Read Online Songs My Mother Never Taught Me by Selcuk Altun - Free Book Online

of the earth with you,’ but she despised the suburban Istanbul dweller who couldn’t even carry a shopping basket in the supermarket. And, according to my mother, Betsy was happy to ignore the city’s advantages and was flirting with a married banker whom she had met on her runs in Yıldız Park. When her suggestion of returning to California was rejected, divorce became inevitable
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    My older sister was jealous of my mother’s interest in me during my childhood, and later, in her adolescence, of my academic success. Her suppressed feelings, developed over twenty-five years, revealed themselves under the influence of alcohol. If I’d had a bigger salary I’d have moved away long ago from this mouldy ruin of a city
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    On the eve of returning to Istanbul I had prepared myself for the very worst. I must have felt ashamed of my powers of imagination, which had underestimated the magnitude of ‘the worst’; hyperinflation had turned a shallow leaderless country into a tribe of nomads. From the ashes of Constantinople, the great city that ignited the Renaissance, had risen a modern village haunted by ghosts of the past. Moustachioed peasants had seized control of the government. A mob ignorant of literature or art (there is no equivalent word for ‘Philistine’ in Turkish – a great pity!) were indifferent to the rampant corruption. Academic life was strangled by a mass of insensitivities. My colleagues were bored and poor. They think that with my degree from Berkeley I’m crazy not to go abroad (or in the midst of chaos am I struggling to face a punishment I deserve?)
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    The academic faculties are divided primarily into two factions, left and right: the time is surely coming when they’ll unite to criticize me. My promotion is delayed and the article I wrote for the college magazine is irresponsibly censored. Sycophantic deans ignorant of any other language are sent abroad to symposia. Students turn up to class occasionally and instead of admiring the most serious and learned, are content with irresponsible teachers who hand everyone a pass ... !
    Was this how I came to be on good terms with my older sister? We drink together. At first we run down our gadabout mother. Then comes the moment when whatever she says is quite incomprehensible. When I start on my usual sermon, ‘The superficial Turk, Turkey becoming shallow ...’, she passes out. And I pass out too as I whisper Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein in her ear
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    Yesterday morning a bright light leapt from the mirror and, spiralling to a point, settled in my brain. The pleasant ache in my head turns into a spiritual and physical drugged condition which I will certainly make my friend
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    Forty years on I’ve managed nevertheless not to ‘suffer in silence’. With my mother and my students and the contemptible faculty of deans, I fight viciously and continuously. I’m certainly on the point of making peace with my loneliness. Am I releasing my pain before the dilemma increases? First I resisted the build-up of chaos, then I discovered why I couldn’t escape from it. I’m dragged into depression, into the eye of the storm which Nietzsche and other philosophers reached. Masochistically I anticipate the arrival of the process and the last act. Waiting for my recovery, I take refuge in the aphorisms of Elias Canetti
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    It was another Saturday when the holiday spirit was missing. Rezzan and I set off together in the direction of centrally located Şişli. I was curious about the son who was said to be ‘depressed’. I entered the monastery-like La Paix Hospital praying, I don’t know why. A nurse looking like a chronically ill patient showed us into a private visiting room and warned us in advance, ‘You can stay for an hour, but don’t excite the Hodja, Rezzan.’
    I was just settling into the flimsy chair when the door creaked open and Gürsel Ergene entered,