It troubled me that my advice would be so little heeded. Arriving on yet another evening to find Feridun and Füsun gone out to some place like the Pelür, I again found myself sitting with Aunt Nesibe and Tarık Bey, silently watching television. I stayed until Füsun and Feridun returned at two in the morning, passing the time-whose passing I affected not to notice-by telling stories of America as I had come to know it during my years at university: Americans were very hardworking, well-meaning, and at the same time very naïve; they went to bed early; and even the richest children were obliged by their fathers to go from door to door on their bicycles delivering newspapers early in the morning. They smiled as they listened, as if I were joking, but they were also curious. Tarık Bey asked me to explain something he had wondered about: When phones rang in American films, they sounded different from ours. Did all phones in America ring like that, or just the phones ringing in films? Suddenly I was confused, and I realized that I had forgotten what phones sounded like in America. Long after midnight this awareness gave me the impression that I had left behind my youth, reminding me of the freedom I’d felt in America. Tarık Bey did an impression of a telephone in a typical American film, and a different impression of a phone ringing in a thriller, an even shriller sound. It was after two o’clock and we were still drinking tea together, and smoking, and laughing.
Did I stay so long to discourage Füsun from going out on the evenings of my visits, or did I stay because it would cause me such distress to leave without having seen her? Even all these years later I still don’t know. But finally, after one more serious heart-to-heart with Feridun about the perils of Füsun’s keeping such louche company, she did stop going out when I was expected for supper.
It was around this time that Feridun and I began to consider whether we should raise funds for the art film in which Füsun would star by first doing a commercial film. It is possible that talk of this prospective interim venture, in which Füsun would play no part, was what inspired Füsun to stay at home, though she did not neglect to communicate her resentment, and on some nights bounded vengefully upstairs to bed before I’d left. Still she clung to her dream, and so the next time I came she would be warmer than ever, asking after my mother, or spooning a bit more pilaf onto my plate unbidden; and then it would be impossible for me to go.
For even as my friendship with Feridun progressed, I remained afflicted by attacks of inertia that kept me from taking my leave. The moment Feridun walked through the door, I would at once feel superfluous, out of place in this world, like something I’d seen in a dream, but unable to give up my stubborn wish to belong to it. I shall never forget Feridun’s expression one night in March 1977, when the late news on television had been an endless succession of stories about bombs detonated at political meetings and coffeehouses and leaders of the opposition shot in cold blood; it was very late (in my shame I’d stopped looking at my watch), and he arrived to find me sitting there. It was the sad look of a good man who felt genuine concern for me, but also tinged with an element of his nature that so mystified me-an innocence, so light and good and hopeful as to accept everything as normal.
After the 1980 coup, the ten o’clock curfew constrained my intervals of inertia. But martial law could not cure my affliction; indeed squeezing my relief into a shorter parcel of time made the suffering more intense. During the curfew hours, the crisis of immobility would intensify from half past nine, and I would be unable to stand, no matter how furiously I told myself, “Up now!” As the countdown continued relentlessly my panic would become impossible to bear by twenty to ten.
When I finally managed to propel myself downstairs and into the Chevrolet, Çetin and I would panic as we wondered whether we would make it to the house by the curfew; invariably we were four or five minutes late. In those first minutes of the curfew (which was later extended to eleven o’clock) the soldiers would never stop the last few stragglers racing down the avenues. On the way home, we’d see cars that had crashed in Taksim Square and Harbiye and Dolmabahçe in their haste to beat the clock, and the drivers were no less quick to get out of their cars and pummel each other. One night a drunken gentleman emerged with his dog from a Plymouth, its exhaust pipe still spewing smoke, and it reminded me of another occasion when after a head-on collision in Taksim, a taxi’s broken radiator was producing more steam than the Cağaloğlu Hamam. One night, having navigated the macabre darkness and the deserted, half-lit avenues, I reached home safely, and after I had poured myself one last raki before heading for bed, I pleaded to God to return me to normal life. I cannot say if I really wanted this prayer to be answered.
Any kind word I heard before I left the house, any gentle or positive remark Füsun or the others offered me, however ambiguous, was enough to sustain hope, to revive the conviction that I would win Füsun back one day, that all these visits had not been in vain. In such a gladly deluded state I could take my leave relatively untroubled.
A pleasant comment from Füsun at the dinner table at an unexpected moment-for instance, “You went to the barber, I see. He took off a lot but it looks good” (May 16, 1977), or turning to her mother, “He enjoys his meatballs like a little boy, doesn’t he?” (February 17, 1980), or on a snowy evening a year later, when I had just walked in, “We haven’t sat down to eat yet, Kemal. We were just saying how much we all hoped you’d be joining us”-and I would feel so happy, however dark the thoughts I’d brought with me, however discouraging the signs I read as we watched television, that when the time came to leave, I could rise from my chair decisively, retrieving my coat from the hook beside the door, and say, “With your permission, sir, I’ll be off!” Leaving the house in this way I would feel serene as Çetin drove me home early, and I could even think not about Füsun, but about the next day’s work.
A day or two following such a triumph, when I next went to their house for supper and saw Füsun, I would understand with great clarity two of the things that drew me there:
1. When I was far from Füsun, the world troubled me; it was a puzzle whose pieces were all out of place. The moment I saw her, they all fit back together, reminding me that the world was a beautiful, meaningful whole where I could relax.
2. Anytime I entered the house of an evening and our eyes met, it was like a conquest. In spite of everything, and no matter what had happened to dash my hopes and my pride, there was the glory of being here once more, and most of the time I saw the light of the same happiness in Füsun’s eyes. Or so I would believe, and, convinced that my stubbornness, my resolve had made an impression on her, I would find my life’s beauty was restored.
58 Tombala
I SPENT New Year’s Eve 1976 playing tombala with the Keskins. Perhaps I remembered this now because I’ve just been speaking about the beauty I’d found in my life. But it is also important, because celebrating the New Year with the Keskins was proof that my life had changed irrevocably. Having broken off with Sibel, I had been obliged to stay away from our circle of mutual friends, and now, visiting the Keskins four or five times a week, I had mostly abandoned my old habits, but until that New Year’s Eve, I would still have myself and those around me believe that I was continuing my old life, or at least that I could return to it whenever I chose.