by Orhan Pamuk
“Plants don’t grow where the Turk has passed.” I felt I could almost hear those hoof beats that made the Christians shudder on cold winter nights, but all of a sudden I got really annoyed, because one of those new fools who had just joined us piped up: “Okay, brother, but if we find oil, too, will we be like the Arabs and get rich and develop?”
As if everything’s about money, everything’s material! We are not fighting for money here, we are fighting for our spiritual salvation. Mustafa didn’t lose his patience, he explained it all over again, but I didn’t listen, I know these things, I’m not new anymore. I noticed a newspaper lying there, so I took it and started reading it, the want ads, too. Then Mustafa told them to come back when it was late. They gave him a salute to show that they had learned the need for absolute obedience and they left.
“Are you going out to write on the walls tonight?” I asked.
“We did them last night, where the hell were you?”
“I was at home,” I said. “I was studying.”
“You were studying?” said Serdar. “Or you were peeping in windows?”
He gave me a dirty smile. I don’t pay attention to anything he says, but I worried Mustafa might take him seriously.
“I caught this guy down at the beach front this morning,” said Serdar. “He was eyeing some girl. Some rich kid, he’s in love with her. He stole her comb, too.”
“He stole it?”
“Look, Serdar,” I said. “Don’t call me a thief, or you’ll be sorry.”
“Fine, so I suppose that girl gave you the comb?”
“Yes,” I said. “Of course she did.”
“Why should a girl like that give you her comb?”
“You wouldn’t understand such things.”
“He stole it!” he said. “He’s in love, the fool, he stole it!”
I took the two combs out of my pocket. “Look,” I said. “Today, she gave me another one. You still don’t believe me?”
“Let me see,” said Serdar.
“Take it,” I said, holding out the red one. “I guess you learned this morning what will happen if you don’t give it back!”
“This comb is totally different from the green comb,” he said. “It isn’t something that girl would ever use!”
“I saw her use it with my own eyes,” I said. “She has one of these in her bag, too.”
“Then she didn’t give this one to you,” he said.
“Why?” I said. “Couldn’t she have bought two of the same comb?”
“The poor guy,” said Serdar. “Love has taken control of his senses, he doesn’t even know what he’s saying.”
“Don’t you believe that I know her!” I shouted.
“Who is this girl?” Mustafa suddenly said.
I was taken aback and I thought, Mustafa’s been listening.
“The guy’s in love with some society girl,” said Serdar.
“Really?” said Mustafa.
“It’s a bad situation, brother,” said Serdar.
“Who is this girl?” said Mustafa.
“Because he keeps on stealing the girl’s combs,” said Serdar.
“No!” I said. “She gave me this comb!”
“Why would she do that?” said Mustafa.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Probably just as a present.”
“Who is this girl?” said Mustafa.
“You know, when she gave me this green comb,” I said. “I wanted to give her a present in return, so I bought this red one. But as Serdar says, the red one isn’t as nice as the other, it’s not the same as the green comb.”
“I thought she gave you both of them,” said Serdar.
“Who is this girl, I’m asking you,” shouted Mustafa.
“I know her from when we were little!” I said. “She’s a year older than me!”
“She’s the girl in the house where his uncle is the servant,” said Serdar.
“Really?” said Mustafa. “Why didn’t you say so?”
“Yes,” I said. “My uncle works for them.”
“So this rich girl just gives you a comb as a present for no reason?”
“Why not?” I said. “I told you: I know her.”
“Are you a thief, you idiot!” Mustafa shouted.
Everybody heard him. I broke into a sweat; I hung my head down in front of me, wishing I were anywhere else. If I were at home now, nobody would be bothering me; I could go out to the garden, look at the mysterious lights on the silent ships going off to distant places.
“Well, are you a thief or not, answer us!”
“I’m not a thief at all,” I said. Then I thought of something and, pretending to laugh a little, I said, “Okay, I’ll tell you the truth! It was all a joke. Just to see what he’d say. I was joking with Serdar this morning, but he didn’t get it. Yes, I bought the red comb from the shop. You can go and ask them in the shop if they have the same one. And this green comb is hers. She dropped it on the street, I found it, and I’m just waiting to give it back to her.”
“Are you her servant, is that why you’re waiting?”
“No,” I said. “I’m her friend. When we were small—”
“The stupid guy’s in love with a society girl,” said Serdar.
“No,” I said. “I’m not.”
“If you’re not, why are you hanging around her door?”
