Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale (88 page)

Their first experiences had supported their worst fears. They were initially in their civilian clothes. Nobody knew what would happen next. When they had arrived in Yozgat, there were, among the indigenous people, those who had met them with imprecations, screaming: “Down with the infidels!” But General Fevzi Çakmak, realizing the threat that these people might present, had them clothed in military uniforms. Thus, under difficult conditions, their security had been assured. A spark that might trigger a conflagration was thus to remain ineffective since no one of sound mind would attack the military. This had alleviated the generally tense atmosphere. They could not be told apart now from other military personnel. They had no other choice but to resign themselves to their fate. This would be their motto henceforth: to get accustomed to their new mode of life. This was another sort of resistance or way of clinging to life; they knew it. They had done this based on what they had learned from the past. They remembered that they should keep silent and turn inward. Nevertheless, this belief or introversion had fallen short of solving the problems in levels. The unsolved mystery about the future, having no idea about the possible end of this conscription, trying to figure out all the scenarios was enough to take them to the borders of anxiety. There was a sergeant who went around the training field during the muster roll, muttering: “Where are the bodies? Are you still alive?” Or cried during training: “Forget about Istanbul and your wives! We are to go there! Not you!” He said once they had given orders: “Jews, Armenians, and Greeks shall be split into groups!” This rumor had created unrest, especially among the Armenians, some trying to work their way into other groups. Once more they had felt the breeze of fear on their necks. They were in the province of Yozgat. There were times when one single word sufficed to generate panic. Nonetheless, the rumors proved to be groundless in the long run. The groupings of conscripts were eventually arranged for their dispatch in different directions in equal proportions. They were in a better position now to gauge their situation. They were first dispatched to Çanakkale and then to Pendik. Pendik was not within the boundaries of Istanbul at the time. It was not a place for the sort of men they were, in any case. Actually, they had begun arranging amusements among themselves. They were on good terms with the commander of the company. He himself had been given the charge of the distribution of mess. Under the prevailing conditions, this meant an influential position not to be underestimated. This had some influence on the captain who had, in return, developed confidence in him. He even benefited from this privilege, enjoying the freedom to make decisions on his own. He had ended up having the full confidence of the captain who had finally given up his patrolling and supervising duty.

Those days did not seem so bad to him now. What had differed had been the time and the place . . . One might also say that those days seemed now to fall under the term “those were the days . . . ”

The time he had spent in arms had been seven months to be exact. He had come home on leave to celebrate New Year’s Eve with his family. Actually, parting with his captain had been an almost heartrending experience. His service in the army would continue . . . Soon he would be transferred somewhere off the beaten track to where his companion from Istanbul would never be seen. They had recognized once more the indispensability of living at places removed from each other despite the common experiences and interests that had developed between them. However, they had learned how to have confidence in their fellow beings; they had learned that regardless of their respective origins, two individuals, conscious of the different places they were destined to be dispatched, had taught each other when they first met, to get to know each other and how to establish a bridge between themselves. It had not been so easy however . . . Life did not always smile on human beings.

Taxes and Muammer Bey’s bow tie

The days following his return from the army actually seemed to be a continuation of military service. His parents and Lilica were still alive. The children were growing up. He had to have confidence in the days to come, in his aspirations directed toward greater gains. He had desired to firmly believe in this, despite his being one of the minority of which he had been made conscious. This meant that he had to feel the burden of the responsibility of the entire family and of their lives. Under the circumstances, he couldn’t keep the pot boiling, that is maintaining the shop at Sultanhamam as easily as before; yet, it made sense to hold on to that belief in the face of the existing difficulties. Obstacles would be overcome step by step. The shop would attract its clientele in due time. New furniture, new features, and the streets would be regained gradually. Nonetheless, while everything was about to go smoothly, the tax on wealth and earnings leveled was to open the door to a completely new life. The tax charged for him was thirty thousand liras; this sum was not considerable in comparison to the sums levied on others. Yet, his financial means could not afford such an amount. He had invested all his means in the job, the guarantee of his future. He might have been somewhat rash in doing so, ill advised, perhaps. But the step could not be retraced. Moreover what he had left behind had taught him how to experience loss.

Succor was offered by Muammer Bey. He had inherited a fortune; a person having cultivated and refined tastes, who hardly knew the quantity of his assets and was inclined to squander his money; he was the scion of an old established family whose roots extended to Egypt. He was in his sixties at the time. His elegant and fancy suits bought in the fashionable shops abroad or exquisitely tailored at home by prominent dressmakers along with his refined manners gave the impression of a retired ambassador who once had occupied important offices abroad. However, this was a mere image of a man who inspired his peers with such an impression. Actually, he was a man of leisure; he had chosen this lifestyle as his profession. He had never had employment in his life. He harbored the conviction that work was an impediment to decent living. It was his custom to have his breakfasts at the Pera Palas hotel, he called on his tenants at Sultanhamam and Yeşildirek to receive the rents when due, which were districts for which he felt an instinctive dislike, where he discussed the political situation with a couple of friends before finally retiring to his lair. In the evenings, he went to Beyoğlu to have a light dinner. He had a frugal meal and drank rather heavily. He had special companions for such occasions, special recollections and solitudes. He never mentioned these people to others. Regardless of the time of day and of his particular outfit, he never failed to wear a bow tie. The bow tie epitomized his view on life; it was a symbol of his own terms. Nobody had ventured to solve the mystery of this symbol. Everybody had preferred to contribute to the solution of this mystery with his own interpretations and fantasies. It may be that these fantasies reflected a butterfly whose passion it was to perch successively on flowers, a carefree butterfly who tried to do what they couldn’t. Years had to go by before he could come up with this interpretation.

