Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale Read Online Free PDF

this very fact, we were face-to-face with our recollections, petty remorse, and the memory of the deceased. Although the lives were not always our own lives, the dead were our dead. This was clear enough even during the last prayer recited to commemorate them. One should bow with respect in the presence of the family members considered, or rather believed, to have ascended to heaven. The rabbi took a roll call of the departed while the congregation chanted in unison “They are in Heaven.” This was how it had been and was desired to have been over the centuries . . . At that moment the features of those deceased came from your own images, the truth which you could not always disclose just to any chance newcomer. It goes without saying that you could return to the past by recalling the people you had left behind at different times and places; you could realize this return without letting your surroundings get a hold of you, despite having seen and lived those locations. These curtailments were your own, while the stage play was being addressed to the people at large.
    The funeral was conducted in a small synagogue at the cemetery. Madame Estreya had neither a large enough assembly to fill a big synagogue, nor enough money to warrant a first class funeral service. I remember her image vanishing in the din of the distant past. However, the image now looks tarnished with certain details blotted. This is the reason why I cannot communicate the legacy she must have entrusted to certain individuals whom I have not met. It seems that certain things have sunk into oblivion for good and are irretrievably lost. All the paths that had led up to her have closed, as they were meant to be. She had always been an outsider; an outsider among outsiders, condemned, if one may be allowed to qualify her as such, or maybe as someone who had chosen to be an outsider after a certain point. An outsider . . . Yet, Madame Estreya was Madame Roza’s sister, the second daughter of her family, who had preferred a thorny way of life at a heavy cost, who always wanted to be considered aloof, at a distance, although not so much a castaway as Aunt Tilda. Despite the beauties of their traditions and their conservative character, there were so many cruelties that had accompanied them, so many archaic failures. Their tale was meant for those who could remain content with very few incidents as far as plot was concerned, for those who would deem that a few sentences would be more than adequate, and for those who would prefer to remain faithful to their traditions. The tale should be an ordinary tale, not deserving to be a topic of serious discussion or to be elaborated upon, rendering it totally unrecognizable.
    To the best of my judgment, Madame Estreya was the most beautiful girl belonging to the family; she had deep blue eyes, possibly inherited from a distant Thracian relative. During her high school years, she had been an introverted music lover. The high school they had enrolled her in was a distinguished establishment where young girls were brought up as ladies. At the time she had taken a fancy to Dickens and had identified her brother, Monsieur Robert, with the heroes in Dickens’ novels, which she read over and over again. When she was still a student at the Galatasaray Lycée , she had fallen in love with a young man who was also a student there. A happy coincidence must have arranged her meeting with this sensitive young man who was to figure prominently in her life, his name was Muhittin Bey. An individual who liked music, making no distinction between the songs of Salahattin Pınar and Chopin’s Polonaises , both of which he used to listen to in rapture, and who preferred to keep his love for poetry as a secret he disclosed only to a few of his companions. What had the circumstances that had led to their fatal encounter been? I have never been able to discover; nor shall I ever be able to do so henceforth. It seemed as though there was a kind of