On Dürdane Hanım

Ahmed Midhat’s Dürdane Hanım, first serialized in Tercüman-ı Hakikat in 1882 contains disparate elements of social and moral criticism in a highly charged emotional context that even today keeps the reader quickly turning pages to find out what happens next. Ahmet Midhat does not demand the conventional willing suspension of disbelief that some literature entails, but on the contrary, with authorial asides to the reader and frequent allusions to the “novel,” the “story,” he keeps the reader aware that one is dealing with a construct, a work of fiction, an intentionally created story. It is a reflection of his role as “teacher of the nation,” who said “my goal was to speak with the majority, to try to illuminate them, to be an interpreter of their problems.” This is the central motivation for the actions of Ulviye Hanım, who is in fact at the center of the story, and who tries herself to be the interpreter of people’s problems, with some rather interesting consequences. As Ahmed Midhat tells us:

But the devil does not just want Ulviye to content herself with reading adventures in story books; one day he causes her to derive pleasure from observing how a novel that was actually lived takes place. She realizes that the great heroine of this novel could be Dürdane Hanım.

And, the author notes “It’s curiosity! Where won’t it lead a person?” In the case of Ulviye Hanım, it leads her to listen at her neighbor’s window, adopt male clothing to be less conspicuous and to even place a telephone, then only newly invented, inside her neighbor’s house wall so that she could listen to conversations that took place in Dürdane’s bedroom. But this clarity only comes when the reader is one-third into the book. Up until that point, Ahmed Midhat has confused, surprised and perhaps offended his readers with a technicolor display of sizzling prose, cross-dressing and sexual innuendo that dazzles the reader even 125 years later.

The novel begins with a realistic depiction of a bottom level bar in Galata where Sohbet (Conversation) Bey, a bargeman, is waiting for a meeting with one Acem Ali. The author describes the dangers of Galata, especially the side streets, and the physical condition and history of the bar, noting that time had replaced Janissaries and sailors with firemen, Greek rowboat men and pickpockets, but that both groups were filled with the “blood that, when it began to boil, leads men to commit murders.” Some similar bars with contemporary types exist in gentrifying Galata even today. Sohbet has a conversation with a friend, a Greek pickpocket named Papazoğlu, who gets a silencing look from Sohbet when he refers to “a bloody killer.” Here Ahmed Midhat foreshadows a story that will be told later in the book. Sohbet tells the Greek about his first encounter with Acem Ali at a yalı on the Bosphorus, where Ali beat up five men and gave Sohbet a blow “such as he had never tasted before.” The fact that Ali hits him by mistake is an early indication of the theme of questionable reality and the uncertainty of appearances that runs through the novel.

Things take a different turn when Acem Ali turns up, however, and Sohbet gives him a look “not like someone who had been a friend for a long time, but of someone who had been in love from the beginning of time.” We learn that Ali is a youth approximately 18 or 29 years old, thin, tall with smallish hands. He is more like an Arab than an Iranian, “his tiny nose and mouth, his small but snow white gleaming teeth were things found only among handsome young men one met in Damascus or Aleppo.”

So good looking, in fact, that he is “one of those handsome young men who say, ‘I wish my beard would grow so that I could get myself away from those devouring looks.’” (p.20) Readers’ concerns are heightened as the conversation takes a questionable turn. Acem Ali proposes a night on the town, in which he promises he will do whatever Sohbet wants until morning. Sohbet counters with the idea of going to a hotel and enjoying themselves there all night, rather than roaming from place to place. When they arrive in the hotel, the author asks, “At first glance, what interpretation would everyone give to seeing a handsome young man with Sohbet in a place like this? After they get drunk in the hotel, Ali tries to induce Sohbet to take up one of the prostitutes they have hired, but he refuses. Ali says: “I’m surprised. Or don’t you like women? If you have a different nature, what can I say?” Sohbet denies this, but tells Ali “don’t propose a woman to me.”

Later, after they have passed out from drink, Sohbet wakes up and stares at Ali. The author writes, “Let’s hope that Sohbet hasn’t changed his opinion about the young Persian boy.” Then Sohbet goes over to Ali’s bed and lifts the covers. He staggers back in astonishment when he realizes that under Ali’s undershirt are the breasts of a girl. In the morning, Sohbet does not let Ali realize he has learned the secret. And so the tale begins.

