by Orga, Irfan
But her voice trailed away uncertainly for now she was looking more closely at the child across her arms. And, indeed, it was Mehmet. Even I could see the likeness.
‘He is light like a bird!’ said my mother wonderingly.
‘He is very ill,’ said the Sister severely. ‘It is wrong of you to take him home.’
I peeped at Mehmet in awe, at the little brown closed face with the jawbones sticking pitifully out from the fleshless cheeks, the faint, dark line of eyebrow, so delicately traced like my mother’s, the skeleton arms and wrists and the poor, wasted body that was dying with hunger. I saw swift tears prick my mother’s eyes, but she thanked the Sister and we came away.
Back to İstanbul again, in the hurtling tram, Mehmet held close against my mother so that the jolting would be minimised for him. I, nose pressed against the windows, conscious of my mother’s sorrow and the shadow that surrounded my brother and the bright day was dimmed for me; the Bosphor had lost most of its blueness.
For several days Mehmet lay in a sort of stupor, with my grandmother constantly reading the Koran over him, and Muazzez and I, now and then, going to look at him, silenced in the face of such tremendous silence. After a while they tried to spoon-feed him with condensed milk obtained by my mother through the Sewing Depôt, and sometimes he would sip a little boiled water, moving his head plaintively from side to side as though in pain. If he did not seem to get any better at home, he certainly became no worse. And then a day came when I remember two important things happened to me. The first concerned Mehmet, for he opened his eyes and looked at me. He looked first at me unrecognisingly but, after a bit, awareness crept back to him and he smiled and held out his small hand.
‘Brother!’ he said to me in a weak, wondering voice, a voice that was not a voice but a thin thread of sound on the air.
I flew over to him, holding tightly to his hand and I asked him if he wanted anything. He said that he was hungry and I went to the kitchen for a spoon and the half-empty tin of condensed milk. I spooned it into his avid, greedy mouth until the tin was shining and empty and he begged for a glass of water. Muazzez staggered to him with the carafe, spilling a few drops over his sheet and we laughed uproariously, as though it was a great joke, and presently Mehmet turned on his side and went to sleep. I stayed by his bed until my grandmother returned from the market, and as she came into the house, I could hear Muazzez’s excited, high-pitched voice telling her the joyful news. Upstairs rushed my grandmother like the wind and in a loud roar, which she thought was a whisper, asked me what had happened. When I told her, she threw up her hands in delight and began to recite a prayer of thanksgiving from the Koran. She crept across to Mehmet and listened for a few moments to his still, even breathing, then she said simply and with great faith that he would get better now and took us with her from the room, leaving him to his good sleep.
She had brought back a few uninspiring things with her from the market, and presently she told me to go to the Sewing Depôt, from where my mother would be returning today. She instructed me to tell my mother about Mehmet and to ask her to come home via Sirkeci, where the shops might have something other than the eternal Indian corn which my grandmother always bought in Bayazit.
She could not get me out of the house quickly enough, so great was her desire to prepare something appetising for my brother, and she grumbled that her legs would not carry her as far as Sirkeci these days.
So we come to the second thing of importance that happened to me that day.
I went to meet my mother, delivered my message and we walked towards Sirkeci, she very excited that her son had chosen to live.
I remember we managed to get some haricot beans and dried peas and a little sugar, rare luxury nowadays. We were on our way home, just behind the station at the time and making slow progress along the narrow, cobbled street, for this was one of the busiest spots in the city. We sidestepped out of the path of horses and of men pushing barrows and presently, above all the street cries, there came another sound, a sound more insistent on the ear, and my mother paused and looked to the sky and I followed her eyes and there, coming in across the Golden Horn, were three aeroplanes.
‘English ’planes!’ a man shouted, dashing past us into a shop doorway.
My mother and I stood looking at them, both of us unaware of the load of destruction they carried. People were hurrying by us into shops, into Sirkeci station, into doorways but I think my mother was too paralysed to move very swiftly. I remember she eventually pulled me under a shop awning and we cowered there, and it was only in after years I learned that she had been convinced that day that the awning would have saved us, that if the pilots could not see us then nothing could hurt us!
