II
Malka Mitrani. Antep, 1881-82.
Chapter One.
My name is Malka Mitrani. I am a thirty-five year-old resident of Antep, in southeastern Turkey. Although the city was started under the Byzantines, and has changed hands many times over the centuries, it is said to have been named by Arabs.
In some ways, I am a typical Antep housewife. That is to say, I look after our children (four), do all the cooking, supervise the upkeep of our house, do most of the food shopping, and sell sewing goods (scissors, thread, thimbles, even a little cotton cloth) in the local market. I could not accomplish all of these tasks without the able assistance of two strong and reliable servants.
If you saw me in the market, you would not be able to distinguish me from all the other housewives. Like many of them, I am a person of middle stature, dressed in soft slippers, a plain blouse, wide pantaloons, and a black robe with white fur at the neckline. Or, if it were a special day (such as a minor festival), I might be wearing a necklace with several strands of beads.
My husband owns a hardware shop in the city. His business specializes in implements (hoes, shovels, etc.) used in the cultivation of pistachio nuts, for which our district is famous. In sum, I live a normal life.
The one thing that makes us somewhat different from the majority of Antep households is that we are Jews. If you asked when our people first came to Antep, you would not find two Jews who agree. Maybe, we descend from the Babylonians exiles, maybe not. Maybe from the time of king David, maybe not. Maybe, maybe not!
Our family resides in the Düğmeci neighborhood, south of the citadel. Our house is just a three-minute walk from the recently built Great Synagogue, on Kasap street. The Synagogue is constructed of ashlars [large stone blocks]. It can hold 300-400 people, or about half of the population of Düğmeci which, in turn, makes up somewhat less than a tenth of the total population of Antep.
The majority population in our city is Muslim. We mizrahi [Jews of eastern Turkey and Jews who originated in the Middle East] are one of several minority groups. The others include Greeks, Armenians, Turkmen, Kurds and Syrians. Antep is located less than 1100 kilometers from Aleppo. It is also quite near the ancient Greek city of Commagene, or Zeugma.
I am sure you know that a “zeugma” is a figure of speech in which a word is used twice, only one of which is in the literal sense: e.g., “she broke his bowl and his heart.” But did you know that the literal meaning of “zeugma” is “bridge of boats,” and that the figure of speech is named for the bridge of boats that once crossed the Euphrates at the settlement of Zeugma?
The other minority groups of Antep, especially the Greeks and Armenians, tend to be our economic rivals. For instance, Greek farmers and bakers claim that the pistachio nuts grown on several of their nearby islands are more succulent than ours. Since I have tasted both Greek and Turkish nuts, my opinion is that, whereas theirs may be sweeter and juicier, ours have the truer flavor. In other words, Turkish nuts are more intense.
This difference becomes amplified in baked goods. As you may not have known, it was the Turks who invented baklava. Whereas the famous Greek baklava tend towards the super-sweet and gooey, our version, which we call “fistliki,” are only moderately sweet and, somehow, richer. In my opinion, a single piece of fistliki will satisfy the eater as much as three or four pieces of baklava. (This assumes, of course, that the pieces are of similar size.) Not that farmers and bakers are about to go to war over the question of whose nuts and pastries are superior, but I have witnessed fierce disputes break out over the question.
More important, by far, are our relations with our Muslim neighbors. In my own lifetime, these have been generally good. In fact, the current mayor of Antep, who is a Muslim, of course, does not think it beneath his dignity to serve our community as shabbos goy [the non-Jew who lights the fires and candles on the Sabbath]. My husband’s business employs people of the Muslim faith, and his suppliers and customers, although predominately Jewish, also include several Muslims, and even a Greek, or two.
Although we socialize with the Muslims, we do not intermarry with them. Up until the age of puberty, our children play together freely. Our Muslim neighbors are sympathetic regarding the statutory restrictions that, especially in recent times, have hedged in Jewish life (and, to be fair, the lives of other so-called “infidels”). In fact, many of our customs and habits are similar to those of the Muslims around us.
