Leyla's House

1

The old woman sat under the huge plane tree and didn’t move for two days. She just waited there, perched on a hard, brown leather suitcase, under the giant, centuries-old tree. The suitcase, with the leather worn through in places, a thick band across the middle, and studs to protect the corners, was reminiscent of travelers of a long-past age.
The plane tree was on the narrow pavement at the foot of the wall of the waterfront mansion, on a narrow street where cars passed constantly. The nearby grocer, green-grocer, and coffee seller were all watching the woman. From time to time they sent her tea and water to drink and apples, roasted chickpeas, and cake to eat.
Later they went over from time to time to beg the woman: “Madam, please stop being so stubborn! We could be considered your children too. Come, come to our house!”
The old woman refused with a stubborn expression.
The greengrocer with the big mustache dried his hands on his blue apron and pleaded, “You’ve known me since I was a child; please, you know that my house is right over here; come on, come with me.”
“Thank you, but I can’t go with you.”
“Madam, for the love of God, stop resisting. Why can’t you come away?”
The butcher got involved: “You can’t live in the street like this. You may have stood it for two days, but what will happen three or four days from now?”
Pointing to the waterfront mansion behind her, the old woman said, “I was born here, and I lived here all my life. I have no place else to go.”
The tradesmen were moved, and one of them said, “We know, Madam. How could we not know? All of us grew up in your shadow. But these heartless people have bought the mansion; what can we do?”
“What recourse do we have?”
“This neighborhood has never seen such wicked people.”
Wringing the cloths in their hands or agitatedly lighting cigarettes, they all cursed the new owners of the waterfront mansion in low voices.
The grocer’s young daughter arrived with a bouquet of jasmine and gave it to the old woman. The woman took the flowers with a smile. The young girl said, “Aunt Leyla, do you remember how you used to give us jasmine from your garden every day?”
“Yes,” said the old woman, smiling again. Her hazel-colored eyes lit up as she brought the flowers to her nose to smell them. Although she’d forbidden anyone to call her “Aunt” and insisted on being addressed as Leyla, she didn’t say anything to the young girl.
Cars slowed down as they passed, some looking at this woman surrounded by people with surprise, some with pity, and some with anger. Who was this? Perhaps she was a madwoman who’d run away from home and got lost.
Those from the neighborhood who knew the woman said, “Look at the state the poor woman is in,” and cursed the new owners of the mansion.
The place where Leyla had been sitting for two days was on the “shore road” of the Asian side of the Bosphorus. However, even though it was called the “shore road,” it didn’t actually run along the shore because the shore was occupied by waterfront mansions. It was only out of habit that the road behind these mansions’ gardens was called this.
You couldn’t see the shore itself because of the high back walls of these mansions. Indeed these mansions could only be seen from the sea. Only passengers on the white ferries that went up and down the Bosphorus, fishermen, and those on the excursion boats had the privilege of being able to see these elegant structures, with their boathouses beneath them, that leaned out over the blue water on cedar posts. As well, of course, as those on the ships that sail through the Bosphorus.
When the tradesmen realized that they would not succeed in convincing “the Great Lady,” the women of the neighborhood got involved. Red-cheeked, fresh-faced brides came one after another and kissed her hand. “Madam, for the love of God, don’t do this, come, I’ve made some fresh tea, I’ve prepared some food . . .”
“I was born in this mansion, I lived here all my life, and I’m going to die here. I won’t go anywhere else.”
The new brides looked at each other with pity in their eyes and started cursing the new owners.
“May they never have a day of peace in that house!”
“May God punish them for this!”
“How could they throw her out of her home after all these years? Have they no conscience?”
All the while, as they were saying these things, they could hear the sounds of work being done in the mansion and the shrill voice of a woman shouting at the designers and contractors.
“Design!” a woman was shouting in a bad accent, “All of this has to be done according to the design, not according to your own taste, do you understand? It’s going to be done the way the American interior decorator says it should be done. The design is going to be followed exactly. Instead of standing there looking like an idiot, go in and take those ornaments off the ceiling.”
Two days earlier, the new owners had come to the mansion with the contractors and the American interior decorator and had asked the old woman to move out of the house. On the edge of the mansion’s large garden, at the foot of the back wall, there was a medium-sized, white, single-story house. The old woman had spent her life in that house. No one had ever thought of making her leave that house, but the new owners were evicting her anyway. “What right do you have to throw me out of my house?” objected the old woman, showing them the deed to this detached house, but to no avail. “There are laws in this country, there are rules,” she said. “I don’t understand how you can presume to evict someone from her own house.”
Meanwhile, the new owners’ two watchmen were filling the old woman’s suitcase without giving her the chance to pack up her own things. Leyla lost her temper completely when they opened her closet and started gathering up the carefully ironed lace gloves, blouses, skirts, and, yes, even her undergarments with their rough hands. In what must have been forty years of privacy, no man’s hairy hands would ever have been allowed to touch them. Meanwhile, in a voice that could be heard in the next neighborhood, the new lady of the house was shouting, “It’s an annex! I’m going to turn it into a guesthouse, do you understand? I’m paying the interior decorator an arm and a leg to redo this little house. And why should I have a fossil living in my garden! I don’t care where she goes.” The old woman heard these words and was more surprised at being evicted from a house that was legally hers than at being called a fossil. What disregard these newcomers had for the law! Even though the detached house was in the mansion’s extensive garden, it was on a separate parcel of land and had a separate deed. The last time the house had been sold, the buyers had respected this deed and hadn’t disturbed her. How could this woman who kept shouting about design throw her out of her own house?
But they did throw her out. Their servants took her by the arms and dragged her to the iron garden gate and deposited her and her suitcase outside. The tradesmen gathered and watched what was happening.
