Atilla Bektore’s Journey
01/15/2011 | Äíåâíîé äîçîð
Excerpts from "A Nomad’s Story:"
"If history is a panorama, an impersonal rendering of past splashed with a broad brush, memoirs are the vivid, colorful details that provide a sense of what the painting is all about. In the following pages, I try to provide some of those details to the panorama of the twentieth century. This memoir is not only my story, but also the story of my father, another nomad. Regardless of what the dictionaries say about the meaning of the word, I have always thought of a nomad as one who keeps looking for greener pastures, wider horizons, and brighter sunrises and sunsets — a metaphor for one’s desire to be part of the wider world. My father’s wanderings, voluntary and otherwise, encompassed all of the horrors, hopes, and shattered dreams that shook the lives of tens of millions during the First World War.
During this unparalleled time, massive battles were fought, empires fell, Tsarist Russia came under Bolshevik rule, and the Muslim Ottoman Empire was replaced by the Turkish Republic, auguring unprecedented world change. My father’s tale—intertwined with mine—provides a human element in the general conflagration surrounding our lives. He paid dearly for becoming a nomad, spending a total of fourteen years in prison and in a gulag in Soviet Central Asia, and eight more exiled in Siberia. This is also my story, the story of a kid’s struggle to make it in life despite hard knocks and adversity.
Our stories, intertwined with lives of the rest of our family, encompass the Soviet Union, Soviet Central Asia, Turkey, and the United States of America during a period of great upheavals, of tens of millions of dead and wounded, and of destruction probably unmatched in the history of the world. The First World War—The Great War, or The War to End All Wars—led to the downfall of the Russian Empire and the rise of the Soviet Union, the great experiment in Communist utopianism that would, in many ways, determine the history of the twentieth century. This war also led to the birth of the Turkish Republic from the remnants of the defunct Ottoman Empire and to the rise of Hitler’s Germany and Imperial Japan.
The First World War was followed by World War II after only twenty five years, resulting in the reversal of fortunes for Germany and Japan. World War II also brought about the rise of two competing superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, who would be locked in a cold war with each other until President Reagan signaled the beginning of the end by challenging Gorbachev to promote peace by tearing down the Berlin Wall. The United States won the competition, the Soviet Union disintegrated, and its component republics gained independence. The Russian Federation now stood alone with its old power considerably diminished. The United States assumed the mantle of the "Sole Superpower of the World," auguring a new outlook for the future of the world—even a short description of the events of the twentieth century takes so many words.
My family dutifully followed my father from one place to another, from Crimea to Daghestan (the eastern neighbor of Republic of Chechnya) to Turkmenistan, to Uzbekistan (all were part of the Soviet Union at the time). One move that had a particularly profound impact on our lives was our relocation to Istanbul, Turkey, after my father’s arrest by the Soviet Security organs and subsequent incarceration in the Gulag camp. For our own safety and security, we reluctantly left him behind. This move, which my father himself suggested, saved us from a lot of grief when the Soviet-German war began in June of 1941. This book recounts our nomadic journey from south-Central Asia through Turkey and finally to the United States…"
"In the summer of 1931, father took us to a place called Shafranovka, a small resort town near the city of Ufa, west of the Ural Mountains. It was renowned for its koumiss, a fermented alcoholic beverage made from mare’s milk. In those days—and probably still today—drinking koumiss was a very popular remedy recommended by doctors in Russia for the treatment of lung diseases (presumably it healed lesions in diseased lungs). Centuries before the Russian conquest, the area was part of the Golden Horde of the Tatar Khanate, traditional horse country where predominately horse meat was eaten and mare’s milk drunk.
The previous winter had been a severe one in Ashkhabad, and my father caught pneumonia. His lungs were weakened by years of smoking—although he had stopped four years ago—and he needed a good rest. Doctor Devlikamov was originally from Ufa, knew of this place, and recommended it to my father. Ufa was 1200 miles north of Ashkhabad as the crow flies, a train journey of several days. My mother and we kids were to go first; my father was to come ten days later. The wife of one of my father’s friends and their two sons accompanied us.
