Portrait of a Turkish Family (16 page)

‘But are you sure?’ my mother had pleaded, impotent against such open, uncaring cruelty. ‘I have received no confirmation from you. Why did you not let me know before this, without my having to come here?’

The official had broken into her words brutally, saying: ‘
Hanım
, your husband is dead, and with so many dead and dying we
cannot
be expected to notify everyone!’

My mother, remembering, said that he had spoken with great petulance, as though she and all the other unhappy women waiting here were in some way responsible for the deaths of their menfolk, thereby causing this gallant young man a great deal of unnecessary trouble.

She had wanted to ask him something else but he had forestalled her, slamming the wooden window-shutter in her face, so that she had been forced to retire. She said that all about her the women were being treated in the same way. Crying, wailing, beseeching for information, old ones and young ones with babies, being unceremoniously pushed back from the enquiry windows. Then one woman, driven beyond endurance, commenced to shout insults whilst she held her startled baby above her head.

‘Dogs!’ she had shouted passionately. ‘My husband left five children behind him, and a mother to support. Are
you
going to support them, you miserable sons of bitches? Did my husband ask to be taken from his work and his family to fight for people like you? Will you give us food to put in our hungry stomachs? Do you care if we go hungry and naked, if strange men insult us in the streets or if our children die of disease and starvation? Our husbands died to save their country and then bastards like you shut the windows in our faces, because we ask for news – ’

She had been roughly handled by the police and dragged, screaming further abuse, from the building. My mother, retelling her story, became heated for the injustice done to that woman and to all the women of Turkey.

‘She was right, right!’ she insisted passionately to my grandmother’s disdainful face. ‘And she was no street-woman either and she would never have said what she did say without provocation. We didn’t ask for this war. My poor, wise Hüsnü was right when he once said that the conceit of a few men could ruin our country.’

She commenced to cry bitterly, my grandmother stirring uneasily in her chair. She was so deaf that she had heard only part of my mother’s speech and she did not know what to do to give comfort.

My mother raised her head to look at my grandmother.

‘If we had not had your money,’ she said to her listening, straining face, ‘we could not have survived. There are thousands who have nothing; still the Government ignores them and leaves them to die in the streets. Is this what our men went to fight for? Did my husband leave me for this? If there is a God above He must show mercy to the widows and orphans who are left!
If
there is a God above!’

My grandmother’s half-silent ears had caught some of the last words and her lined face puckered with distress.

‘No!’ she protested gently. ‘Do not call upon God in that way. You will be punished, my child. It is not right for us to question His ways.’

‘Ach!’ said my mother in disgust. ‘Will He feed us, mother? Will He come down from His heaven and put food in my children’s hungry stomachs?’

My grandmother strained pitifully to catch the angry words and shook her head protestingly.

‘No, no!’ she repeated. ‘It is not right to talk like this. Have you not had enough punishment? Do you want to see your children struck dead or blinded before your eyes?’

Her direful words made us shiver with horror. My mother said to her: ‘You are old, mother. You will never understand what it is to lose your husband when you are young, to know that never again will you be able to lie beside him at the end of the day or to feel his warm body close along the line of your back. Your day is finished and you lost your husbands when all passion had gone from you long ago. But I lost mine before my body had time to wither. All the young and the brave are dying and only the women and the helpless children are left. And our good Sultan keeps to his Palace and assesses the worth of a man in terms of money and will give me ninety-nine
kuruş
a month, to compensate me for the loss of my husband. My husband who was young and strong and who rots in some grave we do not know where. Ninety-nine
kuruş
!’

‘
What
is the ninety-nine
kuruş
?’ asked my grandmother, bellowing in her anxiety so that Mehmet and I trembled.

‘The pension I shall receive for myself and my three children,’ replied my mother.

‘Pension?’ queried my grandmother, not fully understanding anything, I think, but anxious to appear intelligent to the passionate young woman who faced her across the table.

My mother carefully kept her patience to explain.

