My father

Follow

My father was born in Constantinople on the 22nd of February 1881 .

He also was born on the 22nd of February 1877, and on the 22nd of February 1869 .

It all depended on the war that was going on , either against the  English or the Kurds or the Greek or the Armenians or just so. He was always less than 18 year old or more than 35 year old , so that he did not have to join the Turkish Army which was a death sentence .

A Backschis gave him the birth certificate that his parents needed .But he finally was fed up and left for Paris avoiding the Turkish Embassy like a plague.

My mother was sixteen year old born in Samakoff Bulgaria on the fifteenth of April  1894.

They married as it was planned by the families , in Paris.

When I was young and vulnerable my father said ” Don’t spend less , make more”. He was not rich but he was used to live well .

When the war started he lost all his money because he was hiding from the Gestapo . My mother was the only one of the family to get out of our hiding place because she looked so aryan . So she could go out shopping for bread and food.

When the war was finished my father set up a business with my sister and got rich again . My sister used to say I was ugly but sympathique and these words stuck with me all my life .

My brother was in love with a young sales girl who sold knitting wool and the house was full of knitting balls of every colour.

I fell in love with a turkish girl that I treated like a sister . and she was disapointed but I was very young and inexperienced .

My father loved everything Italian and we had two young servants from Calabria . They had a word ” La Sega ” that made my sister and my brother laugh but I never found out its meaning .

My father had an Italian frend the Dorigato from Mons and they arrived each month with a new Italian car big enough to hold his three sons and four daughters. The last one was an IF convertible He was very rich .

We had everything Italian and Turkish .

Except for two ‘Chinese Vases that would frightened me . my father had bought them at an auction .They were huge and frightening .