His friend would also come later. We traveled in one of the comfortable sleeping cars. Needless to say, I spent all of the daylight hours in the passageway by the open window; I was afraid that I would miss something interesting in the constantly changing scenery. It changed from sandy deserts to lush green valleys, rolling hills covered with forests of birch trees with their spotted trunks to high mountains and deep canyons with fast flowing streams. By the end of each day my face would be covered with black soot from smoke blowing from the locomotive stack and my mother would lock me in the compartment’s cubicle with a wash basin until my face was spotless…"
"The quality of bread, a staple of the Russian diet, deteriorated, and the quantity was restricted. It was no longer the same Russian rye bread that we had enjoyed before. It was soggy and tasteless, and I am sure many unknown fillers had been added to it. Other food items like milk, sugar, and oils became scarcer. The supply lines to the stores were frequently interrupted, so even coupons were of no help.
Although we had food shortages in Turkmenistan and throughout central Asia, the region did not experience famine due to the compensating effects of some other agricultural products and the scarcity of the population. But we felt what was happening in those northern lands indirectly, through the inundation of our town by swarms of besprisorniki: homeless, usually orphaned, kids who traveled, dirty and tattered, in freight cars and in box-like structures under the passenger cars. They arrived in especially large numbers in winter because of the relatively mild climate here in central Asia. They survived mostly by begging and stealing. They would come to our doors begging for food. They were also a ubiquitous presence in flea markets, where they begged by singing ribald songs accompanied by the skillful use of two pieces of dry bone between their fingers for rhythm. But they mostly congregated at train stations and terminals, where they had opportunities to lift someone’s purse or suitcase—a craft at which they were quite adept. I remember a story about a man who was asleep on the lower bunk of a train compartment with his high boots on. At night when the train came to stop, a besprisornik entered the compartment and slowly started to pull one high boot off his leg. The man woke up, and, amazed at the brazenness of the kid, let him continue, pretending he was still asleep. Halfway through with one boot, the thief switched to the other leg—and when he was halfway done, he grabbed the man’s suitcase from the shelf and ran. Naturally the man could not catch him with his high boots half way down.
Father is Arrested
"My childhood in the Soviet Union could be separated into two periods: before and after my father’s arrest by GPU organs. Before his arrest, father was the breadwinner and head of the family. He and my mother provided a structured environment for us kids; our time was mostly spent with school, homework, and—in my case—a great deal of reading. In the summer, the family vacationed out of town. In any other country, this would be a downright bourgeois life style. Not much time was left for street activities.
My mother was the breadwinner after father’s arrest, and no one supervised us while she was at work. We spent summers in the city, on our own with neighborhood kids, and the temptation of the streets became ever so great. We had a downright working-class existence.
It was March 17, 1932. I was in the third grade of primary school. One late afternoon, we kids were sitting on the steps of our apartment when a man in civilian clothes approached and asked us if Comrade Bektore was at home. He was not, so he gave my mother a letter for my father.
It was a request for my father to come to the GPU offices at 10 AM the following morning. Although my parents tried to put up a nonchalant attitude in front of us, it was obvious that they were very worried. My father was saying that it was probably just for questioning and that he would be back home in the afternoon. The following day he left in the morning, and we waited in vain for him to come back. Shortly after midnight I was awakened by shouts of: "Otkroyte!" ("Open up!") and forceful pounding on our heavy oak door, which had been reinforced with a heavy iron bar on the back to guard against intruders.21 Ignoring my mother’s fearful question, "Who are you?" The men just kept repeating:
"Open up!"
Our neighbors also had awakened, and they urged my mother not to open the door. But she went to our bar-reinforced window and caught a glimpse of people in military uniforms and of a soldier with a rifle with a fixed bayonet. She asked if they were from the GPU, and when they replied in the affirmative and said they had came for a search, she asked them to show the search warrant. They did, through the window, and she opened the door.
Three officers were at the door, not including the soldier who stood guard with his rifle. Of the three men, two were GPU officers and one was a civilian translator who could read and interpret any books in Turkmen, Turkish, or Crimean. My kid brother had also woke up, but my little sister kept on sleeping.
My brother soon went back to sleep. I, curious despite my mother’s urging to go back to sleep, stayed on.
