Istanbul
by Gloria and Isabel
The stories of the women in my family have always fascinated me. And so, this summer, I travelled to Istanbul to learn more about my grandmother, Alexandra, and great-grandmother Evgenia.
It all began exactly one hundred years ago when, on her wedding night, Evgenia discovered that her brand-new husband Stefan had deceived her. After the elaborate ceremony, all the excitement, the pictures, and the presents, the newlyweds were finally alone. She was sitting on their wedding bed, dressed in an embroidered nightgown. Before he touched or even looked at her, Stefan told her he was a widower and had children in Bulgaria from his first marriage.
“How many children do you have?” she asked in Greek, their common language.
He looked at her sternly without an answer.
“Dío?” she asked. Maybe she had missed something; perhaps he had mentioned the kids during the marriage negotiations, but she somehow didn’t remember. His accent was strong, and she didn’t always understand him. But her parents would have said something for sure if they knew.
Her Greek community considered her an old maid at 26, and she had all but given up on marriage. So, when Stefan appeared at her door with a fine bouquet of roses, asking to speak with her father, she couldn’t believe her luck. He had seen her at a gathering on a Sunday after Church. Stefan was Bulgarian, but that didn’t matter to her — the man was an Orthodox Christian. More importantly — he was well-off, had a respectable house, and a successful business. Stefan Velkoff had a fine reputation as one of the district’s best gentlemen’s tailors, employing several seamsters, a secretary, a housekeeper, and a cook.
“Tría?” she insisted, trying to convince herself, after the initial shock, that bringing up three children wouldn’t be that hard. After all, she had servants and could get more help if needed.
In his early 40s, Stefan looked well-educated, but she knew better — like all Bulgarians, he must have started poor and wild. He had come to Istanbul at age 12 with his father and began first as an apprentice for an English tailor. Even before Kamal Ataturk’s laws requiring all men to wear European attire, Istanbul’s fashions were becoming increasingly Western, and the demand for men’s suits, shirts, and ties was overwhelming. Before long, Stefan opened his own business and established a reputation for quality and fair pricing.
“Tessera?”
His friends called him Bai Stayko. He was good-looking but must have been truly handsome as a young man. Tall, dashing, with a confident posture and piercing blue eyes, he stood out wherever he went. Still, Evgenia didn’t know much more about him.
He began speaking quietly.
“I met her in 1916 in a small town in Bulgaria, Pazardjik. It was during a leave from my military service — the Bulgarian government had forced me to return from Tzarigrad to fight in the Great War.” His voice was hoarse.” When I got the notice, I tried to escape to America but got caught trying to board a ship to New York. I had to drop everything and return and serve in the army.”
“What was her name?” she asked.
“Maria. I didn’t want to marry her, but had no choice. After my service, I returned to Istanbul and opened my shop. But one day, two men showed up at my door. They claimed to be her brothers and threatened to kill me if I didn’t marry her. She was pregnant.”
“And so … I had to go back,” Stefan continued. “She lived in Pazardjik. Each year, I went back to visit her. Each year, there was another child. And then, suddenly, she got very sick, and her brothers came again to announce her death. So now I must go and bring the children down here.”
“What are their names?”
“I named the first one Christo, after my father. Then we had three girls — Milena, Maria, and Christina. The last one was a boy again. We called him Vanyo, from Ivan.”
She wanted to know more. Their ages, for example, what languages they spoke, and who would help her care for them. But Stefan slowly took off his shirt and turned towards her, and she understood that the conversation was over. Evgenia clenched her teeth as she felt his weight on top of her and whispered:
“Pendi”
***
A hundred years ago, Istanbul was the cultural capital of Southeastern Europe. It was a bustling metropolis filled with stunning architecture and distinctly flavored neighborhoods. Although Türkiye is currently going through all kinds of domestic difficulties, it is immediately evident that this city was once at the heart of many great Empires. My grandmother called it Constantinople and sometimes Tsarigrad (City of Tsars), two of its ancient names. Walking the streets, one encounters a delicious clash of cultures — hipsters in art coffee houses, women in short skirts, groups of older men drinking tea on street corners, and many refugees from Syria and Iraq wearing conservative Islamic clothing.
I felt at home the minute I stepped off the train. Just like when I first arrived in New York years ago, I was immediately smitten by the rumble and excitement of this city. Despite the rush, traffic, and urban madness, Istanbul has a quiet and laid-back feel. One can stop for freshly squeezed pomegranate juice any time and marvel at the many street cats peacefully lounging around, stop by the vegetable markets or simit carts, or walk on one of many charming steep streets with unique shops, hammams, and small museums.
My most promising lead for finding a record of Alexandra was the American “Robert” College of Istanbul, where she was a student in the late 1930s until her family left Istanbul for Bulgaria at the end of World War II. She brought several textbooks, thinking she would return one day to finish her education.
