[The Autobiography Of A Turkish Girl Epub 20
Iberio Ralda
The events in the novel take place in the early twentieth century, near the collapse of a war weary Ottoman Empire and the creation of the Turkish republic. Most of the novel is recounted in first-person diary format by Feride. In the first section, Feride describes her childhood from the beginning up until the events that led her to a strange hotel room. The second and largest section consists of diary entries describing her adventures in Anatolia. The third section is the only one written from the third person point of view, describing Feride's visit to her home.
Feride is the orphaned daughter of an army officer. As a teenager, she attends Lycee Notre Dame de Sion in the winter, and stays with one of her late mother's sisters during the summer holidays. She is given the nickname "the Wren" during her time at school for her vivacity and mischief. These two characteristics considered unusual and even a bit inappropriate for Muslim girls at that time.
She gets engaged to her charming cousin, Kamran, whom she leaves the night before their wedding, upon discovering that he has been unfaithful to her. She runs away from home to become a teacher in Anatolia, although she remains desperately in love with Kamran. She is forced to move from town to town several times during her first three years as a teacher, as a result of the incompetence of officials, the malice of colleagues and the unwanted attention she gets from men because of her beauty and her lively manner.
Meanwhile, she adopts a little girl called Munise, finds out that Kamran has married the woman he had cheated on Feride with, and develops a friendship with Hayrullah Bey, an elderly military doctor who treats Feride with fatherly affection. At the end of these three years, Munise dies and Feride is forced to resign from her post and marry the doctor because of the rumors about her "indecent behavior".
A couple of years later, Feride returns to Tekirdag to visit one of her aunts and her cousin Mujgan, where Kamran, now widowed and with a small child, also happens to be. He has never gotten over Feride, painfully regrets having cheated on her, and confesses to have married the other woman only out of pity after he heard false rumors about Feride being in love with another man. The night before her arranged departure, Feride confesses to Mujgan that her marriage to the doctor has never been consummated and he has in fact died recently.
He told Feride to revive her ties to her family as his last wish, and gave her a package to be entrusted to Mujgan. Mujgan takes the package to Kamran, which turns out to be Feride's diary which was hidden and preserved by the doctor. Finding out that Feride is still in love with him, Kamran arranges to be wedded to Feride the next day without her knowledge. The novel ends with their long-awaited reunion, and Kamran's confession that he betrayed her all those years ago because of his insecurity about her love for and loyalty to him, due to her ostensible frivolity and harsh treatment of him.
This book was translated into English as The Autobiography Of A Turkish Girl by Sir Wyndham Deedes, although this version of the book is incomplete (omitting the book's third section). In 2018, a complete translation alikuşu (the Wren) - The Complete English Translation was published. It combines Deedes' translation of the first four parts with the final fifth part translated by Tugrul Zure and edited by Angel Garcia.
New York was bad enough. By nine in the morning the fake,country-wet freshness that somehow seeped in overnightevaporated like the tail end of a sweet dream. Mirage-grey atthe bottom of their granite canyons, the hot streets wavered inthe sun, the car tops sizzled and glittered, and the dry, tinderydust blew into my eyes and down my throat.
I knew something was wrong with me that summer, becauseall I could think about was the Rosenbergs and how stupid I'dbeen to buy all those uncomfortable, expensive clothes, hanginglimp as fish in my closet, and how all the little successes I'dtotted up so happily at college fizzled to nothing outside theslick marble and plate-glass fronts along Madison Avenue.
Look what can happen in this country, they'd say. A girllives in some out-of-the-way town for nineteen years, so poorshe can't afford a magazine, and then she gets a scholarship tocollege and wins a prize here and a prize there and ends upsteering New York like her own private car.
Only I wasn't steering anything, not even myself. I justbumped from my hotel to work and to parties and from partiesto my hotel and back to work like a numb trolley-bus. I guess Ishould have been excited the way most of the other girls were,but I couldn't get myself to react. I felt very still and veryempty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dullyalong in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.
We had all won a fashion magazine contest, by writingessays and stories and poems and fashion blurbs, and as prizesthey gave us jobs in New York for a month, expenses paid, andpiles and piles of free bonuses, like ballet tickets and passesto fashion shows and hair stylings at a famous expensivesalon and chances to meet successful people in the field of ourdesire and advice about what to do with our particularcomplexions.
