It was on the way to Uskudar that I had an insight into what had, up to then, been bothering me about Turkey. The father of the Turks, which is what his surname means, was Mustafa Kemal Atatiirk, and everywhere one goes in Turkey one sees photographs, portraits, and statues of him; he is on billboards, stamps, coins – always the same wincing banker's profile. His name is given to streets and plazas and it enters nearly every conversation one has in the country. The face has become emblematic, the shape of a softening star, with the suggestions of a nose and chin, and is ubiquitous as the simplified character the Chinese use to frighten devils away. Atatiirk came to power in 1923, declared Turkey a republic, and, by way of modernization, closed down all religious schools, dissolved dervish orders, and introduced the Latin alphabet and the Swiss civil code. He died in 1938, and that was my insight: modernization stopped in Turkey with the death of Atatiirk, at five minutes past nine on 10 November 1938. As if to demonstrate this, the room in which he died is as he left it, and all the clocks in the palace show the time as 9.05.
This seemed to explain why the Turks typically dress the way people did in 1938, in hairy brown sweaters and argyle socks, in baggy pinstriped pants and blue serge suits with padded shoulders, flapping winglike lapels and a three-pointed hanky in the breast pocket. Their hair is wavy with brilliantine and their moustaches are waxed. The hemlines on the brown gaberdine skirts the women habitually wear are below the knees, about two inches. It is prewar modernity, and you don't have to look far to see 1938 Packards, Dodges, and Pontiacs lumbering along streets that were last widened when those models appeared. The furniture stores of Istanbul show their latest designs in the window – boxy over-upholstered chairs and clawfoot sofas. All this leads one to the inescapable conclusion that, if the zenith of Ottoman elegance was the sixteenth-century reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, the high-water mark of the modern was in 1938, when Atatiirk was still modelling Turkish stylishness on the timid designs of the West.
'Why, that's awfully clever of you,' said Molesworth, when I rang him up to explain this to him. Then he changed the subject. He was enjoying Tarabya; the weather was perfect. 'Come up for lunch. The taxi will cost the earth but I can promise you a very good wine. It's called either Cankia or Ankia. It's dry, white, with a slight twinkle - a pinky colour, but definitely not a rose, because I hate rose and this was very drinkable indeed.'
I could not meet Molesworth for lunch. I had a previous engagement, my single duty in Istanbul, a luncheon lecture arranged by a helpful American embassy man. I couldn't cancel it: I had a hotel bill to pay. So I went to the conference room where about twenty Turks were having a pre-lecture drink; I was told they were poets, playwrights, novelists, and academics. The first man I spoke to was the most pompous, the president of the Turkish Literary Union, a Mr Ercumena Behzat Lav, a name I found as hard to conjure with as to pronounce. He had a look of spurious eminence – white-haired, with tiny feet, and an unwilling gaze that was disdainful in an overpractised way. He smoked with the squinting disgust people affect when they are on the verge of giving up smoking. I asked him what he did.
'He says he does not speak English,' said Mrs Nur, my pretty translator. The president had spoken and looked away. 'He prefers to speak in Turkish, though he will speak to you in German or Italian.'
‘Va bene,' I said. 'Allora, parliamo in Italiano. Ma dove imparava questa lingua?'
The president addressed Mrs Nur in Turkish.
'He says, "Do you speak German?"'
'Not very well.'
The president said something more.
'He will speak Turkish.'
'Ask him what he does. Is he a writer?'
'This,' said the man through Mrs Nur, 'is a completely meaningless question. One cannot say in a few words what one does or is. That takes months, sometimes years. I can tell you my name. Beyond that you have to find out for yourself.'
'Tell him he's too much work,' I said, and walked away. I fell into conversation with the head of the Enghsh Department of Istanbul University, who introduced me to his colleague. Both wore tweeds and stood rocking on their heels, the way English academics size up new members of the Senior Common Room.
'He's another old Cantabrigian,' said the head, slapping his colleague on the back. 'Same college as me. Fitzbill.'
'Fitzwilliam College?'
'That's right, though I haven't been back there for donkey's years.'
'What do you teach?' I asked.
'Everything from Beowulf to Virginia Woolf!'
It seemed as if everyone had rehearsed his lines except me. As I was thinking of a reply, I was seized by the arm and dragged away in a very powerful grip. The man dragging me was tall and stoutly built, bull-necked, with a great jaw. His palely tinted glasses did not quite hide his right eye, which was dead and looked like a withered grape. He talked rapidly in Turkish as he hustled me into the corner of the room.
'He says,' Mrs Nur said, trying to keep up with us, 'he always captures beautiful girls and good writers. He wants to talk to you.'
This was Yashar Kemal, the author of Mehmet My Hawk, the only Turkish novel I could ever remember having read. It is thought that before long he will be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. He had, he said, just returned from a visit to the Soviet Union where he had been lecturing with his friend, Aziz Nesin. He had addressed audiences in Moscow, Leningrad, Baku, and Alma-Ata.
'At my lectures I said many terrible things! They hated me and they were very upset. For example, I said that socialist realism was anti-Marxist. This I believe. I am a Marxist: I know. All the writers in the Soviet Union except Sholokhov are anti-Marxist. They did not want to hear this terrible thing. I told them, "Do you want to know the greatest Marxist writer?" Then I said, "William Faulkner!" They were very upset. Yes, Sholokhov is a great writer, but Faulkner was a much greater Marxist.'
I said I didn't think Faulkner would have agreed with him. He ignored me and pressed on.
'And the greatest comic writer, of course we all know – Mark Twain. But the next greatest is Aziz Nesin. And don't think I'm saying that simply because we're both Turkish or because he's my best friend.'
Aziz Nesin, who was across the room mournfully nibbling an American embassy vol-au-vent, has written fifty-eight books. Most are collections of short stories. They are said to be hilarious, but none has been translated into English.
'I have no doubt about it,' Yashar said. 'Aziz Nesin is a greater comic writer than Anton Chekhov!'
Aziz Nesin, hearing his name, looked up and smiled sadly.
'Come to my house,' said Yashar. 'We go swimming, eh? Eat some fish? I will tell you the whole story.'
'How will I find your house?' I had asked Yashar the previous day. He said, 'Ask any child. The old people don't know me, but all the little ones do. I make kites for them.'
I took him at his word, and when I arrived at the apartment block on a bluff above a Marmara fishing village called Menakse, I asked a fairly small child the way to Yashar's house. The child pointed to the top floor.
The disorder in Yashar's apartment was that comfortable littering and stacking that only another writer can recognize as order – the considered scatter of papers and books a writer builds around himself until it acquires the cosy solidity of a nest. On several of Yashar's shelves were editions of his own books in thirty languages; the English ones had been translated by his wife, Thilda, whose narrow desk held an open Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.