Young Turk (37 page)

And so, one by one, my classmates declared their choices: careers from doctor to engineer, chemist to accountant, merchant to banker, geologist to metallurgist, soldier to aviator, hotelier to farmer were pronounced. When a boy floundered either because the profession he wanted had already been taken or because he could not think clearly, Âşιk Ahmet – or some of us – suggested alternatives.

I was the last. I stood up, tense and shaking. I had decided on my profession the moment Âşιk Ahmet had announced the outing. It had been an impulsive decision, aimed, I must admit, at impressing him. But it had taken hold of me and I had been praying that no one else would choose it.

Âşιk Ahmet turned to me. ‘And you, my young Jew, what will you be?’

I announced happily. ‘A professor, sir. Of humanities.’

‘A professor of humanities?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘What decided you on this, Zeki?’

‘Sir?’

‘Hero-worship? A desire to emulate me?’

I squirmed. It was obvious I worshipped him. We all did. But I had additional reasons. Firstly, he was one of the people who had saved my mother and myself from starvation at the time of the
Varlιk
, the nefarious Wealth Tax imposed on the minorities. Secondly, he was a champion of every just cause; indeed, in some quarters he was known as ‘the great democrat’. Thirdly, he knew all there was to know about world literature. Fourthly, wanting to impart this knowledge to the whole country, he taught right through the educational spectrum from university to primary school. Fifthly, he was so manly that all the women, even girls our age, were attracted to him.

‘Well, Zeki?’

‘I – I ... Maybe, sir ...’

‘Waste of time. You can’t be like me!’

‘I know, sir. But I’d like to try, sir ...’

‘And should you succeed, what would that make you?’

‘A noble person, sir.’

‘No, sir! You’d be an imitation.’

‘Oh.’

‘Is that what you think you should offer our country?

A mimetic chimpanzee? A suicidal parrot?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Then think again. What are you good at?’

‘Not much, sir. Running, maybe. I have good lungs.’

‘Running is hardly a career. An Olympic medal, at the most. What about literature?’

‘That’s why I want to be a teacher, sir. I love literature, sir.’

‘You’re good at it, I’ll grant you. You can tell what’s prose and what’s poetry. You have a feel for language and you write good essays. I wager you’ll be my best student yet! For a Jew, that’s phenomenal!’

‘Is it, sir?’

‘You also have an oversize dome – plenty of space there for words.’

I blushed. I’d taken a lot of teasing from my peers about my large head. Then I’d come to realize that though tall and thin, I was not necessarily weak. So one day I’d stood up to a bully and gone on to beat the shit out him; I had never looked back. I retorted angrily, ‘I can’t help the size of my head, sir. I was born that way.’

Âşιk Ahmet grinned. ‘And for a very good reason. You have a writer’s head. And that’s what you should be! A writer.’

‘Me, sir? A writer?’

‘It’s in your bones! Can’t you sense it?’

‘I don’t know, sir ...’

‘Damn it, boy! Don’t be a dunce! Touch your feelings!’

‘I – I don’t know how, sir.’

‘Don’t be coy with me!’

‘I’m not, sir.’

‘Now, repeat after me: I’m a writer. I know it in my bones. Come on!’

‘I’m a writer. I know it in my bones.’

‘And that’s what I’ll be. Novelist. Poet. Playwright.

Essayist.’

‘Oh.’

‘Let’s hear it!’

‘That’s what I’ll be. Novelist ... Poet ... Playwright ... Essayist ...’

Âşιk Ahmet clapped his hands. ‘That’s settled, then!’ He shouted at the waiter. ‘Bring this boy some raki! Bring several bottles! We have cause for celebration.’

I stared at my friends, quite dumbstruck, as they cheered and applauded. Somewhere in my mind, I wondered whether they were acclaiming my choice or the prospect of getting drunk.

Âşιk Ahmet took to the floor and started dancing. Then he started reciting Nâzιm Hikmet:

Imagine TARANTA-BABU

How sublime life is

To understand it like reading a masterly book

To hear it like a love song

To live

In wonderment like a child

Oh, how sublime living is

TARANTA-BABU ...
²

Later, Âşιk Ahmet, inebriated yet solemn, came and sat beside me and replenished my glass. ‘How goes it, my young Jew?’

Drunk and emboldened by the raki, I quipped, ‘
Oh, how sublime living is
...’

‘You like the poem?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Know what it’s about?’

‘Denounces fascism, sir. Written when Italy was preparing to invade Abyssinia. Composed as letters from an Ethiopian student in Rome to his wife, back home.’

‘A Hikmet
aficionado
!’

‘
Aficionado’
was that year’s catchword. Âşιk Ahmet had borrowed it from Hemingway, whose rakish masculinity, he maintained, made him the most Turkish of foreign writers.

I nodded proudly. ‘I’ve only read what’s around, sir. Most of his works are banned.’

‘So is
Taranta-Babu
.’

‘My father has a copy, sir. He got it when it was first published.’

‘Your father ... Of course ... Vitali Behar, the lawyer. The one who defends the defenceless – right? I must meet him.’

‘Actually, you saved his life, sir.’

‘Did I? How come?’

‘By feeding my mother and me during the
Varlιk
... Father had been sent to Aşkale labour camp ...’

‘Hold on – is he the man who bought his son an encyclopaedia with his first earnings? When he came back from the camp?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And you were the son?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘No wonder you turned out as you are. And he loves Hikmet.’

‘Jews know about fascism, sir.’

