Portrait of a Turkish Family

by Orga, Irfan

  Not a few wished to apply the chastening stick to my mother also. They gave my grandmother sympathy until she was sick of it and prophesied gloomily – but with a little bit of anticipatory relish too, I think – that my mother would come to a bad end.

  And indeed she very nearly did!

  For one day in Bayazit, when she was alone, an impressionable Frenchman attempted to flirt with her. She tried walking hurriedly on but this had no effect at all, or if anything a worse effect, for the gallant Frenchman became more than ever aware of the swing of her silk skirts and the little dark curls that twined so coquettishly at the nape of her neck. Naturally he followed her. And all the little boys of the district became aware, as is the way of all little boys, of the one-sided flirtation which was in progress. And naturally enough they followed the tall Frenchman, so there was that day in Bayazit the very, very unusual sight of a young Turkish woman, with open face, followed by a foreigner and an innumerable number of small, dirty-nosed boys. When my mother made the mistake of stopping, trying to explain in her totally inadequate French that the gentleman was making a great mistake, he took off his hat, bowed elegantly and declared with obvious feeling: ‘Vous êtes ravissante!’

  And all the small boys who could not understand a word of what he said, cheered or jeered, according to their several temperaments, and my mother – very properly – hurried on, blushing and breathless and perhaps wishing a little bit for the security of her veil.

  So it was that when she came down our street, with her procession behind her, the neighbours were more than ever scandalised and ran into their houses to tell the ones inside. But when my mother called out to them in Turkish that she was being followed, and very much against her will, they set to with a vengeance and brought out sticks and brooms and shooed off the gallant representative of Gallicism in no uncertain manner. Mehmet and I, who were watching the whole proceedings from the window, were bursting with laughter but my poor grandmother was quite ready to die with shame.

  ‘Such a disgrace!’ she kept saying. ‘We shall never be able to live in this street again.’

  But in this she was wrong for when the street had finally disposed of the amorous Frenchman, and a few old men had in fact chased him halfway to Bayazit with tin buckets in their hands, to break his head, the street settled down again to lethargy, exonerating my mother from all blame. All excepting the old women, that is.

  Still the problem of my schooling was unsettled. It was eventually decided that I should be sent to a private school, but when my mother enquired about these, she found that Turkish was excluded from the curriculum and this made her so cross that she said she would rather keep me at home. Whilst she continued the search, I roamed the streets, usually with boys older than myself, defiant to all discipline, impatient of the slightest restraint. A few of the old men attempted to advise me, but their outworn, futile shibboleths so infuriated me that I threatened to run away somewhere if my grandmother did not stop enlisting the aid of these doddering, antiquated people.

  Then my mother had a talk with the local İmam, and the decision they reached was very unpleasant for me, although I did not know that at the time.

  They decided that as schooling was, for the moment, impossible, the next best thing to keep me out of mischief was to put me somewhere as an apprentice. Although really, apprentice sounds far too grand a word to apply in the circumstances, since I was only to remain ‘apprenticed’ until such times as a school could be found for me.

  They chose a barber’s shop.

  I was practically incoherent with ten-year-old rage when they told me, and point blank refused to go. But the İmam, with indescribable cunning, painted such a rosy picture of my independence, of the ‘tips’ I would get, of the fascination of perhaps one day owning my own barber’s saloon. What with one thing and another, he talked me into enthusiasm, my mother and grandmother for once having the wisdom to remain silent. Though I suspect their silence had something to do with previous warnings from the İmam, a capable man who liked to take matters into his own hands. By whatever hypnotism was employed I found myself the next day being taken to the barber’s shop, only a few streets from our house.

  The barber greeted me with an oily effusiveness which I instantly mistrusted. He said in a hissing whisper to my mother that he would train me well and see that I did not get into any mischief.

  ‘You do understand,’ said my mother insistently. ‘He is not here to earn money but to keep him occupied until a suitable school can be found for him.’

  ‘Of course!’ said the barber in a perfectly indescribable voice. He bowed to my mother, hiding his eyes from her open face, and his enormous shoulders shrugged under his soiled, patched shirt.

  ‘I shall look after him like a father,’ he added. ‘Like a father!’ he repeated, flicking his eyes over me rapidly as though wondering just what sort of father he ought to be to me.

  My mother looked terribly doubtful now that we were here, but nevertheless she left me in his care and went home, perhaps feeling thankful that at any rate I was not roaming the streets that day. I had terrible doubts too. Looking about me I could not recognise the glowing picture which had painted itself on my mind. The shop was very small, with only two customers’ chairs and primitive in the extreme. A copper mangal stood in one corner, used for heating and at the same time for brewing coffee. The window was draped with some sort of muslin, much in need of washing, and the glasses were all fly-blown and bluish with the haze of dirt and smoke and dust. I no longer believed in the romantic aspect of such a job, but the thought of the tips still lured me on.

