What Fairy Tales Meant to Selma Ekrem

In January 1924, Selma Ekrem, a recent graduate of the American College for Girls in Istanbul, came to the United States for the first time. She took this long journey by herself, and although she had traveled with her family extensively throughout her childhood, this was the first time she would be separated from them. She had left Istanbul due to the social restrictions Turkish women suffered, in particular, the veil, which she often described as "the shackles around my life." Not knowing that women in the new Republic of Turkey would soon be free, she felt compelled to leave.

Ahead of me was Brooklyn Bridge lying on volumes of air. This, I said to myself, is the magic carpet of old that could transport one from country to country in the days of fairy lore. We in the East dream of such wonders, and you in the West create them… You have lived in this fairyland of unexpectedness and cannot realize that it is an American Thousand and One Nights Tales.

(Ekrem, Unveiled 294)

A first-generation Turkish-American writer—author of three books, hundreds of articles, and numerous short stories—Selma Ekrem (1902–1986) was raised in a progressive, educated, and Western-oriented family. The famous poet Namık Kemal was her grandfather. Her father, Ali Kemal—whom the family followed to the cities of his appointments through political tensions, wars, internment, and occupations—was the governor of Jerusalem and the Greek Archipelago islands. They lived in places where they observed and experienced the fascinating aspects of different cultures, geographies, and religions. The household in which Selma grew up was like a microcosm of the multi-cultural, multi-religious empire, and her coming of age coincided with a series of upheavals that eventually led to the demise of the empire.

Kalnick Doudou, the Source of All Knowledge

Selma's nurse, an elderly Armenian lady named Kalnick Doudou, brought her up on fairy tales and had an undeniable impact on her formation. Kalnick, raised in the household of Namık Kemal's grandparents herself, had a rare gift of storytelling and a vast repertory of fairy tales. Before she could read or write, Selma was imbued with a "love of fairy tales" from which she admits she never recovered. On winter nights, she would gather with her siblings by the porcelain stove, where a roaring fire kept them warm, and listen to the tales of love, bravery, and adventures. Along with Kalnick's enchanted tales, a quiet resignation, a traditional compliance with fate, was served:

What is going to happen will happen.

It is all written on our foreheads before we are born.

Dadi [nurse], I asked, and who writes it there?

Allah writes it. We are all born with our fate on our foreheads, and nothing can wipe it away.

(Unveiled 39)

At a time in which Turkish children's books hardly existed, Selma admits that the only samples of Turkish literature she tasted until her school days were these fairy tales. She owed the love of books and her desire to learn foreign languages to Kalnick:

There were days when nurse was not in the mood to open the treasure house of her imagination, … [and] I was filled with the desire to be grown up and plunge my nose into the many books in my father's extensive library, … [or into the] volumes of Jules Verne in my elder brother's room. … When my parents decided to send me to the American School in Istanbul, my first reaction was, "Now I'll learn English and will read new stories."

("What Fairy Tales" 150–51)

I Could Not Find Children in America

In the States, Selma translated the fairy tales she had heard from Kalnick into English and took them to the editor of a prominent publishing house. The editor did not care to see them but suggested that Selma write about "a modern Turkish girl" ("What Fairy Tales" 150). The fairy tales of her childhood had guided Selma to the world of books, and she felt...