Portrait of a Turkish Family

by Orga, Irfan

  When my father arrived home that evening hampers of food which had been parcelled by Feride were stacked in the hall and the packages containing the clean linen and various other sundries stood beside them. My father began to laugh when he saw them, remarking to my mother that all the world knew when my grandmother was going to take a bath.

  She came down the stairs as he was saying this, her hands blazing with jewels and a large, brightly coloured silk scarf tied over her head. She looked extremely odd with her small, slender body and the swollen head. The drying henna and the innumerable towels still covered it but she had made a concession to polite society by winding her gay scarf over them all so that she could eat in the dining-room with the rest of the family.

  ‘I am going to the hamam tomorrow,’ she said, and my father, with a very grave face and making a gesture in the direction of the parcels, said that this was not difficult to understand. He frowned however when he heard that I was going also and said that I was too big for this sort of thing now. My grandmother very soon overrode his objections and with a pretty little display of femininity promised that this would be the last time she would take me.

  When my father finally gave in to her cajolery I was so excited I could scarcely eat a thing for the thought of his almost certain refusal had been gnawing at me all day.

  Murat arrived at the front gates with the polished phaeton and the restive, impatient, cream-coloured horses, their harness jingling musically each time they tossed their beautiful heads. Feride handed Murat the things needed for our day then importantly returned to the house to escort my perfectly capable grandmother into the carriage. I walked behind them feeling rather grand and Murat looked reproving when he saw me, making the expected remark that I was too big to be taken with the women. Secure in parental permission however I ignored him and took a tight, defiant hold of my grandmother’s hand. When we arrived at the hamam the attendants came out to meet us, bowing very deeply to my grandmother but looking a little startled and uncertain when they caught sight of me beside her. They did not make any remark however but led the way to the disrobing room which had been prepared for us.

  I had difficulty in keeping up with my grandmother’s quick, disdainful steps but nevertheless refused to leave hold of her hand. We passed through a vast marble hall with divans grouped against the walls and little, frosted glass doors which opened off to the private rooms. There were many women lying about on the divans, and in the centre of the hall was a pool and a fountain, the waters making a cool, tinkling sound as they rose and splashed into the stone basin. Many bottles of gazoz, a type of soda water, stood cooling in the pool, for this was a communal room and it was here that all the women would eat and gossip when they had completed their washing. We passed through without looking to right or to left, in fact I kept my eyes firmly on the ground as I had been warned to do. Feride had taken hold of my arm and, stealing a glance at her, I noticed the disdain on her black, finely featured face, the nostrils lifted as though there was a bad smell beneath them. Up a flight of stairs we went and were shown to a small room where we started to undress ourselves. I was the first ready and then Feride went to assist my grandmother. An attendant hovered outside the door waiting for orders, and when we were ready Feride called to her and handed our soaps, eau-de-Cologne and the large silver cup which was used for rinsing our bodies.

  We wore takunyas on our feet, a sort of wooden sabot. Mine were painted gold, I remember, with richly coloured red roses outlined on the fronts. My grandmother wore black ones with jewel-studded heels and we made a terrible noise with them on the bare stone floor. She looked very elegant in her rose-coloured bath-robe, her hair caught back from her ears and temples with little gold-topped combs. Feride managed to convey all the dignity of the East in a plain, severe white robe wrapped closely about her lean figure. Solemnly we left the disrobing-room and followed the attendant to the room where we would wash ourselves and later eat all the food we had brought with us.

  We had again to pass through the communal wash-room and some of the women were still washing themselves, whilst others lay about on the divans. There was a great deal of noise in this place. The high-pitched voices shouted across each other’s heads the scandal and the bits of gossip they had all retained until this meeting in the room of the hamam – for nowhere else would gossip be so spicy in the relating.

  As graciousness and sociability were the keynotes of my grandmother’s mood on hamam days, she naturally halted our little procession whilst she enquired after the healths of the women who, a little overcome by this magnificent condescension, were practically reduced to silence.

  My grandmother looked at the naked young girls with the critical eye of a connoisseur and now and then, when a figure displeased her, she would clap her hands together in a very expressive gesture denoting disapproval – saying that So-and-so was too thin altogether, that her backside rattled and that she would never be able to find a husband until her figure improved. ‘Give her plenty of baklava,’ she advised the mother, and everybody would feel embarrassment for the blushing girl and the naturally affronted mother but my grandmother was always unaware that she embarrassed anybody.

  She next singled out a ripe young beauty for approval and patted the plump thighs appreciatively. This drew the attention of all the mothers of sons, and my grandmother stated with great simplicity that if she had a marriageable son, this was the very girl she would select for him.

  The small girls eyed her with dislike but as she did not notice this it did not matter. She only had eyes for the budding, well-made young maidens of thirteen years old or thereabouts and she would tell some delighted mother at great length that she would certainly be well advised to marry such a daughter as soon as possible to the strongest young man that could be found.

