Turkish Village
Copyright 1965, 1994 Paul Stirling. All rights reserved.
Paul Stirling
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE DOMESTIC CYCLE
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Page 132
was nineteen, that is, as soon as possible after his marriage. Zbeyr and his three brothers (F) in Sakaltutan were in process of making their marriage arrangements. The second already had a wife, the eldest married during our stay, and marriages were being arranged for the two younger brothers. They declared their firm intention of remaining together until all were married, and had completed military service. In fact, of course, a young unmarried man cannot live alone, so that they are normally bound to live with and marry in the house of their closest kin. One young widower had returned to the household of a married brother, pending remarriage. Households of orphaned siblings cannot therefore very well split until all are married. Occasionally, a son will set up an independent household while his father is still alive. I came across only one case, in a neighbouring village, where the separation of a married son was said to have been arranged completely amicably, because the household had become too large. This family boasted to me of their co-operation and intimacy, claiming that they had no quarrels.
Most cases of sons leaving the paternal household prematurely were due to quarrels. People were never willing to discuss details of these quarrels in cold blood afterwards - they were always rather ashamed of them. The separating sons were stepsons of their father's current wife; I only knew one who had left his own mother. His quarrel was so serious that, when he was dangerously ill with pneumonia, his parents took no notice, and it was his father-in-law who took him in, to give him the warmth and shelter that his own hovel could not provide. In one other case a son had accompanied his mother when she left because his father, her husband (T), who was her junior, took a younger wife (p. 196). In all the other three cases, relations with the parental husehold continued, warm in two cases, and slight in one. One father, still vigorous, was helping his three adult married sons to build houses alongside his own, and the whole family was still co-operating closely.
In Elbashï there were only two cases; one was the school headmaster, whose separate house was provided in the school building, and whose father included him in the total population of his own large household. The other was the usual case of a
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