Last Letter from Istanbul

by Lucy Foley

  She steps inside, and asks the man behind the counter for some loukoum, studded with slivers of pistachio. The smallest box, because it is all that she can afford. At least it is beautiful with a painted design of the Aya Sofia. But then as an afterthought, with a slight thrill at her recklessness, she buys another box: rose-scented, her favourite.

  She has never actually set foot in the shop before. In the time before, Fatima would procure them. The quantity that she now holds in two twists of gilt-printed paper would seem laughable in comparison to the pounds of the stuff Fatima would return with, to fill the silver bowls throughout the house. They would eat several pieces with every cup of coffee, and spare no thought for the cost. A time of plenty in everything.

  Except … in that time she could not have gone to the shop, even had she wanted or needed to, without receiving the inevitable dark looks. And with her face uncovered? Unthinkable. A woman of good family would not behave in such a manner.

  She takes one of the sweets from the bag on her way back and holds it in her mouth, savouring the sugared fragrance, before she allows herself to chew it. Here is another observation: when one is not used to having them every day, one tastes the sweetness all the more vividly.

  This flavour is of a time, too. Drowsy, lazy hours. Days spooling ahead. Sometimes pleasurably, sometimes filled with ennui, and a strange melancholy. Then time had been meted out in great handfuls. There had been a surfeit; one struggled to use it all up. From the early morning call of the milk seller to the evening one of the yoghurt seller, the hours had seemed to billow out before her, empty.

  In that time before, Nur might have done one modestly significant thing with her day. She might have finished a new book or she and her mother might have gone for a drive out to the old walls of the city, or one of the picnic spots beside the Bosphorus. Or attempted to paint the scene from the terrace, which she had never managed to represent to her satisfaction. One could not paint the wind, that was the thing.

  There were days when she lay in bed and glanced back over the span of hours and could remember nothing at all taking place … as though she had passed all the time in a dream state, punctuated only by meals, by aimless wanderings in the garden. Or she had spent the day imagining what she would be doing if she had a life in the world beyond – if she were a man, perhaps. A cold understanding would come over her: this was how her whole life would be, meted out in pockets of ennui. When leisure was the thing that took up all of one’s time, it ceased to be easy. It became an art. In the imperial harems the women had become grand masters at it.

  It was important to cultivate a rich inner life; to sustain one through hours of boredom and solitude. Some women conjured fantasy lovers, spending so long deciding upon the peculiarities of their beauty, the sound of their voice, the shape of their hands and form that they knew them far more intimately than they did any living person. Some imagined journeying to exotic lands, unencumbered by any of the practical inconveniences of travel. Nur once heard it said that a woman’s sphere is actually less constrained than a man’s. Because whilst he may travel outside in the physical world, her internal world is limitless, set only by the boundaries of her imagination. This life within the mind is a skill that men do not always take the time to learn … unless, perhaps, they are of a particularly spiritual bent.

  Nur was not convinced. She could not quite bear the idea that everything she had learned in the long years at the British school would be for nothing. All the languages she might never speak, the history, the arithmetic for which she would have no use … the study of atlases which would now only serve to remind her of all that space she would not have the opportunity to explore, all those places she would never visit. Knowledge stoppered up inside her, with no outlet, rotting like something left in a jar. Or worse, poisoning her from within, infecting that inner life with the taint of disappointed hope.

  Difficult to imagine now, that luxury of being bored.

  As she makes her way down toward Galata bridge she hears her name called.

  She turns. A little way below her on the cobbled slope stands a man: she does not recognise him at first, though there is something familiar.

  She looks again. It is her cousin Hüseyin, her mother’s nephew. The most obvious of the changes is the absence of his once luxurious moustaches. Without them he appears younger, more handsome, but his face has lost a certain gravitas. There is more to it than this. His clothes are different, too: the foreign tailoring gives him a different shape. Most of all, he has exchanged a fez for a dark felt affair with a slender brim.

