As the garden slowly surrendered its suffocating heat to the comfort of the evening breeze, Çiğdem slid back the iron bolt and opened the courtyard gate to a stranger she did not recognize. She shielded the guest so the heavy gate wouldn’t swing back on him. The mysterious gentleman, who gracefully stepped out of a beautiful car, stirred not just her curiosity but everyone else's as well.
While Çiğdem and her husband Jacques greeted the
guest, Uncle Ayhan had also risen from his seat, quickening his steps toward
the gate until he was out of breath. The guest handed Çiğdem a Dom Perignon
champagne he brought in a cooler bag. Ayhan embraced him tightly and for a long
moment. “Sinan, my old friend, welcome,” he said. That was when Çiğdem realized
this was the famous Lawyer Sinan Bey. “Mr. Sinan, how thoughtful of you,” she
said, thanking him for the gift.
Çiğdem had a bit of a role in his arrival. She had
only spoken to Sinan Bey on the phone, so this was the first time she saw his
face. Truth be told, she hadn't expected him to suddenly show up like this. In
the 150-page family book she had written, she had only devoted two pages to her
mother’s and uncle’s years in Istanbul. She had only learned about this old
love story of her mother’s during a visit in November — her mother, a deeply
reserved woman, had never mentioned it. She had learned the story thanks to her
Aunt Hale. For years, her mother hadn't said a word about that romance. In
fact, while writing the book, she hadn’t been helpful at all — always
responding with “I don’t know” or “I forgot,” which had driven Çiğdem crazy.
One day, she even told her, “Mom, you should have been a KGB agent.”
Her main sources had been her eighty-year-old Aunt
Ayla and her younger, sharp-minded Aunt Hale, who was nine years younger and
had an elephant’s memory. Aunt Ayla was her connection to the 1950s and 60s.
She had vividly described their mother’s youth, their grandfather’s love for
vinyl records, and daily life in those times. But in 1971, Ayla had met her
future husband, a man from Denizli living in Munich, through a newspaper ad.
They married and moved to Germany, had daughters Pelin and Selin, and returned
permanently to Turkey in 1985, settling in Denizli. That’s why the 1970s were
Aunt Hale’s domain.
When Çiğdem visited Aunt Hale in Istanbul, she had
shared every detail down to the tiniest bits. Hale was like a living
encyclopedia of family history. She had told her everything from Çiğdem’s
childhood 4K project, to the mischief she caused at school, to the burrs that
clung to her hair walking through courtyards. There was enough material to
write a whole book just on Aunt Hale. But out of fairness to the other
siblings, Çiğdem hadn’t included even a tenth of it in her family book.
Once she had learned Sinan’s full name, tracking him
down hadn’t been hard. Despite being over seventy, he still had a law practice.
In addition to being a corporate attorney for several family-owned businesses,
he also provided free legal aid to women facing domestic abuse. Çiğdem had
visited his office in hopes of collecting photos and stories from her mother’s
and uncle’s university days. The secretary told her Sinan Bey was in Antalya
for a case but could be reached by phone immediately.
From the emotional tone of his voice on the phone, it
wasn’t hard to tell how deeply attached he still was to her mother. When he
said he’d be doing a historical tour of Amasra with his daughters that summer,
Çiğdem, more out of politeness than intent, had said, “Well then, feel free to
join our family gathering in Filyos.” No date, no formal invitation. In fact,
she had regretted the offer the moment she made it and had promptly forgotten
about it. Apparently, Sinan Bey had not. He had called Uncle Ayhan and managed
to get himself invited.
Leman Hanım, seated midway down the table, stood
slightly and grasped her chair as if undecided whether to walk toward the gate,
instead choosing to wait as the guest entered the garden. She had recognized
him but didn’t want to act hastily without being certain.
Seeing Sinan flustered her and brought a blush to her
cheeks. Though she blamed Ayhan for being inconsiderate, her dimples and
sparkling eyes betrayed her excitement. Still, she did not approve of her
brother inviting Sinan, his old university friend, to a family event.
Ayhan had met Sinan on his first day at Istanbul
University’s Law Faculty — a random seating arrangement sparked a friendship
that lasted the entire first year. They were inseparable.
When Ayhan started his second year, Leman was accepted
into the university’s Literature Faculty and moved to Istanbul. She lived with
her brother in their modest apartment in Fatih and walked with him to school.
She had met Sinan on her first day, and the spark between them had been
instant. That spark had made her shy and timid around him ever since.
Sinan came from a well-established, well-off Istanbul
family, but like Ayhan, he embraced the ideals of the 1968 movement and spoke
of dismantling the bourgeoisie. Despite this, his elegant demeanor, perfect
Turkish, pressed shirts, and Galatasaray High School friends revealed his
bourgeois roots.