Founded in the middle of the 19th Century, Robert College is one of the most prestigious schools in Türkiye and Southeastern Europe, where middle and upper-class families sent their children for generations. The school prides itself with its many famous alumni, including well-known actors and writers, such as Orhan Pamuk. My grandmother often talked about the College, referring to it with French pronunciation, dropping the final “t” and extending the vowel — “Robѐr.” This name stayed with me over the years, and I felt proud imagining her as a student there.
She thought that her education saved her in Bulgaria. After the war, people like her — Bulgarians born abroad, were seen as enemies of the state. She could have had a much worse fate if she didn’t have an education. But she got a good job at the government publisher Narodna Prosveta because she was fluent in several languages — Turkish, Greek, English and Italian. The man who hired her, whom she described as “A Communist, but with intelligence,” knew the prestige of Robert College and gave her a chance. Alexandra was smart, organized, determined, and stunningly beautiful. Her first job was as a translator of Turkish. Then, when that department closed and Turkish books were banned, she retrained as a copy editor in Bulgarian.
I had Alexandra’s college books with me — Everyday Problems in Science, Correct English, and Home Economics. The last one was a textbook instructing young women on running a household. My grandmother was great at that and knew how to mend stockings, make a bed, iron shirts, and cook almost anything. All three books were published in the US in the late 1930s and had her name neatly written on the title pages — Alexandra Velkoff.
Something unexpected happened soon after I arrived.
I got an email from the archivist at the Robert College. She was very sorry but couldn’t locate evidence of my grandmother in the College’s yearbooks and archives. She wrote that, until the 1970s, Robert College was a school for boys and that in the late 1930s, Alexandra would have attended the American Academy for Girls. When the two schools merged, so did their archives. She was adamant that my grandmother was never a student there.
And so, very quickly, my hopes of finding some hard evidence (a registration card, a grade book, a photo) of my grandmother’s life in Istanbul evaporated. Regardless, I was determined to get closer to her. One of the photos I carried with me was of her family’s house, which I knew was in the neighborhood Kadiköy, on the Asian Side of the city.
As I boarded the ferry for Kadiköy, I began thinking about the email from Robert College. Having been educated in the US, I was confident that a prestigious American institution would have no reason to mislead me and would have pretty good records of all its attendees. The only logical explanation would be that Grandma had lied about her schooling.
But why?
I began to think about the many instances when Alexandra had lied.
To be clear, lying is not something uncommon in Bulgaria. Growing up, I learned that most things people say are lies. There are big lies, small lies, political lies, “business” lies, family lies, lies intended as jokes, and, of course, the most important lies — those designed to protect children.
When I was 9, for example, my family (including my grandmother) lied to me that I was going to the hospital for a medical test when, in fact, I was going in for surgery. I believed them so wholeheartedly that up to the moment I was anesthetized, I kept fighting and arguing with the doctors, nurses, and other kid patients, trying to explain to them that there had been a mistake and that I was not supposed to go in for surgery, and that my parents wouldn’t have lied to me about something like this.
Still, I couldn’t accept that my grandmother would have lied about her education. It was such a huge part of her identity. Surely, the archivist at Robert College needed to try harder to sort through the many piles of documents I imagined had accumulated over the last 100-plus years. And so, I emailed the archivist again, insisting that she look again and keep me posted if she finds anything with Alexandra Velkoff’s name on it.
***
In the summer, the old town of Istanbul looks like a mirage. The heat and humidity create haziness, which cloaks the city in mystery, and one can’t help but think of the Ottoman days — of harems and sultans, marvelous, carpeted halls, hammams with marble floors, luxurious gardens, and large kitchens.
On top of every hill in every neighborhood, one sees enormous flagpoles with giant Turkish flags billowing in the wind. In Bulgaria, we grew up learning that the Turkish banner symbolizes a reflection of the crescent moon and star in a pool of blood. For centuries, the Ottomans ruled Eastern Europe and much of the Middle East and Northern Africa. I grew up learning of the many atrocities they committed — tales of beheadings, massacres, and never-ending Dark Ages where Bulgarians were oppressed and lived without art or education.
But I also grew up with my grandmother’s stories.
The black and white photos I have from her youth show a confident, smiling young lady wearing chic dresses with short cropped hair in a 1930s bob. She often talked of being a day student, proudly wearing her uniform, and commuting from her neighborhood in Kadiköy to the European Side. Each way would have taken her at least 90 minutes — a ferry ride and then a steep climb uphill to the American College for Girls.
