A Strangeness in My Mind Read online

  “Don’t open the window. The girls will catch a cold,” said Rayiha. “Should I be ashamed of the way we smell? Doesn’t their house in Duttepe smell exactly like this?”

  “It doesn’t. They’ve got that huge garden, they’ve got electricity and running water, it’s all like clockwork. But we’re much happier here. Is the boza ready? At least put these dishcloths away.”

  “Sorry, but when you’ve got two babies to look after, it’s a little hard to keep up with the boza, the rice, the chicken, the dishes, the laundry, and everything else that needs doing.”

  “Korkut and Süleyman want to offer me a job.”

  “What job is that?”

  “We’re going to be business partners. We’re going to run the Vurals’ company teahouse.”

  “I think the job is an excuse and Süleyman just thinks he can get us to tell him who Samiha ran away with. If they think you’re so great, why did it take them so long to come up with this job for you?”

  —

  Süleyman. I would have rather spared Mevlut the grief of knowing I’d watched him standing there in Kabataş getting buffeted by the wind as he glumly waited for customers. I knew I wouldn’t be able to find parking in Taksim, what with all the traffic, so I parked the van on a side street and watched dejectedly as Mevlut tried and mostly failed to push his rice cart up the hill.

  I drove around Tarlabaşı for a bit. The general who became mayor after the coup in 1980 flew into a rage one day and kicked all the carpenters and the mechanics out of the neighborhood, driving them away to the outer edges of the city. He also shut down the bachelor dormitories, where the dishwashers who work in the restaurants of Beyoğlu used to sleep, claiming that these places were breeding grounds for germs. As a result, these streets emptied out. The Vurals came here at the time looking for places to take over on the cheap for development later on, but they gave up when they discovered that most of the buildings in the area are owned by the Greeks who were deported to Athens overnight in 1964. The mafia here is stronger and more vicious than the gangs who run Duttepe. In the last five years, this whole place has been overrun by drifters and castaways, and there are so many poor rural migrants, Kurds, Gypsies, and foreigners who have settled on these streets that the neighborhood is worse than Duttepe was fifteen years ago. Only another coup could clean this place up now.

  Once I got to their house, I handed the doll I’d brought for the baby to Rayiha. The single room they lived in was a dizzying mess: diapers, plates, chairs, piles of laundry, sacks of chickpeas, bags of sugar, the butane stove, boxes of baby food, cartons of detergent, pots and pans, milk bottles, plastic cans, mattresses, and duvets had all merged into one big monochrome blur, like clothes spinning inside a washing machine.

  “Mevlut, I never believed Vediha Yenge when she told me, but now that I’ve seen it with my own eyes…You know this beautiful, happy family life you’ve got here with Rayiha Yenge and the girls? It makes me so happy for you that I can’t think of anything I’d rather see.”

  “Why didn’t you believe Vediha when she told you?”

  “Seeing what you’ve got here, this blissful family life, it makes me want to get married right away.”

  “Why didn’t you believe her, Süleyman?”

  Rayiha served them tea. “No girl seems to be good enough for you, Süleyman,” she teased. “Go on, have a seat.”

  “It’s the girls who don’t think I’m good enough,” I said. I didn’t sit.

  “My sister tells me, ‘All these pretty girls are in love with Süleyman, but Süleyman doesn’t like any of them.’ ”

  “Oh, sure, Vediha is so helpful. Does she always come and tell you everything afterward? Who is this pretty girl who’s supposed to be in love with me?”

  “Vediha means well.”

  “I know, but seriously, that girl wasn’t right for me. She supported the wrong team, Fenerbahçe,” I quipped, laughing along with them, and surprised at my own quick wit.

  “What about the tall one?”

  “Good God, is there anything you don’t know? She was too modern, Rayiha, she wasn’t right for me.”

  “Süleyman, if you were to meet a girl you liked who was beautiful and respectable but didn’t wear a headscarf, would that be reason enough for you not to marry her?”

  “Where on earth are you getting all these ideas from, Rayiha?” Mevlut called from the other side of the room, where he was busy checking the consistency of the boza. “Is it the television?”

