Orhan Pamuk - A Strangeness in My Mind

Yet he couldn’t sleep that night. Samiha may have still been beautiful, even now at thirty-six, but Mevlut felt as if he didn’t know her at all. He’d had very little contact with her throughout his life — save for occasional house visits, the glances they’d shared in the mirror at Brothers-in-Law (where Mevlut had always stood with his back to her), and their meetings at weddings and religious holidays — and he knew that he would never be as close to anyone as he had been to Rayiha. He and Rayiha had lived in each other’s pockets for thirteen years. Even when they were separated during the day, they were still together. That kind of intimacy only came with the passionate love of youth. So what was the point of going to see Samiha tomorrow?

In the morning, he gave his cheeks a thorough shave. He wore his newest white shirt and his best jacket. He walked into the pudding shop at a quarter to twelve. The Villa was a large establishment in Şişli Square, just beyond the bus and minibus stops, along the same row of buildings as the mosque, the Şişli Municipal Hall, and the courthouse. As well as shredded-chicken blancmange, other desserts, breakfast, and fried eggs, they also served lentil soup, cheese-stuffed pastries, rice with tomatoes, and, most important, kebabs. The inhabitants of Kültepe, Duttepe, and the other hills nearby — men, women, and children — would come inside while they waited for the next minibus or ran their errands in Şişli and sit there chatting as they looked at the picture of Atatürk on the wall and their own reflections in the mirror. The lunchtime crowd hadn’t arrived yet, so Mevlut managed to find a table away from prying eyes and in a quiet corner, just as he had hoped. His seat gave him a perfect view of the traffic in the pudding shop — the waiters darting back and forth, the cashier’s quick-fire movements — and he began to be excited at the prospect of watching Samiha walk through the door.

All of a sudden, he saw her standing in front of him. He blushed and knocked down a plastic water bottle but managed to rescue the situation with only a few drops spilled. They both giggled and ordered some kebab over rice.

They had never sat and faced each other quite so formally. For the first time, Mevlut got to look right into Samiha’s dark eyes for as long as he wanted. Samiha took out a cigarette from her handbag, lit it with a lighter, and blew the smoke to Mevlut’s right. He could picture her smoking cigarettes and perhaps even drinking alone in her room, but it was something else altogether to do it in a restaurant and in the company of a man. He felt his head spin, and at the same time a thought flashed through his mind that could have poisoned their relationship: Rayiha would never have done that.

Mevlut talked about Süleyman’s visit and the words he’d asked Fevziye to pass on, and he apologized for the misunderstanding. Once again, Süleyman had stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and caused trouble with his nonsense…

“That’s not exactly right,” said Samiha. She spoke about Süleyman’s bad intentions and his stupidity; she went on for so long that she even touched upon Ferhat’s murder. Mevlut told Samiha that he sensed her hatred for Süleyman, but perhaps it was time to leave all that in the past.

That comment irritated Samiha even more. She worked through her kebab and rice and put her fork down every now and then to light up another cigarette. Mevlut had never imagined her to be so volatile and so unhappy. Then he realized that she would be happier if they framed their plans to be together as a way of getting back at Süleyman.

“Did you really not recognize me when you saw me at the end of your wedding to Rayiha, or were you pretending?” asked Samiha.

“I pretended not to recognize you so that Rayiha wouldn’t get upset,” said Mevlut, thinking back to the wedding twenty years ago. He couldn’t tell whether Samiha believed his lie or not. They were quiet for a time, eating their food and listening to the buzz of the pudding shop getting crowded.

Samiha asked, “Did you write the letters to me or to my sister?”

“I wrote the letters to you,” said Mevlut.

He thought he caught a glimmer of satisfaction on her face. They didn’t speak for a long while. Samiha was still tense, but Mevlut felt that they’d done enough for their first meeting and said everything they needed to say: he began to talk vaguely about aging, loneliness, and the importance of having someone in your life.

Samiha was listening closely, but suddenly she interrupted him. “You wrote the letters to me, but for years you told everyone, ‘I wrote them to Rayiha.’ They all pretended to believe you even though they knew you’d meant them for me. Now they’re going to pretend they believe you when you say you wrote them to me.”

“I did write them to you,” said Mevlut. “We saw each other at Korkut’s wedding. I wrote to you about your eyes for three years. Süleyman tricked me, and that’s why I wrote Rayiha’s name on the letters instead of yours. But then I was happy with Rayiha; you know that. Now we can be happy, too.”

“I don’t care what other people think…But I would like to hear you say one more time, like you mean it, that you wrote the letters to me,” said Samiha. “Otherwise I won’t marry you.”

“I wrote the letters to you, and I wrote them with love,” said Mevlut. Even as he pronounced these words, he thought of how difficult it was to tell the truth and be sincere at the same time.

We Were Doing Things Properly

Samiha.The house was an old gecekondu home. Mevlut hadn’t done a thing to it since he’d lived there with his father as a child. He told me all about it at great length during our second meeting at the Villa Pudding Shop. Whenever he mentioned this house I had yet to see, he called it “home” in the same loving way his father had done.

It was during our second time at the Villa that we decided to get married and live in the house in Kültepe. It would have been difficult for me to get rid of the tenants in Çukurcuma, and besides, we needed the income. Suddenly everything seemed to be about the house. Mevlut would tell me something sweet every now and then, but you don’t need to know about all that. We both loved Rayiha very much. We were doing things properly and moving slowly.

As long as we didn’t have to pay any rent ourselves, the monthly rent from the two houses in Çukurcuma that I’d inherited from Ferhat would be more than enough to live on. Mevlut had an income, too. That was another thing we discussed, this time over a plate of rice with chicken. Mevlut was relaxed and direct, though occasionally timid. But I did not see that as a flaw; on the contrary, I appreciated it.

Fevziye was the first to find out that we’d met. Her husband and Mr. Sadullah found out before the Aktaş family did. Mr. Sadullah took me, Mevlut, and Fevziye with İbrahim on her lap on a drive along the Bosphorus. On our way back, people thought we were a taxi cruising for fares and kept hailing us from the pavement or trying to jump in our path. Every single time, Mevlut would cheerfully shout from the front: “Can’t you see the taxi’s full?”

Mevlut wanted to call Süleyman immediately and ask him to kick out his own tenant in Kültepe, but I wanted to be the one to inform Duttepe of the news, so I asked him to wait. Vediha took it very well; my darling sister hugged me tight and kissed my cheeks. But she also got me angry straight after that by saying how everyone had wanted this to happen. I would have preferred to marry Mevlut because everyone was against it, not because everyone wanted it.

Mevlut would have wanted to visit the Aktaş family and give Süleyman and Korkut the news himself. But I warned him that if he made that kind of visit seem more important than it was, and turned it into something ceremonial, Süleyman and Korkut might think we were asking their permission to marry, and that would upset me.