Portrait of a Turkish Family

by Orga, Irfan

  ‘What is wrong?’ cried the widow in dismay, and my mother replied in the new, hard voice that she always seemed to use nowadays: ‘I am past wondering what is right and what is wrong. To live nowadays is to bear insults from everyone. At the Government departments they treat us like vermin or tell us how fortunate we are that we have given a man to the war. I hunt bread each day, running from one baker’s shop to another, and in the end, what do I get? A piece of hard, black bread that I would be ashamed to feed to the animals. The crowds push and kick and snarl with rage and all decency seems to be gone from humanity – ’

  Her voice broke and I thought she was going to cry but she controlled herself, a faint furrow appearing between her delicate brows, almost as though she was wondering what she was talking about. She put out a hand to steady herself and her face became very white, deadly white so that the cheekbones were thrown into high relief, and the nose appeared more pinched and sharper.

  ‘Did anything unusual happen this morning?’ roared my grandmother.

  ‘Plenty!’ retorted my mother. ‘When you are a woman and alone in the world, you have to grow used to insults. This morning I tried several shops for bread and in the end I found one open and joined the queue to take my chance with the rest. Just as I had handed my money and taken the bread offered to me, a woman beside me snatched it from my hand, saying that it was hers and that she had given her money first. I snatched it back again and so the battle started. She was like a wild animal. She fought and kicked and screamed and pulled my veil from my face, saying only the rich wore veils and that I had no right to queue for bread, when the poor needed it worse than I did. My veil!’ my mother repeated, horrified. ‘Before all those people she pulled aside my veil, as if I was a prostitute, and then she called me one! Me! In front of all those people! I thought the world would fall on top of me. I tried to get away from her but she had hold of my skirt and I was afraid she would tear that from me too. Two men interfered and gave me back the bread and I ran away from that dreadful place – with my veil all torn and the people shouting after me in the streets. They thought I was a bad woman and that I had been fighting with another bad woman! Oh, such disgrace! To think I should live to see this day, that I should fight for such a thing – ’

  And she held up the piece of dry, black bread. Then she swayed forward and before I had time to properly realise what was happening, she was lying across the sofa, lifted there by the strong, kindly arms of the widow. My grandmother, more agile than I ever remember seeing her, was chafing her wrists, her own face almost as white as my mother’s.

  My mother commenced to grind her teeth and I was terrified she was going to break them but the widow jammed a spoon between her lips, raising her head to settle cushions more firmly behind it. After a while the awful grinding stopped and my mother opened her eyes.

  ‘Cognac!’ shouted my grandmother, busying herself making strong coffee.

  She was almost crying to herself, calling upon the names of her dead sons to come back and defend their women. Her weak, long-pent-up tears rolled down her cheeks and fell into the hot ash of the mangal, making strange little sizzling sounds.

  My mother opened her eyes and sat up, the colour fast returning to her face. She stretched herself languidly, as though she were very tired and had come back from a long way away, then she accepted coffee and presently seemed perfectly normal again.

  The widow remained with us for the rest of the day; if she had work to do she gave no hint. Good soul that she was, she only wished to stay here with my mother, to serve her as best she could.

  Dusk came early and Ezzin was read from the little mosque, the signal for my grandmother to start praying. Every evening she waited for Muezzin to climb into the minaret, for since her deafness this was the only way she could know the right time to pray. That evening she prayed in her loud, rumbling voice for her sons who were dead, for my grandfather, for my mother and for us children. She put in a special little bit for herself at the end. Her voice filled the room, the old, liquid words falling softly on the ear. The widow had prepared the evening meal and, because my mother was still not really well enough to go downstairs, we had it in the salon. The fire blazed merrily and all the lamps, oh, rash extravagance! were brightly lit.