  “You make me sound like I’m really stuck up and I think no one’s good enough for me. But you should know that I almost agreed to marry a maid, the daughter of Kasım from Kastamonu.”

  Rayiha frowned. “I could be a maid,” she said proudly. “What’s wrong with that, as long as you’ve got your dignity?”

  “Do you think I’d give you permission for something like that?” said Mevlut.

  Rayiha smiled. “At home I’m already the cleaning lady, the maid, the head chef of a three-wheeled restaurant, and the cook in a boza shop.” She turned to Mevlut. “Now give me an employment contract and make sure it’s notarized, or else I’ll go on strike. The law says I can.”

  “Who cares what the law says or doesn’t say? The government can’t interfere in our home!” said a defiant Mevlut.

  “Rayiha, if you know about all these things, then you must also know that other thing I really want to know,” I ventured.

  “We have no idea where Samiha went or whom she went with, Süleyman. Don’t waste your breath trying to get us to tell you. I heard Korkut was really horrible to my poor dad just because he thought he knew something…”

  —

  “Mevlut, let’s go to the Canopy Restaurant around the corner and talk for a bit,” said Süleyman.

  “Don’t let Mevlut drink too much, all right? He’ll say anything after he’s had a glass. He’s not like me.”

  “I know how much to drink!” said Mevlut. He was getting annoyed at the indulgent and overfamiliar tone his wife was using with Süleyman, and she hadn’t even covered her head properly. Clearly Rayiha was spending a lot more time than she let on at the house in Duttepe, basking in the comforts over there. “Don’t soak any more chickpeas tonight,” Mevlut commanded as he was walking out.

  “You’ve brought back all the rice I gave you this morning anyway,” Rayiha shot back.

  At first Süleyman couldn’t remember where he’d parked his van. His face lit up when they found it just a few steps farther on.

  “You shouldn’t park here, the neighborhood kids will steal the side-view mirrors,” said Mevlut. “They’ll even take the Ford logo…They sell them to the spare-parts dealers up the hill or wear them as necklaces. If it had been a Mercedes, they would have ripped the sign out long ago.”

  “I doubt this neighborhood has ever seen a Mercedes.”

  “I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss it, if I were you. All the brightest, most creative Greeks and Assyrians used to live here. Craftsmen are the lifeblood of Istanbul.”

  The Canopy Restaurant was an old Greek place situated just three streets up toward Beyoğlu, but Mevlut and Rayiha had never been there. It was still early, so the restaurant was empty. They sat down, and Süleyman ordered two rakı doubles (without even bothering to ask Mevlut) and some starters (white cheese, fried mussels) and got straight to the point.

  “It’s time to put our fathers’ property dispute behind us. My brother sends his regards…We have a serious job opportunity we want to talk to you about.”

  “What’s the job?”

  Süleyman responded by raising his glass of rakı for a toast. Mevlut reciprocated, but he only had a small sip before putting his glass back down on the table.

  “What, you’re not drinking?”

  “I can’t let my boza customers see me drunk. They’ll be expecting me soon.”

  “Not to mention that you have no faith in me, you think if you get drunk I’ll make you tell me things, right?” said Süleyman. “And
yet, have I ever told anyone your big secret?”

  Mevlut’s heart thumped in his chest. “What’s my big secret supposed to be?”

  “My dear Mevlut, it seems you trust me so blindly that you’re forgetting things. Believe me, I’ve forgotten, too, and I haven’t told anyone either. But let me refresh your memory so you’ll remember that I’m on your side: when you fell in love at Korkut’s wedding, did I or did I not offer you my guidance and help?”

  “Of course you did…”

  “I went all the way from Istanbul to Akşehir in my van just so you could elope with the girl, didn’t I?”

  “I’m grateful, Süleyman…I’m so happy now, and it’s all because of you.”

  “Are you actually happy, though?…Sometimes our heart wants one thing, but we end up with another instead…Yet we still claim that we’re happy.”

  “Why would anyone say they’re happy unless they really were?”

  “Out of shame…and because accepting the truth would make them even more miserable. But none of this applies to you. You’re more than happy with Rayiha…Now it’s your turn to help me find happiness.”