‘I remember something else. One of your family dying in the Spanish Civil War ...’

‘Father’s French cousin, sir. Yes.’

‘A family of lefties. All the more reason to meet him.

We’ll have a conference of lefties.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘On second thoughts, maybe he shouldn’t be seen with me. For some people, I’m even worse than a lefty ...’

‘Even worse, sir ...?’

‘Like a sewer-rat – meaning “pluralist”, therefore, ravisher of nationalism. Or socialist pig – meaning enemy of capitalism and all good things. And, of course, communist vermin – the maggot that’s trying to eat the country’s heart.’

‘How dare they, sir?’

‘When mindless people – opportunists, reactionaries, religious zealots – get to power, they try to hold on to it any way they can. And the best way they can do that is by feeding our paranoia. Like this anti-communist hysteria we’re now having. And we become the scapegoats ...’

‘But you’re a great patriot, sir. A war hero ...’

‘Yes, that’s a bit of luck. It deters some of them. On the other hand, I’m small fry. They want Turkey’s very soul. And they’ve got him. And they’ve put him in chains ...’

You mean Hikmet, sir?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you know him, sir?’

‘Met him a few times.’

‘What’s he like?’

‘Orpheus reincarnated.’

‘I’d love to meet him ...’

‘One day – all being well. There’s a campaign for his release.’

‘In the meantime, I can’t read many of his works!’

‘You can if you join a samizdat network.’

‘How?’

‘I run one. We mimeograph all his banned works and distribute them where we can.’

‘Oh, I’d be very keen to join!’

‘I should warn you. You could get into trouble ...’

‘I realize that, sir.’

‘Is this raki-brave? Or are you naturally so?’

‘I don’t know, sir. Maybe both ...’

Âşιk Ahmet lit yet another cigarette, then offered me one.

‘I suppose I should have asked this before you took your decision, Zeki ...’

I took the cigarette.

He lit it for me. ‘If – when you become a writer – if they started banning your works ...?’

‘I can’t imagine them being interested in me, sir ...’

‘For much of the world, the freedom to write is a luxury. All the more so, if you care about humanity. If you defend freedom and democracy. If you criticize rulers, governments, institutions. If, like Hikmet, you preach equality, an end to wars, universal peace ... For some regimes these themes constitute grave crimes ...’

I looked at him in perturbation. ‘I see ...’

‘Being a Jew, I suspect you’d be writing in that vein. So you’d be branded a subversive. They’ll set the Furies on you. What then?’

‘I don’t know, sir ... What do you think, sir?’

‘The risk of persecution – and gaol – go with the writer’s job ...’

‘Then maybe I shouldn’t be a writer, sir ...’

‘And renege on your oath ...?’

‘But prison ...’

‘Can be very beneficial. Builds up a person in many ways.’ He replenished my glass. ‘What do you say?’

I gulped down my drink. ‘Do I have a choice, sir?’

To my great surprise – and I think, everybody else’s – he hugged me. ‘You devil Jew – God help you!’

That night I told my parents of my decision.

My mother, who was blessed with an artistic disposition – she was a very gifted miniaturist – immediately burst into tears. But then she burst into tears whatever the news, good or bad. (To my great embarrassment, I take after her.) When she eventually composed herself, she turned to my father – who had not said a word – and listed a million reasons why I should be a writer. ‘Doubt not,’ she told him, ‘our son will be a Tolstoy, a Rabelais, a Cervantes, a Shakespeare, maybe even a Homer or a Rûmi or, who knows, maybe even better than all of them.’

My father remained silent.

Later, when people dropped in for coffee, my choice became one of the subjects of conversation. I was doing my homework, but I sneaked out several times to eavesdrop.

On one occasion, I heard my great-uncle, Lazar, trying to comfort my father by telling him that my so-called career choice was merely an adolescent fantasy, that it would soon fade into oblivion and that, within a few months, I would happily decide, like every good Jewish boy, to take up medicine or dentistry or accountancy or, best of all, commerce.

(Not a loveable person, my great-uncle Lazar. A book-keeper in a public company, he was an opinionated man with a violent temper and a veritable bully towards children. Indeed, he so disliked children that each time he heard the muezzin call the faithful to prayer, he was reminded to thank Elohim for making his wife barren – or so he boasted. However, according to the old folks’ gossip, this boast was self-protective; in effect, it was he who was sterile, since my poor, sweet great-aunt had given birth to a boy when she was a mere sap of a girl, during the War of Independence. Tragically, after her lover had been killed at the battle of İnönü, she had had to give the baby up for adoption.)

To my surprise, my father affirmed that he would be very proud to have his son become a writer. What concerned him was the sad reality that writers seldom made a decent living and were always at the mercy of self-aggrandizing publishers, reviewers, columnists, pundits, not to mention rulers and politicians. He would be more than happy to support me for as long as he lived, but who would take care of me after his death?

On hearing this, my mother, needless to say, burst into tears. (Actually, so did I!)

The next day, as I left for school, I caught special smiles on my parents’ faces. Obviously, in celebration of my choice, they had made each other exceptionally happy during the night. If there had been any thoughts in my mind of reneging on my literary career, those smiles banished them for ever.

Thus my fate was sealed. Unbeknown to my parents or to myself, my exile had begun.

Within weeks, I had read everything by Nâzιm Hikmet that was circulating clandestinely or had not been confiscated by the authorities. About the same time, I joined the ranks of the samizdat mimeographers and earned many commendations from Âşιk Ahmet for spending countless weekends with a dilapidated Gestetner.