  After my mother had departed, the barber lost all of his oily civility and said to me: ‘This is a good job, my boy. If you are clever and keep your eyes open you will learn much and then you will pray for me all your life, yes?’

  His little eyes snapped at me and, as he bent his face closer to me I could smell dirt and perspiration, and the blue tassel of his greasy fez waggled with a separate life of its own.

  ‘Over here,’ he said, waving his hand, ‘is the box where you will put all the tips. When I shave a customer or cut his hair, you will stand beside me and you will watch what I am doing. At the same time you will watch in my eyes and when I want soap or a towel you will get them immediately. You will make coffee and take it to the neighbouring shops and they will pay you for it. You will not come back without the money, you understand – yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ I muttered sulkily, already in a mild state of rebellion against this dirty saloon and the dirtier old barber.

  ‘Smile when you say “yes”,’ he snarled, pulling back his upper lip from his broken teeth and giving an imitation of a smile.

  ‘You gotta learn to smile in this job,’ he continued, ‘and if you break any coffee-cups I take the money from your tips, and if you haven’t any tips I break your god-damned head, yes?’

  ‘No,’ I said and fled from his upraised hand.

  All the morning I spent beside him whilst he shaved and cut hair and passed rough jokes with the customers, all of them street-sellers or small shopkeepers, curious about me and inclined to jeer at my accent. My eyes became tired with the strain of watching what the barber did and at the same time trying to watch his eyes for signals, although I never brought the right things for him. My head was constantly twisting and turning until finally I thought it would twist itself off my neck altogether.

  At midday I was sent across to a delicatessen store and ordered to bring back one and a half portions of haricot beans, already cooked in oil and onions. I got bread too, great hunks cut by unclean fingers. The half portion was for me and we ate in the customers’ chairs, washing down the meal with water from smeared glasses.

  The afternoon passed quietly enough until suddenly an order came from a shop across the way for five coffees. I was set to make it but the fire had died in the mangal, so I tried to light it again with charcoal. This is not nearly so simple as it sounds. The barber swore at me and threatened to break
my bones, but I had learned to ignore him and placed pieces of wood on the mangal, afterwards building up with charcoal. Then I poured oil generously over the whole lot, to the consternation of the barber, who said that I would set the place on fire. A match was applied and ‘wouf!’ went the contents of the mangal and a yellow sheet of flame almost enveloped me and dust flew everywhere. The barber chattered with rage, and just at that awkward moment a customer came in and the dirty remains of the haricot beans had to be removed from the chairs before he could sit down. The barber was forced to fetch water and towels for himself and alternated between bright, pleasant conversation with his customer and brief, pithy asides to me. I lay stretched full length along the stone floor, going ‘pouf-pouf’ at intervals at the reluctant mangal, red in the face with my labours and oblivious to the fumes and dust I was creating. Finally the barber lost his patience, left the customer half shaved and lay down beside me on the floor and blew with tremendous energy. His fat, pendulous belly wobbled under him, I watching it with fascination, and the customer came over to us, one side of his face still white with lather. He gave encouraging advice to the barber, who did not want it.

  When the charcoal was eventually persuaded to burn, the barber was tired from all the puffing and blowing he had done, and black streaks ran down his face, charcoal dust and perspiration mingled. The customer started to lose his patience and within a very short time they had nearly come to blows. I quickly brewed coffee, preferring to keep out of their way until their tempers were cooler. When the five coffees were ready, I placed them on a brass tray with a suspended chain to carry it, and went over to the shop that had called for them. I gave the coffees and asked for the money, and they all laughed at me and said between the spasms of laughter, ‘Tell Ali Bey he has our compliments.’

  Ali Bey was the name of the barber.

  When I got back to the saloon and delivered this message, the barber tore at his sparse grey hair, pulled me by the ear to the box for ‘tips’ and emptied the meagre contents into the palm of his hand.

  ‘This is for me,’ he said grimly and I was sad, reflecting that it was not easy to earn money – even ‘tips’. ‘You will learn the job like this,’ said the sadistic old barber grimly. ‘If you are such a fool that you let them drink coffee without paying for it, then you must pay for it. You see?’

  I commenced to argue with him and called him a son of a donkey and many other choice expressions I had picked up in the streets.

  ‘Pezevenk!’ I yelled indignantly, which even to this day in Turkey is a deadly insult, and he danced around me, threatening to break my bloody head if he got at me. I continued to dance with him, but in the opposite direction, feeling that closer acquaintance would not be beneficial while I searched my vocabulary for more insults.

  Were it not for the fact that a customer walked in, he would probably have half killed me. As it was, he collected himself sufficiently to attend to the customer. But his temper had suffered so badly that he nicked a piece out of the customer’s cheek and heated words flared up immediately, and I crouched sulkily in a corner and refused to hand towels or anything else. Another order came in for coffees and I made them, anxious to be out of the saloon for as long as possible before some harm befell me. Unfortunately, in my haste to get out I collided with two more customers in the doorway. The tray with the coffees lurched dangerously and deposited all the contents over the legs of the prospective customers. I yelped with dismay, dropped the wet tray with a clatter and streaked through their coffee-stained legs. Their threats and curses filled the air after me. One man even gave chase, but I was fleeter than he and continued to run like the wind until I arrived home. Even there all I could do was to choke and gurgle with aching laughter, for the brief glance I had had of the barber’s face – after I had upset the tray – was excruciatingly funny.

