Orhan Pamuk - A Strangeness in My Mind

“I don’t want it,” said Mevlut.

On the neat little cart that had caught his eye, Mevlut noticed that the previous owner had taped a picture of the famous belly dancer Seher Şeniz right next to postcards of Atatürk and the Turkish flag. He didn’t like that.

“Are you sure you don’t want it?” said the man from Rize.

“I’m sure,” said Mevlut, backing away.

“Weird one, aren’t you…How do you know Hadji Hamit Vural?”

“I just do,” said Mevlut, trying to sound like a man of many mysteries.

“Well, if you’re close enough that he’s doing you favors, stop working as a street vendor and go ask him for a job. You’d make more in a month as a foreman on one of his construction sites than you do now in a year.”

Outside on the square, life was ticking along in its usual humdrum way. Mevlut saw buses clattering, women shopping, men refilling lighters, guys selling lottery tickets, kids bouncing around in school blazers, a street vendor selling tea and sandwiches from his three-wheeled cart, policemen, and gentlemen in suits and ties. He felt furious at them all, like a man who has lost the woman he loves and cannot stand seeing the rest of the world go about their lives as usual. That clerk from Rize had been so disrespectful and condescending, too.

He wandered the streets just as he used to do in high school, feeling at odds with the world, and eventually he went into a coffeehouse in a part of Kurtuluş he’d never seen before and there spent three hours sheltering from the cold and looking at the television. He smoked his way through a packet of Maltepes and thought about money. Rayiha would have to step up her needlework.

He got home later than usual. When they saw Mevlut’s face, Rayiha and the girls figured out that he hadn’t gotten his cart back, that it had disappeared — died, in fact. Mevlut didn’t have to tell them anything. The whole house went into mourning. Rayiha had cooked some rice and chicken, thinking Mevlut would be out making sales the next day; they sat and ate it in silence. I wish I’d taken that nice cart they were offering me! thought Mevlut. The owner of that cart was probably out there somewhere thinking equally dark thoughts.

There was a weight on his soul. He felt a huge wave of inescapable darkness approach, threatening to engulf him. He picked up his pole and his jugs of boza and went out on the street earlier than usual, before it got completely dark, before that wave could reach him: walking was a relief, and it always made him feel better heading briskly into the night crying “Boozaaa.”

In fact, ever since his cart had been seized, he’d taken to going out long before the evening news came on. He’d head straight down the new road toward Atatürk Bridge and onward across the Golden Horn, his quick steps full of worry, rage, or inspiration as he pressed ahead, ever on the lookout for new neighborhoods, new customers.

When he’d first arrived in Istanbul, he would come here with his father to buy boza from the Vefa Boza Shop. In those days, they hardly ever ventured off the main roads, and they never came after dark. Back then, the homes in this area had been two-story frame buildings with bay windows and unvarnished wood; people used to keep their curtains drawn tight, turn their lights off early, and never drink any boza, and after ten o’clock, the same packs of stray dogs that had ruled these streets since Ottoman times would take over again.

Mevlut crossed Atatürk Bridge and ended up in Zeyrek, powering through the backstreets on his way to Fatih, Çarşamba, and Karagümrük. The more he called out “Boo-zaaa,” the better he felt. Most of the old wooden houses he remembered from twenty years ago had disappeared, replaced by four- or five-story concrete blocks like those they’d built in Feriköy, Kasımpaşa, and Dolapdere. Occasionally, somebody in one of these new buildings would part the curtains and open the windows to greet Mevlut like a strange messenger from the past.

“We’ve got the Vefa Boza Shop just around the corner, but it’s never occurred to us to go. When we heard the emotion in your voice, we couldn’t resist. How much for a glass? Where are you from, anyway?”

Mevlut could see that big apartment buildings had been constructed over what had been empty land, all the graveyards had vanished, and enormous trash cans had cropped up in even the remotest of neighborhoods, replacing the piles of trash that used to grow on street corners — and yet, stray dogs still ruled these streets at night.

What he couldn’t understand was why these dogs were so hostile and even downright aggressive when he ran into them in darkened alleyways. Whenever they heard Mevlut’s footsteps and his voice crying “ Boza ,” they would get up from where they were napping, or cease rifling through people’s rubbish, and assemble together like soldiers in battle formation to watch his every move, and maybe even bare their teeth in a growl. Boza sellers didn’t normally come to these streets, which perhaps explained why the dogs were so intolerant of his presence.

One evening, Mevlut remembered that when he was little, his father had taken him to a house with linoleum floors somewhere in one of these neighborhoods to see an old dervish and ask him to say some special prayers to help Mevlut overcome his fear of dogs. His father had treated this visit to the spiritual sage like a doctor’s appointment. He couldn’t now recall where the bearded old dervish’s house had been — he’d probably died years ago — but Mevlut did remember how carefully his younger self had listened to his advice and how he’d shivered as the old man breathed his incantations over him, banishing the fear of dogs from his heart.

He understood that if he wanted to cultivate the families who lived in these historic neighborhoods, who tried to haggle over the price of his boza, asked him pointless questions about its alcohol content, and generally regarded Mevlut as some sort of strange creature, he would have to devote at least one or two nights a week to walking around this side of the Golden Horn.

In his mind, he kept seeing his rice cart. It was better looking and had more character than any other he’d ever seen out on the streets. He scarcely believed that anyone could be so callous as to hack it apart with an ax. Perhaps they’d given it away to someone else, taking pity on some other rice seller who, like Mevlut, knew the right people. Maybe this scrounger was also from Rize; people from Rize always looked out for one another.

That night, no one had summoned him upstairs; no one had bought any boza yet. The city here was like a distant memory — wooden homes, coal-fire smoke hanging over the streets, crumbling walls…Mevlut couldn’t figure out where he was or how he’d gotten there.

Finally, a young man opened a window on a three-story building. “Boza seller, boza seller…Come on up.”

They showed him into an apartment. As he was taking his shoes off, he sensed a gathering of people inside. There was a pleasant yellow light. But the place looked like a government office. Mevlut saw about half a dozen people sitting around two tables.

They were each concentrating on something they were writing, but they seemed kind enough. They looked at Mevlut and smiled as people always did when seeing a boza seller for the first time in many years.

“Welcome, brother boza seller, we are happy to see you,” said an old man with silver hair and a warm face, smiling gently at Mevlut.

The others looked like they might be his students. They were serious and respectful but also cheerful. Seated with them at the same table, the silver-haired man said, “There’s seven of us. We’ll each have a glass.”

Someone showed Mevlut into a little kitchen. Very carefully, he poured out seven glasses. “Anyone want chickpeas and cinnamon on theirs?” he asked, calling to the people in the other room.