Seal sa Domhan Thoir: sojourn in the Eastern World

Eire-Ireland:Journal of Irish Studies, Spring-Summer, 2003 by Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill

In spite of this he took to me enormously. Quite a demon in his youth, he had mellowed considerably by the time we met. He was in his own words "kurt kocayinca," 'an old wolf', which refers to the proverb "kurt kocayinca kopeklerin maskarasi olurmus," "when the wolf gets old and thin, he becomes the laughing-stock of the dogs." In some ways I was a kind of honorary man for him. He would call me out of the kitchen, saying "benim gelin mutfakta avratlarin icinde ne yapioyor?," 'what is my daughter-in-law doing in the kitchen amongst the womenfolk?', using in ironic fashion the old-fashioned word avrat for women, which might be better translated as 'female slave'. Likewise he didn't like to see me reading books, thinking it was a waste of time: time which would be much better spent in pleasant conversation with himself.

So we would spend hours at a time talking to each other. When it was time for him to say his prayers, he went into the next room with his prayer rug, said his prayers, and then came out again, and we continued the conversation where we had just left off. In the afternoons I would make for him his gelin kahvesi, the special coffee made by the lily-white hands of the new bride, and he would drink it with great pleasure, and we would continue speaking about everything under the sun.

Comparisons of stories and beliefs held by Christians and Muslims used to keep us going for a long time. I remember in particular the comparison of the two versions of the story of Abraham and Isaac, which are actually very similar. He never suggested that I should convert, though once he set out to teach me the Arabic alphabet so that I could read the holy book, "Koran-i-Kerim." After three days of wrestling with "ayin," "kayin," (3) and I don't know what else, I proved to be a total eejit, and he decided that conversion was a grace not vouchsafed to me by Allah: I was fine as I was, one of the 'people of the book', ritaplilardan. As the "Incil," or New Testament, and the "Tevrah," or Torah, are considered holy books in Islam, the idea of conversion never arose again. After a few years I think I became in his eyes an honorary Muslim as well as an honorary man, and we got on together like a house on tire.

I remember one day one of his cronies named Berber Huseyn called in. I made gelin kahvesi in the usual small cups, and, as they sat there sipping it, I was an "ear-guest" at their conversation, as the lovely Turkish expression for eavesdropping has it.

"She is very nice, for a heathen," says Berber Huseyn.

"Ah yes, but you know those heathens aren't bad people at all," Suleyman Dede.

"Oh, don't I know? I have two sons in Germany amongst the heathens, and according to them you couldn't find a straighter or more honest people on this earth."

"If it weren't for the drink."

"Yes, the alcoholic drink makes animals out of them. Animals entirely."

"Yes, it is a real pity about the drink."

This would have been amusing in itself if it hadn't reminded me of similar conversations about Turkey I had had in Irish with Thomas Murphy, my aunt's husband, and his cronies in the Gaeltacht.