“You both look so happy,” said my brother’s wife, Berrin.
“But we’re so tired, too,” said Sibel. “If this is what it takes to pull off an engagement party, just imagine how tiring the wedding is going to be.”
“You’ll be very happy on that day, too,” said Berrin.
“How do you define happiness, Berrin?” I asked.
“Goodness, what a question,” said Berrin, and she behaved as if she were considering her own happiness, but because even to joke about such a thing made her uncomfortable, she smiled bashfully. Amid the babble of conversation, the guests’ chatter, occasional cries, the clink of knives and forks, and the strains of music, we both heard my brother’s loud, shrill voice as he regaled someone with a story.
“Family, children, and good company,” Berrin said. “Even if you’re not happy”-here, she indicated my brother with her eyes-“even when you’re having your worst day you live your life as if you are. All sorrows fade away when you’re surrounded by your family. You should have children right away. Have lots of children, just like peasants.”
“What’s going on here?” said my brother, joining us. “Tell me what you’re gossiping about.”
“I’m telling them to have children,” said Berrin. “How many should they have?”
No one was looking, so I downed my half glass of raki in one gulp.
A little later Berrin whispered into my ear: “That man at the end of the table, and that charming girl next to him-who are they?”
“That’s Nurcihan, Sibel’s dear friend since lycée days-they also went to France together. Sibel has seated her next to my friend Mehmet, hoping to get something started.”
“Doesn’t look very promising so far!” said Berrin.
Sibel felt a mixture of admiration and compassion for her friend Nurcihan. When they were students in Paris, Nurcihan had had several love affairs, which she’d courageously consummated, even moving in with a few of these men (Sibel had enviously told me all these stories), and all the while keeping this life secret from her wealthy parents in Istanbul; but with time these adventures had left her feeling sad and drained, so now, under Sibel’s influence, she was plotting a return to Istanbul. “But for obvious reasons,” I added, after telling all this to Berrin, “she’ll need to fall in love with someone who appreciates her worth, someone at her level, who won’t be troubled by her French past, or her old lovers.”
“Well, if you ask me, it’s not happening tonight,” she whispered. “What sort of business is Mehmet’s family in?”
“They have money. His father is a well-known building contractor.”
As Berrin saucily raised an eyebrow in snobbish suspicion, I told her that although his family was very religious and conservative, Mehmet was a trusted friend of mine from Robert College, an honest and decent man who had for years refused to let his headscarf-wearing mother arrange a marriage for him to an educated Istanbul girl, because he wanted to marry someone of his own choosing, a girl he could go out with. “But so far he’s got nowhere with the modern girls he’s found for himself.”
“He’ll never get anywhere,” said Berrin with a knowing air.
“Why not?”
“Just look at him. You can tell that type from a mile off,” said Berrin. “Men like him from the heart of Anatolia… Girls would rather marry him through a matchmaker because they know if they go gallivanting about town with him too much, a man like this will secretly begin to think of them as whores.”
“Mehmet doesn’t have that mentality.”
“But he’s from that mold. That’s what his family is like, that’s where he comes from. A girl with brains doesn’t judge a man by the way he thinks. She looks at his family, at the way he deports himself.”
“You do have a point,” I said. “I’ve seen brainy girls like this-no need to mention names-who shy away from Mehmet, even when he’s clear he’s serious about them, but when they’re around other men, even when they’re not sure the men would marry them, they’re much more relaxed, and much better at getting the ball rolling.”
“Exactly,” said Berrin proudly. “I can’t tell you how many men in this country treat their wives with disrespect even years later, just for having allowed them some intimacy before marriage. Let me tell you something: Your friend Mehmet has never really been in love with any of those girls who did not allow him to approach them. If he had been, those girls would have sensed it, too, and they would have treated him differently. I’m not saying they would have slept with him, of course, but they would have let him get close enough to make marriage a possibility.”
“But the reason that Mehmet couldn’t fall in love with them was that they wouldn’t let him get close enough, because they were conservative and frightened.”
“That’s not the way it works,” said Berrin. “You don’t have to sleep with someone to be in love. The sex is not what matters. Love is Leyla and Mecnun.”
I said something like “Hmmmmm.”
“What’s going on over there?” my brother shouted from the other end of the table. “Tell us, please! Who’s sleeping with whom?”
Berrin gave him a look that said, There are children listening! Then she whispered into my ear. “That’s the crux of it,” she said. “Why can’t this seemingly meek Mehmet of yours fall in love with any of these girls he wants to meet, or start something serious with them?”
Out of respect for Berrin’s intelligence, I was tempted for a moment to tell her that Mehmet was an incorrigible patron of whorehouses. He had “girls” he visited regularly in four or five private establishments in Sıraselviler, Cihangir, Bebek, and Nişantaşı. Even as he struggled in vain to form deep attachments with the women he met at work-virgins in their early twenties with lycée diplomas-he’d continued to frequent the high-class brothels for wild all-nighters with girls impersonating Western movie stars, though when he drank too much it became obvious what a hard time he had keeping up the pace, or even thinking straight. Nevertheless, when we emerged from a party in the wee hours, instead of returning to his house where his father was forever fretting over his worry beads and his mother brooded in her headscarf, and everyone, including his sisters, kept the fast during Ramadan, he would bid us good-bye and head to one of the pricier brothels of Cihangir or Bebek.
“You’re drinking rather a lot this evening,” said Berrin. “Slow down a little. There are a lot of people here and they’re all watching the family.”
“Fine,” I said, as I lifted my glass with a smile.
“Just look at Osman, how responsible he is,” said Berrin. “Then look at you, so mischievous at your own engagement… How could two brothers be so different?”
“Actually,” I said, “we’re very similar. And anyway, from now on I’m going to be even more serious and responsible than Osman.”
“Well, don’t go overboard. People can be so boring when they’re too serious,” Berrin began, and she continued in this half-hectoring vein until, much later, I heard, “You’re not even listening to me.”
“What? Of course I’m listening.”
“All right, then tell me what I just said!”
“You said, ‘Love has to be the way it is in the old legends. Like Leyla and Mecnun.’”
“I knew you weren’t listening to me,” said Berrin with a half smile, from which I could see she was worried about me. She turned to Sibel, to see if she had noticed what condition I was in. But Sibel was talking to Mehmet and Nurcihan.