Portrait of a Turkish Family (5 page)

In the room were eight beds, arranged dormitory-wise, four down each side. Each bed was covered with fresh linen, lace-edged pillows and a blue silk coverlet. In the centre of the room was a large table, loaded with sweetmeats and fruit and glasses for drinks. All the clowns had followed us and were dancing and tumbling all over the floor, playing their flutes, juggling with oranges and throwing their absurd, tall hats into the air. My father showed me my bed, for I was to sleep in this house for a day or two. It was under a window and I felt momentarily happier, for from here I could watch the garden and see İnci and Mehmet at their play. The doctor came in.

Instinctively I glanced away from him and over to the fat boy. His cheeks were wobbling with terror and his knees trembling so violently beneath the long robe that I wondered how they ever supported him at all. His fear communicated itself to me. I wanted to run, to shout, to call for my mother, to feel the comfort of İnci’s arms about me. I looked at my father and felt my lower lip begin to quiver uncontrollably. He stooped over me and I still have the memory of his face, that kind gentle face, that lonely, shut-away face I loved so dearly. He was willing me to be brave and his fingers closed tightly over my icy hand.

‘It’s all right,’ he comforted me softly, so that the others should not hear. ‘Just be brave for one little minute more and then it will be all over.’

The doctor looked at all of us standing so docilely with our fathers and began to shout with laughter.

‘What!’ he said happily. ‘Eight children in one room and not a sound to be heard!’

He looked at me.

‘You are the youngest,’ he said, ‘so you shall come first.’ He took my hand and peered into my face. ‘I don’t really believe you are afraid,’ he said gently. ‘There is no need to be afraid, you know! I never hurt good boys and your father tells me you are a
very
good boy indeed. Come!’ He insisted to my stubborn, disbelieving face, ‘You will see, I shall not hurt you.’

He took my arm and led me to an adjoining room, a small bare room to strike fresh terror into an already terrified heart.

The Colonel stood me on a table, which had been specially placed in the centre of the room. I faced the window, the Colonel on one side of me and my father on the other. The doctor busied himself with a black bag and boiling water and after a minute which seemed a year approached the table.

‘Now just be a good child and stand still,’ he commanded, but it was unnecessary for him to waste his breath for I could not have moved if I had tried. My legs were rooted immovably to the table and my body icy cold. I turned my head away as I caught sight of a little shining instrument and the doctor said heartily: ‘Come, Hüsnü bey! Let us see what sort of a man your son is.’

My father lifted my robe, baring my legs and the lower part of my body.

‘Open your legs!’ commanded the doctor, his voice no longer sugared but the voice of a man intent upon performing some duty. ‘Wider!’ he roared.

I tremblingly obeyed. I remember that the Colonel held my ankles from behind me whilst my father pinioned my arms tightly. The doctor came nearer. I closed my eyes and was ready to die. There was a slight stinging feeling and suddenly it was all over.

I had been circumcised and my fears had been groundless. Nevertheless I screamed lustily. Screaming was such an exquisite relief to my overwrought nerves that I continued, long after the need for it was over.

The Colonel carried me back to the large room, meeting the second victim in the doorway. I was put into bed and clowns played their music and turned somersaults for my benefit and I felt proud and important.

I had intended to eat many sweets but Nature had her way with me and very soon I slept.

When I awoke the circumcision was over for everyone and the music of the orchestra came faintly and sweetly from the salon. The clowns had all gone. It was night and the stars looked very near and brilliant in a cloudless sky. Laughter and music and the chink of glasses came stealing up from downstairs and all the other boys slept. I was drowsy and contented and I turned on my side and went to sleep again.

The next morning I awoke to sunlight and peals of laughter. The foot of my bed was heaped with presents and I sat up quickly and began to undo them. The terrors of the previous day had vanished and everyone boasted of his remarkable bravery – all, that is, except the fat boy. And he turned out to have a sense of humour for he told us that when the doctor came over to him, he had neighed like a horse.

In the midst of our laughter a coloured servant came in with a tray of breakfasts. There was the customary white cheese, grapes, boiled eggs and bread and butter, wild cherry and rose jams and tea, served in small glasses with slices of lemon.

She mocked our inability to get up and walk, remarked on our appetites which, she said, were surprising since yesterday we had rejected every offer of food and she had thought perhaps we were delicate children. And all this said with a twinkle in her eye to abash us for the cowards we had been less than twenty-four hours before. After breakfast our mothers visited us, promising that upon the following day we would be taken to our homes. I asked my mother why she had not been to see me the previous evening and she replied that she had but as I had been asleep she had not wanted to awaken me. She said she was proud of me because someone had told her I had been a brave boy. I blushed with shame, trying to explain that I had not been brave at all but she laid her cool fingers over my mouth and would not let me finish.

