Chapter 2 Photos inside the Dark Museum of Istanbul

My mother, father, older brother, grandmother, uncles and sisters-in-law—our entire family lived on different floors of the same five-story building.In the year before my birth, the various branches of the family (like so many Ottoman families) shared a large stone house. In 1651, they rented out the stone house to a private elementary school, and built a modern building that I later regarded as my home in the open space next door. According to the custom at that time, they posted a plaque on the facade, which read "Pamuk Apartment ".We live on the fourth floor, but since I left my mother's arms, I have been walking around the whole building, and I remember that there is at least one piano on each floor.After the last single uncle finally put down the newspaper

After Paper went to get married, his new wife moved into the first-floor apartment where she would spend the rest of her half-century looking out of the window, and brought her piano.No one has ever played this or the others, and maybe that's why I feel so sad. But it’s not just a piano that no one plays.In each apartment there is also a locked glass case displaying untouched Chinese china, teacups, silverware, sugar bowls, snuffboxes, crystal cups, rose-scented jugs, cutlery, and incense burners, though I occasionally find a place to hide a car among these things.Inside, there are abandoned desks studded with pearls, hijab racks with no headscarves, Japanese screens and Art Nouveau curtains that hide nothing behind them.In a glass case in the study were the dusty medical books of my uncle the doctor: no one had touched them in the twenty years since he immigrated to America.In my childish mind, these rooms were furnished not for the living, but for the dead. (Every so often, a coffee table or carved chest of drawers in one living room would disappear, only to appear in another living room on another floor.)

If Grandma thought we were sitting in her silver chairs, she would call our attention: "Sit up straight!" A small museum furnished by a westernized family.Those who do not fast during Ramadan may feel more at ease among these glass cases and lifeless pianos than sitting cross-legged in a room of cushions and benches.Although everyone knows that Westernization can break away from the laws of Islam, no one knows what other benefits it has.So not only do you see living room museums in the wealthy homes of Istanbul, but fifty years later, you can see these messy and dull Western furnishings in living rooms all over Turkey.With the advent of television in the 1970s, these baubles fell out of fashion.Once you find out how pleasant it is to sit together and watch the evening news, the group living room goes from a small museum to a small theater—though you still hear about old families keeping the TV in the center aisle, and the museum living room locked, on holidays Or open it when VIPs come to visit.

Doors in our modern apartment building are often left open due to the high level of movement between floors.After my brother started school, my mother let me go upstairs alone, or we walked upstairs together to visit my grandmother who was sick in bed.The tulle curtains in her living room are always drawn, which doesn't matter much anyway, because the building next door is very close, and the room is very dark, especially in the morning, so I'll sit on the big thick rug and invent myself Play.I lined up the cars that someone had brought me from Europe, one by one, into the garage.Then, I used the carpet as the ocean, and the tables and chairs as islands, allowing myself to bounce between the islands without stepping on the water (almost like Calvino’s baron jumping from tree to tree all his life) Go without touching the ground).If I get tired of this kind of airborne adventure or riding a couch arm as a horse (inspired perhaps by Black Beriada's carriage memories), I have another game that I still play when I'm bored as an adult: I Imagine that where I sit (this bedroom, this living room, this classroom, this barracks, this ward, this government office) is actually elsewhere.When I get tired of daydreaming, I hide in the pictures on every table and on every wall.

Since I have never seen the piano used for other purposes, I thought the piano was placed in the house to display photos.There was no flat surface in my grandmother's living room that wasn't covered in large and small picture frames.Two of the most prominent large portraits hang above the unused fireplace: one of my grandmother in full dress and the other of my grandfather, who died in 1934.Judging by the placement of the photographs on the wall and the pose of the grandparents (slightly sideways towards each other, still a popular style for stamps of royal couples in Europe), anyone who walks into this museum living room and meets their haughty gaze immediately See that the story has to start with them.

Both were from Gordes near Manisa; their family was called "Pamuk (Cotton)" because of their white skin and white hair.The grandmother was of Circassian origin—the tall, beautiful Circassian women were extremely popular in the Ottoman harem.My grandmother's father emigrated to Anatolia during the Russo-Turkish war (18771878), settled first in Izmir (there is a legend that there is an empty house there), and then moved to Istanbul, where my grandfather studied civil engineering.He made his fortune in the early 1930s, when the Republic of Turkey invested heavily in railway construction, and then he opened a large factory.The factories, located on the banks of the Goksu River, which flows into the Bosphorus, make everything from rope to twine to dried tobacco.He died in 1934 at the age of fifty-two, leaving behind a fortune that his father and uncle could not exhaust, despite their long list of failed business ventures.

Then we come to the study room, where we see large portraits of the new generation lined up along the wall with great symmetry: from the pastel colors of the photos, it can be seen that they are from the same photographer.Against the wall was my stout uncle Ozhan, who had gone to America to study medicine before serving in the army, so he could never return to Turkey, leaving my grandmother with a depressed look all her life.And his brother Aiden, who wears glasses, lives on the ground floor.Like his father, he studied civil engineering and actively participated in various engineering projects that were always on paper.On the fourth wall was a photograph of my aunt, who had studied piano in Paris, and whose husband was a law school assistant.They live in the penthouse that I will be moving into, years from now, where I am writing this book.

Leaving the study room and returning to the main hall of the museum, we stopped for a while beside the darkened crystal lamp, and we saw many untouched black and white photos, telling us the prosperity of life.Here we see each child posing for a photo at their engagement, their wedding reception, every major life moment.Next to the first batch of color photos sent by my uncle from the United States, there are photos of extended family members feasting together in various parks in the city, Taksim Square, and the Bosporus coast.Next to a photo of my parents taking me and my brother to a wedding, there is a photo of my grandfather and his new car in the garden of our old home, and another photo of my uncle and his new car outside the gate of Pamuk's apartment. group photo.Except for something out of the ordinary—like a grandmother taking out a photograph of an American uncle's first wife and replacing it with a second wife—the old rule remains the same: Once a photograph is placed, it never moves.Even though I've seen each photo hundreds of times, I still have to look at them all again every time I walk into this messy room.

