast prepared for me by mediocre chefs at their less-than-hygienic buffets. I was welcomed with suspicion by old men sitting in their coffeehouses with nowhere else to go. My wanderings were finally over, I suppose, when I realized that the textures of sound and color which changed every three streets or so had begun to blur at the edges. Did I envy those people who sat simply waiting, resigned to their imprisonment in a melancholy time tunnel? I’ve forgotten the name of the philosopher who said, two thousand years ago, “Don’t exaggerate the importance of life. Remember that your slaves, even your animals, have it too.”

  At the main artery of Eminönü, a strategic hub for Byzantines and Ottomans, I ran into weird-looking tourists, aggressive shopkeepers, and giant official monuments whose silhouettes adorned postcards. Delving further into the crossword-puzzle labyrinth of the side streets, I found noble stone buildings abandoned by owners who had fled to nouveau riche ghettos. I passed a row of spice shops where the locks on the shutters hadn’t been changed since World War II.

  And just at that point, why did I suddenly wonder why Suat had fled the scene?

  *

  I wandered into a bar where everybody, especially the waiters, appeared to be absorbed in the horse races on TV. A rich brew of swear words and slang thickened the smoky atmosphere. Special “waiters” went back and forth between the bar and a neighboring bookie where they put down bets for customers. The slim man drinking and belching across the table from me laughed to hear that this was the first time I’d laid eyes on a betting slip. He claimed that his name was Muhlis and that he was a sociology student at nearby Istanbul University. Then he leaned close and said, “I like you, brother,” though I had barely said a word. “If you’ll meet me tomorrow night with $300 in your pocket, there’s a world-class babe who’ll suck your …”

  I got to the Valide Mosque gate five minutes early. Muhlis arrived ten minutes later. When he saw how I was dressed he laughed and said, “Are you on your way to a wedding or what?” As we walked through the dark streets of Aksaray I learned the unwritten rules of the night. We descended to the basement floor of a ramshackle shopping center. Did the sign that blinked on when it was in the mood really say “Disco Eden”? A couple of dull-witted security men checked us out and escorted us down a stinking corridor and into a dimly lit hall where Turkish and Russian music clashed. About thirty Slavic women were undulating on a small raised dance floor. I was informed that I might choose my own filthy table between them and the damp wall. I had trouble deciding whether to turn my attention to the girls with milk-white legs on the floor, or to the women chewing cigarettes and imbibing raki at the neighboring tables. Muhlis, the honorable pimp, advised me to dispatch a waiter to invite the lady of my choice over to negotiate. If we struck an agreement, I would order champagne for the girl, and then we could proceed to her room at the adjacent hotel. It was amusing how Muhlis swaggered like a country lord when it was I who was financing his extravagant charade. He waved his prayer beads airily and a zaftig girl swaying on the dance floor came running to our table. I don’t know why but the fact that they knew each other bothered me. She was swearing in Turkish that the most sportive of the exotic dancers was her roommate Anna, who had a degree in education from Minsk University. I felt like fleeing this place that reeked of piss but my inner voice spoke up and said, “Don’t spoil the game.” So after surveying the field once more, I asked the head waiter to bring over a girl who looked like the actress Sandra Bullock.

  As the girl in black shorts minced her way toward us, I thought about what Muhlis had told me: “No names, no phone numbers.” So when the art historian from Odessa asked my name I blurted out, “Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky.” My imaginary name made the rounds of these university-connected sex slaves, raising a chorus of giggles. It was with these words, which were the last thing they expected to hear from a horny Turk, that I first entered their memories.

  I became a regular at Disco Eden. I went alone, twice a week. I would drink lemon vodka to relax and then retire to a room at the Da-Da Hotel, each time with a new girl. As those lips redolent of vodka and menthol cigarettes started roaming over my body, I would wonder what Suat Altan—if he was still alive—was doing at that very moment.

  *

  I bought the most recent issue of Andante and dropped by the bank to withdraw every last dollar of the second month’s transfer. I walked toward Tünel, planning to sit and read at a quiet café while I waited for the matinee of “Capote” to begin. Suddenly I was startled by somebody whistling Matia Bazar’s “Vacanze Romane.” It came from the side street next to the Swedish consulate, and it took me back fifteen years. Cautiously I approached the barefoot man in rags who was inspecting the contents of a large metal garbage bin.

  “Is that you, Hayri Abi?” I asked.

  Muttering to himself, the man turned a face toward me on which long hair and a beard were intermingled. One eye was shut; but the creature in front of me was indeed my music mentor and exploiter, Hayri Abi. The nails on his scarred hands had turned into claws. He began to stammer and then burst into tears, trying to back away, but he fell over. I saw the filthy underwear beneath his overcoat. He got up with difficulty and, dragging one foot, limped down the street and into nothingness.

