Noontime in Yenisehir

by Sevgi Soysal

  The sign on the door had already read “closed” for some time. Customers, bearing their packages, left the store reluctantly. Under his breath, the clerk Ahmet, who had plans to meet his girlfriend in front of the record store at exactly half past noon, cursed the customers before him who never tired of choosing cloth. Finally the door to the store was locked from the inside so that no one else could get in. Ahmet rolled up the bolts of cloth that had been strewn across the counter and returned each ream to its rightful place, with a swiftness and dexterity calculated to please the ever watchful storeowner who was sitting at the cash register. He took his comb out of his back pocket and carefully ran it through his hair, which had grown curly at his neck. He patted the cuffs of his bellbottoms, ridding them of dust. After tightening his belt one more hole, he made a swift exit out of the store and onto the boulevard. A young mustached man, his unbuttoned shirt revealing a hairy chest, stood next to an open suitcase containing a pile of Orlon sweaters, yelling:

  “Wrap ’em up ’n’ take ‘em home! They’re fifty liras in the Kızılay shops, but we got ‘em for thirty! On the cheap from a merchant that went bottom up! There’s no obligation to buy. But I’m talkin’ genuine Orlon brother, genuine American Orlon! Buy it! Wear it! Wash it! If it shrinks, bring it back! May we be cursed with cockroaches if we don’t take it back, brother!”

  A crowd of people eager to get something on the cheap, cheaper than everyone else, for the cheapest price before anyone else, had amassed around the suitcase. At that moment, a “shill” who practiced the art of facilitating sales by taking advantage of customers’ idiocy and greed, was busy doing his job. He pushed aside those gathered around the suitcase and started grabbing the sweaters out of the hands of everyone left and right, as if he’d struck gold. He paid immediately. And then a few seconds later of course he furtively returned the goods, getting his money, and then some, returned in the process. It was a highly effective tactic. Just as it was in the stores. Of course, in the stores there wasn’t any professional involved, just a slew of greedy, aggressive customers who never failed to sway the undecided, leading to the outbreak of a property struggle over goods not yet purchased. Ahmet couldn’t count the number of customers who’d fought over the last bit of a certain ream of cloth, even while there were reams and reams of better quality cloth. Just as he was thinking this, one of the birds perched on a tree crapped on him. His new shirt was ruined. For a moment, he just stood there, stunned. Then he grabbed his shirt and shook it, a meaningless motion, as if that would make it clean again. He glanced around. He felt as if all the pedestrians on the boulevard were gawking at the bird crap on his shirt. His right shoulder began to twitch, like it always did when he was upset. If he’d had a gun he would’ve shot all the birds he could, that’s just how particular he was about his appearance. “Damn birds! If I could get my hands on you … Ah!” Grumbling, hopeless, he started walking. But who wouldn’t be angry, downright furious in the same situation? It wasn’t for nothing that he spent the better part of his salary from Tezkan on clothes from Amado. Of course it wasn’t. You had to invest if you wanted to be at the height of spiffy all the time. Were the shop windows of Amado not designed for the sole purpose of realizing Ahmet’s dreams of being the handsomest of the handsome? They sold stylish, unique, original things there. The clothes they sold were the same ones worn by the young people Ahmet strove to emulate. Patterned shirts, pants with thick belts. But these weren’t enough to make Ahmet stand out to the degree that he desired. Even in Samanpazarı there had sprouted up young men with a predilection for such novel attire, even if it wasn’t of the best quality. But their garb was hardly on par with Ahmet’s, of course. As soon as Ahmet walked out onto the street, young men went green with envy, neighboring housewives shook their heads in disapproval, and blood went rushing to the heads of old geezers. And that’s what mattered. Anyone who was a real man stood out in Samanpazarı. Anyone who didn’t stand out was a slovenly, ragtag twit, a member of that inconspicuous hoard known as “the people”—the people! If you asked Ahmet, any self-respecting man should be dressed so as to turn at least half a dozen heads as soon as he walked out onto the street. He stopped in front of the record store. Şükran hadn’t arrived yet. While studying the cover of a “Love Story” record displayed in the window, he was startled by the sound of a shrill voice:

  “Brothers and sisters and fellow citizens … Come closer, closer still … Look! I’ve been to sixty-six counties, three hundred and ninety townships and one thousand five hundred villages in Turkey, but a crown befitting my head have I yet to find. May Allah deliver us from destitution of every kind. My Muslim brothers, we just performed our Friday prayers together at that mosque right over there. So do not, I bid thee, seek to detect in my words falsehoods, hypocrisy, or untruths. Now you wake up in the morning and you feel an ache in your head, a pain in your back, but try as you may, you can find no antidote. Well, our factory, esteemed customers, will supply the cure that you have sought in vain in stores and apothecaries, and for the mere recompense of one hundred and fifty lira. Now dear respectable brothers and sisters, when I shake this jar I am holding right now, not once, not twice, but three times, this snake, beknownst to you as an asp, which thirty-six hunters chased for fourteen days in the African jungle, will poke its head out to greet my dear respected brothers and sisters … But first, I beg you to turn your attention this way and I shall take these boxes you see me holding in my hand …”

  Ahmet was surprised. Such hucksters usually set up shop in Ulus, but now it seemed they too had made their way down to Kızılay. The Tezkan store used to be in Ulus too. Over by the hill. But now all self-respecting residents of Ankara did their shopping in Kızılay. Even civil servants looking to get their vittles on the cheap went to Gima, not to the old open-air marketplace. For Ahmet, goods purchased in Ulus were worthless. Even as a child, when speaking about something he’d bought, he wanted to tack on the sentence, “I got it in Kızılay.” Perhaps this was due to the indoctrination he had been subjected to throughout his childhood, that incessant refrain of his mother warning him that shopping in Kızılay inevitably meant getting cheated. Whereas for Ahmet, this indoctrination translated into the idea that anything bought in Kızılay was a sign of privilege and superiority, and so as soon as he began earning his own money, he made sure to do all of his shopping there, and at the most expensive stores to boot. Whenever he thought of Ulus or the open-air marketplace, it was the boring sacks of potatoes and onions and the grimy tins of cheese and olive oil that his father used to bring home en masse at the onset of each winter that came to his mind. How could such thoughts possibly mesh with a stylish wardrobe? But what did they mesh with? With miserliness, with poverty, with the idiotic naivety that one might conquer poverty by means of miserliness. He read the words on the record displayed in the shop window: Love Story. A beautiful, delectable girl and a puny boy wrapped in each other’s embrace. Was the girl a virgin? C’mon now, even if she was getting it on with that puny guy, she wouldn’t really qualify as a non-virgin … The girl possessed both beauty and an innocent-looking face, a rare find, thought Ahmet … He thought of Şükran’s chubby face, of the crude, wide nose that protruded from beneath eyebrows thinned out from too much plucking, and her knobby knees. But still, she was of course a thousand times better than the girlfriends of his buddies (his mother absolutely insisted that they call her “auntie”), those awful girls whose faces were always red, as if they got their periods every day, whose eyes were always downcast, who didn’t know how to walk or talk properly. For one, Şükran knew how to dance. She committed the names of singers and new songs to memory, just like that. She stood up to Ahmet when she had to. She let him touch her, and she could burst into laughter at any moment. She talked. She instantly recognized celebrities walking down the street. She could tell you Fikret Hakan’s street address and the name of Salih Güney’s ex-wife in a snap. She never flagged when it came to fashion. As soon as small talk became fashionable
, she mastered the art of blah-blah before anyone else. In this regard, she completely outdid Ahmet. That was Şükran for you, every bit the girl; he looked at the girl on the record sleeve again. That girl wouldn’t let the likes of us near her, son. As for the boy embracing her, who knew whose son he was? In the movie they’re always ice skating, or playing ice hockey, or something like that, and the girl just adores it. Ice hockey, way out of your league, son. He looked at his reflection in the window. How about I get me some of those striped pants next month! I’d do well to wrestle some money from my mom; a little conniption fit should do the trick. Being a fastidious dresser isn’t a bunch of silly nonsense like my father thinks. His father spent his life dressed like a janitor, and where did that get him? Alain Delon used to be a waiter. Şükran had told him about how Alain had caught the eye of a film producer thanks to his good looks, fashionable clothes, and of course his cunning. Good looks could make you rich, like winning the lottery, or if not that, it at least got you the girl, kept her happy. But what did walking around all sheepishly, dressed like a janitor, filling the house with sack after sack of potatoes and onions get you but a depressing, wearisome life?