Muammer Bey used to shut himself up among his books in his extensive library that contained ancient works; he had a great interest in ancient manuscripts and calligraphy. He used to take down notes written in Ottoman Turkish characters. Actually, the men of his age had been perpetuating their old custom of writing. One could not possibly give up one’s old established habits. Muammer Bey was the landlord of the little shop at Sultanhamam. He had shown him his calligraphic exercises; they looked to be the work of a master calligrapher.

The tax on wealth had deeply affected Muammer Bey. He had immediately gone to his aid and extended him a loan of thirty thousand, saying: “It’s our duty to share the burden of our fellow beings.” He would never forget this generosity, in other words, this human solidarity. Two years of intensive work had enabled him to pay back his debt. Had Muammer Bey not extended him a helping hand, he would not be able to relive his past experiences in old age. There had been such people in his life; people who had guided him on the narrow paths, invisible to many, and who had made him look on life with equanimity in defiance of all outward circumstances.

An era was over. In this period when people felt despair, indignation, and wrath, which were tried to be suppressed, İsmet Pasha had proved to be the ugly face of the State which had to be shunned and dreaded. Was this unilateral attitude an injustice or his
Weltanschauung
? The immediate victims of this policy were not in a position to provide an answer to this question. A sense of having been the victim of a betrayal had penetrated into their souls. In order to forget this, one should hold out for other generations and aspirations.

Talks on the road into the night

Could the mutual attraction between black and white be truly interpreted as fate, as many people claim? In those moments full of hope that induced people to cling to life, to put up courageously with all sorts of adversities believed to have been left behind, this argument had come to the fore once more. One morning, when he got up, his mother told him she had begun seeing everything about her as though through a cloud of smoke. The doctor they consulted heralded the onset of a new era; that was something quite unexpected. No measure could remedy what was fatally determined. Death was out of the question; the fact was that she was going blind. His mother had accepted the onset of this new situation with weary resignation. She had retired to her room and preferred to commune with her past life; with the souvenirs and experiences she recalled in order to be able to listen better to her inner voice which she could not easily transmit to others. That should have been the only explanation; how otherwise could one interpret her leaving her chamber only to gobble down a few morsels of food and hardly speaking with her husband with whom she had shared so many years of her life?

The diagnosis had proved to be true. One morning, his mother woke up to a darkness that was to last for the remainder of her days. “I’ll get used to it,” she said simply. As a matter of fact, she had done; she had gotten used to it, or appeared to have done so, at least. She was to live with this condition for another fifteen years, during which time she would turn inward more and more. Seated in her armchair, she would retreat into silence, in bouts of depression. She would feel herself nearer to certain fears that certain spells might have given rise to. These were but natural, understandable, and explainable retreats. However, she would not be totally absorbed in self-centered thought as she would attain a desired object or end, accomplish what she attempted and intended, she would hold onto life to a certain extent, and continue the trends of new days with new touches, feeling new colors. She had taken the challenge of fate and stood up to it, knowing how to coexist with and endure its injustices.

Everybody had expressed his or her sorrow in their own way. Everybody had felt the necessity to revise his or her relations with Madame Perla under the circumstances. Lilica had felt that she had lost her mainstay; she had had an unshakable belief that the strongest and most reliable woman in her life would shelter her under her wings till the end of her life. This conviction of hers was her only alternative. Madame Roza had tried once again to divest her from her identity as the alien spinster of the family. As for his father, it was the period during which he would, in conjunction with his wife, revise their past and evaluate their achievements and failures, and for him it was time to assume a paternal duty with a new responsibility. From that day on they felt closer to each other. It was as though everybody had attempted to pay Madame Perla the cost of what had been acquired in the past with a true piece of themselves. Throughout the first nights, mother and son would sit for long hours talking of the days they had spent at Halıcıoğlu. He asked her to tell him about past incidents as she patiently narrated them to the best of her recollection, trying to recall all the details. These details were indispensable for both of them in order to build up a new world of confidence through legend.

Madame Perla now and then had long talks with her husband. She was inclined, however, to listen rather than to speak; the latter spoke to her about daily events, kept her informed of the developments in the outside world. They had had their legends in the past; legends rediscovered, taking different steps toward them. They lived in separate rooms; they were like two close friends under the same roof. This separation was his mother’s choice. It seemed that it was for her a preparation for the world to which she wanted to devote herself. Both reality and dream had their equal share in that world. She had become accustomed to finding her way in the house by gingerly groping along; throughout the twenty-four hours during which darkness surrounded her, she was able to manage on her own. These ways of hers they could understand; ways quite different from the road of solitude they could never approach. Certain mornings he observed bruises on his mother’s forehead or arms. When he asked her about them, she simply said: “Don’t bother! The clumsy age!” or “I bumped against the door.” The causes were all too evident. Madame Perla, who influenced people by her demeanor and attractive figure, banged her head and arms here and there during her sleepless night walks. At such moments tears rushed to his eyes; he would have liked to embrace her and kiss her. He had not taken that huge, little step at the time. The reason? Brooding on the answer to this question created in him a sense that everything seemed to have been settled. When the time came, he had already become inured to it. He had given up asking questions and probing into issues of which he had had surfeit knowledge. He knew that she gingerly wandered on certain nights in the corridors and rooms when everybody was fast asleep, touching the objects around her, especially the old ones, while holding conversations most probably with the Madame Perlas of yore in an incomprehensible language. When he woke up in the middle of the night to answer nature’s call, he had had the opportunity to see her. He knew that he had to be careful not to make any noise and leave her to manage on her own. Quite probably, they were her brightest hours, when she felt she most existed.