family’s breadwinners. Every morning before dawn, they would leave home – which, these days, was a corner in a disused warehouse – and climb to the lower slopes of Mount Hortiatis where they would collect wild flowers. They would then run back, at breakneck speed, to reach the city by noon and sell the flowers, often in competition with equally destitute Gypsy children, to German officers relaxing at the waterfront tavernas.
Every morning, as they left, Fortuna felt sure she would never see her daughters again. Her son, David – who, like Bilâl, was nearly thirteen – fared worse. His daily task was to scour the city for scraps of food. In doing so, he had to avoid the German patrols for whom the humiliation of rabbis, women and the elderly, the beating of children and the random shooting of ‘die-hard communists’ – a euphemism for semitic-looking people – had become favourite pastimes.
Salvador, a man who, in his time, had never backed down from a fight, was now a ghost. Since the expropriation of his villa by the
Wehrmacht
, a few days after 11 July, he had ensconced himself in a shack, near the Eptapyrgio fortress, that terrible prison on the crest of the old upper city. Vowing that he would never again be maltreated and calling for his wife, mercifully dead for many years, to come and take him away, he had not left the shack since. Viktorya and Süzan took him food, but how long could they go on doing that?
All of this had persuaded Fortuna that she would have to learn the ways of this new world, become cunning and predatory and, abandoning all notions of decency, survive any way she could. She was still young and attractive. Greek men, everybody knew, had a fondness for Jewish flesh. The Germans, too, it was said, had a secret passion for it.
Bilâl’s relatives had to be saved. They were, to all intents and purposes, our kindred too. Bilâl, who had met them when he and his parents had visited Salonica in the summer of 1939, just before the war, had praised them to us so highly that we had adopted them unreservedly as family. Viktorya and Süzan, adorable little girls threatened by every peril under the sun, were the little sisters we all wished we had. (Naim’s older sister Gül had died two years earlier.) David was our age and, on the evidence of photographs, looked like Bilâl’s twin; therefore he was our twin. In Fortuna’s case, the prevailing moral view that prostitution was a fate worse than death plunged us into gruesome fantasies. Thus, though we secretly felt aroused by the thought of a woman who gave herself to any man, we could not let her face perdition in a thousand and one horrific ways. We had our reservations about Salvador – he had been a veritable tyrant all his life – but we decided that abandoning him would be heinous.
Given our eventual course of action, it might be assumed that we deliberated on the matter for days. We didn’t. Our decision was instant and unanimous. Such considerations as to how we would solve any problems that arose could be dealt with, we decided, in due course. We were young; and according to Plato, who had captured our imagination in those days, we were wiser than our elders. We could make the world a better place. Eradicate wars. Establish universal justice and human rights. Stop the sacrifice of millions at the altar of monomaniacs.
Bilâl presented an ‘if only’ scenario that had become his mother’s lament. If only we could procure five Turkish passports and deliver them to Fortuna ...
He had investigated the possibilities.
As anybody who went around Istanbul with eyes and ears open knew, the black-market trade in passports was a thriving business. Those of neutral countries, like Sweden and Switzerland, or from regions outside the theatres of war, like Latin America, were worth a fortune. There were some exceptions: Turkey was neutral, yet because it was feared that Germany, seeking to destroy Soviet oilfields and refineries east of
Every morning, as they left, Fortuna felt sure she would never see her daughters again. Her son, David – who, like Bilâl, was nearly thirteen – fared worse. His daily task was to scour the city for scraps of food. In doing so, he had to avoid the German patrols for whom the humiliation of rabbis, women and the elderly, the beating of children and the random shooting of ‘die-hard communists’ – a euphemism for semitic-looking people – had become favourite pastimes.
Salvador, a man who, in his time, had never backed down from a fight, was now a ghost. Since the expropriation of his villa by the
Wehrmacht
, a few days after 11 July, he had ensconced himself in a shack, near the Eptapyrgio fortress, that terrible prison on the crest of the old upper city. Vowing that he would never again be maltreated and calling for his wife, mercifully dead for many years, to come and take him away, he had not left the shack since. Viktorya and Süzan took him food, but how long could they go on doing that?
All of this had persuaded Fortuna that she would have to learn the ways of this new world, become cunning and predatory and, abandoning all notions of decency, survive any way she could. She was still young and attractive. Greek men, everybody knew, had a fondness for Jewish flesh. The Germans, too, it was said, had a secret passion for it.
Bilâl’s relatives had to be saved. They were, to all intents and purposes, our kindred too. Bilâl, who had met them when he and his parents had visited Salonica in the summer of 1939, just before the war, had praised them to us so highly that we had adopted them unreservedly as family. Viktorya and Süzan, adorable little girls threatened by every peril under the sun, were the little sisters we all wished we had. (Naim’s older sister Gül had died two years earlier.) David was our age and, on the evidence of photographs, looked like Bilâl’s twin; therefore he was our twin. In Fortuna’s case, the prevailing moral view that prostitution was a fate worse than death plunged us into gruesome fantasies. Thus, though we secretly felt aroused by the thought of a woman who gave herself to any man, we could not let her face perdition in a thousand and one horrific ways. We had our reservations about Salvador – he had been a veritable tyrant all his life – but we decided that abandoning him would be heinous.
Given our eventual course of action, it might be assumed that we deliberated on the matter for days. We didn’t. Our decision was instant and unanimous. Such considerations as to how we would solve any problems that arose could be dealt with, we decided, in due course. We were young; and according to Plato, who had captured our imagination in those days, we were wiser than our elders. We could make the world a better place. Eradicate wars. Establish universal justice and human rights. Stop the sacrifice of millions at the altar of monomaniacs.
Bilâl presented an ‘if only’ scenario that had become his mother’s lament. If only we could procure five Turkish passports and deliver them to Fortuna ...
He had investigated the possibilities.
As anybody who went around Istanbul with eyes and ears open knew, the black-market trade in passports was a thriving business. Those of neutral countries, like Sweden and Switzerland, or from regions outside the theatres of war, like Latin America, were worth a fortune. There were some exceptions: Turkey was neutral, yet because it was feared that Germany, seeking to destroy Soviet oilfields and refineries east of
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