by Barton Sevin
Rarely does it fall to me to be the one to make an official accounting of the state of art and scholarship in any nation, let alone Turkey, so I shall make this brief: there are four young men in art school as of this year and that is all. There is the one last art school and that is the only school of any kind in Turkey.
I had a hard time wrapping my head around the reports until I traveled there myself and discussed the matter with the Minister of Education and the Minister of Arts, two exaggeratedly elderly men confined to wheelchairs and naked except for ragged skins of wild dogs, crudely fashioned into Flintstone-style onesies. I met with them in their private chambers, which they shared, where I sat on a WWII footlocker while their nurse dragged them from their beds and attempted to put them in their chairs, dropping each of them in turn and straining to pull them from the floor. I offered my assistance firmly several times but was rebuffed by not only the nurse but also by the two ministers. Once each was situated, the nurse rolled them over to a long free-standing bar-like table. Curtseying, the nurse exited by the west entrance. Each of the gentlemen pulled forth a gavel and banged fiercely and repeatedly upon the fine oaken bar. Bits of the lacquer finish flew up, giving the appearance that these two furry invalids were summoning snow with their dainty hammers.
“Sirs!” I cried, but their pummeling continued unabated until the head of the Minister of Arts’ gavel flew off the stem. He hid his face in his palm while the Minister of Education laughed and clapped boastfully. A contest of sorts had been won, so I congratulated the victor. He vocalized a flatulent noise. I was unsure how to interpret this, being not at all familiar with Turkish protocol.
“You are cursed now, foreigner!” the Minister of Arts shouted at me. “You won’t have any more ointments or balms or salves! Never again!”
“Only unguents,” said the other.
“I don’t think I’ve ever used an unguent in my life,” I informed them.
“You will have to now!” cried the Minister of Arts, hurling his gavel toward me. It fell short of hitting me, bouncing on the floor and sliding into my shoe.
I segued abruptly to the topic at hand: “What can you tell me, gentlemen, of the state of art and scholarship in Turkey?”
“We employ one thousand good Muslim teachers and one thousand less good Muslim teachers and also nearly five hundred heathen teachers whose goodness it is very hard to gauge,” the Minister of Education informed me. He then fished some dates from his pockets and tossed them at his comrade. This prompted him to laugh like a jackal.
After swatting away the dates, the Minister of Arts said, “Let me tell you about the stacks and stacks of art we have sitting behind the institute. We’ve got more art than we know what to do with. Come cold winter nights, the troops have been known to burn some of the paintings for warmth, which is just as well, because the quality of that art is very low. Painted mostly by the heathen teachers, in heathen styles from strange lands.”
“Do you have fungulosis?” asked the Minister of Education.
“I haven’t the foggiest what you mean.”
“If that were your affliction, then I’d recommend an unguent, which you are fully allowed to use, you understand.”
“Unguents,” the Minister of Arts said, “are quite oily. You will need an antimacassar.”
“Gentlemen,” I said, “I’m not in need of medical advice or furniture accoutrements. I am here only to investigate the state of art and scholarship. Please continue elucidating.”
“As I said, we have plenty of teachers, but we don’t have any students. Or nearly none. There are four young men studying this semester. And we do not expect even half to graduate or return next semester.”
“They are arts students,” the Minister of Arts said, “which might cause you to think that I would have some special knowledge of them, but this is incorrect. I have never even seen these lithe, sensual, young men. After particularly fierce painting sessions I am simply given their sweat-soaked clothes to sniff. It is a time-honored method to distinguish a talented man from a fool or a liar. I wring their sweat into a teacup and add a spot of cream. The taste of success will buoy itself above the luscious thickness of the cream and I shall be forced to declare the sweater a graduate. This, alas, has not yet come to pass.”
“Often times,” the Minister of Education said, “he will be overwhelmed with sweat tea, and I’ll have to come in for a second opinion. A man with a clean palate, so to speak. But often this is not true because I spend many days suckling from the breasts of nursing mothers to ensure they’re supplying proper nutrients to the nation’s young.”
“Oh, your dirty, dirty palate,” the Minister of Arts said wistfully. “At some point we should swap over Cabinet positions.”
“How did this woeful condition arise here in Turkey?” I queried.
“That’s not even a question I’m willing to entertain,” the Minister of Education said before reaching into a pouch in the pelt he wore. He pulled forth a hefty book bound in rose leather. “Here is the full list of inquiries I find do not engage my interests.” The elder waved it violently in my direction, but this was evidently to fake out his companion, whom he then threw the book at.
Stunned by the blow to the head, the Minster of Arts required a few moments to gather his composure before responding simply: “Budgetary cutbacks.”
“You have just told me that the state employs over two thousand teachers to school merely four students. How is that justified?”
“The teachers need their jobs,” the Minister of Education said, “but they are not employed cheaply, leaving us no money to pay for students.”
“Quite right,” the other agreed. “We sold most of them to Hungary, Armenia, Bulgaria, and Georgia. These nations had very abortive states of art and scholarship indeed. I like to think we alleviated that to some extent. I write of this feeling frequently in my correspondences with my dear, dear mother.”
“Your mother is still with us?” I said, astonished that a man so aged could have a living parent.
“No, don’t be absurd. She’s gone to a better place,” the Minister of Arts said. He looked down at his lap, then back up at me. “She’s living in Greece.”
“If you can call that living,” the Minister of Education quipped. “The people there eat clotted milk, you know.”
“I think it is a waste to toss out the old milk,” the other countered. “I applaud their innovative solutions.”
Evidently the Minister of Arts was pleased by the prospect of his ancient mother eating yoghourt, a very strange concoction indeed that I at first glance mistook for an adhesive paste. If his assessment elevated the Greeks so highly for their dairy culture, then I felt that there was not much hope for the abortive state of art and scholarship in Turkey as long as he was in charge.
At that very moment he passed away quietly, though it took me some minutes to realize that he hadn’t simply dozed off. Napping ministers are not a rare sight, especially if they are as advanced in years as this fellow was. But I did check on him after a time and found him lacking a pulse.
“Serves him right,” said the other. “He smoked, you know.”
I am submitting this report without drawing a formal conclusion, but I feel that the data are all present. Once they are properly collated, we shall have our answer, good sirs.
Barton Sevin might be reached if you email IQ’s editor.
Isonomia Quarterly 