“If I take something that doesn’t belong to me and then I don’t return it to the owner, they’ll call me a thief, that’s why.”
“This guy must think we’re as stupid as he is,” said Mustafa.
“So you see,” said Serdar. “He’s fallen really hard!”
“No!” I said.
“Quiet, you idiot!” Mustafa shouted. “He’s not even ashamed. And I thought that this guy would amount to something. I was fooled when he came to me asking for something bigger to do and I thought that he was ready for more responsibility. In fact the whole time, he’s been playing slave to some society girl.”
“No!”
“You’ve been going around like a sleepwalker for days!” said Mustafa. “While we were writing slogans last night, were you hanging around her house?”
“I wasn’t.”
“And you make us look bad with your thieving!” said Mustafa. “Enough already! Just get out of here!”
We were quiet for a bit. I wished I were at home right then, peacefully working on my mathematics.
“Look, this shameless guy is still sitting here!” said Mustafa. “I said I don’t want him around anymore!”
I stared at them both.
“Why don’t we just forget about it. We have more important things to worry about,” said Serdar.
“No, get this guy out of my sight. I don’t want to look at some society lover boy thief.”
“Let it go. Look, he’s shaking. I’ll straighten him out. Just have a seat and relax, Mustafa.”
“No!” he said. “I’m going.”
And he really was.
“Come on, brother!” said Serdar. “Just sit down.”
Mustafa was standing up, playing with his belt. I had an urge to get up and punch him. I’ll kill him! I thought. But in the end, if you don’t want to be alone, you have to learn to explain yourself, so others don’t misunderstand you.
“There’s no way I could be in love with her, Mustafa!” I said.
“You come tonight,” Mustafa said to them. Then he turned to me. “You, don’t show your face around here again. You don’t know us, never saw us!”
I thought for a bit. Then I suddenly said “Stop!” and ignoring the trembling in my voice I said, “Just listen to me, Mustafa. And you’ll understand.”
“What?”
“I can’t be in love with that girl,” I said. “She’s a Communist.”
“What?”
“Yes!” I said. “I swear, I saw it with my own eyes.”
“What did you see?”
“The newspaper. She was reading Cumhuriyet. She gets Cumhuriy
et from the shop every day and reads it. Sit down, Mustafa, let me explain.”
“Don’t tell me you’re in love with a Communist?” he said.
For a moment I thought he was going to hit me. If he did, then I would kill him.
“No,” I said. “I don’t fall in love with Communists. Until yesterday I still didn’t know she was a Communist. Would you sit down, Mustafa, so I can explain?”
“I’m sitting down,” he said. “But if you’re lying it’s going to end very badly for you.”
Then I was quiet for a minute, and I asked if they could let me have a cigarette.
“So you’ve started smoking, too?” said Serdar.
“Just give the guy a cigarette!” said Mustafa and finally sat down.
Yasar gave me a cigarette but couldn’t see how much my hand was shaking, because he lit the match. When I saw the three of them looking at me with great interest to see what I would say, I took a minute to puff and think.
“When I saw her in the cemetery she was praying,” I said. “That’s why I figured she couldn’t be some society girl, because her head was covered and her hands were open to God, just like her grandmother’s …”
“What’s this guy saying?” said Serdar.
“Ssh!” Mustafa said. “What were you doing in the cemetery?”
“Sometimes people leave flowers there,” I said. “My father says that if he puts a carnation in his lapel when he goes out at night, people in the casino buy more tickets. So he sends me there to look sometimes. So when I went there that morning, looking for flowers, I saw her next to her father’s grave. Her head was covered and she had her hands lifted up to God.”
“He’s lying!” said Serdar. “I saw that girl on the beach this morning; she was totally naked.”
“No, she wasn’t, she had on a bathing suit,” I said. “Besides, in the cemetery I couldn’t have known what sort she was.”
“Fine, so is the girl a Communist now?” said Mustafa. “Or are you just jerking us around?”
“No,” I said. “She is. When I saw her praying there I was, all right, I admit it, a little confused. Because she wasn’t like that when she was a kid. I’d known her since childhood. She wasn’t bad, but she wasn’t good either. You don’t know them. Trying to figure it out, I got all confused, too. I was curious about what kind of person she is now. That’s why I started to follow her …”
“No good bum!” said Mustafa.
“He’s in love, that’s it!” said Yasar.
“Quiet!” said Mustafa. “How did you learn she was a Communist?”