  ‘You look so different,’ she says. ‘I hardly knew you.’

  ‘And so do you.’

  In her surprise at seeing him, in noting the changes in him, she has forgotten how she herself might appear to him. She is aware now of the cheap cotton gloves with the stain on the thumb, the outdated dress, the worn leather of her shoes, the twice-mended dress. The greater losses, too: which she feels must be written upon her face.

  He is a man; there is a brief hope that he will not note these things as a woman might.

  ‘How have you been keeping?’ he asks. She hears the pity in it, and understands that her hope has been in vain.

  ‘We have survived.’

  ‘Your husband?’ A moment while he searches for the name. ‘Enver?’

  She shakes her head. ‘Killed. At Gallipoli.’

  ‘Oh, my dear Nur. A widow, so young. They say they fought very bravely there.’

  She has to quash the sudden flood of her anger: what would he know of bravery? ‘So they tell us,’ she says.

  ‘And Kerem?’

  ‘We had a note from the War Ministry. Missing, presumed lost: near the Russian border.’

  ‘So perhaps—’

  She cuts him off. ‘That was four years ago. We had little hope at the beginning, now we have none at all.’

  His face seems to lose all colour. ‘I am so sorry.’

  ‘It is not your fault.’ And what she does not say aloud: ‘It is nothing to do with you, in fact. You made certain of that by staying away.’

  ‘I should have come back.’

  She does not know how to reply. Her innate politeness would never allow her to admit that she agrees, that she has judged him for having stayed away.

  ‘You see,’ he says, ‘it was a little more difficult. My circumstances have changed. I have got married myself. My wife is an American. I must return to her soon.’

  A gust of rage has passed through Nur, and for a moment she cannot bring herself to smile, as she knows she should, let alone speak. He has been halfway across the world falling in love, while her brother was dying for his country. There are times at which her emotions come so close to the surface, when she has very little control over them. Finally, she manages to say: ‘I must congratulate you. I suppose you will bring her here to meet us?’

  ‘Oh … one day. It will be quite a change for her. America is such a new place. It’s so different to here, where everyone lives surrounded by the past. You know, it doesn’t feel as though it has changed at all.’ Perhaps realising what he has said, he gives an awkward little cough.

  With an effort she manages to take pity on him. ‘Are you staying long?’

  ‘I return to New York at the end of the autumn,’ he says. ‘I have come here to sell the house, more than anything else. It seems useless to have such a large property here, merely gathering dust.’

  Nur nods. Within her the rage threatens itself again.

  ‘How is my aunt?’ he asks now. ‘And your father’s mother? We must come and pay a visit.’

  ‘No,’ Nur says, before she has even thought about a reply.

  He looks surprised, a little hurt.

  ‘My mother is not well, at present,’ she says. And before he can ask, ‘Not in her body – in her mind. From the day Kerem left for war she was not herself. But on the day we had that notice from the Ministry it was as though we lost her for good, too.’ He nods. She sees, almos
t to her gratification, that his eyes are wet with tears. ‘So I do not think it would be the best time for it.’

  He inclines his head. ‘Of course.’

  Now would be the time to tell him of their changed circumstances. But she discovers that she cannot do it. Especially in the face of this evident prosperity. She could ask him for money. It would be his duty to give it, to help this branch of his family. It would be madness not to ask. She would not have to spend a piastre of it on herself – she could save it all for her grandmother, her mother, the boy. And yet she cannot do it. Her pride will simply not allow it.

  ‘We went for supper with a British friend of mine last night,’ Hüseyin says. ‘I met him in New York. We went to one of the meyhanes in Galata. This city seems to have turned into a madhouse.’

  ‘A British friend?’ Nur cannot conceal her surprise.

  ‘Yes. He has always been my friend, he remains so. Your father – as I recall – had many British acquaintances.’

  ‘None of whom we would speak to or even think of any more. I am sure the feeling is mutual.’

  ‘You surprise me, Nur. I did not know you thought in such black and white terms.’

