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The country’s tumultuous history has left a deep legacy. People who’ve never had to suffer for an idea or fight for a patch of land can be overwhelmed by the passion of ordinary Turks for their country. But for ordinary Turks that passion finds its outlet, not in martial ardour, but in simple pleasures: family, food, music, football, and friendship. Turks have an inspiring ability to keep things in perspective, to get on with everyday life and to have a bloody good time in the process. Sharing their joy in the simple things is a highlight for every visitor.

—LONELY PLANET TURKEY

Moving Freely

MAUREEN FREELY

IN 1960, Maureen Freely’s family moved from Princeton, New Jersey, to Istanbul. To eight-year-old Freely their destination was a complete unknown, but it was to become the place she still thinks of as home.

In addition to writing novels, Freely has also translated The Black Book and Snow by Orhan Pamuk. In her very interesting afterword to The Black Book, Freely talks about the “more innocent” Istanbul she knew as a child growing up there, in the 1950s and ’60s: she describes a city rather down at the heels, where in every square there was a statue of Atatürk.

A quarter century after his death, Turkey was not yet the prosperous, Westward-looking republic he envisioned. The economy was all but closed, to protect its fledgling industries. We all used Omo detergent, İpana toothpaste, Job shaving cream, and Sana margarine. I remember a man on a donkey delivering milk straight from the farm. Another man with a horse-drawn cart delivered water. We bought glassware from Paşabahçe, Turkey’s only glassmaker. Our shoes came from the dozen or so shoe shops lining İstiklâl Caddesi, and our silk scarves from Vakko, Turkey’s only department store. There was almost no ready-made clothing, but the city’s seamstresses, rumored to be the best in the world, were slavish and resourceful followers of Western fashion. The city’s mechanics needed to be just as resourceful, for every taxi in the city was a 1956 Chevrolet.

She adds that in the 1960s, the radio was state-controlled, and at 8:15 p.m. there was a forty-five minute “light Western music” request program that was, for many, the only time they got to hear the Beatles.

Almost fifty years after she first set foot in Istanbul, Freely looks back on her childhood there in this piece, which originally appeared in Cornucopia: The Magazine for Connoisseurs of Turkey.

MAUREEN FREELY is the author of The Life of the Party (Warner, 1986), The Other Rebecca (Bloomsbury, 2000), and, most recently, Enlightenment (Overlook, 2008), a novel set in Istanbul.

MY FAMILY moved to Istanbul just a few weeks after I turned eight, in September 1960. I had no idea why. When I asked my father, he said, “Because it’s there.” By the time we left, I could locate Istanbul on the globe, but all I knew about Turkey was that it was half a world away from Princeton, New Jersey, and colored purple.

It took us eighteen hours to cover that distance in a prop plane. It was a Near East Colleges Association charter, carrying faculty and their families to Robert College, Robert Academy and the American College for Girls. Many of our fellow travelers went on to become my friends and teachers, but that first day they hardly saw us. They were too busy having a wild party at the back of the plane while my family sat in the nose, facing a blank wall.

I filled the empty hours with questions from Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe and all the other books my father had read my sister and me to inspire an interest in the great beyond. What was the true purpose of our journey? What secrets did the future hold? I couldn’t even guess, nor did I want to. We were on an adventure. That meant never knowing what would happen next.

But first we had to get there. The sun was low in the sky and I was running out of hope when my father leaned across the aisle to announce that we had entered Turkish airspace. I looked down, expecting an oriental landscape in all its purple splendor, but all I saw were brown and empty hills.