Portrait of a Turkish Family

by Orga, Irfan

  At the house, the scrubbing had been finished and clean, naked floors gleamed wetly. A man was busy removing the offending kafes from the windows, whilst another mixed distemper in a bucket. They were very polite to my mother but it was plain to see they thought her very odd to want the kafes off the windows, to let the unaccustomed daylight into these depressing rooms. She was very gay all that day. Her gaiety transformed her so that one could see she looked twenty-two again, beautiful and high-spirited but husbandless. And the men servants were probably prophesying amongst themselves her downfall. She was an odd contradiction, one moment spineless and the next bounding with immense vitality. In one way, her own unobtrusive way, she was the forerunner of Kemal Atatürk – for she emancipated herself years before his time. That the people in her new life would talk about her she did not care.

  She had always lived in houses which admitted fresh air and she intended to do the same thing here, and if there was no garden to protect her from eager scrutiny – then she would have to get used to the peculiar ways of mankind. But fresh air she intended to have even at the cost of her reputation. So she snapped her fingers at the gossipers and acted the lady in her three mean rooms and lamented the loss of her diamond ring. Now that she had found a home again, her vitality was boundless, colour seemed to return to her cheeks, the flesh to the delicate bones. To Mehmet and me her courage was terrific and we still think so today. We cannot help but admire her colossal struggle, her intrepid spirit and even as children we were aware of this courage. We could forgive the lapses into depression and bad temper, the seeming ruthlessness when she banished her children eventually. Today we see these things in their true perspective and can only see the wit, the bravery and the gaiety which transformed three mean rooms in a mean street into a formidable bulwark against the rest of the world.

  My grandmother arranged to let us have the most of her furniture, the cumbersome, handsome walnut furniture she had moved from our house upon her remarriage. From her vast stocks she provided curtains and linens and rugs and tapestries which had once graced our salon in my grandfather’s house. The three rooms and the dark, square landing took on a joyous air, as if they had been waiting for just such a transformation. The windows stood wide open to the world and if the neighbours gasped at such audacity in their midst, my mother I am sure was totally unaware of it. Naturally they knew her story, for gossip has a way of travelling in İstanbul as rapidly as it has in any other part of the world. No doubt the good neighbours thought she had brought these ‘fast’ habits from her former life.

  The first evening we were established in the new house we discovered that, so much else having been thought of, we were without lamps or food. My mother went down the naked stairs to the widow who lived beneath, thinking perhaps she could oblige. Their conversation must have been pathetic. The grand lady in her fine silk dress and the poor, wretched trollop, shunned by the neighbours because of her reputed ‘goings-on’ – she must have thought it was the Sultan himself, no less, who had descended upon her to request the loan of a lamp! Unfortunately she had no lamp, or if she had was far too flustered to search for it, but she produced a scrap of candle. This my mother triumphantly bore upstairs, to place in a silver candlestick on the buffet. So much had been lost and was irretrievable but a silver candlestick was a necessity. Nothing less would have done, not glass or china or even just plain, honest tin, nothing but a silver one was good enough, for ladies only used the best … The room in the candlelight hid some of its secrets and the cracks in the ceiling might have been gold-encrusted ornamentations in that kindly glow – if you had enough imagination, and I had plenty. Well, there we were in our new home, in our new clothes provided by my grandmother – and we ate dry bread and a handful of black olives to still the ache in our stomachs. Then we settled to sleep, far away from the murmur of the sea or the scent of the flowers from an almost forgotten garden and for me, at least, it was as comfortable as the Dolmabahçe Saray. It probably was too, for the white, iced-cake-looking Saray with its echoing dungeons had no great reputation for comfort – or so I heard afterwards.

  And I wonder what my mother thought that night, as she lay down in my grandfather’s exotic bed – the one where I had once played ‘lions’ – and the legs of which were placed in glass bowls of water, to prevent the bed-bugs from becoming too adventurous? Did she thank God for safe deliverance into a new home, however mean, or did she pray for guidance for the future? Perhaps. Perhaps not. She was never a religious person, being too impatient to accept the Muslim teaching of Fatalism, and with a mind so hurrying that God must have just flitted through it with barely a hurried nod in her direction. She had been born in Albania and her unorthodox views of life and religion derived perhaps from some far-off Christian ancestor who slept uneasily in her blood.

  The next morning, şütçü – the milkman – awakened us by his violent assertions that his milk was the best in İstanbul. Mehmet and I leaped from our shared bed and rushed to the window, to see this remarkable apparition who had dared to disturb our dreams. Always before, sütçü had decorously called at the back door and in a series of sibilant whispers conducted his business with Hacer or Feride, never dreaming of loudly crying his wares for fear of waking the sleeping occupants of the house. This was a great change. In our new life, people set their day in motion with the arrival of the milkman and sütçü himself had no false illusions about his value, and firmly believed in thoroughly arousing any sleepy heads who still remained in bed.

  He saw us hanging out of the window and his jaw dropped in surprise because the kafes were gone. He was long and lean and bronzed and wore patched clothing but it could not disguise the smooth rippling of the muscles under his shirt. He had a several days’ growth of beard and this fascinated us very much. His voice was the voice of Doom.

