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Portrait Of A Turkish Family | 
| Author: Irfan Orga
Publisher: Inman Press
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $26.95
You Save: $3.00 (10%)
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Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 725299
Media: Paperback
Pages: 312
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 1406745847
EAN: 9781406745849
ASIN: 1406745847
Publication Date: March 15, 2007
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
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Product Description
a XXXXXXXXXXXX X X X X X X if if X if if r r I y x xxx xxx x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x NEW YORK THE MAGMILLAN COMPANY 1950 if 3f PORTRAIT OF A TURKISH FAMILY . To Margarete, my wife, with love 10. Contents 1 Introducing the Family 1 2 An Autocrat at the Hamam 1 1 3 A Purely Masculine Subject 26 4 Sariyer 37 5 The New House and Other Things 52 6 The Changing Scene 64 7 Week-End Leave and the New Bride 78 8 Muazzez Makes Her Debut 93 9 A Long Farewell 101 10 Trying to Build Again 113 11 The End of Sariyer 127 12 Disillusionment of an Autocrat 140 13 Ninety-nine Kuru in Exchange for a Hero 150 14 Poverty Makes a Bargain 163 15 Charity School in Kadikoy 176 16 Ending with the Barbers Apprentice 191 17 Kuleli 209 18 The New Republic 222 19 A Bayram Morning and a Journey into Bleakness 231 20 Return to Istanbul 242 21 My Batman Averts a Crisis and Muazzez Finds a Beau 253 22 Feminine Affairs 259 23 The Wise Woman of Eskisehir 264 24 The Beginning of the End 272 25 Disintegrating Family . 281 26 Goodbye evk ye 286 27 The End of the Story 302 Introducing the family I WAS BORN IN ISTANBUL ON THE 31sT OP October, 1908. 1 was the eldest son o my parents, my mother being fifteen at the time of my birth and my father twenty. Our house was behind the Blue Mosque, overlooking the Sea of Marmara, It stood at the corner of a small cul-de-sac, with only a low stone wall between it and the sea. It was a quiet, green place and a very little mosque stood near it, and among my earliest recollections is the soft, unceasing sound of the Marmara and the singing of the birds in the gardens. Our house was a big wooden house, painted white, with green shutters and trellised balconies front and rear. It belonged to my grandfather and my grandmother, and we lived there with them. Looking back, it seems to me that the whole of my early childhood was linked with the sound of the sea and with the voices of my parents and grandparents as they sat eating break fast on the terrace overlooking the gardens. Still can I feel the con tentment of awakening in the low, sunny room filled with the re flected white light from the sea, still hear faintly the domestic sounds from the kitchen and the high-pitched, smothered laughter of our black cook. I would creep out of bed, absurd in my old fashioned nightshirt, and lean my head against the protective iron bars on the windows and call down to the family group below me. 2 PORTRAIT OF A TURKISH FAMILY This was the signal for my father to toss aside his napkin and shout up to me that he was coming. I would hastily scuttle back to my bed, laughing a bit with anticipation, for I had already learned that I was an important member of the household. Each day began for me with the throwing aside of my fathers breakfast napkin, the sound of his footsteps running up the stairs, and his repeated toss ing of me into the air to the accompaniment of my excited, terri fied screams. But it was a terror I could not resist, and my day would not have been properly begun if my father had omitted this thrilling game. Attracted by my laughter, Inci would appear, her black eyes rolling in her small dark face and her mouth screwed up with laughter. Inci was my nursemaid, coal-black and only thirteen years old, yet she had full charge of me. She was the daughter of Feride, the upstairs maid, and she had been born in Istanbul while her father was a servant in the palace of the sultan. After the death of Incf s father, my grandmother had taken her and her mother to our house, where, after my birth, Inci had been given to me. I loved her very much and could not have imagined life without her. She was always good-humored and used to make me shout with laughter when she rolled her eyes at me or pulled funny faces...
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
One of those rare books May 9, 2007
Gogol (England)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Exellent book realy well written (if a little dry in some parts) This is Irfan Orga's personal biography of most of all how his mother held the family together in one of the most difficult periods of Turkish history. How his father sadly passed away fighting in Galipoli (something many Turks can relate to) but most of all the sad, pointless way he died as so many Turks did during those years not just in Galipoli but on the Eastern front against the Russians not by bullets buy by poor supply lines, confusion and lack of communication and support.
