Young Turk (29 page)

Admittedly, when our dormitory had first been assembled, there had been attempts by some of the boys to form cabals with co-religionists but these moves instantly expired in the wake of the first raid on our dormitory. As we fought our attackers, we quickly realized that had we splintered into factions, we would have met with swift defeat. And defeat meant performing the victors’ daily chores: making their beds, cleaning their lavatories, sorting out their laundry, laying their refectory tables, serving them meals and washing up their dishes. And so, when we had put our adversaries to flight and strode about savouring our victory, savouring particularly the bruises that provided proof of victory, we felt transformed. (I had someone’s tooth embedded in my knuckle; I still bear the scar.) Cengiz, the Tatar, was the first to shout the catechism with which Atatürk had sought to unite Turkey’s minorities: ‘Blessed is he who can say I am a Turk.’ Then Agop, the Armenian, a passionate romantic since reading
The Three Musketeers
, bellowed his favourite slogan, ‘All for one and one for all!’ At which Zeki, the Jew, clamoured, ‘
No pasarán
’, that famous Republican exhortation from the Spanish Civil War, in which one of his father’s French cousins had lost his life.

Thus, drunk with the joys of our plurality, we, the hybrids, bonded, seemingly for life. We never suffered a betrayal in our ranks. No matter how severe the teachers’ interrogation, not a single person snitched on such peccadilloes as who pissed on the radiator and stank the place out, or who dressed up in a sheet and frightened the night matron by pretending to be a ghost, or who opened the gate to Memduh when he came back from the brothels that he frequented at least twice a week. (Memduh, the Süryâni, a latecomer to education, was twenty-one, came from Diyarbakιr, slept in a rival dormitory and always tipped generously whosoever opened the gate for him. Hooked on sex, he refused to get involved in dormitory battles.) Since the college’s long-established punishment for betrayal was the insertion of chilli paste into the offender’s anus – an infliction that, burning the victims’ innards for days on end, all but drove him mad – our dormitory had the distinction of remaining ‘virgin in the arse’ throughout our years together. That, too, is a record unlikely to be beaten.

As mentioned before, the multi-ethnic constitution of our dormitory had been forged by our literature teacher, Professor Ahmet Poyraz – nicknamed Âşιk Ahmet, ‘Amorous Ahmet’, for reasons I will shortly explain.

Âşιk Ahmet, who has remained an inspired mentor to most of his students, has been the most vociferous defender of the Ottoman empire’s immense contribution to civilization. More to the point, he took this stand at a time when the luminaries of modern Turkey were competing with each other to denigrate the accomplishments of their predecessors in order to ingratiate themselves with the so-called ‘civilized West’. His contempt for the cupidity of the Occidental powers, who claim to be paragons of morality while happily killing millions in wars and in pursuit of colonial possessions, has become legendary. Treasuring the Ottoman empire’s
millet
policy – a policy that had ensured tolerance towards its many peoples – as a great leap forward in political philosophy, Âşιk Ahmet had progressed to Rousseau and to the need to unify humankind in brotherhood. Naturally enough, the concept of the United Nations had also affected him profoundly even though the first attempt at such an organization, the League of Nations, had foundered so disastrously.

Consequently, in support of the evolution of a ‘world nation’, he set out to restore what he called ‘real Turkishness’, a multi-
millet
community. Our dormitory was to be the prototype. We would demonstrate, not only to our government but also to the world, that chauvinist policies seeking to impose unity in a country of diverse peoples and religions were doomed to failure because they specifically sought to reduce plurality to singularity. If such an objective were to be achieved, society would become monolithic and ultimately perish as a result of inbreeding. Our dormitory, by contrast, would demonstrate that harmony could only exist through the preservation of plurality, that only a multi-
millet
policy could elevate Turkey to greatness whereas rabid nationalism – always camouflaged by such emotive terms as Turkification or Kemalism – would blight it irredeemably. We would prove, with our prototype ‘world nation’, that, in an unfettered crucible, different races and religions would create an ethos of mutual respect where all individuals would be equal and free. We would prove that our achievements in microcosm could also be achieved in macrocosm.

(The experiment, I should declare promptly, proved immensely successful. But then, pluralism always does – until, of course, Fate tampers with Pandora’s box and releases shoals of politicians who behave like sharks at mob-feeding time. Or, as in our dormitory’s case, it delivers Pandora herself ...)

Âşιk Ahmet was a tall, craggy, athletic man with impeccably coifed hair and moustache. He was always sombrely dressed in a dark suit and polished black shoes. The girls in our sister college found him very attractive – a cross between Errol Flynn and Boris Karloff. But since he never taught them, they never had to face his fierce temper or run for cover as he stormed through the corridors like his surname, the north wind. He was a hero of the War of Independence and a visiting professor at various universities – and, as a result, his status among the teaching staff was above even that of the Regional Inspector of Schools. He was, in effect, a law unto himself, unchallengeable, beyond criticism.

For Âşιk Ahmet, education started with poetry. Unless anointed by a balm of sublime verse, he claimed, we would turn into soulless bodies, lives devoid of life.

He was a formidable champion of Nâzιm Hikmet. The latter, indisputably one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century and, for many of us, the most immaculate Turkish soul, had been convicted and imprisoned for preaching communism; calumnied by the Establishment, most of his writings had been banned. Despite that, Âşιk Ahmet not only openly lectured on his poetry, but also led a samizdat network for disseminating his works. (Such devotion to justice was typical of Âşιk Ahmet. For instance, at the time of the Second World War, he had been very active in helping Jews and other minorities who had been crushed by the
Varlιk
, the infamous Wealth Tax. Some of the sons of those he had helped had become his students – like Zeki, a member of our dormitory, and Musa and Naim, two years ahead of us.)

