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Aziz Nesin about Himself and His Parents: Poor People in Istanbul during the Late Ottoman Period
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 July 2021
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A resolute modernist and socialist, Aziz Nesin (1915–95) was definitely an author of the republican period. Born Mehmet Nusret to poor parents, both migrants to Istanbul from the Black Sea coast, he adopted Nesin as his legal surname when surnames became obligatory in 1934. By the 1950s, his satirical short stories and plays had made him famous, but he faced political difficulties for much of his life; likely, it did not endear him to the authorities that he used his experiences with the police as inexhaustible material for his stories.
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References
1 Nesin, Aziz, Böyle Gelmiş Böyle Gitmez: Otobiyografi (Istanbul: Düşün Yayınevi, 1969)Google Scholar. This is probably a reprint of the first edition, which appeared in 1966. A revised version is Yol: Böyle Gelmiş Böyle Gitmez: Özyaşam Öyküsü (The Road: That Is the Way He Has Come, But That Is Not the Way He Is Leaving; An Autobiography) (Istanbul: Nesin Yayınevi, 2014). My hearty thanks to Selim Karahasanoğlu for finding me a copy of the earlier version.
2 The second volume, Böyle Gelmiş Böyle Gitmez II: Yokuşun Başı (Istanbul: Nesin Yayınevi, 2008) first came out in 1976, and the third one after the author's death: Böyle Gelmiş Böyle Gitmez III: Yokuş Yukarı (Istanbul: Aziz Nesin Vakfı, 1996). The second volume has the subtitle Where the Road Becomes Steep; and for the third volume the author or his editors have chosen Climbing the Steep Slope. The memoirs are available in English translation by Joseph S. Jacobson as Istanbul Boy: The Autobiography of Aziz Nesin, parts 1–3 (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1977, 1979, 1990), and part 4 (Southmoor Studios, 2000).
3 Partly financed by revenues from real estate donated to the foundation, the children, who come from poor families in nonmetropolitan areas, attend state schools. If they pass the university entrance examinations, the foundation provides scholarships for that stage of their education as well. See https://www.nesinvakfi.org, accessed 26 September 2020.
4 Nesin, Yol: Böyle Gelmiş, 389–90.
5 For attempts to write the biographies of 19th-century slaves, compare with Powell, Eve M. Troutt, Tell This in My Memory: Stories of Enslavement from Egypt, Sudan and the Ottoman Empire (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 Nesin, Yol: Böyle Gelmiş, 494.
7 Donald Quataert and Yüksel Duman, “A Coal Miner's Life during the Late Ottoman Empire,” International Labor and Working-Class History 60 (2001): 153–79.
8 Gülriz Sururi, Bir An Gelir (Istanbul: Doğan Kitap, 2016) is a revised version of an older memoir, which focuses on people with an Ottoman elite background making their way in theater and film during the early years of the republic.
9 See note 2 for bibliographical data. For two comments on the high quality of the translation, one anonymous and the other by Kathlyn Burrill, see Nesin, Yol: Böyle Gelmiş, 503–8. For information on published copies, see the copyright page of this volume.
10 Ibid., 101, 132–40.
11 Ibid., 59. The family's other sobriquet was Bardakçıoğulları.
12 For this reason, I mostly refer to the author as Aziz Nesin, although as a child, he was Mehmed Nusret.
13 Founded in 1863, the Darüşşafaka provided a secondary education of good quality for poor boys who had lost a father; since the 1970s, girls having lost a parent also are eligible.
14 Nesin, Yol: Böyle Gelmiş, 32–33.
15 Nazan Maksudyan, “Foster-Daughter or Servant, Charity or Abuse: Beslemes in the Late Ottoman Empire,” Journal of Historical Sociology 21, no. 4 (2008): 488–512; Yahya Araz and İrfan Kokdaş, “In between Market and Charity: Child Domestic Work and Changing Labor Relations in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Istanbul,” International Labor and Working-Class History 97 (2020): 81–108.
16 Apparently the child's original name was Hanife Havva; the author has not recorded her patronymic.
17 When the actress Şirin Devrim wrote the story of her family, with a special emphasis on her mother, the painter Fahrünnisa Zeyd, she stressed that she often reported family traditions whose accuracy she could not guarantee; A Turkish Tapestry: The Shakirs of Istanbul (London: Quartet Books, 1994).
18 Nesin, Yol: Böyle Gelmiş, 48, 51.
19 Ibid., 5.
20 Ibid., 193.
21 Ibid., 88.
22 Ibid., 46–47.
23 Ibid., 48.
24 Suraiya Faroqhi, “Migration into Eighteenth-Century ‘Greater Istanbul’ as Reflected in the Kadi Registers of Eyüp,” Turcica, 30 (1998): 163–83; Cengiz Kırlı, “A Profile of the Labor Force in Early Nineteenth-Century Istanbul,” International Labor and Working-Class History 60 (2001): 125–40; Nina Ergin, “The Albanian Tellak Connection: Labor Migration to the Hammams of Eighteenth-Century Istanbul, Based on the 1752 İstanbul Hammamları Defteri,” Turcica, 43 (2011 [2012]): 231–56.
25 Nesin, Yol: Böyle Gelmiş, 61.
26 Ibid., 63. One of Abdülaziz's favorites was dehşetli (terrible), which he mispronounced as devşetli. The term devletli, probably the source of the confusion, was a title used for high-ranking persons.
27 Ibid., 63.
28 Herzog, Christoph and Motika, Raoul: “Orientalism alla turca: Late 19th /Early 20th Century Ottoman Voyages into the Muslim ‘Outback,’” Die Welt des Islams 40, no. 2 (2000): 141–95Google Scholar.
29 Nesin, Yol: Böyle Gelmiş, 389–91.
30 Ibid., 51.
31 Ibid., 147–50.
32 Ibid., 475.
33 Ibid., 352–55; see 414–15 for the disappointing end of another gifted boy.
34 Ibid., 355.
35 See ibid., 494–95, for some of the last words of Hanife İkbal, “Gözlerim açık ölmüyorum” (I die without major worries), because she believes that her son is in school. Although the boy assumes that the Darüşşafaka teachers will not take him back after his repeated absences, this scene motivates him to pursue his studies, against all odds.
36 Not being a literary historian, my inspiration comes from “Literary Devices: Definition and Examples of Literary Terms” (https://literarydevices.net/bildungsroman, accessed 27 September 2020); and Sakchai Lunlaporn, “David Copperfield and the Bildungsroman: Their Contribution to Charles Dickens's Reputation,” Manusya: Journal of Humanities Regular 18, no. 1 (2015): 58–72, http://www.arts.chula.ac.th/~manusya/journal/index.php/manusya/issue/view/11.