The aeroplane flew into İstanbul with a roar and then came a dull explosion which shook the earth.
I thought the noises would never cease. Clouds of dust billowed towards us and I discovered that my legs were in danger of giving way.
They bombed Mahmut Paşa Street that day, İstanbul’s busiest marketplace, and scarcely a gun to defend the city. And soon the aeroplane had gone, and the scream of ambulances hurtled piercingly on the ears from all directions. We began to go home, having to pass Mahmut Paşa Street on the way and already flames licked the little shops and the mean houses. A horse lay on its side, neighing horribly, its cart overturned across its broken body and the driver perched high above the débris with his face blown in. There were not enough ambulances, so lorries were commandeered and they passed us with their load of wounded, some unconscious, some crying out in agony and their flapping stumps of arms flaying the air sickeningly. Carts piled with the dead came nearby and one even passed us, and I was almost sick with horror when I saw its gory, exposed contents – heads lolling fearfully without their bodies, hands and legs jumbled together indecently, all bundled in together – for these were the dead and were no longer important when there were still the living to be saved.
‘They meant to bomb the War Office,’ someone was saying; ‘but the bombs went wide and fell here – ’
And the people who heard him commenced to boo him and he was suddenly in danger of his life, for the rest of the people were convinced that Mahmut Paşa Street had been deliberately bombed, because it was a crowded district. Still I remember that day and the murmurings of the people and the crying of the bereaved and none of us will ever know, or care to know, for it is ancient history now, whether the pilots went wide of their target or not. And all the way home my mother’s eyes were blinded by the tears she shed for the innocent ones who had suffered and even for the unaware, surprised ones who had died. And that bombing lived in my mind for many years. Even recently when I had occasion to pass through Mahmut Paşa Street, still with its ugly, unbuilt-over scars, I saw that day again and I wondered if anyone else in that still overcrowded street remembered its tragic history.
Mehmet continued to thrive, albeit slowly. I would take him out each day as far as the wall that bounded for us the Sea of Marmara, and his brown face became browner under the friendly sun. He had become more than ever a quiet, thoughtful little boy, not talking overmuch and flinching if one made a too sudden gesture. To this day he is the same, preferring to listen rather than contribute, rarely expressing an opinion – as if the two years in the school at Kadıköy had taken all initiative from him.
Summer passed and the first leaves began to fall, choking the dirty gutters and scurrying along the pavements like prim, frightened old ladies, and as the weather grew chillier, we went less to the sea wall. My tenth birthday loomed but birthdays were no longer important, and then suddenly the war was over for Turkey.
One night we went to bed still at war and the next day we heard that our country had had enough and was quitting. But for us who were left it mattered little. We had lost everything; but then there were many families like us, so we had no right to complain either.
My mother left the Sewing Depôt and we wondered what would become of us now. Gold, we heard, was fetching
fabulous prices but we had long since spent all our gold – those gleaming, chinking coins that had rattled merrily in my grandmother’s trunk, many years ago now it seemed. But wait! Had we not an old salver that my great-grandfather had given to my grandmother on her wedding day? A golden salver that shone like the sun and was never used because it was such a clumsy size? We had indeed! And my grandmother took little time in remembering where she had last seen it, lying at the bottom of the ottoman in my mother’s room, amongst all the china and glass which was never used nowadays. Out it came to be polished, for it was black and tarnished, and to be talked about, for whoever would have thought that such a useless thing might now fetch us money? My grandmother was given the job of getting rid of it, for we none of us could ever forget how she had once bested a Jew.
When she was ready to go to the Gold Market she was dressed with great care, and once again her jewels sparkled on her hands and her bosom, and the whole street turned out to see her and admire the giant salver that bloomed by itself in a corner, a little self-consciously, for it had always been a despised thing, even in my grandfather’s day.
‘Now you know the market price, per gramme,’ reminded my mother sternly. ‘And do not sell it at all if you do not get the right price!’