‘A pension is money you receive from the Government if you have lost your husband in the war. They have decided to give me ninety-nine
kuruş
because that is all Hüsnü was worth to them. I have lost my home because we are at war. Ahmet is dead and Ayşe – and Sarıyer will soon be less than a memory. My children grow and must be fed and you and I cling to life because sometimes it is easier to live than to die. Bread is fifty
kuruş
a kilo and lasts us one day, two if we go hungry, and a man at the Treasury today congratulated me because I gave a man to the war. “God has blessed you,” he said, “your husband died
şehit
(for his country) and his place is in heaven – and now, if you will just sign here please – ” and he gave me the paper which said I was willing to accept ninety-nine
kuruş
for my husband.’

Her passionate voice broke and she sat staring into space, her eyes full of the saddest dreams and curiously but not frighteningly so, oblivious of her family about her. My grandmother noisily sipped her soup but spoke no word for her deafness gave her a remoteness from life and she could not always follow my mother’s tripping tongue.

The first time my mother went to collect her pension, I went with her, to the building that is today the İstanbul College. Everywhere was crowded with pushing, shouting women and the queues reached far down the street. But they were not the orderly, disciplined queues that I came to know so well in wartime England during the Second World War. No indeed! These queues could scarcely be called queues at all, since they consisted for the most part of women shrieking insults and imprecations at each other, pushing each other out of the way and arguing spiritedly with the police who, for a time, tried to instil some sense of decorum into the crowds. But the women, en masse, were too much for the police, so they left them to fight out their battles.

My mother and I awaited our turn, she with considerable asperity, and if anyone attempted to take her place, she rounded on them so venomously that the attacker was forced to retire. Her sharp, uncompromising attitude brooked no interference and I admired her for being able to defend herself against these rough women.

When it was our turn at the pay-window, she took the money offered, handed it to me and told me to buy sultanas for myself.

The official said sharply: ‘The Government gives you that money for food, sister, not to give it as pocket money to your children. Or are you too rich to need this money?’

My mother turned to him viciously, returning to where he stood at the little window, lightly pushing aside the woman who was awaiting her money.

‘Your job,’ said my mother, with remarkable self-control, ‘is to attend to the people who come here, not to give them advice for we none of us need your advice’ – a cheer went up from the other women – ‘I wonder how much your munificent Sultan pays you in a month? Enough to feed your family well? I do not think so, for your suit, God help you, is a disgrace to you and your thin body looks so weak that it is no wonder they did not send you to fight the English. If I give the money I receive here to my son, for sweetmeats, it is all I consider it to be worth. I came here to collect a pension, not to listen to your uncalled-for advice.’

‘I’ll have you arrested – ’ spluttered the young man, very red in the face, and I shook with terror for I thought perhaps he could really do this.

And my mother’s clear voice rang out challengingly: ‘Try to have me arrested!’

And the voices of the other women rose threateningly, against the arrival of two policemen, who remained however at the edge of the crowd, not yet brave enough to wade through that angry, milling crowd, to lay hands on my mother.

The women shouted hoarsely: ‘Well spoken, sister!’

And they moved protectingly about her, ready to defend her if the police came too near. She stood staring at the hesitant police, her head thrown back proudly, but they made no move towards her. She moved through the ranks of women, her head still high. Some of the women caught her sleeve as she passed and cried: ‘God bless you,
hanım efendi
!’

And the police made no attempt to touch her, even though the words she had spoken that morning were treacherous in old Turkey.

After that episode she did not ever again go to collect the meagre pension but would let me go, for I used to buy nuts or sultanas for myself and Mehmet. But one morning I too had a never-to-be-forgotten experience and after that the pension lay forgotten for none of us bothered to claim it.

That last day I went, the crowds were as thick as ever and I patiently awaited my turn. Although many people left the pay-windows, still so many more were entering the hall that I never seemed to get any nearer to receiving money. I swallowed my fear of the fierce women and pushed my way between them, sometimes crawling under them, ignoring the threats of the angry men and succeeded in almost reaching one of the windows. There was a tall man behind me and, seeing that I was not tall enough to reach up to the ledge with the pay-book, he lifted me up. Then, to my intense embarrassment, he quickly inserted his fingers into the crutch of my short pants and I wriggled and shouted like a mad thing. My threshing legs hit a young woman on the side of the head and she angrily beat me. The man who held me continued with his investigations and I screamed wildly and tried to hit out at him. There was an ominous muttering from the crowd and I struggled to free myself, easy now, for the man had partially released me. I almost fell to the floor, hurt and bewildered that anyone should want to do such things, and I fled through the crowds, the pension-book forgotten.

