Ahmet Tanpinar - A Mind at Peace

“İhsan’s influence on me is immense. He’s my true mentor. Thanks to him, I was spared such unnecessary intellectual exhaustion. İhsan’s greatest virtue is that he points out shortcuts.”

Nuran’s desire to meet İhsan grew in proportion to Mümtaz’s stories.

“In that case, let’s go pay them a visit, or invite them to Emirgân. I want you to meet them anyhow. Truth be told, we’re a little late as is. I refer to him as my older brother, but I consider him a surrogate father.”

Nuran thought it over, then came to a decision, “Forget about it. It’s annoying to be introduced as a fiancée at my age. In any case, we’ll meet each other sometime and I’m sure I’ll like him and Macide as well.”

They returned to the topic of the sites they’d visited that day. They’d wandered through the Cerrahpaşa neighborhood. Nuran was stunned by abandoned medrese s, those dens of the destitute, weeds flourishing in their courtyards, roofs collapsed, by the ruins of the Tabhane district, and the gemstone design of the Hekimoǧlu Ali Pasha Mosque.

On this August day, these areas of Istanbul were worn down by filth, dust, and heat. The piquancy of ruins, the fatigue augmented by heat, an array of sick and exhausted faces and the physiological collapse overwhelmed them. The city’s inhabitants bore an uncanny resemblance to the city itself. Tired glances or bodies complemented houses squeezed into an area of four or five square yards, their boards bruised purple, their terra-cotta shingles broken, and their corpuses listing alee; had Mümtaz and Nuran not recognized this as the city of their birth, they might have taken it for a motion-picture set.

Like the private automobiles and luxury cars brushing and bumping the throngs on the street, occasionally an old white-and-sesame-hued manse appeared like an astonishing remnant of bygone wealth or of the luxury of life’s bloom beside dilapidated, semicollapsed houses gnawed by neglect down to the window-box geraniums. Most houses were unpainted. From open, bare windows poked heads of desolation incongruent with these relics of the past.

Adjacent to them were twenty-year-old brick houses of indistinct architectural style, exceedingly tall or squat, that could never be part of any archetypal pattern, neither one matching the next, backs turned insolently to the aesthetic character of the neighborhood, their walls painted with blue-hued lime-wash.

Among the disarray of this poverty and filth, among the crippled and tired men and women who clogged the street, clothes in tatters, unkempt or having darted out without the luxury of a moment to comb their hair, in an unexpected place, its gilded stones cracked, sparkled a fountain of time past like a vamp who overcame her disheveled dress with her gaze, her figure, or through the intensity of her persona, a seductress who gave others no option but to focus on her face; farther ahead, a tomb with a collapsed dome maintained its integrity through an orderly and dignified façade; later still, a medrese appeared, a melee of children’s voices emanating from within, its white marble columns toppled over, a fig or cypress tree sprouting from its roof; and naturally, an as-yet standing mosque with a broad courtyard welcomed passersby to go beyond the bounties of this world.

By the time they’d arrived in Koca Mustafa Pasha, they were exhausted. First they sat at the coffeehouse before the mosque, drinking tea. Next they paid a visit to the nearby sixteenth-century saint’s mausoleum. Nuran quite adored the protective railing that had been placed around the dead chinar, the story of the tree, whose circumference was etched in Yesarî script, as well as the history of the site.

To Nuran, Sümbül Sinan still sat under the shade of this chinar. The care shown in the maintenance of the desiccated tree gave this garden of death the profundity of a masterpiece.

Along with this, the mausoleum, devoid of architectural style, housed a body that had influenced life from where it lay for four centuries. Supplicants placed hands onto walls and railings and offered their prayers. The saint cured the sick, opened doors of hope for the disconsolate, pointed out sources of light transcending death to unfortunates whose world had collapsed, and taught patience, renunciation, and perseverance.

“What kind of man was he?”

“All of these saints believed in spiritual causes, went through a degree of spiritual training, and learned to supress worldly desires. Therefore, they were exalted after their deaths. Sümbül Sinan is a little different from the rest. To begin with, he was a noteworthy scholar. Not to mention that he had a sense of humor and a sharp tongue.”

Mümtaz paused for a moment and added with a chuckle, “Each of them has a few distinguishing characteristics. D’you have any idea how the man resting here got the nickname ‘Sümbül’? He used to place blossoming geraniums in his turban. He was so in tune with our own sensibilities that he adored the Istanbul seasons.”

“What about his contemporary Merkez Efendi? What was he like?”

“He was of a completely different nature. He wouldn’t harm even the vilest of creatures. Despite having a great affection for cats, he wouldn’t keep them in his house because they pestered our friends the mice. Could you imagine that a sultanate of the soul could be so easily established?”

Nuran thought and said, “I wonder if such men exist today?”

“They must exist, considering that neither the notion of salvation nor the door to sainthood has come to an end… The paths to Allah are always open.”

Nuran stared at her companion as if she’d glimpsed one of his hidden faces. She’d expected to hear a modicum of derision, even disparagement or denigration. Meanwhile, Mümtaz had expressed himself in rather unanticipated terms.

Mümtaz felt the urge to explain himself: “I wouldn’t say that I’m exactly religious. At this moment I’m certainly quite bound to the world. But neither would I intervene between Allah and his subjects, nor would I question the greatness and potential of the human soul. Not to mention that both constitute the roots of a national life. Just consider how many days we’ve spent in Istanbul and Üsküdar. You were born in Süleymaniye and I in a small neighborhood between Aksaray and Şehzade. We’re both familiar with the inhabitants there and the conditions under which they live. They’re all orphans of a civilizational collapse. Before preparing the formula for a New Life for these unfortunates, what good does it do to destroy previous forms that have provided them with the strength to persevere? Great revolutions have long experimented with this, and they’ve served no purpose besides leaving the masses naked and exposed. Not to mention that everywhere, even in societies of extreme wealth and comfort, existence contains myriad relics and is full of interruptions and half-formed lives. Sümbül Sinan and others like him are mainstays for these fragmented people. Just take a look at this elderly lady.”

Nearly doubled over, she approached from one end of the road, leaning upon something between a crutch and cane, and neared the mausoleum with timid, feeble steps. She prayed, her toothless mouth mumbling; with her hands she clung to the railing and remained motionless. From the mosque front, Mümtaz and Nuran watched her every move. How meager her dress… everything she wore was in tatters.

“Who knows what afflicts her? As we speak, Sümbül Sinan is whispering in her soul and promising her immeasurable consolation. And if he can’t provide anything else, at least he can embellish visions of the afterlife. All else aside, don’t you think this human suffering, this search for refuge and despair, is enough to sanctify this place?”