  “I’ll help you the way you helped me.”

  “Where is Samiha?…Do you think she’ll come back to me?…Tell me the truth, Mevlut.”

  “Get that girl out of your head,” said Mevlut after a brief silence.

  “Do things ever get out of our heads just because we tell them to? No, they get stuck even deeper. You and my brother married her sis ters, so you’re fine. But I failed to get the third sister. Now the more I tell myself I should forget Samiha, the more I think about her. I can’t stop thinking about her eyes, the way she walks and talks, how beautiful she is. What can I do? The only other thing I think about is the person who has brought this humiliation upon me.”

  “Who is that?”

  “The son of a bitch who took my Samiha away from me in broad daylight. Who was it? Tell me the truth, Mevlut. I’ll have my revenge on that bastard.” Süleyman raised his glass as a sort of peace offering, and Mevlut reluctantly downed his own rakı, too.

  “Aaaah…just what we needed,” said Süleyman. “Isn’t that so?”

  “If I didn’t have to work tonight, I’d have another…,” said Mevlut.

  “Mevlut, you’ve been calling me a nationalist and a pathetic little fascist for years, and now you’re the one who is so worried about sin that he’s scared of rakı. What happened to that Communist friend of yours who got you hooked on wine…What was that Kurd called again?”

  “Enough of these old stories, Süleyman, tell me about this new job.”

  “What sort of job would you like?”

  “There is no job, is there…You only came here to try to get me to tell you who took Samiha.”

  “You know those Arçelik three-wheelers, you should sell your rice from one of those,” said Süleyman callously. “You can buy them on monthly installments. Mevlut, if you had some cash to spend, what kind of shop would you open, and where would you put it?”

  Mevlut knew he shouldn’t take the question seriously, but he couldn’t help himself. “I’d open a boza shop in Beyoğlu.”

  “But is there enough demand for boza?”

  “I am sure that anyone who tries boza once is bound to come back for more, as long as it has been prepared and served properly,” said Mevlut eagerly. “I’m talking to you as a capitalist, here…Boza’s got a real future.”

  “Does Comrade Ferhat give you these capitalist tips?”

  “Just because people don’t drink that much boza today doesn’t mean they won’t tomorrow. Have you ever heard that true story about the two footwear entrepreneurs who went to India? One of them said, ‘People here walk around barefoot, they won’t buy any shoes,’ and went back home.”

  “Don’t they have their own capitalists over there?”

  “The other one said, ‘There’s half a billion barefoot people here, it’s a huge market.’ So he persevered, and eventually he got rich selling shoes in India. Whatever money I lose selling chickpea rice during the day, I more than make up for with my evening boza sales…”

  “You’ve become a real capitalist,” said Süleyman. “But let me remind you that the reason boza was so popular in Ottoman times was that they used to drink it instead of alcohol. Boza is one thing; shoes for barefoot Indians are another…We no longer need to fool ourselves into believing that boza is alcohol-free. Alcohol’s legal now anyway.”

  “No, drinking boza doesn’t mean you’re fooling yourself. Everyone loves it,” said Mevlut, getting agitated. “If you’re selling it from a clean shop with a modern look…What job is your brother offering me?”

  “Korkut can’t decide whether he should stay with his old friends from the Grey Wolves or run as a candidate of the Motherland Party,” said Süleyman. “Now tell me why you said earlier that I should get Samiha out of my head.”

  “Because it’s done now, she’s run away with someone else…,” Mevlut mumbled. “There’s nothing more painful than love.” He sighed.

  “You might not want to help me, but there are others who will. Now look at this one here.” Süleyman took a battered old black-and-white photograph out of his pocket and handed it to Mevlut.

  The photograph showed a woman singing into a microphone, with darkness and too much makeup around her eyes and a world-weary expression. She was dressed conservatively. She wasn’t very pretty.

  “Süleyman, this woman is at least fifteen years older than we are!”

  “Only three or four years older, in fact. If you met her, you’d see she doesn’t look a day older than twenty-five. She’s a very good person, very understanding. I see her a couple of times a week. You won’t tell Rayiha or Vediha, of course, and least of all Korkut. You and I share lots of secrets, don’t we?”

