By the time Uncle Süreyya’s son (whose name I always forget) introduced me to Inge, the German model who’d done the Meltem commercials, I had downed two glasses of raki and felt relaxed.
“How are you finding Turkey?” I asked her in English.
“I’ve only been in Istanbul,” said Inge. “I’m so surprised. I never imagined anything like this.”
“What sort of thing did you imagine?”
For an awkward moment we stared at each other in silence. This was a wise woman. Having evidently learned how easily she could break a Turk’s heart by saying the wrong thing, she smiled, and in broken Turkish, she repeated the Meltem slogan that had captivated the whole country: “You deserve it all!”
“All of Turkey has come to know you in the space of a week. How does that feel?”
“The police recognize me, and so do the taxi drivers, and everyone in the street, too,” she said, as gleeful as a child. “There was even a balloon seller who stopped me, gave me a balloon, and said, ‘You deserve it all.’ It’s easy to become famous in a country that has only one television channel.”
Did she know how rude she was being even as she struggled to be humble? “So how many channels do you have in Germany?” I asked. Realizing that she had said something wrong, she blushed. I thought there had been no need for me to say that after all. “Every morning on my way to work, I see your picture blown up so large it covers the side of an entire apartment building, and it’s lovely,” I said, by way of recovery.
“Oh, yes, you Turks are way ahead of Europe as far as advertising is concerned.”
These words made me so pleased that for a moment I forgot she was just trying to be polite. I searched the merry, chirping crowd for Zaim. He was across the room, chatting with Sibel. It pleased me to think they might yet become friends. Even all these years later, I can remember the haze of euphoria that enveloped me. Sibel had coined a private nickname for him: “You-Deserve-It-All Zaim;” she found Meltem’s promotional slogan to be selfish and insensitive. In a poor and troubled country like Turkey with young leftists and rightists busy killing each other, it was, she felt, ugly.
A lovely spring breeze was wafting through the balcony’s grand doors, carrying the scent of linden trees. The lights of the city shone on the Golden Horn below. Even the slums and shantytowns of Kasımpaşa looked beautiful. I thought how happy I was, even feeling as if this was a prelude to yet greater happiness. The gravity of what had transpired with Füsun confused me, but I told myself that everyone has his secrets, fears, and moments of worry. No one could guess how many of these elegant guests felt similarly uneasy or carried secret spiritual wounds, but it was when we were in crowds like this, surrounded by friends-and having downed a glass of raki or two-that we persuaded ourselves how trivial and transitory those sentiments were.
“You see that nervous man over there?” Sibel said. “He’s the famous Cold Suphi. He picks up every matchbox he can lay his hands on and saves them all. Apparently he has rooms and rooms full of them. They say he became that way after his wife left him. Let’s not have the waiters wear such weird outfits at our engagement party, promise? Why are you drinking so much? Listen, I have something to tell you.”
“What?” I said.
“Mehmet’s really smitten with the German model-he won’t leave her side-and Zaim is getting jealous. Oh, the one over there, the one who’s the son of your uncle Süreyya… He’s also related to Yeşim. Is there something upsetting you, something I should know about?”
“No, not at all, there’s nothing wrong. I’m actually feeling very content.”
Even all these years later I remember that Sibel spoke to me sweetly. Sibel was fun, and clever, and sympathetic, and I knew that with her at my side I would be fine, not just then but for the rest of my life. Late that night, after I had taken her home, I walked for a long time through the dark and empty streets, thinking about Füsun. What I couldn’t stop thinking about, what perturbed me was not just that Füsun had given me her virginity; it was that she had shown such resolve in doing so. There had been no coyness, no indecision, not even when she was taking off her clothes.
At home I found our sitting room empty; sometimes I would come home to find that my father, having gotten up in the middle of the night, was sitting out there in his pajamas, and I would enjoy chatting with him before I went to bed; but tonight both he and my mother were asleep-through their bedroom door, I could hear his snores and her sighs. Before going to bed I poured myself another raki and smoked another cigarette. But even so I did not drop off to sleep at once. My head was still swimming with visions of our lovemaking, and these began to mix with the details of the night’s engagement party.
11 The Feast of the Sacrifice
AS I WAS drifting off to sleep I thought about my distant relation Uncle Süreyya, and about his son, whom I’d seen at Yeşim’s party and whose name I kept forgetting. Uncle Süreyya had been at the house for one of Füsun’s holiday visits-the time we’d gone out for a ride in the car. As I lay in bed, stalking sleep, a few images from that cold, gray morning came back to me. As they paraded before my eyes, they seemed both very familiar and very strange, as memories do when they find their way into dreams: I remembered the tricycle, and I remembered going outside with Füsun, watching silently as a lamb was slaughtered, and then taking a ride in the car.
“We returned that tricycle from our house,” said Füsun, who remembered everything much better than I did when we met the next day at the Merhamet Apartments. “After you and your brother outgrew it, your mother gave it to me. But by then I’d grown too old for it as well, so I didn’t ride it anymore, and when we went to visit you that year, my mother brought it back.”
“And then my mother must have brought it here,” I said. “Now I can remember Uncle Süreyya also being there that day.”
“Because he was the one who asked for the liqueur,” said Füsun.
Füsun’s recollection of that impromptu car excursion was likewise better than my own. I would like to pause here to relate the story that came back to me once she’d told it to me. Füsun was twelve and I was twenty-four years old. It was February 27, 1969, the first day of the Feast of the Sacrifice. On that morning, as on all holidays, our home in Nişantaşı was packed with relatives close and distant, all delighted to have been invited for lunch, and dressed up in suits and ties and their finest dresses. The doorbell kept ringing and newcomers arrived, for example, my younger aunt with her bald husband and her nosy but beautifully dressed children, and everyone would stand to shake hands and kiss them on both cheeks. Fatma Hanım and I were passing out sweets when my father took my brother and me to one side.
“Uncle Süreyya’s complaining again that we have no liqueurs. Listen, boys, could one of you go down to Alaaddin’s shop and buy some peppermint and strawberry liqueur?”
My mother had previously banned the customary serving of peppermint and strawberry liqueur in crystal glasses on a silver tray, because sometimes my father drank too much. She’d done this for his health. But two years earlier, on just such a holiday morning, when Uncle Süreyya had lodged his familiar complaint about there being no liqueur, my mother, hoping to cut the discussion short, had asked, “Why would anyone serve alcohol on a religious holiday?” a question that had paved the way for an endless back-and-forth about religion, civilization, Europe, and the Republic between my mother and my fervently secularist pro-Atatürk uncle.
“Which one of you is going?” my father asked, peeling off a crisp ten-lira note from the wad of cash he’d taken out of the bank to pass out to the janitors and the watchmen and all the children who kissed his hand.