the osmanli prince on the upper east side
Dear S. sends me a link with the words "surely this would amuse you," and it surely does: Osman Ertuğrul, the current heir to the Osmanlı, or Ottoman, dynasty (Abdulhamid II's grandson!) lives with his wife Zeynep (niece of the last king of Afghanistan) in a two-bedroom walkup on Lexington in the 70's, a few blocks from the building where I teach a several times a week. He's lived there since the 1940s, having come to New York after spending the first decades of his exile in Vienna, where he was in school when Mustafa Kemal proclaimed the Republic in October 1923. The NYT reporteth:
(This week has been full of İstanbul-in-NY moments, provoking nostalgia and delight: the discovery, a last, of a neighborhood of immigrant grocers in southeastern Brooklyn; twice, visits to the Tea Lounge on Union St--my preferred workspace these days--in which good and trashy Turkpop was playing on the speakers for an hour or more; and last night, during an intoxicated walk to the subway in SoHo, two drunken men arguing in Turkish outside a skeezy-looking late-night doner kebab joint called Bereket--the whole tableau could have been imported en masse from a street in Taksim.)
The best part, though, is the paragraph that tells how for many years, he travelled the globe on a homemade passport, "because he claimed to be a citizen of the Ottoman Empire, and the Ottoman Empire did not exist, he refused the passport of any nation." And managed to get away with it (and a special US-issued permit of some sort) before finally accepting Turkish citizenship in 2004. I'm transfixed by the idea of this lonely Ottoman passport, a stubborn little time-warp of a document.
His first trip back to Turkey was 53 years later, in August 1992, at the invitation of the prime minister.
Of course, he wanted to see Dolmabahce Palace. Eschewing the red-carpet treatment, he insisted on joining a tour group, despite the summer heat. "I didn't want a fuss," he said. "I'm not that kind of person."
Still, even he was ruffled when a guard told him he couldn't step up off a plastic mat onto the parquet floors, which he had played on as a child.
(This week has been full of İstanbul-in-NY moments, provoking nostalgia and delight: the discovery, a last, of a neighborhood of immigrant grocers in southeastern Brooklyn; twice, visits to the Tea Lounge on Union St--my preferred workspace these days--in which good and trashy Turkpop was playing on the speakers for an hour or more; and last night, during an intoxicated walk to the subway in SoHo, two drunken men arguing in Turkish outside a skeezy-looking late-night doner kebab joint called Bereket--the whole tableau could have been imported en masse from a street in Taksim.)
posted by kitabet at 9:26 AM
6 Comments:
Dear S. was both charmed by this piece, as well as appalled (read: very very jealous) that almost-royalty can live on the UES in the 70s for a mere 300 dollars a month ... why do the (already) rich get all the breaks?
This was fascinating - I loved the idea of that lonely passport too.
dear S, erm..how much rent do you pay for your room with view in valuation band G house?
dear thariel, do you think the osmanli prince has to stumble onto his skylight-gazing, sprawled on the stairs, housemate early in the morning? ... [now that we are washing our dirty linen in public :) ] ... hey you, good morning, my cockalu (umm, shouldn't misspell that endlessly amusing term of endearment0
that would be cucuklarem, i think, (insert appropriate pronunciation marks, which is the thing we *havnt* got. i suspect once we have, it will lose much of its hilarity). and it's plural for...dear E would you please devote your next post to this term?
you two are both very silly and dirty-minded people, and i love you both very much.
Post a Comment
<< Home