Orhan Pamuk - A Strangeness in My Mind

Mevlut drank the tea served by a pale assistant with big green eyes, trying to cut the small talk short, but the man was determined to raise his price by telling him how bad business was. There were still some young men and women who decided to get married after they’d kissed and fondled each other, and then went home to their separate families and did not say a word to their parents at the dinner table, but their numbers, too, were sadly dwindling.

“I don’t have much money!” said Mevlut.

“Is that why you ran away with the girl? Good-looking boys like you can turn out to be real rakes sometimes, and as soon as they’ve quenched their thirst they’ll say talaq and get rid of the girl. I’ve known many a lovely but ingenuous girl to kill herself or end up in a brothel over someone like you.”

“We’re going to have a civil ceremony, too, as soon as she turns eighteen,” said Mevlut, feeling guilty.

“All right. I will do a good deed and marry you tomorrow. Where shall I come?”

“Could we just do it here without bringing the girl in?” said Mevlut, looking around at the dusty junk shop.

“I don’t charge for the ceremony itself, but I do for the room.”

—

Rayiha.After Mevlut left the house, I went out and bought two kilos of slightly overripe but cheap strawberries from a street vendor, and sugar from the grocery store, and before Mevlut got back, I’d washed the strawberries and started making jam. When he came home, he breathed in the sweet strawberry fumes happily but didn’t try to approach me.

In the evening, he took me to see a double feature at the Tulip Cinema. During the break between the first movie starring Hülya Koçyiğit and the second starring Türkân Şoray, the air in the theater so humid that the seats felt wet, he told me that we would be getting married tomorrow, and I cried a bit. I still paid attention to the second movie, though. I was so happy.

Once the movie was over, Mevlut said, “Until your father gives us his blessing or you turn eighteen, let’s at least make sure we’re married in the eyes of God so no one can split us up…I know this scrap-metal dealer. The ceremony will be in his shop. He said there’s no need for you to come…All you have to do is give someone permission to act on your behalf.”

“No, I want to be there for the ceremony,” I said with a frown. But then I smiled so Mevlut wouldn’t worry.

—

Back home, Mevlut and Rayiha acted like two strangers forced to share a hotel room in a provincial town, hiding from each other as they changed into their nightgown and pajamas. Avoiding each other’s gaze, they switched the lights off and carefully lay down side by side on the bed making sure to leave some space between them, Rayiha with her back to Mevlut again. He felt a mixture of joy and fear, and just as he was thinking this excitement would keep him up all night, he fell asleep.

He woke up in the middle of the night to find that he had buried himself in the thick strawberry scent of Rayiha’s skin and the aroma of children’s cookies coming from her neck. They’d both been sweating in the heat and fallen prey to ravenous mosquitoes. Their bodies embraced of their own accord. With his eyes on the dark blue sky and the neon lights outside, Mevlut felt briefly as if they were floating away somewhere outside the world, in a childhood place where gravity did not exist, when Rayiha said, “We’re not married yet,” and pushed him away.

From a waiter he used to know at the Karlıova Restaurant, Mevlut had found out that Ferhat was back from military service. The next morning, one of the two dishwasher boys from Mardin led him to where Ferhat was staying, a second-rate rooming house for bachelors in Tarlabaşı. He was living here with waiters ten years younger than he was, and Kurdish and Alevi kids from Tunceli and Bingöl just out of middle school who’d started working as dishwashers. Mevlut didn’t think this stinking, stuffy place was good enough for Ferhat and felt sorry for him, so he was relieved when he learned that Ferhat still spent plenty of time at his parents’ house. Mevlut could see that Ferhat was a sort of older brother to the kids in the dormitory, and that there were other things going on here, too — cigarette smuggling, which had become nearly impossible in the aftermath of the coup; trade in a drug that was known as grass; and a feeling of political outrage and solidarity — but he didn’t ask too many questions. The things he’d witnessed and experienced in the military, and the stories he’d heard from acquaintances imprisoned and tortured in Diyarbakır, had all left an indelible impression on Ferhat and made him even more political.

“You need to get married,” said Mevlut.

“I need to find a city girl and make her fall for me,” said Ferhat, “or I need to run away with a girl from the village. I don’t have enough money to get married.”

“I ran away with a girl,” said Mevlut. “So should you. Then we can start a business together, open a shop, and get rich.”

Mevlut told Ferhat a rather embellished version of the story of how he’d run away with Rayiha. Neither Süleyman nor his van featured in it. Mevlut said that he had walked hand in hand with his lover through the mud and the mountains for a whole day, all the way to Akşehir train station, while her father chased after them.

“Is Rayiha as beautiful as our letters said she was?” asked an eager Ferhat.

“She’s even prettier and smarter,” said Mevlut. “But the girl’s family, the Vurals, Korkut, Süleyman, they won’t give up the chase even in Istanbul.”

“Damned fascists,” said Ferhat, and agreed straightaway to act as a witness at their wedding.

—

Rayiha.I wore my floral-print dress with the long skirt and a clean pair of jeans. I also wore the purple headscarf I’d bought in the backstreets of Beyoğlu. We met up with Ferhat in the Black Sea Café on İstiklal Avenue. He was a tall, polite man with a high forehead. He gave us each a glass of sour-cherry juice. “Congratulations, yenge, you picked the right man,” he said. “He’s a bit of a weirdo, but he’s got a heart of gold.”

Once we’d all gathered at his shop, the scrap-metal dealer found another witness from the grocer’s next door. He opened a drawer and took out a frayed notebook covered in Ottoman script. He flipped it open and carefully took down everyone’s names and our fathers’ names, too. We all knew these records had no official value, yet it was impressive to see this man earnestly writing everything down in Arabic letters.

“How much did you spend on her bride price? How much will you pay if you split up?” asked the scrap-metal dealer.

“What bride price?” said Ferhat. “He ran away with the girl.”

“How much will you pay her if you divorce her?”

“Only death can tear us apart,” said Mevlut.

The other witness said, “Just put down ten Sultan Reshad gold bullion coins for one, and seven State Mint gold coins for the other.”

“That’s too much,” said Ferhat.

“It seems I shall not be able to perform this ceremony in full respect of Sharia law,” said the scrap-metal dealer, going over to the set of scales in the front room of the shop. “Any physical intimacy that might occur without there being a religious union in place is to be considered fornication. Anyway, the girl is too young.”

“I’m not too young, I’m seventeen!” I said, showing them the identification card I took from my father’s cupboard.

Ferhat took the scrap-metal dealer to one side and put some money in his pocket.