They meticulously went through every nook and cranny in my father’s desk, and even ripped off the green baize that covered it. They opened every crack, particularly in the massive legs of the desk, probably hoping to find some hidden documents. They took down every book from the shelves. Many had been written in Turkish, Crimean, or Turkmen, with a Latin or Arabic script. When they rejected my mother’s offer of help in their search, she said, "at least let me offer you some tea." The officer who seemed to be in charge half jokingly replied:
"Look, lady, we did not come here to drink tea."
But when they became tired, they relented and accepted it. Taking advantage of the relatively relaxed moment, she asked them if they knew where her husband was, and added that she was worried because his health was not good and that he needed some warm clothes and maybe a blanket. They said they did not know.
But toward the end of the search, the junior officer took my mother aside, out of earshot of the one in charge, and in a low voice gave her the direct private telephone number of one of the chiefs at the GPU office. He cautioned her that under no circumstances she should divulge him as a source. “Just say, ‘I learned it by chance,’” he told her.
This leniency by the GPU members was still possible in 1932, because "Stalin’s Great Terror," the arbitrary exile and execution of people deemed enemies of the state, was still years away.
They took many books and my father’s manuscripts with them. It was daylight by the time they left."
Butte, Montana
After a long trip, we finally arrived in Butte. The red capped steward told us to start preparing to leave the train; we were the only ones getting off. The steward helped us with our baggage, and the train which had been our home for a few days whistled and was gone. I felt a little twinge in my heart as I saw it disappear in the distance. I recalled the same feelings during our prolonged train journeys in the Soviet Union when I was a kid, wishing for the journey to continue indefinitely.
But right now we were exchanging one definite journey for another indefinite one.
The train had deposited us in the forward portion of the long platform. A relatively small wooden station building stood in the middle of it. The sign on the side of the building read "Butte."
The picture that I was seeing was exactly the same as I had seen in many western movies. The platform was completely deserted. I was wandering if Bob Walter had received the telegram that I had sent him from New York. I told Özcan I would go and get some help for our baggage, which included our portable TV. As I walked toward the station building, a tall figure in a western cowboy outfit of blue jeans and plaid shirt, high heeled cowboy boots and ten-gallon hat, emerged from the building and slowly came toward me. Looking down at me, he said, "Mr. Bektore?"
I, looking up, said, "Yes"
"I’m Bob Walter. How are you? Welcome to Butte."
Another load lifted from my shoulders. Bob’s car was a station wagon, with plenty of room for our baggage. He took us to the nearby Rose Motel (I still have a picture of it), and in the evening came and took us to a restaurant for a dinner. Bob recommended steaks, which he said were exceptionally good here in Montana. Beef steak was not popular in Turkey, because of the toughness of its meat. Lamb steaks or chops were more popular fare; and we were surprised at the size and tenderness of the steak we ate.
At dinner, Bob outlined some of the particulars about the job and the town of Butte. Bob was the Chief Engineer, and I was to be the person in charge of all the field engineering on site. All field engineering for a heavy construction project—be it an oil refinery, copper refinery, hydropower project, or an electric generating facility—is practically the same. I would be in a milieu with which I was familiar, and that gave me peace of mind.
Bob also explained that Butte was a company town; most of the employment was provided by the Anaconda Company. The town had open pit and the deep underground mining as well.
The following morning, Bob picked me up and took me to the offices of the Ralph M. Parsons Company. People in the office were aware that a Turkish engineer was coming from New York, and we were met at the door by two female secretaries.
"Welcome," they said, and exchanged smiling glances. Later I learned they were sort of disappointed, because they were expecting a tall, mustached, and swarthy Turk, and I did not fulfill their expectations."
"Recalling my past and putting it on paper—which I always wanted to do—was an arduous but a liberating experience. Looking back I realize that what I am today was shaped by my early experiences. Being torn off from the roots to which I could latch on in times of trouble, at times was exasperating, but it gave me my spirit of independence. From my early childhood I was curious about everything which gave me wider horizons and yearning to reach those horizons.