The structure of Dürdane Hanım owes much to the meddah story-telling tradition. The book is divided into five chapters, each presenting a different dimension of the tale. The introductory chapter we have just examined. The second chapter is the story of Ayşe Ebe (Midwife), introduced according to the convention, with the author asking “Have you heard about what happened to Ayşe the midwife who lived in the neighborhood of xxx?”

In contrast to the exact descriptions and specific history of the nightlife of the European sections of Beyoğlu and Galata, where Ahmed Midhat’s readership might only properly be daytime visitors, the reader is left uninformed about the milieu of the perhaps more familiar domestic sections of İstanbul where much of the tale takes place. Only the mention of the park at Bağlarbaşı in Üsküdar gives us the idea that it is on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus. Ayşe is kidnapped by Acem Ali, made to put on male clothes and brought blindfolded to a yalı on the Bosphorus, but she is cautioned not to look out the windows and does not know whether she is in Europe or Asia. The ambiguity is another reflection of this underlying theme of the novel, the uncertainty of reality.

Voyeurism is an important aspect of the novel, from Sohbet’s lifting up the covers on the sleeping “Acem Ali” to the latter, in the role of Ulviye, listening on the telephone to the intimate details of Dürdane’s bedroom. Ayşe, however, is not permitted to look out on the “real” world. In the yalı, she presides over the secret birth of Dürdane Hanım’s illegitimate son, appropriately named Ataullah (The Gift of God) by his mother. Dürdane, with the assistance of her servant Gülbeyaz (Rose White, virtually the only character with no character flaws) has unconvincingly managed to conceal her pregnancy from her parents and others in the home. Midhat explains that Dürdane’s father, a widower, has remarried and has children by the new wife, a former concubine, and that this woman is largely indifferent to Dürdane. Still, one finds it difficult to accept that Dürdane, whose womb, we are told, swells like a large sack, has managed to conceal her pregnancy while living in the same house. Her father and stepmother are blind to her condition.

Dürdane means Pearl, and the pearl is the only precious jewel that is from a living creature. She, then, is a natural creature who has surrendered to her emotions, a point that is underlined at the conclusion of the novel. The selection of the name we can assume is intentional, as there is a discussion of the names of other characters Ulviye, Lofty, Illustrious and Dürdane’s lover, Mergup – Desirable.

Later Ayşe is returned to her own home with fine new clothes and a generous gift. She finds herself falling in love with Acem Ali in spite of herself and admits this to him just as he is leaving her back at her house. Ali takes her hand and puts it to his breast and she realizes that Ali is, in fact, a woman. Ayşe tells the people in her home about her encounter, but they don’t believe her that Ali turned out to be a female. The sexual ambiguity expressed in the first chapter is reiterated in this chapter. Ayşe is surprised at herself for falling in love with a man and is in fact relieved when she realizes at the end that Ali is, after all a woman. Ali, for his part, tells her just prior to this that he would fall in love with her if, in fact, he could fall in love with a woman.

But the members of Ayşe's household do not believe her story that Ali had turned out to be a woman, adding yet another level to the confusion.

She was no woman at all. Ayşe Hanım just put him into the role of a woman at the end of the story to make her love for the young man seem innocent, that’s all. They even made jokes about it.

Ayşe the midwife said: “I never thought that I would fall this much victim to a man. But I’ve learned a lesson: Don’t criticize those who are victims of the illness of love!” Here we have the moral of this part of the tale, and Ayşe the midwife leaves the story.

The third chapter is named for Ulviye Hanım, nam-ı diger (aka) Acem Ali. It is she who is the ambiguous center of Midhat’s novel. “She was known as being from Egypt; but according to the claims of those who looked into it, she wasn’t Egyptian. She was either Iranian or Indian. She had moved to Egypt with her family, and married there. When her father was exiled for political reasons, she came to Istanbul with him, leaving her husband in Egypt. He died there, and later her father died, leaving her with an aged mother. Midhat interestingly described them as living in a yalı as small as a box, with eight rooms in the haremlik and four in the selamlik. They keep a total of seven servants, which the author interestingly tells us is because they want to maintain a “limited standard of living” to avoid appearing rich. The modern reader appreciates their suffering.

Unfettered by the bounds of father or spouse, Ulviye is able to indulge herself. Fluent in Arabic, Persian, and English, as well as Turkish, she engages in literary correspondence with authors, reminding us of Ahmed Midhat’s own relations with Fatma Aliye Hanım and Fitnat Hanım. Her open manner and love of the parks at Bağlarbaşı and Çamlıca raises eyebrows in society but Midhat assures us she has no evil intentions, and in fact, modestly doesn’t even keep a carriage or a boat. She does not shy away from men, however; quite the contrary. It is from an English surgeon, an old friend of her father’s from Egyptian days that she learns about and obtains the telephone she uses to learn Dürdane’s secrets.