  ‘Milk!’ he barked at us fiercely. ‘Do you want any milk today?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ we said politely, in chorus, and he grinned sourly and stood back to get a good look at us, the paragons of good behaviour.

  Just then the widow opened the front door, thrusting forward a saucepan which the sütçü silently filled. Then I heard my mother’s pattering feet taking the stairs and she also held out a receptacle to be filled. She bought yoğurt for us too, a sort of sour junket which we loved with sugar.

  With the coming of sütçü, the street came to life. Doors opened and saucepans were thrust forth and sütçü did a roaring trade.

  My mother called to us from the landing, which had been made into a kitchen, that it was time for us to get up. We began to pull on our clothes, fumbling over buttons and tapes. Mehmet exasperatedly started to cry and said he wanted İnci, and my mother swept impatiently into the room. Suddenly buttons and tapes became docile things under her experienced fingers. She showed us both how our clothes should be put on, how held together – which was the most important so far as we were concerned. She explained that for the time being there was no İnci to help us and that we must learn to do these things for ourselves. She was particularly scathing with me, declaring that a boy almost seven years old should at least be able to pull on his boots, even if he were incapable of lacing them. I hung my head in shame for every word she said was painfully true and I simply had not the remotest idea of which boot went on which foot. No doubt we benefited from her instructions for I certainly never remember another occasion of being helped into our clothes.

  Later that day when I was sitting in the so-called salon I saw my grandmother coming up the street. I recognised her by her veil for all the women in the street wore the çarşaf – a sort of black scarf tightly binding the forehead and hair and with another piece of material, a peçe, covering the lower part of their faces. They looked unbearably ugly and drab and I was thankful that neither my mother nor my grandmother wore such things. I called to her from my little window and she waved her hand to me and I rushed down to open the door for her. She instructed me to leave the door open, as two of her porters were to arrive w
ith more furniture for us.

  My mother greeted her, then mocked lightly: ‘But what is this today? No chaperone?’

  And my grandmother self-consciously replied that she saw no reason why a poor old woman like herself – she was about fifty – could not walk the daytime streets unescorted.

  My mother’s emancipation seemed to be affecting my grandmother too, although of course she would never admit that, holding firmly to the argument that whereas perhaps she might be rash enough to venture out alone, by reason of her age, my mother could not do the same thing and for the same reason!

  Porters arrived with a sewing-machine that had formerly been used by Feride for the household mending. A large console table followed, a little inlaid Moorish coffee-table, a wooden chest containing God knew what and monstrous armchairs that would crowd everything else out of the salon. My mother’s face was a study as she watched all these things hauled up the narrow stairs and heaved pantingly into the rooms. When the porters had departed she asked my grandmother where she thought everything would be put and my grandmother looked taken aback for, naturally, such a thought had never entered her head. In a sudden burst of generosity she had given this furniture to us and expected pleasure as our reaction and not pointless questions as to where they should all be put. She looked around her, having to admit that the rooms were already overcrowded but she told my mother she ought to be grateful for that. She felt affronted and took no pains to conceal this. I think she saw nothing incongruous in this lovely old furniture adorning these poor rooms, or the silky Sparta and Persian rugs strewn across the uneven floorboards, broken in places. She had wanted to instal her daughter-inlaw and her grandchildren in a fine home and hey presto! had she not done so? Why then was the daughter-in-law looking round her so doubtfully, as though ungrateful for all these lovely things? She must have given up struggling with the idea for she abruptly dismissed the subject of the offending furniture and proceeded to unpack the wooden chest, feeling certain that these treasures would be appreciated. She brought forth curtains, to be hung immediately, she stipulated. Table-and bed-linen was dragged out to trail on the floor, heavy silver cutlery, to be used presumably for our dry bread and our black olives. Hammered brass lamps, which would require a gallon of oil a day to keep them going. A silk-embroidered bed-set which, she proudly informed Mehmet and me, had been given to her when she was a young girl for her wedding to my grandfather.

  My mother looked at all these old treasures and her eyes filled with tears. They reminded her too vividly of my grandfather and my father and the houses where she had been happy and I felt she did not want them here, in this house that held no memories. She said nothing, although the tears began to drop on to her cheeks. Then she recovered herself and bade me blow the mangal, so that coffee could be brewed. I went out to the landing, where lurked the mangal, a table, crockery for everyday use and several buckets of water. There was no water in the house, although fresh drinking-water was supplied each week by Bekçi Baba. All other water had to be fetched from the local pump, the meeting-place for all the ladies of the district, and only that morning I had staggered twenty times or more with small tin cans to be filled. I could not bear to see my mother do such menial work as this. The darkness hid what was on the landing but the unlovely smell of cooking filled the house perpetually. Cooking facilities were primitive. Charcoal was burned in the big copper brazier, the mangal, an iron tripod placed over it and the pan containing whatever had to be cooked stood on it. After several slow hours a meal was either cooked to perfection or ruined beyond redemption, depending on the sort of cook you were. In those first days with this cooking arrangement much of our food was uneatable for my mother was not a good cook. She liked good food but had no patience and could not be bothered to do everything the cookery book prescribed. Many years later she became quite an expert but only when she had already ruined our digestion.

