Portrait of a Turkish Family (8 page)

My father came into the room to decant some wine and, perhaps because I looked dejected or perhaps because İnci was not there to guard us, he told Mehmet and me to go to the salon and play there.

In the salon my uncle was drinking Turkish coffee, looking unhappy. Nobody took any notice of us so I sat down in one of the chairs and my mother looked at me, perhaps wondering why I was there. My uncle was talking about my aunt, saying that her health seemed to be getting worse. There was a peevish, worried note in his voice. Then he mentioned the farm, saying that most of the men had registered with him and who would look after things in future he did not know.

My grandmother sat very silent. She sat looking at Uncle Ahmet as if her eyes could never see enough of him, her eldest born. She was an unemotional woman but that day the tears were seldom far from her, only her fierce, high pride beating them back. I suppose she was realising for the first time in her life what war might do to families. For the first time, I think, she saw herself as a defenceless, ignorant woman who knew nothing of events outside her own small world, the world which held only sociability, women’s gossip and formality. And the last two men of her family were going from her. I am quite sure she did not pause to consider my mother’s or my aunt’s feelings. Naturally cold and a bit of a despot she only ever saw things in relation to herself. She was losing her sons, might lose them forever, but my mother and my aunt were only losing their husbands.

And although my grandmother had a high opinion of husbands she had a higher opinion of sons. It is trite to say that little escapes the eye of a child, but nevertheless it is a fact and I knew my grandmother better then, if more inchoately, than she would ever know herself. She had no time for self-analysis and the Freudian theory had not yet burst over İstanbul. My mother too I knew and the latent streak of hardness there was in her, so that in after years, when hardness had become her chief characteristic, I was not taken by surprise, having all along recognised its deep-down existence. I could not write a true picture of them today, were I not looking back with the eyes of a child to pictures I had thought dead. But just as today these pictures bring back so vividly places, scenes and conversations that are gone, so too do they recall in part the
sensations
I felt as a child.

That November day, for instance, I
knew
as if she were screaming her thoughts aloud what was going through my grandmother’s head. When she asked my uncle to stay for luncheon I knew she was prolonging the fatal moment of goodbye and when he refused she seemed to shrink into herself, looking small and lonely in her tall chair. He said he had many things to attend to in Sarıyer and was anxious about my aunt and all the time he carefully avoided her eyes, perhaps feeling if he looked at her too closely he too would break down.

Presently he stood up to go and I can still see his tall figure dark against the windows.

‘I shall be leaving tomorrow,’ he said and when my grandmother enquired for where he shrugged his massive shoulders and replied that he did not know.

He leaned over his mother, kissing her hands, and she murmured a prayer over his bent, dark head and one hand escaped from his kiss to tenderly stroke his cheek. Uncle Ahmet swung Mehmet on his shoulders, took my hand in his and went out to the hall. My father said he would accompany him to Galata Bridge and my uncle beat his foot impatiently whilst İnci helped my father into his overcoat. Then they were ready and we were kissed. My uncle put his hand over my hair and I saw his mouth suddenly quiver and my inadequate heart longed to comfort him. Down the short path they went to the street and at the corner they turned to wave to us, then they were hidden from our view and we went back into the house again, Mehmet and I – two small boys who knew of no way to relieve the partings.

That evening Orhan Bey came to bid us farewell. He too was off the next morning to a place he did not know. We drank his health and wished him well, Mehmet and I holding our glasses high with the others. And down the street the drums beat for someone else. For in those days going away to the war, any war, was a brave and noble thing to do and as the young men left a district so the band would play outside each of their houses, the Turkish flag being handed to the newest recruit. And all the youth with their wild, wild hearts leaped and danced and shouted, the better to drown the noise of the women’s weeping. When they were leaving their homes the band played a song of unbelievable sadness and everyone started to sing:

(‘Oh wounded ones I am coming to take your place and my heart is crying because I am leaving my beloved ones. The mountains and the stones cry with me … ’)

Orhan Bey bade us farewell and left for his own home and in the street the band still played.

