by Sevgi Soysal
She thinks about the get-together that is to take place the following day. Nezihe Hanım would undoubtedly be in attendance. Tomorrow Hatice Hanım will rub Nezihe Hanım’s nose in the fact that she has not kept her word regarding the doctor’s report her husband asked for so that he could take early retirement, that is, regarding the fact that her doctor husband acted duplicitously. She continues walking. There is a new kind of biscuit available. Newly available goods are of great interest to her. She wants to know in which stores which companies put new goods on the market and at what price. With great generosity she shares this newly acquired knowledge with friends and neighbors, and she desires for her personal judgments regarding the newly released goods to be heard out. She likewise expects others to inform her of newly released goods. And then later she says things like:
“That plastic tablecloth Ayşe mentioned isn’t worth a cent.”
“Our neighbor Zehra Hanım ran and bought the glasses that just arrived at The Big Store as soon as they came out. The woman has absolutely no taste, really.”
“I listened to your father and bought this pan. It turns meat into a sponge …”
She looked at the tea biscuits which had just been put on the market. She was an attentive listener of advertising programs on the radio. She had never heard of this brand. Should she try it? Not out of nowhere she shouldn’t. If it were anything worth its salt they would have broadcast some ads. But then the packaging wasn’t bad, not at all. She looked at the price. It wasn’t any more expensive than the biscuits she usually bought. Her suspicions soared. If only the colonel’s wife would see them and buy a tin. She would offer them at the get-together tomorrow, and that way she’d get to try them. She could hardly reign in her curiosity; if she were certain no one would see her, she’d open it up and take a bite. But, buying biscuits was not on her list today. Otherwise, she definitely would have bought them. But it wasn’t right to just buy something out of the blue; she looked around, searching for Colonel Zeki’s wife—if she could only spot her she would call her over, and together with a litany of other comments, she would recommend the biscuits. And maybe the little woman would buy them, with the following day’s get-together in mind. But she couldn’t spot her, and so she walked away from the biscuits in a huff and approached the tableware section. I should buy some teaspoons, she thought. Actually, I need saucers even more. She patiently and unflaggingly inspected each and every one of the saucers lined up in a row. She desperately desired for the ones that she bought to be without a doubt much better and much stronger than the others that she didn’t buy. Yet all of the saucers looked alike and this created an extremely frustrating and exhausting situation for Hatice Hanım. It was extremely difficult to separate amongst so many similar saucers those worth buying from those not worth buying and thus acquire the feeling that she had bought the best and had not been cheated. Finally, she separated out the ones that had accumulated the least amount of dust.
The teaspoons were displayed right next to the saucers. All of them were the same length and very shiny. Hatice Hanım looked at the teaspoons. How on earth they ever disappeared was beyond her. Once again, there were none left at the house. All because of that cleaning woman. The addlebrained peasant kept tossing them in the trash. She did more damage than good, that woman. Rage welled up inside of her, because she wasn’t able to punish the cleaning woman at that very moment; actually because she wasn’t able to punish her because she needed her. The feeling of desperation that she felt only served to stoke the fires of her anger. She spotted the meat salesman from a distance. He was oh so casually, oh so carelessly weighing meat. All of a sudden, she reached out her hand. She grabbed a handful of teaspoons, the exact number of which she was uncertain, but which she guessed to be around a dozen, and put them in her coat pocket. With swift steps she walked away.
She got in line at the cash register to pay for the goods she had filled her metal shopping cart with. While waiting she complained loudly.
“This place has gone completely to pot. It’s bloody chaos in here, I tell you, bloody chaos.”
As she was paying she asked the cashier:
“Isn’t there an office or something here where one can report an impertinent salesman, young lady?”
The harried cashier looked at her, boredom written all over her face, and did not respond. She shrugged her shoulders in the face of Hatice Hanım’s anger.
Hatice Hanım walked up the stairs towards the exit. She was going to go home. She was of the belief that of everyone at home, her presence was most essential of all. The house belonged to whomever spent the most time in it. The chateau belongs to whoever surrounds it with armed men, to whoever raises its bridge at night. She began to wait by the traffic light. It was red. She grumbled after a young man who dashed ahead without waiting for it to turn green, and to the policeman who saw the young man yet failed to react:
“Look here, son! Everyone and his uncle is sprinting to the other side while we stand here waiting!”
The traffic cop continued to blow his whistle. While Hatice Hanım proceeded to explain to him the situation, starting from the very beginning in a louder voice, the light for pedestrians turned red again. The traffic cop left Hatice Hanım standing there across from the red light and began blowing his whistle after a car.
That so very familiar redness once again spread over Hatice Hanım’s face. It was impossible to go out at all anymore. There was injustice everywhere. There was rudeness everywhere. When the light turned green, she marched forward in a huff. On the other side of the street, right in the heart of Kızılay next to that lovely building, right next to that so carefully decorated shop window, a crouching Gypsy woman was begging, in her lap a child that appeared to have gone blind from nitric acid. The beggar woman rocked the baby, those cliches of “ma’am,” “fer God’s sake,” “fer the fergiveness of your sins” falling from her lips.
