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ANKARA; `My Grandmother' by Fethiye Cetin

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  • ANKARA; `My Grandmother' by Fethiye Cetin

    Today's Zaman , Turkey
    Aug 2 2009

    `My Grandmother' by Fethiye Ã?etin


    I never knew my maternal grandmother. She died before I was born. In
    fact, I never knew any of my grandparents. But it was my grandmother's
    story that fascinated me the most. She was a woman of grit and
    courage.

    She had raised my mother on her own, as a widow in the depths of the
    poverty of the 1920s. She had a tough job, as a mental health nurse in
    an age when there were few drugs available to stabilize the often
    violent patients, and worked long hours, including Christmas Day. But
    Kitty was, according to my mom, always positive and bright, and this
    attitude toward life made her very popular.

    But her start in life was tough, too. All we knew about her background
    was that, in the last decade of the 19th century, she and her little
    brother David were taken in as orphans by Coram's Fields' Foundling
    Hospital. This charitable foundation, endowed by a wealthy ship owner
    called Thomas Coram to care for poor children who otherwise had no
    other hope of care, still exists in London.

    I remember visiting the garden there with my mother, and she told me
    the few things her mother had been able to tell her. Life was fairly
    tough in the orphanage, but there was food and warmth and
    schooling. Kitty did well in her studies, and her teachers were
    pleased with her. The only relative in the world that she had, her
    little brother David, died of tuberculosis while they were both still
    young children, so this tragedy left her truly alone. Nevertheless, as
    she grew up, the teachers could see the potential in her and
    encouraged her to go into nursing so she would have a career.

    My mom was so affected by her mother's own story that when my older
    brother was born, she named him David, after the only maternal
    relative she had heard of.

    With the increase in interest in family roots sparked by television
    programs such as `Who Do You Think You Are?' where famous people trace
    their family tree back a few generations and often find surprises, and
    the climate of freedom of information, foundations such as Coram's
    Fields have opened their records to the public and even now employ
    research officers to assist former residents of the home, and their
    families, to discover more about who they really are.

    Having turned 80 years old herself, my mother wanted to find out more
    about Kitty and David. All we could guess is that my mother's
    grandmother had fallen on hard times, perhaps when she was widowed
    herself. She must have been desperate to give up two children. Maybe
    my mother could discover her real surname. Kitty had been given a
    surname by the trustees of the institution. So my mother applied to
    the Foundling Hospital to find out more about Kitty and David.

    After a few weeks, she received a letter inviting her to come for an
    interview with a family liaison officer who could give her the results
    of research into their archives, now over 100 years old. I was here in
    Turkey, so could not accompany her, but my older brother David went
    with her.

    The researcher was charming and provided a lot of information and
    patiently answered their questions. She gave them a typed report, and
    my mother and I have read it through many times together. My maternal
    great-grandmother came from Scotland. She had been `in-service' as a
    maid in a wealthy family in London. But she was not allowed to
    continue working once she had a child. Her choices were to see her
    child starve or give her away to be cared for. The researcher assured
    us that, in the strict Victorian moral climate of the day, the
    trustees would only take in children of respectable women and
    backgrounds were researched thoroughly.

    One of the biggest surprises was for us to find out that David was not
    really Kitty's relative. The institution's policy, amazingly advanced
    for its day, was to place young children in foster homes, often two or
    three children with the same foster parents. Only when they were four
    or five would they then be taken in to the Foundling Hospital. Kitty
    had been fostered as a baby, and David then fostered by the same
    family. As they had entered the Foundling Hospital together, they
    assumed they were real brother and sister.

    Many tears were shed as we read and re-read the facts of Kitty's
    report together. The A4 sheet of typed information brought the story
    of life in another age, with no state social care, with a different
    moral code and well-intentioned but strict caretakers filling in the
    gaps.

    You will probably shed tears when you read the story of Fethiye
    Ã?etin's discovery of who her grandmother really was. Any family
    history, although seeming to be just a superficial investigation into
    roots, may reveal areas of taboo. A human story bears witness to the
    sweep of political and social history in a way that newspaper articles
    and history textbooks fail to do.

    A young Turkish lawyer, Ã?etin was to discover from her
    grandmother's painful memories, related to her over a series of
    months, that her family history had many secrets. `I would never have
    believed any of this, unless it was my grandmother telling me,' she
    says.

    Her grandmother was not, in fact, as her ID card stated, the daughter
    of Esma and Hüseyin. `For the same reason that her mother's
    name wasn't Esma and her father's wasn't Hüseyin, my
    grandmother's real name was not Seher, but HeranuÅ?. This, too,
    I found out very late.' HeranuÅ? was in fact an Armenian born in
    ElazıÄ? province, and when her family was forced on a
    death march from which very few survived, she was taken in by a
    Turkish gendarmerie officer and brought up as his own.

    `As I went in search of my grandmother's family, I was to learn many
    facts.' Finding out the truth about her own history was to send
    shockwaves through this young Turkish lawyer, who practiced in
    Ankara. `My distress ran very deep.'

    This sensitive and moving portrait has been written `to reconcile us
    with our history and reconcile us with ourselves.' The events of the
    time are exceedingly controversial. They are dealt with in a brief and
    sympathetic way. The book is as much about her grandmother's happy
    childhood as it is about facing the horrific memories she has.

    The discovery that many of the `facts' of her family just simply were
    not true had a profound affect on this child of the republic. `We
    formed a special and very secret alliance. I sensed her longing to rid
    herself of the burden she had been carrying all these years -- to open
    the curtains that hid her secret, to tell this story she had never
    shared with a soul -- but I think she also knew that, having gone
    through life knowing none of it, I would find it deeply upsetting. She
    was protecting me.'

    Despite the controversial subject, this book has so far been reprinted
    seven times in Turkish. It has been written, and must be read, in a
    spirit of reconciliation so that, in the words of
    Seher/HaganuÅ?, `these days may vanish, never to return.'


    `My Grandmother: A Memoir,' by Fethiye Ã?etin, published by
    Verso, 12.99 pounds in hardback, ISBN: 978-18446719-4



    02 August 2009, Sunday
    MARION JAMES Ä°STANBUL

    http://www.sundayszaman.com/s unday/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=182720
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