My Grandmother by Fethiye Cetin

Author:Fethiye Cetin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781844679256
Publisher: Verso Books
Published: 2013-04-16T16:00:00+00:00

10 An industrial town on the north coast of the Sea of Marmara.

After suffering a massive heart attack, but, with the help of excellent care, coming through it, my grandfather exceeded expectations by agreeing to changes in his diet. On one winter day, however, his heart failed and he died. After my grandfather’s death, and at the insistence of her children and grandchildren, my grandmother gave up her house and distributed her belongings. From this time on, she would divide her time amongst her children, going from house to house until her last days in Gebze. The only grandchild whose house she would stay in was Handan; she said she was very comfortable there, and whenever she made the trip from Elaziğ to Edremit to Istanbul, she would stop off at Handan’s house in Ankara, where she would prolong her stay as long as possible.

Handan had married at a very young age and devoted herself to being a housewife. I was sent to teacher training college, this being the easiest way to make a start in life so that I could begin to look after my family. I applied to schools in Ankara so that Haluk could continue at the university there, which was, as my mother put it, ‘just in front of the house’. And so we came to live in Ankara. Until Haluk finished his studies, I took on extra work outside teaching hours. The year Haluk graduated, I took the university examination and won a place in the law faculty. When she heard that I had been accepted, my grandmother was very pleased. Once again I was in her good books. Though my political ideas and my adversarial stance against the system caused her worry, deep down she supported me and this, I think, increased her confidence in me.

Lately my grandmother’s eyes had been bothering her; her sight was failing. Despite an operation and the glasses the doctors had given her – whose lenses were as thick as the bottom of a bottle – her eyesight was getting worse by the day.

It was such bad luck for a woman as tidy, industrious, quick-witted, and energetic as my grandmother to lose her eyesight. Thank God, the houses in which she stayed all met her standards of cleanliness. If she wore her thick glasses, she could just about find her way to the bathroom and the bedroom. ‘My eyes have lost their lustre’ was how my grandmother described it.

Every time we met, I would take her hand in mine, kiss it and say, ‘Grandmother.’ She would reply, ‘Grandmother,’ and then she would say my name and ask, ‘Is it you?’ Then, holding both my hands very tight, she would ask an endless string of questions. She’d never pass over a single detail and never forgot a thing; she wanted to know about everything. During these conversations of ours, she never once let go of my hands.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.