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I was in a metaphysical mood and needed another major project, an earthier one, to snap out. After Parents and I arrived from Istanbul on Sep. 2, 1992, all of us adjusted our daily agenda to accommodate a master schedule. Father, our baba, had to be at the clinic for dialysis from 8:30 a.m. to noon on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Mother, our anne, accompanied him for the duration of the treatment. She passed the hours in the waiting room, usually alone, reading the Washington Post, a magazine, or a French or German dictionary. Parents had complete privacy in the basement apartment of Femsi's town house in Virginia. Femsi, the chief pharmacist at a major drug chain, drove them to the clinic almost every morning Father had to be there. Or Parents called a taxi.
Us,1989 to 1994, Mother (71) visiting me in Washington, DC (1989), at Femsi's town house (1994),
Gulhis (Gigi) and her son Cavit visiting from California.
Being so near
to Parents and Femsi gave a new direction to my freedom. If I was
going to write a book about our experiences in America, this was
the time to do it. I would be almost finished with my
"personal projects" and be really free, perhaps also to
live in other countries. I felt like writer Paul Bowles. When
asked if he would ever come back (from Morocco) to the States, he
said "I hope not." Yet, I knew a part of me would
always want to return to America, if only to escape again. I
molded my schedule to Parents' routine. After I concluded my
astrology research and book, on Mar. 12, 1994, I initiated my
next "Phase of Existence." I turned to our family
history. Like Ian Frazier, I wanted to find a meaning of life for
the family, clan, and our friends, "a meaning that would
defeat death," (from his book "Family," by F. S.
Giroux). In view of our rich background, I envisioned a
comprehensive and multipronged aim.
I began to scan the photos and documents, 2750 of them, in our family albums, also enhancing the images and imbedding identifying text--date, place, people--on them individually. Then I prepared a two-hour slide show of 1191 selected images on the computer and transferred it through an off-the-shelf digital-to- analog signal converter onto a VCR, producing my own version of the Civil War series by Ken Burns. For sound effect, I synchronized various musical pieces, like Albinoni's "G Major," and some spoken parts to the slides from different distinct eras in our lives. We mailed copies of the video to family and friends on three continents.
While working on the video, every weekend I interviewed Parents to obtain information about our past. Mother's phenomenal memory did not leave many gaps, no missing dates. Things she did not know directly I obtained from folks in Turkey and Jordan. I compiled this information in a manuscript of our history in Turkey, covering the period from the 1880s to 1958, including passages from our family's involvement in WWI and indirectly in WWII. For example, while serving on the Yemen front, Mother's father, Dr. Ha(sh)im, had helped also the other side. When "Imam Yahya," the Yemeni leader, fell ill, he asked for a Turkish doctor who could speak Arabic. Grandfather came, operated on him under Yemeni guns and saved his life.
Mother reviewed the manuscript to make sure that the information was correct. Then we began to document a dictionary of the Laz language, a dying dialect that is spoken only. (See the Appendix.) We included every word and phrase Parents could think of, spending a month on the grammar, including conjugations, verb tenses, idiosyncrasies, etc. I added the dictionary as an appendix to the manuscript, as also two family trees. The name "Celayir" dates to year 1385 when the "Celayirliler" dynasty occupied parts of eastern Anatolia. Father's traceable roots begin in 1650 and somewhat fuzzily connect to 1850. Mother's family is from Latakia, Syria, though the main branch of her family is now in Jordan. Mother was born in Aleppo when Syria was a province of the Ottoman Empire. Her tree begins in Syria in 1820 and spreads out to Turkey and Jordan--and to Bulgaria and Russia, though the latter two branches and some family members in Syria were lost due to WWI and WWII.
I had worked on the trees from Jan. 12, 1989 to Dec. 11, 1990, as an elaborate spreadsheet on "Lotus 1 2 3" instead of using a genealogy software. Each branch of the family contributed to this effort, as also clan members in Arhavi and Mother's cousins in Jordan. On both trees, I identified the birth/death dates, professions, the maiden names of all the women, many from other Laz clans, who joined the family. And I included brief life- giving anecdotes about some of the more interesting people and incidents. Since most of these people from 1918 on were also included on the video, in effect I had immortalized them. I finished this work in Washington on Jan. 13, 1995.
