The Bastard of Istanbul

by Elif Shafak

  She had opted for the third choice. Auntie Zeliha abhorred fragility. To this day, she was the only one among all the Kazanci females capable of getting infuriated at tea glasses when they cracked under pressure.

  Auntie Zeliha reaches out for the pack of Marlboro Lights on the bedstand and lights a cigarette. Aging has not changed her smoking habits at all. She knows her daughter is a smoker too. It all sounds like a tawdry passage from a brochure by the Ministry of Health: Children of parents addicted to smoking are three times as likely to become smokers themselves. Auntie Zeliha is worried about Asya's wellbeing and yet she is wise enough to sense that if she intervenes too much, showing signs of mistrust, it will only generate a backlash. It's difficult to pretend not to look concerned, just like it's difficult to be called "auntie" by your own child. It kills her. Nonetheless, she still believes this might be better for them both. It has somehow freed the child and the mother; the two had to be detached nominally so that they could be attached physically and spiritually. Allah is her only witness; the only problem is, she doesn't believe He exists.

  She inhales a thoughtful drag, holds it for a moment, and exhales an angry puff. Provided that Allah exists and knows so much, why didn't He do anything with that knowledge of His? Why does He let things happen the way they do? No, Auntie Zeliha is resolute, there is no way she'll give in to religion. She lived as an agnostic, and she will die as one. Sincere and pure in her blasphemy. If Allah really exists somewhere, He should appreciate this heartfelt denunciation of hers, germane to only a select few, rather than being sweet-talked by the self-absorbed pleas of the religious fanatics, who are everywhere.

  In the room at the other end of the second floor is Auntie Banu. She too is awake at this hour. The third person awake in the Kazanci domicile. There is something unusual about her this morning. Her face is pale and her large, fawn eyes flicker with worry. Across from her is a mirror. She looks at herself and sees a woman aged before her time. For the first time in years she misses her husband-the husband she walked out on, but never fully abandoned.

  He is a good man who deserves a better wife. Never has he treated her badly or said a mean word, but after losing her two sons, Auntie Banu couldn't stand living with him anymore. Every now and then, she goes to her old house, like a stranger who knows every detail of a place from deja vu. She always buys dried apricots on the way, his favorite. Once there she does some cleaning, sews on a few buttons, cooks a few dishes, always his favorites, and tidies up the place. Not that there is too much to tidy up because he is a man who keeps the house in order. While Auntie Banu works, he watches her from close by.

  At the end of the day he always asks: "Will you stay?"

  Her response to that never changes: "Not today."

  Before she leaves the house she adds: "There is food in the fridge, don't forget to heat the soup, finish the pilaki in two days or it'll go bad. Don't forget to water the violets, I changed their place next to the window."

  He nods and mutters softly, as if talking to himself: "Don't worry. I know how to take care of myself. And thanks for the apricots…."

  After that Auntie Banu returns to the Kazanci domicile. That is how it has been, day after day, year after year.

  The woman in the mirror looks old tonight. Auntie Banu always thought aging swiftly was the price she had to pay for her profession. The overwhelming majority of human beings age year by year, but not the clairvoyants: They age story by story. If only she had wanted to, Auntie Banu could have asked for compensation. Just as she has not asked her djinn for any material gains, she has not asked for physical beauty either. Maybe she will some day. So far Allah has given her the strength to carry on without asking for more. But today Auntie Banu is going to request something extra.

  Allah, give me knowledge, for I cannot resist the urge to know, but also give me the strength to bear that knowledge. Amin.

  From a drawer she produces a jade rosary and strokes the beads. "All right then, I'm ready, let's start. May Allah help me!"

  Dangling from the bookshelf where the gas lamp stands, Mrs. Sweet grimaces, unhappy with the role of observer she has all of a sudden found herself in, unhappy with the things she is about to witness shortly in this room. Meanwhile, Mr. Bitter smiles bitterly, the only way he knows how to smile. He is content. Finally, Auntie Banu is convinced. It wasn't Mr. Bitter's djinnish command that convinced her but her own mortal curiosity. She couldn't resist the urge to learn. That antediluvian urge for more knowledge…. Who could resist it, after all?