  That morning she made coffee for my grandmother, handing it to her on a thin, very old silver tray and, if one turned one’s back to the window – ignoring the view – one would have thought that İnci had just left the room and that we were back again in the house that had been burned. So firmly was ritual in her blood that my mother saw nothing odd in the fact that she should continue to serve coffee on a silver tray that would have graced a collector’s possessions. She who had nothing left in the world, who was poorer by far than the widow who lived under us. We saw no incongruity in my mother’s gesture either, but remembering that moment so long ago can bring a smile to me today. There they sat, those two elegant ladies, in a slum room and they sipped coffee from a silver tray. The old order was established once more and presently my grandmother would forget herself and look for the bell to ring for İnci to clear away …

  That day, before she left, she pressed gold money into my mother’s hand, the latter protesting that she was not in need of it since she still had the money from the sale of her ring. My mother had very little knowledge of the value of money and absolutely no true knowledge of food prices. If she wanted something she had to have it and if it seemed to cost many gold coins – well, unfortunately that was life and we were in the middle of a war. Consequently, traders robbed her, demanding exorbitant prices for their wares. She was always too shy to argue with them, feeling it beneath her dignity but I had begun to notice that the other women in the marketplace paid much less for their foodstuffs than she did. If I remonstrated with her, she would hush me impatiently, but there came a time when she began seriously to worry about her money. It was inconceivable that my grandmother could continue to support us. We had already heard that her husband had been almost insane with fury when he discovered she had moved all her furniture without consulting him. Still food continued to be our biggest problem and one gold coin seemed to have very little purchasing power – especially if one patronised the Bourse Noir, which my mother did.

  About this time in my life I became initiated into the purely feminine mystery of acting nursemaid. My mother had formed the habit of shopping alone, usually after the morning’s meal was over. She would leave Mehmet and Muazzez in my charge, to my disgust, for I hated to be held responsible for everything they did. My duties mostly consisted of saying ‘don’t’ but occasionally I would give Mehmet an exasperated slap, which would make him roar so loudly that once the widow rushed up to see what was wrong and afterwards complained about me to my mother. When my mother remonstrated, I was resentful, blind and deaf to everything save my intense dislike of looking after the younger ones.

  One particular day my mother had found more difficulties than usual in getting bread for us. Latterly our whole world revolved on the one word ‘bread’. She had spent most of the morning at the baker’s, returning weary and empty-handed. She went out again in the afternoon, with the same result. Towards evening she set off again, telling Mehmet and me not to make too much noise since Muazzez was sleeping. For a while we played quietly, then Mehmet became tired and fretful, and we gathered our toys together, putting them into a cupboard on the landing and went back to our favourite corner seat to watch for our mother’s return. It was getting duskish and my mother seemed to be away for an unusually long time. The street was deserted and presently we heard the widow go out, closing the front door conspiratorily after her. We watched her black, dumpy figure disappear down the street and we became uneasy, knowing there was now nobody in the house save ourselves.

  Perhaps some memory of the darkness which had preceded the night of the fire came up to catch us by the throat, causing us to talk in whispers and look, now and then, furtively over our shoulders into the darkening room. Mehmet was sleepy and begged to be allowed to go to bed but I was loath to part with his company. I longed for my mother’s return. I wished the lamps were lit but dared not touch them, on my mother’s orders. We continued to sit there and still she did not come and the room grew darker and the street was silent as the grave. There was a little mosque near the house and from our corner window we could see it quite plainly,
its one, slender minaret piercing the gloom. More clearly to be seen, and within one of its windows, was the tomb of a holy man, with a candle – lit by some pious aspirant – burning steadily in a glass holder. Muezzin had mounted the lonely minaret and was calling the people to prayer, but we could not see whether anyone was entering the mosque or not for the entrance faced in the opposite direction to us. Muezzin’s voice was mournful and mysterious, the liquid Arabic notes rippling from his tongue like strange music. When he had finished reading Ezzin and had left the minaret the night seemed stiller and blacker than ever. Only the candle still winked brightly on the holy man’s grave.

  Suddenly I began to be afraid. Fear and hunger and tiredness combined, loosened my tongue. ‘Dead man is coming! Dead man is coming!’ Mehmet looked at me in the semidarkness and his lip started to quiver. He looked in the direction of the candle and began to howl with fear too. We rushed from the window and over to the sofa, which was draped with an old Persian praying-mat, and this we pulled over our heads, whimpering in terror. We whipped up our fear to a greater frenzy, telling each other that the holy man had got out of his grave because he was cold and lonely there and was coming to take us back to his grave, so that we should keep him warm. We shivered and our teeth chattered and scattered remnants of İnci’s ghostly lore kept coming back to keep our terror at fever pitch. We lay clasping each other in desperation, muttering that the holy man must be very near to us now. We pushed each other in our extreme agitation, pulling the too-small praying-mat first over his head, then over mine. In the midst of all this I heard footsteps, slow, furtive footsteps.