  “But weren’t you meant to settle down with a suitable girl? Isn’t Vediha supposed to find you a good girl to marry? Who is this singer woman?”

  “I’m still a bachelor, I’m not married yet. Don’t get jealous now.”

  “Why would I be jealous?” said Mevlut. He got up. “It’s boza time for me.” He’d figured out by then that there wasn’t any business to set up with Korkut and that Süleyman had come here purely to pump Mevlut for information about Samiha’s whereabouts, just as Rayiha had predicted.

  “Come on, sit down, stay at least a few minutes more. How many cups do you think you’ll sell tonight?”

  “I’m going out with two jugs filled halfway. I’m sure I’ll sell out by the end of the evening.”

  “All right then, I’ll buy a whole jug’s worth off you. How many cups would that make? You’ll give me a discount, of course.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “I’m buying it off you so you’ll stay here with me, keep me company, and not go out freezing on the streets.”

  “I don’t need your charity.”

  “But I really need your friendship.”

  “All right then, you can pay me for a third of a jug,” said Mevlut, sitting back down. “I won’t make a profit off you. That’ll cover the costs. Don’t tell Rayiha I stayed here drinking with you. What will you do with the boza?”

  “What will I do with it?” said Süleyman, pondering an answer. “I don’t know…I’ll give it away to someone…or I guess I could just get rid of it.”

  “Where?”

  “What do you mean where? It belongs to me, doesn’t it? It can go down the toilet hole.”

  “Shame on you, Süleyman…”

  “What’s the matter? Aren’t you a capitalist? I’m paying you for it.”

  “Süleyman, you aren’t worth a single penny of the money you make here in Istanbul.”

  “As if boza is holy or something.”

  “Yes, boza is holy.”

  “Oh, fuck off, boza is just something someone invented so Muslims could drink alcohol; it’s booze in disguise—everyone knows that.”

  “No,” said Mevlut, his heart beating fas
t. “There is no alcohol in boza.” He was relieved to feel an expression of utter calm coming over his face.

  “Are you joking?”

  In the sixteen years he’d spent selling boza, Mevlut had told this lie to two different types of people:

  1. Conservative customers who wanted to drink boza and also wanted to believe that they were not committing a sin. The clever ones knew that there was alcohol in boza, but acted as if the mixture that Mevlut sold was a special invention, like sugar-free Coke, and if there was alcohol in it, then Mevlut was a liar, and the sin was his.

  2. Secular, Westernized customers who wanted to drink boza and also wanted to enlighten the country bumpkin who sold it to them. The clever ones understood that Mevlut knew there was alcohol in boza, but they wanted to shame the cunning religious peasant who lied to them just to make more money.

  “No, I’m not joking. Boza is holy,” said Mevlut.

  “I’m a Muslim,” said Süleyman. “Only things that obey the rules of my faith can be holy.”

  “Just because something isn’t strictly Islamic doesn’t mean it can’t be holy. Old things we’ve inherited from our ancestors can be holy, too,” said Mevlut. “When I’m out at night on the gloomy, empty streets, I sometimes come across a mossy old wall. A wonderful joy rises up inside me. I walk into the cemetery, and even though I can’t read the Arabic script on the gravestones, I still feel as good as I would if I’d prayed.”

  “Come off it, Mevlut, you’re probably scared of the dogs in the cemetery.”

  “I’m not scared of stray dogs. They know who I am. What did my late father say to people who claimed there was alcohol in boza?”

  “What did he say?”

  “He’d tell them ‘Sir, if there was alcohol in it, I wouldn’t be selling it,’ ” said Mevlut, imitating his father.

  “They didn’t know that it contained alcohol,” said Süleyman. “Any way, if boza really were as blessed as holy water, people would be drinking it all day and you’d be rich by now.”

  “It’s not like it can only be holy if everyone is drinking it. Very few people actually read the Koran. But in all of Istanbul, there is always at least one person reading it at any given time, and millions of people can feel better just by thinking of that person. It’s enough for people to know that boza was our ancestors’ favorite drink. That’s what the boza seller’s call reminds them of, and it makes them feel good to hear it.”