For those students averse to poetry, Âşιk Ahmet had devised an assortment of punishments. A rap on the knuckles for anyone who dared yawn while he recited – which he did beautifully and sonorously. Ear-twisting for those who failed to fathom the stylized delicacy of the courtly
Divan
literature or who complained about learning the Arabic and Farsi words with which the verses were suffused. Same punishment for those who failed to appreciate the simplicity and immediacy of folk literature, which always ran a rival course to
Divan
. A kick to the bottom for those who sniggered when he waxed lyrical about Hikmet. Masses of weekend homework for those who missed one of his classes. And, in the belief that prevention is better than cure, a slap on the neck for those caught in the corridors without a book of poetry in their hands. The last occurred rarely: Âşιk Ahmet was a chain-smoker and emanated a pungent scent that was a mixture of tobacco and his lemon-scented cologne; thus we could always sniff his presence and get out of the way.

Though we were willing guinea-pigs in his dormitory project, he never treated us preferentially. Paradoxically for someone so liberal, he stuck to the ancient tenet that the relationship between teacher and student was like that between a sultan and a humble subject. On the other hand, fearsome as he was, he was not unaffectionate. Those students, myself included, who had ingested the joys of poetry would regularly get a pat on the shoulder or have their hair ruffled or, if the encounter took place outside the college precincts, be offered, man to man, a cigarette.

Yet I think that during the course of the semester chronicled by this retrospection he did come to perceive us not as adolescents frothy like fresh sheep’s milk, but as young adults with the solid texture of mountain yoghurt.

Most people at the college and just about everybody down the hill, in Bebek, knew that Âşιk Ahmet was having a passionate affair with a widow called Leylâ. Unable to marry her because she had a young son and risked losing custody of the boy to her in-laws, he was fanatically discreet about this romance and went to great lengths not to be seen in her company. However, on one occasion we – the whole dormitory – caught them in a most compromising situation. We had just won another battle, one that had broken a couple of our adversaries’ noses; knowing that we faced a heavy punishment – no weekend leave, at the very least – we decided to console ourselves, at the risk of further punishment, by cutting classes that day and drinking to our victory in a sea-front
meyhane
. When we finally decided to return to school late that afternoon, we chose to climb our hill’s ‘wild flank’ – so called because, given its craggy topography, it did not have a road serving the college – in order not to be caught by the caretakers. Suddenly, in a secluded copse halfway up the hill, we spotted Âşιk Ahmet and Leylâ in an embrace.

When we finally managed to shake off our shock, we scampered away as quietly as we could, restraining ourselves from exchanging lewd looks and, indeed, pretending that we had not even seen them. Though, in the weeks that followed, we could not tell by Âşιk Ahmet’s behaviour whether he himself had spotted us, we maintained a diligent discretion. I imagine those who never got to know Suna did so in fear of his fury. But the rest of us, having just experienced both the apogee and the nadir of love with our beloved Suna, found a new solidarity with Âşιk Ahmet. Manliness resides in silence – so our beloved had instructed us when she had made us promise to keep our trysts secret. Those who babble away, be it to boast or to groan, are creatures of indeterminate sex.

Our beloved ...

She appeared outside the college gates, at the beginning of our second semester.

I believe we all noticed her immediately. Standing by her Studebaker convertible and smoking, she looked like something out of the American magazine,
Esquire
. At first, since she always came on Saturdays, the day our weekend leave started, I thought she was a mother who came to collect her son. As I watched her draw on her cigarette like Rita Hayworth, I felt sorry for the boy: fantasies about voluptuous mothers were our staple for masturbation. (Why do sensual women always smoke? Is it to warn us, men, that we’re only good for a few puffs before being stubbed out?)

She had shining auburn hair that matched – as I eventually found out – the magenta of her vulva. She had inherited her dark-shaded sex, she told me quite seriously, from a Sudanese ancestor who had been a eunuch in one of the sultan’s harems, but who, obviously, had not been a de facto castrato. In contrast, she had such white skin that had she lain naked on the snow she would have been invisible save for her hair, eyes, mouth and nipples.

Soon her presence became intriguing. She had claimed no one as her son. She would just stand near the gates and watch us disgorge from school like prisoners liberated from the Bastille. It was as if she had reserved Saturday mornings for an outing on Bebek’s promenade, where the sea breeze and the view were heavenly and where, for good measure, she could be amused by the wild antics of robust youngsters. Inevitably, I was reminded of stories about perverts who loitered outside girls’ schools and wondered whether she was a female counterpart. After all, perverts were reputedly old and this woman was undoubtedly of a certain age.

(I doubt whether she was older than thirty-five, but for a boy of fourteen, hurrying to be fifteen, every woman about his mother’s age is old.)

And little did I know that I would end up adoring women of a certain age because only they, given their maturity, can provide sexual miracles. After all, to evolve as a sexual miracle a woman needs many years of zealous couplings – and a fair percentage of failure. The failures are particularly important, for without the knowledge of ineptitude, there can be no knowledge of ecstasy. Âşιk Ahmet, who was much taken with Sufism, would often say, ‘Witness how success and failure, joy and grief, birth and death have the same gossamer texture.’