‘Certainly not!’ snapped my grandmother importantly, just as though the house was filled with money and we had no further need of any more.
Off she went, the tray hastily and shamefully wrapped in brown paper but so eager to show itself off that bits of it peeped through and winked and sparkled at us all down the street. And all the neighbours gasped with admiration and said what a beautiful tray it was and were we not blessed by God to have such a thing to sell in these hard times? All the morning we and the neighbours waited for my grandmother to return – they speculating on the price the tray would fetch and I was almost dizzy with disbelief as I heard the liras mounting by the hundred for, in those days, one hundred liras by itself was worth a thousand or more today. The old men and the young women and even the children counted up how much she would get and once I ran into my mother, gasping and choking with the piles of undigested liras ringing in my ears.
‘I know exactly how much she will get,’ said my mother severely; ‘or nearly – ’ she amended. ‘We had it weighed on bakkal’s scales yesterday, so run off now and do not listen to the neighbours’ nonsense!’
And off I went, disappointed by my mother’s matter-of-fact tone of voice.
When my grandmother was sighted, slowly ascending the hilly street, the crowd surged forward to meet her, but I was fleetest of all and reached her first. I knew the moment I saw her that she had been successful for she carried her head proudly again – a sure sign of triumph in my family. There were many packages in her hands, and tucked under her arm of all things a bottle of wine! She handed some of the packages to me but refused to surrender the wine and home we marched with the excited, talkative neighbours, who were much too polite to ask how much she had got, yet who knew her well enough by now to recognise victory in her step.
‘Well!’ said my mother’s voice at the door, ‘well, you are a disgrace, mother! How did you ever carry a bottle of wine through the streets – like a drunkard?’
‘I missed my wine with dinner,’ roared my grandmother, for all the world as though dinner was still a habit in our house. ‘And what is more,’ she added, ‘I have fresh coffee here and sugar from the Bourse Noir so let us invite our good neighbours to drink to our good fortune.’
In surged the ready neighbours, up the stairs and into the salon, all of them politely removing their shoes before they trod the precious Sparta carpets. They were as happy as if the good luck of this day had been theirs and helped my mother dispense coffee and cognac and lifted their cups and glasses to shout: ‘Güle-Güle! Mahşallah, hanım efendi!’ (Good luck! God bless you!)
And we were all overcome with emotion and the easy tears of old age started to the eyes of some of the older ones.
‘Now we can buy plenty of good food,’ shouted my grandmother, waving her coffee cup in the air excitedly. ‘And clothes for the children – ’ she added, her eye catching mine.
And I dreamed of bright picture-books and scrapbooks and a box of paints to carry me through the autumn days. I do not know how much my grandmother got for that old salver but I think it was more than she and my mother had anticipated, mathematics not being their strong point. And it is a funny thing too but when we had enough money in the house again, so that we need not worry for a long time to come, more came in unexpectedly – as is sometimes the way in life. So that from appalling poverty we jumped to comparative affluence in the space of a few weeks.
It came about because my mother started to embroider again, supplying orders to the bigger shops in Beyoğlu. Tray-cloths, tablecloths, pillowcases, babies’ dresses, all passed through her nimble fingers. She used to design and trace her own patterns which gave a touch of uniqueness to her work, an individuality that was liked by the discriminating foreign customers of the big shops. So the machine lay idle again, relegated to the kitchen, where it was forgotten for months on end until my grandmother suddenly had a passion for making new clothes for us. Muazzez began to look like a little doll, usually dressed all in white with exquisite embroidery done by my mother and two white bows atop her brown hair. She was developing into a winning and imperious little girl, very like my grandmother in temperament, ruthlessly bullying Mehmet and me into performing small duties for her. My grandmother was very proud of her and spent hours each day on her clustering curls.
‘She is really going to be a great beauty,’ she would say to a bored Mehmet and me, ‘and one day she will marry a very rich man. You will see!’
And Muazzez, already vain, became vainer.
