Beyond Constantinople by Victor Eskenazi

Author:Victor Eskenazi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Constantinople / Istanbul / Ottoman Empire / Sephardic Jews / twentieth-century history
ISBN: 9780857729255
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2019-11-21T16:00:00+00:00

8Raki: a clear alcoholic beverage distilled from a variety of fruits or grains, usually flavoured with herbs and spices, especially aniseed.

9Lokum: Turkish delight.

10Mastic: a kind of odoriferous tree (resin) gum.

11Cuore (Heart) was published in Italy in 1886. A partial French translation, Grands coeurs, by Adrienne Piazzi, appeared in 1892.

12Uscita: way out.

Chapter Four

We were very silent, my mother, my wife Laure and I, on the train which was taking us away from our home, our friends and the country where we had married and lived happily for so many years. We were conscious of facing the unknown, the throes of a war that seemed more inevitable every day and the anguish of separation when I would have to join the army. I was also very worried about our limited financial resources, which would not have kept my mother and my wife for that long through a prolonged period of war, cut off as we were from the major part of our assets, which we had had to leave behind in Italy.

When we arrived in London we were lucky to find accommodation in a small boarding house on Cromwell Road, which had been recommended to us by some friends. The boarding house, like most buildings in that neighbourhood, had two storeys, a ground floor and a basement that was accessible from the street down a short flight of stone stairs that led into a narrow area. The basement had high windows that let in much of the daylight and a frosted glass-panelled door. Tradesmen used that door to deliver their goods and an array of milk bottles could be seen in front of it in the morning. The main door was three steps up from the pavement, under a portico flanked by two columns. The boarding house owner was a Tuscan by origin who had been brought to England as a child. He now added the good-natured, easy ways of his Italian background to his formal English manners.

Our bedrooms, at the back of the house, looked over a small garden, which bordered on a large wooded expanse belonging to an imposing, elegant villa whose front was on the wide road parallel to ours. In the morning we could hear the birds twittering on our window sill and watch the top of the large trees gleaming in the sunlight.

A school friend of mine, Basil Constantinidis, with whom I had kept in touch over the years, lived in London with his wife Eileen. They were our closest link with our new surroundings and we usually spent weekends with them. I went to work every day in my friend’s office. He imported tinned goods for local consumption: tomatoes, sardines, vegetables and fruit. I was impressed by the enormous quantities of tinned foods that were needed in England. My particular assignment was to canvass shopkeepers and trade wholesalers on the outskirts of the city and in the neighbouring suburbs. I was completely worn out and mortified on going back home in the evening. I was deeply

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