For instance, traditional Jews and Muslims, both men and women, have long worn similar clothing (robes and long dresses). These have given way, during my lifetime, to more modern apparel: suits and ties among the professional men and businessmen, and skirts, blouses, and sweaters for us women (regardless of our husbands’ occupations.) Traditionally, too, men and woman of both faiths covered their heads, both within the home, and without, but with the coming of modern times, men and women, Jews and Muslims, alike, have abandoned mandatory head coverings. Jewish men often wear felt hats, but they wear them less from religious observance than as a fashion statement.
Several years ago, an ugly incident threatened our amicable relations with the Muslims of Düğmeci. On the way home from the neighborhood’s Jewish Communal School, our two sons, aged ten and eight, at the time, were set upon by a pack of young Muslim hooligans. Not only did these ruffians cast stones at our boys (none of which, fortunately, struck either boy,) but they also cast slurs upon them, such as “infidel spawn”and “Hebrew scum.”
When my husband reported what had happened to the fathers of the offenders, they not only expressed shock and sympathy, but we later heard that every culprit was heavily thrashed, and warned that any recurrence would meet with even harsher punishment. Of course, we victims duly expressed our appreciation for the swift justice meted out to the offending youngsters. But I also voiced the thought (behind closed doors, of course) that “the apple does not fall far from the tree.” Selah!
The center of our lives is, of course, the Synagogue. There, our boys study Torah [the five books of the Old Testament attributed to Moses], and all of us, both male and female, pray. An exception to the rule that Turkish state schools, which our boys also attend, do not make any special provisions for Jewish students is that they are permitted to study elementary Hebrew there, which enables them to comprehend, at least somewhat, the content of the texts used in religious observances. Of course, when the boys were as young as two or three, their initial Jewish education was in the hands of the haham [teacher or rabbi], at the heder [Hebrew school], inside the Great Synagogue. Thereafter, our boys have attended both the state school and our local Jewish Communal School.
Their Hebrew education enables the boys not only to pray properly, but to act as sometime-interpreters, during services, for men like my husband, who does not comprehend a single word of the holy language (other than one or two insults and proverbs). At home, like many other mizrahi, we generally speak a variant of the ancient Aramaic tongue of our people —but we also know Turkish and Arabic, of course, which we speak outside the home. (I have even heard rumors that there are some emigre’ mizrahi who learn Chinese!)
“At home” refers to the compound shared by our extended family. The Mitrani compound consists of two three-story buildings (counting the basements), made of hewn limestone, with a courtyard between them. This courtyard, like those of our neighbors, is a tiled space containing a water pool, a water hole, and a small orchard. The fruit trees and and the pool serve to enhance the beauty and comfort of the courtyard. The function of the water hole is to collect runoff water, especially important during Antep’s hot, dry summers.
Not that the Jewish community is very large. As I mentioned, we are only a few hundred, in number, and many of us are related. For instance, my husband is a distant cousin, on my mother’s side. (If Turkish Muslims are “matrilocal,” we mizrahi might be called “omni-local.”) The small size of our community, Düğmeci, is illustrated by the fact that the same man serves as both our shochet [ritual slaughter] and mohel [circumciser, or “snipper”].
While we are on the subject of rituals, you have perhaps heard of our interesting custom of dis hedige [“tooth wheat”], one of many rituals attending the birth of a Jewish child. (Antep is said, nevertheless, to be among the most modern cities in eastern Turkey! )
As fellow “people of the book,” our Muslim rulers do not impose any religious strictures on us. This allows us to find certain spiritual consolations for the civic restrictions, which include onerous taxes, and even regulations about matters such as the colors of the clothing we are permitted to wear.
More seriously, the occasional blood libel is instigated against us by malicious Christians (often of French origin, or by the Greeks who are our main business rivals). Each time this ugly lie surfaces, as it has in Istanbul, Edirne and Smyrna, during the last decade, it darkens the lives of every Jew (as did the stoning incident). I wonder if perpetrators of the blood libel are aware that it was first concocted by pagans for use against early Christians! Please do not insult me by asking how I know all this. I can read, you know!
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