Many and Many a Year Ago by Selcuk Altun Page A

Hotel.”
    The Sefa Hotel’s gracious hospitality bored me. I chose a Tartar restaurant for dinner. After that I went to a bar with a trendy name and sat with my iPod in my ears while I watched the men watching a football game on TV. By the time I put on my pajamas I was tired of the hotel. At the last minute I’d thrown
Tales of Detective Dupin
into my travel bag, but it too failed to interest me. I turned an ear to the rhythm of the traffic on the street below. The receptionist, who persisted in mispronouncing the name of the hotel, had said that Patience Stone Carvers was one of the “strangest” meerschaum shops in the city. I nodded off finally while absorbed in what seemed to be a map on the ceiling.
    The basement of the Yediveren Caravanserai, which apparently hadn’t been painted since its opening, was full of small shops selling forms of meerschaum. The display windows, choked with ornate pipes and gaudy souvenirs, were dazzling. Patience Stone Carvers, however, did not have a window. The apprentice who let me in whispered that his boss was on the phone in the back office. I looked over the items on the shelves while I waited. I’d never seen anything like these human and animal figurines, these grotesque objects and delicate masks, anywhere, not even in the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul. Perhaps the craftsman’s intention was to reflect the honor of pain. Even I could grasp the patience required in their execution. They were bursting with details like the lines and cross-hatchings in a bleak graphic novel (though perhaps I was reading too much into them to see regret in the mask-like faces).
    With a wide smile Hasan Gezgin welcomed me into his spacious studio. He reminded me of those old portraits of Genghis Khan. He treated his tools like his children. It was disturbing to reflect that he’d spent his entire life in this shadowy hermit’s cave. Clearly he had already thought about what he was going to say. I suppose the reason why he focused on the meerschaum snake on his table as he spoke was to try to minimize the tension he felt. When ginger tea was brought in, he began, carefully, to speak.
    â€œMy father was the foreman at the Yelkovan Horse Farm, the first privately owned stud farm in the area. The owner was Nabi Tabur. He was the richest man in Eskişehir; and his wife Safiye Hanım, the daughter of a Tartar chief, was said to be the most beautiful woman.
    â€œThe Tabur family would spend weekends and entire summers at their villa on the farm. They had a daughter, Nalan, who was as pretty as a picture. She was a year and a half younger than I and we used to play together, but I never dared to look into her beautiful blue eyes. Still, because I could make her laugh I believed she was in love with me as I was with her. I had a large head and pudgy body and when Nabi Tabur called me ‘Fatso,’ my father would laugh behind his hand. I think he was disappointed I wasn’t going to be a jockey.
    â€œNabi Tabur took over my education after I finished primary school at the top of my class. On the advice of his Istanbul attorney I entered middle school at Galatasaray Lycée in the city.
    â€œHaluk Batumlu was the most charismatic kid in our class. He was smart and daring and he took it upon himself to protect the outlandish Anatolian students from the Istanbul bullies. Nobody had the guts to ask him why his father was in prison.
    â€œBy the time we were in seventh grade Haluk, myself, and a boy called Halit Mesutoğlu from Tirebolu had become inseparable. I was proud to be one of the ‘3 H’s,’ as we were known at school. Haluk was our leader; thanks to him our school days were a happy time. His mother, Aunt Selma, seemed to be generally dissatisfied with life. She’d taken on housekeeping chores for a White Russian refugee by the name of Count Vladimir Nadolsky who was stuck in Balat because of a hopeless love affair. The count was more