I ran home as fast as my legs could carry me, although they were trembling so much that I do not suppose I really made very much progress. When I got home I sobbed out the whole story to my astonished mother and I saw her mouth tighten, then she bade me wash myself and to say nothing of this to Mehmet.

Afterwards she explained: ‘When you are older I shall tell you all these things, for now I am your father and your mother. But always remember that, to certain men, boys are more valuable than girls, especially a nicelooking boy like you.’

She said no more, beyond adding that I must try to put this day out of my head.

But it was hard to put this memory behind me. The shock had been so intense that for many a long day afterwards I flew like the wind from every man I met. And right through childhood and youth the suspicion remained, and all men were potential enemies. 

My grandmother was ageing fast. She still read from the Koran each day and latterly had taken to accusing my mother of trying to get another husband. She would mumble that nobody wanted her any more, that her money would soon be finished and that once my mother had married again she would never be allowed to see her grandchildren. She wallowed in
self-pity
, refusing to listen when my mother explained that she had not the slightest intention of remarrying. She shouted everything out in her loud voice for the whole neighbourhood to hear. One day she bellowed to the widow, who was passing the door, to come up and drink coffee with her whilst she told all her troubles to her. The widow being a kindly soul forgot the many times my grandmother had snubbed her almost out of existence and declared herself willing to drink coffee. She entered the house saying that she never drank good coffee unless she drank it in our house.

‘Where do you get the sugar – ’ she sighed but my grandmother did not enlighten her and probably heard only part of the conversation in any case.

Although it was the widow who had been invited to partake of
refreshment
it was she who made it, my grandmother roaring instructions at her, scarcely pausing for breath, insisting on the best cups being used. In a very short time the whole street knew that coffee was being brewed in our house and very soon too they were going to hear that the family was practically destitute.

Wood was added to the great white stove and armchairs drawn forward for the two women. I hovered uncertainly in the background and, no notice being taken of me, finally sat down on the soft, warm carpet. The widow was delighted with her good luck and showed no inclination to leave this cosy room. My grandmother started to tell her that we had no money left but the widow paid little attention to this, since she herself had never known anything else but a lack of money. When she finally got a chance to talk, she said cheerfully: ‘But you have a sewing-machine,
hanım
efendi
, and with a sewing-machine you can never be hungry. Why, I have eaten my bread from one for the last fifteen years!’

‘Nonsense,’ said my grandmother. ‘How can I learn to use a
sewing-machine
at my time of life?’

‘What about your daughter-in-law?’ yelled the widow, drawing closer to the crackling fire.

‘Şevkiye?’ said my grandmother, in great surprise. ‘Why, she is as useless as I am!’

‘No, she isn’t,’ contradicted the widow. ‘Look how quickly she learned how to make the children’s clothes?’

‘Yes,’ said my grandmother, thoughtfully. ‘Of course she does the most exquisite embroidery – ’

‘Embroidery!’ snorted the widow, with great disdain. ‘That’s no use today in the world,
hanım efendi
. But machining – now that’s quite another thing. Perhaps my patron in the Kapalı Çarşı (Grand Bazaar) would give her some work to do. I shall ask him tomorrow and if he is agreeable I shall help her and show her how to do the things he wants.’

‘You are unusually kind,’ said my grandmother wonderingly, and the widow looked pleased.

In the midst of their talking, my mother came in, looking so odd, so dishevelled, that my heart gave a lurch of fear.

‘What is wrong?’ cried the widow in dismay, and my mother replied in the new, hard voice that she always seemed to use nowadays: ‘I am past wondering what is right and what is wrong. To live nowadays is to bear insults from everyone. At the Government departments they treat us like vermin or tell us how fortunate we are that we have given a man to the war. I hunt bread each day, running from one baker’s shop to another, and in the end, what do I get? A piece of hard, black bread that I would be ashamed to feed to the animals. The crowds push and kick and snarl with rage and all decency seems to be gone from humanity – ’

Her voice broke and I thought she was going to cry but she controlled herself, a faint furrow appearing between her delicate brows, almost as though she was wondering what she was talking about. She put out a hand to steady herself and her face became very white, deadly white so that the cheekbones were thrown into high relief, and the nose appeared more pinched and sharper.