  I stood there expecting my right hand to start shaking, but instead my head began to ache. I turned and set out on foot toward Balat despite the autumnal nip in the air. Only when I reached home did I feel better. That was the night I stopped taking painkillers and sleeping pills. It was as if Hayri Abi had extracted a virus from my body as he had extracted himself from my life.

  III

  I’d spent the night with the philosopher Tanya, who was counting the days until she returned to Lvov.

  “In two days I’m getting out of this meat market, Tchaikovsky,” said the ballerina with VITA and BREVIS tattooed respectively on her left and right buttocks. “And don’t you get bogged down in thi
s life either. Go out and look for love even if you know it’s going to end in disaster. It will help you mature spiritually.”

  “I hope you won’t laugh if I tell you that the meaning of my name in Turkish is ‘mature’,” I told her as I was putting her fee together. “And as for your sound advice, Tanya, I have actually begun the search for ‘self,’ thank you.”

  From the ranks of battered taxis in front of the hotel I chose one with a bumper sticker that said, “Take me to Sivas, boss.” I smiled to myself, thinking of my oblique response to Tanya. It was probably justice for me to be banished from Aksaray for a while.

  The ether-soaked cloth slapped over my face and the stone to the back of my head carried me back to my collision with the rocks and those days in the hospital. When I awoke, the sound of the ezan was battering my ears and my head was throbbing with pain, but I had no time for self-pity. I was curled in a fetal position and shivering on a couch in a stranger’s living room. I tried to sit up, feeling queasy in this meticulously tidy environment. On the walls and end tables were a series of photographs depicting a couple in youth and middle age. With an effort I got to my feet. It was my neighbor, Ali Uzel, standing next to the pretty woman with shining eyes in every picture. While I waited for him to make his appearance, I checked my pockets. The mugger had taken $200, and my credit cards and house keys. I folded the flowery blanket that had covered me into a neat bundle and sat on the couch waiting to express my gratitude. At that moment Professor Uzel walked into the room, wearing elegant pajamas under a maroon dressing gown.

  “Good morning, young man, and a speedy recovery to you.”

  “Thank you, sir. I must apologize for all the trouble I’ve caused you.”

  “The mugger must have followed you—a Balat person would never do anything so tactless as this. The doorbell started ringing like mad, at midnight. I looked out the window and there was a man calling to me in a shaky voice that my new neighbor was lying unconscious in front of my door. I came down but didn’t see anybody on the street. I called for Sami to come and help, but for some reason he wasn’t here even though he’s usually home all day. I couldn’t find any keys in your pockets, so I dragged you up here myself. It took a while. Come on, let’s have breakfast. Later you can have your locks changed. And I’ll expect you for dinner at 7.30. It will give us a chance to get to know each other.”

  Thanking the good professor, I asked to be excused. I got the spare key from Aunt Cevher and rushed back to my apartment, where I immediately cancelled my credit cards. After a long hot shower I called the locksmith and watched while he changed the locks. Then I slept for two hours listening to Mozart sonatas. I got up and went to Le Cave in Cihangir, where I bought two bottles of good imported wine. The professor welcomed me in his red apron. His living room was filled with the music of Nat King Cole and the aroma of fresh warm butter. The professor set a good table. He smiled at the two bottles of wine and I felt a bit embarrassed. The food was perfect and the service impeccable, yet I sensed he wasn’t fond of praise. My respect for my neighbor was growing with every sip I took. Summarizing my life story for him—with the exception of being underwritten by Suat—released a good deal of my negative energy.

  “May I ask whether the lovely lady in these photographs was your … wife?” I said while opening the second bottle.

  “You can decide for yourself what she was to me,” he replied, staring for a while at the picture on the wall furthest from him. “I went to the Robert College School of Engineering in 1959. That was the year the engineering school first accepted girls, as I was to learn from Esther Ventura, who was standing behind me in the registration line.

  “‘Let me buy you lunch,’ she said. ‘Just to be nice.’

  “From that moment we became, like the poet said, two halves of one apple. We were hardly apart until the day we graduated. Since there was no girls’ dormitory on campus in those days, she lived in a wooden house in neighboring Hisar with her friend Suna. It was a thrill for me to walk her home in the cool of the night after a long study session at the library.

  “She was a spirited girl with a great sense of humor. Maybe she wasn’t the most beautiful girl at the college, but she was the most popular. As she was a chemistry major, we didn’t have all that many classes together. At class breaks I would meet her in front of Hamlin Hall. She would spot me from 300 yards away and start running toward me, yelling ‘Aaa-liii,’ and it would feel like a curtain of fog was lifting from my eyes. But it was also a little embarrassing because I imagined the eyes of the whole campus on us as she threw her arms around my neck. We were considered a model couple by the other students. They knew what time we’d be going to which canteen and would save our favorite table for us. Esther always had a greeting for everybody and a joke for the waiters.

