Seamstress of Ourfa (eBook)

Victoria Harwood Butler-Sloss (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2018
298 Seiten
Armida Publications (Verlag)
978-9963-255-61-0 (ISBN)

Infos

It is 1895, Ourfa, a thriving, cosmopolitan city in the Ottoman Empire. Khatoun Khouri, a girl of thirteen, meets her future husband, Iskender Agha Boghos. Twice her age, a poet, philosopher and dreamer, he adores her but cannot express it in words. Around them, the Ottoman Empire is crumbling, the world heading towards war and the Armenian minority subjected to increasing repression, culminating in the genocide of 1915.
As Iskender retreats into his books and alcohol, losing land, money and business, Khatoun holds their family together by sewing for the wives of the men who persecute them; her creations inciting love, lust and fertility. The family joins the resistance and evades the death marches to the Syrian Desert only to lose everything when exiled by Mustafa Kemal and the birth of the Turkish Republic in 1923. 
What follows is a tale of love, loss and redemption in the diaspora told by four generations of women, each becoming the guardian angel of the next.

Advanced praise for the book

'An intimate and richly lyrical epic of Armenian life and tragedy.' - Colin Thubron

Vividly imagined and realised down to the last stitch of a coat hem in the most gorgeous prose, The Seamstress of Ourfa is a story of a love upon which generations would one day be built. The voices, gentle laughter and sighs of Khatoun and Iskender echoed long after I finished reading their story. This is a work borne of a passion that resonates on every page, it is the passion of Khatoun which lives now in her great grand-daughter. - Aminatta Forna

'The Seamstress of Ourfa is like a magical portal transporting readers to all corners of the globe, including Cyprus, England and the Ottoman Empire. But the real undertaking of this tender novel is a journey across the hills and valleys of the human heart. Butler Sloss delivers her readers into the careful, nurturing hands of her female characters who sew, cook, and nurse the broken hearts and minds inhabiting this moving novel.' -Aline Ohanesian

 'You cannot help but fall under the spell this novel weaves. You forget that it is writing - it is that good - you are simply transported, via all the senses, to the rooms and courtyards, the mountain roads and town streets, and from these into the hopes and fears, and complex nature, of the people depicted.' -Mark Mayes

Textauszug

Who I Am

Nicosia, Cyprus, July1968

Vicky

She’s heading towards me at speed, her black plastic slippers slapping the tiled floor as she comes. I think she’s an adult but I’m not sure. Her face is wrinkly but she’s only a finger taller than I am and I’m seven. She must be Nene Khatoun, my great-grandma who is very, very old. As ancient as the hills, Mummy says, and everyone knows ancient things shrink. Here she comes, making a beeline for my corner. Luckily there are lots of people between us and she can’t get round them easily. She has to keep stopping to get her balance. Eyes quick, I search for someone to help me but everyone’s busy.

The room is full of people. My family I’m meeting for the first time. They live here in Cyprus and Mum, Rob and I came on an aeroplane across the sea from England to see them. Now we are drowning in them. In the middle of the room is an old man in a dressing gown and a blue crocheted hat and he’s crying. He’s got Robert stuffed under one arm and Billy under the other.

“Tvins! Tvins!” he’s screaming, even though they’re not. Robert is my brother and Billy is my cousin even though they do look alike.

Jumping up and down next to the old man is a lady with red hair and a film star dress. She’s kissing both boys and messing up Rob’s parting and singing a song, “Achoognered bidi oudem, kitignered bidi oudem.”

I know what she’s saying, even though it’s Armenian. I understand that much. She wants to eat Robert’s eyes and nose! Before I can warn him, before I can move, I am finally attacked. The midget great-granny has me locked in her arms. She smells of mothballs and onions and her lips turn in over her pink gums which hold no teeth. There’s a cave in her mouth that wants to suck me in. I don’t know if I want to cry, or faint, or have a comforting wee in my pants but as I look into her eyes, only inches above mine, she says my name and the whole world stops.

“Vicky.”

She winks at me, undoes the top button of her spotty dress and I climb in, crack open her ribcage and nestle into her heart. In here I feel the safest I have ever felt in my life. It’s my blue eiderdown and lentil soup and Fleur in ‘The Forsyte Saga’ after a hot bath in winter. It’s new, like a pomegranate split open, ready to eat. It’s the taste of milk and honey. The smell of lily-of-the-valley in our front garden in Bromley, especially after the rain. She is the rain. The rain that runs down the windowpane that I follow with my finger on long car journeys. She is with me now and for always, the angels sing. All ways.

