FROM:GERMAN
Translated by : Katy Derbyshire
A Turkish philosopher from
Istanbul once visited me in Berlin. He was only there for a few days. He looked
at the street and said quietly, ‘I don’t think I could live here.’
Not the summer planes but the
winter planes brought many people who were crying from Europe to Istanbul,
crying because their fathers or mothers had died in Turkey. Three years ago, I
was on a winter plane. Suddenly, a woman got up from her seat, threw herself on
the floor of the plane and started wailing. All the people stood up.
‘What’s the matter?’
Two of the woman’s children had
died in a car accident in Istanbul, and she had to go to the funeral. The
stewardesses put her back in her seat, held her hand. The woman wailed, ‘Open
the door. Throw me out. I want to look for them in heaven.’ She kept looking
out of the window, as though she could see the dead in the sky.
‘Open the door.’
Then she looked at the other
passengers behind her, as though she wanted them all to walk into the sky with
her to look for her dead. She wanted the plane to move around like a car, left,
right, back, forward, and look for the dead. But the plane flew straight ahead,
as though pulled across the sky along a rail…
Back when I still lived in
Istanbul, twenty-five years ago, I got on a ship one summer night, and it took
me from the European side to the Asian side. The tea-sellers brought people
tea, small change jingling in their pockets. The moon was huge, as though it
lived only in the Istanbul sky, loved only Istanbul, and polished itself every
day only for this city. Wherever it looked, all doors would instantly open to
let the moon wax in. Wherever you touched, you touched the moon too. Everyone
held a piece of moon in their hands. Now the moon lit up two faces next to me
on the ship. A boy, a girl. He said, ‘So, you gave Mustafa your key too. I’m
leaving. Goodbye.’ He leapt from the ship’s deck into the sea and dived into
the moonlight. The ship was exactly mid-way between Asia and Europe. Not saying
anything, the girl stayed in her seat in the moonshine. All the other people
dashed to the ship’s rail, the boat leaned with the crowd, and the tea glasses
also slid towards the rail on their saucers. The tea-seller shouted, ‘Tea
money. Tea money.’ I asked the girl, ‘Is he a good swimmer?’ She nodded. The
crew threw two lifebelts after the boy but he didn’t want a lifebelt. The ship
turned and sailed after the boy, a rescue boat pulled him out of the sea. The
moon watched everything that happened, and when the boy had to go to the
captain with wet clothes and wet hair, the moon lit him up with a circle of
light like a clown in the circus. The ship turned back towards the Asian side,
the tea-sellers found their customers and collected up the change. The moon
shone on the empty tea glasses, but suddenly the ship turned back for the
European side, because it had left the lifebelts behind in the sea. And the
moon was always there above Europe and Asia.
At the Istanbul airport, the
people waited, a long corridor of people, some of them crying.
How many doors were there now in
Istanbul? Twelve million people, how many doors did they open? And can the
moonshine wax in under all the doors? Can the moon manage that?
When I was a child, four hundred
thousand people lived in Istanbul.
Our neighbour Madame Atina
(‘Athena’), one of Istanbul’s Greeks, used to pull back her aged cheeks and
tape them in place behind her ears. I was supposed to help her with it. She
told me, ‘I’m a Byzantine like the Hagia Sophia church, which was built in the
time of the Byzantine emperor Constantine the Great, 326 A.D., a basilica with
stone walls and a wooden roof. In the Hagia Sophia, the Byzantines believed
they were closer to God than anywhere else, and I too believe I’m closer to the
moon in Constantinople than anywhere else in the world.’ With the tape behind
her ears, Madame Atina would go to the greengrocer’s. I’d go with her. She
looked young with her cheeks pulled back so I walked quickly. She wanted to
walk as quickly as me and sometimes she fell down on the street. The
greengrocer was a Muslim, and he’d joke with Madame Atina, ‘Madame, a Muslim
angel came, he put his finger in a hole in a pillar and turned the Hagia Sophia
to face Mecca.’ I loved the Hagia Sophia; its floor was uneven and the walls
sported frescoes of Christ without a cross, a muezzin sang the ezan from the
minaret, and in the night the moon shone on Christ’s face and on the face of
the muezzin.