‘Sometimes the weakest of us are the bravest,’ she said.

Mehmet had sent me
lokum
to eat and had cried for me during his breakfast. I was so touched by this that I resolved never again to be impatient with him when he could not follow a game. I kept that resolve for quite three days.

The most beautiful present I had received for my circumcision was a big rocking-horse, brought me by my uncle Ahmet.

Uncle Ahmet was my father’s brother. He was big and jolly and very good-looking. In his younger days he had been the despair of my
grandfather
’s life but after his marriage, to a young and wealthy girl, he had apparently settled down considerably. I loved him and his wife too, for they had no children and used to spoil me atrociously.

The day after I arrived home from the Colonel’s house, Uncle Ahmet and Aunt Ayşe arrived in a horse-drawn cab, laden with presents. They had come unexpectedly but there was a great joy in welcoming them, with we children making most of the noise and refusing to be hushed. My uncle brought many stuffed animal toys for Mehmet and butter and cheese and eggs from his farm for my mother.

Aunt Ayşe was a lovely, shy person, most surprisingly blonde with large dark eyes. I think she was a little frightened of my grandmother for she hardly ever opened her mouth in her presence or expressed an opinion. I discovered later in life that she need not have been afraid, for my
grandmother
had a great liking for her and her money. Her greatest respect in life was for money.

The day they arrived the house was soon filled with noise. Our squeals of delight, coupled with the loud hearty laughter of my uncle and the orders screamed by my grandmother to the servants, the chattering voices of my mother and my aunt, all served to give a stimulus, a sort of artificial gaiety to the drowsy old house.

My rocking-horse was borne off to the playroom by my uncle, I following slowly and painfully for I was still unable to walk properly. Mehmet was lifted, chortling with joy, on the lovely horse and I was bitterly jealous because I could not yet do the same. My uncle played with us for a long time and promised me that he would ask my father’s permission to take me back with him to Sarıyer, which was the name of the place where he lived. I loved to stay at Sarıyer for it was much bigger than our house and had vast gardens and an orchard and many
greenhouses
. There was a gardener there too who, contrary to all accepted ideas, loved little boys.

It was the custom for my family to spend three months of every year at Sarıyer. Usually we went there during May, when the heat of İstanbul began to become unbearable, but this year my grandfather’s death and my approaching circumcision had kept us in the city all through the
interminable
dust and heat and flies of summer. We had suffocated beneath mosquito nets and insufficient fresh air, for the windows had been fitted with fine netting in an effort to keep the insects away and the shutters tightly barred at night. Yet just the same the mosquitoes found entry, filling the dark nights with their whining music. So that it was the middle of that fateful August of 1914 that eventually brought my parents to Sarıyer.

Permission was readily given for me to return, on the following day, with my uncle and aunt – the remainder of the family to leave İstanbul as soon as my father’s business activities permitted. I was very excited to be travelling without the restrictive eye of İnci or my grandmother. I helped İnci to pack clothes for me and lovingly stroked my rocking-horse, for this was to come with me. Mehmet’s lamentations of grief I ignored and could not be persuaded to leave the horse for my father to transport, being convinced that if it were left after me Mehmet would pull off all its lovely mane and no doubt do other irreparable damage.

Murat, my grandmother’s coachman, drove us to Galata Bridge, where we were to board the boat which would take us down the Bosphor to Sarıyer.

Murat was a grumpy, miserable old man, who immediately made difficulties over my rocking-horse. My uncle however eventually managed to persuade him that there was plenty of room for it in the phaeton. Murat, in darkest retaliation, prophesied that it would get damaged on the boat. Unlike my uncle’s gardener he had no love for small boys and thought it beneath his dignity to drive us to Galata Bridge where, he said, all the riff-raff of İstanbul gathered. He liked best to be seen driving my mother and grandmother, both heavily veiled, around the quiet green squares of Bayazit, to one of the big houses to pay a brief morning call.

Driving across the Galata Bridge, behind the high-stepping,
cream-coloured
horses, was an adventure in itself. In those days there was even less traffic control in İstanbul than there is today – and God knows there is little enough today. That morning, horse-drawn cabs, carts, porters carrying beds or other furniture on their shoulders, gypsies stepping out into the road beneath the very feet of the flying horses, peasants riding their mules – all were in danger of being knocked down or overturned, for Murat, with a fine disregard of human life, drove like the wind and was more autocratic than any Sultan.

