by Banine
‘Yes,’ Grandmother continued where she had left off. ‘Then Farida said she didn’t want to marry Akbar because he was sixty. That’s where those dirty Christian dogs are taking us, ay Allah!’
‘Ay Allah!’ ten mouths declared in unison.
‘Where are we going?’ our enemy Amidostu asked grandly.
And the emotional Amidostu screwed up her little piggy eyes as though she were about to cry.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked again, looking at Grandmother as though she might find salvation in her.
Grandmother made a vague gesture in the air and her large emerald and ruby rings caught the sunlight; then she majestically rested her hand on her thigh, crossed in oriental style.
‘Only Allah is wise,’ she pronounced finally.
And the ten women immediately repeated, ‘Only Allah is wise.’
The sun shone fiercely in a cloudless sky. Long beads of sweat trickled down the brown faces, dropping into the pool or onto the laundry, but not one of the women bothered to wipe them away; it would have been a futile gesture, a waste of time and energy. Wipe away ten drops and another ten will take their place… What’s the point of wiping them away, ay Allah?
The women all went back to talking at once; each one firmly believed she had the most interesting thing to say so shouted as loud as possible to be heard. They made such a din that the night-time croaking of the frogs seemed a gentle chirping in comparison. In the still air of the dog days their chattering reached the far ends of the garden and the gardeners would shake their heads, laughing… The frog pool had earned its name twice over.
‘Do you know,’ Grandmother resumed, and all the women fell instantly silent, ‘do you know that Ginger Ahmet, my niece’s sister-in-law’s great-uncle, has serious heart disease? He might die. There’s no… Only Allah is eternal.’
‘Only Allah is eternal,’ the washerwomen’s chorus replied immediately.
And for several moments the splash of the water was punctuated by appropriate sighs. Amidostu sighed more loudly than the others and a tear appeared in the corner of her eye. But Grandmother returned to the subject close to her heart.
‘Can you imagine that Farida, who is only sixteen—she was born in the year of the great Surakhani fire—doesn’t want to marry Balaja-Giz-Bibi’s uncle, because, she says, he’s sixty. As I was saying, this is where the Russian pigs are taking us. My children are mad to bring up their children the Russian way. They’ll be sorry one day. But nothing happens without the will of Allah.’
‘Nothing happens without the will of Allah,’ the chorus responded.
‘That is true,’ Asad interjected firmly.
He got up and walked over to Amidostu, taking a small flask out of his pocket and splashing its contents on the old woman’s veil and clothes. In open-mouthed fascination she watched him do it. Ali in turn took a box of matches out of his pocket and looked as though he was about to use them.
‘What are you doing, children of dogs?’ Grandmother shouted, sensing trouble.
‘I’ve told you a hundred times that you insult yourself when you insult us like that,’ Asad said coldly. ‘Our parents may be dogs, but don’t forget that they’re your children. Anyway, we’ve decided to burn Amidostu, as she annoys us. I’ve poured petrol over her and now we’re going to set her alight…’
Amidostu gave a wild cry. She leapt to her feet, threw aside her veil and undid her skirt, which fell to the ground, revealing long white bloomers. She was taking off her jacket which had also been sprayed with petrol, when Ali brought a burning match close up to her, or rather appeared to do so. Amidostu jumped down from the pool’s rim and charged down a long avenue, calling for help at the top of her piercing voice. Grandmother rained curses down on us, and the other women followed suit. As for me, I rolled on the ground laughing. Amidostu fled through the garden in bloomers and without her veil, despite the gardeners or other men she might encounter; Asad and Ali, still brandishing his box of matches, were hot on her heels. Hadn’t it occurred to her simply to jump into the pool?