  After dinner was over, my grandmother illogically wished to visit the little mosque to pray and said she wanted me with her. We started out into the black night, I pleasantly fearful and excited. My grandmother carried a lighted candle in a sort of storm-lantern and I could clearly see another candle glowing on the tomb of the holy-man. We walked swiftly for the night was bitterly cold, and, when we came abreast of the window in which rested the tomb, my grandmother sternly bade me pray for the soul of the holy-man. She opened her hands to the sky, palms upwards in the Muslim fashion, and I did the same thing. I do not think I said much of a prayer, for my teeth were chattering with the cold and the wind had chosen just that moment to come whistling icily around the corner, cutting through my thin coat.

  When we went into the mosque, we sat down on the women’s side and I was immediately acutely embarrassed, for my grandmother insisted on saying her prayers aloud. There were only a few other people there but no peace was given to them for, whether they wished it or not, they had to listen to my grandmother. Again and again she exhorted her God to be merciful to her dead ones and to make my mother well and strong again. I wriggled with impatience, trying to quieten her but she refused to be quiet until she had finished what she had come here to say.

  One day my mother and I went to Beşiktaş, some distance from our home. I have forgotten the reason we went but remember the occasion, for it was the first time I had ever seen the Sultan, Mehmet Reşat. In the main street of Beşiktaş soldiers were marching and a band played military music, whilst the police were roughly keeping back the curious crowds from the royal route. We waited to see the Sultan, and the cavalry came first, mounted on their high-stepping Arab horses. As far as I can remember, they wore blue jackets with brightly shining brass buttons, scarlet trousers and great tall kalpaks on their heads, with flowing white plumes. They pranced towards us, their uniforms making a splash of welcome colour in all that drab humanity and their spurs clinked and jingled and gleamed in the watery sun. A carriage came after the cavalry, drawn by elegant, aristocratic horses and, dimly, from the windows we caught a glimpse of an old small man with a little white beard. He was in uniform, many medals marching across his breast. A great, loyal cry went up from the people, half of them in rags, a deep-throated, rumbling roar of welcome: ‘Padişahim çok yaşa!’ they roared and then he was past us and other voices took up the refrain. Even when the carriage had finally disappeared from sight the echoes of the cheering crowds came back to us. Then the quiet streets grew quieter for the people had dispersed and my mother and I continued on our journey.

  She had found work to do in these days. The widow, true to her word, had obtained sewing for her from her patron in Kapalı Çarşı. The money was pitifully small and nowadays the salon was eternally littered with made and unmade work and the never-ceasing whirr of the sewing-machine dominated all else. So the winter of 1915 passed to the sound of my mother’s machine and the merry, comforting crackling sound of the logs in the china stove. Somehow or other life was readjusting itself and we had become used to bad food and not enough of it and my grandmother did the marketing and I now hunted for bread. But the soft, early days of spring changed all that again. One had already learned that security was a fragile thing, sensitive to the first cold breath, yet one could not learn to accept this with finality. That spring of 1916 overrides all other memories and carries its scars to this day.

  Sewing, for my mother, came to a sudden, abrupt end for the patron of the Kapalı Çarşı explained that there was no more work for anyone, that the Government had bought all the available materials for the Army. He said that an Army Sewing Depôt had been opened behind the Gülhane Parkı and that anyone applying there would be given work to do. He had str
etched his large, hairy hands to them, begging them to understand his position, and the women had looked at each other and wondered what to do. The widow said immediately that she, for one, would go to the Army Depôt, declaring that it was all the same to her where she worked as long as she got money for it. My mother and many of the new poor were uncertain. They felt that to work in the privacy of their own homes was one thing but to expose themselves in a Government factory, quite another. When my mother came home, my grandmother looked with surprise at her empty hands and asked what was wrong.

  ‘No more work,’ declared my mother. ‘The Army have bought all materials and have opened a factory behind the Gülhane Parkı. The widow has gone there today to look for work.’

  ‘Well, you will not!’ roared my grandmother, so loudly that a pile of plates on the kitchen table vibrated slightly.