  Every week, when he played the lottery, Ahmet liked to think about the clothes he’d buy if he won. He’d tour shop window after shop window, imagining buying himself countless shoes, pants, shirts, sweaters and jackets. As he looked at more and more shop windows, he’d would begin to dislike the items he had originally liked, start eliminating them from his initial list, and then add on the newer, the more recent, the very latest items that struck his fancy instead. Shopping, compiling a wardrobe was nothing less than a science. Not the kind of thing you could learn by buying secondhand pants in the used clothing stores in Samanpazarı. Who knew what his father would do if he were to enter ABC? Imagining the pathetic scenarios his father would live through if he were to set foot in the store, Ahmet laughed to himself, but then he felt ashamed. And he thinks he’s smarter than me, when he doesn’t know the first thing. Once you’ve gotten yourself some sharp clothes, then you get yourself a car. Once you’ve got a car, there isn’t a door you can’t open; it’s a thousand times better than money in the bank. Who’s going to know about the money you’ve got sitting growing moldy in the bank and respect you for it? Besides, it’s hardly like money has any real value anymore these days. But a car? A car is something completely different. It’s a must, no matter what. I’m perfectly happy to go hungry, to go without house and home, anything for a car! “The way you think, you never fail to shock me.” Ahmet frequently engaged in such spontaneous imaginary discussions with his father. It was as if his father were responsible for all of the obstructions he encountered in life; he stunted Ahmet’s growth, and deserved to be squelched. If only I had a dad like theirs. He turned his eyes away from the reflection in the show window and galloped down the record store’s stairs. On the doors of two record stores facing one another hung the same sign: “Selda’s albums available at this store only.” Are customers really so gullible? Ahmet thought. You walk into the store whose sign you see first; that’s what they’re counting on. The people of this country are lazy, that’s what they think, that once they’ve read the first sign, they won’t even question it when they see the second one. But Ahmet knew well and good that customers were anything but lazy when it came to shopping. Forget about the huge letters on such signs, they’d sniff out even the tiniest print on the most obscure part of an item and shove it under your nose. Both of the record stores were closed. He walked back up the stairs and resumed waiting. What did she have to give him that gave her the right to keep him waiting like this? He saw Şükran approaching from the opposite side of the street.

  “Where’ve you been, girl?”

  “Why? It’s not like you kept a taxi waiting for me, now is it?”

  “Cut it out. Look, if you keep me waiting like that again …”

  “I’ll keep you waiting just as long as I want. Now what do you say to that?”

  Ahmet didn’t respond. It was no use arguing with Şükran. Like all streetwise girls, Şükran could hold her own and then some in any quarrel. If he were to drag this one out, soon she’d be harping on about this and that, stomping heavily on every word: “Now. You. Look. Here.” They heard a whistle. A civil servant was dragging away the hawker who’d just been screaming bloody murder in his efforts to attract customers. The hawker, his goods strewn all over the ground, was crying: “Brother, please, I’m begging you, I’ll kiss your feet …” They paused at the sight. Şükran shrugged. Long live the snake that doesn’t bite me. Ahmet threw his arm around Şükran’s neck. They began walking uphill.