  Now, Auntie Banu and Mr. Bitter will together travel back in time. From 2005 to 1915. It looks like a long trip, but it is only a matter of steps in terms of gulyabani years.

  In front of the mirror, between the djinn and the master stands a silver bowl of consecrated water from Mecca. Inside the silver bowl there is silvered water and inside the water there is a story, similarly silvered.

  224

  TWELVE

  Pomegranate Seeds

  Hovhannes Stamboulian stroked the hand-carved walnut desk he had been sitting at since early afternoon and felt the smooth, glossy surface glide under his fingers. The Jewish antique dealer who sold it to him had said such pieces were quite rare because they had been so hard to manufacture. Carved from walnut trees on the Aegean Islands, then adorned with tiny drawers and secret compartments like a fine piece of embroidery. Despite the delicacy of its adornment, the desk was so durable it could last several lifetimes.

  "This desk will outlive you and even your children!" The dealer had guffawed, as if his merchandise outliving his customers was a standing joke with him. "Isn't it sublime that a piece of wood lives longer than us?"

  Though he knew the remark was meant to demonstrate the quality of the merchandise, Hovhannes Stamboulian had felt a pang of sadness.

  Even so, he had bought the desk. Along with it, he had also purchased a brooch from the same store-a graceful brooch in the shape of a pomegranate, delicately smothered with gold threads all over, slightly cracked in the middle, with seeds of red rubies glowing from within. It was a deftly crafted piece by an Armenian artisan in Sivas, he had been told. Hovhannes Stamboulian bought the piece as a present for his wife. He was planning to give it to her tonight, after dinner, or perhaps better, before, as soon as he was done with this chapter.

  Of all the chapters he had written, this was the most demanding. Had he known it was going to be this grueling, he might have abandoned the entire project. But he was up to his neck in the book, and the only way out was to keep at it. Hovhannes Stamboulian, a renowned poet and columnist, was secretly writing a book entirely outside his main field. He could be rejected, ridiculed, or reviled at the end. At a time when the entire Ottoman Empire was sated with grandiose undertakings, revolutionary movements, and nationalist divisions, at a time when the Armenian community was pregnant with innovative ideologies and ardent debates, he in the privacy of his house was writing a children's book.

  Writing a children's book in Armenian was something never done before, almost inconceivable. Why was there not a single piece of literature in this field? Was it because the Armenian minority had become a society unable to consider its children as children? Was childhood a futility, if not a luxury, denied to a minority in need of growing up as quickly as it could? Or was it because the literati in Istanbul had been cut off from the oral traditions faithfully ferried by Armenian grandmothers to their grandchildren?

  The book was titled The Little Lost Pigeon and the Blissful Country. It was about a pigeon lost up there in the blue skies while flying with his family and friends over a blissful country. The pigeon would stop at numerous villages, towns, and cities, searching for his loved ones, and at each stop he would listen to a new story.

  In this manner, Hovhannes Stamboulian gathered in the book old Armenian folktales, most of which had been transmitted from generation to generation, others long forgotten. Throughout the book he remained loyal to the authenticity of each tale, hardly changing a word. But
now he planned to end the book with a story of his own. When done, the book would be published in Istanbul and then distributed in the major cities, like Adana, Harput, Van, Trabzon, and Sivas, where Armenians lived in large numbers. Even though the Muslims had started using the printing press about two centuries ago, the Armenian minority had been printing its own books and texts long before then.

  Hovhannes Stamboulian wanted Armenian parents to read these stories to their children before they went to bed each night. It was ironic that this book had taken so much of his time over the past eighteen months that he himself hadn't been able to spend much time with his own children. Every afternoon he would come into this room, sit at his desk, and write for however long it took him. Each night when he emerged from the room his children would already be in their beds, asleep. The urge to write had cast a spell over everything and everyone in his life. But fortunately he was about to finish. This was the last chapter he was writing this evening, the most demanding of all. When he was finished he would go downstairs, bundle up the whole text with a ribbon, hide the golden brooch inside the knot, and hand the package to his wife. The Little Lost Pigeon and the Blissful Country was dedicated to her.

