Ayse Kulin - Love in Exile

ALSO BY AYE KULIN

Aylin

Rose of Sarajevo

Last Train to Istanbul

Farewell: A Mansion in Occupied Istanbul

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously.

Text copyright 2008 Aye Kulin

Translation copyright 2016 Kenneth Dakan

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Previously published as Umut by Everest in Turkey in 2008. Translated from Turkish by Kenneth Dakan. First published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2016.

Published by AmazonCrossing, Seattle

www.apub.com

Amazon, the Amazon logo, and AmazonCrossing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

ISBN-13: 9781503934955

ISBN-10: 1503934950

Cover design by David Drummond

With love they touched me always, now and forever I miss their faces.

Contents

Foreword

In 1903, my father was born in the capital of an empire stretching from Bosnia to the Persian Gulf, and from Tripoli to Mecca.

In 1941, I was born in the biggest city of a republic founded in 1923.

My father and I were born into different worlds in the same city: Istanbul.

Love in Exile is set in Istanbul in the years between my fathers birth and mine.

After some six hundred years of dominion over a vast swath of territory, the Ottoman Empire lost most of its lands in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East following defeats in the Balkan Wars of 191213 and in World War I. British, French, Italian, and Greek troops occupied and partitioned much of what was left of Anatolia at the end of the war.

Under Allied pressure, the sultan agreed to a treaty relinquishing not only all non-Turkish lands, but some Turkish land as well, prompting Mustafa Kemal Atatrk and a handful of rebel officers to launch the popular national movement that would culminate in the Turkish War of Liberation, the abolition of the sultanate, and the establishment, in 1923, of the Republic of Turkey.

In 1897, my paternal grandfather and his family migrated from the prized Ottoman province of Bosnia to Istanbul, where they adapted to a new language, set of customs, and lifestyle. My maternal great-grandfather and his family faced similar challenges as they adapted to life under a new regime in the 1920s.

Love in Exile is also the story of a forbidden and inspiring love.

An Armenian boy whose family moved to Istanbul in 1915 during what the Armenians call Meds Yeghern, or the Great Calamity, meets and falls in love with my great aunt, the daughter of a Muslim family, at the American school where they are both students.

Portrayed as well are the lives of three generations of women living together under a single roof as their government embarks on an ambitious project of modernization that upends traditional values as it adopts, and in some ways surpasses, Western reforms governing the equality of the sexes, universal suffrage, the right to work, and the nightlife that allows men and women the opportunity to mingle freely.

In this novel, a new generation that looks to the future with hope replaces a generation that has known heartbreak, homesickness, and disappointment.

Part One

Love in Exile

The Yedi Family
(1928)

The Diary

1928

Beyazit, Istanbul

Leman put on her slippers, threw a shawl around her shoulders, quietly opened the door so as not to awaken her daughter, Sitare, and stole out onto the landing. Grumbling to herself, she climbed the stairs to the top floor. Even a simple afternoon nap was too much to expect in this house!

She and her husband Mahir had been up all night. Or rather, once Mahir had wrapped their daughter Sitares arms and legs in strips of damp muslin and waited for her fever to fall, if only slightly, he had nodded off in a chair pulled up to the girls sickbed. Leman, who had opposed from the start this business with the muslin strips, immediately removed them all and settled in for a bedside vigil in case her daughter took a turn for the worse. Left to her own devices, Leman would have placed a heavy blanket over Sitare to sweat out the fever. When Mahir woke up a few hours later, he rewrapped Sitares limbs in damp cloth, ignoring the protestations of his wife and trying to hide how cross he was with her for trusting the old ways above those of modern medicine. By morning, Sitares temperature had returned to normal, although she remained quite weak.

After lunch, Leman stretched out next to Sitare to ensure her daughter stayed in bed, and was looking at the illustrations in a stack of periodicals when she drifted off to sleep. But who could nap in peace with that racket upstairs?

When Leman flung open the door, Sabahat and Suat straightened up from the chest of drawers and looked at their furious sister.

Why are you making so much noise? Leman demanded. I thought the house was about to crash down on our heads. What are you two doing up here anyway?

Sabahat is moving into her new bedroom, replied the middle sister, Suat. Shes trying to get that chest of drawers and its mirror to the opposite wall, but the blasted thing is so heavy she can barely budge it.

Are you out of your mind, Sabahat? Leman asked, as the baby of the family set to shoving the piece of furniture again. Who would give up a spacious room on the middle floor for a cramped one up here?

I would, Sabahat said, puffing and red-faced.

But it makes no sense. Your room is so bright and airy.

Im taking precautions.

Precautions? Against what?

Well, theyll invite Grandmother Neyir to move up here from downstairs because of her bickering with Saraylhanm, but shell get winded climbing up and down the stairs, so theyll make up an extra bed in my room. I dont want to share my bedroom. Im moving in here now so I dont have to hurt grandmothers feelings later.

Youre really too much.

Leman, every time we have an overnight guest theyre always put in my room.

Dont talk nonsense, Sabahat. Thats what the guestroom is for.

Somehow, the guestroom always seems to be occupied. From Fazilet and Hviyet, to Aunt Dilruba. Every time a visitor spends the night in this house, they do it in my room. Mother always says, Make up a bed in Sabahats room! Dont look at me like that. Its true, isnt it?

Leman was peeved at Sabahat for dragging Mahirs nieces, Fazilet and Hviyet, into this. Has Fazilet ever complained about putting you up in her room when you stay over at their house?

Those two are always welcome; its the old ladies I mind.

Well, you do have a big room, Suat said. And you could hardly expect the guests to stay in the rooms where we sleep with our husbands.

I may not be married, but its high time I had a room that nobody barges into and where nobody pokes around in my things.

She must be talking about our children, Suat said to Leman.

How could you get upset at your own niece and nephew? Shame on you! Leman scolded.

Say what you will, Im moving into this room, and Im going to put a lock on the door. Nobody will enter without my permission.

Does Mother know about this? Suat asked.