A Mind at Peace, by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar, translated from the ...

Today, Tanpınar is considered to be an icon of Turkish letters and is an influence on many contemporary
Turkish novelists, foremost among them Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk – whose novel My Name Is Red
(2001, Knopf) I also rendered into English.—Erdag Göknar
In addition to A Mind at Peace Erdag Göknar has written two other book-length literary translations: Orhan
Pamuk's My Name Is Red (Knopf, 2001), winner of the 2003 Dublin IMPAC Award) and Atiq Rahimi's Earth and
Ashes (Harcourt, 2003), shortlisted for the same award in 2004. He is a professor of Turkish at Duke University
and spends his time between Durham and Istanbul.
Ihsan
(City of Two Continents, August 1939)
Mümtaz hadn’t ventured a proper walk since his cousin Ihsan, an older brother to him, had succumbed to
illness. Except for summoning the doctor, taking prescriptions to the pharmacist, and making calls from
the neighbor’s house, he’d whiled away the measure of the week at his cousin’s sickbed or in his room
perusing books, thinking, or attempting to console his niece and nephew. Ihsan had complained of
backache, fever, and fatigue for two days before pneumonia heralded its onset, sudden and sublime,
establishing a sultanate over the household–-a Psychology of Ruin through fear, dread, woe, and endless
goodwill never absent from lips or glances.
The entire household slept and woke with the remorse of Ihsan’s affliction.
Mümtaz again rose to rue from sleep that train whistles bled with separate anxieties altogether. The hour
approached nine. He sat at the edge of his bed, preoccupied. A host of errands awaited him. The doctor
had said he’d arrive at ten o’clock, but Mümtaz wasn’t obliged to wait. His first order of business was to
hire a nurse. Given that neither Ihsan’s wife, Macide, nor his mother, Sabire, ever stepped away from the
sickbed, the children languished in ruin.
The elderly servant could easily handle Ahmet, but someone had to fully occupy his little sister, Sabiha.
More than anything, she needed someone to talk to. As Mümtaz mused, he smiled inwardly at the various
postures of his small niece. His affections for young Sabiha had taken on new proportions since he’d
returned to stay at the house: Is it a matter of habit alone? he mulled. Do we always happen to love those
in our midst?
To escape this line of thought, he returned to the quandary of the nurse.
Macide’s health wasn’t all too stable. What’s more, he was astonished she could withstand such stress.
Excessive worry or exhaustion would again reduce her to a shadow of herself. He had to get hold of a
nurse, yes. And in the afternoon he had to face that bother of a tenant.
As he dressed, he repeated to himself, “Man, this scrap of a reed.”
Mümtaz, who’d been quite isolated during a formative period of his childhood, liked to talk to himself: “And
that entirely separate thing called life.” Then his mind turned back to little Sabiha. The thought that he
loved his niece solely because he’d moved back into the house beset him. In truth he’d been bound to her
from the very first.
Considering the circumstances of her birth, he was grateful even. Few children could so quickly fill a
house with such ease and elation.
Trying to engage a nurse for three days now, Mümtaz had collected a handful of addresses and made
countless phone calls. But in this land, one’s aim simply receded into the distance. Doubtless, the East
was the place to sit and wait. With a modicum of patience everything arrived at one’s feet. Six months
after Ihsan regained his health, for instance, a couple of nurses were certain to call seeking work. When
one was genuinely needed, however... This, then, was how the ordeal of the nurse went. As for that
tenant...
The tenant boded trouble of another sort. Since he’d let the small shop from Ihsan’s mother, he’d been
dissatisfied and complained, but for a spell of, say, a dozen years, he hadn’t once considered moving,