  Thus, ignominiously, ended my first and last day as a barber’s apprentice.

  CHAPTER 17

  Kuleli

  Nineteen hundred and nineteen, the war over and İstanbul filled with Allied Commissioners and officers in their dull khaki uniforms. The sibilant twittering of the English language filled the air, and the English with the French and the Italians supervised the police and the ports. They were everywhere – advising and ordering and suggesting.

  One day my mother came home from Beyoğlu with two items of exciting news. The one concerned herself, for her designs in needlework were attracting attention and she had taken so many orders that morning that she wanted my grandmother to help her to complete them. This my grandmother was perfectly willing to do for although she perhaps lacked true creative skill, she was an expert needlewoman – quite frequently paying more attention to detail than my mother. My mother had great sensibility and during the times when she was working out her patterns she could lose herself to the exclusion of her family and the world.

  Her designs were most vivid and appealing. They lived in bold colourings and outline as though painted on the materials. A number of foreign women had asked for repetitions of her work but she refused to repeat, even if the money offered was high. Instead she would work out some new design for them, intricate or simple according to her mood of the moment, offering it casually as though it did not matter whether they accepted or not. I often wonder what they thought of her, so slim and haughty with the flaring wing of nose and the delicate eyebrows that seemed painted on, her unveiled face and her halting French. Today all women in İstanbul and the other cities and towns go unveiled but in 1919 she must have been a rare sight. Many of the shops in Beyoğlu suggested that she should open an atelier but she would laugh at them, saying she had no head for business. My grandmother, excited by the fuss created by my mother’s designs, also nagged that an atelier was becoming essential. She even wanted to turn her bedroom into one, declaring that she would sleep somewhere else, but my mother held out against this for a long time.

  The year 1919 saw my family on its feet again, my mother being the bread-winner.

  The second item of news that spring day concerned Mehmet and me. She had met in Beyoğlu the wife of the colonel in whose house I had been circumcised but he was a general now and an important person in the War Office. His wife had been so delighted to see my mother after the lapse of years that she had insisted upon her returning home with her to partake of coffee and gossip about all that had happened in the years they had not met. She had hustled my unveiled mother into her husband’s motorcar, driven by his batman, and my mother never having been in a motorcar before was too terrified to speak during the journey to Bayazit. She told us that the sense of speed was terrible, that her heart had been perpetually in her mouth and that every time another motorcar had whizzed past in the opposite direction she had closed her eyes and left herself entirely to God’s mercy. This feminine attitude annoyed Mehmet and me who would have given much to have been in her place.

  ‘But you are not afraid of trams,’ Mehmet said in great contempt and she replied that trams ran on lines and were, in consequence, perfectly safe, and did not go so fast as a motorcar. During coffee the general’s wife had asked about us children and when she heard of the difficulties of having us suitably schooled came out with the suggestion that we should be sent to the Military School.

  ‘The what?’ roared my grandmother, perhaps feeling like us that she had not heard aright, and a queer little excited feeling began to pull at my heart.

  ‘The Military School,’ repeated my mother with some impatience. ‘She told me that a very close friend of her husband’s is in the War Office and can use his influence to enter the boys. Apparently the Government intend to establish a junior school, which will be attached to the Academy, and they will only accept pure Turkish children so that eventually only Turkish officers will be in the Army.’

  ‘I shall be a general,’ I said boastfully and Mehmet said gently: ‘I shall be a doctor and then I can help the wounded soldiers to get better – ’

  And if I may digress a little, of the two of us
he got his wish.

  ‘But what sort of education will they get in a Military School?’ demanded my grandmother, who knew nothing about schools but who always liked to put in her opinion.

  ‘How can I know?’ demanded my mother, displeased that her startling news had not had a better reception. ‘And I do not suppose it matters very much,’ she added, ‘for if they are going to be officers they need to know very little, excepting how to kill each other of course.’

  ‘I shall not kill anyone,’ interposed Mehmet in his soft voice and taking her words with literal seven-years oldness.

  ‘Do you really think the general can do anything?’ I asked, thrilled by the idea of life in a Military School, picturing it to be anything but what it turned out to be.

  ‘Let us see,’ returned my mother. ‘Anyway, the general’s wife is going to see her husband’s friend this afternoon to discuss it for me.’

  ‘Shameless woman!’ interjected my grandmother in horror, still firmly entrenched in the past, and we began to laugh at the bewilderment on her face for she was half inclined to believe that the general’s wife was conducting a clandestine affair with her husband’s friend.