Chapter 21 "Istanbul" rich man

In the mid-1960s, my mother went to the newsstand every Sunday morning to buy a copy of The Evening Paper.Unlike the newspapers we read every day, this one is not delivered to our home.Knowing that my mother bought the Evening Gazette in order to read the social gossip column "Have you heard?" published anonymously under the pseudonym Gul-Peri ("Rose-Goddess"), my father made fun of her at every opportunity.I learned from his sneer that an interest in social gossip is a sign of weakness, tantamount to ignoring journalists venting their grievances against "rich people" (including those we hang out with or wish we were) behind pseudonyms , making up lies about them.Even if it wasn't a lie, these wealthy people whose skills are so poor that they attract the attention of social columns are not living a model life.These insights, however, did not stop my father from reading these columns and believing them:

Poor Madense! Her house in Bebeka was burglarized, and no one seemed to know what was missing.Let's wait and see if the police can solve this mystery. Madara didn't go swimming in the ocean last summer - all because she had her tonsils removed - and she had a great time at Kurussesme this summer - although we hear she's still a little fidgety.Let's not ask why... Ipa went to Rome! The Istanbul celebrity never looked happier.I don't know what she is happy about? Is it the fashionable man next to her? Saliya used to spend the summer in Buyocada, but now she abandoned us to her villa in Capri.It's so much closer to Paris after all! We've heard she's going to have a few exhibitions.So when did she let us see her sculptures?

Celebrities in Istanbul persecuted by poisonous eyes! Many dignitaries who regularly appear in this column fell ill and were rushed to the hospital for surgery.The latest bad news comes from the much-mourned Esref, whose home in Chamlega, where Gursu had a wonderful time at the moonlight party...   "So Guersu also had his tonsils removed?" Mother said. "It would be better for her to take off the meatball on her face first," said the father jokingly. Some celebrities were named, some not, but from their back-and-forth responses, I deduced that my parents knew these people, and that they were interesting to my mother because they were richer than us.Mother envied them while at the same time disapproving of their wealth, as she sometimes denounced them as "in the papers."My mother's views were not unique, and most Istanbulites at the time strongly believed that rich people should not be ostentatious in public.

They even say it openly, not as a call for humility, or to avoid arrogance—neither of which express a Protestant work ethic—but simply out of fear of the government.For centuries, the ruling Ottoman pashas had regarded other wealthy people—most of whom were themselves powerful pashas—as thorns in their side, killing them and confiscating their property under any pretext.As for the Jews who lent to the government in the last centuries of the empire, and the Greeks and Armenians who made their mark in the business world and crafts, they all remember fondly the punitive wealth tax imposed during World War II, which led to the confiscation of their land and land. Factories, as well as shops looted and burned during the riots of September 5-6, 1955.

So the big Anatolian landowners and second-generation entrepreneurs who are now flocking to Istanbul have the audacity to flaunt their wealth.Naturally, those of us who still fear the government, or those of us who, through incompetence, have not possessed wealth for more than a generation, consider such audacity not only foolish but vulgar.A second-generation entrepreneur, Sabanci, the patriarch of Turkey's second-richest family today, is ridiculed for his ostentation, eccentric opinions and unconventional behavior (although no newspaper writes about it, for fear of advertising revenue Drain), but his brutish courage led him to emulate Frick, the American coal magnate, in making his home Istanbul's finest private museum in the 1990s.

Still, the anxieties of the wealthy Istanbulites of my childhood were not unfounded, nor were their caution unwise.With the government still eyeing every form of production and dealing with politicians in order to get really rich, it was assumed that even the "well-meaning" rich had a dirty past.After his grandfather's money ran out, his father had to work for years for Kok, the patriarch of another large business family in Turkey.Even if he joked about his boss’s country accent or his stupid son’s lack of knowledge, the father was still reluctant. When he was angry, he would say that the family’s wealth during World War II had a lot to do with the famine and queuing for food that the country had to endure at that time .

Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I saw the wealthy people of Istanbul not as beneficiaries of their ingenuity, but as people who seized the opportunity to bribe the authorities early and made a fortune.By the 1990s, when fear of the government subsided somewhat, I estimate that most of them got rich quick and devoted their lives to hiding their wealth while attempting to legitimize their social prestige.Since knowledge does not need to be exercised to become rich, these people have no interest in books, reading, or playing chess.It was a far cry from the elitist Ottoman period, when people from humble beginnings could rise, get rich and become pashas only through education.In the early years of the Republic, with the closure of Sufi monks’ halls, the denial of religious literature, the reform of the alphabet, and the initiative to turn to European culture, it was impossible to improve oneself through education.

As the new rich came to fear the state (with good reason), these timid families had only one way to advance themselves, and that was to show themselves to be more European than they really were.So they amused themselves by traveling to Europe to buy clothes, suitcases and the latest electrical gadgets (everything from juicers to electric razors), taking pride in the pomp.Sometimes an old Istanbul family runs a business and gets rich again (like my aunt's friend, a well-known columnist and newspaperman) but they have learned their lesson: even if no laws are broken, no officials are offended , there is no reason to fear the government, and it is not uncommon to sell everything and move to an ordinary flat in London.Either staring at the wall of the neighbor across the way, or staring at incomprehensible British TV, and yet for some reason they couldn't explain, they still felt it was a step up from the not-so-comfortable overlooking the Bosphorus Istanbul Apartments.And the longing for the West often leads to the story in "Anna Karenina": a rich family hires a nanny to teach their children foreign languages, but the male owner elopes with the nanny.

The Ottoman Empire had no hereditary nobility, but with the advent of the Republic, the rich tried to make themselves seen as legitimate heirs.So, in the 1980s, when they suddenly became interested in remnants of Ottoman culture, they tried to collect the few "antiques" that survived the fire in the wooden "Yali".Since we were rich and are still considered rich, we like to gossip about how rich people get rich (my favorite story is about the sugar shipments that came to Hong Kong overnight during the First World War) A man who gets rich, enjoys the proceeds until his death).Perhaps it is the charm of such stories, or the tragic atmosphere of not knowing what to do with sudden wealth, and how to prevent wealth from coming and going too quickly. Whatever the reason, whenever you meet rich people-some distant relative, family A friend, a childhood friend of my mother’s or father’s, a neighbor of Nishantashi’s, or some soulless, cultureless rich guy who ends up in the “Have You Heard?” The endless urge to delve deeper into the emptiness of their lives.

A childhood friend of my father's, an elegant and handsome elder, inherited a large fortune from his father (a vizier at the end of the Ottoman Empire), and the inheritance was huge - I can never tell when it is mentioned Whether it was praise or disapproval—so he “had never worked a day in his life” and had nothing to do but read the newspaper and overlook the street from Nishantashi’s apartment.He spends long afternoons grooming his beard, puts on elegant clothes tailored in Paris or Milan, and begins the task of the day, which is to drink tea for two hours in the lobby of the Hilton Hotel or in the pastry shop.He once raised his eyebrows and explained to my father, as if telling a great secret, with a sad expression to express some kind of deep spiritual torment: "Because the city feels like Europe, only here." Another peer is My mother's friend, a rich, fat woman who, despite (or because) she looked so much like a monkey, greeted everyone with, "Hello, monkey." My brother and I liked to imitate her. Pretentious demeanor.She spent most of her life rejecting suitors, complaining that they were not elegant or European enough: when she was fifty, she gave up a rich man or a gentleman who did not want to marry a woman as mediocre as her, and married An "excellent, elegant" thirty-year-old policeman.This marriage lasted only for a while, and after that, she advised all her life that women of her class should only marry rich men of the right family.