  ‘You were not here,’ she is surprised by the tremble of anger in her voice, ‘when everything became black and white.’

  If he feels the slight, he does not show it. ‘And you think it is now?’

  ‘More so, yes.’

  ‘I would not be so sure. None of us are innocent in this.’ He covers his mouth with his hand, smoothes the place where his moustaches would have been.

  ‘Tell me, the thing that you are deciding whether or not to say.’

  ‘There are stories, of terrible things.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘By our army, Nur. You wouldn’t hear them, here, of course. But in other newspapers – American, French – there are detailed accounts.’

  She is not sure that she wants to hear any more, and yet cannot stop herself from asking. ‘Accounts of what?’

  ‘It is not the sort of knowledge you need to bear.’

  ‘I cannot judge that for myself?’

  ‘Goodness,’ he says, almost smiling. ‘You have certainly changed. What happened to my shy little cousin?’

  ‘A war.’

  He stops smiling. ‘All right – I confess, I do not want to speak of it, not in detail.’

  ‘You cannot allege a thing, like that, without telling me something.’

  ‘In the East, mainly. Massacres, Nur – not of soldiers, but of civilians. Our own people. Ottoman citizens. The Armenians. They say they marched them into the desert. People saw …’ he leaves a pause, as though for things unsaid, too terrible to be said, ‘evidence.’ The word, in its sterility, is chilling. ‘And those that survived, that managed to escape, are talking of it. Some believe that they are still going on, even now. The atrocities.’

  ‘That is absurd. I would know of it.’

  ‘Not necessarily, Nur. Sometimes it is possible to be too close to something: so much so that one is prevented from seeing the whole.’

  She thinks of the boy. A shiver of fear. ‘No. I cannot believe it. It is easy for them, the “Allies”, to make up whatever they choose now they have won.’ But she realises dimly that her skin has gone cold, and there is a bubble of nausea in her throat. Because if it is a lie, who would be able to make up such a thing, even in the interests of making the other side look worse? In most rumours, she knows, there are seeds of truth. But what she says is, ‘Why would I have heard nothing of it?’

  ‘The question is would you have heard anything of it? People hear – and tell – what they want to.’

  ‘Why are you telling me?’ She forgets briefly that it was she who demanded it. She feels that the thing has entered her like a poison.

  ‘All I am trying to say is that when one sees them from a distance, these last few years, it seems that none of us are innocent.’

  There is a long silence. Nur thinks of many sharp retorts with which to fill it, mainly upon the theme of everything being easy from a distance.

  ‘Well,’ Hüseyin says, briskly, ‘I hope to see you again soon, little Nur.’

  ‘And you, cousin.’

  But as she walks away she is thinking something quite different. That she would be quite content never to see him again, in all his wholeness and prosperity. And his accusations of atrocities – accusations which somehow seem to include herself, her brother, everyone else who was not lucky enough to escape the war, like him. They cannot be true. Can they?

  George

  ‘I’m not sure I can come today.’ At the weekends George, Bill and a couple of others, Briggs and Howarth, have taken to exploring the city and beyond.

  ‘Why?’ Bill asks.

  ‘The child – he’s still running a temperature.’

  ‘Oh for goodness’ sake, Monroe. The Sisters are more than capable.’ Bill narrows his eyes. ‘You know, I’m not even sure you’d exhibit the same concern for one of our own. What is so special about this boy?’

  ‘Fine.’ He holds up his hands, in surrender. Bill is an understanding man. But George understands that it is in the best interests of all not to create too much of a commotion around his newest patient.

  They take an early ferry from the quay at Galata. At the kiosk, trying to pay for tickets, the man tells them: ‘No, Englishmen. You do not need to pay.’ He is unsmiling as he says it. It is not meant as a gesture of goodwill, George is certain. It is more like an accusation.

  On the water the light is blue, the air cool with the new breath of autumn. They are observed with furtive curiosity by the other passengers. A small boy strains away from his mother’s embrace to get a clearer look. She gathers him tight against her, administers a sharp reprimand.