  ‘What is the use of talking like that?’ demanded my mother wearily. ‘We have so little money and the children must be fed. Can we see them going hungry, because of our pride?’

  My grandmother stood up and called to us to come with her. She led the way into the bedroom, produced a key from somewhere about her middle and unlocked the tin chest where her valuables were stored.

  ‘We have these five gold coins left to us,’ she said to my mother. ‘Take them. They will keep us for a little longer. And when they have gone I have still my jewellery – my rings and my emerald pendant. I was keeping them for Muazzez.’

  She drew them out of their silk-lined box and they glittered palely in her hands.

  ‘No!’ said my mother. ‘These rings will never be sold. The dealers will rob you nowadays because they know that people like us are selling our valuables because we want money so desperately. Why, only last week I heard from one of the women at the Kapalı Çarşı that she had sold a diamond-and-ruby chain, far finer than these, mother, and all she got for them was a little gold. She did not know their value and she was so hungry that she let them go to the first Jew dealer who offered to take them. No!’ she said more softly, so softly that my grandmother could not catch her words, ‘these shall belong to Muazzez,’ and she touched the pretty trinkets, taking them from my grandmother and locking them up again. She put her hands on my grandmother’s shoulders, lightly brushing her forehead with her lips. ‘All our pretty things are gone,’ she said into the straining ears. ‘So let us keep Muazzez’s pretty things. They will look very well one day on my daughter’s neck!’

  So the first crisis was averted and the little house grew silent again, without the weight of the machine’s noise to disturb it. And gold in the pocket gave a temporary, transient gaiety, for would it not buy good meals again – even for a brief while – and wine for my grandmother? Feckless and improvident and wildly extravagant were they, ignorant of the long years still to be lived. All through childhood their beauty and tears and gallantry pierced my heart to torment. Their blood ran fiercely through my veins and I have been as wildly improvident, but without their courage and wit and graciousness to face the sort of heartaches they faced.

  Now and then the widow would come to visit us, amusing yet terrifying us with her coarse humour of what life was like in a factory. She had to stay there day and night, sleeping and eating with the others, doing different turns of duty and only allowed off one day in a week.

  The pay, she said, was poor but sufficient for her, for the Army provided her food.

  ‘Me,’ she said proudly. ‘I’m as strong as a lion, thank God! Only the strong can survive in a place like that.’

  She no longer pressed my mother to join her there, realizing my grandmother’s fierce distaste for such work, but, since they talked openly to her, she could not help knowing that money was low again and perhaps she knew too that it was only a matter of time before my mother joined her of her own free will. When has money not been low in my dear, idiotic family? They were excellent for spending but terrible for saving and even life at its most cruel could not teach them anything else. One morning my grandmother went round all the rooms, ticking off on her fingers all the largest, and to my mind the ugliest, pieces of furniture we had. Several times she wondered aloud how much they would fetch if she sold them.

  ‘It’s good walnut furniture,’ she would mutter. ‘Not to be bought anywhere today. And Şevkiye was quite right when she said that these rooms are very overcrowded.’

  Brave soul that she was, she was trying to convince herself that the sale of her furniture was a matter of no importance. She was hoping to defer the day when my mother would have to go to the factory.

  She sent for a Jewish dealer and it was I who ushered him into the transformed presence of my grandmother. She had dressed herself up for the occasion and wore all her rings and her emerald pendant, defying the dealer to guess she was desperate for money.

  The Jew looked over the furniture with a cautious, jaundiced eye. Perhaps he did not know what to make of the situation, for though the house was small and in a bad district, the old lady wore diamonds that he could see were real enough. She was dressed in silk too, the hallmark of respectability, and the furniture and carpets were the best that money could buy. He can be forgiven if he did not quite know how he stood in this place, before this indomitable, proud-faced old woman.