‘Did anything unusual happen this morning?’ roared my grandmother.

‘Plenty!’ retorted my mother. ‘When you are a woman and alone in the world, you have to grow used to insults. This morning I tried several shops for bread and in the end I found one open and joined the queue to take my chance with the rest. Just as I had handed my money and taken the bread offered to me, a woman beside me snatched it from my hand, saying that it was hers and that she had given her money first. I snatched it back again and so the battle started. She was like a wild animal. She fought and kicked and screamed and pulled my veil from my face, saying only the rich wore veils and that I had no right to queue for bread, when the poor needed it worse than I did. My veil!’ my mother repeated, horrified. ‘Before all those people she pulled aside my veil, as if I was a prostitute, and then she called me one! Me! In front of all those people! I thought the world would fall on top of me. I tried to get away from her but she had hold of my skirt and I was afraid she would tear that from me too. Two men interfered and gave me back the bread and I ran away from that dreadful place – with my veil all torn and the people shouting after me in the streets. They thought I was a bad woman and that I had been fighting with another bad woman! Oh, such disgrace! To think I should live to see this day, that I should fight for such a thing – ’

And she held up the piece of dry, black bread. Then she swayed forward and before I had time to properly realise what was happening, she was lying across the sofa, lifted there by the strong, kindly arms of the widow. My grandmother, more agile than I ever remember seeing her, was chafing her wrists, her own face almost as white as my mother’s.

My mother commenced to grind her teeth and I was terrified she was going to break them but the widow jammed a spoon between her lips, raising her head to settle cushions more firmly behind it. After a while the awful grinding stopped and my mother opened her eyes.

‘Cognac!’ shouted my grandmother, busying herself making strong coffee.

She was almost crying to herself, calling upon the names of her dead sons to come back and defend their women. Her weak, long-pent-up tears rolled down her cheeks and fell into the hot ash of the
mangal
, making strange little sizzling sounds.

My mother opened her eyes and sat up, the colour fast returning to her face. She stretched herself languidly, as though she were very tired and had come back from a long way away, then she accepted coffee and presently seemed perfectly normal again.

The widow remained with us for the rest of the day; if she had work to do she gave no hint. Good soul that she was, she only wished to stay here with my mother, to serve her as best she could.

Dusk came early and
Ezzin
was read from the little mosque, the signal for my grandmother to start praying. Every evening she waited for Muezzin to climb into the minaret, for since her deafness this was the only way she could know the right time to pray. That evening she prayed in her loud, rumbling voice for her sons who were dead, for my
grandfather
, for my mother and for us children. She put in a special little bit for herself at the end. Her voice filled the room, the old, liquid words falling softly on the ear. The widow had prepared the evening meal and, because my mother was still not really well enough to go downstairs, we had it in the salon. The fire blazed merrily and all the lamps, oh, rash extravagance! were brightly lit.

After dinner was over, my grandmother illogically wished to visit the little mosque to pray and said she wanted me with her. We started out into the black night, I pleasantly fearful and excited. My grandmother carried a lighted candle in a sort of storm-lantern and I could clearly see another candle glowing on the tomb of the holy-man. We walked swiftly for the night was bitterly cold, and, when we came abreast of the window in which rested the tomb, my grandmother sternly bade me pray for the soul of the holy-man. She opened her hands to the sky, palms upwards in the Muslim fashion, and I did the same thing. I do not think I said much of a prayer, for my teeth were chattering with the cold and the wind had chosen just that moment to come whistling icily around the corner, cutting through my thin coat.

When we went into the mosque, we sat down on the women’s side and I was immediately acutely embarrassed, for my grandmother insisted on saying her prayers aloud. There were only a few other people there but no peace was given to them for, whether they wished it or not, they had to listen to my grandmother. Again and again she exhorted her God to be merciful to her dead ones and to make my mother well and strong again. I wriggled with impatience, trying to quieten her but she refused to be quiet until she had finished what she had come here to say.