“Following her,” I said. “Well, I wasn’t actually following her at that point. By chance she came into the shop where I was drinking a Coca-Cola and she got a Cumhuriyet. That’s how I realized.”
“You understood just from that?” said Mustafa.
“No, not just from that,” I said, and I was quiet for a second before continuing. “She goes and gets Cumhuriyet every morning and doesn’t get any other paper. And then she no longer socializes with the other rich people here.”
“She got Cumhuriyet every morning, and you were hiding this from us, because you were still in love and going after her, weren’t you?”
“No,” I said. “She got Cumhuriyet this morning.”
“Don’t lie, I can tell,” said Mustafa. “You just said that she gets Cumhuriyet every morning.”
“She goes to the shop every morning and gets something, but I saw this morning that what she gets is Cumhuriyet.”
“This guy is lying,” said Serdar.
“Another minute and I’m going to break his face,” said Mustafa. “He went after this girl knowing full well that she’s a Communist. So what’s with these combs, then?”
“I am trying to tell you,” I said. “She dropped one of them while I was following her. I picked it up then. I didn’t steal it, in other words … The other is my mother’s comb, I swear.”
“Why would you be carrying your mother’s comb?”
I took another drag on my cigarette because I realized they had no intention of believing anything more I said.
“I’m talking to you!” he said.
“Fine,” I said. “You don’t believe me. But now, I swear, I’m telling the truth. No, this red comb isn’t my mother’s, it’s true. I just said that because I was embarrassed. This red comb, she got it from the shop today.”
“With the newspaper?”
“With the newspaper. You can ask the guy in the shop.”
“And so, you mean, she gave you the comb?”
“After she left, I got one of the red combs for myself.”
“Why?” shouted Mustafa,
“Why?” I said. “Don’t you understand why?”
“I’m going to punch this guy in the mouth!” said Serdar.
If Mustafa hadn’t been there I would have shown him. But Mustafa was still shouting.
“Because you’re in love, you stupid idiot! You already knew she’s a Communist. Are you a spy?”
Once again I thought, He’s not going to believe anything I say from now on, and I kept quiet, but Mustafa continued shouting so much that I said, Let me try one more time to convince him that I’m not in love with a Communist anymore. I threw my cigarette on the floor and snuffed it out with my shoe, like a perfectly calm and sensible person. Then I took the red comb out of Serdar’s hand, bent it back and forth, and said:
“If you found such a nice cheap comb for twenty-five liras you probably wouldn’t pass up buying it either,” I said.
“Goddamn you, you liar!” Mustafa howled.
At that point I decided that I was definitely just going to keep quiet. I don’t have any intention of talking to you anymore, gentlemen, okay? Whether you want me around or not, either way, in just a few minutes, I’m going home. I’ll sit down to my math, and one day soon, I’ll go to headquarters in Üsküdar and ask for an important job: the guys in Cennethisar, I’ll tell them, don’t do anything except call one another spies, so give me something big to do! I can shoot anyone! For now, though, I’m just going to read my newspaper. I was halfway through it when I opened it and started reading again, ignoring all of them.
“What should we do now, my friends?” said Mustafa.
“Well, there’s the shop that’s still selling Cumhuriyet,” said Serdar.
“No,” said Mustafa. “I’m saying what should we do to this stupid Commie lover?”
“Forget it, Mustafa!” said Serdar. “Don’t take it seriously, he’s already shown remorse.”
“Are you saying I should let him go and be devoured by the Communists?” shouted Mustafa. “And he’ll run right off and tell the girl everything.”
“Should we beat him up?” whispered Serdar.
“And what should we do about the Communist girl?” said Yasar.
“Let’s do to her what they did to the girl in Üsküdar.”
“And we have to teach the shopkeeper a good lesson!” said Serdar.
They continued to talk among themselves in whispers about what the Communists in Tuzla did to our guys and about me as if I were some retard and about how they’d hanged this girl from the rail of the Üsküdar boat when they caught her reading Cumhuriyet, but I stopped paying attention: I was reading my newspaper and I was thinking how I wasn’t a professional licensed driver with experience, a telex operator with knowledge of English, a fabricator of aluminum shutters, a pharmacist’s assistant with experience fitting eyeglasses, an electrical installer who has completed his military service, a sewing machine operator experienced in trouser welting. But, damn it, I’ll still go to Istanbul, and one day, when I’ve done something big, yes, yes, I was thinking of that big job, and since I didn’t know yet exactly what it would involve, I turned to the first page of the newspaper again, as though I would see my name and find the job I was meant to do there, but someone had torn a few sheets from the newspaper and it seemed to be missing page 1, or at least I was looking for it but I couldn’t find it; and
it was as if I had lost not part of the newspaper, but my whole future. I was trying to hide my hands so that they couldn’t see I was trembling when Mustafa said loudly:
“I’m talking to you, you idiot! When does this girl go to the store?”