Coming to the United States, and to becoming its citizen was closest to becoming the citizen of the world. Being multicultured gave me an ability to see the forest while some who lived in the forest could not see it for the trees. My years in the Soviet Union left me with mistrust of all dogmas and officialdoms of all governments including the democratic ones and take their official pronouncements with a grain of salt and process it through my own filter. And I developed a low tolerance for injustice. Being a “nomad” had its own pitfalls and frustrations, but I wouldn’t have changed it for the world."
http://www.bektore.com/excerpts.html
"If history is a panorama, an impersonal rendering of past splashed with a broad brush, memoirs are the vivid, colorful details that provide a sense of what the painting is all about. In the following pages, I try to provide some of those details to the panorama of the twentieth century. This memoir is not only my story, but also the story of my father, another nomad. Regardless of what the dictionaries say about the meaning of the word, I have always thought of a nomad as one who keeps looking for greener pastures, wider horizons, and brighter sunrises and sunsets — a metaphor for one’s desire to be part of the wider world. My father’s wanderings, voluntary and otherwise, encompassed all of the horrors, hopes, and shattered dreams that shook the lives of tens of millions during the First World War.
During this unparalleled time, massive battles were fought, empires fell, Tsarist Russia came under Bolshevik rule, and the Muslim Ottoman Empire was replaced by the Turkish Republic, auguring unprecedented world change. My father’s tale—intertwined with mine—provides a human element in the general conflagration surrounding our lives. He paid dearly for becoming a nomad, spending a total of fourteen years in prison and in a gulag in Soviet Central Asia, and eight more exiled in Siberia. This is also my story, the story of a kid’s struggle to make it in life despite hard knocks and adversity.
Our stories, intertwined with lives of the rest of our family, encompass the Soviet Union, Soviet Central Asia, Turkey, and the United States of America during a period of great upheavals, of tens of millions of dead and wounded, and of destruction probably unmatched in the history of the world. The First World War—The Great War, or The War to End All Wars—led to the downfall of the Russian Empire and the rise of the Soviet Union, the great experiment in Communist utopianism that would, in many ways, determine the history of the twentieth century. This war also led to the birth of the Turkish Republic from the remnants of the defunct Ottoman Empire and to the rise of Hitler’s Germany and Imperial Japan.
The First World War was followed by World War II after only twenty five years, resulting in the reversal of fortunes for Germany and Japan. World War II also brought about the rise of two competing superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, who would be locked in a cold war with each other until President Reagan signaled the beginning of the end by challenging Gorbachev to promote peace by tearing down the Berlin Wall. The United States won the competition, the Soviet Union disintegrated, and its component republics gained independence. The Russian Federation now stood alone with its old power considerably diminished. The United States assumed the mantle of the "Sole Superpower of the World," auguring a new outlook for the future of the world—even a short description of the events of the twentieth century takes so many words.
My family dutifully followed my father from one place to another, from Crimea to Daghestan (the eastern neighbor of Republic of Chechnya) to Turkmenistan, to Uzbekistan (all were part of the Soviet Union at the time). One move that had a particularly profound impact on our lives was our relocation to Istanbul, Turkey, after my father’s arrest by the Soviet Security organs and subsequent incarceration in the Gulag camp. For our own safety and security, we reluctantly left him behind. This move, which my father himself suggested, saved us from a lot of grief when the Soviet-German war began in June of 1941. This book recounts our nomadic journey from south-Central Asia through Turkey and finally to the United States…"
"In the summer of 1931, father took us to a place called Shafranovka, a small resort town near the city of Ufa, west of the Ural Mountains. It was renowned for its koumiss, a fermented alcoholic beverage made from mare’s milk. In those days—and probably still today—drinking koumiss was a very popular remedy recommended by doctors in Russia for the treatment of lung diseases (presumably it healed lesions in diseased lungs). Centuries before the Russian conquest, the area was part of the Golden Horde of the Tatar Khanate, traditional horse country where predominately horse meat was eaten and mare’s milk drunk.
The previous winter had been a severe one in Ashkhabad, and my father caught pneumonia. His lungs were weakened by years of smoking—although he had stopped four years ago—and he needed a good rest. Doctor Devlikamov was originally from Ufa, knew of this place, and recommended it to my father. Ufa was 1200 miles north of Ashkhabad as the crow flies, a train journey of several days. My mother and we kids were to go first; my father was to come ten days later. The wife of one of my father’s friends and their two sons accompanied us.