When Grandmother wasn’t busy with one of her five daily prayers or on her commode receiving visitors, she held court in the kitchen, which served as her drawing room. Crowds of poor relations swarmed around her, but rich relations came too, as did poor people who were not even related. One of this last group stood out in particular: an old woman called Fatima who was said to be a hermaphrodite and descended from the Prophet—though the only benefit this ancestry brought her was to increase her vanity. Even marriage had eluded her, and she was the only celibate Muslim woman that I knew; perhaps because her hermaphroditism posed sexual problems that were difficult to resolve; perhaps because her divine ancestry frightened the men, rendering them unable to be at ease with her; or perhaps simply because she was so ugly that even the usually imperturbable Asad and Ali found her disturbing. She had a large face like a dog, deeply wrinkled and covered in hair. Were it not for her breasts, which hung loose and banged together like two squashed mortadellas as she walked, she would have been taken for a man. Another of her distinguishing traits was her passion for the hookah, which Grandmother, with uncharacteristic generosity, offered her during her visits. I loved Fatima despite her ugliness, as she was Grandmother’s only visitor who never tried to kiss me with her wet lips and damp cheeks.
Those revolting kisses were the bane of my childhood. As soon as one of the poor relations spotted me, she would inexplicably make a beeline for me and cover me with kisses that were a dense mixture of sweat and saliva. Knowing from experience the impossibility of escape, I would let them get on with it, clenching my teeth and nursing hatred in my soul. As soon as the woman let me go, I would demonstratively wipe my face with a handkerchief or, failing that, the hem of my dress. But this eloquent performance didn’t stop them starting all over again. Tact was not their forte.
The vast kitchen was always overflowing with visitors, most of them accompanied by children of all ages. It was impossible to go in without seeing one of them breastfeeding an infant, or even a child whose nursing days were long since over (if there’s milk there, then of course someone has to have it). These lousy, snotty-nosed, screaming children repulsed me and I didn’t try to hide it. The assembled company took exception and decided I was a child of Shaytan. Obedient to my reputation, I lived up to it with even worse behaviour: I would stick out my tongue at one woman, pull another’s plaits and pinch a third woman’s child.
Asad, Gulnar, Ali and I made frequent incursions into the kitchen, where from seven in the morning to nine at night something was always cooking. Wanting to be seen more than to satisfy hunger, we would stick our fingers into boiling jam then lick them, snatch a morsel of mutton simmering in its sauce and eat it half-cooked, choking on it and burning our mouths. Grandmother would threaten us with a rolling pin or meat skewer; knowing that she couldn’t get up quickly enough, we would continue to ravage the dishes until she told one of her visitors to throw us out without ceremony, which the latter would do with obvious pleasure.
Sometimes, though, we would sit quietly on the straw mats scattered over the floor in place of chairs, and listen. We listened with delight to a storyteller’s nasal twang (all the storytellers had a nasal twang—tradition demanded it). The children suckled, the women fanned themselves with raffia fans or quietly twiddled their thumbs while the storyteller told the tale of Ahmad and Surayya or Mohammed and Leyla. Love stories were popular with us all, though the women rarely experienced them themselves. They always began with the words: ‘Someone was and someone was not; apart from Allah no one was.’ As the story unfolded, the milk curdled in the large earthenware bowls, the mutton gently roasted and the jam boiled in the enormous red copper vats, watched over by one of the women.
The sloppy kisses were not the poor relations’ only drawback. They were eaten up by curiosity and unrestrained by any scruples; they would burst into our bedrooms while we were still asleep, opening all the drawers and cupboards to look at our thi
ngs, feeling our dresses to work out the cost of the fabric and our breasts to see if they were growing well. They wanted to know everything about their rich relations and fired questions at us. Which of us was already menstruating and since when? Which of us was our father’s favourite? How many dresses did we each have and how much were the ‘Christian women’ paid to look after us? They listened behind doors, pressed their faces up to our windows and were amazed at everything: the piano, the mechanical toys, tennis. They envied us these things with a childlike candour, but were suspicious of the progress they represented; their simple life must have seemed more peaceful to them. Sometimes they irritated us so much we slammed the door in their faces, telling them to go to the Devil, but they wouldn’t take umbrage and would start up again later.
Grandmother loved them and took their side against us, because she liked to surround herself with a biddable entourage. The poor relations were her courtiers: servile, fawning and backbiting. They brought her all the local gossip, making it up if need be to entertain her. Grandmother would invite them to the hammam parties, give them some leftover mutton or a length of cotton for their trouble. Of course, she could be very rude about them when she felt like it, but the women did not flinch: her courtiers were unencumbered by pride.