Ulviye adopts men’s clothing first as a means of eavesdropping at her neighbor’s house. She thinks that anyone who sees her in men’s clothing will think that she is either a thief or, later, a lover of Dürdane Hanım. In this way, she hopes to avoid what she calls “certain scandal” if she is found out as herself, a woman. However, Ahmed Midhat uses this entry into sexual ambiguity to establish a clear leitmotif of sexual ambivalence throughout the novel, with numerous phrases and remarks by the characters that could lead to multiple sexual interpretations. In addition, Ulviye’s behavior as Acem Ali leads her to develop a reputation as a tough even in the disreputable areas of the city.

When Ulviye decides to take revenge on Dürdane's lover Murgep, she tries to decide whether she will do this as a man or woman and decides to do it as both in the end. As she begins on her adventure, she tells her maid that she is wearing men’s clothes “for fun.” When the servant asks what kind of fun, she says she is going to “make love to Dürdane Hanım.” Her maid reacts with astonishment, saying “What kind of remark is that?” Ulviye replies; “What kind of remark? We didn’t come to this world to be imprisoned within four walls, did we? Or, are you implying some other things? About my virtue?” “No, no,” her maid quickly replies. ‘Who could say anything about your virtue?” but another marker has been placed.

We have already seen that Sohbet’s sexual appetites are at least mixed. Dürdane’s appearance and appetites are similarly mixed. Throughout the novel there are scenes where the gender of at least one of the characters is unclear to others in the same scene.

The ambiguity is not limited only to simple gender identity. Another theme of the novel is the lesson learned by Ayşe the midwife, that one should not pass judgment on those in love. Ulviye herself will come to realize this, but that does not prevent her from helping Dürdane to exact her revenge in a way that will surprise even Ulviye.

Ahmed Midhat, as usual, provides helpful clues as to where the novel is going. When Ulviye hears about Mergup’s rejection of his lover Dürdane, she pauses to reflect:

Novels and plays, she said, are sometimes entertaining, and sometimes painful. It’s possible that Dürdane’s novel will be a bitter one. It seemed somewhat happy and fun at the beginning, but then it became a face that began to darken.

She decides to take revenge for Dürdane on her playboy lover, Murgep, who has refused to marry Dürdane, but first decides to investigate the situation. She finances Sohbet to buy new clothes and transform himself into a middle class person – neither an oarsman nor an aristocrat- and call on Murgep Bey. He comes back with a tale of Dürdane’s obsessive love that has frightened Murgep and driven him away from his relationship with Dürdane. He also speaks of another suitor of Dürdane’s the respectable Memduh Bey, literally Mister Praiseworthy, who is as obsessed by his love for Dürdane as she is by hers for Murgep. He was chosen by Dürdane’s deceased mother to marry her daughter but Dürdane, after a period of passionate involvement that did not, as far as we know, involve a physical relationship, found herself sought after by Murgep and transferred her obsessive emotions to a new lover. In the classic style of a heel, Murgep rejects her on this basis as well, claiming that he has no guarantee that she will not fall in love with someone. He gets his comeuppance in the end, when he is killed fifteen days after his marriage to another woman by that woman’s former lover.

But first we return to Sohbet Bey, whose tale we learn in Chapter Three. It is a classic meddah tale in style and structure, almost anachronistic in its evocation of what seems nearly to be another time. Sohbet, it turns out, was an adopted child scheduled to marry the niece of his benefactor until Cemal, the deceitful head steward of the house, became enamored of the handsome youth. Refusing the steward’s advances, and finally striking the steward with a pot to ward him off, Sohbet then becomes subject to the steward’s revenge. First the steward attacks one of the household women while she is sleeping and flees when she awakes, but manages to have the attack ascribed to Sohbet, since they have similar nightshirts. In another case of ambiguity, Ahmed Midhat tells us that the household doesn’t suspect Cemal the steward, “because they all knew his character,” (p.134) as he had somehow managed to present himself in the household as a model of moral probity. Sohbet is sent off to prison and when released kills Cemal. He is then sent back to prison where, he notes, his formerly good moral character is completely destroyed (!), escapes, and is living an underground life as a boatman in İstanbul when the novel begins and we meet him in Galata.

