The Pillars of Hercules

I wondered whether Ömer had been intimidated by having been brought up in this pristine house with its delicate furnishings.

“My brothers and I realized that it was ornate, but my father didn’t worry about us making a mess,” Ömer said. “He’s not bothered by that sort of thing.”

He and his brothers, Mustafa and Ali, romped in the basoda—the formal living room, where guests were received—and climbed all over the banquettes, called sedirs. They especially loved being so close to the water, Ömer said. They dived off the landing stage, where their boat was moored, and this proximity to the Bosporus turned them into great swimmers.

Like his father, Ömer was a collector, a passionate bibliophile. His library was stocked exclusively with books on Turkish subjects. Evelyn Waugh used to joke that his relative Sir Telford Waugh’s book, Turkey—Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, “sounded like Boxing Day.” Ömer owned that book, and a thousand more rare volumes, along with old maps, weapons, incunabula, and treasures, such as Sultan Abdul Hamid’s personal letter opener, a simple dagger.

“This is interesting,” Ömer said to me, and showed me a copy of Lew Wallace’s Ben Hur inscribed to Sultan Abdul Hamid (1876–1909). And he explained that Lew Wallace had been the American Cultural Attaché from 1881 to 1885.

Ömer’s grandfather, Vehbi Koç, now in his eighties, was the patriarch of the family and a noted philanthropist. He had been called “the father of Turkish private enterprise.” His name was as familiar to the average Turk as Henry Ford’s was in America, and significantly Henry Ford II wrote a foreword to Vehbi Koç’s autobiography. Ömer gave me a copy. The book was not a rags-to-riches story, because the Koc family was not indigent. It was a modest Ankara family which, like most others in Anatolia, had no lights or running water. A real bath was “a public bath. This was a monthly expedition.”

In accordance with Turkish tradition, family members found Vehbi Koç one of his own cousins for him to marry. This arrangement was intended “to preserve the family fortunes, and with the hope that they would get along together.” He saw his wife for the first time at the end of the marriage week when, on the seventh day, his bride, Sadberk, raised her veil.

As a youth, Vehbi went to Istanbul and served an apprenticeship. “I noticed that the minorities”—the Greeks, the Jews, the Armenians—“led a better life. Their standard of living was much higher than the Turks’, so I decided to go into business.” He progressed from being a contractor, to manufacturing, to the production of foodstuffs and steel, to the making of cars (Fords and Fiats) and railways. He became by his own report a frugal billionaire and his book contained, among other things, advice on how to stay healthy. For example, “Find the right weight, and stick to it for life.”

“The best entertainments” from his youth, Vehbi Koç wrote, “were marriage and circumcision ceremonies.”

“Oh, yes, circumcisions are great occasions in Turkey,” Ömer told me. And it did not take place immediately after the boy’s birth. His own sunnet, or circumcision party, occurred when he was two and a half—and was a joint one, shared by his brothers Mustafa (nine) and Ali (seven)—and was celebrated at the yali on the Bosporus. It was an enormous party—four hundred guests—and his parents indulged their sons.

“Normally the party is held the same day as the ceremony—to ease the pain, as it were,” Ömer said. “But my parents wanted us to enjoy it, so it was held fifteen days later.”

As we talked, and drank coffee, I felt I was experiencing an aspect of culture on the Turkish Mediterranean that had not changed in five hundred years. This was the ultimate country house. It was hard to imagine a more peaceful setting, a greater harmony of both natural and architectural elements, or—in this waterside culture of caïques and yachts and ferries—an easier place to reach, from almost anywhere. I had fulfilled the old Turkish idea of fleeing the city of shadows and hawkers’ cries and music, and finding peace in its opposite, light and silence; sitting in comfort at the edge of Asia and contemplating Europe.

Frustrated that my Syrian visa was taking so long, I went back to the ship I had seen moored at Kadiköy, the Akdeniz, a Turkish cruise liner. Was it headed somewhere interesting? I found the agent in a nearby office.

“Where is this ship sailing to?” I asked.

The man’s English was inadequate to frame a reply, but he handed me the printed itinerary: Izmir, Alexandria, Haifa, Cyprus, and back to Istanbul. Perfect.

“What day is the ship leaving?”

“Today—now.”

“Now?”

He tapped his watch. He showed me three o’clock.

It was now noon. I explained that my passport was at the Syrian Consulate, three miles away. If I could get it back from the Syrians, and check out of my hotel (two miles away), was there room for me on board?