Portrait of a Turkish Family

Irfan Orga | 4.19 | 1,613 ratings and reviews

Recommended by Norman Stone, and 1 others. See all reviews

Ranked #13 in Turkey, Ranked #56 in Turkish

a XXXXXXXXXXXX X X X X X X if if X if if r r I y x xxx xxx x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x NEW YORK THE MAGMILLAN COMPANY 1950 if 3f PORTRAIT OF A TURKISH FAMILY . To Margarete, my wife, with love 10. Contents 1 Introducing the Family 1 2 An Autocrat at the Hamam 1 1 3 A Purely Masculine Subject 26 4 Sariyer 37 5 The New House and Other Things 52 6 The Changing Scene 64 7 Week-End Leave and the New Bride 78 8 Muazzez Makes Her Debut 93 9 A Long Farewell 101 10 Trying to Build Again 113 11 The End of Sariyer 127 12 Disillusionment of an Autocrat 140 13 Ninety-nine Kuru in Exchange for a Hero 150 14 Poverty Makes a Bargain 163 15 Charity School in Kadikoy 176 16 Ending with the Barbers Apprentice 191 17 Kuleli 209 18 The New Republic 222 19 A Bayram Morning and a Journey into Bleakness 231 20 Return to Istanbul 242 21 My Batman Averts a Crisis and Muazzez Finds a Beau 253 22 Feminine Affairs 259 23 The Wise Woman of Eskisehir 264 24 The Beginning of the End 272 25 Disintegrating Family . 281 26 Goodbye evk ye 286 27 The End of the Story 302 Introducing the family I WAS BORN IN ISTANBUL ON THE 31sT OP October, 1908. 1 was the eldest son o my parents, my mother being fifteen at the time of my birth and my father twenty. Our house was behind the Blue Mosque, overlooking the Sea of Marmara, It stood at the corner of a small cul-de-sac, with only a low stone wall between it and the sea. It was a quiet, green place and a very little mosque stood near it, and among my earliest recollections is the soft, unceasing sound of the Marmara and the singing of the birds in the gardens. Our house was a big wooden house, painted white, with green shuttersand trellised balconies front and rear. It belonged to my grandfather and my grandmother, and we lived there with them. Looking back, it seems to me that the whole of my early childhood was linked with the sound of the sea and with the voices of my parents and grandparents as they sat eating break fast on the terrace overlooking the gardens. Still can I feel the con tentment of awakening in the low, sunny room filled with the re flected white light from the sea, still hear faintly the domestic sounds from the kitchen and the high-pitched, smothered laughter of our black cook. I would creep out of bed, absurd in my old fashioned nightshirt, and lean my head against the protective iron bars on the windows and call down to the family group below me. 2 PORTRAIT OF A TURKISH FAMILY This was the signal for my father to toss aside his napkin and shout up to me that he was coming. I would hastily scuttle back to my bed, laughing a bit with anticipation, for I had already learned that I was an important member of the household. Each day began for me with the throwing aside of my fathers breakfast napkin, the sound of his footsteps running up the stairs, and his repeated toss ing of me into the air to the accompaniment of my excited, terri fied screams. But it was a terror I could not resist, and my day would not have been properly begun if my father had omitted this thrilling game. Attracted by my laughter, Inci would appear, her black eyes rolling in her small dark face and her mouth screwed up with laughter. Inci was my nursemaid, coal-black and only thirteen years old, yet she had full charge of me. She was the daughter of Feride, the upstairs maid, and she had been born in Istanbul while herfather was a servant in the palace of the sultan. After the death of Incf s father, my grandmother had taken her and her mother to our house, where, after my birth, Inci had been given to me. I loved her very much and could not have imagined life without her. She was always good-humored and used to make me shout with laughter when she rolled her eyes at me or pulled funny faces... less

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Norman Stone It’s by a man called Irfan Orga and it’s called Portrait of a Turkish Family. It was a bestseller in the 1940s and is still on sale. Orga was from a good Ottoman family. They lost everything in the [First World] War and he ended up in an orphanage. He went into the army and became a Turkish fighter pilot. He fell in love with an Irish girl, but if you worked in the Turkish state you couldn’t marry a foreigner. So he resigned, married her, and trained himself to be an English writer. He wrote this wonderful classic about an Istanbul family, which describes the atmosphere and disasters of 1918,... (Source)

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