Portrait of a Turkish Family

by Orga, Irfan

  Mehmet bathed the wound for me in one of the wash-houses but it was so painful that I had the greatest difficulty in walking upright.

  There was nothing for us to do that day for the school was now stripped and all the furniture lay out in the garden. Mehmet and I went and sat on a low wall which overlooked the Bosphor. Down here in this part of the garden it was very quiet. My back still ached so I pulled off my jacket and vest and lay face downwards on the grass, facing the sea with my back exposed to the healing rays of the brilliant sun. I lay and watched the blue Bosphor and the little passing boats, and my thoughts travelled with the boats and ran on ahead of the big ships that were sailing to some unknown place. I forgot the discomfort of my back or that I lay here in the school gardens, and I thought instead of the many pictures I had seen of foreign lands, of brown-skinned races speaking a language I did not know. In imagination I saw great, swarthy stevedores unloading ships in a port I would never see and smelled the soft, aromatic perfume of spices and the warm scent of bananas, and my stomach ached with hunger and my heart with nostalgia for I knew not what.

  Mehmet looking drowsily out to sea said in a contented voice: ‘When I grow up I shall be a sailor.’

  ‘But I thought you wanted to be a doctor,’ I replied, and he hesitated a moment or two, trying to reconcile the two things, then he said triumphantly: ‘But I can be a doctor in a ship.’

  Strangely enough he never faltered in his determination.

  I stumbled through life never knowing what it was I really wanted, only conscious that it was always just out of reach around some corner.

  I forget exactly how old I was when I discovered that I should never make a good officer but it was some time in childhood.

  All that morning Mehmet and I lay on the sun-drenched grass, and when finally a bugle called us to the midday meal, we found our dining-room under the shady trees. Whilst we ate, wasps and bees buzzed about us and earwigs sometimes dropped into our plates. The officers looked tired and dispirited, their shoulders sagging under their ancient uniforms, and when we had all eaten there was nothing for anyone to do, except to wait. The school lay empty under the afternoon sky.

  That evening the Commanding Officer returned from İstanbul with the good news that we were to stay in our school, after all, so all the things had to be moved back again.

  Those summer days of 1920 were filled with the now familiar name of Mustafa Kemal. He had become our national hero and gained in lustre when we heard that the Sultan had put a price on his head.

  Lessons were difficult for me. I could not concentrate when I could watch instead the shimmering, blue haze on the grass and how the shadows crept out from under the trees as the sun moved along the sky. Suddenly a teacher would rap out my name and I would return from my trance-like staring at the garden, to stand up dazedly, wondering what it was I had been asked.

  We had readings from the Koran every morning and as this was the first lesson of the day we usually all started off in good humour. All we had to do was to listen but later on our teacher decided to give us religious music and that startled us considerably, for the idea of standing up in public to sing solo was more than we could contemplate.

  The İmam who taught us religion was very fat with a large bushy beard, a green sarık, or turban, and a loose black robe that almost touched the ground. We used to call him yeşil sarıklı (the man with the green turban) and although we profoundly disliked him were at the same time very proud of him because any İmam permitted to wear a green sarık is supposed to be directly descended from Muhammed. We disliked him because he was sensual and carnal and would call one of us to his desk on the dais, pinch our cheeks or our lips with his forefinger and thumb, then put his fingers to his long nose to ecstatically smell whatever perfume we exuded. More often than not it would be of pilav or potatoes or fruit stains would linger at the corners of our lips and he would roguishly wag his beard, saying: ‘Some naughty boy has not washed his mouth after eating!’ He had a high falsetto voice like a woman’s and we did what we liked with him for he was no disciplinarian and never complained about us.

  Mehmet and I used to go home every week. We enjoyed these excursions into the outer world, feeling very important on the boat in our precious green uniforms. We would tear into the little house in Bayazit, disturbing the peace with our ribald shouts and our never-failing habit of reducing Muazzez to tears after the first five minutes.

