Orhan Pamuk - A Strangeness in My Mind

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Mahinur Meryem.Some regulars at bars and nightclubs may have heard my name before, though they may not remember it. My father was a humble government clerk, an honest, hardworking, but hot-tempered man. I was a promising student at Taksim Secondary School for Girls when our team made the finals of Milliyet ’s pop-song contest for high schools, and my name ended up in the newspapers. Celâl Salik wrote about me once in his column: “She has the silky voice of a star.” It is still the highest praise I’ve ever received in my singing career. I would like to thank the late Mr. Salik and those who are letting me use my stage name in this book.

My real name is Melahat. Unfortunately, no matter how hard I tried, my singing career never took off after that initial success in high school. My father never understood my dreams, he often beat me, and when he saw I wouldn’t make it to college, he tried to get me married off. So when I was nineteen, I ran away from home and got married to a man of my own choosing. My first husband was like me: he loved music, though his father was a janitor at the Şişli town hall. Sadly, it didn’t work out, and neither did my second marriage nor any of the relationships that came after that, all ruined by my passion for singing, by poverty, and by the inability of men to keep their promises. I could write a book about all the men I’ve known, and then I would also end up on trial for insulting Turkishness. I haven’t told Süleyman too much about it. I won’t waste your time with it now.

Two years ago, I was singing in some horrible dump in the backstreets of Beyoğlu, stubbornly sticking to Turkish pop, but hardly anyone ever came, and I was always scheduled at the very end of the program. So I moved to another tiny bar, where the manager persuaded me that I could be very successful if I switched my repertoire to Turkish classical and folk songs, but again I wasn’t on until the very end of the night. It was at the Paris Pavilion that I first met Süleyman — another one of those pushy guys desperately trying to chat me up between numbers. The Paris was a haunt for lovesick men not coping well with their misery but who found some consolation in traditional Turkish music, the specialty of the house, despite the name. At first, I ignored him, of course. But soon enough, he’d softened me up with his lonely presence every night, the armfuls of flowers he sent me, his persistence, and his childlike innocence.

Süleyman now pays my rent for a fourth-floor apartment in Sormagir Street in Cihangir. After a couple of glasses of rakı in the evenings, he’ll say, “Come on, let’s go, I’ll take you for a drive in the van.” He doesn’t realize that there’s nothing romantic about his ride, but I don’t mind. A year ago, I stopped singing folk songs and performing in small nightclubs. If Süleyman is willing to help, I’d like to go back to singing pop. But it doesn’t even matter that much.

I do love driving around in Süleyman’s van at night. I’ll have a couple of drinks, too, and when we’re tipsy, we get along really well and can talk about anything. As soon as he’s able to shake off his fear of his brother and get away from his family, Süleyman turns into a kind of lovable, charming guy.

He’ll take me down a hill to the Bosphorus, swerving through narrow alleyways.

“Stop it, Süleyman, they’ll pull us over!” I’ll say.

“Don’t worry, they’re all our men,” he’ll say.

Sometimes, I’ll tell him what he wants to hear: “Oh, please stop, Süleyman, we’re going to fall off and die!” There was a period when we would have this exact exchange every evening.

“What are you scared of, Melahat, do you really think we’re going to fall off the road?”

“Süleyman, they’re building a new bridge over the Bosphorus, can you believe it?”

“What’s not to believe? When we first came from the village, these people thought we’d never be more than just a bunch of poor yogurt sellers,” he’d say, getting worked up. “Now those same guys are begging us to sell them our property and using their middlemen to try to get involved in projects. Shall I tell you why I’m so confident that there really is going to be a second bridge soon, exactly like the first?”

“Tell me, Süleyman.”

“Because now that Kültepe and Duttepe are all theirs, the Vurals have started buying up all the land around where the highway to the bridge is supposed to be. The government hasn’t even begun to seize land for the highway yet. But the land the Vurals bought in Ümraniye, Saray, and Çakmak is already worth ten times what they paid. We’re going to fly down this hill now. Don’t be scared, okay?”

I helped Süleyman forget about the yogurt seller’s daughter he was in love with. When we first met, he couldn’t think of anything but her. Without any trace of embarrassment, he’d tell me about how he and his sister-in-law were turning the city inside out trying to find him a wife. At first it was fine, because all my friends made fun of him anyway, and I knew that if only he could get married, I’d finally be rid of him. But now, I have to admit, I’d be sad if Süleyman were to get himself a wife. Still, I don’t mind when he goes to see potential brides. One night, he was very drunk, and he confessed that he could never muster any desire for a girl in a headscarf.

“Don’t worry, it’s a common problem, especially among married men,” I said, trying to comfort him. “It’s not you, it’s all those foreign women on TV and in the newspapers and magazines, so don’t obsess over it.”

As for my obsession, he never understood it. “Süleyman, I don’t like it when you talk to me like you’re giving me orders,” I’d say sometimes.

“Oh, I thought you liked it…,” he would say.

“I like your gun, but I don’t like you being so rough and cold with me.”

“Am I a rough man? Am I really that cold, Melahat?”

“I think you do have feelings, Süleyman, but like most Turkish men, you don’t know how to express them. Why do you never tell me the one thing I most want to hear?”

“Is it marriage you want? Will you start wearing a headscarf?”

“I don’t want to talk about that. Tell me that other thing you never mention.”

“Oh, I get it!”

“Well, if you get it, say it…It’s no big secret, you know…Everyone knows about us now…I know how much you love me, Süleyman.”

“If you already know, then why do you keep asking?”

“I’m not asking for anything. All I want is for you just to say it once…Why can’t you say ‘Melahat, I love you’?…Is it so difficult to pronounce those words? Will you lose a bet of some sort if you say it?”

“But, Melahat, when you do this it makes it even harder for me to say the words!”

The Happiest Man in the World

AT NIGHT, Mevlut and Rayiha slept in the same bed as their two daughters, Fatma and Fevziye. The house was cold, but it was nice and warm under the bedcovers. Sometimes the little ones were already asleep when Mevlut went out to sell boza in the evenings. He would come back late at night to find them asleep in exactly the same position as when he’d left. Rayiha would be sitting under the covers on the edge of the bed, watching TV with the heating turned off.

The girls had their own little bed next to the window, but they were scared of being alone, and even in the same room they would start crying if they were put there. Mevlut, who had the utmost respect for their feelings on this matter, would tell Rayiha, “Isn’t it incredible? They’re so little, but they’re already scared of loneliness.” The girls quickly got used to the big bed; there, they could have slept through anything. But when they slept in their own bed, they would wake up at the tiniest sound and start crying, which in turn would wake Mevlut and Rayiha, and the girls wouldn’t settle down until they could move to the big bed. Eventually Mevlut and Rayiha saw that sleeping all together in the same bed was better for everyone.