My Father’s Books

Tattered Fate

163 Tat­ tered Fate Yes, in Con­ stan­ tin­ o­ ple my ­ father had his small father­ lands, his won­ drous ­ worlds, to which his soul be­ came ac­ cus­ tomed and ­ poured out ­ streams of ideas and con­ fes­ sions. Af­ ter­ ward, lost in his ­ thoughts, as he ­ passed by the Great Eyüp­ Mosque, play­ fully dec­ o­ rated in ­ faience and mar­ ble, an­ i­ mated by the­ flight of the pi­ geons cir­ cling eter­ nally ­ around its tow­ er­ ing min­ a­ ret, my­ father would turn his gaze and ­ thoughts to­ ward Sul­ tan ­ Eyüp’s tomb and the Eyüp ce­ me­ tery, with its count­ less ­ carved tur­ bans by the exit; he would walk along the Av­ e­ nue of the Forty ­ Stairs so he could climb up the hill from where the sight of the ­ Golden Horn cap­ ti­ vated the­ viewer. Here was his cho­ sen café, where he gath­ ered his ­ thoughts and wrote some down. This café was known to him ­ through the nov­ els of the fa­ mous ­ French ­ writer ­ Pierre Loti, who from this van­ tage point pre­ served the great Con­ stan­ tin­ o­ ple fan­ tasy of a by­ gone time, with which, in the form of Orien­ tal ex­ ot­ i­ cism, he ­ flirted for years with his many read­ ers, who them­ selves never under­ stood the Bal­ kan Ot­ to­ man drama. When my ­ father came here for the first time, he ­ thought back on the re­ la­ tion­ ship of ­ Atatürk to such ex­ otic nov­ els, es­ pe­ cially those of­ Pierre Loti, which ­ looked on the Ot­ to­ man Em­ pire only as a gar­ den of all pos­ sible ­ earthly de­ lights. ­ Atatürk was par­ tic­ u­ larly trou­ bled by the con­ stant im­ ages in West­ ern nov­ els in which Mus­ lim women were por­ trayed as ­ slaves in vast har­ ems, satis­ fy­ ing the frus­ trated West­ ern ­ reader’s dis­ placed ­ dreams of a woman, for­ ever sub­ mis­ sive, ac­ com­ pa­ nied by a splen­ did ­ hookah and a box of Turk­ ish de­ light. The epoch of the ex­ otic Aziy­ ade as well as the mys­ tic der­ vishes that in­ tox­ i­ cated West­ ern read­ ers was, in ­ Atatürk’s opin­ ion, de­ cid­ edly in the past. 164 Here, upon this hill, ­ beside the ­ Golden Horn, each had his vi­ sion of Con­ stan­ tin­ o­ ple, of a time that was van­ ish­ ing into the shad­ ows of his­ tory and a time that was un­ fold­ ing. Each had his own ac­ counts to set­ tle with his coun­ try and with this im­ pe­ rial city. Here each de­ clared war or peace with Con­ stan­ tin­ o­ ple. My ­ father ­ watched the in­ tel­ li­ gent steps that ­ Atatürk made in his at­ tempts to sal­ vage the es­ sen­ tial core of Turk­ ish iden­ tity from the col­ lapse of the Ot­ to­ man Em­ pire. ­ Atatürk saved what could be saved, but my­ father, an or­ di­ nary stu­ dent from Con­ stan­ tin­ o­ ple Uni­ ver­ sity, with a head brim­ ming with the stat­ utes of ­ sharia law and the old forms of the Ot­ to­ man ad­ min­ is­ tra­ tion, the ­ Balkans’ raw ­ wounds on his mind, plus a yearn­ ing for fam­ ily that ­ pulled him to­ ward the Bal­ kans, what could he save? The Turks, to­ gether with ­ Atatürk, would turn to the core of their na­ tion, to An­ a­ to­ lia, but where would my ­ father go, where would he turn to in the Bal­ kans, where the ­ red-hot lava of the Ot­ to­ man Em­ pire had ­ flared for cen­ tu­ ries and had not yet ­ cooled.­ Atatürk, as if with the sword of Dam­ o­ cles, would sever the knot of the Ot­ to­ man era and would build his coun­ try from the last bul­ wark of its po­ ten­ tial iden­ tity. Yes, ­ Atatürk would eas­ ily free him­ self from the il­ lu­ sions of the Ot­ to­ man era, but what would be­ come of us, his fel­ low cit­ i­ zens of the Ot­ to­ man Em­ pire, those of us in the Bal­ kans, where the...