| That these two relationships have names, while the other two relationships of this class, wife’s brother’s wife, and husband’s sister’s husband, do not, is due to the social segregation of the sexes. Whereas a man can meet his bacanak freely, and often, especially where the sisters are married to different villages, develops a close friendship for him, and two elti live in great proximity if not in the same household, a social contact between a man and his wife’s brother’s wife, or between a woman and her husband’s sister’s husband would constitute a cross sexual relationship between persons not closely related. Hence such a relationship can therefore involve no social contact, and has no need of a name. A marriage alliance forms a very definite link between the two families concerned. A son-in-law is, as it were, a weaker version of a son. On festal occasions, such as weddings, the husbands of the women born in the household lend their assistance. At the return of Haci Mehmet from Mecca, a feast was given to all the village men. In the preparation of this, Nail (KA 4), son-in- law to the elder of Mehmet’s sons, Cafer (CS 2’s son), Mehmet’s own son-in- law, and Fazli (HK), who was at once wife’s brother’s son, to Mehmet, dead wife’s brother to his elder son, and son to have his younger son, through his first wife, all helped. In every case where a man had a daughter married in the village, his son-in-law would be conspicuous in acting with his own sons as host on such festive occasions. Equally, a young man, Haci Ali (VK 2), had quarrelled with his father (VK 1), and lived in a hovel in the middle of the village. When he got pneumonia and needed to be removed to a warmer and more weatherproof house, it was his father-in-law who took him in. This relationship between inter-married households does not seem a matter of the fulfilling of precise rules and obligations, but rather of recognised ways of showing respect and affection for the close kin of one’s wife on the one hand, or, on the other, for the family which has power over one’s daughter or sister. Whereas between blood kindred it is proximity, common upbringing, a life long association, that is the basis of their intimacy, affinal kin, except in the case of the girl who has to go to live among her affines, have a certain artificiality in their mutual services and expressed affections. The marriage ceremonies clearly bring out the opposition between the two sides, and this opposition is dangerous for both parties. For the husband and his family its development will at least upset domestic peace, and may cost him his wife, with no hope of recovery of the bride price; for the girl’s family, its intensification may mean that the girl will suffer, the marriage may break down, or even that they will lose contact with their daughter and her children, if she decides against them, or prefers to submit to her husband and remain with her children. Both sides, moreover, are anxious for friends and allies to |
| increase their strength and security - new friendships are one of the stated advantages of a marriage outside one’s own kin. Thus, both sides are anxious to perform mutual services and show mutual respect, not so much from spontaneous affection as from a wish to maintain a cement the ties, which in any case grow with the arrival of common ruled out - the father-in-law who, as related just above, took in Haci Ali was not bound to do so, his action was a natural response to the urgent need of someone near to him. The strength and warmth of relations between inter-married households is perhaps seen better in day to day contacts that in services rendered on special occasions. The degree of such daily contacts varies with physical and social distance. In marriages between brothers’ children common upbringing and life-long proximity means that there is no strangeness or artificiality between the parties, but an already existing intimacy. Where two families have already spent a generation in affinal relationship the same may be true to a lesser extent. The second generation of children of the marriage grow up to assume the relationship, to take mutual visiting for granted; within the village, where they can come and go of their own volition, they will help to draw closer the links between the families. Under these conditions a second marriage will be between households already on terms of spontaneous affection. Surriye (DS 4) was thoroughly intimate and at home with his mother’s brothers (DT), one of whom was also his wife’s father. Surriye’s grandfather’s stepfather was agnatically connected with DT and he was also their near neighbour. But where even repeated marriage links come up against kabile or neighbourhood boundaries, day to day warmth and intimacy may be much less. In spite of Faxli’s (HK) triple affinal tie with Mehmet’s (T 1) household, apart from his assistance at the feast mentioned above, there was no other sign of any special relationship between the two households. Fazli lived at the end of the Upper Quarter, Mehmet down by the road and they seldom associated. Ali Osman’s half sister was married to Murat, the son of Zubeyr (SI 4), and SI was the main core of hostility between the Upper Quarter and Lower Quarter. Ali Osman and Murat were no more than polite to each other. More striking, BK had provided the three wives of the three brothers, FA 3, 4 and 5, including Ali Osman’s full sister, to whose daughter he planned to marry his own son. Yet, except for Iba (FA 3), who having come to live in his wife’s house was a close neighbour, Ali Osman had no day to day contact with FA. There was no hostility; it was simply that the two groups kept to themselves in their own areas unless there was a special reason for doing otherwise. In the account, I have been thinking mainly of men, especially of heads of households. What I have said of “intimacy between households” might imply a uniformity of all two-person relationships between the households in question; |
| in fact this is not so. I have already spoke of the children’s freedom to wander and visit on their own. The women also, whose social life is independent of the men’s, may associate closely although their menfolk do not do so. There was, for example, much coming and going between the women of FA 3, 4 and 5 and the women of BK household. I shall turn to women’s kinship presently. Even with this qualification, it is true to say that the strength of affinal ties varies greatly, and that besides temperament and personal feeling, physical and social distance between the households is an important faction in determining the degree of intimacy. Perhaps, as so often, this is no more than to say the painfully obvious. Where families are predisposed to indifference or to hostility marriage between them is less likely to develop into intimacy than where they are already closely related. |
| V.4 | THE COMPOSITION OF GROUPS ATTENDING “ODALAR” |