Boarding the boat was fraught with difficulties, for I lost sight of my horse and in the resulting confusion wailed long and loudly and would not be pacified, despite my aunt’s repeated assurances that she had distinctly seen Murat give the horse to my uncle. In the end, however, the horse was discovered to be safe and sound, seated all by itself importantly and looking over the rail of the boat with glassy eyes. Uncle Ahmet bought
simit
, a sort of crescent-shaped, sesame-studded bread, and we fed the following, crying seagulls.

The journey took two hours and I was beginning to be bored with inactivity when the boat-station of Sarıyer came in view.

It was good to be on land again, to catch a glimpse of my uncle’s greenhouses through the trees which enclosed the gardens from the curious eyes of the boats. Servants met us, taking our meagre baggage, and I swung happily along the dusty road, clinging to my uncle’s strong hand and keeping a half-fearful look-out for snakes – for which Sarıyer was notorious.

That night I slept in a little cool room overlooking the house garden, a wilderness of tangled briars and tobacco-plants with their hot, hurting scent, and roses which were not considered good enough for the famous rose-garden. Jasmine trailed through the windows, and it was very quiet. I missed the sound of the sea, for the Bosphor was on the other side of the house and could not be heard from my room. I missed also İnci’s clever fingers to undo my buttons. My aunt had sent an old servant to look after me and she fumbled over my clothes and over my bathing. Crowning insult, she omitted my evening glass of milk and closed the door after her when she had put me in bed. İnci had always left my door ajar, so that I could go to sleep to the sound of my parents’ voices from downstairs and to the comforting clatter old Hacer made when she washed the dishes after the evening meal. I lay in my little bed, listening to all the unfamiliar sounds that assail one away from home. Furniture seemed to creak extra loudly and shift itself and the shadows in the corners were alive with fearsome things.

Fidèle and Joly, the house-dogs, padded restlessly up and down the path under my window, sometimes brushing through the shrubs,
sometimes
stopping to bark ferociously – at some unaccustomed noise perhaps, or merely because they were bored. When they barked, Hasan – the gardener – or Thérèse – the Greek cook – would hush them to cease their noise. Once a big black cat climbed on the branches of a tree opposite my window and my heart leaped in terror, for it seemed so large there, so still and evil in the dusky light. Yet for all my little fears I slept soundly, awaking next morning to the friendly voice of my aunt bidding me get up.

We had breakfast in the garden, my uncle fresh from a dip in the Bosphor. Afterwards I played with my aunt and the dogs, big, lovable Dalmatians, who gambolled on the smooth lawns, chased the innumerable kitchen cats and licked most of the gleaming paint off my horse.

When I had been there a few days, one morning my uncle announced that he was going to his farm, in the hills, and proposed to take me with him. My aunt was bade prepare snacks for the journey for the farm was two and a half hours’ drive from Sarıyer. The phaeton was brought round and in we climbed, settling ourselves with much laughter amid the cushions, and my aunt’s face was covered with a thick motoring veil – a veil that fluttered in the breeze and sometimes tickled my nose. When we arrived at the farm, dogs leaped out to greet my uncle hysterically. They seemed very big and fierce to me and I clung tightly to Uncle Ahmet’s coat-tails. The dogs wore great iron collars around their necks and, because wolves always first attack an animal by the throat, these collars were heavily spiked for protection.

We lunched in the farmhouse, in a low dining-room that had a big, open fireplace large enough to roast an ox and an uneven stone floor. The furniture was primitive and hand-made but the meal which was served us was delicious. There were roast fowls piled on a mountain of
pilav
– rice cooked in butter and chicken-water; swordfish straight from the sea and served with parsley, slices of lemon and various kinds of salads. There were dishes of grapes, water-melons and some kind of heavy sweet made of shredded wheat, butter, syrup and chopped nuts. Wine was served in carafes, and my uncle, answering the appeal in my eyes, poured a little into my glass. After the meal, Turkish coffee was served under the lime trees and my elders seemed drowsy, lying back in their chaises-longues, their eyes half-shut against the glare of the sun on the grass.

