Portrait of a Turkish Family (10 page)

Later in the day the bridal pair were handed in to their elegant carriage, and my grandmother, looking suddenly lonely, drove away to her new home.

In the evening three porters from the old man’s house called for my grandmother’s furniture. For the next hour or so they were busy removing it and things kept shifting in the salon and in the dining-room until I had a fearful thought that nothing would be left for us.

Last of all they stripped my grandmother’s room and that, for me, really was the end of her, for when the room was empty I peeped inside and saw that nothing of her was left there. The patterned curtains swung in the little breeze I made with the open door, and so little impression had my grandmother ever made on this house that it seemed to me as if she had never lived here at all. The empty room echoed gently when I said ‘Grandmother’ and I shivered and ran to find İnci, who was always at hand when a small boy needed comfort.

After my grandmother’s marriage the house seemed larger and, it must be admitted, more peaceful. The remaining furniture was rearranged and I moved into her empty bedroom.

Occasionally during the afternoons my grandmother would visit us, for she still lived quite near Bayazit, but she never mentioned her husband and my mother never enquired after him. By tacit agreement, his name was taboo. Later on in the year, in the fine spring weather, Mehmet and I were given permission to visit her. But this we did not like doing,
preferring
to see her in our own house, for her husband had no affection for small boys and, in particular, he disliked Mehmet and me. Another time my mother paid an afternoon call with us but the old man stayed in his own little sitting-room the whole time we were there and made it so abundantly clear that we were unwelcome, that my mother decided never to set foot in his house again. We were also forbidden to visit there but, nevertheless, when the days were fine and we were supposed to be playing safely in the garden we did sometimes manage to escape.

My grandmother’s new home was very beautiful, with exquisite old tapestries and Chinese vases, which we were told were very valuable. He was a bit of a connoisseur in his way and loved beauty. The gardens were expansive and well kept but my grandmother had a temporary look in that house, as though she had rested there but for a moment. The servants were all old retainers who had been there for years and knew their job so well that she had no conceivable right to interfere with them. This restraint, this lack of freedom in her kitchen, made her feel lonely for Feride and İnci and the other long-departed servants she had trained from childhood. As I have remarked before, the old man did not like Mehmet or me. He was very jealous if my grandmother gave up any time to us, resenting us in some queer, illogical way, and telling her over and over again that she must give up her visits to our house. He said our family were dead for her, that she had married him and that he required some attention from her. All of this I learned many years later but when I was a child I only saw him as a cantankerous, horrid old man – totally unlike my own beloved grandfather. One other thing I learned later in life. He had expected from his marriage that she should share his bed with him and, upon her adamant, astonished refusal, informed her that he could, if he wished, insist on this right. She, apparently, sharply and coldly reminded him that as he was well over eighty years old, he should be contemplating his death and not setting himself up as an
amoureux
. This plain speaking had considerably affronted him and huffily he had warned her that if she were to continue in this attitude she need not expect any benefits from him. Since my grandmother was hoping for benefits from him, she thought it better thereafter to hold her peace, though still continuing in her firm refusal to become part of his bed. Later, a bitter quarrel took place between them and he refused her permission to visit us. And a husband’s will in those days was not to be lightly disregarded.

My mother did not know of this quarrel and Mehmet and I were sent to find out what was wrong. We met the old man in the street, almost at his own door so to speak. He was carrying a large stick and asked me where I was going. Tremblingly I replied that I was going to see my grandmother and he lifted his heavy stick to bring it down on our shoulders. I quickly dodged out of his way, dragging a surprised Mehmet after me and the stick dropped shatteringly to the ground from his fingers. Nimbly I picked it up and ran away with it in the direction of our own home to breathlessly pour out the story to my mother. She grew white as she listened. She banished the offensive stick to the kitchen and later on a servant of the old man called for it, bringing with him an insulting message that we were to be kept out of his master’s way. Never have I seen my mother in such a passion. She put on her veil, asked Feride to accompany her and leaving us in İnci’s care, went off to my grandmother’s house.