On Sunday mornings, the family attended the Bulgarian Church Sveti Stefan in the Old Town, near the Golden Horn Bay — a gorgeous Cathedral entirely made of iron, designed by a famous architect from Vienna. With her siblings and other Bulgarian and Greek kids, she would sneak behind her parents and climb to the rooftop of the Church, next to the three large church bells. From there, she would look out the window and marvel at all the sights of the city — the Domes of the many mosques and cathedrals, the Galata Tower, the Black Sea to the North, and the Sea of Marmara to the South, separated by the Bosporus.
After Church, they would go to the Moving Pictures and watch the latest Hollywood films and swoon over Fred Astaire, Errol Flynn, and Clark Gable.
***
Stefan moved his family to Bulgaria in 1944, a few months before the Soviets marched in. My grandmother told me that after the move, she cried every morning for months. Alexandra found the contrast between the cosmopolitan city of her birth and the rural, primitive village life in Bulgaria unbearable. Throughout her life, she missed the open skies and vast sea views of Istanbul, the freedom of speaking whatever language she pleased, and dreamed of returning home. Sadly, she was not allowed to even write to her brothers and friends and could only go back once, many years later, when the borders between the two countries reopened.
There are two versions as to why Stefan made the move. The one he often told was that he wanted to avoid paying certain newly imposed taxes on foreigners, so he decided to retire comfortably in a quiet, small village in Bulgaria, not suspecting that Communists would overrun the country.
The other version is that, according to my grandmother, he feared she would elope with a Turkish man. Stefan lived in Istanbul and did business with Turks. But, like many Greeks and Bulgarians, he also held deep prejudices and couldn’t bear the idea of one of his daughters marrying a Muslim.
Whatever the reason was, Stefan withdrew Alexandra from school, sold his house, and left his business to his sons. He then filled a suitcase with gold coins, put his wife and daughters on a cattle wagon, and moved the family to the village of his birth — Koprivshtitsa. They arrived on a rainy evening. Evgenia was wearing her furs and fancy shoes with which she stepped in mud up to her knees. The girls, fearing that partisans who roamed the forest would rape them, stayed hidden in the house until the war ended.
In September the Soviets marched in, closed the borders, and established their new order, killing and imprisoning thousands. The new government nationalized our family house and everything in it — furniture, clothing, and gold coins. Stefan and his family moved to Sofia. They lived in communal housing, sharing a small apartment and kitchen with two other families.
A few years later, my grandmother Alexandra married a Bulgarian Turk.
***
When my mother Elena was 14, she came home late from school one day. Her father, Mehmed Ali, got so angry that he beat her until she couldn’t feel her face. She went to bed thinking that he was right to beat her, that she was a slut, that she should never hang out with boys after school, that her uniform skirt was too short, and that her long hair was too provocative. She also slept, dreaming that Mehmed Ali was not her father.
This was the first time he beat her, but not the last. Something had happened to him when she became a teenager, and almost overnight, he began avoiding her. Whenever she tried to hug him or get close to him, he would suddenly pull away and get enraged.
“Dirty woman!” he would say.
Whenever she didn’t cover her legs, which grew long and skinny, he would scold her:
“Don’t cross your legs. You are not in a bar. Sit properly.”
Her mother Alexandra would not confront him directly but would try to teach Elena how not to trigger him, often an impossible task.
“Bring his slippers and help him take off his shoes. He has had a hard day and needs some comfort,” Alexandra would say.
Mehmed Ali often worked late, and Elena never knew in what kind of mood he would return. She also did not know what he did for a living, except that it involved manual labor. His hands and especially his fingernails were often dirty. Sometimes, he would bring her something from outside, like a small bag of peanuts or contraband Pepsi. But other times, Mehmed Ali would return with Rakija in his hand. The more he drank, the angrier he got. And his anger often became violent.
Elena knew to avoid him on those occasions — anything could trigger him — a forgotten toy she had not put away before his return, an untidy corner of the room, or too many books on the table. With her mother, she would tidy up and clean everything in the house as best as possible. In the winter, they would prepare a foot bath for him to soak his feet in hot, salty water. In the summer, they would open the windows to create a draft so he would not feel too hot.
A few weeks after the first beating, when she went to the library to check out a book, Elena was asked to bring her birth certificate because she didn’t have a passport yet. Excited about getting a library card, she went straight to her mother’s closet, where she knew Alexandra had hidden all the important documents. My mother found her birth certificate under my grandmother’s freshly ironed linen, which smelled like lemon water. As Elena was getting the paper and before she put it in her bag, something caught her eye.
There was an unfamiliar name on the line for “father.” Not Mehmed Ali, but a Bulgarian name. Dobrin Grancharov.
Too scared to confront her parents about it, she returned the birth certificate, covered it with lemon-scented sheets, and decided not to get a library card. But from that moment on, Elena knew that she had been lied to, that the man in the apartment was not her father, and that she needed to get out of there.