Portrait of a Turkish Family (19 page)

‘Now you know the market price, per gramme,’ reminded my mother sternly. ‘And do not sell it at all if you do not get the right price!’

‘Certainly not!’ snapped my grandmother importantly, just as though the house was filled with money and we had no further need of any more.

Off she went, the tray hastily and shamefully wrapped in brown paper but so eager to show itself off that bits of it peeped through and winked and sparkled at us all down the street. And all the neighbours gasped with admiration and said what a beautiful tray it was and were we not blessed by God to have such a thing to sell in these hard times? All the morning we and the neighbours waited for my grandmother to return – they speculating on the price the tray would fetch and I was almost dizzy with disbelief as I heard the
liras
mounting by the hundred for, in those days, one hundred
liras
by itself was worth a thousand or more today. The old men and the young women and even the children counted up how much she would get and once I ran into my mother, gasping and choking with the piles of undigested
liras
ringing in my ears.

‘I know
exactly
how much she will get,’ said my mother severely; ‘or nearly – ’ she amended. ‘We had it weighed on
bakkal
’s scales yesterday, so run off now and do not listen to the neighbours’ nonsense!’

And off I went, disappointed by my mother’s matter-of-fact tone of voice.

When my grandmother was sighted, slowly ascending the hilly street, the crowd surged forward to meet her, but I was fleetest of all and reached her first. I knew the moment I saw her that she had been successful for she carried her head proudly again – a sure sign of triumph in my family. There were many packages in her hands, and tucked under her arm of all things a bottle of wine! She handed some of the packages to me but refused to surrender the wine and home we marched with the excited, talkative neighbours, who were much too polite to ask how much she had got, yet who knew her well enough by now to recognise victory in her step.

‘Well!’ said my mother’s voice at the door, ‘well, you are a disgrace, mother! How did you ever carry a bottle of wine through the streets – like a drunkard?’

‘I missed my wine with dinner,’ roared my grandmother, for all the world as though dinner was still a habit in our house. ‘And what is more,’ she added, ‘I have fresh coffee here and sugar from the Bourse Noir so let us invite our good neighbours to drink to our good fortune.’

In surged the ready neighbours, up the stairs and into the salon, all of them politely removing their shoes before they trod the precious Sparta carpets. They were as happy as if the good luck of this day had been theirs and helped my mother dispense coffee and cognac and lifted their cups and glasses to shout: ‘
Güle-Güle! Mahşallah, hanım efendi!
’ (Good luck! God bless you!)

And we were all overcome with emotion and the easy tears of old age started to the eyes of some of the older ones.

‘Now we can buy plenty of good food,’ shouted my grandmother, waving her coffee cup in the air excitedly. ‘And clothes for the children – ’ she added, her eye catching mine.

And I dreamed of bright picture-books and scrapbooks and a box of paints to carry me through the autumn days. I do not know how much my grandmother got for that old salver but I think it was more than she and my mother had anticipated, mathematics not being their strong point. And it is a funny thing too but when we had enough money in the house again, so that we need not worry for a long time to come, more came in unexpectedly – as is sometimes the way in life. So that from appalling poverty we jumped to comparative affluence in the space of a few weeks.

It came about because my mother started to embroider again, supplying orders to the bigger shops in Beyoğlu. Tray-cloths, tablecloths,
pillowcases
, babies’ dresses, all passed through her nimble fingers. She used to design and trace her own patterns which gave a touch of uniqueness to her work, an individuality that was liked by the discriminating foreign customers of the big shops. So the machine lay idle again, relegated to the kitchen, where it was forgotten for months on end until my grandmother suddenly had a passion for making new clothes for us. Muazzez began to look like a little doll, usually dressed all in white with exquisite embroidery done by my mother and two white bows atop her brown hair. She was developing into a winning and imperious little girl, very like my
grandmother
in temperament, ruthlessly bullying Mehmet and me into performing small duties for her. My grandmother was very proud of her and spent hours each day on her clustering curls.