Five months after registering at the university,
Leman’s father passed away. Ayhan was already on the brink of being expelled
due to student activism. With the loss of their father and financial strain
worsening, he dropped out in the middle of his second year to work at a law
office as a clerk. He paid rent and supported Leman through school until she
graduated and became a literature teacher in Ankara. Leman would never forget
her brother’s sacrifice.
Their widowed mother and unmarried sister Ayla took
over the household responsibilities. Luckily, the two middle sisters were in a
boarding school on full scholarship. But there were still three younger
siblings at home between the ages of 10 and 14. They were difficult years, and
Ayhan had sacrificed himself for the family. Later, he married Gül, Leman’s
classmate.
During those university years, Sinan would often visit
their home. Leman and Sinan had never expressed their feelings beyond a few
stolen glances and brief conversations. That was until Leman’s graduation
ceremony. Sinan, who had graduated the year before, came with flowers. While
Ayhan and his wife were in the kitchen, Sinan had pulled Leman aside, kissed
her, and said, “One day I will marry you — don’t disappear.”
But life took a different turn. Shortly after Leman
was posted to Ankara in 1972, she met Serdar, her teacher colleague’s older
brother. Within a year, they were married. Serdar came from a family similar to
hers. He had studied economics at the Faculty of Political Science and had a
good job at the State Planning Organization. At the time, Leman found Sinan too
bourgeois and believed his family would never allow him to marry someone from
the provinces like her. After a heated argument beginning with “Lawyer Sinan
Bey,” she became angry and requested a transfer to one of Ankara’s more
prestigious schools.
She and Serdar had what could be called a happy
marriage, and three children. When their daughters Çiğdem and Deniz were 7 and
5, the 1980 military coup took place. It ruined Serdar’s political career and
forced the family to seek asylum in Switzerland due to his political
activities. Their son Onur was born in Basel. Years later, after the children
had grown, their 30-year marriage ended in divorce. Leman moved to her summer
house in Izmir, devoting herself to her garden and her vast library. Around ten
years ago, she had published a poetry book.
Now Ayhan and Sinan were walking toward her. With a
theatrical but familiar flourish from the past, Sinan took Leman’s hand and
gently brought it to his lips with a light kiss, saying, “Enchanté, madame.”
Then, to avoid further embarrassing Leman, he followed Ayhan’s lead and walked
with her toward the head of the table.
Leman remembered the argument they had when they
parted ways half a century ago, and also how they reconciled fourteen years
earlier at the funeral of Sinan’s mother, Jale Hanım. With those thoughts, she
returned to her seat, deciding to give the two friends some time and join them
later.
Çiğdem had left Jacques by the E-type and returned to
the table, taking the seat across from her mother. About ten minutes before
Sinan’s arrival, she had distributed the booklet she had prepared about the
family history. Her cousin Selin had also scattered handmade bookmarks with
personalized designs across the table, and guests were now eagerly and
playfully trying to find their own. They were chatting about the patterns on
the bookmarks and the contents of Çiğdem’s booklet, joking about the mini skirts
Aunt Hale and Aunt Nejla wore in the 1970s, praising their beauty. The aunts,
now with wavy white hair and sweet grandmotherly smiles, had once been striking
women — one brunette, the other blonde — like Turkish versions of Charlie’s
Angels.
Uncle Ayhan seated his guest at the head of the table,
between himself and his sister Ayla. “Set a place for our guest, kids,” he said
to the younger ones as if speaking to waitstaff.
The young people were wearing white t-shirts that
Çiğdem had printed. On the front was a mulberry tree with “1915” written above
it, and on its branches, starting from the grandparents down to the smallest
twigs, the names of the grandchildren. At the top, it read “Filyos Reunion
2024,” symbolizing the hope for future gatherings.
Sinan took off his hat and laid it beside him on the
table, running his fingers through his graying, wavy hair. While filling
Sinan’s glass with raki, Ayhan said, “Leave the car here, sleep at Yeni Konak
tonight — or the kids will take you, wherever that campsite was... Was it
Amasra?” Then without waiting for an answer, he added, “Never mind, you’ll stay
with us. I’m not letting the kids drive around at night.” Then they dove into a
long conversation about old times.
Ayhan said, “My friend, I was just thinking... in the
summer of 1968, when I came here on vacation, my father seriously considered
tearing down this wooden house to build a new concrete one. He was constantly
sketching out plans. Thankfully, he never started. We lost him that December.
What would we have done then? An unfinished house, middle sisters just starting
boarding school, three small kids at home, my mother, my older sister... tough
days. But my mother managed to get by in this house. She even sold produce from
the garden and eggs from the chickens. Anyway, the girls finished school, and
things got better.”
Listening to all this, Sinan felt a bit ashamed. Back
in those days, he would escape his parents’ grand waterfront mansion and come
eat at their modest home, only to return to Bebek from Fatih by bedtime. Of
course, he wasn’t a freeloader — he always brought something when he visited.