Ulviye, who has meanwhile begun a flirtation with Mergup with the intention of revealing his faithless character, is consumed with the desire for revenge, revenge in the name of Dürdane and Memduh. She claims that she has no desire for herself, and tells Sohbet of Mergup’s perfidy while glossing over her own rather bold behavior. Sohbet Bey, however, has meanwhile had an intense religious experience in a mosque, and points out to her that Memduh Bey is still so in love with Dürdane that he not only doesn’t want revenge, but actually approves of Mergup’s falling in love with Dürdane. According to Islamic law, he notes, there can be no execution when the aggrieved party withdraws its complaint. He says that Ulviye must find out what Dürdane wants to do, since only she is the aggrieved party.

As Ulviye returns home, she reflects over the astonishing romanticism of Memduh Bey as well as the equally astonishing sense of justice on the part of Sohbet Bey, “a cold-blooded killer.”

Ulviye has become involved in the novel she set out to observe, and in the process, has contributed to the very pain she tried to relieve. Ulviye thinks over “this strange novel that she just got involved with out of curiosity and says:

“Strange. In other words, just when I was thinking that I would be the main hero of the action in this novel, and the greatest hero from the point of view of doing good, I become the main force for evil. That’s how it is! Mergup is the main criminal, but when those he has oppressed forgive him, he remains completely innocent. If I try to take revenge on him, I will move from being just to being cruel. As for Dürdane, after having done more than enough things to justify killing a woman, she’ll remain blameless in everyone’s eyes because of a simple crazy infatuation. Then if I work as an instrument of revenge for her, it will only result in her losing the chance of seeming blameless and give her the label of being a sinner. What difference is there in that from being called a criminal?”

Once again the tables are turned. This time it is Dürdane who surprises, in the final chapter. Gülbeyaz her servant has abandoned her, saying “she could not accept such thing.” Dürdane, still in love, cannot understand why Gülbeyaz does not want to stay and be a “faithful friend” to her. Referring to the official emancipation of 1876, she remarks sarcastically, “Well, she’s a free person now, isn’t she?” I don’t know what has happened to Gülbeyaz.”

Ulviye then does some straight talking to Dürdane; with a moralistic and pragmatic voice we can easily imagine to be Ahmed Midhat’s:

“Dürdane Hanım, my sister. Can I say something to you? To love and be loved are nothing to be ashamed of; even more, they are sacred things. But with one condition: and that condition is to behave suitably according to the rules that come from religion, civilization, our own customs and general morality. If love blinds one's eyes and you don’t see that condition, then love is not desirable, but becomes something disgusting and abhorrent. If Mergup were a man worthy of the degree of affection you have for him, he should have married you by now. In addition, without a legal engagement he should not have allowed the tip of his finger to touch one of yours.”

The two ladies hatch a plot to give Mergup a week in which to commit himself to Dürdane. After she gives him the ultimatum, he sends a letter breaking off their relationship. Ulviye volunteers to become Acem Ali again and bring him to Dürdane’s yalı, as she brought Ayşe the midwife, helping to bring death, it will turn out, as she had brought life. In a final tableau, with all present, including the returned Gülbeyaz and even the infant Ataullah, Dürdane, appropriately dressed in black, reveals her melodramatic plan of revenge. She will leave her child as a living reminder to Mergup of what he has done, a more fitting revenge than even killing him would be. She has taken poison, and dies in front of them. Gülbeyaz pronounces: “This problem now belongs to the Day of Judgment.” In the denouement, however, six months later, we learn that Ulviye has purchased Sohbet as a slave, thus clearing up his account with the government, and then later taken him as her husband. As for Mergup, his murder by a jealous lover fifteen days after his marriage is a fitting punishment for his perfidy. At the funeral, Sohbet says to Gülbeyaz, “So the settling up didn’t wait till Judgment Day after all”.

Dürdane Hanım gives us a portrait of a very strange world indeed. As David Selim Sayers has excellently (pointed out), there is a rich history that precedes the cross dressing and sexual innuendoes that permeate this pot-boiler of a novel. Ahmed Midhat wanted to reach a wide audience, and seamy stories are a proven way to get that audience. Enfolded in the novel, as we see, are several moral elements. The most obvious is that untrammeled love can be disastrous. Both Dürdane Hanım and Memduh are blinded by love, Dürdane to the point of death, Memduh, perhaps more sadly, to the point of a life of anguish. When Ulviye points out to Dürdane the noble and sacrificial nature of Memduh Bey’s passion for her, Dürdane responds, “That Crazy?” She is as blind to herself as she is to the perfidy of Mergup Bey.