Again the next day my father hunted for bread and once again tried to see my uncle. He came home very late and my grandmother immediately asked if he had seen him.

‘Yes,’ replied my father, ‘I caught a glimpse of him as they marched him away.’

‘And did he look well in his uniform?’ demanded my grandmother eagerly.

My father said gently: ‘He had no uniform. All the men wore their own clothes and carried bags on their shoulders. They had no marching boots and armed soldiers kept between them and the crowd. And all their wives and mothers and sweethearts were there. I followed with the crowd and they were put in a building in Sirkeci. We all waited, hoping for a sight of them but nothing happened and in the end the soldiers guarding the building sent us away.’

My father ceased talking and his eyes looked bitter. He had seen Uncle Ahmet ordered and pushed and prodded by the butts of the guns of the peasant soldiers. He had seen a soldier kick one of the men but he did not tell these things before my grandmother.

The next day my mother prepared a bag for my father, made like the bags the other men had been carrying across their unaccustomed shoulders. Nobody mentioned anything about his going but we all knew the day would come. So my mother sewed a bag for him, a coarse white linen bag which she sewed with exquisite stitchery. And I think she sewed her heart into that bag too for after my father had gone we who were left saw nothing of her heart.

My father’s business had been sold and now he spent the days at home, awaiting his turn with horror and impatience at their delay. It seemed as if the Government would never call him and now that he knew he would have to go he wanted to be away, to be done with the waiting that tore the heart and whitened the cheeks.

But the day came at last. The same drum beat out its poignant message, the same Bekçi Baba stood under the same lamp and delivered his ultimatum: ‘Men born between 1886 and 1892 must report to the Recruiting Centre during the next forty-eight hours. Who fails to do so will be prosecuted … ’

And dan-dan-da-da-dan-dan mocked the drum.

My father had been called at last and we thought that nothing worse than this could ever happen to us.

He went the next day to the Recruiting Centre and all the remaining young men of the district seemed to go with him. When he returned I was in bed but I was not sleeping, even though I could not hear what they talked about. It was a grey day when he left us, a grey, cold day in early December, and because so many others were leaving with him, the band was going to play them all out together, from the lives they had always known to the bleakness of the battlefield. Feride packed the coarse linen bag with cakes and pies and other delicacies she had prepared for him. My father stood in the middle of the salon, already gone from us in spirit and he looked about him for the last time. His face was secretive and closed, an alien, soldier’s face that had no right in this elegant, smiling room. My mother stood close beside him and she too had that alien, shut-away look. But my poor, huddled grandmother, who could not go to where these two had gone, sat in the windows and listened for the drums that would take away her youngest son. İnci brought in Turkish coffee, Feride following with the packed linen bag and Mehmet ran to pull at her skirts, not understanding what all this fuss was about or that his father was going away. I went to my father and put my arms around him and he lifted me up in his arms.

‘You will be father from now on,’ he said and I pressed my head against his face and felt a tear drop on my cheek. Whose tear was it, mine or his? Perhaps it fell from both of us for tears tormented both of us. Feride and İnci burst into loud wailing, their soft hearts inexpressibly touched but my mother stared dry-eyed. She had, I think, shed all the tears she would ever shed in some more private place than this. And now her frozen heart was able to look on this farewell scene with almost-tranquillity.

My grandmother prayed without stopping and then she began to mutter: ‘My eldest son and my youngest son. My eldest son and my youngest son. They have taken you both.’

The distant drums began and my father put me down, drinking his coffee quickly. He said: ‘Şevkiye! Don’t look like that! Smile for me. I shall come back again – ’

And my mother’s frozen face relaxed to give him her old, dazzling smile and my father said to her: ‘You would make a better soldier than I.’

They stood there facing each other, smiling their brilliant smiles, not touching each other yet indissolubly merged into each other. The band came nearer and now we clearly heard the drums and the zurna and the shouting of the following children.