  He ran his fingers over the smooth, polished wood, ‘hemming’ and ‘hawing’, and I trailed after him, a curious figure no doubt in my assortment of colours. I had been put into the best clothes that could be found to fit me and I was afraid to sit down, for everything was uncomfortably tight, the seams in danger of giving way. The Jew rapped out a figure and my grandmother’s knuckles whitened over her ebony stick.

  ‘Are you mad?’ she demanded imperiously, her loud, self-conscious voice booming reverberatingly through the room.

  The Jew looked doubtful again and ran his fingers over the wood for a second time, and opened a few drawers as well.

  ‘My offer stands,’ he said, and my grandmother drew herself up with great haughtiness.

  ‘Then I think we have nothing further to discuss,’ she said, with an edge to her voice and made a movement towards the door.

  ‘Wait a moment,’ said the Jew, adding ‘efendim’ uncertainly for he was still unsure of her status or – more importantly – her financial position.

  There was a long pause, each eyeing the other suspiciously, each trying to assess the obstinacy of the other. The Jew shifted his eyes first and slightly raised his figure, very slightly, mind you, but that was where he made his first mistake. My grandmother remained immovable, not a flicker of emotion crossing her poker face. I was entranced for I had never seen her like this since my grandfather’s day. I had almost forgotten she could look like this. She leaned on her stick and waited, the Jew slightly raising the figure, for he knew a good bargain when he saw one and was prepared to give way a little. But she just stood there like a statue and refused to give in. When at last he could bear it no longer, he burst out: ‘I’m offering you the best price you will get anywhere. If you’re in need of the money I advise you to take it.’

  And that was his second mistake for it made my grandmother arrogant and when she was arrogant she was at her most dangerous, and better people than the Jew had been known to grow reckless under this danger.

  ‘When I am in need of money,’ she said, ‘I shall no doubt be willing to let you cheat me. At the moment I am merely trying to get rid of the large furniture for, as you can see, this house is far too small to house it. If, however, you do not wish to buy then that is quite a different matter and I can only regret that we have both wasted our time. Good morning.’

  And she walked determinedly towards the door, holding it open for the Jew to pass through. We heard him going down the stairs and I wanted to cry with desperation, for perhaps my grandmother would never again get such an offer. I looked at her mutely, longing to cry but I heard the Jew’s returning step on the stairs and I looked at my grandmother, who had not heard. I was afraid she would make some false remark he would overh
ear and which would send him bounding out of the house, or to return with a lower offer. But she said nothing and showed no trace of surprise when he came back into the salon. He sketched a gesture on the air, of desperation, of resignation – who shall know? And he took a deep breath, saying: ‘You’re ruining me, efendi, and I shall never be able to get rid of such heavy, old-fashioned stuff as this, but here’s my final figure, take it or leave it – ’ and he named a sum and my grandmother’s mouth relaxed.

  ‘Add twenty liras more,’ she said grandly, ‘and the furniture’s yours.’

  ‘Five!’ said the dealer.

  ‘Fifteen!’ said my grandmother.

  ‘Seven and a half!’ shouted the dealer, perspiring by now and looking as if he would like to discontinue but could not, because he loved a good bargain too.

  ‘Twelve and a half!’ retorted my grandmother, indomitable to the last.

  ‘Ten!’ said the dealer, passing his hand over his brow.

  ‘Very well,’ conceded my grandmother and the Jew handed over a greasy bundle of liras and went to the window to call up his porters, who had been waiting in case business was done.

  He walked back to my grandmother.

  ‘You drive a hard bargain,’ he said. ‘But if ever you want to sell those diamonds and things of yours, I can put you on to a man who will give you a good price for them.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said my grandmother, with distaste, anxious to be rid of him now that the business was concluded. ‘But my jewellery is never likely to be for sale.’

  And she sat down on the sofa and waited for the porters to clear the rooms. She called out constant instructions to them and warnings to be careful of her carpets and made them remove their footwear before they entered the rooms. When at last they and the furniture had gone, I saw that she was trembling violently.

  ‘What is wrong, grandmother?’ I asked, going over to her.