  "Read it, please," he was planning to say. "If it is not good enough, I want you to burn it. All of it. I promise I won't even ask you why. But if you think it is good, I mean, good enough to be published and distributed, then please take it to Garabed Effendi at Dawn Publishers."

  Hovhannes Stamboulian respected his wife's opinion like no one else's. She had sophisticated taste in literature and fine art. Thanks to her hospitality, this chalky konak along the Bosphorus had for years been a center for intellectuals and artists, visited by countless men of letters, some eminent writers, some aspiring to be. They would come to eat, drink, read, contemplate, and fervently discuss one another's works, and even more fervently, their own.

  After flying too long the Little Lost Pigeon felt tired and thirsty and perched on a snowbound branch, which belonged to a pomegranate tree ready to blossom. He filled his little beak with some snow and having thus quenched his thirst, started to shed tears for his parents.

  "Don't cry, little pigeon," said the pomegranate tree. "Let me tell you a story. The story of a little lost pigeon. "

  Hovhannes Stamboulian paused without quite understanding what exactly disturbed his concentration. He let out a sigh of exasperation, much to his own surprise. For the last hour or so his mind had been a free-for-all of gloomy thoughts. He had a hard time understanding why he was so worried deep inside, as if his mind had been operating on its own, contemplating nameless worries. Whatever the reason behind such uneasiness he had to get rid of the torpor. This was the last chapter, the last story. It had to be good. He pursed his lips and went back to writing.

  "But that's me you are talking about. I am that pigeon!" chirped the Little Lost Pigeon in surprise.

  "Oh really?" asked the pomegranate tree, but didn't sound the least surprised. "Then listen to your story…. Don't you want to learn about your future?"

  "Only if it's a happy one," said the Little Lost Pigeon. "I don't want to learn about it if it's sad."

  Suddenly the still air was pierced by the smashing of glass. Hovhannes Stamboulian flinched in his chair, stopped writing, and instinctively turned toward the window, all- ears, frozen. For a long while he heard nothing but the howling of the wind. Oddly enough he found the silence more ominous than that eerie sound. The night was thick with a ghostly stillness while the wind outside roared as if it ferried the wrath of God, fuming for a reason unknown to mortals. In contrast to the wind whipping the walls outside, here in the house it was exceptionally silent. Hovhannes Stamboulian felt so deeply unnerved by this unusual quiet that he was almost relieved when he heard some sounds coming from downstairs. Someone scurried from one end of the house to the other, and then all the way back; panicky, abrasive footsteps in a rush as if running away from someone or something.

  That must be Yervant, he thought, as a new concern crept into his eyes, a look of pensiveness and apprehension. His eldest son, Yervant, had always been naughty and boisterous, but recently the boy's waywardness had soared beyond limits. In truth, Hovhannes Stamboulian felt a pang of guilt for not spending as much time with him as he should have. Obviously the boy longed for his father.. Compared to him his three other children, two boys and a girl, were so docile it was as if their eldest brother's frenzied energy had a soporific effect on them. The two younger boys were three years apart but equally compliant. And then came the youngest sibling, the only girl in the family, little Shushan.

  "Don't you worry, little bird," the pomegranate tree smiled and shook the snow on her branches. "The story that I'm going to tell you is a happy one."

  Downstairs in the corridor footsteps multiplied alarmingly. Now it sounded as if there were dozens of Yervants disobediently running from one end to the other, stomping and crushing the floor underneath. But amid the scuttle, all of a sudden, he thought he heard a voice, so unexpected and curt it was hard to be sure-stern and husky, cracking for a split second. That was it. After that it was silence again, as if it all had been a figment of his imagination.

