Thanks for the Buggy Ride: Memoirs of an Ottoman Jew.

• Author: McGaha, Michael
• Position: Book review

Thanks for the Buggy Ride: Memoirs of an Ottoman Jew

By Victor Eskenazi

Istanbul: Libra Kitapcilik ve Yayincilik, 2013, 189 pages, ISBN 9786054326754.

THIS little memoir, first published in Italian in 1987, is an account of a life well lived. A proud Sephardi Jew, Victor Eskenazi (1906-1987) was fortunate to have been born and raised in Istanbul at a time when that city was still home to an extraordinarily diverse mix of ethnic and religious groups. In the book's introduction, Eskenazi's son John defines his father as Ottoman "because of his inbred cosmopolitanism, his wide vision of the world, his insatiable intellectual curiosity, his instinctive understanding and respect of other peoples, cultures, and behaviours, and when required also a determination and assertiveness that is so prevalent in the Ottoman personality and in the history of the Empire" (pp. 10-11). Although Eskenazi's formal education ended with high school, just growing up in such a city was in itself a liberal education. By the time he finished high school, he was fluent and literate in Greek, Ladino, French, Ottoman Turkish, German, and English. A bright and sensitive child, Victor clearly reveled in the rich variety of sights, sounds, and smells his native city offered him in such profusion.

Although the Eskenazis had lived in Istanbul for generations, they retained British nationality, because the family had originated in Gibraltar. Culturally, however, they were more German than British, because his father's brothers had been educated in Germany, and some of his mother's brothers lived in Vienna.

When Victor's father died in 1915, Victor and his mother and sister went to live with his father's brother (married to his mother's sister), who was a prosperous gynecologist. They lived in a large flat on the third floor of an apartment building near the elegant Pera Palace Hotel. It was in that apartment, tastefully decorated with beautiful and interesting objects, that Victor grew up. During World War I, he attended a German school, where he encountered some discrimination both because of his nationality and his Jewishness. When the war ended and the English high school was able to reopen, he was happy to transfer there. It was with particular fondness that Victor recalled the postwar period, when an influx of well educated Allied officers and refugees from the Russian revolution infused the city's cultural life with a renewed vigor.

After graduating from high school, he...