* ‘Devil’ in Azeri.
4
Quarrels and rifts were a dominant feature of family life, for two reasons: one was the fiery tempers and fractious dispositions of all the members of the family; the other was the INHERITANCE. The famous, elusive inheritance that had to be shared out on the death of my paternal grandfather. I’ll say it again—the INHERITANCE! The word merits several exclamation marks, not just one, as it spawned endless discussions, arguments and hatred. Three sisters and their husbands, two brothers (and later, their wives), their mother and their father’s second wife spent much of their lives haggling over it, each fiercely defending their share. The children of these brothers and sisters were dragged along the rocky road as well. Their parents would forbid them to play with those cousins whose father, or mother, or both, were out of favour. Nobody escaped involvement in these intractable disputes that went on year after year, court hearing after court hearing, until 1917. No explanation needed…
We children were upset when we had to break off relations with our cousins, stopping our games to satisfy the passing whims of adults. Sometimes we continued playing in secret, and those games were doubly exciting, as they had the allure of forbidden fruit. But often Asad and Ali, belligerent and foul-mouthed at the best of times, used the opportunity to heap undeserved abuse on us with impunity—breaking my young heart, ignorant as I was of the fickleness of human sentiment.
I’ve already said that their father, Uncle Suleyman, never came to the country house because of the semi-permanent rift with my father. But he let his wife live with us, on the sole condition that she have the occasional row with my father. And when she did, a cloud hung over relations with my amazing cousins, whom I loved so much; but they loved their father more and followed his instructions to the letter. They were so much in his thrall that, typically, it took just one word forbidding them to play with the children of the ‘thief’, as he usually called my father, for them to fall into line. When the paternal rift had passed, they would be friendly towards me again in their own way.
I could understand their love for their father, with his powerful personality. Wagging tongues said he was syphilitic, a murderer and a thief, but if we believed every malicious rumour, we would have nothing to do with anyone but ourselves. Handsome, violent, a shrewd businessman, he had come from nothing and managed (I wonder by what sleight of hand) to marry a daughter of the Family and build a town house that inspired the admiration of all its visitors. The house had an inner courtyard for elephants (who never did take up residence) and a roof where jasmine could grow (but never did). Other things remained unfinished too, but, even as it was, the town house filled me with awe, especially the inevitable Moorish reception room with a fountain, and the boldly decorated Renaissance room. Not forgetting to mention a room covered entirely in mirrors and a bedroom with twin beds separated from the rest of the room by a fretwork panel that created the strange effect of a cage.
Despite all this splendour the whole house was untidy, even dirty, most likely due to the residents themselves. I am sure that Asad and Ali would have managed to turn the Élysée Palace into a similar mess: a strong personality leaves its imprint everywhere.
But let’s get back to the eternal rifts that wrought havoc in the family. The state of affairs with the other sister and her husband would be quickly made apparent—the barometer door between the two country houses would be bolted shut, so it would be impossible to see each other; though both sides could hurl abuse over these two-metre-high ramparts, which they did sometimes when a storm was brewing and spirits sank.
All this was child’s play, though, in comparison with what happened one disastrous day when my grandfather’s second wife took the ridiculous idea into her head to come and visit us in the country. We were shut up in a distant room—still not far enough away, however, to stop the cries, or rather howls, from reaching us. All the adults of the family were gathered on the terrace; hard feelings forgotten, those who had not been on speaking terms that morning were united against a common enemy. From what I learnt afterwards, the second wife feared neither God nor the Devil. Standing up to the lot of them with admirable courage, she repeatedly went on the offensive. I don’t know exactly what went on during this historic encounter, but the wicked stepmother did not stay the night, returning to the city the same evening. When we were allowed out of exile, we saw shocked faces, dishevelled hair and eyes smouldering with a dangerous fire. At dinner the conversation was exclusively in Azeri, as was always the case when passions were running high. With the enemy gone, the sides regrouped and resumed their quarrels with more vigour than ever. The racket grew ever louder during the meal, and after dinner moved onto the terrace, where discussions between the interested parties were resumed, redoubled, quadrupled, and so forth. It ended in a grand battle; everyone was angry that evening, and for around a week all the factions within the family broke off relations with one another. It was a painful time. When we saw a member of an enemy faction, we had to look away and make it obvious by our demeanour that we had become deaf, blind and dumb and saw no one but ourselves. We would go on our haughty way, in a silence that spoke volumes or rather spoke nothing at all.