I still have the make-up kit they gave me, fitted out for aperson with brown eyes and brown hair: an oblong of brownmascara with a tiny brush, and a round basin of blueeye-shadow just big enough to dab the tip of your finger in, andthree lipsticks ranging from red to pink, all cased in the samelittle gilt box with a mirror on one side. I also have a whiteplastic sun-glasses case with coloured shells and sequins and agreen plastic starfish sewed on to it.
I realized we kept piling up these presents because it was asgood as free advertising for the firms involved, but I couldn't becynical. I got such a kick out of all those free gifts showering onto us. For a long time afterwards I hid them away, but later,when I was all right again, I brought them out, and I still havethem around the house. I use the lipsticks now and then, andlast week I cut the plastic starfish off the sun-glasses case for thebaby to play with.
These girls looked awfully bored to me. I saw them on thesun-roof, yawning and painting their nails and trying to keepup their Bermuda tans, and they seemed bored as hell. I talkedwith one of them, and she was bored with yachts and boredwith flying around in aeroplanes and bored with skiing inSwitzerland at Christmas and bored with the men in Brazil.
Girls like that make me sick. I'm so jealous I can't speak.Nineteen years, and I hadn't been out of New England exceptfor this trip to New York. It was my first big chance, but here Iwas, sitting back and letting it run through my fingers like somuch water.
I'd never known a girl like Doreen before. Doreen camefrom a society girls' college down South and had bright whitehair standing out in a cotton candy fluff round her head andblue eyes like transparent agate marbles, hard and polished andjust about indestructible, and a mouth set in a sort of perpetualsneer. I don't mean a nasty sneer, but an amused, mysterioussneer, as if all the people around her were pretty silly and shecould tell some good jokes on them if she wanted to.
Doreen singled me out right away. She made me feel I wasthat much sharper than the others, and she really was wonderfullyfunny. She used to sit next to me at the conference table,and when the visiting celebrities were talking she'd whisperwitty sarcastic remarks to me under her breath.
Her college was so fashion-conscious, she said, that all thegirls had pocket-book covers made out of the same material astheir dresses, so each time they changed their clothes they had amatching pocket-book. This kind of detail impressed me. Itsuggested a whole life of marvellous, elaborate decadence thatattracted me like a magnet.
'What are you sweating over that for?' Doreen lounged onmy bed in a peach silk dressing-gown, filing her long, nicotine-yellownails with an emery board, while I typed up the draft ofan interview with a best-selling novelist.
'You know old Jay Cee won't give a damn if that story's intomorrow or Monday.' Doreen lit a cigarette and let the smokeflare slowly from her nostrils so her eyes were veiled. 'Jay Cee'sugly as sin,' Doreen went on coolly. 'I bet that old husband ofhers turns out all the lights before he gets near her or he'd pukeotherwise.'
Jay Cee was my boss, and I liked her a lot, in spite of whatDoreen said. She wasn't one of the fashion magazine gusherswith fake eyelashes and giddy jewellery. Jay Cee had brains, soher plug-ugly looks didn't seem to matter. She read a couple oflanguages and knew all the quality writers in the business.
I tried to imagine Jay Cee out of her strict office suit andluncheon-duty hat and in bed with her fat husband, but I justcouldn't do it. I always had a terribly hard time trying toimagine people in bed together.
Jay Cee wanted to teach me something, all the old ladies Iever knew wanted to teach me something, but I suddenlydidn't think they had anything to teach me. I fitted the lid onmy typewriter and clicked it shut.
They imported Betsy straight from Kansas with her bouncingblonde pony-tail and Sweetheart-of-Sigma-Chi smile. Iremember once the two of us were called over to the office ofsome blue-chinned TV producer in a pin-stripe suit to see if wehad any angles he could build up for a programme, and Betsystarted to tell about the male and female corn in Kansas. She gotso excited about that damn corn even the producer had tears inhis eyes, only he couldn't use any of it, unfortunately, he said.
'We'll just go till we get sick of it,' Doreen told me, stubbingout her cigarette in the base of my bedside reading-lamp, 'thenwe'll go out on the town. Those parties they stage here remindme of the old dances in the school gym. Why do they alwaysround up Yalies? They're so stoo-pit!'
Buddy Willard went to Yale, but now I thought of it, whatwas wrong with him was that he was stupid. Oh, he'd managedto get good marks all right, and to have an affair with someawful waitress on the Cape by the name of Gladys, but hedidn't have one speck of intuition. Doreen had intuition. Everythingshe said was like a secret voice speaking straight out of myown bones.
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