The Bastard of Istanbul

by Elif Shafak

  Armanoush feared she did.

  "As a result, I had to work my butt off to fulfill all their dreams at the same time. I started learning English at six, which was okay if only they could have stopped there, you know? The next year I had a private teacher to teach me French. When I was nine, I was made to study the violin the whole year, although it was obvious that I had absolutely no interest and no talent in it. After that a skating rink was opened near our house and my aunts decided I should become a skater. They dreamed of me in sparkly dresses pirouetting gracefully to the tune of our national anthem. I'd be the Turkish Katarina Witt! Soon there I was spiraling on ice, falling on my rear again and again while trying to pirouette! The sound of skates scraping on ice still sends shivers down my spine."

  Out of courtesy Armanoush managed not to laugh, though she found the image of Asya pirouetting in an international competition hard to resist.

  "Then came a time when they expected me to develop into a long-distance runner. If I trained hard enough, I could be this wondrous athlete and represent Turkey in the Olympic Games! Can you imagine me competing in the women's marathon with such big breasts, for Allah's sake!"

  Armanoush didn't hold back her laughter this time.

  "All those women athletes, I don't know how they do it, but they all have chests as flat as marble, you know. They must be taking male hormones to deflate their tits. But women like me are not created to become athletes; it is against the most basic laws of physics. The body moves forward gaining speed in accordance with the law of acceleration. The amount of change in your speed is proportional to the amount of force impressed upon the body, and in that direction. Then what happens? The boobies accelerate too, even though they move with a completely dissonant rhythm of their own, up and down, eventually slowing your wind. The law of inertia plus the law of universal gravitation! You cannot possibly win. Oh, it was so embarrassing!" Asya exclaimed excitedly. "Thank God that stage was quickly over. After that, I took painting classes and alas, they even made me take ballet until Ma recently found out I had been skipping the classes and gave up on me."

  Armanoush nodded with the familiarity of someone identifying fragments of her personal story in the story of another. She could relate to such overwhelming love from her own aunts but didn't feel comfortable talking about it. Instead, she asked:

  "There's something I couldn't understand. The lady you came to the airport with, the lady with the nose ring." Armanoush giggled but instantly composed herself. "Zeliha…. She is your mom, right? But you don't call her mom… am I right?"

  "You're right. It's a bit confusing. I myself get confused sometimes," Asya said as she lit her first cigarette of the day. By now she had sensed Armanoush's distaste for cigarettes. Though still working on her new friend's profile, Asya classified Armanoush as a "well-mannered girl." If a cigarette stood out as a blasphemy within this decently sterile lifestyle of hers, Asya figured, Armanoush would never be able to accept what other bad habits she had. She blew the smoke in the opposite direction, as far away from Armanoush as she could, except that the wind brought it directly back at them.

  "I don't even remember when exactly I started calling my mother `auntie,' at what age. Perhaps from the start, you know, the very start," Asya replied.

  Asya's voice was little more than a whisper but her eyes were ardent. "You see, I grew up with all these aunts playing the role of the mother. My tragedy is that I was in a way the only child of four women. Auntie Feride, as you might have noticed, is a bit of a cuckoo, and she never got married. She has held numerous jobs on and off. She was a terrific saleswoman when she was in her manic stage. Auntie Cevriye was happily married once but then she lost her husband and her joy in life. After that she dedicated herself to teaching national history. Between you and me, I think she doesn't like sex and finds the needs of the human body revolting! Then there is the eldest, Auntie Banu. She is the salt of the earth. She is still married on paper but seldom sees her husband. Her marriage was so tragic. She had two lovely sons, but they died. The men of this family are cursed, you know. They don't survive."

  Armanoush sighed wearily, not knowing how to interpret this remark.

  "You see, I can understand Auntie Banu's need to seek refuge in Allah," Asya added, stroking the beads of her necklace. "Anyway, the point is, when I was born I found myself surrounded by fourr auntie-moms or mommy-aunties. Either I had to call them all `mom,' or else I had to call my mother `Auntie Zeliha.' That proved easier in a way.