One day my mother and I went to Beşiktaş, some distance from our home. I have forgotten the reason we went but remember the occasion, for it was the first time I had ever seen the Sultan, Mehmet Reşat. In the main street of Beşiktaş soldiers were marching and a band played military music, whilst the police were roughly keeping back the curious crowds from the royal route. We waited to see the Sultan, and the cavalry came first, mounted on their high-stepping Arab horses. As far as I can remember, they wore blue jackets with brightly shining brass buttons, scarlet trousers and great tall
kalpaks
on their heads, with flowing white plumes. They pranced towards us, their uniforms making a splash of welcome colour in all that drab humanity and their spurs clinked and jingled and gleamed in the watery sun. A carriage came after the cavalry, drawn by elegant, aristocratic horses and, dimly, from the windows we caught a glimpse of an old small man with a little white beard. He was in uniform, many medals marching across his breast. A great, loyal cry went up from the people, half of them in rags, a deep-throated, rumbling roar of welcome: ‘
Padişahim çok yaşa!
’ they roared and then he was past us and other voices took up the refrain. Even when the carriage had finally disappeared from sight the echoes of the cheering crowds came back to us. Then the quiet streets grew quieter for the people had dispersed and my mother and I continued on our journey.

She had found work to do in these days. The widow, true to her word, had obtained sewing for her from her patron in Kapalı Çarşı. The money was pitifully small and nowadays the salon was eternally littered with made and unmade work and the never-ceasing whirr of the
sewing-machine
dominated all else. So the winter of 1915 passed to the sound of my mother’s machine and the merry, comforting crackling sound of the logs in the china stove. Somehow or other life was readjusting itself and we had become used to bad food and not enough of it and my
grandmother
did the marketing and I now hunted for bread. But the soft, early days of spring changed all that again. One had already learned that security was a fragile thing, sensitive to the first cold breath, yet one could not learn to accept this with finality. That spring of 1916 overrides all other memories and carries its scars to this day.

Sewing, for my mother, came to a sudden, abrupt end for the patron of the Kapalı Çarşı explained that there was no more work for anyone, that the Government had bought all the available materials for the Army. He said that an Army Sewing Depôt had been opened behind the Gülhane Parkı and that anyone applying there would be given work to do. He had stretched his large, hairy hands to them, begging them to understand his position, and the women had looked at each other and wondered what to do. The widow said immediately that she, for one, would go to the Army Depôt, declaring that it was all the same to her where she worked as long as she got money for it. My mother and many of the new poor were uncertain. They felt that to work in the privacy of their own homes was one thing but to expose themselves in a Government factory, quite another. When my mother came home, my grandmother looked with surprise at her empty hands and asked what was wrong.

‘No more work,’ declared my mother. ‘The Army have bought all materials and have opened a factory behind the Gülhane Parkı. The widow has gone there today to look for work.’

‘Well, you will not!’ roared my grandmother, so loudly that a pile of plates on the kitchen table vibrated slightly.

‘What is the use of talking like that?’ demanded my mother wearily. ‘We have so little money and the children must be fed. Can we see them going hungry, because of our pride?’

My grandmother stood up and called to us to come with her. She led the way into the bedroom, produced a key from somewhere about her middle and unlocked the tin chest where her valuables were stored.

‘We have these five gold coins left to us,’ she said to my mother. ‘Take them. They will keep us for a little longer. And when they have gone I have still my jewellery – my rings and my emerald pendant. I was keeping them for Muazzez.’

She drew them out of their silk-lined box and they glittered palely in her hands.

‘No!’ said my mother. ‘These rings will never be sold. The dealers will rob you nowadays because they know that people like us are selling our valuables because we want money so desperately. Why, only last week I heard from one of the women at the Kapalı Çarşı that she had sold a diamond-and-ruby chain, far finer than these, mother, and all she got for them was a little gold. She did not know their value and she was so hungry that she let them go to the first Jew dealer who offered to take them. No!’ she said more softly, so softly that my grandmother could not catch her words, ‘these shall belong to Muazzez,’ and she touched the pretty trinkets, taking them from my grandmother and locking them up again. She put her hands on my grandmother’s shoulders, lightly brushing her forehead with her lips. ‘All our pretty things are gone,’ she said into the straining ears. ‘So let us keep Muazzez’s pretty things. They will look very well one day on my daughter’s neck!’