It should be kept in mind that Irfan Orgas family were of the middle class and were largely receptive of the reforms of Ataturk (I would be interested to read something from those who were not) There are some interesing parts of this book such as how when he was at school under the old system students would be punished for missing prayers under the new system they are now punished for attending them. How their hats (so important in Ottoman days) where slowly changed to have a peak on them in order both to make them more 'western' and also to prevent prayer.
Well written and interesing, worth a read.
A warm memoire and a minor classic December 19, 2006
Menahem Prywes (Washington, DC USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
"Portrait of a Turkish Family" is a memoir of the decline of old Istanbul, and of the author's once-wealthy merchant family, during the military and economic crises that followed Turkey's entry into World War I, the wars of the early 1920s, and Mustafa Kemal's (Ataturk's) nationalist revolution. The book, republished by Eland Publishing Ltd., was written originally in English and in an elegant, end-of-the-19th Century style. In the Afterword, the author's son Ates, hints that his father Irfan planned the book and wrote a sketch, but that his aristocratic English mother drafted it. This warm and tragic remembrance is a minor classic of English literature; it echoes the aching nostalgia of the British upper classes for things oriental in 1950, the evening of the British Empire.
Though British in style and sentiment, the book belongs to Irfan Orga's very Turkish memories of childhood. It is his touching, often moving, evocation of the charms of a world lost forever; the world of servants, comfort, and of cloistered women and small children. Women of this social class stayed mainly at home in the Ottoman era, leaving their homes only with relatives and completely veiled. Small children were happily spoiled.
This charmed if out-dated existence was destroyed by Turkey's entry into the First World War and by the succession of military reversals that followed. These brought blockade, food shortages, inflation, and repeated drafts of militarily unqualified civilians. Many died, including the author's father; who was drafted, hardly trained, and sent off with his battalion, dying en route from marching day after day on swollen, bloody, and then infected feet. The fires that periodically ravaged old Istanbul burned the family home, and most of its savings --in paper notes- were lost. The tale follows the family's quick slide into poverty and even hunger, Irfan's mother's struggle to remake her self, by acts of will, to earn money through labor, and his grandmother's incapacity to adjust to new realities.
With the victory of the Mustafa Kemal's revolution, their mother places Irfan and his younger brother in officer candidate school, to avoid hunger and provide some education, and Irfan goes on to a career in military aviation and, during World War II, to a posting in Britain. What follows is sad, and according to the Afterword; although this book won recognition and sold reasonably well in Britain when it was first published, Irfan Orga fell into poverty once again.
Although Orientalism is famously out of fashion, this book is worth reading for its sincerity of feeling, for its extraordinary style, and for its personal point of view on the end of Ottoman Turkey. For an alternative point of view on Old Istanbul, this time of the 50s and 60s, read the Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul: Memories and the City. This is also a memoire of childhood and youth, but it is less sentimental, and instead, absorbed with eccentric aspects of Istanbul's near-past.
 A poignant memoir September 16, 2006
GLORIA VILLANUEVA (Caracas, Venezuela)
In my second visit to Istanbul I bought this book at the Istanbul airport minutes before boarding the plane back home as a "divertissement" for the long flight. It turned out I couldn't put it down. Is a poignant memoir of a life style gone forever and happy times that would never come back. As a woman I ached for the mother, she is really the central character of the book, and of the author's life as well.
Is a sad, beautiful book which I enjoyed very, very much
personal and historical insight and relation of turkey with european recent history October 17, 2005
anna maria negri (pavia, italy)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Bought in a bookshop in Istambul in a more expensive edition. Found it deep on both sides of personal and historical insight. Relates from a child clear and sharp eye the involvement of Turkey in WWI and Ataturk "modernizing" impact on the country. Individual struggles outlined on common sufference and historical stream. Mooving and never pathetical. For foregner reader language is quite easy, reveals a non-native-tongue writer, yet is subtle and sort of classical. Pity most of I. O. books are out of print.
a.m.negri, pavia, italy
A powerful true story of endurance and adaptation January 13, 2004
Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Portrait Of A Turkish Family is the true and biographical story of a Turkish family's effort to persevere through incredible and disastrous wartime hardships by Irfan Orega, a son of that family. World War I brought poverty and desperation to the formerly affluent Orega family, and small triumphs over something as small as a silver candlestick became crucial pieces of hope for the family's survival. A powerful true story of endurance and adaptation, Portrait Of A Turkish Family is an extraordinary biographical testament and very highly recommended reading.
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