  "But wasn't she offended?"

  Asya's face perked up as she noticed a rust-colored cargo ship sailing on the open sea. She liked to watch the vessels gliding along the Bosphorus, daydreaming what the crew on board was like, trying to seee the city from the eyes of a sailor constantly on the move, a sailor with neither a port to disembark at nor the need to do so.

  "Offended? No! You see, she was only nineteen when she became pregnant with me. Odd as it might sound, my not calling her `mom' must have come as a relief to her. They were all my `aunties,' and somehow that title rendered my mother's sin less visible in the eyes of society. There was no sinful mother to point a finger at. As a matter of fact, I suspect I might have been encouraged to call her `auntie,' at least for a while, and after that, it was hard to break the habit."

  "I liked her," Armanoush said, but then she paused, confused. "What sin are you talking about?"

  "Oh, giving birth to an illegitimate child. My mom is"-Asya crinkled her nose hunting for the right word-"she is… the black sheep of the family, you know. The warrior rebel who gave birth to a child out of wedlock."

  A Russian tanker passed by, sending small waves to the shore. It was a big vessel, carrying petroleum.

  "I'd noticed there was no father around, but I thought he might be dead or something," Armanoush stammered. "I'm sorry."

  "You're sorry that my father is not dead." Asya chuckled. She gave a flickering glance at Armanoush, who had flushed crimson.

  "But you are right, you know," Asya said, with a glint of rage in her eyes. "I feel the same way. I mean, if my father were deceased, this vagueness would be over once and for all. That's what infuriates me most. I can't help thinking he could be anyone. When you have absolutely no idea what kind of a man your father is, your imagination fills in the void. Perhaps I watch him on TV or hear his voice on the radio every day, without knowing it's him. Or I might have come face-to-face with him sometime, someplace. I imagine I might have taken the same bus with him; perhaps he is the professor I talk to after class, the photographer whose exhibition I go to see, or this street vendor here You never know."

  The subject of their attention was a pencil-mustached, wiry man between forty and fifty. In the window case in front of him were dozens of jumbo jars with pickles of all sizes, which he, with the help of an automatic juice machine, turned into fresh pickle juice. Noticing the two young women eyeing him, the man broke into a grin. Armanoush instantly turned her face away while Asya frowned at him.

  "You mean your mom hasn't told you who your father is?" asked Armanoush, delicately.

  "My mom is a unique species! She won't tell me anything unless she wants to. She is the most stubborn, the most iron-willed woman you could ever chance upon. I don't think the others know my father's identity either. I doubt if my mom has told anyone. Anyway, even if they know something about it, the family wouldn't share it with me. Nobody tells me anything. I am an outcast in that house, eternally exiled from dreadful family secrets. In the name of protecting me, they have separated me from them." Asya bit into a sunflower seed and spat out the shell. "And after a while it became a reciprocal game-they separate themselves from me, I separate myself from them."

  In that same moment they both slowed down. There, half a mile away from them out on the sea, was a man standing up in a small motorboat with several other passengers, holding a newly lit cigarette in one hand and in the other a fantastic tree of balloons in glowing yellows, oranges, and purples. Perhaps he was a fatigued ball
oon vendor, the father of many children, taking a shortcut from one coast to another on his way back from work, without knowing how breathtaking a pose he struck, as he dragged along a rain of colors and a plume of smoke over the blue waves.

  Caught utterly unprepared by the exquisiteness of the scene, Armanoush and Asya stood silently watching the motorboat until all the balloons had disappeared into the horizon.

  "Let's sit somewhere, shall we?" Asya asked, as if tired out by what she had just seen.

  There was a shabby, open-air cafe nearby.

  "So tell me, what kind of music do you like?" Asya asked, as soon as they had found an empty seat and ordered their drinksAsya, tea with lemon, Armanoush, Diet Coke with ice. The question was a manifest attempt to become better acquainted, since music happened to be Asya's main connection with the entire world.

  "Classical music, ethnic music, Armenian music, and jazz," Armanoush replied. "How about you?"

