Orhan Pamuk - A Strangeness in My Mind

At four o’clock, I descended into the basement of a block of expensive apartments in Gümüşsuyu. The rusty meters for all twelve apartments were churning away like old washing machines, down at the dark end of a narrow, dusty corridor. I asked the doorman, “Is anyone home in number eleven?”

“The lady is,” said the doorman. “Hey, what are you doing, don’t cut them off!”

I ignored him. It takes me less than two minutes to pull out the screwdriver, a pair of wire cutters, and the special key wrench from my toolbox and cut someone’s power off. Number 11’s meter stopped ticking.

“Go upstairs in about ten minutes or so,” I told the doorman. “Tell them I’ll be in the neighborhood and that you know where to find me if they want to see me. I’ll be at the coffeehouse at the foot of the hill.”

Fifteen minutes later, the doorman came to the coffeehouse and told me that Madam was very upset and that she was waiting for me at home. “Tell her I’m busy with other meters and other families, but I’ll try to come by later,” I said. I wondered if I should wait until it got dark. In winter, when night falls very early, it’s easier for these people to picture what it might be like to spend ten days in the dark. Some of them go to stay in hotels. Would you care to hear the story of the guy who was too cheap to pay his bill but wound up taking his wife, her hats, and his four children to stay at the Hilton for several months while they waited stubbornly for their connections to come to their assistance?

“Sir, the lady is very concerned. She’s expecting people tonight.”

People always worry when their power gets cut. Wives call their husbands, some get aggressive, others take a milder approach, and while there’re those who’ll just cut to the chase and offer you a bribe, some people don’t even know that’s how to fix their problem. Most of these people still address us as government clerks, not realizing that we were all forced to give up our government jobs after privatization. But even our stupidest countrymen eventually figure out how to offer a bribe: “Perhaps I could pay the fine to you in cash now, and maybe you can switch our electricity back on?” When you reject their offer, some of them raise it; others think it will help to start threatening you: “Do you know who I am!” And then there are those who are so confused that they have no idea what to do next. I’ve heard people say that when an inspector goes to one of the rougher neighborhoods and threatens to turn off the power, women sometimes offer to have sex with him. It’s never happened to me, though; I wouldn’t believe that nonsense if I were you.

People in poor neighborhoods can recognize an inspector immediately from the bag he carries and the way he walks down the street. First they’ll send out a few kids — the same ones who usually go after strangers and thieves — to throw stones at him and yell “Get out of here!” to scare him off. The neighborhood lunatic will then threaten to kill him. Some drunk may be on hand to provide a little more intimidation: “What the hell do you think you’re doing here?” If the inspector looks like he’s walking toward where the illegal branch connections meet the main cables high in the air, neighborhood thugs and stray dogs will try to change his mind. Gangs of political militants will harangue him with their speeches. Should he ever manage to find what he’s looking for, like some poor woman who can’t afford to pay her bills, there will be children playing in her garden, ready to carry word to the neighborhood coffeehouse in the blink of an eye. Any inspector who dares to walk into a house and shut the front door behind him so that he ends up alone with a woman will be lucky to get out of that neighborhood alive.

I’m telling you all this to lower your expectations now that you are about to hear my love story. Love in our parts is usually unrequited. A lady who lives in a house on the Bosphorus in Gümüşsuyu would never have noticed a meter inspector before. She will now, though — especially if he cuts her power off.

Leaving the coffeehouse, I headed back toward the building. I got into an elevator with wooden doors, a battered old golden cage, and as it groaned its way up toward number 11, I felt exhilarated.

—

Süleyman.One freezing afternoon toward the end of February, I finally went to the Brothers-in-Law, just like any other customer.

“Boza seller, is your boza sweet or sour?”

Mevlut recognized me immediately. “Ah, Süleyman!” he shouted. “Come on in.”

“Hope you’re well, ladies,” I said, with all the familiarity of an old friend who just happened to be passing by. Samiha was wearing a headscarf with pink leaves.

“Welcome, Süleyman,” said Rayiha, getting agitated at the prospect that I might start something.

“I hear you’re married now, Samiha, congratulations and best wishes.”

“Thank you, Süleyman.”

“That was ten years ago,” said Mevlut protectively. “It’s taken you this long to wish her well?”

So, Mr. Mevlut was happy in the little shop with two women beside him. Careful now, I wanted to say, you’d better look after this place properly, you wouldn’t want it to go bust like Binbom. But I held back and took a more diplomatic approach.

“Ten years ago, we were just a bunch of hot-blooded young men,” I said. “At that young and turbulent age, it’s easy to become obsessed with certain things, and ten years later you can’t even remember why they ever seemed so important. I would have wanted to bring you a wedding gift, but Vediha never gave me your address; she just told me you lived far out in the Ghaazi Quarter.”

“They’ve moved to Cihangir now,” said that idiot Mevlut. I wanted to say Çukurcuma, the rough part of the neighborhood, not Cihangir — but I didn’t. Otherwise they would have figured out that I had some men tailing Ferhat. “Thank you, your boza really is delicious,” I said, taking a sip from the glass they’d given me. “I’ll take some back for the others.” I had them fill a bottle up with a kilo’s worth. With this visit, I showed these long-lost friends — and even my fading love herself — that I was over my obsession. But my main purpose was to warn Mevlut. When he came to show me out, I gave him a hug and a message for his dear friend: “Tell him to watch himself.”

“What do you mean?” said Mevlut.

“He’ll know.”

Let’s Run Away from Here

Korkut.A one-room house was all that my late uncle Mustafa ever managed to build on the land he’d fenced off with my father in Kültepe back in 1965. Mevlut came down from the village to help him out, but it didn’t work, and they soon ran out of steam. We started with a two-room house on our land over in Duttepe. My father planted poplars in the garden like those he had back in the village; I bet you can see them all the way from Şişli now. When my mother left the village to join us in Duttepe, we added a nice little room one night in 1969, and then came another room, which I used when I wanted to listen to the horse races on the radio. In 1978, around the time I got married to Vediha, we added a guest room and another big room with its own toilet, and pretty soon our sprawling house was the size of a palace. Our royal gardens even had two mulberry trees and a fig tree that had started growing on their own. We made the wall around the garden taller. We also installed an iron gate.

The family business was thriving, thank God, so six years ago we decided to add a whole new floor to the house — everyone else on these hills was already doing it, and we (finally) had a title deed to fall back on. We built the flight of stairs that led to this second floor on the exterior of the house so that my mother wouldn’t have to worry constantly about where Vediha was going and whether her boys had come home. In the beginning, Mother, Father, and Süleyman were very eager to move upstairs where everything was new and there was a better view. But soon my parents came back down; there were too many stairs, and it was too big, too empty, too cold, and too lonely up there. At Vediha’s request, I fitted the upstairs bathroom with blue porcelain tiles as well as the latest and most expensive furniture, but still she wouldn’t stop badgering me: “Let’s move to the city.” I kept telling her “This is part of the city now, it counts as Istanbul,” but it was like talking to a brick wall. Some rich-kid bastards who went to high school in Şişli with Bozkurt and Turan had teased them about living in a gecekondu neighborhood. “My parents will never go to Şişli. They’ve got their garden with this lovely breeze, their grocery store, their chickens, and their trees,” I said. “Are we supposed to leave them here on their own?”