In May 1995, in Miami Beach, I began our diary (this book) in America and finished it on Apr. 12, 1996, also vacationing somewhere in the Caribbean for a week each month. This left only the project of "burning" all this and my software, etc. onto a CD-ROM, and having a book printer produce a hardback of our lives in Turkey (Volume I), including a jacket for the CD-ROM on the inside cover. I decided to try to have Volume II--this manuscript--published while I finished the remaining parts of my project, say in 1997. And since my work in astrology had brought me in contact with people from 46 countries, and I was a "sysop" (bulletin board system operator), I decided to have my work available on selected bulletin boards around the world, mine too, some of it also on the Internet. While I worked on my projects, often my mind traveled, sometimes on an island-hopping excursion to Indonesia, also to enjoy Bali again. There were inducements for other trips. For example, Jung Chang's book, "Wild Swans," gave the impetus to an extended tour of China.
On Saturdays, at 10:00 a.m., I left Washington on the Orange Line metro from McPherson Square and arrived at Dunn Loring station 22 minutes later. A short cab ride brought me to the clinic: Yorktown 50 on Route 50 West. Mother always sat next to the large window facing the street. She came to the entrance to greet me, adorned with a happy smile. Over the years, we had met this way at hundreds of locations on three continents. Our arrivals and departures were well-rehearsed rituals. It did not matter that I had done this only a week ago, would do so again next week. We hugged and kissed as if we were greeting after a long separation. It was all heartfelt, for this gentle and decent doyenne of Celayirs was my best friend.
Then I went inside, to the dialysis section, to say hello to Father. He was usually asleep or in a sleepy trance, nursing his thoughts. If his blood pressure was not excessively high he was more relaxed. Otherwise there was a rash on his cheeks and he looked worried. I had seen him also when his blood pressure was very low and he looked asleep. I may have saved his life a few times, when I sensed something was not right and alerted the nurses. Father did not speak much; he never did. I made conversation for both of us, chatted briefly with other patients, then returned.
Mother and I have similar personalities. Variety and mobility are essential to our happiness. Gülhis feels the same way, but she is married and raising a son. These limitations also apply to Mother who is taking care of Father. Mother and Gülhis' needs for variety are limited to travel, mental stimulus, and congenial friends. The last element proved to be elusive for both of them in America. I require much more and I am free to indulge in my plans, whims, and sometimes eccentric notions. Father and Femsi view settling down as a higher form of happiness.
Mother is the most sociable member of our family. Both of us are animated and talkative. We gesticulate and modulate our voices to accent and emphasize. Since Father's stroke in 1989, she has had limited social life. Her children and grandchildren are the only company she has. She entertains herself by reading a great deal, solving "cryptoquizzes," and watching the news shows. The 17 isolated years in Waynesburg, PA had conditioned her to aloneness, but ultimately Mother likes it when she can talk to someone. Femsi and Gülhis are also sociable, but they are employed and have families. So I am always welcome.
The interaction between us grew considerably after I returned from Saudi Arabia. Before we left Turkey in 1958, Mother had been socially very active with her many friends, especially the girls with whom she had attended the American schools in Merzifon and Üsküdar (Scutari, a historical section of Istanbul). When she returned to Turkey the first time in 1968, she continued amiably, as if there had been no separation. However, the ten years in America had made a mark. Mother still enjoyed the social life but now also looked forward to her private moments. Her conversations with family and friends accentuated a common past, in part because they had less in common at the present and faced a different future.
We began our osmosis by discussing the highlights of the previous week. Since Mr. Clinton became the President, Mother adopted him, Mrs. Clinton, and Al Gore and his wife as our extended family. So she usually condemned everything derogatory written or said about them, defending her brood by using (Turkish) vocabulary that would have qualified her automatically as a sailor in any navy. Mother never uttered crude four-letter words but used artful substitutes, poetic descriptions, metaphors, analogies. She was a sight in this mood. My sisters and I enjoyed her colorful expressions. Father, always a gentleman, usually responded by raising his eyes to the ceiling and swallowing hard. He did not make a comment, for he knew better. Mother would tell him not to complain, pointing out that she who was raised very properly learned to talk this way out of frustration about his silent ways.