Hatice Hanım gave the beggar a piercing glance. These scoundrels had infiltrated the very heart of Kızılay. This city was absolutely out of control. It used to be you never saw any of these ragtag types on the avenues of Ankara, she said to herself; there used to be order, there used to be an authority, there used to be a system; servants used to seek the favor of this person and that person in the hopes of getting a position for their peasant relatives amongst the household help; the local bakkal didn’t know how he could possibly thank Hatice Hanım enough when she paid her monthly bill. All it took was a phone call and the butcher would have his apprentice running right over to deliver the finest meat. The apprentice wouldn’t accept any tips, he would just leave the meat and return with dignity to his post. But now? The thought of how things were now sent the blood rushing to her head. She looked at the Gypsy’s hair, with its filthy, sticky strands clumped together. Fine, so we might be used to it by now, but what a shameful sight for the foreigners. Her husband had gone to Germany when he was young. He used to talk about those spic and span avenues that had not one piece of trash or a single beggar. You could lick the avenues and not be disgusted at all, it was that clean. A land of working, discipline, and order. One day he was walking down the street, behind a mother and child. The child tossed a banana peel onto the ground. The mother noticed a short while later. She immediately sent the child back to pick up the banana peel. And she gave the child an earful too. How many times Hatice Hanım had told that story to the children at elementary school, after picking the lice out of the hair of the children from the gecekondu neighborhood on Deliller Hill. If we want to be proper people, we have to be more like the Germans, who don’t toss banana peels onto the ground. But that would be a long time coming! We will never become proper people. She looked at the beggar with an expression of rage, as if the beggar alone were to blame for the utter failure of this population to become proper people. She wished for the harshness of her gaze to pick the woman up and send her on her way to wherever it was she belonged. But the beggar woman persisted in her begging, as self-assured as ever. Hati
ce Hanım had given up all hope for her country’s recovery. She walked; she didn’t notice the greeting of a man in golf pants as he walked past her; she didn’t see any faces, she was careful to walk on the right side of the pavement, she held on tightly to the teaspoons in her pocket; she was freezing, her body was ice cold, as if it were freezing outside; despite all of the blood that had shot to her head, her cheeks were like ice; it was as if her face were an apple forgotten in the refrigerator, as if only the palm of her hand, the hand wrapped around the teaspoons she had snatched from The Big Store, were warm, as if her heart were beating at that very spot, as if all the blood in her body flowed from that very spot; the heat spreading from that spot rescued her from the deadly cold; it gave her the strength to continue walking, to make it home and put away all the things she had bought, to cook them in the way they must be cooked, to begin and continue her life from that infallible point known to be necessary.
The hem of Necip Bey’s pants comes undone
Necip Bey was upset that the greeting he had bestowed upon Hatice Hanım with informed courteousness was not returned. They’re boors, the whole lot of them, complete and utter boors, male and female alike. He wasn’t someone easily overlooked, with his plaid golf pants, bowtie, and long-handled umbrella. That uncouth lowlife, and to think she was a teacher! So long as “éducation” remained in the hands of people like her, well … He recalled the French frères at the parish school where he had studied, refined men who could recognize a fine wine, who knew which fish to eat in which season, who had no tolerance for those incapable of maintaining a rare center when cooking beefsteak, and he did so with gratitude. And how could he not? The education he received later during his university years in Lausanne, his refined nature, his ability to make a strong impression despite his dwindling inheritance, all of that he owed to what he had learned from them. That’s the way it was. That’s the way it was, even if uncouth, rude people like Hatice Hanım did fill up all the apartment buildings, even if they did constantly yell at the apartment building attendants, even if they did find a way to have the attendants at their beck and call, that’s just the way it was. And to think that he had tipped the hat he bought in Paris ten years ago to greet that uncouth woman. He was very proud of the hat. He had seen a similar one in the Atatürk Museum located adjacent to Atatürk’s mausoleum. “Atatürk’s traveling clothes!” At the museum there were dozens more pieces of fashionable attire. Atatürk was a refined man with impeccable taste. Perhaps it was because he was from Salonica. After all, Salonica qualified as Europe. But it shouldn’t be said that he was from Salonica. Necip Bey’s mother got very upset at the mention that they were from Salonica. What was that supposed to mean, “from Salonica”? Of course there were dönmes, palikaryas, Bulgarians, and other immigrants who were from Salonica. But we, we hail from the gentry of Salonica. There was a seemingly infinite number of Greek and Bulgarian sharecroppers at the farm where Necip’s father worked in Pişona. Whenever a member of the family died, the death notice would begin with the phrase, “A member of the gentry of Salonica,” and all members of the family, even the most distant of cousins, would be mentioned one by one. Whenever Necip Bey’s mother didn’t take a liking to someone, she would say, “What do you expect, he’s Anatolian, those people have