Matt A. V. Chaban
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| Zeynep Osman,a niece of the last king of Afghanistan.Photo: New York Times |
New York: Tutankhamen, Richard III, Archduke Franz Ferdinand - throughout history, the deaths of monarchs have set off wars, revolutions and writing careers. Now, the passing of the last of the imperial Ottoman Turks has led to a battle over the rent-controlled apartment of an ageing Afghan on the Upper East Side.
In 1945, Ertugrul Osman moved into a two-bedroom walk-up apartment on the top floor of a three-storey commercial building. Though it had a handsome mansard roof at the time and a prime uptown location, the stout 10-metre-wide property was practically a hovel compared with the 50-hectare Yildiz Palace in old Constantinople where Osman was born and where his grandfather Abdul Hamid II ruled from 1876 to 1909. Had the empire not been dissolved, Osman would have taken the throne in 1994.
Instead he spent 64 years in the same apartment until he died in 2009 on a trip to Istanbul with his second wife, Her Imperial Highness Zeynep Osman, who had joined him after their marriage in 1991. Like her husband, Zeynep Osman's royal family had had to flee its home in Afghanistan in the 1920s.
Now Osman, who was born in Turkey, fears she may be forced out of her New York home.
After her building was sold in 2011 for $US10.1 million ($10.8 million), her new landlord, Avi Dishi, went by to see her that October.
"The first words out of his mouth were: 'I want you out. I paid too much for this building to have you here,' " Osman, 69, recalled, sitting inside her large living room sharing platters of cookies and crackers - a courtly gesture she said she also extended to her landlord, along with any other guests. Read more
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