When she told me the story in after years – with a good deal of laughter for things so far behind her – it appears that she had marched boldly to the old man’s room, ignoring alike the alarmed faces of my grandmother and the servants. She thrust open the door of his private sitting-room, leaving the terrified Feride outside to wait for her, and had told him what she thought of him – and a good deal else beside, I gathered. He had been as astonished as the rest of his flurried household and had listened, unwillingly, to most of what she had to say before reviving sufficiently to ask her to leave his home.

Naturally this dispute did not make relations any less strained between the two families – if anything it widened the breach. Once my
grandmother
secretly managed to visit us but she was in such fear of being discovered that my mother asked her not to come again.

I thought she was hard with her, not listening to her complaints, not giving a word of comfort and I felt near to tears as I saw my grandmother hurrying furtively away from our house – a little lonely old woman she seemed to be without a word of comfort in the world.

In Turkey in the old days there used to be a month called Aşure Ayi.

Aşure
is a sweet cooked with wheat, sultanas, figs, dates, dried beans, what you will, the whole being boiled for several hours until the result looks a little like aspic jelly. The legend of
aşure
is that when Noah in the Ark found himself running short of supplies, he ordered all the remaining foods to be cooked together for one last gigantic meal. This was
aşure
– or so we were told. During the days of the Ottoman Empire a month used to be set aside each year for the making of
aşure
in all the houses of the rich, who afterwards distributed it to the poor. When my grandfather was alive it used to be made in our house, fat Hacer being an adept at it, but latterly my mother had discontinued the habit, for Feride was uncertain of the recipe and my mother too cautious nowadays to waste any precious food. But it was made in my grandmother’s new home, and a huge silver pot of it sent to us. Feride was immediately ordered to give it to the poor and my mother sent a message to my grandmother not to send any more to us. If my mother had anything to do with it, the breach between them would never heal.

After that I remember Ramazan. None of us kept the fast, although in my grandfather’s day Ramazan was the signal for the entire household to fast and pray the prescribed five times in a day. With the ending of Ramazan comes the Şeker Bayramı, when all manner of sweets are
distributed
, especially to the children. This particular Bayram was unbearably sad for us, and perhaps that is why I remember it so well. My father was no longer with us, my grandmother had remarried, and my mother was, although I did not know that, pregnant with her third child. And she was alone in this great, empty house with two small children and her faithful Feride and İnci. That Bayram morning İnci dressed us in new clothing – for new clothing is as necessary to a Bayram as are the sweets and the celebration. We were taken sedately downstairs to the salon, where my mother sat alone, in a pretty silk dress and all her rings sparkling on her reddened fingers. A few neighbours called to congratulate the Bayram then went away again and I saw my mother quietly crying to herself …

What an emotional, unhappy Bayram to remember when only happiness should have been present.

Later that same week we were taken to Madame Müjğan’s house to stay for a few days for we were told our mother was not well. We were inclined to be tearful but I remember that İnci whispered that perhaps when we came home again the new baby would have arrived. So that made us feel better and we proudly boasted of this to Yasemin and Nuri, who were bitterly jealous that they had no new baby to boast about.

The last evening we spent in the house of our neighbour Mehmet was inclined to be fretful, calling for İnci but was eventually persuaded to sleep by Madame Müjğan’s upstairs maid.

I lay there in my little narrow bed, listening to the street-sounds drifting in through the window. Somewhere I could hear Bekçi Baba crying his news of a fire and sleepily I remembered the night I had seen him for the first time. Then I remembered the shivering, mournful beat of the drums the day they came to take my father away and I felt suddenly lonely, lying there in an unfamiliar room. I wondered if the pigeons had brought the new baby yet and finally drifted into sleep to the sound of Bekçi Baba’s voice. He still cried of a fire that raged somewhere in this city but a fire was not exciting to me, for I had never seen one and I did not know that the wooden houses and konaks of İstanbul were a heaven-sent opportunity for enemy spies. I did not know that one day I should see my beloved İstanbul burning, burning to the empty skies.

The next day İnci arrived to take us back home. On the way across the gardens she said to me: ‘Your pigeons have brought a lovely baby sister for you. Aren’t you pleased?’

I was uncertain until I had seen the wonderful baby, so reserved my judgment, and İnci thought I was sulking and laughed at me.

