At first, she was
just a friend of a friend of a friend I was to stay with for a couple of months
before finding my own apartment in the city of Essen, North West Germany. She
would be working on the day of my arrival so she arranged to have others pick
me up from the train station and bring me to her loft. The first I knew of her
was through the pictures she hung of herself on her walls and the way Hüs and
Annette introduced me to her remarkable home. “Look… look here,” Annette exclaimed,
gesticulating towards a coffee table made out of an industrial lifting pallet.
Arzu was
born to a retired sea merchant and his wife of mixed Turkish and Greek origin.
Like many other Turks, her family had immigrated to Ennepetal in post war Germany. As she grew older, she nurtured her interest
in the arts and crafts until it was moulded into a career of artisanship and
carpentry. “I make homes”, she would say over a cigarette, meaning it quite
literally.
I’ve had a visitor
or two tell me that the first thing you could tell about the apartment was that
those who dwelt there bled once a month. Walls painted in contrasting shades of
white and deep ruby red framed her surrealistic paintings. They were
consistently rich with strong, sensual imagery of a female as ambiguous as she
is complex. Spaces were furnished with salvaged items from thrift shops, flea
markets or cleared out evangelical churches. My favourite? A full length gothic mirror or
perhaps mosaic tiles set in white, red and blue which she used as a countertop
and modelled her kitchen around. Bookshelves smiled under the weight of art books,
Feng Shui bibles, the Koran, a complete “The Lord of the Rings” set and
curiously, “A History of Mistresses.”
“I think friends
find me strange because I don’t use simple pieces and worst of all I decorate –
That is how I am. I look at something and can tell whether it is Arzu. I
cannot be any other way.”
The spaces she
lofted into a home were benevolently ruled by three female cats that
complemented the space like they were living throws and cushions. All terribly
misnamed; the bossy, slightly overweight British shorthair with a penchant for
vigorous back rubbing was called Fable; the tomboy with a remarkable ability to
call birds from windows was Ashanti; while my personal favourite, who would
curl up with me in bed, would have to be a docile long-haired princess doomed
to be known as Poison. I always believed that these cats could be personified
in Arzu – her confidence, sexuality, self-sustainability and ability to
nurture.
There was no doubt
she loved animals; for company, in her house or on her plate. She once brought
home an adequately sized stretch of rabbit fur she intended to make a purse out
of. She shared my love for well marinated Argentine steak. There were cowhides
on the floor and real fur throws hanging in her bedroom. The last thing I
expected her to pull out of her suitcase from Bali were two severed buffalo
heads, which she let to decompose for an evening in our bath tub before quarantining
them to Annette’s balcony.
Arzu is one of
those people able to live in decadence for days on end, and then whip up a
storm, dust every corner, rearrange furniture and even repaint a table or two.
She’d grin, “A normal person would have just dusted this.”
She admits that
she owes much of her fierce determination and confidence to her father. One
day, as a toddler accompanying her father on the farm, he gave her a little
basket so she could carry some of the harvest. She would laugh, telling me that
although young Arzu was only carrying a few stems of barley, he must have asked
his workmen to over emphasise to her how much she had managed to carry all by
herself.
Before four weeks
had passed I could not help asking her whether I could keep my room. She
answered, teary-eyed, that she was just relieved I liked it there. Now, a year
later, I hold her responsible for my stint at painting during my stay in Germany after years of not picking up a brush. I reminisce over the time we spent
sketching ideas in IKEA when she decided it was time to redo the sitting room. I
smile from time to time when I open my closet and remember the evening she gave
me a bag of lingerie she never wore. And when I think of her, she is sitting
cross legged and barefoot on the sofa in bleached white slacks, with coffee and
a cigarette, Fable purring at her side.