Thomas Cosmades The Story of the Life and Times of Thomas Cosmades Introduction For years friends and family have been requesting me to put down at least the highlights of my life, pleasant and unpleasant. Following serious thought I concluded that doing this could be of service to people dear to me. Also my account can benefit coming generations. Many recollections in my thoughts still cheer my heart and others sadden, or make me ashamed, even after many years. If I fail to put my remembrances on paper they will die with me; otherwise they will profit those interested. I am confident of their being useful, at least to some. Innumerable people have written and published their life stories. Some have attracted favorable impressions and others the contrary. The free pen entrusted for free expression shouldn’t hesitate to record memories of some value. We are living in an age of intimidation and trepidation. People everywhere are weighing their words, writings, criticisms, drawings, etc. Prevailing conditions often dictate people’s manner of communication. Much talk is going around regarding democracy and free speech. Let’s be candid about it, democratic freedom is curtailed at every turn with the erosion of unrestricted utterance. The free person shouldn’t be intimidated by exorbitant reaction, or even violence. I firmly believe that thoughts, events and injustices should be spelled out. Therefore, I have recorded these pages. I did not conceal my failures, unwise decisions and crises in my own life. The same principle I have applied to conditions under which I lived and encountered from my childhood onwards. History is a storehouse of events involving humans. Many of these happenings are suppressed. Or they are twisted in keeping with certain accepted positions. General knowledge would have been much richer if known facts had been objectively recorded, pursuing the benefit of the uninformed. In front of the Archives Department in Washington, D. C., the passer-by can notice this impressive motto: “Study the past; it is the prologue.” Can anyone take issue with this? I have decided to abandon the dead-end road of reticence and to use my moral courage by putting in writing events and episodes which affected my life. Numerous experiences are engraved in the heart of a minority individual born and reared in Turkey. Some of these happen to be unpleasant. Shall I allow these to die with me? Deciding to the contrary, I have written my life memories in English and in Turkish. There are certainly subjective accounts in this writing. On the other hand, those which I am writing objectively, as much as I can, offer concrete and tangible facts to every reader. These will not be to the liking of some. However, a faithful writer should not write with the aim of pleasing those he is addressing. There could be other opinions on these matters, but objective history is wide open to anyone to investigate and examine the issues. Among the reminiscences, many events are referred to which I did not experience personally. However, these were checked and re-checked in order to present a historical record subject to no bias or partiality. I have carefully avoided being swayed by any exaggerated accounts. Remaining faithful to the truth has become life’s principle for me. No one can contradict the fundamental dictum put forward in the New Testament: “For we cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth” (II Corinthians 13:8). Truth is eternal; lie and falsehood are invented. Truth is original; lie is fabricated. Truth is impartial; lie is prejudiced. It is far better to rejoice with truth than be soothed by inaccuracy. Truth may hurt and sadden one’s heart; however it provides a breath of satisfaction to the one who loves it. Lie unsettles its inventor. It stirs anger and boisterousness when exposed. It always carries its manipulator to a defensive mien. “Love does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right” (I Corinthians 13:6). The unalterable guidance for the advocate of truth is found in Acts 4:20: “For we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.” The ‘Bekchi’ The institution of ‘bekchi’ (watchman – in this case, night watchman) was a traditional feature in old Constantinople. These neighborhood guards wore brown uniforms and visored caps. They were drafted from a given neighborhood, men who knew every nook and cranny of their area and the occupants of every house. After everybody retired for the night and a comfortable sleep, the duty of the bekchi began and theoretically continued until daybreak. The chief characteristic of the bekchi was his whistle which he would blow at every corner, infusing a sense of security to the dwellers of the neighborhood. He was responsible to protect them from burglars. No one seemed to appreciate that the shrill sound of the whistle was a signal to any would-be thief to make his getaway from the scene of the robbery. Our family endured one such indignity. We often used to catch colds, all of our noses running. At a time when Kleenex was unknown, much less in Turkey, our mother Maria used to wash all the handkerchiefs by hand after having thoroughly boiled them in a large caldron. She did this one clear evening, and hung them on the lines in the garden behind our house where they could catch the clear fresh wind coming down off the Bosphorus. Our house was on the beautiful hills of Kuzgunjuk on the Asiatic side of the city. In spite of the alertness of the bekchi – or perhaps because he retreated to his house for a short respite – in the morning we were shocked to see all clotheslines stripped of their load. With running noses, how were we going to wipe our personal torrents? My mother immediately ran down to the market in Üsküdar and bought a couple yards of white cotton material, hurried back, sat down at her sewing machine and turned out many new handkerchiefs. She was a very industrious woman. Having had her education at the American mission school in Gedikpasha, she learned every aspect of homemaking from the able New England missionaries. From them she had also learned to make ‘rock cake’, a kind of hard cookie reminding one of the historic ‘Plymouth Rock’ (1620). It was late April 1924 that our neighborhood bekchi noticed several kerosene lamps burning throughout the night in our two-storied wooden house. Being observant of every detail and particular, this aroused his curiosity. Finally, he rang our hand- turned doorbell, and inquired why so many lights were flickering throughout the 2 night. My Grandmother Despina, the matriarch of the family, answered him in jubilant excitement, “Bekchi, baba, bir oglumuz oldu!” (Father Bekchi,” which is how people addressed him, “We got a son!”) Suddenly the bekchi sank into grief, moaning his consolation: “Vah, vah!” (i.e., “Pity, pity!”) My quick-witted Yiayia immediately grasped the bekchi’s misunderstanding and corrected him: “Ölmedi, bekchi baba; oldu!” (i.e., “He did not die, bekchi baba, he came!”) In a moment the bekchi’s dismay turned into relief, and he burst out with “Oh, oh, oh!” Now Turkish is a very interesting language, with amazing peculiarities. It has similar sounding words whose meanings are worlds apart. The infinitive of ‘to be’ in ‘olmak’ and that of ‘to die’ are almost identical. Only in one case, the ‘o’ is spelled with a simple ‘o’ and in other case the ‘o’ has modifying double dots over the ‘o’, which in German is called ‘Umlaut’. So the bekchi took the word ‘oldu’ as the word ‘öldü’. But when grandma clarified the matter, his ‘Vah, vah!’ turned to ‘Oh, oh!’ The latter is a customary expression of excitement and happiness. So a big mistake was adequately clarified right after I became the firstborn child, and at that, a son, of the family. As for the compensation of the bekchi, each house was responsible to pay him fifty kurush per month. At the end of the month, the bekchi went from house to house collecting his meager remuneration. This was willingly given by each family. Some appreciative people even offered him a glass of ayran, a yoghurt-water drink, with a little salt added. The bekchi was a loved individual. A Permanent Feature of Istanbul It would be a great injustice to the flavor of both old and new Istanbul not to mention one of the permanent features of the city, i.e., the dogs. These are nondescript mongrels that run the streets at will. Once in a while a special breed can be detected among them. They constitute an inescapable hallmark of the historic city. Although stray, they are rather tame, more-or-less domesticated. They make their home in the streets where they are born, exist, breed and die. Usually they hang around butcher shops, if there is one nearby, counting on the benevolence of the butcher to throw a tasty chunk of bone or a delicious lump of fat their way. These morsels are gulped down faster than the time it takes to throw them. Kind-hearted families sometimes treat the dogs to leftover food. They are also offered an abundance of stale bread from kitchen cupboards, since it is the custom of Turks to always keep more than the needed supply of bread. Occasionally the dogs are seen lingering around fish shops, alongside stray cats. While frolicking among themselves, children gather around as spectators. Once in a while, a child singles one out for special affection, making it an out-of-the-house member of the family.