Looking at these photos for a long time has taught me the importance of preserving certain moments for future generations, and as time has passed, I have come to understand that there is something important in living everyday life. At the same time, how much these framed scenes affect us.Watching my uncle give my brother a math problem, and at the same time looking at his photos from thirty-two years ago; watching my father flipping through the newspaper, smiling, trying to understand the ending of the jokes rippling in the crowded hall, and at the same time watching Pictures of him when he was five years old - my age - with long hair like a girl's... it seems clear to me that my grandmother frames these moments so that we can interweave them with the moment in front of us .When my grandmother mentioned my grandfather who died young in the tone usually used when discussing the issue of nation-building, pointing to the table and the framed picture on the wall, she seemed to be torn between wanting to continue living and wanting to live. Capturing the perfect moment, savoring the everyday while still honoring the ideal.But even as I ruminate on these contradictions—to capture and frame a particular moment in life, to resist or submit to death, decline, and time?—I grow tired of them.

As the days go by, those long lunches, endless parties, and New Year’s Eve dinners where the whole family stays to play lottery after dinner make me daunted. Every year, I swear to attend for the last time, but I can’t get rid of the habit.Even though I loved these potlucks as a kid.As I watched the jokes passing across the full table made my uncles laugh (with vodka or rake) and my grandmother smiled (with the little glass of beer she let herself drink) ), I found life outside the frame much more interesting.I feel at ease in my heart, grateful to be part of a big happy family, intoxicated by the illusion that life is for joy, even though I always knew that these relatives who talked and laughed at the festive feast, Equally ruthless when it comes to disputes over money and possessions.With no one else in the apartment, my mother was always complaining to me and my brother about the harshness of "your aunt," "your uncle," and "your grandma."Once differences of opinion arose over ownership, shares in the rope factory, or which floor of the apartment to whom, the only certainty was that there would never be any resolution.These rifts may be healed by family feasts, but I knew from an early age that behind the joy there were mountains of old scores and billows of blame.

Each branch of our extended family has its own handmaidens, and each handmaiden feels that she should take a stand in the battle.Hanim, who works for her mother, goes to Iqba, who works for her aunt.Later, at breakfast, my mother would say, "Did you hear what Aiden said?" My father was curious, but when he had finished, he would just say, "For God's sake, don't worry about it." Come on." And went back to reading his paper. If I had been too young to understand the root causes of these disputes--my family, though still living the life of a Haussmann mansion, was gradually falling apart--I could not have failed to notice my father's bankruptcy and his Increasingly frequent absences.Whenever my mother took my brother and me to visit my grandmother at the haunted house in Sisli, I could hear in greater detail how bad things were.My brother and I were playing, my mother complained, and my grandmother advised her to be patient.Perhaps worried that my mother would want to move back to the three-story building where she now lives alone, my grandmother kept reminding us that the house has many shortcomings. Apart from the occasional tantrum, my father had almost no complaints about life.He liked his good looks, his good brains, and his good luck, which he never tried to hide, like a child.In the house he was always whistling, looking in the mirror, and using lemon as pomade in his hair.He loved jokes, wordplay, surprises, reciting poetry, being clever, and flying to faraway places.He was never a father who scolded, forbade, punished his children.When he took us out, we would wander around town and make friends, and during these outings, I began to think that the creation of the world was For fun. If bad luck befalls and boredom approaches, the father ignores it accordingly and keeps silent.The mother who made the rules raised her eyebrows and taught us the dark side of life.She was less fun to be with, but I still depended heavily on her love and affection because she gave us far more time than my father who ran away from home at every opportunity.The toughest lesson of my life was knowing that I had to compete with my brother for favor. Perhaps because my father had little authority, my rivalry with my brother made more sense: he was my rival for maternal love.Of course we didn't understand psychology at the time, so my war with my brother was initially disguised as a game in which we pretended to be someone else.It wasn't Orhan and Sefket who fought, but my brother and I's favorite hero or football player.We were convinced that we became our own heroes, so we gave it our all.When the match ended in tears and blood, anger and jealousy made us forget that we were brothers. Whenever I was down, whenever I was unhappy or bored, I would leave my apartment without telling anyone, and go downstairs to play with my sister-in-law's son, or more often upstairs to my grandmother's.Although each apartment looks very much alike, with chairs and cutlery, sugar bowls and ashtrays all bought from the same store, each apartment is like a different country, its own world.In my grandmother's cluttered and dark living room, in the shadows of coffee tables and glass cabinets, vases and picture frames, I was able to dream that I was elsewhere. When our family gathers in this living room at night, I often play a game of using my grandmother's apartment as the captain's quarters of a large ship.This fantasy is due to the ships that ply the Bosphorus: while I lie in bed, the mournful sound of the ship's whistle will invade my dreams.As I steer my imaginary ship through a storm, the rough seas make my crew and passengers more and more uneasy, and I feel a sense of pride as captain, knowing that our ship, our family, Our fate is in my hands. While this fantasy was likely triggered by my brother's adventure comics, it also had something to do with my perception of God.God decided not to combine us with the fate of the city, I think just because we are rich.However, as my father and uncle went bankrupt again and again, the family property withered, the family broke up, and the disputes over money became more and more serious. Every time I went back to my grandmother's house, it made me distressed, and it made me further discover: , the shadow of loss cast over Istanbul by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire finally swept over our home.