My mother’s eyes flew away from my father’s and the lovely miracle was broken. She picked up his heavy bag and handed it to him and they kissed like strangers, those two who had no need of kissing. My grandmother held out her hand for his gesture and Feride and İnci then came forward to pay their tribute to him. They were crying bitterly and he patted their heads, as if they were children again, like Mehmet and me. He swung his bag over his shoulder and went to the front door and the crowd that waited outside. The band played softly and mournfully and my father kissed us children, then said his goodbye with lips that were wooden and stiff.

An old man came forward and handed him the Turkish flag and the people all shouted ‘
Padişahim çok yaşa
’ and my father stepped into his place, amongst the other recruits. The waving and the cheering went wildly on but there was no need to drown the weeping from our house, for the women did not weep. They stood there gently smiling and the band played for my father: 

Then they turned the corner, out of our sight, only the sound of the cheering and the singing voices and the noise of the band, coming ever fainter back to us.  

We did not know where they were taking my father, and although we asked Bekçi Baba, he could only say that the Recruiting Centre might have some information.

The next day Feride was sent to enquire and came back to tell us that my father’s age-group were at the Hasan Paşa Mosque, waiting to be sent away. My mother was excited and bade my grandmother get ready to accompany us to the mosque, as perhaps we would be able to catch a glimpse of my father before he left. We made our way through the crowded streets, my mother and my grandmother heavily veiled, the latter volubly protesting at having to walk, and lamenting loudly for the vanished Murat and the phaeton.

Hasan Paşa Mosque was built in a garden, high above the street. When we got there there were many other women and children, also come to try and see their menfolk before they left İstanbul. Crowded in the garden were the soldiers, looking down at us and searching for their loved ones. One of the soldiers shouted down to us, calling my
grandmother
by name and telling us that my father was somewhere in the garden. We looked at the soldier wonderingly, for who was this
rough-looking
person who dared to call my grandmother by her name? Suddenly my mother recognised him, telling us that it was the man who lived opposite us. I could hardly believe her. That soldier in his drab, grey uniform, with his hair cut close against his head, could surely not be the elegant gentleman from across the way – who had so proudly carried his wife on his arm each evening, when taking her for a stroll? It was impossible: where was the similarity between this soldier and the
frock-coated
, fezzed man from across the street?

Tension increased as I saw my father walking to the edge of the garden. There was quite fifteen feet between us and the garden stood so high from the ground that it was not possible to see each other clearly.

My grandmother called to him, asking if there was anything he wanted but he shook his head and said, sternly: ‘Take the children home and do not come here any more.’

So we waved our handkerchiefs to him and left. There was nothing else to do. We could not wait there all night and we could not bring my father home again. A few days after this we learned he had been moved to Selimiye, on the Anatolian side, for training, and one day my mother took me there with her, hoping to see my father. But it was impossible and we returned wearily home. When we arrived home, we found that Madame Müjğan and her children were with my grandmother and my mother begged them to stay for dinner, for I think she felt their presence would help us forget our father’s absence. It seemed odd to have guests without my father being there, and to see my mother sitting in his place, at the head of the table. The talk was naturally about the war and their absent menfolk. My grandmother inclined still to grumble over changed conditions. She was horrified by the war-lust manifest in the bloodthirsty youth of the district, the only youth she ever saw and those only from her window, for she could not be persuaded to go out on foot. And she was piously indignant that the Sultan and his Government should be so inconsiderate as to leave all the women without their men to protect them.

But we others were growing accustomed to the idea of war, and even to the absence of my father. My mother seemed a different person without him, more competent now that she had not his shoulder to lean on, more decisive and less inclined to sit doing pretty, useless embroidery. She made an effort to instil some scholarship into me, since there was no school to which I could be sent, but it was not a success. She had not the teacher’s patience and I no inclination to learn from her. She was very affectionate with us, but curiously detached, and it was not possible for a child to want to run to her or sob against her shoulder his small fears. We children appeared to be the merest incidents in her life and my father a sort of god.

