Portrait of a Turkish Family

by Orga, Irfan

  I kissed her hand and replied: ‘When I love.’

  She answered: ‘That you will never do. You have no heart; I should know that.’

  Then she started to cry, long tremors running through her body and impatience swept cruelly upwards in me so that I left the tearful house and spent the evening in a bar, deserting the dinner-party where I was to have been host. When I returned my mother was in bed again, Mehmet pushing injections into her.

  Mehmet was ordered to İstanbul in May and my mother’s favourite doctor also left İzmir to take up residence in Ankara. She brooded alone, worrying more than ever about her health, about Mehmet and Muazzez in far-off Ankara, about Bedia, feeling now that she would not make a suitable wife for my brother. She began to eat alone, sometimes not eating at all, then she grew careful again and would eat only if I were at home. So I curtailed my visits to friends’ houses, or to the casinos, and ate at home each evening, trying not to chafe too much under this new restraint. She bound me with chains of love, even taking to waiting up for me at night, watching from the terrace to see me walking up the street. Even if I did not arrive home until three in the morning, still she waited in a corner of the terrace, never saying anything, never letting her presence be known, yet I could feel her mournful eyes watching me out of the darkness. I took to coming home earlier so that she should get some sleep. Her gaunt look grew more pronounced and my grandmother complained that she kept her awake at night. They shared a room now since my mother did not care for the İzmir servant we had engaged, and grew very grand and regal at the thought of having her in her bedroom.

  One night during dinner she looked really ill. Her hair was unkempt and uncombed and one eye seemed to grow smaller and smaller as I watched her. I asked her why she sat at the table like this and she looked startled for a moment, as though I had rudely interrupted some faraway, private thought, then she stammered that she was not well, that her head ached. Suddenly she lay her head down amongst the dishes, so wearily, so uncaringly that my heart was wrung with pity and my grandmother rang for the maid and she was put to bed, coaxed and petted out of her clothes like a child.

  Later when my grandmother and I sat in the salon drinking Turkish coffee, I said I thought the time had come when my mother needed constant, experienced nursing and put forward the suggestion that she would be better off in a private institution I had heard of.

  I remember that my grandmother looked at me very oddly, then she said: ‘Your mother is not bad enough to separate her from her family and everything she has always known. That would be great cruelty, my son. She is only neurotic and the doctors all say that her headaches are migraine – ’

  ‘I suppose they must be right,’ I said uneasily, unwilling to set myself up as an authority, in the face of medical opinion, on nervous disorders.

  ‘If one day she has to be sent away,’ continued my grandmother, following her own train of thought, ‘I pray God that I may not be here to see.’

  She looked away from me but I could see old bitter memories struggling in her face and I knew that though she and my mother had never liked each other, one always resenting the other, still they could not live apart for long. They had been together for too many years now, had shared all the important things that had ever happened to them.

  We sat silent for a long time and then I rang for more coffee and my grandmother came out of her reverie.

  ‘If only there was something more I could do,’ I said and my grandmother put out her hand and touched my knee lightly.

  ‘You have done everything that was left in your nature to do – ’

  The odd words startled me and revived the times I had had of impatience, the harsh words I had uttered. My grandmother watched my struggle and said sadly: ‘It is too late now to torment yourself. You grew away from us a long time ago, shutting us out and perhaps the fault was our own. I have seen how you have tried with your mother, how you have forced yourself to do as she wanted but it was all false, my child. She knows that too, but you could not give more than you had to give so there is no need to reproach yourself. You have done more for her than many sons who loved her might have done.’

  ‘You make me feel ashamed,’ I said to her, hating my unnaturalness, remembering too the restraints that Mehmet had never had. ‘I can’t come closer!’ I shouted in desperation, ‘I can’t give her all my thoughts!’

  My grandmother’s wise old face looked understandingly at me. She nodded her head.

  ‘Hüsnü should not have died,’ she said, pressing my hand tightly. ‘She should not have been left alone so young in life.’