In general, the last generation of westernized wealthy Ottomans failed to capitalize on their inherited wealth to participate in the commercial and industrial boom that Istanbul was entering.The heirs of these old families are often unwilling to sit down to do business, not even over tea, with the "tacky businessmen" - whose capacity for "genuine" friendship and community spirit temper their cunning and deceit .These ancient Ottoman families were also kept in the dark by the lawyers they hired to defend their interests and collect rent for them.Whenever we go to see these endangered people in their villas or in "Yali" on the Bosphorus, I understand that most of them would rather be in the company of their cats and dogs than in the company of human beings, so I always pay special attention to The love they showed me.Five or ten years later, in his curio shop, the antique dealer Porta Caroux displayed the furniture surrounding these men—lecteres, benches, pearl-encrusted tables, paintings, framed calligraphy, vintage rifles, antiques handed down from their ancestors. Swords, plaques, big clocks—remind me fondly of the downfall they led.They both have hobbies and quirks to distract themselves from bad relationships with the outside world for a while.I remember a frail man who surreptitiously showed my father his collection of clocks and weapons, displaying a secret collection of erotic paintings.An elderly aunt asked us to walk around a low, crumbling wall on the way to the boathouse, which reminded us that when we visited her five years ago, she said exactly the same thing, and we thought it was funny.Another aunt spoke in a low voice so that the servants would not hear her precious secret.Another aunt rudely asked where my grandmother was from, much to my mother's displeasure.I had a fat uncle who got into the habit of taking guests on a museum tour of his house, and then discussing the seven-year embezzlement scandal and its aftermath, as if it had just been reported in the Liberty Journal that morning, and the city was buzzing. As if excited.We went through these strange ceremonies without a hitch, and I tried to make sure we were behaving properly by the look in my mother's eyes.I also gradually understood that we were not important in the eyes of these rich relatives, and I suddenly wanted to leave their "Yali" and go home.When someone gets their father's name wrong, or their grandfather for some country farmer, or--I've seen it so often in reclusive rich people--exaggerates some little thing (the maid didn't get the bulk When I brought sugar cubes instead of sugar, the maids wore unpleasantly colored socks, and the speedboat was too close to the house), I realized that our social status was very different.But for all their artyness, their grandchildren, the boys my age with whom I had to be friendly, were uniformly regarded as "difficult fellows"—many picking fights with fishermen in cafés, beating up at French schools downtown The priest, or (if he hadn't been imprisoned in a Swiss madhouse) committed suicide. These families got into petty and thorny disputes, often in court, in which I thought they were similar to my own.Some people lived together in their villas for years, even if they sued each other, they still got together for family dinners (like my father, aunts and uncles).Those with deep grievances who confuse their feelings with their actions are more miserable, and refuse to talk to each other for many years; some continue to live in the same "Yali" building, but they can't get used to their annoying relatives, so they use simple plaster walls to separate them. Open the most beautiful room of "Yali", blocking the unobstructed high ceiling and panoramic view of the Bosphorus, the thin walls force them to still have to listen to their hated relatives coughing and walking all day; Other parts (“You live in the harem, I stay in the outbuilding”), not for your own comfort, but for the pleasure of knowing you’ve caused discomfort to an annoying relative; I’ve also heard of some people taking legal action to prevent relatives from using the courtyard. As I watch the younger generations of these families start another wave of similar feuds, I wonder if the wealthy in Istanbul have a talent for feuds.In the early years of the republic, when my grandfather was accumulating his fortune, a wealthy family moved to Nisantasi, not far from our home on Teswichje Street.The children of the family divided in two a piece of land that their father had bought from a pasha in Abdul Hamid's time.My brother had built an apartment building, far from sidewalks by city ordinance.A few years later, his younger brother built an apartment on his half of the land. Although he still followed the city ordinance, he deliberately moved three meters closer to the sidewalk, just to block his brother's view.The older brother then built a five-story wall—everyone in Nishantashi knew about it—just to block the view from the side windows of the younger brother's house. It's not often that you hear about such quarrels among provincial families who have moved to Istanbul.The normal thing is to support each other, especially if they are not very rich. After the 1960s, the urban population grew rapidly, and land prices also rose accordingly. People who have lived in Istanbul for several generations and who own any property have made windfalls.In order to prove that they belonged to the "rich family in Istanbul", the first thing they did was naturally to trigger a dispute over the division of property.Two brothers owned the barren hill land behind Bakrkoy and made a fortune as the city expanded towards the area.This may explain why the younger