Ulviye Hanım, the powerful Acem Ali, is an extremely interesting figure. Her background is unclear, even if she is clearly unique in the period as a foreigner from an Islamic background. One can surmise that Ahmed Midhat made her such a foreigner so that she could move in society in a way that might have been a great deal more difficult for an ethnic Turkish woman to do. Her arms are almost implausibly powerful and her good looks equally attractive to men and women. She has the means and the will to do what she wants, a rarity in Ottoman society at that time. That her nocturnal adventures in Galata with Sohbet did not result in an affair or worse can be more ascribed to class differences and social reticence rather than to Sohbet’s failure to be attracted to her, as either a man or a woman. Her many adventures, the quick changes between seemingly homosexual to heterosexual encounters and her willingness to use brute force as well as gold coins to obtain her goals place her in a unique position and warrant considering this work as an early feminist novel.

She and Dürdane Hanım are the two main characters. It is they who ultimately determine the course of action. Sohbet Bey is from the beginning a secondary figure who enters into the action of the novel as a figure acted upon and who remains silent at significant points to underline this. When Ulviye talks to him about transporting the midwife, he claims to know only that he brought a person from one place to another and then back, and then nothing more. It is Ulviye who makes and determines the actions, eliciting the secrets of Dürdane, the base nature of Mergup, and, in fact, the tragic ending. Ahmed Midhat prefigures throughout the novel, and even Ulviye’s astonishing cross-dressing is in fact a vehicle to prevent, as she notes, “certain scandal.” When she lectures Dürdane on the limits of love, we see a moral outlook that is in fact conventional, even if her acts were not. In that light, her bizarre behavior with Sohbet in Galata becomes in fact a test of his morality, one that he passes and that is later reinforced by his redemptive afternoon spent praying and weeping in the Kiliç Ali Paşa mosque, itself ironically built on former seabed.

Mergup Bey, the dastardly hero, is a conventional Tanzimat dandy, who, we learn, goes occasionally to his government office at Babiali and more often to the pleasure garden at Bağlarbaşı. Profligate, sensuous and above all, selfish, he manages to rationalize his rejection of Dürdane on the grounds of passion, just as he has rationalized his affair with her. Ulviye easily tricks him into becoming enamored of her as well, as an artifice to confirm his nature. Interestingly, we do not learn anything of his family background. His counterfoil, Memduh the ardent lover, is depicted as noble, but basically hopeless. Even though Ulviye poses him to Dürdane as her true lover and the one wronged person in the piece, he is in fact left as a fairly one-dimensional and colorless figure in the tale. It is the women who run this show.

The milieu of Dürdane Hanım is the familiar Tanzimat world of the yalı. The author does not, as I have mentioned, tell us exactly where the story takes place. The only locations specifically mentioned, Galata, Beyoğlu, Ortaköy, and Beşiktaş, are all on the European shore. Only Bağlarbaşı indicates that these yalıs are in Asia, the home of traditional values. Money is not a problem for Ulviye. The wealth of Egyptians was as famous in İstanbul then as Arab wealth is today. The source of income for the other yalı inhabitants is obscure, as is often the case in Tanzimat novels.

The issue, however, is not economics, as it often is in European novels of the same period. The issue is moral. It is the question of love, the question of limits, the question of synthesizing a new life style, and the question of gender relations. Mergup may be a Tanzimat fop, but his reaction when Dürdane tells him that she has gone to Bağlarbaşı by herself is nothing but traditional. It may be wrong for men to waste time there, he tells her, but how much more wrong for women. His attitude increases Dürdane’s passion, so that, having already decided on her fate she decides on revenge:

She says to Ulviye:

“If I don’t die within a week that would be really something”

And then continues, “Anyway I’ll try not to die. I’ll take my revenge from that traitor. Such a revenge, that it will be a lesson for the whole world!”

Ulviye replies:

Good for you, Dürdane Hanım! Yes, let’s take a revenge that will be a model for the whole world. Let these poor men see, that a woman can take revenge too. Let them understand that from now on, they won’t be able to find the courage in themselves to treat women like a handkerchief and after wiping their noses, throw them away any more.

And the rest, I would say, is history.