A Useless Man (28 page)

Today, he risks being swamped by nostalgia. For the Istanbul he described – the city of a million souls, where, despite the ravages of politics, Greeks, Armenians, Jews and Muslims continued to live side by side in noisy and exuberant peace – is no longer. The further it recedes into the past, the greater the temptation to find in his stories the bitter sweetness of lost innocence. But as we read our way through his collected works, we
came to the view that even his most charming tales had dark and troubling, silent and painfully
knowing
souls. And then there were the ones lit only – and only intermittently – by a six-watt bulb. The nostalgia hunter might find little to admire in these glimpses into violence, cruelty and perversion, but when we set them alongside their better-behaved cousins, we came to understand that there is a point in almost every story when he pulls the carpet out from underneath our feet, throws open the curtains to reveal the truth for which we are least prepared.

For most of his life, Sait Faik lived in an opulent family villa – a grand, four-story, wooden Ottoman mansion (now the Sait Faik Museum) not far from the pier on Burgazada, one of the quieter Prince’s islands, where he took shelter from the crowd and wrote. Life for him was idling with the local fishermen and tradesmen on the island, exploring its quiet corners with his dogs, and, every now and then, jumping on a ferry to booze until the sun came up with other writers in the bars of Beyoğlu. Few islanders ever knew he was an accomplished writer until the day he died. Now a monstrous statue of him stands in the center of the main square, a strange twist of fate considering one of his last stories, “I Can’t Go into Town,” in which, on his deathbed, he remembers with a pang of nostalgia the familiars on the island and their crazy stories. Now it seems he’s condemned to stand there for time eternal. Sait Faik died of cirrhosis when he was just forty-six; it was the same disease that took Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey – both had a wild passion for
rakı
, the national drink also known as lion’s milk, and no doubt the lifestyle that came with it.

In his poem, “Letter II,” Sait Faik writes about the great Süleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul; for him, it is forever bound up with his memories of a Greek girl he once loved. It is by weaving them together in words that he captures the essence of his beloved city: the idea that these monuments gain meaning only in the intimate stories we can share on common
ground. As we bid our guide farewell, after three years of following in his footsteps from ferryboat to coffeehouse, stopping along the way to admire the birds and the violets, the gardens and the fountains, we would like to thank him for illuminating our Istanbul with his.

Alexander Dawe and Maureen Freely

archipelago books
is a not-for-profit literary press devoted to promoting cross-cultural exchange through innovative classic and contemporary international literature
www.archipelagobooks.org