A Strangeness in My Mind Read online

Page 16


  Once that whole tangle of leftists was gone, the value of the deeds issued by the councilman increased overnight. Armed gangs and profiteers cropped up trying to claim new land. The same people who wouldn’t give old Hamit Vural a penny when he said, Let’s buy new carpets for the mosque, who said behind his back that he should pay for them himself, since he drove the Bingöl and Elazığ Alevis out and took their land, were themselves quick to snatch up land and title deeds according to the new development plans. Mr. Hamit also embarked on some new construction projects in Kültepe. He opened a new bread factory in Harmantepe and spared no expense building a dormitory with televisions, a prayer room, and a karate school for the bachelors he brought over from the village. When I got back from military service, I started working as an assistant on the construction site for this dormitory, and I managed the on-site supply store. On Saturdays, Mr. Hadji Hamit would share a meal of ayran, meat, rice, and salad with all these unmarried, patriotic young men in the dormitory cafeteria. I would like to thank him here for having so generously helped me to get married.

  —

  Abdurrahman Efendi. I am struggling to find a suitable match for my eldest daughter, Vediha, who is already sixteen. Normally it is best for the women to sort these things out among themselves while they’re washing their laundry or out at the public baths or the market, or while visiting each other, but my orphan girls have no mother and no aunts to speak of, so it’s all been left up to your humble servant. When people found out that I took a bus all the way to Istanbul just for this purpose, they said all I was after was a rich husband for my beautiful darling Vediha and that I would take her whole bride price and spend it on rakı. The reason that they would envy a cripple like me and talk behind my back is simple: despite my crooked neck, I’m still a jolly fellow who takes joy in his daughters, lives life to the fullest, and can also enjoy an occasional drink. It’s just a jealous lie that I used to get drunk and beat my late wife, or that I only went to Istanbul so I could forget my crooked neck and throw some money at the girls in Beyoğlu. In Istanbul, I dropped by the coffeehouses where the yogurt sellers are usually found early in the day and saw some old friends who are still working, still selling yogurt in the morning and boza in the evening. Not that you can just come straight out and say, “I’m looking for a husband for my daughter!” You have to start with some small talk and let friendship do the rest, and if you end up in a bar at night, one bottle will lead to the next, and before you know it, everyone’s talking more freely. I may have boasted drunkenly about my darling Vediha during one of these conversations, passing around a photo we took at the Billur Photography Studio in Akşehir.

  —

  Uncle Hasan. Every now and then I looked at the photograph of the girl from Gümüşdere in my pocket. Very pretty. I showed it to Safiye in the kitchen one day. “What do you think, Safiye?” I said. “Might she be right for Korkut? She’s our Crooked-Necked Abdurrahman’s daughter. Her father came to Istanbul, all the way to my shop. We talked for a while. He used to be a hardworking man, but it turns out he wasn’t strong enough; he got crushed under that stick and had to go back to the village. Clearly he’s out of money. But Abdurrahman Efendi is a wily old fox.”

  —

  Aunt Safiye. My little Korkut is getting worn out from all this building work, the dormitory, that car, being a driver, and with his karate, too, and we would love to get him married, but he’s so tough, God bless him, and so proud as well. If I were to say to him, You’ve turned twenty-six, let me go to the village and find you a girl, he’d say, No, I’ll find one myself in the city. If I were to say, All right, do it yourself, look around in Istanbul for a girl you want to marry, he would just say that he wants a girl who is pure and obedient, and you don’t find any of those here in this city. So I took the photograph of Crooked-Necked Abdurrahman’s pretty daughter and stuck it somewhere by the radio. When he gets home, my beloved Korkut is too tired to do anything but watch TV and listen to the horse races on the radio.

  —

  Korkut. Nobody knows that I bet on the horse races, not even my mother. I don’t do it for the money; I just do it for fun. One night four years ago, we added a room to the house. I sit alone in that room listening to the horse races live on the radio. This time, while I was staring at the ceiling, a ray of light seemed to shine on the radio, and I felt that the girl in the photograph set there was looking at me, and that the way she was looking at me would be a consolation to me for the rest of my life. I was filled with gladness.