| I have already described and discussed the ownership of the odalar in the village. Apart from their use for weddings and for entertaining guests, these odalar act as clubrooms for the men. The use which is made of them at various seasons of the year depends directly on the work cycle, mainly on the agricultural cycle, but also on seasonal migration for labour in the towns. During the autumn, as the evenings draw in and get cold, the men retire to them after sundown, the time of the second main meal of the day, and for the pious, of the second namaz, (the ritual prayer of Islam). They sit talking in these odalar until the final namaz of the day, about one and a half hours after sundown, or even later. As conditions get severer, the odalar are used also during the daytime, the men gathering early in the morning and coming and going during the day to their own meals, to see to their animals, or to do any other special business. After sundown in mid-winter, all, or almost all, usual adherents of a particular oda are present in it. Each oda has a group of regulars, always including close patrilineal kin of the owner, but not everyone belongs to such a group. A few men keep to their houses, partly because of temperament, in some cases because they are too proud to make regular use of someone else’s oda and cannot afford to use their own, in others, because like Hasan (VH), there is no group to which they belong. One or two drift from one oda to another. At the beginning of the winter, when the oda belonging to Selahaddin (BA 5), which normally formed the centre for almost the whole of the Lower Quarter, was not open, some members of this group visited other odalar, but not regularly. The social intercourse of the men almost invariably takes place outside the ev. In the summer, when they are not working too hard to have time for talk, they |
| meet in the open. In the winter the season for sitting and talking, they live in the odalar. The word for bringing an oda into use is “yakmak”, to “kindle” - the key need is for fuel. Least winter, (1950), twelve of these oda were in use, though not all of them all the time. Since the range of people using them varied greatly I think it worth while to analyse the attendance. In all of them the male children from about nine or ten on come and sit, usually in silence - there is no strict age limit and I have seen the baby boys of the household left in their father’s care in the oda. Older children often, but by no means invariably, go to the same odalar as their fathers or their fathers’ brothers. One may divide the people to be found in any oda on any given occasion roughly into four classes. First, the members of the household to which the oda belongs; secondly, regular attenders from other households; thirdly, occasional attenders whose presence or absence does not call for remark; and fourthly those whose presence in that oda means at least that they are paying a formal visit, more probably that they have special business with some of the regular members. Of course, these four classes grade into one another along a continuous scale. And I have not in the following analysis kept strictly to this classification. The fourth of these classes I have ignored altogether. I begin with those odalar which serve mainly the household to which they belong and work towards the larger and more interesting groups based on the larger odalar. The oda of Haci Mehmet (T 1), after the first rush of visitors in November on his return from Mecca was used only by him and his sons and grandsons. This household are strangers in Sakaltutan, having been established only two generations, and are not popular in the village. Haci Mehmet’s two sons and their sons were often to be seen in the other more sociable odalar. Their own oda was always warm because the old man was sick and could not leave it, yet no neighbours even came to sit there. The oda of Ali (CS 1) is used up to a point by members of his kabile, though only occasionally. I have also seen Ali’s mother’s brother’s son, who is also his sister’s widower, in there a man I have never seen in any other oda except strictly for business reasons. But there did not seem to be any group centering on this oda and once when I visited it in mid-winter I found the whole household, women and girls as well, gathered in it, presumably because there wasn’t enough fuel to heat both the ev and the oda. On this occasion, he had also present Mehmet (CS 4), and Yusuf (PB 3), a feckless and stupid young man. Melik (CS 2) had his own oda and in consequence he was a rare visitor at this one. His own, situated in the Lower Quarter, drew more on neighbours |
| than on kinsmen. One son of Mehmet (T 1) visited occasionally - his sister was Melik’s gelin. The members of BA and Ali Osman (BK 1) also went there - Melik’s late wife was a member of BK. Owing to a fight the previous year between Veloglu and Caferler, no one of Veloglu origins ever went to his oda. When the oda went out of use almost completely. One night I caused consternation by marching in old to find it full of the women of the household. Melik and his sons were frequently in the BA oda. The only occasion of the social revival of this oda was heavy rain during the thaw which flooded the BA oda making it suitably, as Selahaddin remarked, only for ducks. For a day or two some of the regulars moved to Melik’s oda. In the same way, the DT oda, after the period of open house during November to celebrate Haci Ali’s return from Mecca was first used by a small clientele consisting of some members of DS and FA. In January the large and ancient oda, the common property of the Duranlar, was opened and the DT oda lost all its outside following. But no member of DT went to sit in the other oda - I suspect because their pride would not allow them thus to admit the shift of the centre of gravitation away from their own house. Haydar (FB 1) kept an oda for his own use. Here one always found his companion and immediate neighbour Haci Ali (VA 13); sometimes Niyazi (BT), who was Haydar’s wife’s sister’s son, and old Abdullah (PB 2) another close neighbour, but no relation, who perhaps preferred this quiet small gathering under the roof of a man both literate and pious than the larger more crowded odalar. Haydar’s own paternal cousins were often there. Zubeyr, (SI 4), the carpenter, used his oda as a workshop and hence it was always in use. Early in the winter a few neighbours besides his brothers and their children would be found there, Mehmet (VS) a close neighbour and his cross-cousin, and Ahmet (VK 1) (no relation). Fazli (HK) was also there occasionally - his late sister had married Zubeyr’s late brother, and the orphan daughter of this match lived with Zubeyr. Once or twice I found there Ibrahim (VT 4) (no relation), a very poor and simple fellow. In this case also, the putting into service of the oda next door by Zubeyr’s paternal cousins, Mehmet and Ibrahim (SI 2 and 3), on their return to the village from work in the town attacked these visitors away from Zubeyr’s oda next door. A less close paternal cousin (SK) was often there, and also less often Osman (T 2), maternal half brother of Fazli (HK). Other occasional visitors included Eyup (KO 2) and little Mustafa (ST) who was not a kinsman. I never saw Zubeyr himself in this oda but his brother and his sons were often there. Very close to this oda was that of Haci Ahmet (SA 2). Several neighbours were fairly regular visitors to this oda, but none of his sister’s children were |