Two-The Photographs in the Dark Museum House(4)

  My prolonged study of these photographs led me to appreciate the importance of preserving certain moments for posterity, and in time I also came to see what a powerful influence these framed scenes exerted over us as we went about our daily lives. To watch my uncle pose my brother a math problem, and at the same time to see him in a picture taken thirty-two years earlier; to watch my father scanning the newspaper and trying, with a half smile, to catch the tail of a joke rippling across the crowded room, and at the very same moment to see a picture of him at five years old--my age--with hair as long as a girl's, it seemed plain to me that my grandmother had framed and frozen these memories so we could weave them into the present. When, in the tones ordinally  reserved for discussing the founding of a nation, my grandmother spoke of my grandfather, who had died so young, and pointed at the frames on the tavles and the walls, it seemed that she--like me--was pulled in two directions, wanting to get on with life but also longing to capture the moment of perfection, savoring the ordinary but still honoring the ideal. But even as I pondered these dilemmas--if you pluck a special moment from life and frame it, are you defying death, decay, and the passage of time or are you submitting to it?--I grew very bored with them.

  In time I would come to dread those long festive lunches, those endlessevening celebrations, those New Year's feast when the whole family would linger after the meal to play lotto; every year, I would swear it was the last time I'd go, but somehow I never managed to break the habit. When I was little, though, I loved these meals. As I watched the jokes travel around the crowded table, my uncles laughing (under the influence of vodka or raki) and my grandmother smiling (under the influence of the tiny glass of beer she allowed herself), I could not help but notice how much more fun life was outsid e the picture frame. I felt the security of belonging to a large and happy family and could bask in the illusion that we were put on earth to take pleasure in it. Not that I was unaware that these relatives were also merciless and unforgiving in quarrels over money and property. By ourselves, in the privacy of pur own apartment, my mother was always complaining to my brother and me about the cruelties of "your aunt," "your uncle," "your grandmother." In the event of a disagreement over who owned what, or how to divide the shares of the rope factory, or who would live on which floor of the apartment house, the only certainty was that there would never be a resolution. These rifts may have faded for holiday meals, but from an early age I knew that behind the gaiety there was a mounting pile of unsettled scores and a sea of recriminations.

  Each branch of our large family had its own maid, and each maid considered it her duty to take sides in the wars. Esma Hanim, who worked for my mother, would pay a visit to Ikbal, who worked for my aunt. Later, at breakfast, my mother would say, "Did you hear what Aydin's saying?"

  My father would be curious to know, but when the story was over he'd say only, "For God's sake, just stop worrying about it," and return to his newspaper.