When the weather was fine, we took walks around the clinic grounds, sat under a cherry tree, and continued our conversation. In May 1993, we located blackberry bushes nearby and ravished the berries as we had in Turkey four decades ago. The topics we discussed jumped from this to that. We did not elaborate on them, for we knew our views. For example, if Mother mentioned something by George Will or William Safire about the republican agenda or the Reagan years, we knew they would not say anything even remotely critical. Instead, if their focus was on the democratic agenda or Mr. Clinton, invariably they had nothing positive to say.
To us, these pundits of profundity, with superb command of English and a flair for composition, often used selected facts and craned reasoning to support their right-veering logic and carved- in-stone opinions. Obviously they were informed, but we did not find them enlightened, rarely enlightening. Indeed, we wondered if people with set views could qualify as pundits in the first place, irrespective of their learning. They could be also crusaders, shepherds in search of sheep, not an uncommon vocation in America. In contrast, although other writers also criticized, their criticism, or praise, emerged from a well-rounded analysis. The results were not preordained. They did not skew their report to support preconceived notions. This made a crucial difference to us. A fair coverage that looked at an issue from several dimensions enlightened the reader. In turn, skewed coverage was generally a pretense to push opinions, often flabby ones.
We felt most Americans followed the views of only the pundits they liked. Then, fortified with one-sided information, they argued with the other side. This was clear from the calls to CSPAN and the talk shows. Americans thought such exchanges qualified as debates. We did not agree. America was already overburdened with pro something and anti-the-same-thing groups that did not give an inch to the other side. These "debates" were nothing but clashes of tendentious opinions and biases that divided the American people further into my-way-or-no-way camps. We did not see how America could reach sensible solutions to problems this way. The partition in the leadership mirrored the division between the people. Except in case of an emergency, gridlock or watered-down perfunctory bills seemed the only natural outcome of this system, for resolute bills seemingly always had resolute opponents. Problems continued to fester until they reached a crisis stage and a determined bipartisan solution became imminent. Many serious problems were simply ignored, public education one of them. Instead of preventive medicine, the American system practiced emergency care, crisis management.
I observed Mother's response to Father's ailment and learned more about love, duty, responsibility, and devotion than I knew of them from my own life. They were in full view every day, every moment. I spent my life in pursuit of experiences, variety, and adventure in their transient forms, but I also appreciated these more enduring forms of attachment. I projected the bond between Parents to Femsi's marriage. Her marriage of 27 years had ended in 1991. Although the writing had been on the wall for 27 years, I was perplexed. Such things happened to me. Femsi and Gary were both my opposites. They were a perfect match, though Femsi was much more giving. Both liked the package of job, home, family, children, and stability that came with the conventional lifestyle. Their two children, Debra and Glen, were all-American kids. Gary and Femsi even climbed to the roof and repaired shingles together. Because of my two divorces and the adventurous way I lived life, they had regarded me as irresponsible.
After Father's dialysis, we came home. Father sat at the kitchen table, sometimes moaning from excessive water loss or blood-pressure fluctuations, while Mother prepared his meal. For some dishes, Mother is the best cook there is. Father favors his simple but tasty Laz dishes, like "makvali quali t(gh)aney" (eggs and cheese and hard corn bread sautéed in butter and spiced with garlic salt). He washes them down usually with a syrup of canned fruit, preferably figs. The rest of us are not as careful about our eating. Fortunately, we have the metabolism of a humming bird, though Mother is overweight. I usually maintain an athletic weight, except when I am busy with a personal project and live next to my computer. Mother and I eat for the joy of eating. We do not worry about losing a few years from the end of our lives when we can enjoy the rest more.
The domestic scene changes once or twice a year when Parents travel to California to spend the winter with Gülhis, her husband Michael, and their son Cavit Michael. Gülhis ("Gigi" in America) is a part-time instructor in art history at a college nearby. So she is especially busy when Parents are there, synchronizing Father's dialysis with her class schedule, Cavit Michael's school work and band practice, etc. This trip also enables Parents to interact with Michael's parents, Mr. and Mrs. George Monezis who became friends over the years.
Albeit, these circumstances are an ideal retirement arrangement for Parents, though sometimes I am despondent. I spent many hours examining Parents' old photos and feel as if I knew them also before I was born. They arrived in this country when Father and Mother were respectively 8 and 13 years younger than I (1996). Now, 38 years later, they had aged. I decided golden years or not "aging sucks" and told so to Mother.
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