Orhan Pamuk - A Strangeness in My Mind

The exchange of bullets lasted all day, but there were few injuries, and no one died. Just before sundown, the robotic sound of police loudspeakers informed everyone that a curfew had been imposed on both hills. It also announced that homes in Kültepe would be searched for weapons. A few armed stalwarts stayed on the fortifications preparing to fight the police, but Mevlut and Ferhat were unarmed, and they both went home.

When his father returned from a day spent selling yogurt without running into any trouble on his way back, Mevlut was amazed. Father and son sat down at the table, talking over their lentil soup.

Late at night, there was a power cut in Kültepe, and armored vehicles entered the dark neighborhoods with floodlights blazing, like clumsy but malevolent crabs. Marching behind them like Janissaries after chariots were policemen armed with guns and batons who rushed up the slopes and fanned out into the neighborhoods. There was the sound of heavy gunfire for a time, and then everything sank into a nervous silence. When Mevlut looked out of the window into the pitch-black night, he saw masked informants leading the soldiers to the homes that needed to be raided.

In the morning, their doorbell rang. Two soldiers were looking for weapons. Mevlut’s father explained that this was a yogurt seller’s house and that they had nothing to do with politics, and he welcomed them inside with a respectful bow, sitting them down at the table and offering some tea. The soldiers were both potato nosed, but they weren’t related. One of them was from Kayseri, the other from Tokat. They sat there for about half an hour, discussing the sad events they were witnessing and the danger that innocent bystanders might get caught up in the fray, and whether the Kayseri football team had any chance of get ting promoted this season. Mustafa Efendi asked them how long they had to go until they were discharged and whether their commander was nice or beat them for no reason.

While they had their tea, all the weapons, leftist literature, posters, and banners in Kültepe were confiscated. The vast majority of local university students and angry protesters were taken into custody. Most of them had barely slept for days, and as they were herded onto buses, they were subjected to a first round of beatings, followed by more systematic tortures: bastinadoes, electric shocks, and the like. Once their wounds had healed, their heads were shaved and they were photographed for the newspapers standing beside weapons, posters, and books. Their trials went on for years; in some cases, the prosecutors demanded the death penalty, while in others they asked for a life sentence. Some of these protesters spent ten years in jail, some only five, one or two broke out of prison, and others were acquitted. Some got involved in prison riots and hunger strikes, ending up blind or paralyzed as a result.

Atatürk Boys’ Secondary School had been closed down, and its reopening was delayed by the political tensions that followed the death of thirty-four left-wing demonstrators on International Workers’ Day in Taksim Square as well as a spate of political assassinations all over Istanbul. Mevlut grew even more distant from his classes. He was selling yogurt late into the evening on streets covered with political slogans, and at night he gave most of his earnings over to his father. When school opened again, he really didn’t feel like going back. No longer was he just the eldest in his class, he was now older than anyone else in all of the back rows.

When their report cards were issued in June 1977, Mevlut learned that he had failed to graduate from high school. He spent that summer in uncertainty and fear of loneliness. Ferhat and his family were leaving Kültepe, along with some other Alevis. Back in winter, before all this political upheaval, Ferhat and Mevlut had made plans to start their business — as street vendors — in July. But now Ferhat, busy with the logistics of the move and his Alevi relatives, was no longer so eager. In the middle of July, Mevlut returned to the village. He spent a lot of time with his mother, ignoring her talk of “getting you married.” He hadn’t done his compulsory military service yet, and he had no money, so marriage would mean a return to the village.

At the end of that summer, just before the start of the new term, he stopped by the school. It was a hot September morning, but the old school building was, as ever, cool and shaded. He told Skeleton that he wanted to postpone his registration for a year.

Skeleton had come to respect this student he had known for eight years. “Why would you do that; just grit your teeth for another year and you’ll be done with school,” he said, with surprising warmth. “We’ll all give you a hand, you’re the oldest student here…”

“I’m going to go to cram school next year to prepare for the university admissions exams,” said Mevlut. “This year, I’m going to work to save some money for cram school. I’ll finish high school next year.” He’d thought out every detail of this scenario on the train to Istanbul. “It’s possible.”

“Possible, yes, but by then you’ll be twenty-two,” said Skeleton, ever the heartless bureaucrat. “Never in this school’s history have we graduated anyone at the age of twenty-two.” But he saw the resignation on Mevlut’s face. “Well, good luck, then…I’ll defer your registration for a year. But first you’re going to need a document from the city health department.”

Mevlut didn’t even ask what document he needed. The moment he set foot outside, his heart told him that this would be his last visit to the school building. His mind, meanwhile, warned him not to get too sentimental about the smells of UNICEF milk that still drifted up from the kitchens; of the coal cellar that was no longer in use; of the basement toilet, which he’d been scared even to look at when he was a middle-school kid and where he’d spent his high-school years smoking scrounged cigarettes with all the other boys. He walked down the stairs without a single glance back at the staff room and library doors. Whenever he’d been to school recently, he had always thought, Why do I even bother coming, I’m never going to graduate anyway! Now, as he walked past the Atatürk statue for the last time, he told himself, I could have made it if I’d really wanted to.

He did not tell his father that he wasn’t going to school. He even hid the truth from himself. Since he didn’t go to the health depart ment to get the document he needed in order maintain the illusion that he might really go back to school, his true and private thoughts on the matter gradually adapted to the more official version of the facts. There were even times when he genuinely believed that he was saving money to go to cram school next year.

Other times, as soon as he was done delivering yogurt to a gradually shrinking roster of regular customers, he would drop off his stick, his scales, and his trays with someone he knew and run out into the city streets, to wherever his legs happened to take him.

He loved it as a place where all manner of wonderful things seemed to be going on at the same time, no matter where he looked. Mostly, these things tended to happen around Şişli, Harbiye, Taksim, and Beyoğlu. He would hop on a bus in the morning with no ticket, going as far into these neighborhoods as he could without getting caught, and then, with no load on his shoulders, he would walk freely into those same streets he couldn’t enter when he had yogurt to carry, savoring the joy of getting lost in the commotion and the noise of the city, looking in the shopwindows on his way. He liked the mannequin displays of women in long skirts next to cheerful children in two-piece suits, and he always looked closely at the trunkless mannequin legs in hosiers’ shops. He might get caught up in a fantasy his mind had invented on the spot and spend ten minutes following a woman with light brown hair walking on the other side of the road, until an impulse would lead him toward the first restaurant he came across, and he would enter it, asking for the first high-school classmate that popped into his head: “Is he around?” Sometimes they would put him off with a brusque “We don’t need a dishwasher!” before he could even get a word in. Back on the street, Neriman would cross his mind for a moment, but then he would follow his imagination again and start walking in the opposite direction, toward the backstreets of the Tünel area, or he might pay a visit to the Rüya Cinema, where he would linger in the narrow lobby looking at the posters and movie stills, until he could see whether Ferhat’s distant relative was there, checking tickets at the door.