Orhan Pamuk - A Strangeness in My Mind

Mevlut was just about to leave when the lady extracted a plastic bottle from the fridge. “Is it the same as this?” she asked.

That was the moment when Mevlut first came across bottled boza sold by a big company. Six months ago, he’d heard from an old street vendor who’d decided to retire that a biscuit manufacturer had bought out an old boza maker on the verge of bankruptcy with plans to bottle the boza and distribute it through grocery stores, but Mevlut had found this all to be utterly implausible. “No one would buy boza from a grocery store,” he’d said, just as, thirty years before, his father had laughed and said, “No one would buy yogurt from a grocery,” only to find himself without a job soon after. Mevlut couldn’t contain his curiosity: “May I have a taste?”

The children’s mother poured a little bit of the whitish bottled boza into a glass. With the whole family staring at him, Mevlut had a sip and made a face. “It’s not good,” he said, smiling. “It’s sour already, it’s gone off. You shouldn’t buy this stuff.”

“But this was made in a factory, by machines,” said the older of the two boys with glasses. “Do you make your boza at home by hand?”

Mevlut didn’t answer. He was so upset he didn’t even want to talk about it with Mr. Sadullah on the way back.

“What’s wrong, maestro?” said Mr. Sadullah. His “maestro” was often ironic (Mevlut could tell), but sometimes Mr. Sadullah used the word out of genuine respect for Mevlut’s talent and persistence (at those times Mevlut would always pretend he didn’t know).

“Never mind, these people don’t know what they’re doing, and anyway I heard it’s going to rain tomorrow,” said Mevlut, changing the subject. Mr. Sadullah could talk endearingly and instructively even about meteorological matters. Mevlut liked to listen to him and daydream as he sat in the front seat of the Dodge, watching hundreds, thousands of lights shining out of cars and windows; the depths of the dark, velvety Istanbul night; and the neon-colored minarets going past. Mevlut used to toil on foot through mud and rain, up and down these very same streets, and now here they were slipping right through with ease. Life, too, slipped by in much the same way, speeding up as it ran along the tracks laid out by time and fortune.

Mevlut knew that the hours he spent at Mr. Sadullah’s house would be the happiest of his whole week. He didn’t want to bring the problems and complications of his other life into the house at Kadırga. After the wedding, he watched as the baby in Fevziye’s belly grew week by week, just as he had done with the babies Rayiha had carried. He was very surprised when it turned out to be a boy; an ultrasound scan had told them it would be, but Mevlut had remained convinced that his grandchild was to be a girl, even wondering whether it would be appropriate to name her Rayiha. Throughout the summer that followed the baby’s birth in May 2002, Mevlut spent many hours playing with little İbrahim (named for his paternal great-grandfather, the shoemaker), helping Fevziye change the diapers (he would look at his grandson’s tiny penis with pride every time) and prepare his baby food.

He wished he could see his daughter (she looked so much like Rayiha) happy all the time. It bothered Mevlut to hear them asking her to set the table for a night of drinking when she’d only just given birth and to see her serving them without complaint while also keeping an eye on the baby in the other room. But Rayiha had always been expected to do exactly the same and somehow managed. Fevziye had left her father’s home and moved into Mr. Sadullah’s only to do the same things she’d done before. But at least this was Mevlut’s home, too. Mr. Sadullah always said so.

They were alone one day, and as Fevziye stared pensively at the plum tree in the neighbor’s garden, Mevlut said, “These are good people…Are you happy, dear?”

An old clock was ticking on the wall. Fevziye only smiled, as if her father had made a statement, not asked a question.

At one point during his next visit to the house in Kadırga, Mevlut felt that same sense of intimate understanding again. He wanted to ask Fevziye more about her happiness when something completely different came out of his mouth.

“I am so, so lonely,” said Mevlut.

“Aunt Samiha is lonely, too,” said Fevziye.

Mevlut told his daughter about Süleyman’s visit and the long conversation they’d had. He’d never spoken with Fevziye about the letters (had they been meant for her mother or for her aunt?), but he was sure that Samiha had told both his girls the whole story anyway. (What must his daughters have thought to find out that their father had actually meant to court their aunt?) Mevlut was relieved when Fevziye didn’t linger too long on the details of how Süleyman had tricked him all those years ago. She had to keep going back to check on İbrahim in the other room, and it took Mevlut a long time to tell her the whole story.

“So what did you say to Süleyman in the end?” asked Fevziye.

“I told him I wrote those letters to your mother,” said Mevlut. “But I’ve been thinking about it, and I wonder if that could have upset your aunt Samiha?”

“No, Dad, my aunt would never be angry at you for telling the truth. She understands.”

“Well, anyway, if you see her,” said Mevlut, “tell her your father says sorry.”

“I’ll tell her…,” said Fevziye, with a look that suggested there was much more than an apology at stake.

Samiha had forgiven Fevziye for having eloped without confiding in her aunt first. Mevlut was aware that she came to Kadırga sometimes to see the baby. They didn’t talk about it again that day, or on Mevlut’s next visit three days later. Fevziye’s warm readiness to act as go-between had filled him with hope, and he didn’t want to push things too much and end up doing something wrong.

He was also happy at the migrants’ association. Mevlut always enjoyed meeting the yogurt sellers and other street vendors of his generation and also his former classmates when they came to the clubhouse. Even people from poorer villages Mevlut had rarely heard of (Nohut, Yören, Çiftekavaklar) half a dozen kilometers from Cennetpınar had started coming by, eager to put up bulletin boards for their villages, with Mevlut’s permission. (He would regularly have to consolidate all the coach schedules, circumcision and wedding announcements, and village photographs that got pinned up on these boards.) More people were asking to book the clubhouse for henna nights, little engagement parties (the clubhouse was too small for actual weddings), dumpling dinners, Koran readings, and fast breaking during Ramadan. Under the leadership of a few rich men from the village of Göçük, others began to get more involved in association activities and to pay their membership dues on time.

The richest of all were the legendary Concrete Brothers, Abdullah and Nurullah, from İmrenler. They didn’t show up at the clubhouse too often, but they donated plenty of money. Korkut said they’d managed to send their sons to school in America. They had put most of what they’d made as the exclusive suppliers of yogurt to Beyoğlu’s big restaurants and cafés into buying land, and now they were rumored to be sitting on mountains of money.

Among others who’d invested their yogurt money in land, there were two families from Çiftekavaklar who’d learned all about the construction business just by building their own homes, to which they gradually added floors, until soon they had made a fortune building houses for new migrants they knew from the village using land they’d fenced off in Duttepe, Kültepe, and all the other hill neighborhoods. People from other villages nearby came to Istanbul and started off as laborers on these construction projects, eventually becoming master bricklayers, licensed builders, doormen, and watchmen. Some of Mevlut’s classmates who’d dropped out of school to take early apprenticeships were now repairmen, mechanics, and blacksmiths. They weren’t exactly rich, but they were still better off than Mevlut. Their main priority was to get their children through a decent school.