Orhan Pamuk - A Strangeness in My Mind

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Abdurrahman Efendi.What I didn’t say is that, actually, I live for my daughters. I tried to humor this angry young man because part of me felt he wasn’t entirely wrong, but more than that, I felt sorry for him. We had so much to drink that I began to see all my forgotten memories floating around like submarines inside the distant fish tank. Toward the end of the night, I gathered up the courage to say, “Süleyman, my son, I know how hurt and angry you are, and I completely understand. We’re hurt and angry, too, because Samiha’s actions have put us in a very difficult position. But there’s no reason to drag honor and wounded pride into this! Your dignity hasn’t been compromised in any way. You weren’t married or even engaged to Samiha. Yes, I wish we’d had the two of you tie the knot before you got to know each other. I’m absolutely sure you would have been happy that way. But it’s not right for you to turn this into a matter of honor now. Everyone knows that all these big proclamations about honor are really just excuses invented to let people kill each other with a clear conscience. Are you going to kill my daughter?”

Süleyman bristled. “I’m sorry, Father, but shouldn’t I at least have the right to go after the bastard who ran away with Samiha and punish him for what he did? That bastard humiliated me, didn’t he?” “Don’t take things the wrong way.” “Do I or do I not have the right?” “Calm down, son.” “When you come from the village and toil away for years trying to build a life for yourself in this dump of a city, and then a swindler comes along and tricks and sucks you dry, it’s really very difficult to stay calm.” “Believe me, son, if it was up to me I would pick Samiha up by the scruff of her neck and bring her home myself. I’m sure she knows she’s made a mistake. For all we know, maybe while we’ve been busy drinking, she’s on her way back home with her bag in hand and her tail between her legs.” “Who’s to say my brother and I would take her back?” “You won’t take my daughter back if she returns?” “I have to think about my honor.” “But what if no one’s laid a finger on her…”

We sat there drinking until the bar closed at midnight. I’m not sure how it happened, but at some point Süleyman got up and apologized, respectfully kissing my hand while I promised him that I wouldn’t tell anyone what we’d talked about. I even said, “I won’t tell Samiha.” Süleyman started crying. He said my frown and my gestures reminded him of Samiha. “Fathers resemble their daughters,” I said with pride.

“I made a mistake, I kept showing off, I didn’t try to be friends with her,” said Süleyman. “But she has a sharp tongue on her. It’s hard talking to girls; no one ever taught us how to do it properly. I just talked to her as I would talk to a man, only without swearing. It didn’t work.”

Süleyman went to wash his face before we headed home, and when he came back, he’d really sobered up. On the way home, the traffic police in İstinye pulled us over to search the car, and we had to give them a hefty bribe to let us go.

It Was as If His Life Were Happening to Someone Else

MEVLUT REMAINED a stranger to these events until much later. He hadn’t lost any of his early enthusiasm for his work: he was as optimistic as “the entrepreneur who believes in the idea,” beloved hero of books like How to Be a Successful Businessman. He was convinced that he could still make more money, if only he installed some brighter lighting inside the glass case of his three-wheeled cart, made deals with the ayran, tea, and Coke vendors that kept popping up and disappearing all around him, and tried harder to have truly heartfelt and sincere conversations with his customers. Mevlut did everything he could think of to build a regular clientele in the Kabataş-Fındıklı area. He didn’t mind so much when the corporate clerks who had their lunch standing up at his cart ignored his efforts, but he was furious when the smaller businesses he worked with asked him for receipts. He used his network of doormen, janitors, security guards, and tea servers who worked inside company buildings to try to build a rapport with accountants and managers. One night, Rayiha told him that she was pregnant again and that it was going to be another girl.

“How do you know it’s a girl? Did the three of you go to the hospital again?”

“Not all three of us, Samiha wasn’t there. She eloped with someone else so she wouldn’t have to marry Süleyman.”

“What?”

Rayiha told him what she knew.

That night, Mevlut was roaming around Feriköy like a sleepwalker, crying “Bozaaa,” when his feet led him to a cemetery. The moon was out; the cypress trees and the gravestones alternated between a silver gleam and a thick blackness. Mevlut took a paved road through the middle of the cemetery, feeling as if he’d picked a path in a dream. But the person walking in the cemetery wasn’t him, and it was as if his life, too, were happening to someone else.

The farther he walked, the farther downhill the cemetery went, unfurling like a carpet, and Mevlut found himself on an ever-steepening slope. Who was the man Samiha had run away with? Was she going to turn to him one day and tell him, “Mevlut wrote me love letters about my eyes for years, and then he married my sister”? Did Samiha even know about all that?

—

Rayiha.“Last time you went through all the boys’ names, and we ended up having a girl,” I told Mevlut as I gave him the handbook of Islamic names. “Maybe if you try reading all the girls’ names, we’ll have a boy this time. You can check whether any of the girls’ names have ‘Allah’ in them!” “A girl’s name can’t have ‘Allah’ in it!” said Mevlut. According to the Koran, the most that girls could hope for was to be named for one of the Prophet Muhammad’s wives. “Maybe if we keep eating rice every day, we’ll turn Chinese,” I teased. Mevlut laughed with me, picked up the baby, and covered her face with kisses. He didn’t even notice that his prickly mustache was making Fatma cry until I told him so.

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Abdurrahman Efendi.My daughters’ late mother was called Fevziye. I suggested the name for their second daughter. You’ll be surprised to hear that even though all three of her daughters are in Istanbul now, and two of them rebelled and ran away from home, Fevziye, may she rest in peace, did not have a very adventurous life: she got married to me, the first man who asked for her hand, at the age of fifteen and lived peacefully to the age of twenty-three, without ever setting foot outside Gümüşdere village. I am on my way back there now, having accepted the painful truth that I’ve failed yet again to make it in Istanbul, and as I sit on this bus, looking mournfully out the window, I keep thinking how I wish I’d been like Fevziye and never left the village at all.

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Vediha.My husband barely talks to me, he never comes home, and he sneers at everything I say. Korkut’s and Süleyman’s silences and all their subtle insinuations wore my father down until the poor man packed his bags and went back to the village. I cried a lot, secretly. In the space of just a month, my father and Samiha’s room has emptied completely. I go in there sometimes to look at my father’s bed on one side and Samiha’s on the other, and I weep, completely mortified about what happened. Every time I look outside the window, I try to picture where Samiha went and whom she might be with. Good for you, Samiha, I’m glad you ran away.

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Süleyman.It’s been fifty-one days since Samiha ran away; and still there is no news. The whole time, I’ve been drinking rakı nonstop. Never at the dinner table, though, as I don’t want my brother getting angry; I either drink quietly in my room, as if taking a dose of medicine, or out in Beyoğlu. Sometimes I drive around in the van just to get my mind off things.