Orhan Pamuk - A Strangeness in My Mind

“Now, repeat after me,” said the scrap-metal dealer.

Mevlut and I looked into each other’s eyes and recited a long series of words in Arabic.

“Dear God! Bless this union!” said the scrap-metal dealer as he concluded the ceremony. “May there be companionship, understanding, and love between these two forsaken souls of yours, and please, O Lord, allow their marriage to stand the test of time, and protect Mevlut and Rayiha from hatred, discord, and separation.”

The Happiest Days of His Life

AS SOON AS they got home, they made straight for the bed. Now that they were married, they could relax; the thing both had craved so much, been so curious about while never getting to do it, was now a duty everyone expected them to perform. They were shy about seeing each other naked (even with some parts remaining covered) and touching each other’s bodies where they burned hottest — on their arms, their chests — but the sense that it was all unavoidable relieved their shame somewhat. “Yes, this is really embarrassing,” their eyes were saying. “But unfortunately, it must be done.”

—

Rayiha.I only wish the room had been dark! I didn’t like feeling so self-conscious every time we looked into each other’s eyes. The faded curtains couldn’t block out the bright summer afternoon light. I had to push Mevlut away once or twice when he got too greedy and rough. But part of me liked it when he was forceful, and I just let myself go. I saw Mevlut’s thing twice, and it scared me a little. I cradled my pure and handsome Mevlut’s head like a baby, so that the huge thing down there wouldn’t catch my eye.

—

Contrary to what they’d always heard from their friends, Mevlut and Rayiha had learned in religion class back in the village that there was nothing lascivious about physical intimacy between husband and wife, but they still felt uncomfortable whenever they looked into each other’s eyes. They realized soon enough, however, that their shyness was bound to abate, and that they would come to see sex as a normal human activity, perhaps even a sign of maturity.

“I’m so thirsty,” said Mevlut, feeling as if he were about to suffocate.

It was almost as if the whole house — the walls, the windows, and the ceiling — were sweating with them.

“There’s a glass by the water pitcher,” said Rayiha, burrowing under the bedsheets.

Mevlut could sense from the look in her eyes that she was seeing the world from outside her own body. He felt the same as he poured water into the glass on the table — as if he had stepped outside himself and now existed purely as a soul. Handing his wife her glass of water, he realized that even though there was something obscene and shameless about sex, it also had a divine, spiritual side to it. They stole a few glances at each other’s bodies while they were drinking their water, feeling almost resigned, shy, and amazed at what life could be.

Mevlut saw light pouring out into the room from Rayiha’s milk-white skin. He briefly considered that he might be responsible for those pink and light purple marks on her body. Once they were back under the covers, they embraced in the comfort of knowing that everything was fine. Tender words tumbled unrehearsed from Mevlut’s mouth.

“My darling,” he told her. “My sweetheart, you’re so lovely…”

His mother and sisters used to say these things to him when he was little, but where they would say them in their normal voices, he was whispering them fervently into Rayiha’s ear like secrets. He called out to her in the restless voice of a traveler afraid of getting lost in the woods. They made love until morning, falling in and out of sleep, and getting up to drink water in the dark without ever switching the lights on. The best thing about being married was that you could have sex whenever and as often as you wanted.

In the morning, when they saw stains the color of sour cherries on the sheets, Mevlut and Rayiha felt a bit embarrassed, but also pleased — though they hid this satisfaction from each other — for here was the expected proof of Rayiha’s virginity. They never spoke of it openly, but all through that summer, whenever they were busy preparing sour-cherry ice cream for Mevlut to sell in the evenings, he would always remember that other smudge of cherry hue.

—

Rayiha.We both keep the fast during Ramadan — Mevlut started the year he finished primary school and stayed behind in the village, while I began even earlier, when I was just ten years old. When we were little, Samiha and I were napping until it was time to break the fast one day when my sister Vediha felt faint with hunger and keeled over like a minaret in an earthquake, and the trays she was carrying came tumbling down with her. That’s how we learned that whenever we felt too weak to stand from all that fasting, we should sit down on the floor immediately. Even when we didn’t feel faint, sometimes just for fun we would pretend that the world was spinning and sway backward and forward a little before throwing ourselves on the floor in fits of laughter. Anyone who keeps the fast, even kids, knows that there should not be any physical contact between husbands and wives during fasting hours. But three days after we got married, it was already Ramadan, and Mevlut and I began to question what we thought we knew.

Sir, does a kiss on the hand void the fast? It does not! What about a kiss on the shoulder? Probably not. What about kissing the neck of your lawfully wedded wife? Her cheek? The council for religious affairs says that a chaste kiss is fine as long as you aren’t planning to take things any further. The scrap-metal dealer who married us says that even a kiss on the mouth won’t void the fast provided there is no transfer of saliva. Mevlut trusted him and thought that, since he was the one who’d married us, he alone could decide the matter. In our faith, things can be interpreted in many different ways. Vediha once told me that on long, hot summer days, boys keeping the fast will disappear into the woods and hide in dried-up riverbeds where they shamelessly play with themselves and justify it by saying that “the imam states you mustn’t touch your spouse, not that you mustn’t touch yourself…” Maybe there isn’t anything in the holy book that forbids sex during Ramadan either.

You’ve probably figured it out by now: during the long, hot days of Ramadan, Mevlut and I couldn’t control our urges and started having sex. If it’s a sin, let it be on my head. I love my beautiful Mevlut so very much. We weren’t doing anyone any harm! Of those who would call us sinners, I’d like to ask one question: when thousands of young people are married off to each other in a hurry just before Ramadan and are having sex for the first time in their lives, what do you think they get up to at home during the long and dizzying hours of fasting?

—

Hızır had gone back to his village near Sivas for Ramadan, leaving Mevlut his three-wheeled ice-cream cart, some ladles, and a wooden cooler. Every summer, many street vendors like Hızır would arrange for someone to take over their carts and customers so that they wouldn’t lose any regulars while they were away in their villages.

Hızır wasn’t charging Mevlut much rent for the equipment because he trusted him to be honest and diligent. He had invited Mevlut over to his house on a gloomy backstreet of the Dolapdere neighborhood, where his tiny and rather rotund wife befriended Rayiha immediately and joined her husband in teaching them how to make the ice cream, how to knead the mixture with a continual heartfelt motion until it was the right consistency, and how to add a little citric acid to lemon juice and a little food coloring to sour-cherry juice. Hızır said that ice cream was not only a treat for children but also for adults who thought they were still children. As much as the flavor of the ice cream itself, the key to success lay in the ice-cream vendor’s exuberance and sense of humor. Hızır had sat Mevlut down and shown him a map he himself had drawn with great care, marking out which streets Mevlut should pass through and which spots would be most crowded at what times, so he could focus his efforts accordingly. Mevlut memorized the map and would visualize it every evening as he pushed his ice-cream cart from upper Tarlabaşı down to İstiklal Avenue and Sıraselviler.