  "A bit different." Asya blushed though she didn't know why. "For a while I listened to harsh stuff-you know, alternative music, punk, postpunk, industrial metal, death metal, darkwave, psychedelic, also a bit of third-wave ska and a bit of gothic, that sort of stuff:"

  Accustomed to regarding "that sort of stuff' as a lost genre shared by decadent teenagers or directionless adults with more fury than character, Armanoush asked, "Really?"

  "Yeah, but then some time ago I got hooked on Johnny Cash. And that was it. Ever since then I stopped listening to anything else. I like Cash. He depresses me so deeply, I am not depressed anymore."

  "But don't you listen to anything local? Like Turkish music… Turkish pop…"

  "Turkish pop!!! No way!" Asya flapped her hands in panic as if trying to wave away a pushy street vendor.

  Sensing her limits, Armanoush did not press the question any further. Self-hatred, she deduced, could be something the Turks went through.

  But Asya tossed back her tea, and added, "Auntie Feride likes that kind of stuff. Though, to be perfectly honest, I sometimes can't tell if it's the music or the singers' hairstyles that she is most interested in."

  Halfway through her second Diet Coke, Armanoush asked Asya what kind of books she read, since fiction was her main connection with the entire world.

  "Books. Oh yeah, they saved my life, you know. I love reading, but not fiction…."

  A boisterous group of boys and girls materialized in the cafe, and they were ushered to the table across from Asya and Armanoush. As soon as they sat down, they started to scoff at everyone and everything. They laughed at the plastic burgundy chairs, the glass cases displaying a modest selection of refreshments, the errors in the English translations of the items listed on the menu, and the I LOVE ISTANBUL T-shirts the waiters wore. Asya and Armanoush yanked their chairs forward.

  "I read philosophy, political philosophy especially, you know, Benjamin, Adorno, Gramsci, a bit of Zizek… especially Deleuze. That kind of stuff. I like them. I like abstractions, I guess, philosophy-I love philosophy. Especially existential philosophy." Asya lit another cigarette and asked through the smoke, "How about you?"

  Armanoush named an elongated list of fiction writers, mostly Russian and Eastern European.

  "You see?" Asya turned both palms up, as if to indicate the situation made by the two of them. "When it comes to your favorite occupation in life, you too are less regional in your choices…. Your reading list doesn't sound very Armenian to me."

  Armanoush's eyebrow slightly rose. "Literature needs freedom to thrive," she said as she wagged her head. "We didn't have much of that to expand and enlarge Armenian literature, did we?"

  Sensing her limits, Asya did not press the question any further. Self-pity, she deduced, could be something the Armenians went through.

  The teenagers behind started to play a game of charades. Each chosen player was assigned a movie title by the rival team, which he then had to convey to his fellow team members. A freckled, ginger haired girl started to mimic the assigned movie title, and each time she came up with a gesture, the others broke into raucous laughter. It was odd to see how a game based on 'the principle of silence could cause so much clamor.

  Perhaps because of the noise in the background, whatever spirit had guided Armanoush not to trespass her limits had now departed. "The music you listen to is so Western. Why don't you listen to your Middle Eastern roots?"

  "What do you mean?" Asya sounded perplexed. "We are Western."

  "No, you are not Western. Turks are Middle Eastern but somehow in constant denial. And if you had let us stay in our homes, we too could still be Middle Easterners instead of turning into a diaspora people," Armanoush retorted, and instantly felt discomfited for she hadn't meant to sound so harsh.

  Asya gnawed the insides of her mouth, but when she had finished, all she said was, "What do you mean?"

  "What do I mean? I mean, Sultan Hamid's Pan-Turkish and Pan-Islamic yoke. I mean, the 1909 Adana massacres or the 1915 deportations…. Do those ring a bell? Did you not hear anything about the Armenian genocide?"

  "I'm only nineteen." Asya shrugged.