no sense of courtesy, they’re a bunch of boors, you cannot blame them for their faults …” That’s the case with Hatice Hanım as well. Every time he turns around she’s coming over to Necip Bey’s to use the phone. As if the phone belongs to her own daddy! She gives all of her acquaintances, close and otherwise, Necip Bey’s number. Necip Bey can’t count the number of times he’s had to interrupt his bath to go and give word to Hatice Hanım that she was wanted on the phone, or the number of times he’s had had to get up in the middle of a meal, all because of Hatice Hanım’s phone calls. But Hatice Hanım, well, she sees nothing out of the ordinary about this state of affairs, nothing at all. What’s more, she makes him listen to her own litany of complaints about her husband’s ineptitude and faint-heartedness, which always begin with, “I listened to the man of the house and cancelled our number when we moved, and we just haven’t been able to get a new number since.” She has a right to everything, including Necip Bey’s telephone, and she will thank him for it, or not, as she darn well pleases. It’s the gratitude issue that gets on Necip Bey’s nerves more than anything else. The differences between them should be obvious. It should be obvious who gave and who took. It should be obvious who is bestowing a favor upon whom. Necip Bey considers himself to be a man of good manners. He is, he believes, the kind of man who willingly helps a neighbor who lacks a phone. Ever since he was little, he listened to so many stories about how his father helped numerous people in one way or another. And he too loves to help in any way he can, as long as it does not involve money …
He’s philanthropic like his father, but he doesn’t actually remember much about his father. In his mother’s words, his father died of “the Aleppo boil,” just like Sultan Selim. Right after the Greek-Bulgarian war. The Greeks had imprisoned all of the gentry of Salonica for some time, including his father. His mother had filled the house with hodjas and a bunch of old hags who used combinations of haricot beans for some curious manner of fortunetelling. Then there was a huge fire, and his father either died, or he did not; it was the homes of Jews or merchant dönmes that burned down in the fire. Nothing happened to the Turkish neighborhood because it was at the top of the hill. No, his father did not die just then; in fact, he had rented out a few of the empty rooms upstairs to some Jewish merchant acquaintances. As a gesture of good will.
After all, those Jews were multilingual people who had been through a lot. They had great respect for İzzeddin Efendi. On every holiday they would come bearing presents to ask for his blessing.
Hatice Hanım, on the other hand, was living in Necip Bey’s apartment as if she were the one doing him a favor. Each month when she handed the rent over to the building attendant, she’d complain of this or that problem with the apartment building. As soon as the central heating flagged even the slightest bit, she complained; she never missed a beat. She was utterly devoid of any manners, how else to possibly describe her?
Yunus Bey, one of his father’s dönme renters in Salonica, now he was one polite gentleman; on the evenings when he came to chat with Necip Bey’s father, Necip Bey would listen, mesmerized, his mouth agape, until he fell asleep on the divan. Yunus Bey knew everything. He talked about Europe, Paris, operas, the churches in Rome, the paintings in the churches. He was particularly interested in painting. One day when they had removed the upholstery from the divans for cleaning, he found Necip Bey hidden behind the divans drawing; seeing a Muslim child take such an interest in drawing brought tears to his eyes. He convinced İzzeddin Efendi that he should foster the development of the child’s special talent, and finally, İzzeddin Efendi allowed Necip Bey to take lessons from Yani Usta, a professional painter who lived in the neighborhood. Necip Bey did not come to master the art of painting while working alongside Yani Usta, but he did paint in various shades of blue the skies of the paintings of angels and saints that Yani Usta produced on order for three different neighborhoods. The Ottoman gold pieces İzzeddin Efendi paid for those lessons! Still, may Yani Usta’s soul rest in peace. Necip Bey always says that it was he who first instilled in him a sense of European culture.
That thick-legged daughter of Hatice Hanım is taking lessons at a ballet studio, he’d heard. Already an insolent hussy, that one. When Necip Bey gets into his car on Saturday afternoons, wearing his white shorts, white rubber shoes, white sweater and cap, to go play tennis, she and her friends make fun of him; he hasn’t said anything, but he knows, he can tell from their laughter. At one point they had gotten Necip Bey’s daughter mixed up in their business and convinced her to let them make all sorts of calls from Necip Bey’s phone. Every single day they called the flower-seller located at the intersection, Mehmet Horoz, whose last name means “rooster,” to ask, “Hey Mr.
Rooster, how’s Mrs. Chicken?” The man filed a petition to track the calls. Next thing you know, Necip Bey is served with a court warrant. Necip Bey would never in a million years be caught dead in a courthouse; courthouses are for peasants. As far as he was concerned, the judge should have understood immediately, as soon as he saw Necip Bey’s name, that a man such as himself could not possibly be capable of a trick like that, and he then should have convinced the flower-seller to that effect. But that’s not what happened. Necip Bey was sentenced in abstentia to pay 50 liras. The very thought of it drove him mad. He refused to speak with his daughter for weeks because of this incident. He forbade his daughter from fraternizing with Hatice Hanım’s daughter. His daughter didn’t listen.