LEAVING ALEPPO
By Pauls Toutonghi Photography : Bernd Lohse
PERSPEKTIV
LEAVING ALEPPO
My grandfather had a poet ’ s eye for beauty . Cut off from any means of publication , surrounded by a new culture , what hope did he have ?
Of all the family stories about my grandfather Philip Toutonghi ’ s time in North Hollywood , one pains me the most . In 1951 , after months and months of polite but dogged pursuit , he managed to get a meeting with the actor Danny Thomas . Thomas was born Muzyad Yakhoob Kairouz in 1912 , to Maronite Catholic parents from Bsharri , Lebanon . My grandfather was born Philippe Elias Tütünji in 1898 , to Melkite Catholic parents in Aleppo , Syria . At the time , the two men attended mass at the same Catholic church , in Los Angeles . But while Thomas was starring opposite Doris Day in the Michael Curtiz-directed Warner Brothers musical “ I ’ ll See You in My Dreams ,” my grandfather was sweeping the floors at Universal Studios .
Still , my grandfather was a recent immigrant , full of ambition . He was a poet , and he ’ d written a few lyric stanzas in English , which he dreamed of turning into a song . It was , he would always claim — even decades later — a poem worth “ a million dollars ,” and “ unlike anything anyone had ever heard .” On the day of his meeting with Thomas , he went to the post office and spent twenty-eight cents to send the poem to himself through registered mail — a poor man ’ s copyright . On the envelope , he wrote his address , twice , and then added , underlined : “ Poeme in English ,” and “ its title had never been used .”
Excited and confident , he went to Thomas ’ s house , where he was led into the study . He brought his son , my father , along , and they waited there patiently . My grandfather had come up with a melody , and he hoped that Thomas might play the tune on the piano — a simple chord progression — while he sang the lyrics . It would be my grandfather ’ s début as a Hollywood lyricist . His verses , he was certain , would make him famous . They would come back to him , amplified , made more lovely by radio or vinyl records or film .
They waited for an hour . Then two , then three . Finally , a housekeeper came in . Mr . Thomas wouldn ’ t be able to make it , she said , apologizing . But he would be sure to reschedule . My grandfather nodded , certain that this rescheduling would never happen . He and my father left through the side door and went home . He was working that night ; he had to change out of his suit and into his coveralls .
My family ’ s recorded history dates back to 1720 , when two brothers , Victor and George Tütünji , were born . Tütün is the Turkish word for tobacco , which Tütünjis grew on farms scattered throughout the countryside near Turkey ’ s Mediterranean coast . Over the next two centuries , my ancestors became members of the merchant class , extending , through commerce , their worldly connections , to Europe and European institutions , especially . You can see this on our family tree , from 1904 . Written entirely in Arabic , it features names that sound one way ( Bashir , Abdullah , Fouad , Salim , Hafifa ) and names that sound another ( Basil , Eduard , Michel , Susan , Sophia ). Over the years , many generations of Tütünjis lived in the region , near the sea . They spoke any combination of a half-dozen languages . Some were Christians and some were Muslim .
My grandfather was born into the vibrant , complex culture of fin de siècle Aleppo . Because his father and uncles , selling tobacco across the region , depended on inter-urban commerce to make a living , they frequently travelled on the Baghdad Railway , commuting between the main cities of the Vilayet of Aleppo , a province of the Ottoman Empire . It was a cosmopolitan existence . The family ’ s home was in the soap-making district of the city . My grandfather would never forget the scent of Aleppo ’ s soap season — the time each November when the soap-making houses would feed their boilers with wood and cook the straw-colored admixture . The air would smell like charcoal and laurel oil ; the pungent , muddy odor clung to clothes , to bedsheets , to the fibers of the carpets .
This all changed in the closing days of the First World War . One of the war ’ s last battles happened within the city walls — a bloody , hand-to-hand fight between the Egyptian Expeditionary Force and the fleeing Thunderbolt Army Group of the Ottoman Empire . Much of the fighting happened in the darkness , on the night of October 25 , 1918 — a night when hundreds of Aleppo ’ s residents were killed . Over the next few years , regional politics only grew darker . The Ottoman Empire collapsed ; civil war broke out ; General Mustafa Kemal Atatürk , the leader of the Turkish National Movement , fought a prolonged war for independence against Armenian and French forces in the countryside of the Vilayet . Turkish troops burned , shot , and drowned Armenian Christians by the thousands . Melkites and Maronites were especially imperiled , since they were perceived — perhaps unfairly — as rejecting the values of the newly founded Turkish state .
During wartime , most trade-related businesses failed . My family struggled to survive . And so they were divided . Some chose to stay ; my grandfather was one of the many who fled . He travelled by boat to Cairo . He imagined that his time in Egypt would be brief , and that he would soon return home , where he wanted only to teach languages and write French poetry and grow geraniums , all the things that , to him , seemed to add up to a full and worthwhile life .
He was a young man . In his new city , he wrote poems about his exile , poems to his new country and his new city , poems to St . Thérèse , to the Virgin Mary . Ultimately , he wrote poems to my grandmother , Lorice , whom he met in Heliopolis , a suburb outside Cairo where he ’ d settled . Then he wrote poems for each of his seven children , as they were born , in quick succession , in the course of eleven years . He worked as a teacher and French translator , offering French lessons out of his apartment not far from the Heliopolis Palace Hotel . He wrote articles for Cairene newspapers ; he acted , semi-professionally , in plays . But poetry remained his single great passion , the art to which he would return again and again .
10 LEAVING ALEPPO