His friend would also come later. We traveled in one of the comfortable sleeping cars. Needless to say, I spent all of the daylight hours in the passageway by the open window; I was afraid that I would miss something interesting in the constantly changing scenery. It changed from sandy deserts to lush green valleys, rolling hills covered with forests of birch trees with their spotted trunks to high mountains and deep canyons with fast flowing streams. By the end of each day my face would be covered with black soot from smoke blowing from the locomotive stack and my mother would lock me in the compartment’s cubicle with a wash basin until my face was spotless…"
"The quality of bread, a staple of the Russian diet, deteriorated, and the quantity was restricted. It was no longer the same Russian rye bread that we had enjoyed before. It was soggy and tasteless, and I am sure many unknown fillers had been added to it. Other food items like milk, sugar, and oils became scarcer. The supply lines to the stores were frequently interrupted, so even coupons were of no help.
Although we had food shortages in Turkmenistan and throughout central Asia, the region did not experience famine due to the compensating effects of some other agricultural products and the scarcity of the population. But we felt what was happening in those northern lands indirectly, through the inundation of our town by swarms of besprisorniki: homeless, usually orphaned, kids who traveled, dirty and tattered, in freight cars and in box-like structures under the passenger cars. They arrived in especially large numbers in winter because of the relatively mild climate here in central Asia. They survived mostly by begging and stealing. They would come to our doors begging for food. They were also a ubiquitous presence in flea markets, where they begged by singing ribald songs accompanied by the skillful use of two pieces of dry bone between their fingers for rhythm. But they mostly congregated at train stations and terminals, where they had opportunities to lift someone’s purse or suitcase—a craft at which they were quite adept. I remember a story about a man who was asleep on the lower bunk of a train compartment with his high boots on. At night when the train came to stop, a besprisornik entered the compartment and slowly started to pull one high boot off his leg. The man woke up, and, amazed at the brazenness of the kid, let him continue, pretending he was still asleep. Halfway through with one boot, the thief switched to the other leg—and when he was halfway done, he grabbed the man’s suitcase from the shelf and ran. Naturally the man could not catch him with his high boots half way down.
Father is Arrested
"My childhood in the Soviet Union could be separated into two periods: before and after my father’s arrest by GPU organs. Before his arrest, father was the breadwinner and head of the family. He and my mother provided a structured environment for us kids; our time was mostly spent with school, homework, and—in my case—a great deal of reading. In the summer, the family vacationed out of town. In any other country, this would be a downright bourgeois life style. Not much time was left for street activities.
My mother was the breadwinner after father’s arrest, and no one supervised us while she was at work. We spent summers in the city, on our own with neighborhood kids, and the temptation of the streets became ever so great. We had a downright working-class existence.
It was March 17, 1932. I was in the third grade of primary school. One late afternoon, we kids were sitting on the steps of our apartment when a man in civilian clothes approached and asked us if Comrade Bektore was at home. He was not, so he gave my mother a letter for my father.
It was a request for my father to come to the GPU offices at 10 AM the following morning. Although my parents tried to put up a nonchalant attitude in front of us, it was obvious that they were very worried. My father was saying that it was probably just for questioning and that he would be back home in the afternoon. The following day he left in the morning, and we waited in vain for him to come back. Shortly after midnight I was awakened by shouts of: "Otkroyte!" ("Open up!") and forceful pounding on our heavy oak door, which had been reinforced with a heavy iron bar on the back to guard against intruders.21 Ignoring my mother’s fearful question, "Who are you?" The men just kept repeating:
"Open up!"
Our neighbors also had awakened, and they urged my mother not to open the door. But she went to our bar-reinforced window and caught a glimpse of people in military uniforms and of a soldier with a rifle with a fixed bayonet. She asked if they were from the GPU, and when they replied in the affirmative and said they had came for a search, she asked them to show the search warrant. They did, through the window, and she opened the door.
Three officers were at the door, not including the soldier who stood guard with his rifle. Of the three men, two were GPU officers and one was a civilian translator who could read and interpret any books in Turkmen, Turkish, or Crimean. My kid brother had also woke up, but my little sister kept on sleeping.
My brother soon went back to sleep. I, curious despite my mother’s urging to go back to sleep, stayed on.
They meticulously went through every nook and cranny in my father’s desk, and even ripped off the green baize that covered it. They opened every crack, particularly in the massive legs of the desk, probably hoping to find some hidden documents. They took down every book from the shelves. Many had been written in Turkish, Crimean, or Turkmen, with a Latin or Arabic script. When they rejected my mother’s offer of help in their search, she said, "at least let me offer you some tea." The officer who seemed to be in charge half jokingly replied:
"Look, lady, we did not come here to drink tea."