I wandered away to explore. I went into the empty stables that smelled of horses and leather and I discovered seven or eight puppies playing in the straw. They were so soft and fluffy that I could not resist taking one of them into my arms to pet. The rest played about my feet, trying to climb up my legs. Suddenly two large dogs sprang in and I dropped the puppy to run, but the dogs were on me in a trice and I thought they intended to eat me. I began to scream and a farm labourer came running and I heard my uncle’s voice in the distance. My legs threatened to collapse and, ignominiously, I wet my trousers. The farm labourer told me in his difficult, peasant Turkish, not to be afraid. The dogs were the father and mother of the puppies and only wanted to play with me. I mistrusted however their idea of play. The peasant tried to press bread into my trembling fingers, with which to feed the dogs, but before I could take it, the dogs voraciously snatched it from him. The puppies, scenting sport to be had, got joyously under my feet and succeeded in knocking me down into the straw. So there I lay struggling, with dogs and puppies crawling over me and I screaming like one possessed. I was eventually sorted out of the doggy mess by my uncle’s capable hands and taken, in floods of tears, to be changed and washed. My aunt and uncle were roaring with laughter, and the louder they laughed, the louder I bawled, feeling their amusement to be adding insult to injury.

After that disgraceful episode, I took care ever afterwards to avoid the stables and was glad when we returned to Sarıyer.

My uncle used to bathe every morning before breakfast and I used to watch him from the dining-room windows, running down the garden to meet him when he was returning to the house. Some mornings I was taken with him and he taught me how to swim. We had fun splashing about in the chilly water but would come to breakfast with great appetites. Now my uncle was very fond of grapes. He could eat with ease two or three kilos each morning, and because of this my aunt was miserly about cutting from the house-vine, which spread out over the terrace like a canopy. She treasured those grapes and would tie each cluster in a little muslin bag, to prevent birds or bees from blemishing the fruit. And she never gave my uncle enough of them – at least in his estimation. Instead, dishes of market grapes were set on the table, which would cause heated words between them, he saying that one of the few pleasures of his day was to reach up to his own vine and cut as much as he wanted. He would come on to the terrace each morning, eyeing with disgust the market-grapes arranged so temptingly but so futilely for him.

‘H’m!’ he would remark disparagingly, ringing a little silver handbell for the parlour-maid, who would timorously emerge from the house knowing full well what was to come. ‘What are these grapes doing here?’ he would demand, to which she would reply sadly: ‘
Bey efendi
, it was not possible to get any from the vine this morning …’

And stand there before him, looking down at her feet, her face and neck slowly reddening. Before my uncle could any further embarrass her limited intelligence, my aunt would appear to ask what was the matter.

‘The grapes,
hanım efendi
– ’ the parlour-maid would begin.

‘These grapes, Ayşe – ’ my uncle would interrupt, waving to the parlourmaid to go away. ‘Why cannot we have our own grapes instead of these half-dead-looking specimens?’

Then he would stick out his lower lip, looking charmingly at my aunt, and maybe she would sigh and proffer the grape scissors without another word.

Having got his own way, my uncle would be instantly repentant,
contenting
himself with one outsize bunch and one meagre one, calling upon my aunt to witness his amazing economy. But victory was not always so easy. The results largely depended upon my aunt’s mood and she could very easily turn her face to all cajolery. So my uncle formed a plan. I was shamelessly instructed to pamper and pet my aunt and when her mood was judged to have been softened sufficiently look appealingly to the house-vine and beg for some of its grapes. This I did and my aunt responded in the way my uncle had prophesied but I sometimes wonder how much she guessed of his villainy. For he would come to the table buoyantly, his face wreathed in smiles at the sight of his favourite grapes and my aunt would now and then look thoughtfully at him, then turn towards me as if wondering how far she was being made a fool of between us.

I used to spend most of my days in the gardens, my aunt sitting sewing under a magnolia tree and keeping an alert eye on my activities. I loved the magnolia trees with their shining green leaves, the thick, creamy texture of their flowers and sometimes I would pluck one, giving it to my aunt, who would place it behind one ear, looking suddenly exotic and strange. There was a pool in the middle of the grounds and I would peer into it for hours, watching the lazy goldfish with Fidèle and Joly panting beside me. They had adopted me as their own property, following me everywhere and howling dismally if I left them to look for Hasan. They were forbidden the rose-garden and the kitchen-garden but lived in the hope that one day an unsuspecting human would leave one of the wall doors open for them to slip through. Hasan would let me pick up the over-ripe apples that had fallen to the ground and on rare occasions he would give me peaches to eat, warm from the day-long sun on the southern walls. Once I let the dogs come with me and it was the only time I saw Hasan really angry as opposed to his not infrequent grumblings. He fussily hunted the two dogs off the carrots and onions, beat them from the raspberry canes and swore luridly when they trampled his strawberry beds. I took to my heels and ran, Fidèle and Joly flying after me, having had enough of sport – and Hasan’s curses filling the air with vengeance.