I had become very restless at home and was often insubordinate. My mother worried incessantly about my education, but all the schools were still disorganised and many teachers had never come back from the war. I used to haunt the streets, playing a corrupted version of football near the gardens of the mosque, for I had nothing to keep my mind constantly occupied. My mother and I used to have fierce and bitter quarrels and, because I could not bear being confined to the house, I took to roaming farther and farther away from home. No doubt had I had a father to discipline me I should never have dared to do these things, but I would not listen to my mother or grandmother, flying into a passion if they attempted to interfere with me.
My mother was rebelling against life too – but for a different reason. Her rebellion was, unexpectedly enough, against wearing the veil, for she had noticed that none of the foreign women wore them and that even a few of the more daring Turkish women from good families had ceased the practice also. She used to complain about it to my grandmother, declaring she was sick and tired of keeping her face covered, and I would interrupt, with lordly ten-year oldness, saying I would not have her going about the streets with her face open. I would chastise her too for her many goings-out.
‘You are never at home,’ I would declare and although usually I was told to mind my own affairs, one day I was very surprised when my grandmother actually agreed with me.
‘It is quite true,’ she said heatedly. ‘You are always out these days. And it is not right for you to complain that you have to wear the veil. Why, many women are still behind the kafes and they never see the colour of the sky, excepting from behind their veils. But at least you cannot complain of that for you tore the kafes from here and it is a wonder to me that you were ever accepted in this street, for you behaved exactly like a fast woman looking for another husband or like a prostitute. Yes, you did!’ she assured my mother’s astonished face. ‘And now you talk of leaving aside your veil. Why, I lived for thirty years with my husband and I never went out without his permission and I had to keep my face covered all the time. If I went out in the carriage with Murat, immediately all the windows were closed and sometimes the blinds were drawn too. I say it is a scandal that women are today revealing their fac
es. God will punish them! Do not let me hear another word from you, my daughter, for surely the sky will open on you for such impiety.’
Never had I heard my grandmother talk at such length or with such obvious passion. My mother replied: ‘You are talking a great deal of old-fashioned nonsense, mother! My place is not in the home these days. If I were to sit at home all day, or you either for that matter, who would go to market for us? Do you expect me to stay here all day, reading the Koran and wearing my veil for fear the passers-by should see me from the street? I tell you again, from now on I shall go without my veil!’
And she angrily tore the pretty veil from her face and threw it petulantly on the floor.
My grandmother lifted her hands to heaven.
‘I never thought I should live to see this day,’ she said.
‘Times are changing,’ said my mother.
‘They will say you are a prostitute!’ wailed my grandmother, genuinely distressed, totally incapable of accepting such a fierce gesture as the ‘opening’ of the face.
‘If they do, it will not worry me,’ retorted my mother. ‘Their words will not bring bread to me. And from now on, you will throw aside your veil too, mother.’
‘Oh no, no, no!’ said my grandmother in superstitious horror. ‘God forbid I should invite punishment upon me!’
But the next morning when my mother went into Beyoğlu, with a box of embroidered articles under her arm and her lovely face naked to the world, she was stoned by some children near Bayazit and received a nasty cut on the side of her head. After that she was cautious about going anywhere alone, but was adamant about not reveiling herself; Mehmet or I would go with her to Beyoğlu, my grandmother steadfastly refusing to be seen with her. The reaction to her in the street was mixed. The older ones were stricken with horror, more especially since they had always recognised my mother as a good woman, and now their faith in her was sadly battered. She was still young and attractive – she was twenty-five – and despite the shadows that lingered now and then in her eyes, was so unusually beautiful that people could not help but stare at her, and certain sections of the street wondered if she were trying to catch a husband. They came in their droves, the old men as well, to remonstrate with my grandmother, urging her to put a stop to this terrible thing, and my grandmother, thoroughly enjoying herself, would groan to them that she had no authority left in this wayward family of hers. But the younger women sided with my mother, and some of them even began to follow her example. Their fathers, however, in the absence of dead husbands, took a stick to them muttering piously that no woman in their family would so disgrace themselves. So they put on their veils again in a hurry.