  “Mom, who’s this girl whose picture is by the radio?” I asked in passing. “She’s from back home, from Gümüşdere!” she said. “Isn’t she an angel? Shall I arrange a match for you two?” “I don’t want a village girl,” I said. “Especially not the kind who gives out her photograph left and right.” “It’s not like that,” said my mom. “I heard her crooked-necked father refuses to show her picture to anyone, they say he’s jealous of his daughter and turns suitors away at the door. Your father pressed him for a picture because he knew that this shy girl was meant to be such a beauty.”

  I believed this lie. Perhaps you know for sure that it was a lie, and you’re laughing at how easily I let myself be taken in. I’ll tell you one thing, though: people who make fun of everything can never truly fall in love, nor truly believe in God. That’s because they’re too proud. But just like believing in God, falling in love is such a sacred feeling that it leaves you with no room for any other passions.

  Her name was Vediha. “I can’t get this girl out of my head,” I told my mother a week later. “I’ll go back to the village to watch her in secret and speak to her father.”

  —

  Abdurrahman Efendi. The suitor is just a hothead. He took me to a bar. Vediha is my daughter, my treasure, my bouquet of flowers, these people would never understand, they’ve scrounged up a little money here in Istanbul and now they’re getting above themselves. Some karate-chopping upstart makes a little money sucking up to Mr. Hadji Hamit from Rize and he’s driving a Ford so now he thinks he can have my daughter? I said several times MY DAUGHTER IS NOT FOR SALE. They were frowning at the next table when they heard me, but then they smiled as if it were a joke.

  —

  Vediha. I’m sixteen years old, I’m not a child anymore, and I know (as everyone does) that my father wants to marry me off, though I pretend I have no idea. Sometimes I dream that an evil man is following me…I finished Gümüşdere Primary School three years ago. If I’d gone to Istanbul, I would have graduated from high school by now, but there’s no middle school in our village, so no girl has ever gone that far.

  —

  Samiha. I’m twelve and just in my last year of primary school. Sometimes my sister Vediha picks me up after school. A man started fol lowing us one day on the way back home. We walked on in silence, and doing like my sister, I didn’t turn around to look. Instead of going straight home, we headed for the grocer’s, though we didn’t go in. We walked down dark streets, past houses with no windows, under the shivering plane tree, and through the neighborhood behind our house, and we got home late. But the man kept following us. My sister never even smiled. “He’s an idiot!” I said, fuming, as I stepped inside. “All boys are idiots.”

  —

  Rayiha. I’m thirteen years old, and I finished primary school last year. Vediha has plenty of suitors. The latest, supposedly, is from Istanbul. That’s what they’re saying, but really he’s the son of a yogurt seller from Cennetpınar. Vediha loves going to Istanbul, but I don’t want her to like this man, because then she’ll get married and leave. Once Vediha is married, it’ll be my turn next. I still have three years to go, but once I’m her age, I won’t have anyone running after me the way she has now—and even if I did, who cares, it’s not like I want any of them. Everyone always says, “You’re so clever, Rayiha.” Looking out the window with my crooked-necked father, I can see Vediha and Samiha coming home from school.

  —

  Korkut. I couldn
’t take my adoring eyes off my beloved as she walked her little sister home from school. It was my first glimpse of her, and it filled my heart with a love far deeper than I had felt just seeing her photograph. Her straight back, her slender arms, were all so perfect, and I thanked the Lord for that. I knew that I would be unhappy if I didn’t get to marry her. So I got more and more worked up thinking about how that sly Crooked Neck would drive a hard bargain, until I rued the day I’d fallen in love.