  She shook her head sorrowfully, her eyes bright with tears but none were falling and I took her old, worn hand and kissed it.

  I felt her looking down at my bent head and then she said irrelevantly: ‘How like Ahmet you are!’

  CHAPTER 29

  Disintegrating Family

  Mehmet returned to İzmir in August 1939 for his wedding and Muazzez and Ali arrived from Ankara, adding grandeur to the little house.

  I never saw Mehmet married, for the day before I was ordered to a manoeuvre and had to leave all the bustle and the excitement behind me. The manoeuvre lasted ten days and when I returned home I was unutterably shocked for my grandmother had left us for good, returning to İstanbul with Mehmet and Bedia. My batman was in hospital.

  It had previously been arranged in the family that when my grandmother went to live with my brother and his wife my mother would go to Muazzez in Ankara. My grandmother would never have left us at all but for the fact that Mehmet was more often away at sea than he was at home. It was felt to be unwise to leave the youthful Bedia unchaperoned. Perhaps this chaperonage would be quite unnecessary in other countries but to leave Bedia at seventeen alone in İstanbul, where scandal false or true needs but the slightest flicker to grow into a roaring flame, was unthinkable. There were far too many traps for unwary young wives in İstanbul.

  When the arrangement was originally suggested my mother professed herself pleased, telling me in confidence that she had perhaps lived too long with my grandmother and that living in Ankara would do her good.

  It was therefore a surprise for me to return to İzmir and find her still there and that she was alone in the house made it seem far worse.

  ‘Where is the servant?’ I asked.

  ‘I dismissed her. She was lazy,’ returned my mother, who hitherto had always extolled her.

  My mother herself was in a terrible state. I trembled when I thought of the heartless criminality that had left her alone in that echoing house. She was unwashed, uncombed and slatternly and, worst of all, she was unaware of this.

  I cursed Mehmet for having done such a thing but could scarcely blame the flighty Muazzez, who was always much too concerned with her own affairs to have bothered very much when my mother refused to accompany her.

  I enquired for my batman and was told that he had gone to hospital. She started to complain in a high, whining voice of the maid she had dismissed. And all the time her hands were twisting, twisting, busily rending a lacy handkerchief. She looked as if she had not eaten for days and the house was a shambles. Most of my grandmother’s furniture had gone to İstanbul and the few pieces that remained were pulled out from the walls. Beds were unmade and the kitchen littered with the remains of meals, obviously several days old.

  I took her into the stuffy, airless salon and flung wide the windows. Here was shambles too. It was heartbreaking to see my mother like this, in this dirty, uncared-for house.

  ‘Why did you not go with Muazzez?’ I asked her gently and she stared at me for a moment or two and then she replied: ‘And who would look after you if I had gone?’

  I bit back the searing retort that burned on my lips and she said fretfully: ‘I told your grandmother not to look back when she left the house. I said that if she did it would bring us bad luck. But she ignored me and she stood at the corner, looking back for a long, long time and I had to shout to her to go, go, go!’
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  My mother’s voice was high with hysteria and I stirred uneasily, seeing the scene again through her eyes. The old woman leaning on her stick at the corner, looking back to a place where she had been happy, and my mother on the terrace shouting at her, attracting attention perhaps, my batman trying to pull her back to the silent house.

  She watched me unwinkingly, trying to find out my reaction to what she was telling me. I said nothing. She had been silent for so long alone that talking was necessary to her now.

  ‘Your grandmother did not want to go. She said that I wanted to be rid of her. That is why she turned back when I had told her not to, so that she could leave her curse on this house and everyone in it. I know’ – she nodded to me. ‘She hopes I will die!’

  ‘Oh, Mother!’ I said, wondering when this feud would cease between them.