  The sandwich place was packed. Grilled cheese with sausage, with mustard, with ketchup, and ayran to drink; no one ever tired of eating these same old foods, which were served at each and every sandwich shop, and to which no one ever thought of making any changes, of introducing a few innovations. For most, eating a sandviç was enough of a change as it was. Although the claim that it was a cheap meal was hardly believable to those used to cooking a very cheap meal on the stove, it was something new, something different for those sick and tired of dishes comprised primarily of potatoes with a wee bit of ground beef and a heavy dose of onion thrown in, dishes that boiled on the stove for hours and hours. How many years ago did sandwiches first become available? The first sandwich shop had opened in the arcade next to The Big Movie Theater. The owner had hung up a sign above the boulevard sidewalk that read, “Hot Dog.” As soon as it opened, it was chock-full of boys and girls from the private high school, the Yenişehir kolej. At first the sandwich shop was a place that the majority viewed with suspicion, the latest hangout of the kolej kids who were more open to innovation than anyone else. It was a nuisance to parents who got angry at their children for spoiling their appetites with a sandwich when there was a delicious meal waiting for them at home. And then, suddenly, sandwich shops popped up throughout the city. All over Kızılay and Yenişehir, all of the unoccupied corners in all of the stores which would have been good for nothing else, the vestibules of apartment buildings, any space that could be squeezed out of coal bunkers, all of them became sandwich shops. The sandwich shops spread near and far, all the way to Ulus, Cebeci, Maltepe, everywhere, to Yeni Mahalle, and even to Altındağ and Telsizler. Now anyone able to equip some corner of his fly-ridden, dusty old shop with a rusty, cruddy toast machine began to sell toasted sandwiches which they made by putting a membrane of cheese in between two stale slices of bread and slathering some margarine on the outside. These sandwiches and grilled toast, no matter how disgusting, always found a buyer. Perhaps it was an insurrection against the onion-reeking hands of mothers, against the meals that always tasted the same regardless of the season, always made of the cheapest ingredients, meals that had become tasteless as a result of housewives skimming off a portion of the money allocated for foodstuffs in order to go sneak off to the cinema or secretly buy a pair of nylon stockings. They were capable of overthrowing the system (and this system only) in homes, a system grounded upon sacks of flour, potatoes, and onions lugged into the home with the onset of each new season.

  Ahmet and Şükran each ordered a goralı. This particular sandwich was designed for those who like to walk into the sandwich shop thinking they’re in for a feast; a sandwich into which all of the ingredients put into other sandwiches individually are lopped en masse; in other words, a sandwich that doesn’t have a particular taste, and gives you the impression you’re eating everything at once. As she ate her sandwich, Şükran studied her reflection in the mirror across from her, focusing on her brows that had recently been plucked. It was horrible the way thin brows had come into fashion. Şükran actually had thick, dark eyebrows. She’d shed sweat, blood, and tears to get them thinned out, that’s how determined she was. And now her skin revealed where the brows had once been thanks to its surprising paleness, and a day would not go by before the bases of the recently plucked brows made themselves visible once again as individ
ual dots. Şükran worked at Spor Toto, the government-run football pool. On certain days of the week, that is. “Tomorrow’s Wednesday; I’m off.” Tomorrow she was going to get a wax at Günseli’s. This time she would try using wax to remove her brows. Günseli was a pro when it came to waxing. But then, Günseli was incredibly skilled in every way. Maybe it was because she’d gone to boarding school? Günseli had spent years on a full scholarship at a boarding school for students studying to become teachers. Her memories of those days knew no end. Still, school did get you ready for the world. Şükran had dropped out the first year of middle school. So Günseli completed her studies, so what? She works at Spor Toto, and so do I. But no, I have to give it to her, she is one brazen gal. I guess that’s what a proper taste of school and a little living does to you. Nothing stops Günseli. There’s nothing reserved about her. She does whatever comes to mind, her heart’s desire. “If I get desperate, I’ll just do some tailoring, or knit some baby’s clothes, or do some manicuring at the hairdresser. What’s there to worry about?” That girl really could do anything. Well, sure, but after all that time studying to be a teacher, she barely made it through two years of teaching in a village, and put up with a hell of a lot until she finally found her place at Spor Toto. Şükran whined a lot about her troubled childhood in Hamamönü, but that childhood, spent begging her mother for this and that in vain, and shedding tears when her wishes were not fulfilled, was seventh heaven compared to Günseli’s years as a teacher. As kids, our heads were in the clouds, our hearts set on the boy next door, and our purses never empty, at least. The village where Günseli taught was a nightmare. She very well could have had the unfortunate fate of being born there. Still, she should be grateful. The more she heard Günseli’s stories, the more Şükran thanked God for her good luck—after all, she could have been born a villager.