Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale

I am well aware that the accounts narrated here or the experiences that dictated themselves to me in dribs and drabs and eventually transformed themselves into a manuscript forming the contents of the present long story may be potentially disturbing for certain individuals. During the never-ending nights, I had had the impression that I was trying to understand, even to analyze—which is more important—my manuscript, looking at it from a distance, and keeping aloof from those who had endeavored to impose it on me. Those were the nights during which I had tried to find a room in my life for what I had been imparted with. This feeling, whose roots lay entrenched far back in an inheritance, had eventually made me what I am; it was a feeling that I could not rip from myself despite the fact that I did my best to convey said manuscript to the reader on a different wavelength through that voice within me, despite all those secret corners that I had access to in my breast and all the tricks I had contrived toward that end. As far as my limitations permitted, I had to conceive and tell the story of this legacy to the best of my abilities, in my vernacular description of the extent of this circumstance in my life in the city where I was born and raised. In this way, I could make headway on a shoreline familiar to me, out of harm’s way and unperturbed, thanks to the strength that this conviction gave me. I could evoke this shoreline in a conventional language, clad in the garb in which other people have been accustomed to see me. This frame of mind wherein I felt at home was just one of the circumstances I preferred to hold on to; just one of the circumstances. I had heard other voices calling me during the days I was learning to swim in still waters. The fear of remaining rooted to a given spot, of living and dying confined in a well-delineated space had had its part to play in arousing in me the desire to hurl myself headlong toward other places where I could not linger or stay for long, but I lacked the heart to bring myself to act firmly on such a notion. That was the reason that prompted me to such foolish fancies. That was the reason why I became a liar. I learned to live on lies and betrayed the people I cherished. I filled my lungs with the smoke of nearly ‘everything that emitted smoke’ to the detriment of my asthma, except for the carbonic acid in the gas released by burning coal in the stove. That was the reason why I had evinced the desire to marry a freckled slut with hazel eyes and flaxen hair who had taught me wantonly the secret language of lovemaking during my years of apprenticeship, and who, now and then, expressed the wish to be a lecturer someday in the sociology department of a university. That was the reason why I had started reading Spinoza on the Day of Atonement. That was the reason why pandering had tickled my fancy and I had wanted to become a copywriter. That was the reason why I had developed a hatred for prudish women whose sole concern was the preparation of crisp and golden pastries and in whom the development of the dexterity required in stuffing grapevine leaves was considered to be a matter of professional pride. That was the reason why I was disgusted with women whose peroration on freedom came to naught as they merely acted out things while remaining tightly bound to their matrimonial conventions and tradition; I disliked women whose aim it was to provide themselves with more security or who gossiped about my views, trying to prove to the world at large that they were mistresses of this world, by merely defining things without living them; thus contriving a sound scientific basis to satisfy themselves. Such was my wasteland, and I disclosed to no one my confidence tricks at the time. The child within me, the child who was thought to have been abandoned, the child who always felt a compulsive desire to attract attention, had the desire to emulate living such a life. That child had never tired of making requisition for just such a person. And he was in the right. He was fully justified in his aspirations for such tomfooleries. Was I by any chance trying to retrace my steps toward that thrilling adventure of which I never ceased to imagine, of which I had the premonition of encountering frequently in the course of my life and of which I was convinced of coming upon now and then in the darkest corners of my being? That may well be the case. I think I must ask myself once more about this story I am trying to elaborate on within myself in full cognizance of the frustrations, suspicions, and betrayals I have been subject to. I know that this will submerge me in a long period of gloomy introspection. I must see whether the simmering discontent and suspicion that my confessions may provoke in some people is of the same mold as the other perceptions I hold against my will. For, what I have gone through has taught me to shut up and bury my feelings deep within my heart. After all, I was born under a climate in which it was not so easy to persuade people to view things from different angles or to frustrate them by holding a mirror up to them so that they may see in it their own image. I took refuge in the languages of that climate; those languages were my sanctuary. Despite the ordeal I had gone through when I had set out, I’d not had the slightest intention of flustering people by my presence and exposing them to the things I had in store for them. I simply had been goaded by an instinct to tell a story, just to tell it. It was the story of someone leading the life of a fiddler, of living within a story, journeying to various countries of the world . . . After all, I was a wandering Jew whose aim it was to give birth to a land of his own, to discover it and live in it. Just like any other Jew, I was a stateless person. An ordinary Jew in the sight of some people, I was a nondescript individual that people looked at with suspicion and would not rely on; I had no vernacular to speak of and happened to be an outsider. When and where had that story begun, who had initiated it, the story which I might appropriate and call ‘our story’? Where, when and for whom? Was it one of those stories that involved postponement, the putting off of expectations, living, living to the bitter end, living in defiance of ‘them,’ showing them, or living by narration and giving birth to a brand new morning after a night that seemed to have no end. A story stuck in the past we narrated, or rather—what is more important—the past we believe we narrated; the past expressed in a given tongue, using certain words? Such issues, in a certain sense, required courage in an individual that might insidiously lead to minor homicides, to the murder of certain things for which a proper definition was lacking. It was not in vain that we had cogitated on the fact that we were exhausting ourselves for everybody every passing day; just like the traveler in love . . . Those relationships could perhaps be defined in time in terms of our solitudes. For, the words, yes, the words, were not our words after all. However, those words may well have revealed our nakedness, our very selves; yet, we had been surreptitiously eradicated from our roots by those who were overeager to lend us their own vocabulary. Can we consider ourselves now to be in a position to ask one another what exactly those words had been? Can we reclaim them from each other and remind each other of them? Can we put on their garb once again? Can we? Can we identify ourselves with ourselves?

The experiences one enjoyed in those relations were certainly nobody’s fault. Not a single moment was the consequence of a chink in one’s armor. There was no such thing as wrong and right anyway. All that existed was what one actually had experienced or the things one desired, now left behind; things that are experienced and then desired to be bequeathed, or, in other words . . . things that one was desirous to show t7o one’s fellow beings in order to make oneself conscious of what one experienced, even if only for a fleeting moment.

This book can therefore be read in more than one way, if a similar approach is adopted toward what has been narrated. If he so wishes, the reader may rest content with reading the section entitled ‘The Starlings,’ consisting of a few pages at the beginning of the present book. Those who opt for such an alternative shall be considered to have read and gone through the entire book. To understand another person or persons, even this step may suffice. For, this did have its precedence! This much had been enough and then some. Images or visions had proved to be adequate. The choice to consume it and put it in a corner believing it shall remain unaffected was a choice that strategically positioned us in familiar places, reinstating us to our original quarters; whilst the pages that narrate the rest, my ongoing adventure, are meant for those curious about details, for inquiring minds. The trivia and forgotten languages are meant for those willing to take a few steps toward knowing another person. The reader may, from the first page to the last, move forward listening to and feeling the sound of his own footsteps; he may skip sections or follow another order he himself may choose. I am aware that this suggestion is far from being a new proposal. In different climates, in different contexts, different people prefer to follow this voice. As I dare to make this suggestion or state this reminder, oblivious to my reiterations, I have the feeling that I’m more inclined to cogitate on the orientation of my life in this manuscript, thus being indifferent to my will. It has never been easy to pluck up the courage to collate data. To place oneself in that picture and view it, I mean truly view it, when the time is ripe, calls for one’s patience rather than one’s mastery. To be able to see it necessitates the focusing of one’s attention on the issue with dedication and spontaneity as well as zeal, enthusiasm, and commitment, just like in the case of a relationship we try to cultivate and preserve lest we lose it, forms us and shows us to ourselves in the most straightforward manner. I can’t possibly foretell where this trivia may lead and there is no need to repeat again at this juncture the fact that when a person gains ground in his march toward another person, or when he advances within himself with all those ancient images inherent in him, he doubtlessly experiences his own adventure, solely his own. I created a hero who endeavored to look through another window upon the city where I was born, the briny odor of whose sea he had drawn deep into his lungs, the odor which would not abandon him at a point where I felt I had found a vital clue; it was a hero who had dared to proceed on a long walk in order to discover his language, his vernacular. On this walk, the secret of the land was inherent. This language would set the boundaries of this land. As a matter of fact, this land was language incarnated, the horizon that this language revealed, the dreams that this language evoked and conjured up, the sentiments that the said language gave rise to. The story itself was an old story. The hour mentioned in the story was the hour already spent, experienced elsewhere; for instance, the death mentioned in the story was an ordinary death; the book in the story was the book painstakingly written both to be concealed and to be made public. The male protagonist was a person who took up the manuscript that he had written then tried to narrate and fictionalize his unique land. This person was at the same time the witness, the spectator, and the hero of his tale; in other words, a person condemned to be both inside and outside the tale. The walls were also there, those walls that had drawn up the borders of the land, the walls that delineated which was more important. In fact those walls were not unfamiliar to me. They were my own walls; the walls I wanted to rediscover, the walls I was supposing to tell the story of in my vernacular. This uneasiness could be explained in this way. The fear of taking a wrong step might in fact be sought for in the history of those walls, but that fear was cancelled in them. But the fact that I was born as an outsider in the peninsula nearest to the western world was not my fault; I was not responsible for having been the hero of my life in the ‘Tale of Istanbul,’ for emulating certain people and the heroes of other books that made up the course of my life, or for using the words of other people indiscriminately, laboring under an old illusion, or hoping for a new journey toward liberation. My Istanbul was a fairy tale. It was a tale, my own tale. The tale was ‘their’ story. The tale was our story. The tale was your story. The tale was the story of those who felt themselves alien in their own city. The tale was the story of my imagination that saw the waterway of the Bosporus like a womb, despite all the experiences I had gone through. This tale was the story of the fear of the consequence of a wrong overarm stroke or paddle which would cause my engulfment, my being swept away by currents and counter-currents toward something unknown. The short and the long of it, this tale was a tale.