  ‘He will know how to delight her,’ she would boom loudly, ‘but make sure he is as strong as a lion, otherwise with those fine legs of hers she will kill him.’

  This caused a great silence and then the women suddenly caught sight of me lurking in the background and gasped with horror that a young man of the advanced age of five years had been brought amongst them, a witness to their nakedness. They curled into the most unnatural positions, trying to cover their bodies, and sniggered into their protective arms rude remarks about my male organs. My grandmother frowned at this levity however. She might be outspoken herself regarding other people’s property but none might dare to make a remark about hers.

  Sociability temporarily suspended she drew herself up haughtily and made a sign to the patiently waiting attendant that she was ready.

  Our little procession moved on again, the clattering of our takunyas effectively drowning the remarks which were being made about me, and about my grandmother too for that matter.

  Before we reached the room where we were to wash we had to cross a narrow channel where the dirty water was running to the drains. We could not cross this however until we had all solemnly spat three times into the dirty water and said, ‘Destur bismillah’ to appease the evil spirits which always lurk in dirty places. In old Turkey one had to be very civil to the evil spirits. If one did not say ‘Destur bismillah’, meaning ‘Go away in the name of God’, the evil spirits of the drains might very likely feel insulted by the lack of respect shown towards them and give one a push in the back guaranteed to land one face downwards in the channel of dirty water, or they might even cause one side of one’s body to become temporarily afflicted with paralysis. Therefore we never took any chances with them. We were always most respectful.

  Having on this occasion discharged our obligations, we were able to cross the dirty water freely and proceed without any further hindrance to the washing-room with light hearts. This room was very large, but because it was for private use there was only one kurna or large water-basin in it, instead of the twenty or so in the communal washroom. In one side of the marbled wall was a niche where Feride immediately placed our baskets of food. The attendant put the soap, the towels a
nd the eau-de-Cologne on another shelf and left us, and Feride promptly pulled a curtain, made of rough towelling, into position over the arched doorway so that none might catch sight of us at our ablutions. She then proceeded to wash the kurna and the walls and the floor with soap which had been brought with us for that purpose. All the time she laboured my grandmother exhorted her to wash everything three times, otherwise they could not be said to be washed at all, and if everywhere was not perfectly clean evil spirits would cling to the dirt and perhaps do us some injury whilst we were washing. I sat on the cleaned part of the floor, apprehensive lest Feride should omit to wash anywhere thoroughly and visualising grinning, destructive demons lurking invisibly in the air waiting to pounce on me when I disrobed.

  Perspiring freely by the time she had finished everywhere, Feride placed more towels about the floor for us to sit on and then she lay down herself and blew soap bubbles to amuse me, and succeeded in making me forget all about the evil spirits. Washing was the worst part of the visit to the hamam for Feride, like İnci, had no mercy on me and lathered me from head to foot three times, making sure I could not escape from her by holding me securely between her strong legs. She put a sort of loofah glove on her right hand and scrubbed and kneaded my body with it until great, ugly lengths of black dirt were brought to the nearly bleeding surface and released. Despite my fierce cries she never relaxed and just when I thought the worst was over, she repeatedly filled the silver cup with what seemed to me practically boiling water and threw it over my head and body until I finally emerged smarting and tingling all over and looking like a lobster.

  Whilst my grandmother was being subjected to similar treatment, with the wily Feride all the time admiring the delicate, unlined texture of the creamy skin, I was forced to lie down to rest, wretched and bored by this part of the day and longing for the excitement of food to be given me. Food always had twice its appeal if offered in the hamam. I did manage once however to slip out of the room unnoticed and wandered into the communal room, without my bathrobe, thinking to cool myself with the sound of the cool fountain that played there.

  The women watched me with a sort of hostile interest and sharply called the younger children to their sides, and I stood alone in the middle of the large room, awkward and shy yet reluctant to return to the steam and overpowering boredom of the private room. A fat Armenian woman called me over to her and offered me an apple but I had been taught never to accept anything from anyone outside my family so I could only thank her and decline the offer, even though my stomach turned over with the longing to bite at the cool, red apple in her hand.

  She coaxed me over to her side and put a fat, kindly arm about me, and a young woman called impudently:

  ‘Madame! It would have been better to have brought your husband here. Why, he’s not as big as my little finger and I doubt if he would be of much use to you.’

  The other women laughed coarsely at this and the fat Armenian woman grew red with anger and annoyance.

  ‘You would be better not to let the grandmother hear you talking like that about him,’ she said, and many more remarks were passed about me and some of the women stopped eating to see if there was going to be a fight between the fat Armenian and the young Turkish woman. I escaped and ran back to the private room to the more kindly influence of my grandmother and Feride and even my posterior seemed to be blushing with the dreadful sense of embarrassment which I felt.