“After she goes to the beach.”
“How do I know what time she goes to the beach?”
“She goes around nine, nine thirty.”
“And this girl knows you, right?”
“Of course!” I said. “We say hello to each other.”
“This retard! He’s still proud of it.”
“Yes,” said Serdar. “That’s why I said to forgive him.”
“Listen to me!” Mustafa said. “Tomorrow at nine thirty I’ll be there. You wait for me! You show me which shop it is! Let me see with my own eyes that the girl really buys Cumhuriyet.”
“She gets it every morning!” I said.
“Shut up!” he said. “If she buys it I’ll give you a signal. Then you go and grab the newspaper out of her hands. You say that we don’t allow Communists around here. Then you rip it up and throw it away. Got it?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Good,” he said. “Can’t take any chances when it comes to these Communists, even with a fox. And tonight, you come out with us to write slogans. No going home!”
I wanted to kill Mustafa right there. But in the end, I figured, You’ll only make more trouble for yourself, Hasan! I didn’t say anything. Except I did ask for another cigarette. They gave it to me.
21
Metin Spins Out of Control
Cuneyt opened the window and was shouting into the darkness, All teachers are maniacs, all the professors, and as he moaned, Gülnur on the couch burst out laughing and said, He’s high, he’s flying, do you guys see this, but Cuneyt continued shouting, Faggots, they completely fucked me up this year, bastards, what right do you have messing around with my life, and Funda and Ceylan interrupted, saying, Ssshh, Cuneyt, what are you doing, look at the time, it’s three a.m., the neighbors, everybody’s asleep, but Cuneyt kept at it, saying, Leave me alone, sis, the neighbors and the teachers are in on it together, and trying to take the joint from his hand, Ceylan said, You’re not getting this again, but Cuneyt wouldn’t give it up and said, Everybody’s having some, but I’m the only one getting blamed, and Funda, shouting to make herself heard above the awful music and noise, said, Just be quiet, then, stop shouting, okay, and Cuneyt suddenly quieted down, as if he’d forgotten all his hatred and bitterness in one instant, and began slowly rocking back and forth to the music that was wailing in my ears; then they went out between the flashing colored lights that Turan had strung up around the room to make it look like a disco, and I looked at Ceylan, who didn’t look upset, just beautiful, smiling a little, a little pained maybe, a little sad, God help me, I love this girl, I don’t know what to do, am I going to wind up like those pimply young Turkish lovers who decide to get married as soon as they fall in love, like those lovelorn idiots at school, who show contempt for girls then sit down and write mushy love poems all night long in notebooks they hide from everyone, concealing their pathetic feelings so they can feel like a real man when they grope a girl the next morning, don’t think about it, Metin, I hate all of them, I will never be like them, I’ll be a heartless rich international playboy, pictured in the papers with the Countess de Roche-Whatever, and the next year, I’ll live the life of a renowned Turkish physicist in America, Time magazine will catch us walking hand in hand in the Alps, me and Lady So-and-So, and when I come to Turkey on my private yacht to make a Blue Voyage, and you see me splashed across the front page of Hürriyet with my third wife—the beautiful only daughter of a Mexican oil tycoon—then, Ceylan, let’s see if you don’t say, I’m in love with Metin … Man, did I have a lot to drink! I looked at Ceylan again, and her beautiful face was looking stupid after just a couple of hits of hash, sitting among the others, stoned out of their minds, starting to howl, God, I even heard them ululate, and I don’t know why, but I felt like howling along with them, and so I started to, at first just some weird animal noises coming out of my throat, and as I was making these hopeless noises Gülnur said, Metin, just be quiet, don’t even pretend to be joining in, and showing me the joint in her hand, she said, You haven’t even had any, and I laughed it off, as if it was all in fun, but then I said, gravely, I polished off a whole bottle of whiskey, okay, and I don’t pass mine around from hand to hand, but she wasn’t even listening and gave me a look as if to say, You wimp, why don’t you smoke, have some consideration for Turan, why be such a drag on his last night before he goes off to the army, until finally I said, Okay, okay, and took the joint from her hand, and I looked your way, Ceylan, as if to say, See, I’m inhaling just like you, and Gülnur said, Yeah, that’s it, and I took another drag before handing it back, but when Gülnur realized I was looking at you, she laughed out loud and said, Look, Metin, you’re going to have to smoke a lot more to catch up with your girlfriend, and I was quiet and Gülnur said, Well, are you interested or aren’t you, and I was quiet again, and Gülnur said, Metin, better move fast or Fikret will snag her from you, mark my words, and she made a