  My mother had at last been persuaded to turn the downstairs room into a workroom – my grandmother now occupying the room which had formerly belonged to Mehmet and me. In consequence at weekends Mehmet and I were given camp-beds to sleep on and we were forever in danger of stabbing ourselves in vital places with the needles left so carelessly lying about. It was nothing to discover a needle in one’s bed or to step on one with bare feet in the early mornings or last thing at night.

  Friday morning, the Muslim Sunday of those days, would see us lazily out of bed rejoicing in the undisciplined atmosphere of home. Yet towards evening we would be glad enough to return to the more masculine atmosphere of Kuleli, meeting our friends on the boat and walking together along the dusty sea road to school.

  I learned how to be a soldier. I and all of my generation learned the hard way, schooled severely by war-experienced, impatient, frequently cruel officers. We learned how to stand for a long time without moving a muscle of our faces or flickering an eyelid. We learned not to cry out, not to flinch when an officer slapped our cheeks with a sound like doom. We learned too, at ten and eleven years old, to keep our tears inside us for the fear of further punishment was usually greater than our immediate pain. At first our spurting tears were commonplace until held up to public contempt.

  ‘Are you not ashamed to cry like a woman?’ an officer would sneer bitingly.

  We learned to jump to attention on the word and not let our rigid hands restlessly wander from our sides. We learned how to open our palms to the sky and accept the sting of the cutting stick without betraying emotion. We learned how to be good soldiers, and if many of us later on meted out much the same sort of punishment to the soldiers in our command, who could altogether blame us for our lack of imagination? We were taught that a good soldier needs no imagination, no feelings of humanity.

  During my fourteenth year I became imbued with the spirit of piety. I spent so much time praying in the mosques that my lessons suffered and the craze I had developed for football receded into the background. I would relentlessly flog myself to daily prayers. I became so holy, so priggish that my mother viewed this with alarm and looked about for other things to distract my attention. She, who had never been holy in her life, regarded such excessive sanctity as unnatural, but my grandmother and the school’s İmam encouraged my fever. My delighted grandmother even prophesied to the Bayazit neighbours that I would end my days as a holy man!

  But too much religion began to affect my nerves and my health for I rose from my bed for prayers before dawn and slept late each night because of night praying. I became pale and thin as a rake but prayed fervently, no longer remaining in bed at the weekends. I would visit the Bayazit Mosque and today when I see Bayazit Mosque standing in its tranquil gardens I see the fanatical child who had leaped indecorously through its portals, eager to fling himself down and commune with his God. Sometimes Sultan Mecit would dazzle my eyes when he attended at Bayazit for prayers. I would watch him enthralled, his fine, good-looking old face, his bushy white beard, the red fez adding colour to the funereal black of his dress. The band would play loudly and the soldiers march and Sultan Mecit would bow from his coach – first to this side he would bow then to that, and the cheers would hoarsely rend the air. The old Sultan would stretch his lips into a wider smile of acknowledgement, putting his hand gracefully to his scarlet fez.

  CHAPTER 20

  The New Republic

  It was a popular belief amongst the Muslims of İstanbul that if they prayed in the same mosque as their Sultan and at the same hour, God would
listen with greater intensity to their supplications. Consequently the Shadow of God – as the Sultan was called – was everywhere followed by admiring, Paradise-yearning crowds. I remember a morning in the Bayazit Mosque when I was in the middle of such a crush that it was not possible to do anything but remain in a cramped, semi-upright position with danger from the movement of arms or legs all about me. When the prayers began I was in an even greater quandary, for the person in front of me, who was a porter, had a pair of evilly smelling feet, and when I attempted to make my obeisance, impelled forward and downwards by the pressure from behind, I was almost drowned in the odour of dirt and perspiration so perilously close to my nose. It was an odour sufficient, I swear, to kill even the rats who sported in the mosque’s lavatories. But fear of the Lord held me in my place securely and I stifled my squeamishness and eventually escaped from the mosque to wash my hands and face in the water-basins in the gardens. I gulped the clean, sweet air as avidly as a man newly rescued from a gaseous mine.