Upstairs in my mother’s room all was arrayed as if for a wedding. Lace pillows supported my mother’s dark head and a satin quilt dropped almost to the carpet. Mehmet and I stood awkwardly in the doorway, uncertain whether or not to advance into such grandeur but my mother smiled and called us over to her. Excitedly we ran for her kiss, my grandmother fussily warning us not to jump on the bed.

‘Where’s the baby?’ we wanted to know and my mother pulled back a lacy sheet and we looked down at a little dark head and a red crumpled rose leaf of face.

Mehmet said: ‘Why doesn’t she open her eyes?’

And my mother laughed and replied that she was sleeping. She put her hand against the baby’s dress and drew out a long white box.

‘Look what she has brought for you from your father,’ she said and we took the box in delight, discovering chocolate bonbons inside, a rare luxury nowadays. We were happy that the baby had not come
empty-handed
and disposed to regard her more kindly.

The days passed by, those sunny May days of 1915, and one day my mother was downstairs with us again and we became accustomed to seeing the baby sleeping in her white cradle on the terrace. Mehmet and I would peep at her curiously, anxious for her to open her eyes and smile at us. She was so quiet, lying there, such a remarkably docile baby that we quite grew to love her, for no matter how much noise we made, she still slept on. We were never hushed for her sake and I think our love for Muazzez dates from that time.

About this time too my grandmother started to disobey her husband and visited us whenever she pleased. One day she helped my mother compose a letter to my father, telling him of the birth of his daughter but we never knew whether he received the letter or not. Neighbours began to alarm my mother, hinting that his long silence might mean that he was dead and advised her to go to the War Office for information. But this she would not do, perhaps fearing to hear what they would say.

Aunt Ayşe paid us a visit from Sarıyer, eager to see Muazzez. She looked so different that I could scarcely recognise her, so gaunt and white and with cheeks sunk in. She started to cry when she saw Muazzez and I remember that I fascinatedly watched her. The tears poured down her face and Mehmet plucked uncertainly at her sleeve, distressed to see such sorrow, his small brown face looking unhappily at Aunt Ayşe. When her tears ceased she began to cough, in a sickening sort of way, and my grandmother, who sat out on the terrace with us, looked impatient and tapped her foot, as if she abhorred such a display of emotionalism.

I stood there, pondering about crying. Everyone seemed to cry
nowadays
and for no reason at all, in so far as I could see. Rebelliously, I wished my father back with us again. I had not thought about him for weeks, perhaps for months, yet suddenly there he was before my eyes and my heart ached with longing to see him come striding on to the terrace, to hear him call out to us, in the old way. And I felt rise in my throat a great lump and I did not know that crying was infectious. Afterwards I heard my aunt say that Uncle Ahmet had been blinded somewhere in the desert and she could not understand why the authorities did not send him home to her. Her unhappiness nagged at the heart, even phlegmatic Mehmet noticing it and trying to climb across her knee to console her. My mother told her we would all come to Sarıyer later in the summer, when Muazzez was a little older and in a better condition to travel. And my aunt sighed and asked if we remembered last year there.

I listened to her soft voice, rising and falling, but in my eye was a picture of Sarıyer. I saw the old house set amongst the trees and heard again my uncle’s merry laughter. I went fishing with him on the Bosphor and slept again in the little rose-scented room above the tangled old garden. I heard the ships’ sirens as they passed in the night – and yet I never left the terrace. But the memories were so clear and insistent on the brain that for a split second in time I had been back again in Sarıyer.

When my aunt left us to return home I felt sorry that she had to go. She looked so little and lonely that I yearned to protect her from the world she found so hard now that my uncle was not beside her.

She did not kiss us, I remember, but stood fondling our heads, reluctant to leave yet anxious to return to Sarıyer, where news from Uncle Ahmet perhaps awaited her.

‘We shall come in June,’ said my mother confidently, as if nothing might happen to disturb that promise.

Aunt Ayşe left and I never saw her again in my life. I never saw Sarıyer either, for many years afterwards when I visited it nothing remained but a tumble-down house and a garden choked with weeds. The Sarıyer I knew and loved was no more, vanished like its long-dead owners. Yet that Sarıyer still shines clearly for me today, just as Aunt Ayşe’s face emerges out of the mists of time, and shines too. There are some things in the heart that do not die and the loves of early childhood are the strongest loves of all.