Constantinople's Cherry

II - 10. Café Kundera

Octobre 1945, Istanbul.

"She was worried for your father kizim, you need to understand that a lot of us didn't knew the amplitutude of what was done to your people then, we still don't know." Melek explained.

"She was worried for my father ? A summer fling ? Who do you think she'd have more loyality toward ? Some boy she met and passed time with for a few weeks or her own people, and literally her own party of years ? I can't believe this, Eda Yıldız, literally a CUP membre." Kiraz shut her eyes.

"Most of the intellectual youth in Constantinople then, was. Look, I was your mother's maid, not her high school friend, not her University friend. Maybe, you'll get more information from her University friends ? They'll know better, in what she was involved, her ideas, what she did." Melek looked for a truce, trying to calm down Kiraz and helped her as much as she could.

Kiraz rolled her eyes. "So she went to University ?"

"She joined the Istanbul University in 1916, evet." Melek pointed.

Anger filled Kiraz even more. So while Armenians were going through the worst of the genocide, while her father lost everything, while so many attrocities were being committed, privileged Eda Yıldız was just enjoying University life ?

It felt so unfair and cruel, even Kiraz herself couldn't go to University during World War Two. And now, as she should have joined back, she was going after ghosts of her parents in a foreign far away country, a country where her people had been massacred.

And while this massacre occured, during World War One, Eda Yıldız spent it in peace, just going to University. "What a privileged bitch." Kiraz muttered out of spite under her breath.

"What ?" Melek asked.

"What does me going to meet her University friends will bring me ? I want to know what she did to my father and what happened to him, I have no care in the world for her filthy rich and genocide partaking self." Kiraz fumed.

Melek closed her eyes and sighed. "It will give you more information, I don't know, you don't believe me when I tell you she wouldn't hate your people or be so cruel, that she loved your father. Why do you have so much hate and judgement towards your own mother ?"

"I can't believe you're still asking me this. Because she was Turk! And she abandonned me!" Kiraz snapped pain in her eyes.

"Do you know how hard it is for a mother to split herself from her child ? Bless my daughters, I would be heartbroken if I had to lose them. She gave her infant away, there has to be a reason.." Melek's eyes filled, one certitude she had knowing Eda was that she must have loved this young and beautiful girl as her baby so much.

And Melek's heart hurt, from how much she knew her, Eda Yıldız must have cried a lot when splitting from her baby, and here, her daughter was thinking such things ?

"That reason was that her hate for my people was so big, that it even overshadowed something as strong as motherly attachement. Can you imagine that ? How awful of a person she must have been." Kiraz breathed.

"Then go find out, face it. That's what you are here for, aren't you. Find our and have real awnsers, not speculations. Then you can fully condemn your mother and even insult her, I wouldn't blame you." Melek's voice shifted to a harshness a bit, this girl was so stubborn, she needed it.

"Right." Kiraz closed her eyes as Melek grabbed a piece of paper and wrote something down.

"This is the address of a café in one of our Bazar, it's not too far from the University. I often found bills in your mother's things. It was sort of her third place, and I always suspected there was more to it than she let it on. It seems to me like a militant headquarter from my visits afterwards. Go find out. If she was CUP, and if she did things, those people will know and remember." Melek gave her the piece of paper.