‘She is really going to be a great beauty,’ she would say to a bored Mehmet and me, ‘and one day she will marry a very rich man. You will see!’

And Muazzez, already vain, became vainer.

I had become very restless at home and was often insubordinate. My mother worried incessantly about my education, but all the schools were still disorganised and many teachers had never come back from the war. I used to haunt the streets, playing a corrupted version of football near the gardens of the mosque, for I had nothing to keep my mind constantly occupied. My mother and I used to have fierce and bitter quarrels and, because I could not bear being confined to the house, I took to roaming farther and farther away from home. No doubt had I had a father to discipline me I should never have dared to do these things, but I would not listen to my mother or grandmother, flying into a passion if they attempted to interfere with me.

My mother was rebelling against life too – but for a different reason. Her rebellion was, unexpectedly enough, against wearing the veil, for she had noticed that none of the foreign women wore them and that even a few of the more daring Turkish women from good families had ceased the practice also. She used to complain about it to my grandmother, declaring she was sick and tired of keeping her face covered, and I would interrupt, with lordly ten-year oldness, saying I would not have her going about the streets with her face open. I would chastise her too for her many goings-out.

‘You are never at home,’ I would declare and although usually I was told to mind my own affairs, one day I was very surprised when my grandmother actually agreed with me.

‘It is quite true,’ she said heatedly. ‘You are always out these days. And it is not right for you to complain that you have to wear the veil. Why, many women are still behind the
kafes
and they never see the colour of the sky, excepting from behind their veils. But at least you cannot complain of that for you tore the
kafes
from here and it is a wonder to me that you were ever accepted in this street, for you behaved exactly like a fast woman looking for another husband or like a prostitute. Yes, you did!’ she assured my mother’s astonished face. ‘And now you talk of leaving aside your veil. Why, I lived for thirty years with my husband and I never went out without his permission and I had to keep my face covered all the time. If I went out in the carriage with Murat, immediately all the windows were closed and sometimes the blinds were drawn too. I say it is a scandal that women are today revealing their faces. God will punish them! Do not let me hear another word from you, my daughter, for surely the sky will open on you for such impiety.’

Never had I heard my grandmother talk at such length or with such obvious passion. My mother replied: ‘You are talking a great deal of
old-fashioned
nonsense, mother! My place is not in the home these days. If I were to sit at home all day, or you either for that matter, who would go to market for us? Do you expect me to stay here all day, reading the Koran and wearing my veil for fear the passers-by should see me from the street? I tell you again, from now on I shall go without my veil!’

And she angrily tore the pretty veil from her face and threw it petulantly on the floor.

My grandmother lifted her hands to heaven.

‘I never thought I should live to see this day,’ she said.

‘Times are changing,’ said my mother.

‘They will say you are a prostitute!’ wailed my grandmother, genuinely distressed, totally incapable of accepting such a fierce gesture as the ‘opening’ of the face.

‘If they do, it will not worry me,’ retorted my mother. ‘Their words will not bring bread to me. And from now on, you will throw aside your veil too, mother.’

‘Oh no, no, no!’ said my grandmother in superstitious horror. ‘God forbid I should invite punishment upon me!’

But the next morning when my mother went into Beyoğlu, with a box of embroidered articles under her arm and her lovely face naked to the world, she was stoned by some children near Bayazit and received a nasty cut on the side of her head. After that she was cautious about going anywhere alone, but was adamant about not reveiling herself; Mehmet or I would go with her to Beyoğlu, my grandmother steadfastly refusing to be seen with her. The reaction to her in the street was mixed. The older ones were stricken with horror, more especially since they had always recognised my mother as a good woman, and now their faith in her was sadly battered. She was still young and attractive – she was twenty-five –  and despite the shadows that lingered now and then in her eyes, was so unusually beautiful that people could not help but stare at her, and certain sections of the street wondered if she were trying to catch a husband. They came in their droves, the old men as well, to remonstrate with my grandmother, urging her to put a stop to this terrible thing, and my grandmother, thoroughly enjoying herself, would groan to them that she had no authority left in this wayward family of hers. But the younger women sided with my mother, and some of them even began to follow her example. Their fathers, however, in the absence of dead husbands, took a stick to them muttering piously that no woman in their family would so disgrace themselves. So they put on their veils again in a hurry.