One day, Madame Atina took the
ship with me to the Asian part. I was seven years old. My mother said, ‘Look,
the Greeks of Istanbul are the city’s salt and sugar.’ And Madame Atina showed
me her own Istanbul. ‘Look at that little tower by the sea. The Byzantine
emperor, who had received a prophecy that his daughter would be bitten by a
snake and killed, had this Tower of Leandros (Maiden’s Tower) built and hid his
daughter inside it. One day, the maiden longed for figs, so a basket of figs
was brought to her from the city. She was bitten by a snake that had hidden in
the basket, and she died.’ Madame Atina cupped my face in her hands and said,
‘My girl, with those beautiful eyes you’ll burn many men’s hearts.’ The sun lit
up her red-painted fingernails, behind which I saw the Maiden’s Tower by the
sea.
Then Madame Atina walked with me
across the Bridge of the Golden Horn. As I walked across the low bridge that
moved with the waves, I didn’t yet know that Leonardo da Vinci – the Ottomans
called him Lecardo – had once written a letter to the sultan, on the 3rd of
July 1503. The sultan wanted him to build a bridge across the Golden Horn, and
Leonardo sent the sultan his suggestions in that letter. Another suggestion
came from Michelangelo in 1504. But Michelangelo had a question: ‘If I were to
build this bridge, would the sultan demand that I adopt the Muslim faith?’ The
Franciscan abbot who discussed the sultan’s suggestion with Michelangelo said,
‘No, my son, I know Istanbul as well as Rome. I don’t know which city holds
more sinners. The Ottoman sultan will never demand such a thing of you.’
Michelangelo couldn’t build the bridge in the end, though, because the pope
threatened to excommunicate him. For centuries, the Ottomans didn’t build a
bridge between the two European parts of Istanbul because Muslims lived in one
and Jews, Greeks, and Armenians in the other. Only fishing boats ferried the
people to and fro. It was Sultan Mahmut II (1808–1836) who wanted to bring
Muslims and non-Muslims together at last in Istanbul and had the famous bridge
built. Once it was finished, the fishermen beat at the bridge with sticks
because it had taken away their work. The bridge became a stage: Jews, Turks,
Greeks, Arabs, Albanians, Armenians, Europeans, Persians, Circassians, women,
men, horses, donkeys, cows, hens, camels, they all walked across the bridge.
One day there were two crazies, a woman and a man, both of them naked. The man
stood at one end of the bridge, the woman at the other. She shouted, ‘From here
on, Istanbul is mine.’ He shouted, ‘From here on, Constantinople is mine.’
At the airport, I took a taxi.
Since Istanbul had become a city of twelve million, the taxi drivers would no
longer find the addresses and they’d lose their tempers. ‘Madame, if you don’t
know where you want to be driven, why did you get in my car?’ I wanted to go to
a friend’s house, I no longer had a father and a mother to go to first.
Years ago, I had come to Istanbul
once before on a winter plane to bury my parents, who had died three days
apart. My mother was the first to go. My father had sat in his chair, the
opposite chair empty. He took out a pair of false teeth with sheep’s cheese
still stuck to them, and said, ‘Here, your mother’s false teeth.’ Two days
later he died too, and his coffin stood on a raised stone slab for the dead in
the mosque’s courtyard. There were two other coffins on the other slabs, and
the mosque got the coffins mixed up. They didn’t know which dead man belonged
to which family. At the cemetery, the gravediggers took the corpses, wrapped in
shrouds, out of the coffins, and a man from each family – the women weren’t
allowed to stand near the graves – had to see which of the dead belonged to
them. My brother looked at the three dead men’s faces and said, ‘That’s our
father.’
In the taxi, I now drove past the
cemetery where my parents were buried. I couldn’t remember which grave was my
father’s. All I knew was that you could see the sea from his grave. Since
Istanbul has become a city of twelve million, the cemetery management has
demanded that relatives buy up the graves, otherwise new dead are laid on top
of the dead. At the time, my brother called me in Germany: ‘What shall we do?
Buy the grave or let him get lost between the other dead?’
‘What do you think?’
‘We can let him lie with the
other dead, that suits him better.’
As no one visits cemeteries in
Istanbul, we didn’t mind where the dead would lie. The cemeteries are empty,
the only quiet places in the city. As a young girl, I sometimes used to go to
the cemeteries with a poet. He had written down what it said on the
gravestones. He said, ‘These are people’s last words. There are no lies.’ He
wanted to use those words in his poems.
Although no one visits cemeteries
in Istanbul, every cemetery has its own crazy. They wander between the
gravestones, and cats wander after them because they give the cats cheese and
bread. At my parents’ cemetery, there were two crazies who lived there for
years. One of them would always give the other a lira. One day, he gave him
three lira instead of one. The other man got angry and said, ‘Why are you
giving me three lira, I only want one lira.’
‘My son, have you not heard of
inflation? Three lira is one lira now.’
The other man started to cry; his
friend gave him a handkerchief.