  In those days during Ramazan there were no lessons in the schools and we were allowed home on leave. Twenty-seven years ago the streets at Ramazan time were crowded as they have not been since and perhaps never will be again. Not only the Muslims who were keeping the fast were in the streets but the British, French and American soldiers were there too to watch the ceremonies. And on the last night of Ramazan, in the year of which I write, Bayazit Square and its mosque were places not to be forgotten by those who saw them.

  The tall, slender minarets of the mosque were ringed with gleaming electric candles, and between the minarets, silhouetted brilliantly against the dark sky, stretched electric lettering – ‘Elveda, Ramazan!’ (Goodbye, Ramazan). The nostalgia of the words and the effect of so much nocturnal beauty caught at the heart in a strange sadness, even though this was meant to be a happy occasion. On both minarets were the Muezzins, their chanting, lovely voices busily calling the people to prayer, and the square itself and the gardens of the mosque were thronged with silent, listening people – like an army of dead people. And high above them swayed the Muezzins, their voices the only sound in that vast silence.

  I edged my way to the mosque, but cautiously, for one felt oddly guilty to be moving in that dead sea of silence. The interior of the mosque was ablaze with light. Light poured down from the great chandeliers in the arched dome and the dome itself was ringed with light that glittered as the glasses swayed. And on the walls branching gigantic candelabra threw a blinding glare over everything. Many Muezzins were here too, reading from the Koran, and the faithful bowed and moved in unison and beat their breasts. I remember I was aflame that night with the pomp and the splendour, the majesty, and all my senses reeled.

  One day the Armenians left Kuleli and the American flag was hauled down and up ran the red of the Turkish flag.

  We senior boys left the grey, ancient building on the hill and moved into the white palace fronting the Bosphor and great was our joy to be here at last.

  Kuleli’s rooms were large and bright and, as a welcome change from oil lamps, we had our own electrical plant. The classrooms were on the ground floor, facing the dusty, quiet road, and there was silence all the day long for no one came to Kuleli save the students or the officers stationed there.

  A mosque was established in the basement and on our first evening in the school we were all herded there for prayers of thanksgiving. Whether we wished or no, religion was forced down our throats. I had lost some of my early adolescent fervour but I needed no forcing. Many of the older boys however resented the interference of the officers, especially when they used large sticks as a better means of persuasion. In those days in Turkey when the Muslim religion was a national institution, a fixed habit of the centuries, the Kuleli gardens would be full of sullen, protesting boys washing their hands and faces under the fountains, balancing against a tree whilst they pulled socks over newly cleaned feet, rushing at the last moment to the lavatories for more private ablutions, and everyone in a panic for fear of being late. Muezzin would start to read and groans rent the air for that surely meant that we were late already. Irate officers would be stationed at the mosque door, their sticks ready in their hands to whack smartly the backsides of the latecomers.

  When Kemal Atatürk formally declared on October 29th, 1923, that our country was now a Republic, everything slowly began to change its face. Orders were sent to Kuleli that it would no longer be necessary to force the students to go to the mosque. Religion was to be free. So the sticks were temporarily abandoned and only the merest handful of boys now attended the mosque. But this time the sticks were brought out for quite a different purpose, for we who still visited the mosque were frequently late for lessons and whereas before the sticks had soundly whacked the backsides of reluctant devotees, now commenced a crazy period when they whacked the backsides of reluctant scholars.

  Atatürk and his government decided that religion and public affairs must be separated and the new constitution read: ‘The language of the Turkish Republic is Turkish and the capital, Ankara.’

  Whereas formerly it had read: ‘The religion of the Turkish Republic is Muslim, the language Turkish and the capital, Ankara.’