But when they became tired, they relented and accepted it. Taking advantage of the relatively relaxed moment, she asked them if they knew where her husband was, and added that she was worried because his health was not good and that he needed some warm clothes and maybe a blanket. They said they did not know.
But toward the end of the search, the junior officer took my mother aside, out of earshot of the one in charge, and in a low voice gave her the direct private telephone number of one of the chiefs at the GPU office. He cautioned her that under no circumstances she should divulge him as a source. “Just say, ‘I learned it by chance,’” he told her.
This leniency by the GPU members was still possible in 1932, because "Stalin’s Great Terror," the arbitrary exile and execution of people deemed enemies of the state, was still years away.
They took many books and my father’s manuscripts with them. It was daylight by the time they left."
Butte, Montana
After a long trip, we finally arrived in Butte. The red capped steward told us to start preparing to leave the train; we were the only ones getting off. The steward helped us with our baggage, and the train which had been our home for a few days whistled and was gone. I felt a little twinge in my heart as I saw it disappear in the distance. I recalled the same feelings during our prolonged train journeys in the Soviet Union when I was a kid, wishing for the journey to continue indefinitely.
But right now we were exchanging one definite journey for another indefinite one.
The train had deposited us in the forward portion of the long platform. A relatively small wooden station building stood in the middle of it. The sign on the side of the building read "Butte."
The picture that I was seeing was exactly the same as I had seen in many western movies. The platform was completely deserted. I was wandering if Bob Walter had received the telegram that I had sent him from New York. I told Özcan I would go and get some help for our baggage, which included our portable TV. As I walked toward the station building, a tall figure in a western cowboy outfit of blue jeans and plaid shirt, high heeled cowboy boots and ten-gallon hat, emerged from the building and slowly came toward me. Looking down at me, he said, "Mr. Bektore?"
I, looking up, said, "Yes"
"I’m Bob Walter. How are you? Welcome to Butte."
Another load lifted from my shoulders. Bob’s car was a station wagon, with plenty of room for our baggage. He took us to the nearby Rose Motel (I still have a picture of it), and in the evening came and took us to a restaurant for a dinner. Bob recommended steaks, which he said were exceptionally good here in Montana. Beef steak was not popular in Turkey, because of the toughness of its meat. Lamb steaks or chops were more popular fare; and we were surprised at the size and tenderness of the steak we ate.
At dinner, Bob outlined some of the particulars about the job and the town of Butte. Bob was the Chief Engineer, and I was to be the person in charge of all the field engineering on site. All field engineering for a heavy construction project—be it an oil refinery, copper refinery, hydropower project, or an electric generating facility—is practically the same. I would be in a milieu with which I was familiar, and that gave me peace of mind.
Bob also explained that Butte was a company town; most of the employment was provided by the Anaconda Company. The town had open pit and the deep underground mining as well.
The following morning, Bob picked me up and took me to the offices of the Ralph M. Parsons Company. People in the office were aware that a Turkish engineer was coming from New York, and we were met at the door by two female secretaries.
"Welcome," they said, and exchanged smiling glances. Later I learned they were sort of disappointed, because they were expecting a tall, mustached, and swarthy Turk, and I did not fulfill their expectations."
"Recalling my past and putting it on paper—which I always wanted to do—was an arduous but a liberating experience. Looking back I realize that what I am today was shaped by my early experiences. Being torn off from the roots to which I could latch on in times of trouble, at times was exasperating, but it gave me my spirit of independence. From my early childhood I was curious about everything which gave me wider horizons and yearning to reach those horizons.
Coming to the United States, and to becoming its citizen was closest to becoming the citizen of the world. Being multicultured gave me an ability to see the forest while some who lived in the forest could not see it for the trees. My years in the Soviet Union left me with mistrust of all dogmas and officialdoms of all governments including the democratic ones and take their official pronouncements with a grain of salt and process it through my own filter. And I developed a low tolerance for injustice. Being a “nomad” had its own pitfalls and frustrations, but I wouldn’t have changed it for the world."
http://www.bektore.com/excerpts.html