The taxi driver couldn’t find my
friend’s address and he broke out in a sweat. I gave him a paper tissue and
said, ‘Drive me to the city centre.’ Thirty years ago, there was a film
producer in Istanbul who only filmed sad stories. He knew all the viewers would
cry, so he had handkerchiefs made out of the finest cotton. He stood outside
the cinema himself and handed the handkerchiefs to the moviegoers. He laughed
all the while. In those days, there was a famous cinema crazy in Istanbul, who especially
admired a particular Turkish actor. Because that actor was killed in a film
role, the crazy came to the cinema with a gun one evening and tried to kill the
murderer before he could shoot – and fired six shots at the screen. Istanbul
loves its crazies. The city gives them its breast and suckles them. It has been
ruled by several crazy sultans. When a crazy comes along, Istanbul gives him a
place.
I got out of the taxi right
outside the cinema where the crazy once shot at the screen. Before I left for
Berlin twenty-two years ago, I would often stand outside that cinema waiting
for my friends.
Now I’m standing here again,
looking at the faces of the people walking past. It looks like films from all
different countries are being screened one over another. Humphrey Bogart is
speaking to an Arabic woman, asking her the time. A Russian whore is speaking
to a man who moves like Woody Allen.
I look for my friends from back
then in these people’s faces, but I’m looking for them in the young faces of
today, as though my friends hadn’t got older over these twenty-two years, as
though they’d waited for me with their faces from back then. As though Istanbul
had frozen to a photo at the moment I left for Europe, to wait for me – with
all its baths, churches, mosques, sultans’ palaces, fountains, towers,
Byzantine walls, bazaars, wooden houses, steel lanes, bridges, fig trees, slum
houses, street cats, street dogs, lice, donkeys, wind, sea, seven hills, ships,
crazies, dead, living, whores, poets, porters. As though Istanbul had waited
for me with its millions of shoes, all waiting for morning in the houses, with
its millions of combs left below mirrors spotted with shaving soap.
I’m here, so now all the windows
will open. The women will call out to their friends from window to window. The
basil plants in the flowerpots will give off their scent. The children of the
poor will throw themselves into the Marmara Sea in their long cotton underpants
to wash. All the ships between Asia and Europe will sound their horns. The cats
will yowl for love on the roofs. The seven hills of Istanbul will awaken. The
gypsy women will pick flowers there to sell in the city centre later on. The
children will climb the fig trees. The birds will peck at the figs.
‘Mother, do you make fig jam from
the male or the female fig trees?’
‘The male ones. Look, their figs
are small and hard.’
In the tulip gardens at the
sultan’s palace, the tortoises will walk around with lit candles on their
shells, the tulips will bend their heads towards the sea in the wind, the
tortoises’ candle lights will flicker in the same direction. The wind will push
the ships along today and make them sail faster, the passengers will arrive
home sooner. When the men are at home, the lights will go on across the seven
hills. The fathers will wash their hands. Sounds of water. ‘My daughter, will
you pass me a towel?’
‘Yes, father.’
Opposite the cinema were a few
shops. Some of the shopkeepers recognized me and said hello; they all had white
hair and white eyebrows.
Next to the cinema stood a poor
man, perhaps a farmer, trying to photograph the people passing by with a
Polaroid camera.
‘Photo souvenir of Istanbul,
photo souvenir of Istanbul!’
I let him take my photo; the
picture was blurred. ‘Take another picture.’
‘I haven’t any more film.’
A beggar woman took the photo out
of my hand and said to the photographer, ‘You’re the artist, aren’t you, why
didn’t you photograph this lady in front of McDonald’s?’
She looked closely at the photo
and exclaimed, ‘Oh, how beautiful my treasure is, how beautiful.’
I thought she meant me, but there
was a cat on the wall behind me in the photo. I was blurred but the cat was in
focus.
Then I called the Turkish
philosopher who didn’t want to live in Berlin.
‘Where are you?’
‘In Istanbul.’
I took the ship over to him, to
the Asian part of Istanbul. Sailing alongside the ship sailed a fishing boat
transporting two horses. The moon shone on the faces of the horses, which were
perfectly calm. I dipped my hands in the sea to touch a little moonshine; the
moon looked suddenly like it had in my childhood – as though it lived only ever
here in the Istanbul sky, as though it loved only Istanbul, and polished itself
every day only for this city.
________________________________________
*This story is taken from: Der
Hof im Spiegel by Emine Sevgi Özdamar. © Kiepenheuer & Witsch GmbH &
Co. KG, Cologne/Germany.