Devlet Baba

Devlet Baba means "daddy state," or "welfare state" in Turkish. It denotes a parternalistic society, where children are encouraged to be dependent on their parents.

Konya was twenty-five years old and still living at home, but she didn't mind because her father paid her credit card bills and paid the installments on the loan for the car that she had bought two years before. But she was helping out too: her salary from her full-time job as an accountant at a department store on Istaklal Boulevard in Istanbul helped pay the bills.

Konya's parents believed that they were protecting their daughter's virtue by allowing her to stay with them, but they didn't know that she was sleeping with her boyfriend. They also didn't know that she had slept with her boyfriends since she had graduated from secondary school, and that all of her friends did it.

Konya and her family were Muslims, but the Turks have lived under secularism for nearly a century, since Kemal Atatürk. What's more, Turks consider themselves to be Europeans, not Asians. They consider the Arabs to be a race of barbarians.

One day, during the summer, Konya told her family that she was going to a resort on the Black Sea with some friends. She was gone for eight days. She came back tanned and looking happy. Her mother noticed that there were no tan lines on her body.

Then, about a week later, her mother found some photos in the top drawer of her dresser while putting away some clothes. In one of them, Konya was posing in a photo booth with a young man who had his arm around her shoulders; they were both smiling brightly.

The rest of the photos verified that were taken while Konya was on vacation on the Black Sea, supposedly with some friends. She had photos of the Black Sea at sunrise, and the sandy beaches.

When Konya's father saw the photo with the young man, he few into a rage— at his daughter's deception, at the fact that she was obviously sleeping with a man.

When her parents confronted her with the evidence, she didn't try to deny it. She apologized, but her father slapped her in the face— the only time that he had ever struck Konya.

When Konya told her boyfriend, Mehmet, what had happened, he did the only honourable thing he could do: he approached Konya's father and asked for his daughter's hand in marriage.


Devlet baba signifie « l'état de papa » ou « l'état de providence » en turc. Ces mots dénotent la société patérnaliste où on encourage un état de dépendance d'enfants sur leurs parents.

Konya avait vingt-cinq ans, restant chez ses parents encore, mais elle n'avait pas d'objections parce que son père payait les notes de sa carte credit et payait les versements mensuels de l'emprunte pour la voiture qu'elle eut achetée il y a deux ans. Mais elle donnait un coup de main aussi : la salaire de son ouvrage à plein temps comme une comptable d'un magasin dans le boulevard Istaklal à Istanbul aidait payer les notes.

Les parents de Konya se croyaient à défendre la vertu de leur fille en la permettant à rester chez eux, mais ils n'avaient pas connaissance d'elle coucher avec son petit ami. Aussi, ils n'avaient pas connaissance d'elle avoir couché avec ses petits amis après qu'elle eut reçu son diplôme de lycée. Ils n'avait pas connaissance de toutes ses amies l'avoir fait.

Konya et sa famille étaient musulmanes, mais les Turcs sont vécu sous le laïcisme depuis presque un siècle, depuis Kemal Atatürk. En plus, les Turcs se considèrent à être Européens, pas Asiens. Ils considèrent les Arabes à être une race barbare.

Un jour, pendant l'été, Konya dit à sa famille d'elle aller en vacanses à un lieu de villégiature sur la mer Noir avec quelques amies. Elle y était huit jours. Elle revint bronzée, semblant être contente. Sa mère remarqua qu'il n'y avait pas de lignes de bronzage sur son corps.

Alors, environ une semaine plus tard, sa mère trouva quelques photos en mettant des vêtiments dans le tiroir en haut de sa commode-coiffeuse. Dans l'une d'elles, Konya posait dans un photomaton® avec un jeune homme, qui avait un bras autour de son épaule. Tous les deux souriaent largement.

Le reste des photos vérifièrent qu'elles furent prises pendant que Konya était en vacanses sur la mer Noire, elle, censée d'être avec quelques amies.

En voyant la photo du jeune homme, le père de Konya entra dans une colère noire — à cause de la duplicité de sa fille, à cause du fait d'elle coucher avec un homme évidamment.

Quand ses parents l'affrontèrent avec l'évidence, elle ne tenta pas de mentir. Elle demanda pardons, mais son père la gifla, la seule fois qu'il eut jamais coupé Konya.

Quand Konya dit à son petit ami de ce qui fut passé, il fît la seule chose honorable qu'il pouvait faire : il approcha le père de Konya pour faire une demande en mariage avec sa fille.