  Ordinarily, he would have run out of his room to check if everything was all right. But tonight was no ordinary night. He didn't want to be disturbed, not now, not when he was about to finish the work of eighteen months. Hovhannes wriggled in angst like a diver who, after having submerged too deep, could not bring his body to swim its way back to the surface. The whirl of writing was cavernous and encapsulating but also distinctively enticing. Words jumped to and fro on the parched paper, begging him to bring this last story to a close and to shepherd them to their long-awaited destiny.

  "All right, then," the Little Lost Pigeon chirped. "Tell me the story of the Little Lost Pigeon. But I warn you, if I hear anything sad, I will take wing and fly away. "

  Hovhannes Stamboulian knew what the pomegranate tree was going to say in return and how the last story started, but before he could put it down on paper, something somewhere fell on the floor and smashed into pieces. Amid the burst he picked up a snuffle; though it was muffled and short he instantly recognized his wife's sob. He jumped to his feet, now entirely flushed out of the abyss of his writing, and popped up to the surface like a dead fish.

  As he darted toward the staircase, Hovhannes Stamboulian recalled his quarrel that very morning with Kirkor Hagopian, an eminent lawyer and member of the Ottoman Parliament.

  "The times are bad, very bad. Get ready for the worst," was the first thing Kirkor muttered when they ran into each other at the barber's shop. "First they conscripted Armenian men. `Aren't we all equal, aren't we all Ottomans?' they declared. `Muslims and non Muslims, we will fight the enemy together!' But then they disarmed all the Armenian soldiers as if they were the enemy. Next they gathered Armenian men in labor battalions. And now, my friend, there are rumors…. Some say the worst is coming."

  Though sincerely concerned, Hovhannes Stamboulian had not been particularly shaken by the news. He himself was too old to be recruited and his boys too young. The only one in the family within the range of conscription age was his wife's younger brother, Levon. But he had avoided military service during the Balkan Wars thanks to receiving the badge of "the unguarded" during the selection process. Men who were the sole providers of their families were spared military duty. That old Ottoman rule, however, might be changing. Nowadays one could never be completely sure. At the beginning of the First World War, they had announced they would solely recruit those in their early twenties, but once the war had gathered speed, those in their thirties and even forties had also been conscripted.

  Combat was not for Hovhannes Stamboulian. Neither was hard manual work. He loved poetry. He loved words, feeling each individual letter of the Armenian alphabet upon his tongue and lips. After ample reflection he had deduced that what the Armenian minority needed most was not arms, as some revolutionaries posed, but books, more and more books. Though new sch
ools were founded after the Tanzimat, they were in dire need of more openminded and cultivated teachers and better books. Some additional progress had been made after the revolution in 1908. The Armenian population had supported the Young Turks in the hope that their treatment of non-Muslims would be fair and decent. The Young Turks had stated it in their proclamation:

  Every citizen will enjoy complete liberty and equality, regardless of nationality or religion, and be submitted to the same obligations.All Ottomans, being equal before the law as regards rights and duties relative to the State, are eligible for government posts, according to their individual capacity and their education.

  True, they had not stuck to their promise, abandoning multinational Ottomanism for Turkism, but the European powers watched the empire carefully; they would surely intervene if something grim were to take place. Hovhannes Stamboulian believed that under the present circumstances Ottomanism was the best option for Armenians, not radical ideas. Turks and Greeks and Armenians and Jews had lived together for centuries and still could find a way to coexist under one umbrella.

  "You don't understand a thing, do you?" Kirkor Hagopian snapped furiously. "You live in your fairy tales!"

  Hovhannes Stamboulian had never seen him so unnerved and confrontational. Still, he didn't go along with him. "I don't think zealousness is going to help us," he said, barely getting his voice above a whisper. It was his belief that nationalist zeal would solely serve to replace one misery for another, inevitably working against the deprived and the dispossessed. In the end minorities tore themselves apart from the larger entity at a great cost, only to create their own oppressors. Nationalism was no more than a replenishment of oppressors. Instead of being oppressed by someone of a different ethnicity, you ended up being oppressed by someone of your own.