71. Today in 1920s Turkey: 26 March 1923 (Spring Flowers or Autumn Blossoms?)

(Cartoon by Muhittin, Zümrüdü Anka, 26 March 1923, no. 22, page 2.)

Comments:
It is March, so love is in the air with the welcome arrival of Spring in Turkey. The ability to maneuver the complex intricacies of finding an ideal life-mate is especially pressing during this season of rejuvenation and renewal. Males, for instance, sometimes must rely on their wits instead of other qualities (looks, brawn, wealth etc) to secure a mate. This cartoon presents the attempts of an elderly man to court (or “pick up”) a much younger woman. Looking like he can barely stomach his own rhetoric he makes his move:

English
Man: I am presenting myself to you as an autumn blossom.
Woman: Well then, you must be a nerium!

Türkçe
Erkek: Size kendimi bir sonbahar çiçeği olarak takdim ediyorum.
Kadın: Zakkum olsanız gerek!...

(Comments continued)
The word play in the cartoon is lost a bit in English but the concept still applies. In Turkish “autumn/fall” is literally expressed as “last spring” (son bahar) so this man tells the woman that he is a kind of spring (just not the desirable kind)… hoping perhaps that she will hear the “spring” bit and not the “last.” Autumn refers also to the older man’s age and where he is presently in the arc of his life. Catching onto his advances, the woman elaborates by suggesting he must be a certain kind of flower. The flower she compares him to, “nerium” or zakkum is a notoriously toxic plant. The woman also met the old man in quick-wittedness by playing her own word-games. The word zakkum (the name of the flower) in Turkish has several other meanings including “very bitter” and the name for a tree that supposedly grows in hell. Thus, she delivers a backhanded compliment (insult, or “complisult”) to him with her specific choice of flower—perhaps punishing him for making a pass on someone so far out of his age-range.

The cartoon features the fashionably dressed man and woman situated in an interior furnished with a few props. The artist, Muhittin’s signature is located between the two figures. Muhittin’s style of caricature includes baby-faced woman and child-statured adults engaged in otherwise grown-up activities. Incidentally, these artistic choices are not reflected in the only other example of his work covered in these posts: #22 (Global Dissatisfaction with Monarchies).

(Entire page, Zümrüdü Anka, 26 March 1923, no. 22, page 2.)