gesture, as if to write them in the air with the glowing tip of her cigarette, and I was quiet again, and she said, Okay, where’s Fikret, at which point I emptied my glass in one gulp and, on the pretext of going to refill it, I bolted out of there before something awful could happen, which made Gülnur burst out laughing again, and as I was looking for the bottle in the darkness, Zeynep suddenly appeared from I don’t know where and wrapped herself around me, saying, Come on, let’s dance, come on, Metin, this is such nice music, so I said, Fine, and as she embraced me I wanted to say, See, I don’t just think about Ceylan from morning till night, look, here I am dancing with chubby Zeynep, but I had my fill very quickly, because she started right off giving me these dreamy eyes, like some contented cat that had just filled its belly, her idea of flirting, I guess, and as I was looking around for my exit, some of the others started patting my ass, when, damn it, somebody turned out the lights and they started yelling, Kiss, kiss, kiss, so I took the opportunity in the dark to push her away like a big hot pillow, and I’d just about broken free when I felt a real pillow hit me in the face, Fine, if that’s the way you want to play, I said, and took a blind swing at someone in the darkness, which must have connected, because I heard Turgay moaning, but I kept going and made my way to the kitchen door, where Vedat, looking extremely messed up, said to me, Isn’t this a beautiful thing, to which I answered, What’s so beautiful, and in amazement he said, Don’t you know, we just got engaged, and he put his hand affectionately on Sema’s shoulder like a dutiful husband, saying, Isn’t it great, man, and I said, It sure is, he said, It’s a wonderful thing, we’re engaged, aren’t you going to congratulate us, and we embraced, and Sema looked as if she’d suddenly start bawling, and I didn’t know what to say, but just as I was about to get away Vedat grabbed me for another embrace, and I was afraid that the English girl would see us and get the wrong idea, because in school, in the dorms, everybody was out to make everybody else out to be a homo, the sickos, they’d treat anybody without facial hair like one, but, thank God, I’ve got some hair, could even have a beard if I wanted, it wouldn’t look bad either, even so, that bear Suleyman pinched me once on the ass, but I got him back, climbing on top of him one night when he was asleep and humiliating him in front of the whole dormitory, because if you don’t stand up to them they’ll crush you, just like they did to poor Cem, these animals, but in the end, what do you care, Metin, next year you’re going to be in America, but there’s still one year to go in this land of retards, and I’m telling you, Faruk and Nilgün, I thought, if I can’t make it to America next year because there’s no money, there’s going to be hell to pay. Fortunately I finally found the kitchen: Hülya and Turan were there; Hülya had been crying, Turan had his bald head under the tap, when he saw me he straightened up and gave me a manly punch, and then when I said, Where th
e hell are the bottles and glasses, he said, The glasses are there, but he didn’t show me anyplace, and when I said, Where, again, he said, Over there, again, and still he didn’t show me where exactly and, finally, as I was opening and closing all the cabinets, Turan put his arms around Hülya and the two of them started to kiss passionately, biting each other with a force like pulling teeth, and I thought, We could be like that, Ceylan, and then they started to make kind of strange sounds, and Hülya managed to get her mouth away from Turan’s, and then, all out of breath, she said, It’ll go by quickly, just go and get it over with, but suddenly Turan got all angry and said, What do you know about military duty, men are the soldiers, and getting even more worked up, he pulled out of Hülya’s arms, bellowing, Anyone who doesn’t do his military duty isn’t a man, and, planting another fist on me, this time my back, he said, Are you a man, are you a man, oh, and now you’re even laughing, you’re so sure of yourself, okay, come on, let’s see if you measure up, let’s see how much of a man you are, and as he put his hands on the buttons of his pants, Hülya said, What are you doing, Turan, please don’t do that, Turan, and he said, Fine, I’m going in two days, but tomorrow night we’ll have fun again just like tonight, okay, and Hülya said, Your father may have something to say about that, and Turan yelled, I have had it with that bum, I’ll crap in his mouth, enough already, if you’re a father know how to act like one, do I have to finish high school just because you say so, so you can just hustle me off to the military, what kind of father is that, so what if I’m not making anything of myself, okay, how about I just total your car, I swear, I’ll take that Mercedes, Hülya, I swear I’ll wrap it around a pole, let him figure it out, he said. Hülya was weeping, No, Turan, don’t, please, she said, and Turan gave me one more punch before he, too, began swaying to the music coming from