  Still I could see the departing figure of my grandmother and I wondered if we had done the right thing, we younger ones who had thought only to separate them, to keep them from fighting as they had done all through the years. I thought of my mother, remaining here for me, and could not see her in the alien atmosphere of my sister’s house in Ankara. I did not know what I could do with her now, when only I was left with her. I had tried to be good but had failed somewhere, perhaps many years ago. I felt helpless sitting there, watching her. The others had shelved their responsibilities and had gone away, leaving us alone, the one thing I had always dreaded.

  When my batman returned after a few days the house was normal again, and I was glad to leave her in his hands each morning when I went to the aerodrome, knowing no harm could come to her.

  At the end of August I was sent to Kayseri, to bring back a new plane for my unit, but on September 3rd I received a telegram from the Commanding Officer ordering me to return immediately.

  War had again come to Europe and Poland had been invaded and all the lights of the world were going out again, one by one. When I arrived at Eskişehir for refuelling, I saw that all the planes were out of their hangars in the fields. Tents were out and lorries and I wondered if Turkey would come in and, more important, on whose side.

  I was told in Eskişehir that all leave had been cancelled, that all officers had now to remain in the aerodromes day and night. I took off for İzmir, wondering about my mother. Who would look after her now?

  At İzmir excited friends crowded about me but I could not listen to them. I sought out the Commanding Officer and begged him to relax the new rule for me, just for one night, as I was anxious about my mother. He knew of her illness and gave me permission to go home immediately, saying that if I should be wanted he would send a car for me.

  When I got home my mother appeared quite calm, greeted me affectionately and said that she had heard over the radio that war had been declared. She also had heard from neighbours that I should no longer be able to come home at night. I was relieved by her normality.

  During September everything went all right, for my batman was excellent with my mother and I spoke to her each day by telephone. A new servant was engaged and at first she spoke highly of her, then the old dissatisfaction began to creep back to her voice and she no longer seemed pleased with her.

  In October my batman was demobilised, having finished his military service. A new one came to take his place and my mother hated him, telling me he was too stupid to do anything or understand half what she said. I sent another one and another one and then another but they would not stay and, in any case, she disliked all of them on sight. Then she threw the servant out and she was now alone in the house with the dog.

  I was half frantic with anxiety and would circle in my plane over the garden each day, to see if she was all right. I wrote to Mehmet, explaining the situation and suggesting that my mother go to his house in İstanbul, where at least she would not be alone.

  I managed to get home one day and discussed this with her.

  ‘Your grandmother is there,’ she said. ‘And perhaps we have missed each other more than we know and anyway, I shall be back again in İstanbul.’

  Mehmet replied promptly, saying that Bedia would be glad to have my mother with her and to send her immediately.

  Again I obtained leave, helped my mother to pack her things and took her to İstanbul.

  Bedia welcomed her kindly and showed us the large, airy room she had prepared for her. My grandmother only looked thoughtful as though wondering how this ménage à trois would work out.

  Alone I returned to İzmir and went to the empty house and wondered what to do with the furniture that was left. The dog, Fidèle, refused to eat his meals, all the time crying quietly to himself, watching me anxiously as though he was begging me to tell him what was the matter.

  Now and then he would pad softly to the door, sniffing the carpets, then would come dispiritedly back to me, flopping down beside my chair.

  My batman brought dinner and the silent room seemed filled with ghosts. Fidèle had followed me to the table but he would not eat. He lay down, resting his nose on his paws, only moving to cock an ear if he heard a sound. He waited all the time for my mother to walk into the room, but she would not come here again.

  The house was given over to silence and the remembrance of all the unquiet things that had happened beneath its narrow roof.

  CHAPTER 30

  Goodbye, Şevkiye

  My mother proved troublesome in İstanbul.

