Orhan Pamuk - A Strangeness in My Mind

“Now you may read.”

There was a murmur and the rustle of curious boys leafing through old, yellowed pages. Mevlut and Mohini had been given the June 1952 issue (only twenty years old) of Turkey’s first parapsychology magazine, Mind and Matter, to share. They were gently turning pages, without wetting the tips of their fingers, when they came face-to-face with the picture of a dog.

The title of the article was “Can Dogs Read People’s Minds?” The first time Mevlut read through the piece, he didn’t really understand much of it, but oddly, his heart started racing. He asked Mohini if he’d let him read it one more time before they turned the page. Years later, it wasn’t the ideas or the concepts explored in the piece that Mevlut would remember most vividly but the way he had felt as he was reading it. While reading the piece, he had sensed the way everything in the universe was connected. He had also realized that street dogs watched him at night from cemeteries and empty lots even more than he had ever known. The dog in the picture wasn’t one of those cute little European lapdogs you usually found in magazines but one of the mud-brown curs you saw on the streets of Istanbul; perhaps that was also why the article had made such an impression.

When they got their final report cards in the first week of June, Mevlut saw that he’d flunked English and had to take a makeup exam.

“Don’t tell your dad, he’ll kill you,” said Ferhat.

Mevlut agreed, but he also knew that his father would demand to see his middle-school diploma with his own eyes. He’d heard there was a chance that Miss Nazlı, who now worked at a different school in Istanbul, might come back to proctor the makeup exams. Mevlut spent that summer in the village cramming for the English exam so that he could finish middle school. The Cennetpınar primary school didn’t have an English-to-Turkish dictionary, and there was no one in the village who could help him. In July, he started to take lessons from the son of a man who had emigrated to Germany and had just come back to Gümüşdere village with a Ford Taunus and a TV set. Mevlut had to walk three hours each way just so that he could sit down with a book in the shade of a tree and practice his English for an hour with this boy, who went to a German middle school and spoke both Turkish and English with a German accent.

—

Abdurrahman Efendi.The story of our dear, lucky Mevlut, who took English lessons from the son of that man who went to work in Germany, has once again brought him to our humble village of Gümüşdere, so I hope you will let me offer a quick update on the dark fate that has befallen the rest of us. When I first had the honor of meeting you in 1968, I had no idea how lucky I was, having my three beautiful daughters and their silent angel of a mother! After my third daughter, Samiha, was born, I tempted fate again. I just couldn’t get the thought of a son out of my head, and we couldn’t keep from trying for a fourth child. Indeed I had a son, whom I named Murat as soon as he was born. But not an hour after his birth, the Lord called him and his mother, too, covered as she was in blood, and so from one minute to the next, Murat, my heart’s desire, and my wife were both taken, gone to live with the angels in heaven, leaving me a widowed father of three orphaned girls. At first, my three daughters would get into their late mother’s bed next to me, sniffing in the last whiffs of her scent as they cried through the night. Ever since they were babies, I’ve pampered them like the daughters of the Chinese emperor. I bought them dresses from Beyşehir and Istanbul. To those cheapskates who say that I have squandered my money on drink, I would like to say that a man whose neck has gone crooked from selling yogurt on the streets can only entrust his future to his three beautiful daughters, each more precious than any earthly treasure. Now my little angels are old enough that they can speak for themselves better than I can. The eldest, Vediha, is ten, while Samiha, the youngest, is six.

—

Vediha.Why is it that the teacher looks at me the most during class? Why can’t I bring myself to tell anyone that I want to go to Istanbul to look at the sea and the ships? Why do I always have to be the one to clear the table, make the beds, and cook for my father? Why does it make me angry when I see my sisters talking and giggling together?

—

Rayiha.I’ve never seen the sea in my life. There are clouds that look like things. I want to grow up to be as old as my mom and get married as soon as possible. I don’t like sunchokes. Sometimes, I like to think that my departed little brother, Murat, and my mom are watching over us. I like to cry myself to sleep. Why does everyone call me “clever girl”? When the two boys look at their book under the plane tree, Samiha and I watch them from far away.

—

Samiha.There are two men under the pine tree. I am holding Rayiha’s hand. I never let go. Then we went home.

—

In late August, Mevlut and his father returned to Istanbul earlier than usual so that they would be on time for Mevlut’s makeup exam. At the end of summer, the house in Kültepe smelled of damp and earth, just as it had when Mevlut had first walked into it three years ago.

Three days later, he was in the biggest classroom in all of Atatürk Boys’ Secondary School taking his exam, but there was no sign of Miss Nazlı. Mevlut’s heart broke. But still he did his best, answering the questions well. Two weeks later, when high school had begun, he went to Skeleton’s office.

“Well done, ten nineteen, here’s your middle-school diploma!”

All day long, Mevlut kept taking it out of his bag to have another look, and that evening he showed it to his father.

“Now you can become a policeman or a watchman,” said his father.

Mevlut would miss those years for the rest of his life. In middle school, he had learned that being Turkish was the best thing in the world and that city life was so much better than village life. They had sung in class all together, and after all the fighting and intimidation, even the very worst bullies and troublemakers sang with joyful innocence all over their faces; Mevlut would think back on that and smile.

A Matter of Life and Death

ONE SUNDAY MORNING in November 1972, Mevlut and his father were planning their yogurt distribution routes for the week when it became clear to Mevlut that they would no longer be going out to sell yogurt together. The yogurt companies were growing and had started delivering their truckloads straight to shops and street vendors in Taksim and Şişli. The art of a good yogurt seller no longer lay in lugging around sixty kilos of product from Eminönü to Beyoğlu and Şişli, but in stocking up wherever the trucks dropped it off and distributing it as quickly as possible among the surrounding streets and homes. Mevlut and his father realized that their overall income would increase if they split up and followed different routes. Twice a week, one of them would also bring some boza home to sweeten with sugar, but that, too, they now sold separately, in different neighborhoods.

This new state of affairs filled Mevlut with a sense of freedom, but it was to prove a fleeting illusion. Getting along with the restaurant owners, the increasingly demanding housewives, the doormen, and the people at the places where he parked his yogurt trays and boza jugs took a lot more time and effort than he’d anticipated, and he often found himself skipping school.