Trouble in Paradise

Elisabeth was from Canada, twenty-two years old. She was the girlfriend of a businessman, also from Canada, who was building condominiums in Kingston, Jamaica, and she was just gorgeous. And she had a very sexy, come-on voice.

Her boyfriend's foreman was a Jamaican named Rodney, who was much older than her, over fifty. But there was something about this man: he was nice and charming, and he knew how to treat a woman.

At first, Rodney was her confidant, but then he became her friend. Then, one night while her boyfriend worked late, they went out for a night on the town. They got drunk and ended up in a hotel room together.

Rodney felt bad about it, because he had a woman and several children with her, and Elisabeth was his boss's girlfriend. Though Elisabeth had flirted with him, he had never taken her flirtations very seriously; she was much younger than he was, and her boyfriend was a rich man.

However, he wanted her very much, because she was beautiful, and it was obvious that she wanted him. Therefore, they had a series of liaisons over a six-week period. They couldn't wait to see each other.

Rodney was even aware of her past: Elisabeth had confessed that she was a topless dancer— something she hadn't told her boyfriend. "I've done it all," she said, while drunk. "I've even had sex with other women."

However, he didn't care about her past, because he was in love with her. If he wasn't so much older than her, if he didn't have a woman and children, and she wasn't the mistress of a rich man, he would have run of with her, if that was what she wanted.

But that was what she wanted. After six weeks, she wanted to run off with him. It could have been anywhere, for all she cared. It could have been the Sahara Desert.

"But where would we live, miss?" he asked.

"I don't care. I only want to be with you."

"But we are of different races. I'm black and you're white."

"I don't care. I would love you even if you were green."

The truth was that Elisabeth wasn't really white; she was créole, a mélange of several races: white, black, and even Native-American. Elisabeth only looked white to Rodney in comparison to the other Jamaican women, but part of her mother's family was from New Orleans.

"And we will be poor," he pointed out. "I have nothing to offer but my soul."

"I don't care," she said again. "All I want is your beautiful soul."

In the end, Rodney was so in love with Elisabeth that he was willing to leave his woman and their children and run off with her anywhere. It could have been the Sahara Desert, for all he cared.

It could be, he was charmed by the way she repeated "I love you" over and again as they made love. Nobody had done that with him before, and he was sure that nobody would ever do that again, at his age.

So they ran off together and they lived in a miserable little shanty in a miserable little shantytown near Kingston, despite his misgivings.

The truth was that they weren't thinking very rationally. It was difficult. During the hurricane season, the roof usually had a leak, and Elisabeth had to fix it, though Rodney was a carpenter. Elisabeth had to learn to cook over a fire without gas or electricity, and she had to drag water over a long distance from a pump to wash clothes. What's more, she had to slaughter chickens, and a neighbour had to show her how to do it.

Sometimes, she even had to call her parents in Canada and ask for money— that was the worst part of it. She always had to call collect from a pay phone.

They had several children together, some of whom died early in childhood. By the time she was thirty-five, she was large, with enormous breasts that hung down over her belly, like the other women of the shantytown. What's more, she dressed like a woman of the shantytown, with a long skirt and a turban on her head, and you'd have never thought, from a distance of a hundred yards, that she was white.

However, that only made Rodney want her more, though he remembered her in a bikini from when she was young. He didn't care about her size, because nearly all the women in his life had ended up plus-sized anyway.

Of course, they quarrelled— she even threatened him with a knife a few times. His friends said that he should beat her just to show who was boss, but Rodney didn't believe in hitting a woman. He had hit his first woman several times, usually when he was drunk, but he was resolved never to repeat that mistake with Elisabeth, no matter how much his friends might have thought that she deserved it.

In their poverty, only two things kept Elisabeth going: love and religion. What kept Rodney going was sex and the herb that made Jamaica famous.

When they made love at night, after the children were supposed to be asleep, she still cried out, over and over again, "I love you!"

That was because she meant it, at least at the time. But love wasn't always enough: she started going to church and got baptized. However, she never doubted that she would be in heaven with Rodney after they died, because she believed that he was a deeply spiritual man, despite all his faults. He had a beautiful soul, she thought.

The preacher thought that she had a beautiful body. He liked her body (as well as the bodies of about eleven other middle-aged women in his congregation), but Elisabeth could say with confidence that Rodney was the father of all of her children.

Then, when he was about seventy years old, Rodney died after a brief illness. When her mother pleaded with her to come back to Canada, Elisabeth reluctantly returned to Canada, tired, with her six children in tow.

However, her parents didn't know what to make of her when she arrived at Pearson International Airport with six grandchildren that they had never seen before.

Their daughter wasn't the same. Their baby was no longer young.