One day Aunt Ayşe came to visit us, bringing a tall, gaunt maid with her as chaperone. She looked very thin and was distressed at having to travel without my uncle, saying that the noise and confusion in the streets frightened her. She asked for news of my father and my mother told her where he was and she replied that Uncle Ahmet was outside Turkey altogether. Then sat twisting her hands, as though that knowledge was a fearful knowledge to hold and to be outside his country the most terrible thing that could happen to Uncle Ahmet. During dinner that night she ate little, although Feride had been at pains to prepare all her favourite dishes. She sipped a little red wine and coughed continuously, apologising blushingly, saying that she had had this cough for many months now and that it would not go or respond to the various herbal treatments her cook had recommended.

During dinner Feride appeared with a letter for my mother. It had been brought by the batman of a certain captain, whom we knew very well. He said that my father was well but unable to write, for he was undergoing a very rigorous officers’ training which for some reason or another made it impossible for him to communicate with my mother himself. The captain went on to say that at the end of the initial training period, probably by the coming weekend, my father would be given a few days leave.

Feride stood by whilst my mother read this out to us and she was as excited as the rest of us and there and then began to plan what my father would be given to eat. My aunt smiled wistfully. But my grandmother triumphantly held out her glass for more wine and said: ‘You see! They will make him an officer. Did I not tell you that always?’

Then we all drank my father’s health and felt proud and happy. İnci was despatched to tell Madame Müjğan of the good news and to request that she should come and drink coffee with us. Mehmet and I were taken to bed but the women sat long in the salon, their happy voices floating up the stairs and my mother’s laughter now and then ringing out purely – just as in the days when my father had always been with us.

Aunt Ayşe left for Sarıyer and we had two more days to prepare for my father’s arrival. In those days the Muslim weekend was Thursday and Friday and no cleaning could be done during that time. Thursday morning dawned clear and cold and İnci had no time to waste with Mehmet and me. Once we were dressed we were severely cautioned not to get ourselves dirtied, but a twinkle lurked behind the severe voice for today was a happy day, not to be spoiled by tears. That day the house was enchanted. Clean curtains were hung in the main rooms, a great orgy of polishing went on and silk cloths and lace cloths were put everywhere – just as at Bayram. But this was better than Bayram for our father was coming home.

Many neighbours called and my mother drank endless cups of Turkish coffee with them. My grandmother held a sort of court among them, all five fingers of one hand decorated with exquisite rings and jewels blazing about her neck. She was her old, arrogant, despotic self again and commanded royally.

Feride and İnci worked like slaves. Flowers were found and arranged, glasses polished until they shone with a thousand eyes and silver made a note of glory against the mellow walnut of the great buffet. Morning slipped by into afternoon and still my father did not come. Mehmet and I waited for hours in front of the door, until finally the raw air drove us shivering indoors. Everywhere in the house was a sense of expectancy. The hall was all a-glitter with the sheen from the freshly polished floor and with the reflection of the giant silver trays in the patina of the table – an English table my great-grandfather had once brought back from his travels. A copper
mangal
– a sort of brazier – gave off heat to thaw a cold and weary voyager and the chrysanthemums from Sarıyer glowed brightly in a corner. The house waited for its master and nothing more remained to be done. But still the afternoon flew until it was evening and time for İnci to light the six tall lamps in the salon and the smaller ones in the hall.

Mehmet and I were disconsolate. Would our father not come after all? We opened the front door, for a last peep into the evening gloom, letting in such a gust of cold air that İnci sharply ordered us to close the door immediately. But I had seen a soldier turning the corner and I thought it was the captain’s batman come with another message and I shouted to my mother to come. The soldier called to me and then I knew it was not the captain’s batman after all, but my father. I ran to him, throwing myself with violence into his outstretched arms and Mehmet came flying after me. We went into the house together and there was my mother in the hall, all a-tremble with happiness and flushed rosy red, wearing a wine velvet dress and rubies to glorify her neck.

