51 Happiness Means Being Close to the One You Love, That’s All
I REMEMBER that when I reached Beyoğlu, its shop windows were glittering and I was glad to walk among the crowds streaming out of the cinemas. My happiness-the joy I could take in life-was impossible to deny. That Füsun and her husband had invited me to their house so that I would invest in their preposterous film dreams should perhaps have caused me only shame and humiliation, but so great was the happiness in my heart that I felt no embarrassment whatsoever. That night my mind was fixed on one fantasy: the film premiere, and Füsun holding the microphone, speaking to the admiring audience at the Palace Cinema-or was the New Angel Cinema a better choice?-thanking me first and foremost. When I came on stage, those attuned to the latest gossip would whisper that during the filming the young star had fallen in love with the producer and left her husband. The photograph of Füsun kissing me on the cheek would appear in all the newspapers.
There is no need to dwell on the dreams my imagination was churning out, much as the rare safsa flowers that secrete their own opiated elixir and fall off to sleep. Like most Turkish men of my world who entered into this predicament, I never paused to wonder what might be going on in the mind of the woman with whom I was madly in love, and what her dreams might be; I only fantasized about her. Two days later, when I went to collect her and Feridun in the Chevrolet, with Çetin Efendi at the wheel, I saw, as soon as my eyes met hers, that our evening would in no way resemble the conjurings of my imagination, but being happy just to see her, I lost none of my enthusiasm.
I invited the newlyweds to sit in the backseat, while I sat in the front beside Çetin, and as we passed through streets darkened by the city’s shadows, and through dusty, disorderly squares, I tried to lighten the mood by turning my head around continually to make jokes. Füsun was wearing a dress the color of blood oranges and fire. To expose her skin to the exquisite fragrance of the Bosphorus breeze, she had left the top three buttons undone. I remember that as the car bumped over the cobblestones on the Bosphorus roads, every time I turned around to address them, happiness flamed up in me. That first night we went to Andon’s Restaurant in Büyükdere, and-as would become the rule whenever we met to discuss our film project-I soon realized that I was the one who was the most animated of our party.
We had just selected our mezes from the tray that the old Greek waiters brought to us, when Feridun, whose self-confidence I almost envied, said, “For me, Kemal Bey, cinema is the only thing in life that matters. I say this so that my age does not undermine your confidence in me. For three years now I’ve been working in the heart of Yeşilçam, our own Hollywood. I’m very lucky, I’ve met everyone. I’ve worked as a set hand, carrying lights and props, and I’ve worked as an assistant director. I’ve also written eleven screenplays.”
“And all of them were shot, and they did very well,” said Füsun.
“I’d really like to see those films, Feridun Bey.”
“Of course, Kemal Bey, we could go and see them. Most of them are still playing at summer cinemas, and some are still showing in Beyoğlu. But I’m not happy with those films. If I were content to produce work of that caliber, the people at Konak Films say that I’d be ready to start directing. But I don’t want to make that sort of film.”
“What sort of film would that be?”
“Commercial, melodramatic, mass audience stuff. Don’t you ever go to Turkish films?”
“Very rarely.”
“The rich of our country who have been to Europe only go to Turkish films to laugh at them. When I was twenty I thought that way, too. But I don’t look down on Turkish films the way I used to. Füsun now likes Turkish films very much.”
“Teach me, too, for God’s sake, so I, too, may love them as much,” I said.
“I’d be happy to teach you,” said Mr. Son-in-law, smiling sincerely. “But the film we make with your help won’t be at all like those, have no fear. For example, we won’t make a film in which Füsun leaves the village for the city, and three days later, thanks to her French nanny, becomes a lady.”
“Anyway, I’d be fighting with that nanny from the very beginning,” said Füsun.
“And you won’t see her playing Cinderella, despised by her rich relatives because she’s poor,” Feridun continued.
“Actually, I wouldn’t mind playing a despised poor relation,” said Füsun.
