Orhan Pamuk - A Strangeness in My Mind

“Boza goes best with roasted chickpeas,” he said.

The men looked at each other and drained their cups.

“Well, then, do us a favor on this bad day,” said the older and bulkier of the two men once he had finished his drink.

Mevlut knew what was coming and tried to preempt it.

“If you don’t have any money on you right now, you can pay me some other time, my friend. If us poor fellows in this big city don’t help each other out in times of need, then who will? Let this one be on me, if it pleases you.” He moved to lift the stick back across his shoulders as if to go on his way.

“Not so fast, boza seller,” said the well-built man. “We said do us a favor today, didn’t we? Give us your money.”

“But I don’t have any money on me,” said Mevlut. “Just some small change from one or two glasses for a couple of customers, that’s all. And I need that to buy medicine for our patient at home, and I don’t—”

Suddenly, the smaller man drew a switchblade from his pocket. He pressed the button, and the blade snapped open in the silence. He rested the point of the knife on Mevlut’s stomach. Meanwhile, the bigger man had gone behind Mevlut’s back and pinned his arms. Mevlut went quiet.

The smaller man pressed the switchblade against Mevlut’s stomach with one hand, and with the other hand he did a fast but thorough search of the pockets on Mevlut’s apron, and every fold of his jacket. He quickly pocketed everything he could find: banknotes and coins. Mevlut could see that he was very young and very ugly.

“Look away, boza seller,” said the bigger, stronger man when he noticed Mevlut looking at the boy’s face. “Now then, you’ve got plenty of money, don’t you? No wonder you were trying to run away from us.”

“That’s enough now,” said Mevlut, shaking himself loose.

“Enough?” said the man behind him. “I don’t think so. Not enough. You come here twenty-five years ago, you loot the city, and when it’s finally our turn, then what, you decide to close up shop? We get there late, so now it’s our fault?”

“Not at all, not at all, it’s nobody’s fault,” said Mevlut.

“What do you have in Istanbul? A house, an apartment, what?”

“I haven’t got a single thing to my name,” Mevlut lied. “Nothing at all.”

“Why? Are you stupid or what?”

“It just wasn’t meant to be.”

“Hey, everyone who came to Istanbul twenty-five years ago has a house in one of those slums by now. They’ve got buildings sprouting on their land.”

Mevlut twitched irritably, but this only resulted in the knife being jabbed into his stomach a little harder (“Oh God!” said Mevlut) and in his being searched once again from head to toe.

“Tell us, are you actually stupid or are you just playing dumb?”

Mevlut made no response. The man behind him expertly twisted Mevlut’s left arm and brought his hand behind his back in a smooth motion. “What do we have here! It’s not houses or land that you like to spend your money on. You prefer wristwatches, don’t you, my friend from Beyşehir? Now I see how it is.”

The Swiss watch that Mevlut had received twelve years ago as a wedding gift was off his wrist in an instant.

“What kind of person robs a boza seller?” Mevlut asked.

“There’s a first time for everything,” said the man holding his arms back. “Be quiet now and don’t look back.”

Mevlut watched in silence as the two, one old and one young, walked away. In that moment, he realized they had to be father and son. Mevlut and his late father had never been partners in crime like these two. His father was always blaming him for something. Mevlut went down the steps. He found himself on one of the side streets that led to Kazancı Hill. It was quiet; there wasn’t a soul around. What would Rayiha say when he got home? Would he be able to rest without telling someone what he’d been through?

He imagined for a moment that the robbery was a dream and that everything was as it always had been. He was not going to tell Rayiha that he’d been mugged. Because he hadn’t been mugged. Wallowing in this delusion for a few seconds made him feel better. He rang his bell.

“Booozaaaa,” he called, out of habit, and realized immediately that there was no sound coming out of his throat.

Back in the good old days, when something happened on the streets to upset him, whenever he felt humiliated and heartbroken, he could count on Rayiha to cheer him up when he got back home.

For the first time in his twenty-five years as a boza seller, Mevlut rushed home without calling “Boo-zaaa,” even though he still had some boza left.

When he walked into his one-bedroom house, he deduced from the quiet that his two daughters had both gone to sleep.

Rayiha was sitting on the edge of the bed, doing some needlework in front of the television with the volume turned down, as she did every night while waiting for Mevlut to return.

“I’m going to stop selling boza now,” he said.

“Where’s this coming from?” said Rayiha. “You can’t stop selling boza. But you’re right, you need to get another job. My embroidery isn’t enough.”

“I’m telling you, I’ve had enough of boza.”

“I hear Ferhat makes a lot of money at the electricity board,” said Rayiha. “He’ll find you a job if you give him a call.”

“I’d rather die than call Ferhat,” said Mevlut.

If This World Could Speak, What Would It Say?

IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND Mevlut’s decision, his devotion to Rayiha, and his fear of dogs, we must look back at his childhood. He was born in 1957 in the village of Cennetpınar in the Beyşehir district of Konya and never set foot outside the village until he turned twelve. In the autumn of 1968, having finished primary school, he expected to join his father at work in Istanbul while also continuing his studies, just like all the other children in his position, but it turned out his father didn’t want him there, so he had to remain in the village, where he became a shepherd for a while. For the rest of his life, Mevlut would wonder why his father had insisted that he should stay in the village that year; he would never find a satisfactory explanation. His friends, his uncle’s sons Korkut and Süleyman, had already left for Istanbul, so this was to prove a sad and lonely winter for Mevlut. He had just under a dozen sheep that he escorted up and down the river. He spent his days gazing at the pale lake in the distance, the buses and the trucks driving by, the birds and the poplar trees.

Sometimes, he noticed the leaves on a poplar quivering in the breeze and thought that the tree was sending him a message. Some leaves showed him their darker surface while others their dried, paler side, until, suddenly, a gentle wind would come along, turning the dark leaves over to show their yellow underside and revealing the darker face of the yellowed leaves.

His favorite pastime was to collect twigs, dry them, and use them to build bonfires. Once the fire really got going, Mevlut’s dog Kâmil would bounce around it a couple of times, and when he saw Mevlut sitting down to warm his hands over the flames, the dog, too, would sit down nearby and stare into the fire, motionless, just like Mevlut.

All the dogs in the village recognized Mevlut, they never barked at him even when he crept out in the middle of the darkest, quietest night, and this made him feel that this village was a place where he truly belonged. The local dogs barked only at those who came from outside the village, anyone who was a threat or a foreigner. But sometimes a dog would bark at someone local, like Mevlut’s cousin Süleyman, who was his best friend. “You must be having some pretty nasty thoughts, Süleyman!” the others would tease.