  —

  Abdurrahman Efendi. At the suitor’s insistence, we met again in Beyşehir. I thought to myself, If you’re so in love, then money should be no object. The fate and fortune of my darling Vediha, of all my daughters, are in my hands, so I was leery even as I went to the restaurant, and before I’d even had my first drink, I said once again, “I’m really sorry, young man, I understand you very well, but MY BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER IS ABSOLUTELY NOT FOR SALE.”

  —

  Korkut. That pigheaded Abdurrahman Efendi had already spouted a whole list of demands before he’d even finished his first drink. I wouldn’t be able to afford it even with my father and Süleyman’s help, even if we all pulled together, took out a loan, sold our house in Duttepe and the land we’d fenced off in Kültepe.

  —

  Süleyman. Back in Istanbul, my brother decided that the only hope of solving his romantic woes was to call upon Mr. Hadji Hamit, so we decided to put on a karate exhibition match for his first visit to the dormitory. The clean-shaven workers fought well in their spotless training uniforms. Mr. Hamit had us sit on either side of him during dinner. The venerable gentleman had been to Mecca two times—twice a hadji!—he had huge holdings of land and property, many men at his command, and he had founded our mosque, so that every time I looked at his white beard, I felt lucky to be sitting so close to him. He treated us like his own sons. He asked after our father. (“Why isn’t Hasan here?” he said, remembering Dad’s name.) He inquired about the condition of our house and about the latest room we’d built and the half floor we’d added with its own external staircase, and he even asked where that land was that my father and Uncle Mustafa had claimed and gone to register with the neighborhood councilman. He knew everything: he knew where all the land was, whose plot was next to or across from anyone else’s, he knew about the houses that had been built or left half finished, when people were arguing over a plot they owned jointly, he kept track of which buildings and shops had been built over the past year, down to the last wall and chimney, he knew exactly which street was the last street on any given hill to have electricity and running water, and he knew what route the ring road was going to take.

  —

  Hadji Hamit Vural. “Young man, I hear you’re lovesick and in a lot of pain, is it true?” I asked, and he turned his eyes away in shame: he was embarrassed not about being head over heels but about his friends discovering his hopeless romance and his being unable to sort it out by himself. I turned to his fat little brother. “God willing, we shall find a solution to your brother’s heartache,” I said. “But he has made a mistake that you must avoid. Tell me, what’s your name? All right, then, Süleyman, my son, if you’re going to love a girl as deeply as your brother here…you’ve got to make sure to start loving her after you’re married. If you’re in a rush, then maybe wait until you’re engaged, or perhaps until you’ve got an informal agreement…At least wait until the bride price has been decided. But if you fall in love before all that, like your brother, and you sit down to discuss the price with the girl’s father, then those cunning, crafty fathers will ask you for the moon. There are two kinds of love in our land. The first kind is when you fall in love with someone because you don’t know them at all. In fact, most couples would never fall in love if they got to know each other even a little bit before getting married. This is why our Blessed Prophet Muhammad did not think it was appropriate for there to be any contact between the boy and the girl before marriage. There is also the kind that happens when two people get married and fall in love after that, when they have a whole life to share between them, and that can only happen when you marry someone you don’t know.”

  —

  Süleyman. I said, “Sir, I would never fall in love with a girl I didn’t know.” “Did you say a girl you do know, or a girl you don’t know?” asked the radiant Mr. Hadji Hamit. “Leave the knowing to one side; the best kind of love is the love you feel for someone you haven’t even seen. Blind people know how to fall in love, you know.” Mr. Hamit laughed. Then his men laughed, too, though they didn’t really get it. Before we left, my brother and I kissed Mr. Hadji Hamit’s blessed hand with deference. My brother punched me hard on the shoulder when we were alone, saying, “We’ll see what kind of wife you find in this city.”

