Orhan Pamuk - A Strangeness in My Mind

The moment he walked in, he knew that it was God who’d made him run back home in such haste. Rayiha had done something primitive, something from the village, to try to cause a miscarriage, but it had gone wrong, and now the blood loss and pain had left her barely conscious.

He pulled her up, lifted her into his arms, and rushed out with her to find a taxi. He knew with each step that he would remember every single one of these moments until the day he died. He prayed repeatedly for their happiness to remain intact, for her pain to go away. He caressed his wife’s hair soaked with sweat; he gazed in terror at her face, which was white as a sheet. On the way to the emergency room five minutes away, he saw that she was wearing the same expression of guilt and astonishment that she’d worn the night they’d run away together.

By the time they went through the hospital door, Rayiha had bled to death. She was thirty years old.

People Can’t Get Cross with You If You’re Crying

Abdurrahman Efendi.We have a telephone in our village guesthouse now. “Quick, your daughter’s on the line from Istanbul!” they said. I made it just in time: it was Vediha, who said that my darling Rayiha had ended up in the hospital after a miscarriage. I had two drinks on an empty stomach just before boarding the bus in Beyşehir, and that’s when I knew in my heart that we were cursed, that I might drown in despair, for this was how my orphaned girls had lost their mother. Crying is some relief, at least.

—

Vediha.I know now that my darling angel Rayiha, may she rest in peace, gave me and Mevlut each a lie. She told me that he didn’t want her to keep the baby, which wasn’t true. She told Mevlut that the baby was a girl, which she couldn’t have known for sure. But our grief is so great that I don’t think anyone has the strength to talk about these things right now.

—

Süleyman.I was worried that Mevlut would think I wasn’t upset enough. But in fact as soon as I saw him looking so lost and desolate, I started crying. When I did, Mevlut started crying, too, and so did my mother. Eventually I felt as if I was crying not because Rayiha had died but because everyone else was crying. When we were little, whenever he caught anyone crying, Korkut would tell him to “stop sniveling like a girl,” but of course this time he had to keep quiet. He found me watching TV in the guest room on my own. “Cry all you want,” he said, “but someday Mevlut will find a way to be happy again, you’ll see.”

—

Korkut.I went to the hospital with Süleyman to pick up Rayiha’s body. They told us, “The best place to have her washed is at the bathhouse of the Barbaros Mosque in Beşiktaş, they have people there who specialize in handling female corpses, they’ll do it with proper sponges and soap, they’ll use the best shrouds and towels, and rosewater, too. You’d better tip them upfront, though.” So that’s where we went, smoking cigarettes in the courtyard of the mosque while we waited for Rayiha to be washed. Mevlut came with us when we went to the offices of the Cemetery of the Industrial Quarter. But he’d forgotten his identity card, so we had to go back to Tarlabaşı. At home, he couldn’t find his card, and he collapsed on the bed in a crying heap, but then he got up to look for it again and finally he found it. We went back to the cemetery. You wouldn’t believe the traffic.

—

Aunt Safiye.I was cooking halva, the special kind that’s made of flour and butter after someone dies. My tears were falling into the pot, disappearing among the little clumps of flour and sugar, and with each tear that vanished, I felt like another memory was gone. Would we run out of butane gas? Should I have put a bit more meat in the vegetable stew? Whenever people got tired of crying, they came into the kitchen and lifted the lid off a pot to stare quietly at its contents. As if crying for a long time meant you could come over and see what was cooking.

—

Samiha.Poor Fatma and Fevziye spent the night at my place. Vediha, who was also there, said “Bring them over to ours.” That’s how I went back to the Aktaş family home in Duttepe for the first time since running away eleven years ago to avoid marrying Süleyman. “Watch out for Süleyman!” said Ferhat, but Süleyman wasn’t even around. To think that eleven years ago, everyone — myself included — had thought I was going to marry him! I was curious to see the room where we used to stay with my father: it looked smaller now, but it still smelled of beeswax. They had added two floors to the house. This whole situation makes me really uncomfortable, but right now we’re all thinking of Rayiha. I started crying again. People can’t get cross with you if you’re crying, or ask you any questions either.

—

Aunt Safiye.Mevlut’s girls Fatma and Fevziye, and later Vediha, too, would come into the kitchen whenever they got tired of crying and stare into the pots and the fridge as they would at the TV. Later, Samiha arrived, too. I’ve always had a soft spot for that girl. I have nothing against her, even though she led Süleyman on and charmed him with her beauty only to ditch him in the end.

—

Vediha.Thank God women aren’t allowed to attend funerals. I don’t think I could take it. After the men went off to the mosque, all the women in the house, Mevlut’s daughters included, started crying. The sobs would begin on one side of the room, and when they stopped, the other side would pick up. I didn’t wait for the men to come back from the funeral — I didn’t even wait until evening, in fact — I just went straight into the kitchen and brought out the pudding. The crying stopped for that. Fatma and Fevziye looked out the window as they ate, and we saw Turan and Bozkurt’s black-and-white football in the back garden. As soon as we were done with dessert, the tears started flowing again, but there’s only so much crying you can do before you’re too exhausted to go on.

—

Hadji Hamit Vural.The young wife of Aktaş’s nephew has already left this world and gone to meet her maker. The mosque courtyard was thronging with elderly yogurt sellers from Konya. Most of these people have sold me the empty land they grabbed in the 1960s and 1970s. Now they’re all wishing they’d waited a little longer and made more money on it. They’re complaining that Hadji Hamit took their land for next to nothing. There isn’t a single one among them saying, I’m grateful to Hadji Hamit, we fenced off some public land on this godforsaken mountain one day, and even though we had no legal right to it, he still bought it off us with truckloads of money. If they’d donated even a tiny fraction of that cash to the mosque’s maintenance fund, I wouldn’t have to draw from my own pockets today to repair the leaking gutters, replace the lead sheets on the dome, and set up a proper classroom for Koran lessons. But never mind, I’m used to these people by now; I still smile at them with affection, and I’m happy to offer my hand to anyone who wants to kiss it with respect. The husband of the deceased was in a terrible state. I asked what this Mevlut had done after his time as a yogurt seller; what I heard saddened me. Men are as different as the fingers of a hand. Some become rich; some become wise; some go to hell; some go to heaven. Someone reminded me that I’d been to his wedding years ago and even given the groom a watch. I saw that someone had dumped empty boxes next to the steps leading up to the mosque courtyard; I said, “Is the mosque your private storeroom now?” Really, they’ve got to take care of that. The crowd began to gather together as the imam arrived. Our Holy Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, once proclaimed that “it is best to stand in the back row during a funeral prayer.” I do love to watch the members of the congregation turn their faces to the right, and then again to the left, and that is why I try never to miss a funeral prayer. O Lord, I prayed, please send this woman to heaven if she was a good person, and please forgive her if she was a sinner — what was her name again? The imam said it just a moment ago. What a slight little thing this Rayiha must have been when she lived; her coffin rested on my shoulder for a moment, and it felt as light as a feather.