brother shot and killed his older brother in the 1960s.I remember newspaper reports implying that the older brother was in love with the younger brother's wife.The murderer's green-eyed son was my elementary school classmate when it happened, so I followed the scandal with interest.The news ran on the front page for days, and the townspeople were absorbed in reading the details of the story of greed and passion, while the murderer's fair-skinned, red-haired son wore his suspenders and clutched a handkerchief, sobbing silently all day long.For the next forty years, whenever I passed through the district bearing the name of my suspender classmate—now home to 250,000 people—or heard the family mentioned (Istanbul was a big village, after all), I recalled Of my red-haired friend's red eyes, silent tears. The major shipbuilding families (all hailing from the Black Sea coast) would rather not take their disputes to court, preferring a rage that only arms could sate.They started out with a fleet of small wooden boats and competed for government contracts, but instead of free competition as understood by Westerners, they sent gangs of bandits to intimidate each other.Sometimes they got tired of fighting each other, so they married their daughters to each other, just like the princes and nobles in the Middle Ages, but the peace that followed was short-lived, and soon they started shooting each other, making the daughters of both families feel deeply sad .After they started buying big barges, growing their fleet of small freighters, marrying some daughter to the president's son, they became regulars on the "Have You Heard?" Narrative of their "luxury caviar and champagne poured" parties. At these kinds of parties, wedding receptions and dances — often attended by fathers, uncles and grandmothers — there was always a troop of photographers, and my family would take their pictures home and display them at the dinner table for days.I recognized some of the people in the photos who had visited our house, and a few other well-known people I had read about in the papers, and politicians who had helped them along the way.I tried to imagine what it was like when my mother exchanged ideas on the phone with her sister, who often attended these events.Since the 1990s, celebrity weddings have become a grand event with the participation of the media, TV stations and domestic supermodels, and the publicity fireworks can be seen all over the city.But a generation ago, the situation was very different: the purpose was not to show off, but to bring the rich together, temporarily without fear of a greedy government, even if only for one night.When I was a child attending these kinds of weddings and parties, it was a joy to be around these dignitaries, despite my trepidation.I also see the joy in my mother's eyes as she spends her day getting dressed and stepping out of the house for a party.The anticipation of a fun night out is less than the satisfaction of being able to spend your evenings with rich people—the kind of people you know you belong to, for some reason. Entering a brightly lit hall or (in summer) a splendid courtyard, walking among the beautifully furnished tables, tents, flower beds, clerks and footmen, I find that rich people like each other's company, especially when famous people are present.They look around the crowd like mothers, to see "who else" is there, and take comfort in seeing "us."Most people get rich not by hard work or ingenuity, but by some kind of good luck or a scam they want to forget these days, and their confidence comes from knowing they have more money than they ever dreamed to spend.In other words, they can relax and be smug only with people like them. After wandering among the crowd for a while, a gust of wind came from nowhere, which made me feel out of place.It disheartened me to see luxury furniture or luxuries we couldn't afford (eg, an electric cleaver), and to see parents close to people who boasted that they made their fortunes out of some kind of shame, disaster, or scam. increase my uneasiness.Then I discovered that my mother, who really liked their company, and my father, who was afraid to flirt with one of his mistresses, hadn't quite forgotten the nasty gossip they talked about at home, but decided to put it aside for a while, if only for one night. .After all, don’t rich people all do the same things? Maybe that’s part of being rich, I thought, that they act “as if.”Wealthy people go into these parties to complain about how badly they ate on their last flight, as if it was a big deal that mattered, and as if the vast majority of what they ate wasn't equally low-level food.And the way they deposited (or, as my parents called it, transferred) their money in Swiss banks: knowing their money was far away gave them a certain wonderful confidence that I admired. My father explained to me in a roundabout way that the distance between us was not as far as I thought.I was twenty years old at the time, and my constant diatribes were directed at soulless, brainless rich people who pretentiously boasted about how "Western" they were, saying they didn't share their art collections with the public, endow funds for museums or Pursue your own hobbies, but live a timid and mediocre life.I single out a few relatives and friends, a few childhood friends of my parents, and the parents of some of my own friends.My father interrupted my invective, and then—perhaps fearing that I was headed into an unhappy life, or simply wanting to warn me—he said, "In fact" the lady I just mentioned (a very beautiful woman) was a woman with a heart. Good girl, if I had the opportunity to know her well, it would be easy to see why.