Orhan Pamuk - A Strangeness in My Mind

—

Abdurrahman Efendi.Vediha went as far as to say, WHAT KIND OF FATHER ARE YOU. “What kind of father tries to break up a marriage just so he can sell his daughter off and cash in on her bride price?” That was so hurtful I thought it might be better to pretend I hadn’t heard it, but I couldn’t help myself. “Shame on you,” I said. “Everything I’ve endured, all the humiliation, it was all for the sake of finding you husbands who could provide for you, not so I could sell you off at a profit. A father who asks his daughter’s suitor for money is only trying to recover some of the expenses of raising her, sending her to school, putting clothes on her back, and bringing her up to be a good mother one day. This bride price doesn’t just tell us how much a man feels his future wife might be worth; it’s also the only money anyone in this country ever spends on sending their daughters to school. Do you understand now? Every single father in this country, down to the most open-minded of them all, will do whatever it takes to make sure he has a son instead of a daughter — whether it be a ritual sacrifice, a magic spell, or going into every mosque he can find and begging God for a baby boy. But unlike all these mean-spirited men, did I not rejoice at the birth of each and every one of my daughters? Have I ever laid a finger on any one of you? Have I ever shouted at you or said anything to cause you pain, have I ever raised my voice or let the slightest shadow of sorrow fall upon your beautiful faces? Now you tell me you don’t love your father? Well, then, I’m better off dead!”

—

Rayiha.Out in the garden, the girls were showing their aunt Samiha the enchanted dustbin, the train of worms that went through the broken flowerpot, and the tin palace that belonged to the weeping tin princess, who would give two shuddering cries every time you hit her. “If I really was this cruel man who kept his daughters locked in a cage, how were they able to get away with exchanging letters with some good-for-nothing scoundrel right under my nose?” said my father.

—

Abdurrahman Efendi.It was hard for a proud father like me to bear the weight of the awful things being said. I asked for a glass of rakı before it was even time for the midafternoon prayers. I got up and opened the fridge, but Rayiha stopped me. “Mevlut doesn’t drink, Dad,” she said. “I can go buy you a bottle of Yeni Rakı, if you want.” She closed the fridge.

“You don’t need to be ashamed, my dear…Samiha’s fridge is even emptier.”

“All we have in ours are the leftovers from the rice and chicken Mevlut can’t sell,” said Rayiha. “We’ve also started putting our boza in there overnight; otherwise it goes off.”

I stumbled into an armchair in the corner, feeling as if some strange memory had popped into my head and darkened my vision. I must have fallen asleep, because in my dream I was riding a white horse among a flock of sheep, but just as I realized that the sheep were actually clouds, my nose began to hurt, growing as big as the horse’s nostrils, at which point I woke up. Fatma was grabbing my nose, pulling on it with all her might.

“What are you doing!” yelled Rayiha.

“Dad, let’s go to the shop and get you a bottle of rakı, ” said my darling daughter Vediha.

“Fatma and Fevziye can come with us and show their grandpa the way to the shop.”

—

Samiha.Rayiha and I watched my father, bent in half and smaller than ever under his hunched back, holding hands with the girls on the way to the shop. They’d reached the end of the narrow alley and were just about to turn the corner onto the sloping road when they turned around and waved, sensing our presence at the window. Once they were gone, Rayiha and I sat facing each other without exchanging a word, thinking that we could still understand each other perfectly just as when we were little. Back then we used to tease Vediha, and if we got in trouble, we’d just stop talking and switch to winks and gestures. But in that moment I realized we couldn’t do it anymore; those days were behind us.

—

Rayiha.Samiha lit up a cigarette in my presence for the first time ever. She told me she’d picked up the habit from the wealthy people whose homes she cleaned, not from Ferhat. “Don’t you worry about Ferhat,” she said. “He’s got a degree now, he has contacts at the electricity board, and he’s got himself a job; soon we’ll be doing all right, so don’t worry about us. Don’t let Father anywhere near that Süleyman. I’m fine.”

“Do you know what that creep Süleyman told me the other day?” I said. I looked inside my sewing box and took out a bundle tied up with a ribbon. “You know these letters Mevlut sent me when he was in the army…Apparently they weren’t meant for me, but for you, Samiha.”

Before she could respond, I started pulling envelopes out and reciting passages at random. Back in the village, I used to read bits out for Samiha whenever Father wasn’t home. It would always make us smile. But I already knew we wouldn’t be smiling this time. When I read the part about my eyes, “black like melancholy suns,” I almost started crying, I suddenly had trouble swallowing, and I knew that telling Samiha about the lies Süleyman was spreading had been a mistake.

“Don’t be silly, Rayiha, how can that be?” she said, but at the same time she was looking at me as if what I’d said might even be true. I could sense that Samiha was flattered by the letters, as if Mevlut really had been talking about her. So I stopped reading. I missed my Mevlut. I realized just how angry Samiha was with me and with us all, far away in that distant neighborhood of hers. Mevlut would be home any minute, so I changed the subject.

—

Samiha.My heart sank when Rayiha mentioned her husband would be home soon, and later when Vediha looked at me and said, “Dad and I were just about to leave anyway.” It all made me really upset. I’m on the bus back to Gaziosmanpaşa now, sitting by the window and feeling low. I’m wiping my eyes with the hem of my headscarf. Earlier, I had the distinct impression that they wanted me to leave before Mevlut got back. All because Mevlut wrote those letters to me! How is that my fault? I couldn’t have said any of this openly, of course, since they would have just said what a pity it was that I felt this way and proceeded to voice their shared concern: “How can you even think that, Samiha, you know how much we love you!” They would have blamed my reaction on Ferhat’s money troubles, my having to work as a maid, and the fact that I still don’t have any children. To be honest, I don’t even mind; I love them all very much. But I did wonder once or twice whether Mevlut could really have meant those letters for me. I told myself, Samiha, stop, don’t think about it, it’s not right. Yet I continued to wonder — more than once or twice, actually. Women have no more control over their thoughts than over their dreams; and so these thoughts ramble through my head like nervous burglars in a pitch-black house.

I lay down in my tiny maid’s room in the plush home of the Şişli rich, and as the pigeons in the inner courtyard stood still on their perches and sighed in the darkness, I wondered what Ferhat would do if he ever found out. I even wondered if perhaps my sweet Rayiha had told me all this to make me feel better about my lot. One night, after a weary journey on a weary bus, I came home to find Ferhat slumped in front of the television, and I felt the urge to shake him awake before he drifted to sleep.

“Do you know what Rayiha told me the other day?” I said. “You know those letters Mevlut sent her…He’d meant them for me all along.”