Orhan Pamuk - A Strangeness in My Mind

“Hurrah for Atatürk!” said one of the women.

Some of the other diners cheered in response. Mevlut joined in.

“All right, fine, but what will become of Atatürk, of secularism, if the Islamist parties take power? Will Turkey become like Iran?”

“Don’t you worry about that; the army won’t let them do that. They’ll organize a coup, close the party down, and lock them all up. Isn’t that so, boza seller?”

“All I do is sell boza,” said Mevlut. “I don’t get involved in high politics. I leave that to my betters.”

Even though they were all drunk, they heard the sting in Mevlut’s remark.

“I’m just like you, boza seller. The only things I’m afraid of are God and my mother-in-law.”

“Boza seller, do you have a mother-in-law?”

“I never got to meet her, unfortunately,” said Mevlut.

“How did you get married?”

“We fell in love and ran away together. Not everyone can say that.”

“How did you meet?”

“We saw each other at a relative’s wedding, and it was love at first sight. I wrote her letters for three years.”

“Well, well, boza seller, aren’t you full of surprises!”

“And what does your wife do now?”

“She does some needlework from home. Not everyone can do the things she does, either.”

“Boza seller, if we drink your boza, will we get even more drunk than we already are?”

“My boza won’t get you drunk,” said Mevlut. “There are eight of you, I’ll give you two kilos.”

He went back to the kitchen, but it took a while to assemble the boza, the roasted chickpeas, and the cinnamon and for him to get his money. He put his shoes back on with an alacrity from the days when he used to have customers waiting in line for him and he had to hurry all the time.

“Boza seller, it’s wet and muddy outside, be careful,” they called from the living room. “Don’t let anyone mug you, don’t let the dogs tear you apart!”

“Boza seller, come back again!” said one of the women.

Mevlut knew full well that they weren’t really going to want boza again, that they had only called him in because they’d heard his voice and wanted to be entertained while they were drunk. The cold air outside felt good.

“Booo-zaaaa.”

In twenty-five years, he’d seen so many homes like this one, so many people and families, he’d heard these questions thousands of times. Toward the end of the 1970s, in the dark backstreets of Beyoğlu and Dolapdere, moving among the nightclub entertainers, the gamblers, the thugs, the pimps, and the prostitutes, he’d come across many groups of drunk diners. He became well versed in the art of not getting too involved with the drunks, of dealing with them “without catching anyone’s eye,” as some of the wily types in military service used to say, and getting back out on the street without wasting too much time.

Twenty-five years ago, almost everyone invited him inside, into the kitchen, where they asked him whether he was cold, did he go to school in the mornings, and would he like a cup of tea? Some invited him into the living room, and even to take a seat at their table. Those were the good old days when he was so busy hurrying off to deliver orders he couldn’t pause to properly enjoy people’s hospitality and affection. Mevlut knew he’d been particularly sensitive to it that night because it had been a long time since anyone had shown so much interest in him. It had been a strange crowd, too; back in the old days it was rare to find men and women having rakı and making drunken conversation in a proper family home with a kitchen and all the rest. His friend Ferhat used to tease him, only half jokingly: “Why would anyone want your three-proof boza when they can all get drunk together as a family on the state’s forty-five-proof Tekel brand rakı ? There’s no future in this business, Mevlut, let it go for God’s sake! This country no longer needs your boza to get drunk.”

He took one of the side streets that led down to Fındıklı, where he dropped off half a kilo to a regular customer, and on his way out of the building he saw two suspicious shadows in a doorway. If he gave these “suspects” too much thought, they would know (as in a dream) that he was thinking about them, and then they might try to harm him. But he couldn’t help it; the shadows had seized his attention.

When he turned around instinctively to check whether any dogs were following, he was sure, for a second, that the shadows were tailing him. But he couldn’t quite believe it. He rang his bell twice with vigor, and twice halfheartedly, but with urgency. “Bo-zaa,” he shouted. He decided to avoid Taksim, taking a shortcut home down the steps to the hollow between the hills, and then back up to Cihangir.

As he was making his way down the stairs, one of the shadows called out, “Hey, boza seller, hang on a minute.”

Mevlut pretended not to hear. He gingerly ran down a few steps, with his pole balanced across his back. But when he got beyond the light of the streetlamps, he had to slow down.

“Hey, boza seller, I said wait! We won’t bite, we just want some boza.”

Mevlut stopped, feeling a little ashamed for being afraid. A fig tree blocked the light from one of the streetlamps, so the landing at the bottom of the stairway was particularly dark. It was the same spot where he used to park his three-wheeled ice-cream cart in the evenings that summer when he eloped with Rayiha.

“How much is your boza?” said one of them, coming down the stairs with the air of a bully.

Now, the three of them were standing under the fig tree, in the darkness. People who craved a glass of boza did tend to ask how much it cost first, but they usually did so in a soft, even sheepish way, politely rather than aggressively. Something was not quite right here. Mevlut quoted half his normal price.

“That’s a bit expensive,” said the beefier of the two men. “All right, give us two glasses. I bet you make loads of money.”

Mevlut lowered his jugs and took out a large plastic cup from his apron pocket. He filled it with boza. He handed it over to the younger, smaller man.

“Here you are.”

“Thank you.”

As he filled the second cup, he felt almost guilty about the awkward silence that had set in. The bigger man sensed his embarrassment.

“You’re in a hurry, boza seller, is there that much work?”

“No, no,” said Mevlut. “Business is slow. Boza is over, we don’t do nearly as well as we used to. No one buys boza anymore. I wasn’t going to come out at all today, but someone’s ill at home, and we need the extra money for some hot soup.”

“How much do you make in a day?”

“You know what they say, never ask a woman her age, nor a man his salary,” said Mevlut. “But you asked, so I’ll tell you,” he said, now handing the silhouette of the bigger man his glass of boza. “When sales are good, we make enough to live on for a day. But on a slow day like today, we go home hungry.”

“You don’t look like you’re hungry. Where are you from?”

“Beyşehir.”

“Where on earth is that?”

Mevlut didn’t reply.

“How long have you lived in Istanbul?”

“Must be around twenty-five years now.”

“You’ve been here for twenty-five years and you still say you’re from Beyşehir?”

“No…it’s just that you asked.”

“You must have made some good money in all that time.”

“What money? Look at me, I’m still working at midnight. Where are you from?”

The men didn’t reply, and Mevlut was afraid. “Would you like some cinnamon on top?” he asked.

“Go on then. How much is the cinnamon?”

Mevlut took his brass cinnamon shaker out from his apron. “The chickpeas and the cinnamon are on me,” he said as he shook some cinnamon over the two cups. He took two bags of roasted chickpeas from his pocket. Instead of just handing them over to the customers as he would usually do, he tore the bags open and sprinkled the chickpeas onto the cups in the dark of night, like a helpful waiter.