  George looks with equal interest at his fellow passengers. His eye is drawn to an elderly couple in one of the corner seats at the back: he in the signature red fez, she in a dark headscarf. There is a quiet tenderness about them, though they barely touch. It is something in the way their bodies incline toward one another, in the way the man seems anxious that she not miss any sight on the banks as they pass. He watches them until Bill gives him a nudge and he comes, with a jolt, back into an awareness of himself.

  The great wide sweep of the Bosphorus is all serenity. Hard to imagine that a fearsome crosswise current stirs beneath the surface. The men have been warned about it: to take care when swimming. They say a man drowned here, just beyond the stately beauty of Arnavutköy village, trying to save a child. Did the child survive? George feels an important need to know.

  On the horizon appears an apparition: a flock of white geese. No – sharpening into focus: a flotilla of sails. They draw nearer silently, inexorably. From a distance the kayıks appear unmanned, so many Mary Celestes. Then George can make out the men sitting within them, can hear the commotion of them, the chatter and shouts. Fishermen, returning with the dawn catch from the Black Sea.

  He is reminded now of something the burn victim, Nicholls, told him. He insisted that it had happened to a friend of his, but it is so fantastic a story that he cannot believe it to be anything other than apocryphal.

  Not so long ago, the patient said, two rather surprised fishermen netted a live bear in the waters of the Golden Horn. There was a – relatively – logical explanation for it. A group of British soldiers, Rawling’s friend included, had bought a bear from an entertainer in Stamboul, and taken it to their barracks in Pera. The story was that it had discovered the regiment’s beer supplies, which one suspected was less accidental than professed. It had escaped its new owners and gone carousing alone in the streets. Like many humans, it had been filled with a mistaken idea of its own skill and agility, and had climbed onto a railing beside the channel, to walk along it in the manner of a tightrope artist. A six-hundred-pound, inebriated bear does not make the best gymnast. It had been very lucky that the fishermen had decided to set out earlier than their fellows, in the hopes of scoring the
catch of the day. That had certainly been achieved.

  It is a funny story, but it is also further evidence of the state of the men. He has seen it in the Pera nightclubs: the behaviour growing ever more outrageous. They are growing bored now, restive, glutted with the idea of themselves as conquering heroes and homesick for England. It makes for a rather volatile combination.

  On either side of the water the land sheers up, densely forested: it has a muscular beauty. Near to the waterfront the elegant wooden houses cluster, some three storeys high, exquisite with fretwork and the white and green tracery of jasmine. The breeze comes to them over the water laden with its perfume. In the street one finds this scent often, usually before seeing the white flowers clustering around a door, massing across ancient stone. It provides a welcome balm to the odour of refuse ripening in the heat: a caress to follow an insult.

  Some of the waterside houses have small balconies. On one stands a figure – far off, but the long skirts reveal that she is female. As they draw closer George sees that she is veiled. When the ferry passes she retreats indoors. He is certain that all the Ottoman warmongers must have lived in the clamour of the great city, not here, with nothing but the sounds of the birds and the water. Only thoughts of peace could exist here. Some are less well-cared-for. The greyish-brown of the old wood is exposed beneath the paint, splintering away from the frame. Balconies loll drunkenly. The houses here are made all the more melancholy by the vestiges of their former beauty. A hush seems to hang over them, a pall of history.

  ‘Çay! Çay! Kahve! Kahve!’ One of the ferry-hands makes a slow circuit of the passengers, offering tea and coffee, the round sesame-studded simit breads that they sell in hot piles on the street. Suddenly every one of them is famished: they order confusedly. Just as the drinks are handed to them the ferry makes an unfortunate lurch: Howarth deposits the hot contents of his cup into his crotch with an oath that George is glad probably won’t be translated by any of their fellow passengers. For a minute or so they are all laughing too hard to be of much help to him; finally Bill leans across to proffer his napkin.