inside, as if he’d forgotten all of us, and slowly disappeared in the haze of strobe-lit hash smoke and music with Hülya running after him; as for me, I was finally making my drink when Turgay found me and he said to me Come on you come, too, we’re going skinny-dipping, and I suddenly got excited and I said, Who is, who is, and he laughed and said, No girls, of course, and when he said no Ceylan I was taken aback and I thought of you, Ceylan, how did everybody figure out that I loved you, how did they realize that I don’t think of anything but you anymore, Ceylan, where are you in all this smoke and music, why don’t they at least open the windows, I looked and looked for you, and I didn’t panic until I saw that you were dancing, and Fikret was with you, Calm down, Metin, don’t make a big deal out of it, and I sat down somewhere like a guy who doesn’t make a big deal out of things, when somebody put on a folk dance, the “Butcher’s Air,” I think, and since they all had been to too many middle-class weddings, they all got up and were going at it arm in arm, I had Ceylan on one arm, and when I stole a peek, of course, Fikret was on her other, and we started to turn, just as we would with our aunties at some distant relative’s nuptials, and when the circle broke we became a long train, changing direction in the hall before one end went out into the garden, and then we all went out, and as we were going back in the other door, I felt Ceylan’s beautiful hand on my shoulder, and I began thinking, What about the neighbors, and when the train entered the kitchen, we broke off, but Fikret kept going, leaving the two of us behind, Ceylan and me, and in the kitchen, where we saw that Sema was staring into the open refrigerator and crying, and we heard Vedat say, like a dutiful husband, Come on, dear, let me take you off home now, but Sema just kept on staring and crying, as though there were something in the fridge to cry about, and Vedat said, It’s late, what will your mother say, and Sema was saying, I hate my mother, and now you’re on her side, and when Vedat said, At least give me the knife, Sema suddenly let the knife in her hand drop to the floor, and at that point, I put my hand on your shoulder, as if it was perfectly natural that I’d be protecting you, Ceylan, and as I got you out of the kitchen you pressed up against me, and we went into the other room, yes, yes, the two of us together, everybody check this out, we went inside, everyone was shouting and jumping around, and then, just at my moment of triumph, because you had pressed up against me, Ceylan, you suddenly broke away and ran off, I don’t know where, and I was left saying, Should I go after her, but then I looked and there I was next to Ceylan again, there we were dancing together, there I was holding her hand, and then I looked and she was gone again, but what difference does it make now, now everything is clear, I’m so happy I can hardly stand it, but suddenly I’m thinking that I’ll never see you again and then I’m really scared, Ceylan, scared that for some reason I would never be able to make you love me, and I’m looking for you desperately, Ceylan, where are you, I love you, and I thought how when I was little everybody had a mother who kissed them when they came home in the evening, everyone but me, and I thought how I felt so lonely in the dormitory on weekends and how I hated myself and being lonely and how nobody at my aunt’s house loved me, how everybody has money except me, and that’s why I’ll need to make some major discoveries but, Ceylan, who needs America, I don’t have to overcome all these problems, we can live wherever you like, stay here if you want, Turkey isn’t such a terrible place, there are nice stores opening all the time, one day this senseless street violence will end, too, and we’ll have right here in Istanbul everything the shops carry in Europe and America, let’s get married, I have a good head on my shoulders, at this very moment I have fourteen thousand liras in my pocket, none of these guys is carrying that kind of money, if you want, I’ll work somewhere to get ahead, or if you want we can just agree that money isn’t everything, can’t we, Ceylan, where are you, you haven’t left in Fikret’s car, have you, but wait, there you are, sitting by yourself in the corner, my lonely little helpless pretty angel, what’s happened, are your mother and father bothering you, too, you can tell me, I’m just sitting here next to her, and finally just to make conversation, as usual, the deadliest lines come flowing out, and I ask, Are you very tired, and you, taking the question seriously, say, Me, yes, I have a little headache, and since I can’t think of anything else, I sit there silently for what feels like forever, and just as I’m about to lose it from the boredom and the music, Ceylan comes out with one of her happy laughs so full of life, and seeing my face looking stupider by the minute, she says, You’re so sweet, Metin, tell me, what’s twenty-seven times seventeen, and then furious with myself, I put my hand on your shoulder and then you bend your lovely