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Our home was on the main street in Ortakoy, on the corner of a little street that went to the pier. It overlooked both the main street and the sea. It was a 3-storey house. We lived on the first floor. Somebody else lived above us. We rented our flat. However, we used to find the people who were to rent the upper floor. The owner of the house, who was Jewish, would never rent his house to people we did not approve of. We had another room on the top floor.
There did not use to be any bathrooms then. Just toilets, and the toilets were “a la turca” [a hole on the floor with two stones on each side to put your feet on and squat] and not “a la franga” [European style].
We had normal types of furniture. Actually, if we still had them today, they would be considered as having antique value. I remember a console with a mirror that was covered with colored stones. It was very beautiful. We also had a big, beautiful tile stove in our living room.
As far as I remember, electricity came to Ortakoy when I was still quite young, I don’t remember exactly when . And when they did give electricity to Ortakoy, not everyone had it. There was a shop on the ground floor of our apartment building and we drew an electrical line from the shop to our house. However, I do remember the days when we we used big gas lamps for lighting. We did have running water in our home. There was also a “hamam” [Turkish bath] nearby. My mother used to take me but I didn’t like it. I used to cry.
We used big, round “mangal”s [brazier] for heating and also of course stoves to burn wood in. We had two sorts of braziers; one made of copper and the other of sheet iron. We had stoves in 2 of the bedrooms and in the living room, and we had a brazier in the living room. There were 3 rooms downstairs and another room on the top floor. On Shabat [Sabbath] of course, we never lit the stoves or the brazier. Somebody would come to light them for us. He was Turkish of course, couldn’t be Jewish. He used to make the rounds of all the houses. He came round once or twice in the day to check the stoves. That was his job.
We did not have a garden but we had a cat and once we had a dog, too. A very small one. My mother used to look after it, gave it baths etc... My mother was very serious about cleanliness and she took special care of the cleanliness of the dog, so nothing would happen to us. I remember taking him out in the inside pocket of my coat. The cat was always there. I also liked birds but my mother always let them free because she believed it was a sin to keep a bird in a cage. “It flew away, it flew away” she would say. She never wanted us to keep birds.
There were a lot of books in our house. I used to read a lot. Actually everyone in our home read a lot. When I went to “Kapalı Carsı” [the closed bazaar in Eminönü] for shopping, I used to go to the second-hand book sellers and buy 8-10 books at a time. I used to read books by Michel Zevaco, and others like “Les Pardaillans” [by Alexandre Dumas]. I liked detective novels. We used to read a lot even in bed. When we went to bed at night, we used to read under the quilt with a torch. We also read newspapers of course. There was the “Journal d’Orient” and also a Jewish newspaper in Ladino that appeared once a week “El Jugueton”, which we always had in our house.
There did not use to be any bathrooms then. Just toilets, and the toilets were “a la turca” [a hole on the floor with two stones on each side to put your feet on and squat] and not “a la franga” [European style].
We had normal types of furniture. Actually, if we still had them today, they would be considered as having antique value. I remember a console with a mirror that was covered with colored stones. It was very beautiful. We also had a big, beautiful tile stove in our living room.
As far as I remember, electricity came to Ortakoy when I was still quite young, I don’t remember exactly when . And when they did give electricity to Ortakoy, not everyone had it. There was a shop on the ground floor of our apartment building and we drew an electrical line from the shop to our house. However, I do remember the days when we we used big gas lamps for lighting. We did have running water in our home. There was also a “hamam” [Turkish bath] nearby. My mother used to take me but I didn’t like it. I used to cry.
We used big, round “mangal”s [brazier] for heating and also of course stoves to burn wood in. We had two sorts of braziers; one made of copper and the other of sheet iron. We had stoves in 2 of the bedrooms and in the living room, and we had a brazier in the living room. There were 3 rooms downstairs and another room on the top floor. On Shabat [Sabbath] of course, we never lit the stoves or the brazier. Somebody would come to light them for us. He was Turkish of course, couldn’t be Jewish. He used to make the rounds of all the houses. He came round once or twice in the day to check the stoves. That was his job.
We did not have a garden but we had a cat and once we had a dog, too. A very small one. My mother used to look after it, gave it baths etc... My mother was very serious about cleanliness and she took special care of the cleanliness of the dog, so nothing would happen to us. I remember taking him out in the inside pocket of my coat. The cat was always there. I also liked birds but my mother always let them free because she believed it was a sin to keep a bird in a cage. “It flew away, it flew away” she would say. She never wanted us to keep birds.
There were a lot of books in our house. I used to read a lot. Actually everyone in our home read a lot. When I went to “Kapalı Carsı” [the closed bazaar in Eminönü] for shopping, I used to go to the second-hand book sellers and buy 8-10 books at a time. I used to read books by Michel Zevaco, and others like “Les Pardaillans” [by Alexandre Dumas]. I liked detective novels. We used to read a lot even in bed. When we went to bed at night, we used to read under the quilt with a torch. We also read newspapers of course. There was the “Journal d’Orient” and also a Jewish newspaper in Ladino that appeared once a week “El Jugueton”, which we always had in our house.
Location
Besiktas/İstanbul
Türkiye
Interview
Izak Sarhon