  When I got back my grandmother was resting and Feride in the act of setting out plates of food on a white tablecloth which was spread over a section of the floor. We all sat cross-legged in our bathrobes and ate with great appetite the lahana dolması (stuffed cabbages) which the despised Hacer had somehow managed to cook to perfection after all. We ate köftes (a savoury meat rissole), börek (a pastry stuffed with white cheese, eggs and parsley), turşu (a salad consisting of pickled vegetables, mostly cabbages), green peppers and fat golden cucumbers.

  An attendant brought us iced gazoz to drink and then we ate Feride’s speciality, kadin-ğöbeği, and afterwards were so overcome with sleepiness that my grandmother became quite querulous at my slowness in finishing. She brusquely ordered Feride to clear away the dirty remains of our feast and said that she wished to sleep. I curled myself up in a ball beside her, belching unashamedly to show my appreciation of all the good food I had eaten and then I went to sleep too.

  When I awoke, the day at the hamam was almost over. My grandmother was in the act of bathing herself for the last time and Feride, noticing my awakening, promptly seized the opportunity to wash me again. Renewed by her sleep she put as much energy into washing as though the dirt of centuries lay over me.

  The day was dying. Crockery, dirty linen and the silver washing-cup were packed away by Feride, the empty eau-de-Cologne bottle lay forlornly in the centre of the floor. It would not be wanted again.

  My grandmother put on her rose-coloured bath-robe and helped me into mine, and we went down the long, echoing corridor to the room where we had left our clothes this morning, which now seemed a lifetime away.

  I averted my eyes as we passed the groups of remaining women. Many of them who were here this morning had already gone home but those who still remained called out respectfully to my grandmother, wishing her good health and continued prosperity, but she was in no mood for trivialities. She ignored them all. The time for sociability was over for another week.

  CHAPTER 3

  A Purely Masculine Subject

  The long hot summer sped by and my grandfather’s death was eclipsed for me by the autumnal approach of my sixth birthday and – CIRCUMCISION!

  Circumcision was only a word to me but as time went on it became the most exciting word in the world. It cropped up frequently in my parents’ conversations. My father would start the ball rolling by perhaps remarking that Ali, the son of the local schoolmaster, had been circumcised a few days ago and that the whole neighbourhood was still talking of his bravery. This was the signal for my grandmother to look disbelieving, furiously clack her knitting-needles and remark, disparagingly, ‘What! That unhealthy-looking child! Impossible for him to show any bravery, it isn’t in his blood!’ and she would go off at a tangent into some long story about his father and his grandfather and their lack of bravery, until I would begin to wriggle impatiently and she would check herself and end triumphantly, ‘Wait until they all see my grandson.’

  And because she meant me a hot thrill of pride would surge through my veins.

  My mother would contribute in her cool voice: ‘You are quite right, of course. My son will be as brave as a lion and we shall all be proud of him.’

  Nobody ever explained what this terrible ordeal was which lay before me, requiring the courage of a lion, and I was too timid to ask though becoming more and more curious about it. One day I asked İnci to explain but she only laughed and told me to wait and see. So then I flew to Hacer for advice and she popped freshly made baklava into my mouth and grinned coarsely. She made a gesture somewhere in the lower regions of my anatomy but I did not understand and probably looked very puzzled, for she sobered her grinning and told me to run away and not to be bothering my head with such things. My mother was little more explicit but at least she tried to form some sort of picture in my mind. She told me that all little Muslim boys had circumcision and that it would be the start of my ‘manhood’ and that lovely new clothes were to be prepared for me, for the act of circumcising was a great ceremony in Turkey. I thought about her words but, without knowing it, she had given me a new problem to wrestle with in my already overflowing mind. What had she meant by the word ‘manhood’? Had it anything to do with my father – whom I had heard referred to as a ‘man’? It was all very odd to a small boy’s mind, but all these conversations had the desired effect of making me impatient and eager to experience circumcision.

  Every evening I used to climb on my father’s knee and ask when it would happen. He would pretend to look very grave and would ask my mother if I had been a good b
oy that day. The answer was always yes. Indeed, since the idea of circumcision had taken hold of me, I had walked in saintliness. So then my father would promise to arrange everything before my birthday and I would swell with pride and the days could not pass quickly enough.

  It became my custom to wait each evening at the side of the house for my father to return from his business. When I saw him turning the corner, I would run to open the gate for him and examine his bulging pockets, usually filled with toys or sweets for Mehmet and me. One evening he was carrying a large cardboard box under his arm and when I demanded to know what was inside it, he told me it was my circumcision robe. I was almost delirious with excitement and begged to be allowed to carry it into the house. In the hall we met my mother and I pointed out the box to her, almost bursting with pride at the thought of what it contained. She restrained my high enthusiasm and I rushed off to find Mehmet and İnci to tell them the news.

  Mehmet was now two and he began to cry because the robe was for me and not for him. He wanted a new dress too, he wailed. İnci popped sweets into his mouth, telling him to stop crying for he was lucky not to be having circumcision, since it would hurt him.