head and it rests on my chest and I feel it there, the scent of your hair and your skin, in this unimaginable ecstasy, you say, There’s no air in here, Metin, let’s go outside for a bit, and we get up right away, my God, we’re going out together, yes, good, away from all this awful noise, yes, together, and see, my hand is on your shoulder and we’re pressing against each other, we’re leaning on each other, like two hopeless lovers who by their affection save each other in this world full of ugliness, we’ve left it all behind, the terrible music and the crowd, and we’re walking together through quiet empty streets, under the trees, looking at the colored lights of the nightclubs in the distance, we’re talking like lovers who make everyone jealous, not just by their love, but by their deep friendship, their deep understanding of each other, and I’m saying to her how nice it is out in the fresh air, and Ceylan is saying how she’s not really that afraid of her mother and father, who’s basically a good man even if he’s a little too Turkish, and I’m saying, Unfortunately, I never got to know mine well, because my mother and father passed away, and Ceylan is saying how she wants to study journalism and see the world, and she says, Don’t look at me now, here we’re only out to have fun, we don’t do anything, but that’s not what I want to be, I want to be like that woman, what is her name, that Italian journalist, the one always interviewing famous people, she talks with Kissinger or Anwar Sadat, yes, I know that to be like her you have to be very sophisticated, but I can’t read books from morning till night, I have a right to live, too, because I passed all my classes this year, so I want
to have fun, not like that kid in our school, who read so much he went nuts, they put him in the asylum, what do you say, Metin, but I don’t say anything, I’m just thinking that you’re beautiful while you’re going on about your father, school, your friends, your future, and what you think about Turkey and Europe and such things and, when the dim light of the streetlamps filters through the leaves and falls on your face, you’re even more beautiful, and when you puff on your cigarette with an anxious expression and toss back that curl on your forehead, my God, just seeing you a person would want to have a child with you, and suddenly I said to her, Let’s go to the beach, look how nice it is, there’s no one around, it’s so quiet, Ha, she said, and off we went, and when we were walking on the sand Ceylan took off her shoes and carried them in her hand all along the shore, with her feet sparkling on the sand, those pretty little feet she carefully dipped into the dark mysterious water as she talked, splashing the water around, I couldn’t see anything but those feet making little waves in the water as she was talking about how she wanted to live like a European, from then on not listening to me, but I was lost anyway in the humid heat and the smell of the seaweed and of her skin, then suddenly I ran into the water with my shoes still on and put my arms around you, Ceylan, and she said, What are you doing, I love you, I said, and I wanted to kiss her on the cheek, and she, laughing at first, said, Metin, you’re very drunk, but then I could tell she got scared, so I pulled her to the shore and tried to pin her down, and as she was squirming under me on the sand, I tried to find her breasts and feel them, No, she said, no, no, Metin, what are you doing, have you gone crazy, you’re drunk and I said, I love you, and she said, No way, and I kissed her neck and smelled her incredible smell, but when she pushed me again, I thought, What right does she have to treat me like that, so I worked my way on top of her again, lifted up her skirt, and there it was, under my legs, that unapproachable body I had imagined so long from a distance, and I unzipped my pants, and she was still saying no, pushing at me, why, Ceylan, why, one minute I love you so much and the next we’re struggling like a cat and a dog, rolling on the sand, it’s so stupid, everything is so hopeless, and you tell me again I’m drunk, fine, fine, I’m not some crude guy who can’t take a hint, I’m stopping, but so what if we had, I was saying, I’m not some sex fiend, I really only wanted to kiss you a little, so you would know that I love you, but, okay, I got carried away, but I stopped, I let her pull her body out from under me, let my angry dick bury itself in the cold sand without finding relief, fine, I’m leaving you alone, I pull up my zipper and turn my face to the sky and stare vacantly at the stars, leave me alone, understood, go run off and tell your friends, Hey guys, be careful, that Metin is a weirdo, he attacked me, no-class slob, that much was obvious, absolutely no different from the creeps whose photos you see in the paper, my God, I could cry, I’ll pack my bag and go back to Istanbul, this little Cennethisar adventure is over. If you want to sleep with a girl in Turkey, I guess you have to be a millionaire or marry, next year I’ll be in America anyway, meanwhile giving lessons in mathematics