We were not the only ones to suffer from the loss of our games: the three sisters would be stricken, as the rift deprived them of their daily card games. They had a burning passion for poker, perhaps using it as a receptacle for all their repressed feelings. Sometimes they would start playing in the early afternoon, only breaking off to gulp down a few mouthfuls, as though they scorned base dietary concerns in favour of purer pleasures, then resume their game and not finish until dawn. And estrangements meant they had to give all this up! When peace was restored, how they would race to the green baize table! And we celebrated too. During those endless card games we would take up position at the four corners of the table, preferably near whoever was winning (and this required intuition). Intoxicated with victory, the winner rarely forgot the smart nephew or sweet niece sitting quietly at her side and would give them a rouble, sometimes more, depending on the size of the winnings and the mood of the moment. Though Fräulein Anna objected time and again to the practice, no one took any notice of her virtuous indignation: neither the generous donor who laughed at her anger, nor the recipient who was motivated by love of money. We secured substantial revenues for ourselves in this way, and went on to lose them too as we already shared the passion for the game. Only Asad and Ali ended up in profit—they always won, by cheating or through their greater skill and intelligence. What noble boys they were!
Let’s go back to the last get-together around the frog pool, when Grandmother talked about pretty Farida, sixteen years old and sentimental at heart, who baulked at marriage to
a man of sixty. Not long after that conversation the young girl gave in to her authoritarian father, as was only to be expected, and agreed to marry the man they had chosen for her. Veiled and kept well away from young men, how was she to find a fiancé herself? (Later, when revolution had conquered the Caucasus, she cast off her veil and her husband and married a man her own age. History does not say whether she was happier with the former or the latter.)
The wedding was set for mid-June. Though scornful of the sentimental dramas surrounding the marriage, we children were delighted, as a wedding was a gift to those who like to enjoy themselves. And my cousins and I really did enjoy ourselves at that wedding. We were too young for gender distinctions to be applied, so we could spend as much time as we liked at the men’s wedding party or the women’s. Like the house of any good Muslim, Farida’s parents’ home was divided into two: one part for the women, the other for Them (the husband and his guests).
In one part, people ate, sang, danced and drank rose water; in the other people ate, sang, danced and drank rose water. You might think it would have been simpler to eat, sing, dance and drink rose water all together, but the gentlemen did not think so and, as for the ladies, nobody asked their foolish opinion.
The exquisite young Farida sat regally upon a chair in the middle of the room reserved for the women’s wedding party; but we couldn’t see her, as she was covered by an impenetrable red veil. As was the practice, she sat very still and said nothing. The poor thing was not meant to enjoy herself; she must have been very bored, especially since no one seemed to pay her the slightest attention, which I would certainly have found annoying in her shoes. It surely was no fun for her.
My cousins and I, however, really enjoyed ourselves, as I’ve already said. Cheeky and scruffy, as was their wont, Asad and Ali inspected the whole house, having something to eat in one room, a drink in another, teasing one person, annoying another, while Gulnar and I followed in their wake. With their customary brilliance they knew how to make the most of a situation and turn it to their advantage. Would it be too much to say that they forged their destiny, rather than followed it? They chose their seats, gave orders to the servants, who circulated barefoot and wearing the traditional fez, and wouldn’t let anyone tell them what to do, especially when they were in the women’s quarters, where they felt like masters; as the only males, they knew how to profit from the situation. Their mother had only to make an innocent remark for them to belittle her and put her in her place as a woman. So she didn’t push her point too hard.