The Great Lady stood for a while, looking at the gate through which she’d just been ejected, and then grew tired and sat on her suitcase. Since then she hadn’t really moved from this spot. From time to time, to answer the calls of nature, and taking care not to meet anyone face-to-face, she would go to the back of the grocery store, but then she would return and continue to sit in her place. Once or twice she got to her feet and started doing gymnastics. These movements didn’t resemble any kind of gymnastics the tradesmen had ever seen. These were very slow, deliberate movements intended to strain the muscles. It was clear that, as with everything the Great Lady did, these gymnastics required a certain knowledge and training.
The Great Lady knew so many things like this. She helped the neighborhood children with their homework and talked to them from time to time; she gave them advice that no one else would ever give them and told them stories. The exotic flowers she grew in her garden weren’t at all like the flowers the Roma people sold from colorful plastic buckets by the roadside. It was as if the Great Lady gave them a different fragrance, as if even their appearance changed when she touched them. There was no one in the neighborhood who hadn’t received jasmine from the Great Lady.
The older people of the neighborhood had once called her “Little Lady,” but the world had changed, and in time she became known as the Great Lady.
The sounds of hammering and sawing told of a great deal of work being done in the mansion. When the Great Lady heard these sounds she looked toward the mansion with curiosity and didn’t try to hide the anxiety in her eyes. Whether it was a wall or a ceiling, something was being knocked down with a great deal of clatter.
The tradesmen, who had only ever entered the mansion on rare and special occasions, could never forget the magnificent ceiling moldings, the Ottoman ornaments on the walls, or the elegant portico. The new owners, who clearly didn’t like these ornaments, were dumping these beautiful antiques in the garden. The trucks that were taking loads of rubble out of the mansion’s gates were evidence of this. The trucks were taking the rubble, dumping it far away, and coming back for more.
When night fell, everyone dispersed; the Great Lady, who had ignored the entreaties of the tradesmen who wanted to take her to their homes, spent her first night in the Bosphorus damp sitting on her suitcase. In the morning, the grocer brought her tea and hot bread that had just come out of the oven. The Great Lady, who had grown quite pale, accepted them happily.
It was the kind of June morning on the Bosphorus that fills people with joy. From the woods that rose just behind the road came the beautiful chirping of birds and the smells of jasmine, laurel, and magnolia.
The Great Lady couldn’t bring herself to believe that she’d been thrown out of the house she’d lived in for seventy-six years and had never left for even a single day. It had to be a mistake, so she sat there on her suitcase, waiting for this to be set right. Because this was not the jungle, but a nation that lived according to the rule of the law. No one could come and throw someone out of a house to which they had a deed. She resisted and wouldn’t leave the front of the house because she was certain that this mistake would be rectified.
Meanwhile, the tradesmen and some of the others of the neighborhood thought about talking to the new owners of the mansion. Yes, the new owners were very rich and powerful; the man owned a large bank and had thousands of people working for him. Was throwing an old woman out of her own house going to make someone like that look good? Everyone embraced this idea enthusiastically. “It’s not right! No one has the right to seize someone else’s property.” They were all the more agitated because of their deep attachment to their own property, but when it came to going and talking to the new owners they were less vociferous. And when a Mercedes with tinted windows arrived so pompously and drove into the mansion’s garden they began to argue about whether they’d made the right decision.
“These people aren’t children. They’re bank owners. Who knows how many lawyers they have working for them. They wouldn’t make a mistake like this.”
“Let’s try to listen to their side of the story; let’s not rush into things.”
“And we’re going to have to look these people in the face tomorrow; we’re going to make deliveries to them . . .” The Great Lady didn’t pay attention to any of this because the deed her grandfather the pasha had given her was in her pocket. After her grandfather’s death, her grandmother had had to sell the mansion, and she had no rights left to that, she had no objections about that, but the little house at the foot of the garden wall belonged
completely to her.
She’d known all the tradesmen gathered around her since they were little children. They felt for the Great Lady and didn’t want to leave her side, but whenever the shiny car with tinted windows emerged they scattered immediately. They all acted as if they had something to do and went to their shops as if customers had arrived, and then later, when the danger had passed, they gathered around the Great Lady once again. The new owners could see them through the tinted glass and might even be noting who was there. When the car came out, the area was deserted.
“Please, don’t insist, come with us. You’ll get sick if you stay here.”
“Who has the right to seize someone else’s property? There are laws in this country.”
“Is this the jungle?”
The Great Lady listened with a bitter smile playing about her lips to the people of the neighborhood who were insisting she come home with them, and shook her head with an expression that said she would not accept any of their suggestions.
Whether it came from a passing driver or a resident of the neighborhood, the news appeared in the papers that an old woman had been sitting under a plane tree on the Bosphorus road for two days. Was the woman crazy, or was she sitting there to protest something? Had her family thrown her out into the street? If that were true, it might be a good news item, a short piece that would arouse the readers’ emotions. Human interest pieces were important. For this reason, the Today newspaper’s city editor didn’t neglect to include the old woman in his notes for the daily meeting. In any event a reporter could wrap up the story within two hours. He mentioned the item when it came up on the agenda. For whatever reason, the words “crazy woman” escaped from his mouth.
“A crazy woman in front of the Bosnalılar Mansion . . .” When Yusuf, who’d started at the newspaper six months earlier, heard this, he rose to his feet and asked, “Can I take this story?”
“Do you find it that interesting?” asked the city editor.
Yusuf said, “I know that woman. She’s not at all crazy.”
“All right, go look into it,” said the editor, “But don’t waste too much time on it because there are a lot of other things to cover.”
“Don’t forget to take a picture!” he called out after him.
“He thinks I’m still a rookie,” Yusuf grumbled to himself.