Orhan Pamuk - A Strangeness in My Mind

Mevlut couldn’t quite work this out yet, though he had already decided to announce it like a political slogan. Perhaps this message — which he intended to write on the city walls as he had done in his youth — should relate not to his public views but to his private world. Or maybe it should be something that was faithful to both: the most essential truth of all.

“Boo-zaa…”

“Boza seller, boza seller, wait…”

A window opened, and Mevlut smiled in surprise: a basket from the old days was descending rapidly before him.

“Boza seller, do you know how to use the basket?”

“Of course.”

Mevlut poured some boza into the glass bowl inside the basket, took his money, and was soon eagerly back on his way, still trying to figure out what thought he should share with the city.

In recent years, he had been fearful of old age, death, and being forgotten. He’d never hurt anyone on purpose, and he had always tried to be a good person; provided he didn’t succumb to a moment of weakness between now and the day he died, he believed he should make it to heaven. Recently, though, a fear that he may have wasted his life — which he’d never felt in his youth — had begun to gnaw at his soul, despite all the years he still had ahead of him with Samiha. He wasn’t sure what he could say to the city on this matter.

He walked all along the wall around the cemetery in Feriköy. In the past, the strangeness in his mind would have pushed him to go inside, even though he used to be so afraid of dead people and graveyards. Nowadays he was less scared of cemeteries and skeletons, but he was still reluctant to walk into one of these historic graveyards because they brought to mind his own death. But a childish impulse made him look over a slightly lower section of the wall and into the cemetery, where he saw a rustling that alarmed him.

A black dog, followed shortly by another, was heading deeper into the cemetery. Mevlut turned around and started walking briskly in the opposite direction. There was nothing to fear. It was a holiday, and the streets were full of well-dressed people of goodwill, smiling at him as he walked by. A man around his own age opened a window and called out to him and then came down with an empty pitcher into which Mevlut poured two kilos of boza, which cheered him up, and made him forget all about the dogs.

But ten minutes later, two streets down, the dogs cornered Mevlut. By the time he noticed them, he realized that two others from the pack were behind him, and that he wouldn’t be able to back off and slip away. His heart sped up, and he could not remember the prayers his father’s holy man had taught him, or the advice the Holy Guide had given him.

When Mevlut tiptoed past them, however, the dogs didn’t bare their teeth or growl at him, nor was their demeanor threatening in any way. None of them came to sniff at him. Most ignored him, in fact. Mevlut was profoundly relieved; he knew this was a good omen. He felt the need for a friend he could talk to. The dogs loved him now.

Three streets, one neighborhood, and many eager, hopeful, and kindhearted customers later, Mevlut was amazed to find that he was almost out of boza, when a third-floor window opened and a man called out, “Boza seller, come on up.”

Two minutes later, Mevlut was at their door with his boza jugs, on the third floor of this old building with no elevator. They showed him inside. There was that dense humidity that formed when people kept their windows mostly shut and their stoves and radiators turned low, and he detected a heavy dose of rakı fumes, too. Yet this was not a table of querulous drunks but a group of family and friends delighting in the festivities. He saw loving aunts, dignified fathers, gregarious mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers, and an indefinite number of children. As their parents sat at the table and talked, the children kept running around, hiding underneath and shouting at one another. These people’s happiness pleased Mevlut. Human beings were made to be happy, honest, and open. He saw all this warmth in the orange light from the living room. He poured out five kilos of his best boza as a number of children observed him with interest. A gracious woman, around his own age, came into the kitchen from the living room. She was wearing lipstick and was without a headscarf, and her dark eyes were huge.

“Boza seller, how good that you came upstairs,” she said. “It was good to hear your voice from the street. I felt it right inside my heart. It’s a wonderful thing that you’re still selling boza. I’m glad you’re not just saying, ‘Who’d buy it anyway?’ and giving up.”

Mevlut was at the door. He slowed down on his way out. “I would never say that,” he said. “I sell boza because it’s what I want to do.”

“Don’t ever give up, boza seller. Don’t ever think there’s no point trying among all these towers and all this concrete.”

“I will sell boza until the day the world ends,” said Mevlut.

The woman gave him a lot more money than what he usually charged for five kilos. She gestured as if to say that she didn’t want any change, that this was a gift for the Feast of the Sacrifice. Mevlut slipped quietly through the door, went downstairs, and stopped in front of the main entrance to throw his stick across his shoulders and pick up his jugs.

“Boo-zaa,” he cried when he was back out on the street. As he walked toward the Golden Horn, down a road that felt as if it were descending into oblivion, he remembered the view he’d seen from Süleyman’s apartment. Now he knew what it was that he wanted to tell Istanbul and write on its walls. It was both his public and his private view; it was what his heart intended as much as what his words had always meant to say. He said it to himself:

“I have loved Rayiha more than anything in this world.”

2008–2014

All page numbers in boldrefer to first-person narratives.

Abdülvahap

Abdurrahman Efendi: retired boza and yogurt seller. Father of Vediha, Rayiha, and Samiha; Mevlut’s father-in-law. Comes to Istanbul and goes back to the village, 3.1; his wife, son, and daughters, 8.1; his search for a husband for Vediha, 14.1; with Korkut, 14.2, 14.3; 21.1; 24.1; 27.1; 28.1; 30.1; with Süleyman, 27.2, 34.1; in the Ghaazi Quarter, 34.2, 34.3, 34.4, 34.5; 45.1; at Fevziye’s wedding, 51.1

(The) Admiral. Bringing down a nightclub; 49.1

Ahmet from Ankara. In the army

Ali

(Uncle) Asım

Atiye: Mevlut’s mother, who stays behind in the village. Writing letters, 3.1; in the village, 45.1

(The) Blind (village) Grocer; 3.1

Blind Kerim: high-school gymnastics and religion teacher, 7.1, 19.1

Bozkurt: Korkut and Vediha’s elder son. His birth, 20.1; 21.1; 21.1; 26.1; when Samiha elopes, 27.1; 34.3; 50.1; 57.1

Burhan

Captain Tahsin: owner of the Binbom Café, 37.1; his precautions against his employees’ tricks, 37.2; his fight with his employees, 39.1

Cezmi from Cizre: Beyoğlu gangster

Chubby Muharrem: employee at the Binbom Café, 39.1, 39.2

(The) Concrete Brothers, Abdullah and Nurullah, 9.1, 33.1, 53.1

Doorman Ercan, 42.1, 42.2, 42.3

Emre from Antalya (Emre Şaşmaz). In the army

Erhan

Fatma: Mevlut’s elder daughter. Her birth, 26.1; her first day of school, 37.1; her friendship with her father, 43.1, 50.1; 45.1; 50.1; on Bozkurt, 50.2; at university, 50.3; her wedding, 50.4; 54.1