Tag #127360 - Interview #98039 (Izak Sarhon)

One more thing I remember from the time of my parents is that during the war [WWI],  Istanbul was under siege, there were a lot of English and French soldiers in Ortaköy.  We used to sit in the dark in our homes at night so nobody would see us, because these soldiers would get drunk and start shooting at random, not to kill, but just for the hell of it; we were frightened some accident would happen so we just sat in the dark.

The French soldiers stayed in a place they called “Petit Paris” [little Paris].  There was a slope, called “Portakal Pasha”, that went up beside the stream with an empty lot.  That’s where the French soldiers had their camp.  There were also soldiers from Algeria there.

These soldiers used to treat us well because we spoke French.  But we still closed up our curtains at night.  There were a lot of drunken soldiers.  There was a nightclub opposite our house, where the English soldiers gathered at night.  We even had a relative of ours who had come here from England as a soldier.  (My grandfather, used to do business with England.  He was probably doing business with relatives of ours, who at one time or other had emigrated to England.) As he played the piano, he would play and sing at this night club and entertain all these English soldiers.  As to the French soldiers, we used to visit them in the summer and sing songs together.