When they went out drinking, he would cover the bill, but to him, those were
small expenses. Ayhan ended with, “Those were hard days.”
Why had one of the wealthiest families in the region
before 1940 become so poor that they had to sell eggs in the market within
thirty years? While WWII raged across Europe and Turkish men were drafted amid
war fears, the only difference between this family and the peasants they once
looked down on was that they didn’t starve.
Over the following two decades, the family steadily
lost its former wealth — they became poorer, but more enlightened. In the
1960s, they had led the way in educating girls in the district. Çiğdem’s
grandfather, Rıza Bey, had become a progressive figure who read Ulus
newspaper columns by Çetin Altan to the children by lamplight. Leman and her
brother Ayhan had been sent to university in Istanbul, while the middle
sisters, Hale and Nejla, were enrolled in a boarding teacher’s college. Leman
had been the first woman in the entire town of Filyos to attend university.
Now, Aunt Nejla and Aunt Hale, whispering to each
other in the middle of the U-shaped table arrangement, lived in Istanbul and
had for many years. But they had first come to the city as teenagers, 15 or 16
years old, tagging along insistently when their father brought Leman to enroll
in university. They later spent a few winter breaks in Istanbul. Back then,
they had teased and joked about this man who was always around their older
sister at the time. Now, fifty years later, they were whispering, “Why has he
come here now?” In the background, the song “Don’t think I’ll be fooled
twice…” by Nilüfer was playing.
In the aftermath of the 1980 military coup, Ayhan was
arrested for union activities and organizing workers. Sinan served as his
lawyer but couldn’t prevent him from spending two years in prison. That same
year, Sinan lost his father in a tragic accident, and never having quite
recovered from the heartbreak caused by Leman’s marriage, he fell into a deeper
depression. In 1981, he moved to Paris to pursue a PhD in Commercial Law at the
Sorbonne. He never married Estelle, whom he met five years later, but they had
twin daughters together. When the girls were ten, Estelle married an American
and moved to the U.S., leaving the girls in Sinan’s care.
“How old are the twins now?” Ayhan asked. “Camille and
Chloé are 38,” Sinan replied. Ayhan’s eyes welled up. “Well, the years fly by.
My eldest just turned 50 the other day. Hasn’t spoken to me since I separated
from his mother. I raised a glass in his honor.”
Ayhan spoke of his divorce from Gül, his retirement,
and move back to his hometown, and of his son’s long silence. Then, realizing
he had interrupted his friend, he said, “So, you were saying — the girls. Last
I saw them, they were still young. What are they up to now?”
“They’re doing well. Both married. I’ve got four
adorable grandkids. So sweet, I could eat them up!” Sinan laughed. “You know,
my sister never married. She’s helped raise the girls like they were her own
since they were little. Remember how you used to call her ‘Snobby Suna’? We
used to laugh so hard. Suna plays the piano beautifully — so did my mother.
Remember? She loved La Bohème by Aznavour.” He paused, then added, “We
last saw each other at my mother’s funeral.”
Both men fell silent for a moment, remembering Jale
Hanım. A true lady, she had remained elegant until her death at 79 from
Alzheimer’s. “Of course, Suna studied classical music,” Sinan continued. “She
practically raised the girls — art, painting, ballet, piano. And now she’s onto
the grandkids. But it’s good for them. I’m the playful grandpa, she’s the
strict aunt.” He laughed. “These days, the girls are seeing their mother more
often, too. That makes me happy. And me? Just living a retired life now, taking
on the occasional case.”
Ayhan had never met Estelle. But he said thoughtfully,
“It’s good the girls are reconnecting with their mom…” He remembered how much
he had disliked Suna in their youth. He even recalled how Gül had been jealous
of this love-hate dynamic and chuckled to himself. Changing the subject, he
pointed to Çiğdem and Jacques sitting at the center of the table. “Leman’s
son-in-law is French… Well, no — Belgian, but he speaks French. I think he
really liked your car. Hasn’t left it alone for ten minutes. His name’s Jacques.
Çiğdem’s husband. She even called you about that book project — tracked down
the entire family tree like a detective. You’ll talk later, I’m sure. Now,
let’s raise a glass to our reunion!” he said, lifting his glass.
To be continued
in Part 3. Next week.
The Guest from the Past
The table set in the family home’s garden is shaken by the unexpected arrival of a long-lost guest: Lawyer Sinan, Leman Hanım’s university sweetheart. This surprise visit opens doors to both youthful memories and buried family history. As Çiğdem’s family research and book bring old relationships to light, the family gathered around the table begins to reconnect not only with their shared past but with each other. This reunion, blending old friendships, loss, regrets, and a hint of hope, will carry the traces of the past into the present.