  13

  * * *

  Mevlut’s Mustache

  The Owner of Unregistered Land

  NOT UNTIL much later, in May 1978, in a letter his elder sister had written to their father in Istanbul, did Mevlut discover that Korkut was about to marry a girl from the neighboring village of Gümüşdere. His sister had been writing her father for almost fifteen years, sometimes regularly, sometimes when the mood struck her. Mevlut would read the letters to his father in the same focused, serious voice he used to read out the newspaper. On finding out that the reason for Korkut’s visit was a girl from Gümüşdere, they both felt strangely jealous, and downright angry. Why hadn’t Korkut mentioned anything? Two days later, when father and son went over to visit the Aktaş family and learned all the details, it occurred to Mevlut that his life in Istanbul would be so much easier if only he, too, could count on a patron and protector as powerful as Hadji Hamit Vural.

  —

  Mustafa Efendi. Two weeks after our visit to the Aktaş family, during which we found out that Korkut was getting married with Hadji Hamit Vural’s support, I was at my older brother Hasan’s grocery store, chatting about trivial matters, when he suddenly put on a serious face and announced that it had been decided: the new ring road would pass through Kültepe, and the cadastral surveyors would therefore no longer be coming to that side of the hill (and even if they did, they would have no choice but to set those plots aside for the road, no matter how much you tried to bribe them), meaning that no one would be able to have the land around there registered officially in his name, and the government would be paying no one a single penny of compensation for the land it expropriated to build its six-lane highway.

  “I realized our plot in Kültepe was going to go for nothing,” he said, “so I sold it to Hadji Hamit Vural, who is collecting all the land on that side of the hill. He’s a generous man, God bless him, and he paid me handsomely!”

  “What! You mean you sold my land without even asking me?”

  “It’s not your land, Mustafa. It’s our land. I went to claim it, and you gave me a hand. The councilman did things properly and wrote both our names under the date and signature on the piece of paper he gave us, just as he did with everyone else. He gave the document to me, and you didn’t seem to mind him doing that. But that piece of paper was going to be worthless in another year. Forget about a house, no one’s going to start anything on that side of the hill, because they know it’ll just get demolished. You must have noticed that not a single wall has been going up.”

  “How much did you sell it for?”

  He was saying “Now, why don’t you calm down a little and stop using that tone with your older brother…” when a woman walked into the shop and asked for some rice. I stormed out angrily while he was busy with his plastic scoop, putting rice from a sack into a paper bag. I could have killed him! I have nothing in this world except for my slum house and half of that land! I didn’t tell anyone. Not even Mevlut. The next day, I went back to the shop. Hasan was folding old newspapers into paper bags. “How much did you sell it for?” Again, he didn’t say. I could no longer sleep at night. A week later, when the shop was empty, he suddenly told me how much the land had gone for. What? He said I would get half, of cou
rse. But it was such a pittance that all I could say was: I DO NOT ACCEPT THAT SUM. “Well, I don’t exactly have it anymore,” said my brother, “we’re arranging Korkut’s wedding, aren’t we!” “Excuse me? Are you saying you’re marrying off your son with the money from my land?” “I told you poor Korkut is smitten!” he said. “Don’t get so mad, it’ll be Mevlut’s turn soon, Crooked Neck’s daughter has two sisters. Let’s get one married off to Mevlut. What’s that poor boy going to do?” “Don’t you worry about Mevlut,” I said. “He’s going to finish high school first and then do his military service. Anyway, if there was a suitable girl, you’d take her for your Süleyman.”

  —

  It was from Süleyman that Mevlut found out that the unregistered land his father and his uncle had claimed in Kültepe thirteen years ago had been sold. According to Süleyman, there was no such thing as “the owner of unregistered land” anyway. No one had built a home there, or even planted a single tree, and it would be impossible to stop the government’s six-lane road with a piece of paper obtained from a neighborhood councilman years ago. When his father brought the topic up two weeks later, Mevlut acted as if it were news to him. He understood his father’s fury, and he resented the Aktaş family for having sold their shared property without even asking, and when he considered that, on top of this, they had been so much more successful in Istanbul than Mevlut and his father had, he felt increasingly angry, as if he’d suffered a personal injustice. But he also knew that he couldn’t afford to cut his ties with his uncle and cousins, that without them he would be left all alone in the city.