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The Waves of Illusions
- University of Wisconsin Press
- Chapter
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151 The Waves of Il lu sions He came to Con stan tin o ple with his old child hood dream of set tling ac counts with the Ot to man era and to dis cover the curse at its very roots, to dis cover when those roots had be come en tan gled, when every one in the Bal kans was left to be pounded by the waves of fate. He found him self in that city sur rounded by three seas, between East and West, that city that would for ever mark his life, at a true cross roads in the Bal kan lab y rinths. To the end of his life he felt him self tugged between East and West. The curse of being al ways caught between East and West, never quite in one or the other, was passed on to his fu ture fam ily as well and, later, to the coun try where the waves of his up rooted des tiny tossed him ashore. R In the vor tex of his youth ful dreams, im pulses, and be liefs he would come here to the sea shore by the Bos porus, beside the bridge on the Golden Horn, to con fide in the sea, to re veal to it his thoughts, to raise his spir its. But in the dense, deep blue wa ters at the bot tom of the Golden Horn every thing was cursed, si lent, and still. It was as if the sky it self had turned into the sea and kept si lent the se crets it left on the bot tom. Here, deep, deep in the sea, rested his lost Bal kan time, the time of his fam ily, of his na tion; it was as if, in its depths, he sought con ver sa tion with his an ces tors. Even the sun could not reach down to the deeper layers of the water, to the layers of re triev able his tory. He came to the Golden Horn to a be lated con fes sion, to be cleansed by the waves of his tory, which for ever spread and broke on the shore. 152 He came up to these waves, which al ways began anew; they en cour aged him, they gave him cou rage at each new be gin ning of his Bal kan fate. There was no other path, nor exit, just new be gin nings, new waves. But this sug gested con fron ta tions and un rest. Here, at the Golden Horn, he summed up what he had come to under stand dur ing his time in Con stan tin o ple, he con fided in the sea those de ci sions from which he never again turned away. Here, in a mo ment, he an chored his life at its new un cer tain be gin ning. He could have stayed in Atatürk’s new Tur key to con tinue the mod ern Ja nis sary tra di tion; he would not be the first nor the last of the eche lons of Ja nis sar ies from the Bal kan na tions that had for merly been em bed ded in the pow er ful Ot to man Em pire and now in the new state of Atatürk. In the depth of his thoughts, clearer than the dark wa ters of the Bos porus, it was ob vi ous to him that if he but en tered into the trap of a new iden tity, he would never leave, he would lose him self in the gray ness of the new hier ar chy. He did not want to be come a Ja nis sary, a ser vant of this new era; he did not want yet one more layer of the tur bid Bos porus to cloud his exit out into the quickly flow ing wa ters of his own tur bu lent iden tity. He set off along the cursed path to ward the Bal kans, to ward his old fam ily, which was dying out, and the new fam ily he must first dis cover and then per pet u ate. His wit nesses, the com pan ions of this new de ci sion, this new path, re mained the books he gath ered in Con stan tin o ple. ...