Not a few wished to apply the chastening stick to my mother also. They gave my grandmother sympathy until she was sick of it and prophesied gloomily – but with a little bit of anticipatory relish too, I think – that my mother would come to a bad end.

And indeed she very nearly did!

For one day in Bayazit, when she was alone, an impressionable
Frenchman
attempted to flirt with her. She tried walking hurriedly on but this had no effect at all, or if anything a worse effect, for the gallant Frenchman became more than ever aware of the swing of her silk skirts and the little dark curls that twined so coquettishly at the nape of her neck. Naturally he followed her. And all the little boys of the district became aware, as is the way of all little boys, of the one-sided flirtation which was in progress. And naturally enough they followed the tall Frenchman, so there was that day in Bayazit the very, very unusual sight of a young Turkish woman, with open face, followed by a foreigner and an innumerable number of small, dirty-nosed boys. When my mother made the mistake of stopping, trying to explain in her totally inadequate French that the gentleman was making a great mistake, he took off his hat, bowed elegantly and declared with obvious feeling: ‘Vous êtes ravissante!’

And all the small boys who could not understand a word of what he said, cheered or jeered, according to their several temperaments, and my mother – very properly – hurried on, blushing and breathless and perhaps wishing a little bit for the security of her veil.

So it was that when she came down our street, with her procession behind her, the neighbours were more than ever scandalised and ran into their houses to tell the ones inside. But when my mother called out to them in Turkish that she was being followed, and very much against her will, they set to with a vengeance and brought out sticks and brooms and shooed off the gallant representative of Gallicism in no uncertain manner. Mehmet and I, who were watching the whole proceedings from the window, were bursting with laughter but my poor grandmother was quite ready to die with shame.

‘Such a disgrace!’ she kept saying. ‘We shall never be able to live in this street again.’

But in this she was wrong for when the street had finally disposed of the amorous Frenchman, and a few old men had in fact chased him halfway to Bayazit with tin buckets in their hands, to break his head, the street settled down again to lethargy, exonerating my mother from all blame. All excepting the old women, that is.

Still the problem of my schooling was unsettled. It was eventually decided that I should be sent to a private school, but when my mother enquired about these, she found that Turkish was excluded from the curriculum and this made her so cross that she said she would rather keep me at home. Whilst she continued the search, I roamed the streets, usually with boys older than myself, defiant to all discipline, impatient of the slightest restraint. A few of the old men attempted to advise me, but their outworn, futile shibboleths so infuriated me that I threatened to run away somewhere if my grandmother did not stop enlisting the aid of these doddering, antiquated people.

Then my mother had a talk with the local İmam, and the decision they reached was very unpleasant for me, although I did not know that at the time.

They decided that as schooling was, for the moment, impossible, the next best thing to keep me out of mischief was to put me somewhere as an apprentice. Although really, apprentice sounds far too grand a word to apply in the circumstances, since I was only to remain ‘apprenticed’ until such times as a school could be found for me.

They chose a barber’s shop.

I was practically incoherent with ten-year-old rage when they told me, and point blank refused to go. But the İmam, with indescribable cunning, painted such a rosy picture of my independence, of the ‘tips’ I would get, of the fascination of perhaps one day owning my
own
barber’s saloon. What with one thing and another, he talked me into enthusiasm, my mother and grandmother for once having the wisdom to remain silent. Though I suspect their silence had something to do with previous warnings from the İmam, a capable man who liked to take matters into his own hands. By whatever hypnotism was employed I found myself the next day being taken to the barber’s shop, only a few streets from our house.