Although I didn’t believe she was mocking me, I felt in her words a buoyancy, a lightheartedness, that pained me all the same. It was in the same blithe spirit that we shared family memories; after recalling how we’d long ago toured Istanbul in the Chevrolet, with Çetin at the wheel, we discussed recent and imminent deaths of distant relations living in the narrow streets of distant neighborhoods, and much else. Our discussion of how to make stuffed mussels ended with the extremely pale Greek chef coming all the way from the kitchen to tell us, with a smile, that a dash of cinnamon was required. The son-in-law, whose innocence and optimism were beginning to win me over, was not overbearing as he promoted his screenplay and his film ambitions. When I dropped them off at the house, we agreed to meet again four days later.
During the summer of 1976 we dined together at many Bosphorus restaurants. Even years later, every time I looked out at the Bosphorus through the windows of those restaurants, I would remember being caught between my elation at sitting across from Füsun and the cool I needed to maintain to win her back, and would feel the same confusion that had beset me. At these meals I would listen respectfully to her husband holding forth on his dreams, on Yeşilçam films and Turkish audiences, keeping my doubts to myself; it was, after all, not my aim to offer the Turkish filmgoer “the gift of an art film in the Western sense of the term,” and so I would discreetly create difficulties; for example, asking to see the finished screenplay, only to express my excitement about another story before the first script came to hand.
Once, after Feridun (whom I had discovered to be cleverer and more adroit than many Satsat employees) had engaged me in a conversation about the cost of a “good and proper” Turkish film, I worked out that the cost of making Füsun a star would be roughly half that of a small apartment in the backstreets of Nişantaşı, but if we were unable to accomplish this purpose, it was not because this figure was unacceptable; it was because I had realized that seeing Füsun twice a week on the pretense of making a film was enough to assuage my pain, at least for now. After suffering so much I was content with what I now had. Even to wish for more was too daunting. It was as if, having endured such agony, I needed to give myself a little rest.
If, after our meal, Çetin drove us to İstinye for chicken breast pudding with lots of cinnamon on top, or he took us to Emirgân for a stroll, to laugh and talk as we ate paper helva and ice cream sandwiches and gazed into the dark waters of the Bosphorus, it would seem to me that there could be no deeper happiness in all the world. One evening, when I had placated the djinns of love and found peace in Yani’s Place, just by sitting across from Füsun, I recall being struck by the simple, ineluctable formula: Happiness means being close to the one you love, that’s all. (Taking immediate possession is not necessary.) Just before acknowledging this enigmatic mantra, I had looked out the restaurant window at the opposite shore; seeing the twinkling lights of the yali where Sibel and I had spent the previous summer together, I realized that love was no longer lacerating my stomach.
It was not just that the searing pains of love would disappear the moment I sat down at the same table with Füsun; I would immediately forget that until just now, this same pain had brought me to thoughts of suicide. So, at Füsun’s side, with the agony having subsided, I would forget my wretched undoing; convincing myself that I had been restored to “normal,” I returned to my old self; I would succumb to the illusion that I was strong, decisive, even free. But after our first three outings I came to notice that such ecstasy was inevitably followed by the familiar despair, and so, as I sat across from her, thinking how soon I would miss her, foreseeing the pain of the days to come, I would discreetly pilfer various objects from the table as reminders of the happiness I’d felt there and then-and to fortify myself later when I was alone. This little tin spoon, for example: One evening, at Aleko’s Place in Yeniköy, I had a short conversation with her husband about football-it was fortunate we were both Fenerbahçe supporters, which spared us shallow arguments-when Füsun, getting bored, put this spoon into her mouth, toying with it for some time. This saltshaker: Just as she picked it up a rusty Soviet tanker rumbled past the window, the violence of its propeller shaking the bottles and glasses on our table, and she held it for a good long time. On our fourth meeting, we went to Zeynel in İstinye, and as we all strolled, I was just behind her, Füsun cast off this half-eaten cone, which I retrieved from the ground and pocketed in a flash. Returning home, I would gaze drunkenly at these objects; a day or two later, not wishing my mother to see them, I would take them over to the Merhamet Apartments to arrange them among similarly precious artifacts, and as the agonies of love set in, I would conjure my relief with them.