Such laughter and tears there were suddenly, such excited question and answer, for the master of the house was home again, and the old house creaked in its joints and sat back content to shelter such radiance.

My father looked drab in his uniform and said he only longed for a bath and a change of linen, for the coarse Army under-linen chafed his skin.

He was gay and talkative, glad to be home again, hiding his unhappiness at being in the Army. He said he would be training for several more months, adding that that was all to the good since it meant he would remain at Selimiye and might occasionally be permitted to come home. He mentioned the Commanding Officer, a man who had been a great friend of my grandfather’s but he only touched lightly on him, saying that one could not expect favours in the Army. German officers were attached to the unit, Prussian upstarts he called them, adding that there was no love lost between the Turkish officers and the strutting Germans.

My mother shone quietly for the two days he was at home but on the last evening I wandered into the salon on a conversation that was to puzzle me for a long time.

‘ … anything may happen,’ my father was saying earnestly, adding, ‘but if I am not here at that time, I would like the baby to be called Muazzez – or Arif, if it is another boy.’

Here I saw the ever-alert İnci look across to them – she was pouring coffee at a side table – and I was intensely curious, wondering what baby they were talking about. I had not the courage to ask questions and, in any case, the subject was abruptly dropped since my father noticed the proximity of İnci and my own staring face.

When my father left to return to his unit everyone was cheerful, for this time we knew that he was only going as far as Selimiye and might soon be again with us.

‘Au revoir,’ my mother called gaily to his hand-wave and Mehmet and I remained to watch him out of sight.

Then we went back to İnci and daily routine and we none of us knew that this was the real goodbye.

Some weeks later a letter was brought from my father. My mother kept that letter all through her life and it is in my possession today – almost the only souvenir left from those times:

My mother cried over this letter but my grandmother was offended because my father had not mentioned her and sulked a little for the ingratitude of all sons when they take a wife. Mehmet and I were excited to be going to the rail-tracks. They ran across the bottom of the big waste field behind our house and although they could not be seen from the house, very often one heard the rumble of the infrequent trains. It seemed very romantic to us that our father should travel in such a fearsome monster as a train and we bitterly envied him. İnci said to me that day: ‘Perhaps soon you will have a baby brother or sister; shall you like that?’

‘No!’ I replied, appalled by the thought of a new baby in the house for perhaps some subconscious memory lingered from Mehmet’s babyhood, when I had been continually hushed into silence.

‘But perhaps it will be a lovely baby sister,’ persisted İnci until she finally aroused my curiosity.

‘Who will bring it?’ I wanted to know.

‘One of the pigeons in the garden, one of
your
pigeons, will bring it from your father.’

‘This morning?’ I asked, ‘or tomorrow when we go to the tracks to see my father?’

‘No, silly!’ said İnci.

I lost interest immediately, uninterested in the arrival of such a remote baby.

‘Did my pigeons tell you?’ I asked finally, not quite able to entirely dismiss the subject, and when İnci replied that they had I sat and thought about her words, then dragged Mehmet off to the garden to look for the knowledgeable pigeons. They strutted at the bottom of the garden and thought we had brought bread for them. And to all my questions they only answered ‘Coo-coo’, in their soft, throaty voices. Mehmet maddened me by rushing at them, his arms flapping, and they took fright and circled irritatingly above my head.

‘Tell me!’ I shouted at them, and they replied, ‘Coo-coo’, ‘coo-coo’, curving and diving and circling and I sadly decided that İnci must have some very special knowledge of pigeon-language.

Next morning we were wrapped in heavy overcoats and scarves and taken with my mother and my grandmother to the bottom of the waste field, where we could see all the passing trains. It was bitterly cold and many trains passed that day, all of them overflowing with soldiers who shouted and sang and waved to us but my father was not amongst them. Trainload after trainload passed us and still he did not come and after two hours we children were almost crying with the cold, stamping our feet in an effort to keep warm.

‘Perhaps he had already gone,’ said my mother, her voice despairing. ‘Perhaps he passed this way when we were still sleeping.’