  “We never fought, and only once did I have to lay down the law to her. It was after our first-year finals. She made a proposal that shocked me—she wanted us to show up in swimsuits and dive into the Bosphorus in front of the Bebek gate of the campus. Of course I was angry when I realized she wasn’t joking.

  “‘Then I’ll do it on my own,’ she said.

  “‘Look,’ I said. ‘If you go swimming in a place where even the drunks don’t dare to fall in, you’ll not only cause a traffic jam, but you’ll be known as the crazy lady of the school. I can’t let you go down in Bosphorus history like that.’ I walked away and left her sitting on the bench.

  “Next day, at the time of the morning ezan, the windows on the tennis-court side of the men’s dormitory were full of boys craning their necks to see what was going on. It was Esther. She was at the front door yelling my name at the top of her lungs. I knew she wouldn’t stop until I went down.

  “‘What’s all this?’ I said.

  “‘I couldn’t sleep. What would you have done if I’d dived in?’ she said.

  “‘I don’t know, I might have transferred to Middle East Technical in Ankara,’ I said.

  “Quick as a shot she hooked her foot behind my leg and flipped me onto my back, then jumped on me and started pinching my cheeks.

  “‘What! So you think I wouldn’t follow you?’ she shouted, whereupon the crowd of spectators burst into a round of clapping and cheering.

  “During summer vacations I worked as a so-called intern at my sister’s company. I’d send Esther flowery letters signed ‘Aliye,’ the feminine version of my name, and she would secretly send me postcards from the magical European cities that she toured with her mother. I read them five times a day.

  “For three years, we lived a dream-like existence. Then, in the summer before our senior year, we decided to get married, as we intended to go to America for Master’s degrees. Esther knew it wouldn’t be easy to get permission from her pious Jewish mother to marry a Muslim boy, but we were prepared to spend a while in İzmir softening her up. We waited until the end of finals to bring up the subject. I didn’t worry about my sister—she was carrying on with a company manager who was married, after all. As for my father, his response was, ‘Well, if you think you’ve found the woman of your life, what can I say?’

  “So the mission of tearing us apart was left to Esther’s mother. In our farewell scene Esther said, ‘I couldn’t care less about her threats to disown me, but she vows that if I marry a Muslim she’ll commit suicide. She never really recovered from my father’s death, you know. She’s dependent on me. You’d be appalled if you saw her. She curses me and weeps, weeps and curses me. You’re the only man I can ever love, Ali. But …’

  “And that was it.”

  *

  “More because it was in New York than because of the scholarship they gave me, I chose Columbia for a Master’s in industrial engineering. I believed my wound would heal in that great city, and I wasn’t wrong. Still, as I struggled with the city and the school, Esther remained like a clot in my blood. The following year I ran into her old housemate Suna on a flight to Istanbul. She hadn’t been all that sorry to hear that Esther and I had b
roken up. Anyway, this dumpy, disagreeable woman was nattering on about Esther marrying a Jewish fellow and emigrating to Buenos Aires. I said, ‘If you’re passing on this gossip to make me feel bad, you needn’t bother—it won’t work,’ which shut her up.

  “During the three years it took to complete my degree my sister Oya’s lover divorced his wife, married Oya, and was divorced by Oya. I taught in New York for two years and then returned to Turkey for my military service. My sister by then was living with my father in his new Maçka apartment with the Bosphorus view. I was assigned to a military translation project at General Headquarters in Ankara. My father, in a burst of delayed affection, wanted me to visit every weekend. I decided not to return to the States when I learned from my sister that he had cancer. I finished my military duties and took a job at my old school, which by now had been nationalized as Boğaziçi University. Oya had risen to director of one of her company’s divisions. On hearing how much I was earning, she arranged some consulting work for me. That New Year’s Eve my father passed away. It never crossed my mind to think about matters of inheritance.

  “In the 1970s the ideology wars hit Boğaziçi like every other Turkish university. Maybe I should have gone back to Columbia. Anyway, I was tidying my desk in preparation for summer vacation one day, when who should walk into my office but Esther? I acted as if I wasn’t shocked. We said our hellos like distant friends; she smiled a guilty smile. She was still attractive and elegantly dressed. The weight she’d put on had only added to her sexiness. It was odd to feel so horny after all that time. She heard me tell the secretary to cancel any further appointments and asked if we could meet next evening in the Hilton Hotel lobby.

  “‘I’ll die if you don’t come,’ she said.