and English to private high school students till the end of the summer, help for the mentally deficient at two hundred fifty liras an hour, and all summer long while I’m squirreling away money, staying in my aunt’s hot, suffocating little house, back here, Fikret and Ceylan … I can’t even think about it, it’s so unfair, girls shouldn’t be seduced by money but by cleverness, talent, and good looks, oh, just forget about it, Metin, it’s not important, look at those stars, what could all those shining stars mean up there in the sky, people look at them and recite poems, and why do they do it, they claim they feel something mysterious, but they’re just confused, and they call their confusion feeling, no, I know why they read poems, the whole point is to get women and make money, that’s it, the fools, what counts is knowing how to use your head, and when I get to America the first thing I’ll do is make some kind of very simple discovery in physics, something nobody has thought of, and immediately publish it in the Annalen der Physik, the journal that published Einstein’s first discoveries, and after I get rich and famous overnight, the Turks will come begging me for the secrets and the formulas of all the rockets I’ve developed, Come on, please, won’t you share with your fellow countrymen, so we can rain down some rockets on the heads of the Greeks, and then it’s off to my villa, a bigger and better one than the one that billionaire Ertegun has in Bodrum, unfortunately, I don’t have much time, I just come here once a year for a quick one-week visit, and by then, who knows, Fikret and Ceylan, maybe they’ll be married, but where are you getting this from, there’s nothing between them, Ceylan, where are you, maybe she ran off, I can see her panting while she tells the others all about it, but where is she now, I couldn’t even lift up my head to look, I’m losing it, all alone out here on the sand, I have nobody, it’s all your fault, whose parents leave their son alone like this, you could at least have left me a decent inheritance, then at least I would be like them with my money, but no, not a cent, not a dime, in the end all you left me was a fatso big brother and a big sister obsessed with politics, of course there’s also the senile grandmother and the dwarf, not to mention the decrepit house they refuse to demolish, just you wait, I’ll knock it down! I know why you never made any money, to make money you need courage and talent and guts, and I’ve got them, so I’ll earn plenty, but still I feel sorry for you and for myself and how I have nobody, and as I was thinking of you and of my own loneliness, afraid I might start to cry, suddenly I heard Ceylan’s voice: Are you crying, Metin, she said; she hadn’t gone! Me? I said, Nooo, why would I cry, I said, Good, then, said Ceylan, that’s what I thought, come get up, let’s go back now, Metin, she said, Okay, okay, I said, I’m getting up, but I continued to lie there without budging, just looking stupidly at the stars, and Ceylan said again, Come on, get up, Metin, and when she put out her hand to help me me, I got up, though I could hardly stand, I was swaying back and forth, and I was looking at Ceylan, so this is the girl I just attacked, what a strange thing, she’s smoking a cigarette as if nothing happened, so, to say something, I said, How are you, I’m fine, she said, I lost some buttons from my blouse, she said, but not in an angry way, and then I was ashamed, thinking what a warm, compassionate person she is, God, I was quiet for a little while, and then I said, Are you mad at me, I was really drunk, forgive me, I said, No, no, she said, I’m not mad, we were both pretty drunk, things happen, I know that’s not your nature. I was stunned. What are you thinking, Ceylan, I said, and she said, Nothing, I’m not thinking anything, come on, let’s go back, she said, and as we were turning to go she saw my wet shoes and she laughed, and I just wanted to put my arms around her again, I just don’t understand anything, I thought, and then Ceylan said, We’d better pass by your place so you can go change those shoes, and I was even more stunned, and so we left the beach, without saying anything we walked and walked through the silent streets, breathing in the scents of honeysuckle, dried grass, and hot cement rising from cool dark gardens, and when we came to our garden gate, I was ashamed of how run-down the place was and a bit annoyed at those sleepyheads inside, when I saw that Grandmother’s light was still on, then, on second look—oh, God—that my brother was in a stupor at the table on the balcony, where he was sitting in the darkness, and when his shadow moved, I figured he wasn’t asleep, only leaning back in his chair at this hour of the night, or, rather, the morning, and I said, Let me introduce you, Ceylan, Faruk, my big brother, and they were pleased to meet, and catching a whiff of that disgusting stench of alcohol coming from my brother’s mouth, I ran up the steps and madly changed my shoes and socks, so as not to leave them alone too long, but when I came downstairs Faruk had started: