Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale (10 page)

As for the revelation of Niko’s petty larceny . . . I don’t think he had suffered greatly from the disclosure of his secret. This singularity of his had apparently, in one way or another, been known to everybody in his circle and eventually came to be seen as a pleasant extension of collectivity. This may have been a bonus due to the fact that it cushioned the blow of the teasing. His half-drunk state even in the middle of the day and his frequent lapses of oral hygiene had made him a laughing stock. One’s conscience had to be cleansed in one way or another in order to give way to other petty offenses.

Monsieur Jacques would confirm, years after my conversation with Olga that had enabled me to have an insight into the relationship between those two kindred-spirits, the reality relative to Niko’s ill-gotten waistcoat trade. The backdrop was of a different time, one pregnant with meaning. Monsieur Jacques, like many people who had lived during those days, had felt the need to comment on the changing values, values that were actually being gnawed away at the roots. The number of tailors who understood the sartorial expressions exchanged between master and apprentice was ever decreasing. “For instance,” he said, “here we have Niko, who, despite the fact that he is a liar and hardly keeps his promises and his shop stinks of raki, the jackets he tailors fit his customers perfectly. You can throw whatever you have, whenever you have it, into the bargain.” He had a way to smooth out the fabric he tailored. He wore a wry smile on his face. He was lost in the distance beyond any boundaries I could ever imagine. “He was a bit of a filcher, but anyway . . . ” he added afterwards. I had some difficulty in understanding what he meant by the word filcher. He may have used it in order not to insult a person of a time past, not to stain the memory a man had left behind. I think it was also a sort of sympathy. The same appreciation was also shared by Uncle Kirkor who happened to be there, and who had, benefiting from the opportunity, cut in, making the following remark for a friend he had lost: “The waistcoat bawd! He hardly knew how to play backgammon!” Monsieur Jacques had first cast a glance at Uncle Kirkor from above his spectacles. However, both had begun laughing at the same time at this remark. This was one of those guffaws that was deeply felt and well justified, a peel of laughter that embodied a kind of heartache. Monsieur Jacques had afterward said to Uncle Kirkor in imitation of Niko (that was my impression anyhow) something in Greek which I hadn’t understood. He had a smattering of Greek like all the Jews of the time. The remark had been confirmed by a nod from Uncle Kirkor. I’d felt this. One could feel that Niko was somehow present at the time, in a place to which I could never have access . . . Moreover, one had to dwell on the significance of the phrases used by Uncle Kirkor while referring to Niko, as well as to their associations. For reasons well-known to those who live with another tongue, in addition to the so-called vernacular, he could not properly pronounce the word ‘backgammon,’ for instance, without provoking derisive laughter. Leaving aside all the remarks that one could allow oneself, one thing was acknowledged: namely his mastery of backgammon. Although it was said that he often cheated while playing hurriedly and manipulated the dice so that they fell as he would have wished, everybody who had played a game of backgammon with him knew how exhilarating the game was. The same exhilaration was shared by the onlookers as well. There was no doubt that he was topnotch. His most admirable characteristic was his inability to acknowledge defeat. His matches with Sedat the Arab, who teased him with swear words like “son of a bear” during their game (the bet being a cup of tea) gathered a whole crowd of onlookers.

The Joke of Sedat the Arab

I distinctly remember that Sedat the Arab was, in the first instance, a man who had sought to live the life he always imagined for himself in some other place, in such a place that people lived as if lost in a poem. He had traveled all over Anatolia in his minibus baptized ‘The Detective’ because of the initials ‘DT’ on the license plate; it was a minibus which he had to take to the service station every other day; he doted on her, even though she was already an old banger. He also took pleasure in displaying the various features of people’s faces by mimicking them behind their back, in the manner of a professional. This was his hobby, and, if one considers his attitude to life, one can say that it was finesse. He was full of life. Full of it! He had lived many a life, many a path ran through him, different nights and dawns that not many people could have lived. He hadn’t gone to university and had to shoulder the inferiority that this failure burdened him with everywhere he went, especially his failing to have become a doctor. He had to compensate for this frustration through his accurate diagnoses of many a disease that his friends suffered from and the therapeutic methods he recommended; and according to his own account, he had saved many lives. However, I interpreted this as a kind of joke, a joke that ought to lead us to a revision of the reality behind that failure. In my opinion, we should look for the meaning concealed in his outlook on life in those secluded and out-of-sight places where he lived. It looked as if he had spent more than half his life, or, to be more precise, of his life visible to me, on those secluded paths. When we noticed his absence, we were sure that he had set out for one of his usual journeys in Anatolia. Nobody knew what his destination was and when he would be returning—and by which particular direction. The length of his stays at the places he visited varied drastically; they were sometimes short and sometimes very long. All I can remember is that if one considers how often he engaged in such sallies, one would be inclined to conclude that he must have spent at least half the year on such voyages. This is why I think that he took his minibus not only as a companion, but also as his workshop and home, to wit his sanctuary. However, he was not the only person of this kind, for there were many people in his circle who sallied forth on such vagaries in different directions for different reasons. Yet, these were emotions which, although visible up to a certain extent, were not of the sort one could empathize with. Once they were experienced they became lost and gone forever; yet, they remained in certain people serving as repositories. In many a city and town, he knew the addresses of such places as pharmacies, post offices, hotels, cafés, unlicensed brothels, restaurants, etc. He had a vast knowledge about land routes. The road map in his mind was not the official map of the overland routes; it was exclusive to him. He liked to freak out now and then. I knew this. Those freak-outs involved other maps. We could read from the sorrowful expression on his face that he was to set off early next day. When he returned from his journeys, he stayed in Istanbul at places where he was recognized; he put in an appearance at varying locations of his choice before taking flight with a view to perpetuating his destiny, his wandering. He had no idea about when he would return. “The road tips us a wink . . . Source of livelihood, you know . . . ” It was his livelihood; that much was true. This was not all, however; Sedat the Arab enjoyed an almost legendary fame through the marketing of his merchandise and his collecting of valuables. This may be a feature that made him conspicuous in the eyes of others. To treat someone in a way that is calculated to please him, that’s what a decent person should do. But had he been decent himself? Perhaps not; but he had an uncanny ability to feel the pulse of his customers. There was no doubt about it; the crux of the matter lay in this. Thus, at the places he stopped, he persuaded people, posing as a refined gentleman from Istanbul, to buy his pharmaceutical products, or, if need be, as a lovable rascal, a pettifogger, whatever the circumstances warranted. He recited poems to some, while he harangued others about the country’s problems. He was a leftist with the leftists and a rightist with the rightists. As far as I know, he spoke Kurdish well, although he was not a Kurd himself. He knew how to perform the prayer of the Muslims although he was not a Muslim. Thus, by giving the supplicant what he wanted, he skillfully refrained from giving what he should actually have given. This was his petty revolt. I took cognizance of this fact years later when I managed to have a distant view of it. At the time I misread the signs, and results, of what was going on. However, in order for me to pass judgment on these happenings, other people must also be considered. The number of witnesses and followers of Sedat the Arab’s legendary fame was, of course, considerable. However, despite all of his renown and his modest achievements, he had been indifferent to saving money as far as I know. This stands as evidence to his other pursuits, of his goals and desires to see other places. As though this was not enough, he spent every penny he had on the treatment of his wife who was suffering from cancer. I still retain those days in my memory. The craftsmen in his circle had even collected money to subsidize his wife’s treatment. Sedat the Arab had realized, especially back then, how deeply he had been attached to her. According to the accounts of his next-of-kin, his mobilization was not simply the cause of a repayment of gratitude, but also one of the greatest disgraces of his life; a disgrace or a sense of defeat one can only acknowledge with difficulty . . . or a resentment, a resentment harbored against life, against days he could not turn to good account despite all his efforts, the days he thought he had missed and failed to make the best of . . . Could one establish a relationship between this bitter resentment and his sudden death of a heart attack in a small hotel room in a town near Istanbul where he stayed on his return journey from a long eastern sales campaign to celebrate his fiftieth year? Perhaps. However, what was still more important was the place where he died, where he succeeded in dying, rather than this question mark he had left unanswered. He had died in the place he cherished most, on the road . . . He had experienced in that town an original feeling he had never felt before; a feeling that showed us an attribute, a time, a part of which we had not been conscious of until then . . . The scene we had been faced with had puzzled us for many years. It looked as though this had been the performance of the last act of a play. Or, as if the play had ended in such a way that not even its actors could have foreseen, not being prepared for such a catharsis . . . The fact is that when he died, there was a woman with him. We had been told that the woman was a sophisticated pharmacist who was in an unhappy marriage. They had spent a passionate love affair full of sound and fury that had lasted for two years. We have this information from Vedat Bey, his cousin who ran a perfume shop, and who had gone downtown to collect Sedat’s remains. Vedat Bey described the lady pharmacist as a very beautiful and refined woman who knew how to listen to people. Everybody had more or less guessed what merit and character Sedat had found in her.

On my way to another place years later, my path had strayed toward that town . . .My intention was to take some rest and have a glimpse of it as long as I could, and, last but not least, to find, if I could, that pharmacist. It was a small town and the inhabitants were friendly. It did not take me long to track down the pharmacy in question. However, it turned out that the pharmacy had changed hands and was being run by another lady. The new owner was an attractive woman of about fifty. At first, she seemed cagey about what I wanted to learn, but in the end, she told me everything she knew. The lady pharmacist I had been looking for had apparently preferred not to stay any longer in that town, and felt obliged to leave, according to hearsay, to the south where she had opened a new drugstore. She had ended up marrying an old university friend who had been wooing her. She had put a certain order to her life and was back on her feet. The townsmen with whom she had been on intimate terms had heard that she had eventually found what she had been looking for in the south. As a matter of fact, she was from Iskenderun. She was nearer now to the climate of her youth which she had been missing. About the incident in that hotel room when death had overtaken him, she said that the man in question was a refined gentleman, a rich businessman. While narrating this part of the story, she had had to break off every now and then. Could she have been inventing things? I don’t know; but I had the impression that I was acting in a play in which everybody in the town was taking part. It seemed that nothing had changed; everybody looked like they had stayed right where they had been. I think the reality of the situation lay in my being pushed out or through the impression of my being ousted. As I was leaving the pharmacy, the lady shook my hands warmly and said: “It appears that the man was a refined gentleman, a real gentleman. However, he seemed to have had some serious problems.” As I came out I noticed that there were people who wore meaningful smiles on their faces. There was no change of expression . . . I had to leave . . . I had realized that I had reached a dead end . . . I had no other choice but to continue my journey. Another person who continued her journey for the sake of her own story was Elisa, Sedat the Arab’s wife. It had taken her two years to completely recover; she finally married a wealthy widower with two grown-up children; thus, she had had the privilege of enjoying, as best she could, the remaining part of her life living in the summer of the Princes’ Islands, a thing she could never afford during her previous marriage. Years later, I ran into her on the island at an ordinary moment during an ordinary day. She seemed to be enjoying good health. She spoke to me about her husband’s affairs and of their children as though they were her own. She had not mentioned the name of Sedat. His father being an Antiochian Armenian and his mother a Jewess from Gaziantep, Sedat used to boast of his mixed blood. The only certainty for him was the concrete reality of a lived day. Such an attitude was automatically reflected in many aspects of his lifestyle. The witticism he used to tease Uncle Kirkor with was in reality a projection of this attitude toward delusion. Needling him at these incendiary moments, Uncle Kirkor, whose habit it was to swear like a trooper, would simply utter: “Fuck you! Son of a bitch!” In this, there seemed to be concealed a special affection whose origin was not to be so easily detected. Whether it could be shared or not . . . This was an important issue as it was with other people. However, when one takes everything into consideration, as far as one can infer from the accounts of his contemporaries, Uncle Kirkor had shared with Niko things which he could share with no other person. Even during a game of backgammon . . . I know for a fact that there were many things they had jointly discovered and reproduced. Nevertheless, his common experiences with Niko require a totally different dimension that we ought to discover. There is a place to which only the people whom one cherishes belong, to whom one feels attached and with whom one can never break, a place that faithfully follows one everywhere . . .