“Always dreaming!” Mummy says, yanking at my arm. I’m in shock – being dragged back to earth so rudely. That’s parents for you – they teach you manners and then they don’t use them. Mummy wants to introduce me to all the people in the room. I look over at Nene Khatoun and she nods. Suddenly I can hear her voice even though it’s Mummy’s lips that are moving. Nene Khatoun can speak to me without opening her mouth just like they do on the telly, on magic shows. Telepathy, it’s called. Or ventrilolilolism, that thing with a creepy doll. I listen to Nene Khatoun’s voice inside my head, watching Mummy’s Coral Frost lipstick move, woowah woowah. Nene Khatoun is telling me important stuff.

“It won’t make any sense now but will in the future,” she says. “It’s about who you are.”

I listen hard. I know I may have to depend on these words one day. Mum pushes me in front of the red-haired lady in the lovely dress, wipes my eyebrows and tugs at my hem. The lady has stopped singing that song and is smiling at me. Colgate, three ways clean.

“This is Auntie Verginia, Mummy’s sister,” Nene Khatoun’s voice says. “She’ll show you her dzidzigs when she gets undressed. Look at them. Her body is not as loud as her laugh.”

Auntie Verginia does laugh a lot. She sticks her fist in her mouth and bites it and does a little dance. I wonder what her dzidzigs look like under her clothes. She smells like a film star. As soon as I have pecked her on the forehead someone else grabs my face and smooshes it together. I look like my favourite dolly after Robert squashed it with his chair leg.

“This is my little girl, my daughter, Alice. Your Grandmum. Same person, just different names. Listen to her when you can’t hear me. She saw things at your age that a child cannot unsee.” Nene Khatoun’s voice is like a whisper in my ear.

Grandmum Alice has so many lines on her face, I can’t imagine her ever having been a little girl or a daughter, but I know she must have been, once. That’s the way of the world. We’re born wrinkly and then we go smooth for a while and then we go wrinkly again and our heart – which is really a clock – stops and we’re dead.

After some cheek pinching Grandmum Alice lets go of my face, pokes around in her pocket and hands me some toffees. She leans down to kiss me and when she pulls away we’re attached by a curtain of hair – mine – caught in the row of needles pinned under her collar. She gently unpicks me then pushes me back so she can see the travelling outfit Mummy made me for this trip.

This is the grooviest thing my mother ever sewed. A lime-green mini with stars and moons and planets on it. I’m still wearing the matching coat on top even though I’m boiling. The coat is not fastened with buttons, nor with hooks, but by a chunky zip with a huge Go-Go-girl ring on the end.

I strike a pose then do my special ‘Top of The Pops’ dance for them. They clap as I dance, Grandmum Alice and Auntie Verginia, who is now doing the squashy face thing to me and singing her “I’m going to eat your eyes and nose!” song again. When I finish, they drag me towards the sofa. Towards the old man in the crocheted hat. I stare at his feet in blue flip-flops. His toenails are yellow and the big toes are hairy.

“This is your Grandad Haygaz.” Nene Khatoun’s voice, Mummy’s lips. “An orphan with no ties to bind him. We became his family and he carried us here.” When I look up at his hands I see that he could easily carry me in just one of them. Mum tells me to do the dance again.

When you’re alone and life is making you lonely,

You can always go – downtown!

I sing as I shimmy and twist.

Forget all your troubles! Forget all your cares! And go

Downtown! Lala lala lala, Downtown! Lala lala lala laaaaaaah![1]

I sing as loud as I can, hoping that Grandad Haygaz will stop crying. Instead, he lunges at me and buries me in his arms. Old Spice. I know that smell.

“Downtown, downtown,” he croaks, “Downtown!”

Mummy sits next to him on the sofa and perches me on his knee. He inhales my hair and we sit facing the door opposite as he sobs down my back. I’ve never seen a grown man cry so much – usually they shout.

“He’s happy,” Mummy whispers. “He’s crying because he’s happy.” I’m not sure I believe her. Parents lie sometimes, and I already know he’s an orphan and they’re always sad, even if they get given another spoonful of gruel. Anyway, I move away as soon as I can, thankful that it’s Robert’s turn to display his travel outfit now. Maybe he can use the hanky he wasn’t allowed to blow his nose on to dry Grandad’s tears.

I look away and there, in the doorway, is another person I’ve never seen before, her long face watching me. Where do they all come from, this family of mine? Nene Khatoun’s voice follows me.

“That’s Umme Ferida, my sister-in-law. Your great-great-aunt. Eat her food and watch the slippers on her feet. They’ll fly off and bite you if you behave badly.”

Umme Ferida tuts and disappears back into the shadows. I can hear kitchen noises and then someone pokes me in the back with a gun, just where they should be careful because it’s my kidney and that’s a...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 27.6.2018
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Historische Romane
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Märchen / Sagen
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• Schlagworte: Armenian Genocide • cultural heritage • family life • family memoir • Family Saga • historical fiction • Ottoman Empire • Women • World War I
• ISBN-10: 9963-255-61-2 / 9963255612
• ISBN-13: 978-9963-255-61-0 / 9789963255610