Consolaçam 13

3. Nissim Abulafia, scribe of an important Jewish functionary in the Young Turks movement. Turkey and Palestine (1908-1917).

Chapter One.

Under the Ottomans, some people used to say that Jews should be Turks, first, and Jews, second. Although the Empire has now run its course, the statement still holds. To introduce myself, born and bred in Constantinople (aka Istanbul), my name is Nissim Abulafia. Some vainglorious people like to claim that even their names presciently point toward their fated greatness. In my case, the opposite is true. Nissim Abulafia means, roughly, “wonderful and powerful,” but the reader will soon learn that my career has belied both of those superlatives.

The organization that I serve is called the Genç Türkler [Young Turks], and we are direct descendants of the Young Ottoman Society. Both the YT luminary, Emmanuel Carasso, and the man for whom I work, are my co-religionists. An even more important figure than Carasso bey is Javid Pasha, but he is a dhimmi [convert to Islam], rather than a Jew.

Not that Jews are numerous in the Movement. It is our enemies, especially among the French and English, who have spread rumors to the contrary. (For example, a British diplomat once described our political party, the Committee of Union and Progress, or CUP, as the “Jew Committee of Union and Progress.”) Yes, anti-semitism is still deployed, in this year, 1908, as a political weapon.

These same liars and rumor mongers employ the time-honored tactic of “divide and conquer.” By de-emphasizing the Ottomans’ targeted taxation policies against us, and the occasional interludes of sanctioned violence, such as the islamization that followed the great fires of 1660, and by underlining the long history of coexistence and tolerance, the enemies of progress hope that the small number of Jews in the Movement will be ostracized by fellow minority members. And since, unlike our Greek, Armenian, and other non-Turkish colleagues, we Jews have no communal or nationalist agenda, the fomenters of discord portray us as spineless flunkies. The sophistry of these anti-semites knows no bounds.

However, despite all the distortions and aspersions, my role in this progressive organization remains a matter of deep personal pride. I am thirty-seven years of age, young enough to anticipate a great social revolution within my own lifetime, selah (or inshallah ) And, also inshallah (or selah), may the Turkish fanatics within our organization abandon their own nationalist agenda! There are some hotheads already whispering about the need to purge Turkey of Greeks and Armenians, as soon as the CUP takes power. I abhor nationalism, in all its forms; to me, a true progressive must be an internationalist! By that, I do not refer, of course, to imperialists like Sultan Abdulhamid II, whom we anticipate deposing any day now, if he does not start to act as the constitutional monarch to which the times have consigned him.

But turning from politics to the personal, I must confess that, for all practical purposes, I am without a family. Although I have entered into a romantic relationship with a colleague in the Movement named Defne Yilmaz, and although we live under one roof, we have not married. This is a matter of both principle and pragmatism. Defne and I share the belief that marriage, perhaps especially in Turkish society, is an instrument of oppression. Our lives, moreover, are too busy and fraught with danger for us to think of starting a family. Also, like most young couples of our acquaintance, we do not always agree about trivial, or even important, matters., which is another reason for leaving our options open.

For example, one evening just a week or two ago, we had a heated argument. Earlier that day, Defne, who works as a bookkeeper in the Party’s Treasury Department, noticed that a significant sum was missing from one of their bank accounts. Probably because both of us were hungry and tired, at the time, her suspicion of larceny by a Party member precipitated one of our quarrels. Like many such quarrels, this one ranged from petty bickering to grand principle.

“What should we do?” she asked. We were sitting on a bench in a small park in our neighborhood after work, enjoying the cool, clear evening, and procrastinating about shopping for, and preparing, the evening meal.

“Who has access to this account?” I asked.

She named four Directors of the Organization, then quickly added, “But I can’t imagine any of them stealing this money. They are all….”

I cut her off. “… all human beings,” I spluttered, “and they are all in need of money. Just like…”

Now it was her turn to interrupt: “…just like us, and just like everyone else. Since two of the four are already wealthy, I suppose they must think that they need even more.”

Our conclusion about the missing funds was to wait and watch. In other words, when in doubt, do nothing! I will spare you the details of the remainder of the quarrel and the aftermath, saying only that it is a wonder Defne and I are still together, after five-and-a-half months of cohabitation. Will we still be together next year, and the year after that? Ask me, then, Reader! As to the theft, at least as far as we could learn, it was never resolved.

I mentioned that, for practical purposes, I have no family. Let me clarify that statement. Most of my closest relations, on both sides, have emigrated to Palestine. In 1903, my parents, Yaakov and Ivet Abulafia, who were (and presumably still are) Zionists, carried off my five siblings to eretz yisroel, “the promised land.”

I have no idea whether my mother and father, who had scraped together a bare living in Istanbul as, respectively, a street vendor and a barber, have escaped from their poverty in Palestine. My own “promised land” is Turkey; my means of escape, modernization. As a committed liberal secularist, when the family left Turkey five years ago, I chose to remain here, working for the revolution.

I have been a member of the Young Turks ever since my secondary school days, over a decade ago. I am a firm believer in education as the engine of many types of progress, especially economic. To that end, I expect that, in future, our organization’s support of schools run by the liberal, French-based Alliance Israelite Universelle will enable Turkish Jews to aspire to much more lucrative trades than those that were available to my parents. My regard for the Alliance should also give the lie to allegations that I am a francophobe. Like other Jewish members of the Young Turk Movement, I have nothing but admiration for the progressive elements in French society, or, for that matter, in any society.

My own university education took place from 1898 to 1902 at Constantinople’s Darülfünun-ı şahane [House of Science], our country’s oldest institution of tertiary education. Founded in 1453, and modeled upon the French universite’ system, the school was modernized, in 1843-45, to include scientific and technological disciplines, and named accordingly.

My own principal fields of study at the Darülfünun-ı şahane were History and Philology (Language and Literature). (Not) to boast, (but) I am something of a polyglot. My languages include Turkish, Hebrew, Arabic, French, English, German, Italian, and Spanish, all of which I can speak, read, and write. As the inclusion of Hebrew on the list suggests, before I opted for apostasy, I duly logged several years at our community cheder [Hebrew school]. Since then, I have, instead, become a devotee of cheddar (not to mention brie, camembert, and pecorino, among others).

Jokes aside, let me now jump back to earlier in this year of 1908, and to the serious business which, for several months, caused me so many sleepless nights. I will also jump ahead three, and then five or six, years, to a pair of watershed events in the history of our Movement.