Orhan Pamuk - A Strangeness in My Mind

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Mevlut was looking at the girls sitting with the bride at the far table when Hadji Hamit Vural came in with his men. All heads turned as soon as he walked in, and he was immediately surrounded by people wanting to kiss his hand.

Mevlut would also have liked to marry a pretty girl like Vediha once he turned twenty-five. This would only be possible after making lots of money and gaining the protection of someone like Hadji Hamit. He understood that, for this to happen, he would have to go and do his military service, work very hard, and leave the yogurt to find a proper occupation or run a shop.

Eventually, emboldened by the alcohol, the rising noise levels, and the increasingly lively atmosphere inside the hall, he started staring at the bride’s table directly. He also felt that God was with him and that his fortunes might be about to lift.

Many years later, Mevlut would still be able to replay those moments — the conversation around him and what he saw at the table where the pretty girls sat (occasionally obscured by people standing in his line of sight) — like scenes from a movie. But it was a movie in which the dialogue and the photography were not always entirely clear:

“They’re not that young, you know,” said a voice at the table. “They’re all old enough to get married.”

“Even the one with the blue headscarf?” “Guys, please don’t look straight at them like that,” said Süleyman. “Half these girls are going back to the village, the other half will stay in the city.” “We don’t even know where they live…” “Some of them live in Gültepe, some in Kuştepe.” “You’re definitely taking us there…” “Which one would you want to write letters to?” “None of them,” said an honest young man Mevlut didn’t know. “They’re sitting so far that I can’t even tell them apart.” “All the more reason to write them letters, since they’re so far away.”

“Our Vediha’s ID card says she’s sixteen, but actually she’s seventeen,” said Süleyman. “Her sisters are fifteen and sixteen. Crooked-Necked Abdurrahman Efendi had them registered late, so they would have more time to sit at home and entertain their father.”

“What’s that youngest one called?”

“Yes, she’s the prettiest.”

“Her sister’s nothing special.”

“One of them is Samiha; the other one is Rayiha,” said Süleyman.

Mevlut flushed with surprise at his own quickening heartbeat.

“The other three girls are also from their village…” “The one with the blue headscarf isn’t bad at all…” “None of these girls is younger than fourteen.” “They’re children,” said the Boxer. “If I were their father, I wouldn’t let them wear headscarves yet.”

“In our village, you put on your headscarf once you’re done with primary school,” said Mevlut, unable to contain his excitement.

“The youngest finished primary school this year.”

“Which one’s that, the one with the white headscarf?” asked Mevlut.

“She’s the pretty one, the younger one.”

“I would never get married to a village girl,” said Hidayet the Boxer.

“And a city girl would never get married to you.”

“Why?” said Hidayet, somewhat offended. “How many city girls do you even know?”

“Loooads.”

“You do realize, don’t you, that customers who come into your shop don’t count as girls you know?”

Mevlut ate some sweet biscuits with another glass of vodka and lemonade, which smelled like mothballs. When it was time to give the bride and groom their gifts and jewelry, he was able to take a good long look at the incredible beauty of Korkut’s wife, Vediha Yenge. Her younger sister Rayiha, sitting at the girls’ table, was just as beautiful; as he kept looking at that busy table, staring at Rayiha, he noticed a desire stirring inside him as strong as the will to live, but at the same time he felt ashamed and afraid that he would turn out to be a failure.

Mevlut pinned his twenty marks onto Korkut’s lapel with a safety pin Süleyman had given him, but he couldn’t bring himself to look up at his sister-in-law’s beautiful face, and his own shyness embarrassed him.

On the way back to the table, he took an unplanned detour: he went up to congratulate Abdurrahman Efendi, sitting with the other Gümüşdere villagers. He was now very close to the girls’ table, but he didn’t look in that direction. Abdurrahman Efendi was dressed up in a white dress shirt with a high collar to hide his crooked neck, as well as a tasteful jacket. By now he was used to the antics of young street vendors and yogurt sellers who were dazzled by his daughters. Like a sultan, he held his hand out to Mevlut, who gamely kissed it. Had his beautiful daughter been watching this exchange?

For a second, Mevlut lost concentration and glanced at the girls’ table. His heart started beating madly; he was afraid, but he was happy, too. At the same time, he felt a little disappointed. There were now a couple of empty chairs at the table. In truth, Mevlut hadn’t been able to get a proper look at any of the girls from where he had been sitting. So as he was walking back he kept his eyes on their table, trying to figure out who exactly was missing, when…

They almost crashed into each other. She was the prettiest among the girls. She must have been the youngest, too; there was a childlike quality to her.

They looked into each other’s eyes for a moment. She had a very honest, open face, and girlish dark eyes. She walked off to her father’s table.

Even in his confusion, Mevlut could see the hand of fate — kismet — at work. Only God could have ordained this chance encounter. He was having trouble thinking straight, and he kept looking toward the crooked-necked father’s table, trying to catch another glimpse of her, but there were too many people. He had already walked off too far. But though he couldn’t see her face, he felt her in his soul every time she moved, every time the blue blur of her headscarf fluttered in the distance. All he wanted to do was to tell everyone about that pretty girl, their miraculous meeting, and the moment her dark eyes looked into his.

At some point before the party started winding down, Süleyman mentioned that “Abdurrahman Efendi and his daughters Samiha and Rayiha are staying with us for another week before they return to the village.”

Over the next few days, Mevlut thought constantly about the girl with the dark eyes and the childlike face and about what Süleyman had said. Why had he mentioned this to Mevlut? What would happen if Mevlut revived his old habits and went over to knock on the Aktaş door out of the blue? Would he get to see that girl again? Had she also noticed Mevlut? He definitely needed an excuse to visit them, otherwise Süleyman would realize that he had come to see her, and he might hide her away from him. He might even make fun of Mevlut, or put a stop to it all by saying that she was still a child. If Mevlut admitted his infatuation to Süleyman, Süleyman would probably say that he was in love with her, too — that he’d fallen in love with her first, in fact — and not let Mevlut anywhere near her. Mevlut spent the whole week selling yogurt and failing to find a reasonable excuse to visit the Aktaş family, no matter how hard he looked for one.

When the migrating storks had come back over Istanbul on their way to Europe, August had come to an end, and the first two weeks of September had passed, Mevlut did not go to school, nor did he exchange any of the German marks he kept hidden under his mattress to pay for one of the cram schools he had said a year ago that he would be attending now. He hadn’t even gone to the city health department to get the document Skeleton had told him to get last year in order to defer his school enrollment. All this meant that his academic career, which for all practical purposes had ended two years ago, could no longer survive even as a dream. The gendarmes from the draft office were bound to turn up at his village soon.