  The teenagers behind cheered as the freckled girl failed to accomplish her task in time and was replaced by a new player, a lanky, handsome boy whose Adam's apple jutted out from his neck with each mimic. The boy lifted three fingers, indicating that the movie's title consisted of three words. He proceeded into the third and last word directly. Raising both hands into the air, he clutched an imaginary, round thing between his palms, smelled and squeezed it. While his team members failed to understand what that meant, the rival team snickered.

  "Is that an excuse?" Armanoush looked Asya in the eye. "How can you be so impervious?"

  Not knowing the meaning of impervious, Asya saw no problem in personifying the word until she had found an English-Turkish dictionary and looked it up. Savoring the brief reappearance of the sun from behind thick clouds, she remained quiet for what felt like a long time. Then she murmured, "You're fascinated with history."

  "And you aren't?" drawled Armanoush, her voice conveying both disbelief and scorn.

  "What's the use of it?" was Asya's curt answer. "Why should I know anything about the past? Memories are too much of a burden."

  Armanoush turned her head, and her gaze involuntarily settled on the teenagers. Narrowing her eyes, she concentrated on the boy's gestures. Asya too turned around, observed the game, and before she knew it blurted out the answer: "Orange!"

  The teenagers burst into laughter, all looking at the young women at the next table. Asya flushed crimson, Armanoush smiled. They paid the bill quickly and were out on the street again.

  "What movie has `orange' in its name?" Armanoush asked once they had reached the path along the seaside.

  "A Clockwork Orange… I guess."

  "Oh yeah!" Armanoush conceded with a nod. "Listen, about thee fascination with history," she said, marshaling her thoughts. "You have to understand, despite all the grief that it embodies, history is what keeps us alive and united."

  "Well, I say that's a privilege."

  "What do you mean?"

  "This sense of continuity is a privilege. It makes you part of a group where there is a great feeling of solidarity," Asya replied. "Don't get me wrong, I can see how tragic the past was for your family, and I respect your wish to keep the memories alive come what may so that the sorrow of your ancestors is not forgotten. But that is precisely where our paths diverge. Yours is a crusade for remembrance, whereas if it were me, I'd rather be just like Petite-Ma, with no capacity for reminiscence whatsoever."

  "Why does the past frighten you so?"

  Asya demurred. "It doesn't!" As the capricious to and fro of the Istanbul wind fluttered her long skirt and cigarette smoke every which way, she paused briefly. "I just don't want to have anything to do with it, that's all."

  "That doesn't make sense," Armanoush insisted.

  "Perhaps it doesn't. But in all honesty, someone like me can never be past-oriented…. You know why?" Asya asked a
fter a long pause. "Not because I find my past poignant or that I don't care. It's because I don't know anything about it. I think it's better to have the knowledge of past events than not to know anything at all."

  An expression of puzzlement passed over Armanoush's face. "But you also said you didn't want to know your past. Now you sound different."

  "I do?" Asya asked. "Well, let's put it this way, I have conflicting voices inside me with respect to this issue." She gave her companion a glance full of mischief but then her voice became more serious. "All I know about my past is that something wasn't right, and I can't attain that information. For me history starts today, you see? There is no continuity in time. You can't feel attached to ancestors if you can't even trace your own father. Maybe I will never be able to learn my father's name. If I keep thinking about it, I'll go nuts. So I say to myself, why do you want to unearth the secrets? Don't you see that the past is a vicious circle? It is a loop. It sucks us in and makes us run like a hamster on a wheel. Then we start to repeat ourselves, again and again."

  As they walked up and down on the undulating streets, every neighborhood looked so different that Armanoush began to think Istanbul was an urban maze, cities within a city. She wondered if James Baldwin had felt the same way when he was here.

  At three o'clock in the afternoon, exhausted and hungry, they entered a restaurant, which Asya said was a must, since it was here that one could find the best chicken doper in town. They each got a doper and a large glass of frothy yogurt drink.

  "I have to confess," Armanoush muttered after a lull. "Istanbul is a bit different from what I expected. It's more modern and less conservative than I feared.""Well, you should tell that to my Auntie Cevriye sometime. She'd be thrilled. She'll give me a medallion for having represented my country so well!"