  She soon left Bedia’s house and took a room for herself in a tall old house in Sişli, saying she preferred to be alone. Sometimes she would visit my grandmother and she and Bedia soon noticed her rapid deterioration, the carelessness of her dress. She told people that her children did not want her. She started to go without food, giving most of her money to poor people whom she met in the streets. She would talk to all the beggars of İstanbul, inviting them to her room in Sişli, where she would give them quantities of food to take away. She could not bear to see people in tattered clothes and started to give them her own. At other times she would walk miles in the course of a day, returning home weary and hungry but without money left to buy food for herself. She used to go to the old places where she had lived before, frequently taking taxis, haughtily telling drivers to wait for her and then when she could not pay them would direct them back to Bedia’s house. She bought quantities of sweets to distribute to the slum children and once she was discovered sitting in the rank, over-grown garden of our ruined house – the house my father had bought for her before he went to the War. I could not get leave to go to İstanbul and could only write frantic letters, imploring her to return to Bedia and my grandmother, where she would be well looked after.

  These letters she completely ignored.

  From the time she left İzmir she never communicated with me, even indirectly through my grandmother’s scrappy letters. I grew despairing, wondering what would be the end of this bad business.

  On February 2nd, 1940, I received a telegram from Bedia, asking me to go to İstanbul immediately as my mother was seriously ill. I went to the Commanding Officer and showed him the telegram. He took one look at my face and gave me permission to leave the aerodrome. I left Bedia’s address with him and hastily booked a seat by train to Bandırma. From Bandırma I took the boat for Galata, impatient of the slow-seeming journey, my heart continuously in my mouth.

  When I finally arrived at Mehmet’s house, Bedia’s tear-stained, swollen face did nothing to reassure me that all might after all be well.

  ‘Is my mother dead?’ I asked her, clutching her arm and my grandmother came through the narrow hall and drew me into the salon. She seated herself and bade me do the same but this I was totally incapable of doing.

  ‘Tell me,’ I said to her quiet face. ‘Is she dead?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Better by far that she were.’

  I walked up and down the room, seeing the familiar furniture that still could remind me of childhood and hunger, even though I had nothing to fear on that score nowadays. All the houses we had lived in, even when pro
sperity had come back to us, were linked with those early insecure years, because the heavy old furniture was always there to remind one. There was never any escape from memories.

  ‘Come, sit down,’ said my grandmother gently; ‘there is nothing to be gained by walking up and down the room or by hysteria.’

  I sat down on a brocaded chair, once beautiful but now fraying at the edges through long usage.

  ‘Where is my mother?’ I asked. ‘What has happened to her?’

  And I think I knew the answer before anyone replied. It was Bedia who told me, Bedia who started to cry and irritated me with her persistent tears, yet who had the courage to say what was difficult for my grandmother.

  ‘She has lost her mind,’ said Bedia with a dignity in her voice and I was glad that she was here, new to the family, able to speak of hurting, hidden things as we others would not have done. So new to the family that our horror could not touch her too much.

  My grandmother stood up very erect, her face without colour and her stern eyes filled with compassion. She put a hand on Bedia’s young shoulder and said: ‘There! my child. There is no need to cry!’

  And she went on patting the thin shoulder absently, her eyes looking to something we could not see, and I leaned against the window, my body light as water, and waited for them to tell me everything.

  It was Bedia who was the storyteller.

  ‘Mother came to visit us two nights ago,’ she said, ‘and she looked very ill. She said she was hungry and I gave her something to eat and then she asked if she might spend the night with us. She complained that her head ached and, of course, I said that I should be glad if she stayed with us, not only for one night but for always. For awhile she was all right then she began to get irritable and would not have the radio on, saying that it made her head worse, so I turned it off. When I had done that she remarked on how obedient I was and asked me if I did not find it difficult living with grandmother. I said no, I did not, and she grew quarrelsome and said that grandmother was a most difficult woman, that all mothers-in-law ruined their daughters-in-laws’ lives and that that was the reason she would not live with me. She said she wanted me to be free of older people’s influence and then turned to grandmother and said she ought to leave me and take a room by herself somewhere. “You are foolish to remain here,” she said; “Bedia does not want you. When one is old one is useless,” she continued, “children do not want one any more.”’