  The change was far greater than perhaps it would appear to European eyes. Religion was practically abolished since, although the mosques remained places of worship, the people had no longer time to pray the prescribed five times in a day – save the old and perhaps the infirm who had no public duties to perform. The majority of the Turks simply had no time. The work of the government offices could no longer wait on the prayers of the officials. Religious teachings were abolished in all schools, Muslim or Christian, and religious sects were no longer permitted to appear in the streets in the clothes of their particular religious order.

  Now, when the Muezzin called, there were few to listen and fewer still to respond. The weekend was changed also and we observed the Christian Saturday and Sunday in place of the old Muslim Thursday and Friday.

  The mosque at Kuleli was abandoned and given over to broken chairs and tables in need of repair.

  Our uniform changed and became the familiar navy blue of today’s students with the smart red line down the seams of the trousers, and a hat with the smallest suspicion of a peak was issued, for the fez had been abolished by law.

  At weekends Mehmet and I would go proudly home, my grandmother being convinced that there were not two better-looking boys in all Turkey.

  Muazzez was nine now and attending a girls’ day school in Bayazit. A pert, conceited little thing she was, with her long twinkling legs in their demure black silk stockings, her brief skirts flying out jauntily. She was incredibly pretty and her hair had still further lightened with the years so that by now it was almost blonde. My grandmother spoiled her as she had never spoiled Mehmet or me; perhaps she had softened with age. She was as autocratic as ever and quite frequently had long, bitter quarrels with my mother.

  After a time weekends spent at home were no longer a novelty and I spent more and more of my free time at Kuleli. We would swim together whole summer days in the Bosphor, afterwards lazing in the school gardens, pleasantly conscious that this was the weekend and that no lessons loomed before us for two whole days.

  Just prior to Atatürk’s abolition of the fez the military were issued with a small round cap that had the suspicion of a peak on it. The peak, we were told, was to guard the eyes against the sun. It was so small however that the idea of it being able to guard against anything, let alone the sun, was laughable. We had always previously worn a fez with the Turkish moon and stars woven into the front and we were now very much ashamed to be seen with our new headgear, which was really, we thought, too much like the hat the Christians wore. So we carried the offensive hat in our hands as often as we dared and the few boys who were brave enough to keep it on were called ‘Gavur’ – an epithet relating to a Christian in an unsavoury way.

  When I used to pass through Bayazit all the old men in the coffee-houses and those sitting
at the tables in the streets would look at the cap with the apology of a peak and shake their grey heads.

  ‘What is this?’ they would mutter in dismay. ‘Where is this country going to?’

  One day the district barber – not the barber of an earlier episode in my childhood – came up to me in the street and solemnly advised me never to put this terrible, Christian thing on my head.

  ‘It is a Christian hat,’ he warned. ‘If a Muslim puts such a shocking thing on his head the good God will surely punish him.’

  When I laughed at him he grew angry and later complained to my grandmother about my lack of piety.

  It was in 1925 that Atatürk ordered that from henceforth all men in Turkey must wear the Christian hat. What a consternation there was then and the state of the nation’s nerves! Was Atatürk playing with them? Was he sitting in his château in Ankara devising new things to disturb and break their habits of centuries?

  The men indignantly refused to throw away the fez and it became a usual sight to see fighting taking place between the supporters of the new order and the die-hards of the old. Government officials were the first to give way to Atatürk. They were forced into this position by reason of their work and the streets became full of bowler hats worn with a self-conscious air. The children used to throw stones after them and the police arrested men who still persisted in wearing the fez, and the street sellers in desperation put fancy paper hats on their heads and added a note of unusual gaiety to the market-places. And out in the country places and the villages the men even wore women’s hats in order to evade arrest. The old men took to tying handkerchiefs on their heads, placing the offending Christian hat over this, but the police became wise to this ruse and promptly arrested them. Arrested men were hauled to the police stations in such great numbers that they could not be dealt with and the white handkerchiefs were pulled off the bald pates, the insulting headgear being firmly clamped over the naked, uneasy heads.