Orhan Pamuk - A Strangeness in My Mind

In a house across from the Piyale Paşa Mosque in Kasımpaşa, two sisters — neither of them the girl we’d come to see — kept whispering and giggling between themselves, or biting their lips trying not to laugh even more. After we left the house, Vediha told me that our quarry — their frowning older sister — had in fact entered like a ghost while we were having our tea and almond biscuits, crossing the room so quietly that I didn’t even notice my potential wife come and go, let alone whether she was pretty or not. “A man mustn’t marry a girl he wouldn’t even notice,” Vediha wisely advised on our leisurely way home in the van. “I was wrong about her; she isn’t right for you.”

—

Vediha.Some women are born matchmakers, blessed with a God-given gift for making people happy. I’m not one of them. But when Samiha ran away after my father had already taken money from Korkut and Süleyman, I became a quick study, not only out of fear they might blame me for what happened but also because I felt so sorry for silly Süleyman. I also really loved getting out of the house and driving around in the van.

I’d start by saying that my husband had a younger brother who’d already finished his military service. Growing very serious, I would then launch into a somewhat embellished tale of just how clever, good-looking, respectful, and hardworking Süleyman was.

Süleyman asked me to make sure I told people that he came from a “religious” family. The girls’ fathers appreciated this, but I’m not sure it was much of a draw for the girls themselves. I would explain that having become wealthy since moving to the city, the family didn’t now want a village girl for their son. Sometimes I’d hint that they had enemies in the village, but this could scare some families off. Whenever I met someone new, I’d almost always mention that I was looking for a suitable girl and ask whether they knew any; but since Korkut’s patience with my being out of the house was limited, even for this purpose, I didn’t exactly have my pick of candidates. And half of those I did find still acted as if there is something embarrassing about an arranged marriage, which is ridiculous considering this is the way everyone gets married eventually.

People would always say they knew a girl who was exactly what I was looking for, but unfortunately she would never agree to an arranged marriage or even to a visit from a potential suitor. We soon realized that when visiting a prospect it was better not to reveal our purpose and just act as if we happened to be in the neighborhood — perhaps our mutual friend so-and-so had recommended we say hello if we were ever in the area. Or maybe we would say Süleyman needed to check on a site he was managing for his construction company…

Sometimes the drop-in approach depended on coming along with someone else paying a call at a particular house. This was essentially a form of mutual assistance between matchmakers, not unlike the way property brokers sometimes help each other out. The invited guest would explain our presence with some excuse made up on the spot — but not before having given the entire household a rather exuberant and exaggerated account of who we were. These small, old-fashioned apartments would invariably be packed with a crowd of inquisitive mothers, aunties, sisters, friends, and grandmothers. The expected guest would introduce us as the famous Aktaş family of Konya, owners of a thriving construction business for which Süleyman oversaw many projects; we’d called on her unexpectedly, and she’d decided to bring us along with her. The only one who even remotely believed these lies was Süleyman himself.

Still, no one ever asked, “If you really were just passing by, then why is Süleyman clean-shaven, wearing that syrupy cologne and sporting his best suit and tie?” For our part, we never asked, “If you really had no idea we were coming, why did you tidy up the house, bring out your best china, and reupholster all the sofas?” The lies were part of the ritual, and just because we were lying, it didn’t mean we weren’t sincere. We understood one another’s private motivations, while making sure to keep up public appearances. These empty words were just a prelude to the main act to come, anyway. In a few minutes, the girl and the boy were to meet. Would they like each other? More important, would this audience judge them to be a good match? As it all unfolded, everyone in the room would begin to remember when they had been the object of this kind of attention.

It wasn’t too long before the girl herself appeared, in her best clothes and perhaps even wearing her nicest headscarf, feeling mortified and trying to act nonchalant as she found somewhere to sit at the edge of the crowded room. There were usually so many hopeful young women of roughly the same age in the room that the mother and aunts, veterans of the field, would have to find some casual way of signaling the arrival of the shy girl we had actually come to see.

“Where were you, darling, were you doing your homework? We have guests, look.”

In four or five years’ worth of these visits and their disappointments, two of the five high-school girls Süleyman was interested in had used school as an excuse to reject us (“I’m afraid our daughter would like to finish her education”), so that Süleyman no longer liked hearing about girls who were supposedly “doing their homework.”

When mothers feigned surprise—“Oh, I see we have guests today!”—their daughters could sometimes come out with an embarrassing reply: “Yes, Mom, we know; you’ve been preparing all day!” I liked these spirited, honest girls, and so did Süleyman, but from the speed with which he was later able to put them out of his mind, I figured that he must have also been a little scared of the way they might treat him.

When we had to deal with girls who flatly refused to meet suitors, we would hide our true purpose. One time, a rude and unpleasant young thing really believed that we had come by simply to bring a gift to her father (who was a waiter) and paid no attention to us at all. With another girl, we had to pretend to be friends of her mother’s doctor. One day in spring, we went to an old wooden house in Edirnekapı, near the city walls. The girl we had come to see was playing dodgeball on the street with her friends and had no idea her mother was hosting a potential husband who had come to look her over. Her aunt leaned out of the window to lure her in: “Come up, darling, I’ve brought you some sesame-seed cookies!” She came straightaway, full of enchanting beauty. But she ignored us. She wolfed down two cookies with her eyes on the TV, and just as she was about to leave the room and go back downstairs to resume her game, her mother said, “Wait, sit down with our guests for a while.”

She sat down instinctively, but with one glance at me and at Süleyman’s tie, she lost her temper: “It’s matchmakers again! I told you I didn’t want any more men coming home, Mother!”

“Don’t talk to your mother like that…”

“Well, that’s what they’re here for, isn’t it? Who is this man?”

“Have some respect…They saw you, they liked you, and they’ve come all the way across the city just to talk to you. You know how bad the traffic is. Now, sit down.”

“What am I supposed to say to these people? Am I supposed to marry this fatty?”

She stormed out.

It was the spring of 1989, and this was to be the last of our house visits, which were already growing more infrequent. Now and again, Süleyman would still say, “Find me a wife, Vediha Yenge,” but by then we all knew about Mahinur Meryem, so I didn’t think he really meant it. He was still talking about how he would have his revenge on Samiha and Ferhat, so I wasn’t very happy with him anyway.