A Strangeness in My Mind Read online

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  “You speak for yourself. I’m religious, but I also like my rakı,” said the one with the thin nose. “Boza seller, are you saying there’s no alcohol in boza because you’re afraid?”

  “I’m not afraid of anyone but God,” said Mevlut.

  “Oooh, there’s your answer, eh?”

  “But don’t you worry about street dogs and robbers at night?”

  “No one would harm a poor boza seller,” said Mevlut, smiling. This, too, was another of his practiced responses. “Bandits and robbers don’t bother boza sellers. I’ve been doing this job for twenty-five years. I’ve never been mugged. Everyone respects a boza seller.”

  “Why?”

  “Because boza has been around for a long time, passed down to us from our ancestors. There can’t be more than forty boza sellers out on the streets of Istanbul tonight. There are very few people like you who will actually buy boza. Most are happy just to listen to the boza seller’s call and remember the past. And that affection makes the boza seller happy, it’s what keeps us going.”

  “Are you religious?”

  “Yes, I am a God-fearing man,” said Mevlut, knowing that these words would scare them a bit.

  “And do you love Atatürk, too?”

  “His Excellency Field Marshal Mustafa Kemal Pasha passed through Akşehir, near where I come from, in the year 1922,” Mevlut informed them. “Then he set up the Republic in Ankara, and then he went to Istanbul, where he stayed at the Park Hotel in Taksim…One day he was standing at the window of his room when he noticed that the usual joy and bustle seemed to be missing from the city. He asked his assistant about it, who told him, Your Excellency, we’ve banned street vendors from entering the city, because they don’t have those in Europe and we thought you’d get angry. But it was precisely this which made Atatürk angry. Street vendors are the songbirds of the streets, they are the life and soul of Istanbul, he said. Under no circumstances must they ever be banned. From that day on, street vendors were free to roam the streets of Istanbul.”

  “Hurrah for Atatürk!” said one of the women.

  Some of the other diners cheered in response. Mevlut joined in.

  “All right, fine, but what will become of Atatürk, of secularism, if the Islamist parties take power? Will Turkey become like Iran?”

  “Don’t you worry about that; the army won’t let them do that. They’ll organize a coup, close the party down, and lock them all up. Isn’t that so, boza seller?”

  “All I do is sell boza,” said Mevlut. “I don’t get involved in high politics. I leave that to my betters.”

  Even though they were all drunk, they heard the sting in Mevlut’s remark.

  “I’m just like you, boza seller. The only things I’m afraid of are God and my mother-in-law.”

  “Boza seller, do you have a mother-in-law?”

  “I never got to meet her, unfortunately,” said Mevlut.

  “How did you get married?”

  “We fell in love and ran away together. Not everyone can say that.”

  “How did you meet?”

  “We saw each other at a relative’s wedding, and it was love at first sight. I wrote her letters for three years.”

  “Well, well, boza seller, aren’t you full of surprises!”

  “And what does your wife do now?”

  “She does some needlework from home. Not everyone can do the things she does, either.”

  “Boza seller, if we drink your boza, will we get even more drunk than we already are?”

  “My boza won’t get you drunk,” said Mevlut. “There are eight of you, I’ll give you two kilos.”

  He went back to the kitchen, but it took a while to assemble the boza, the roasted chickpeas, and the cinnamon and for him to get his money. He put his shoes back on with an alacrity from the days when he used to have customers waiting in line for him and he had to hurry all the time.

  “Boza seller, it’s wet and muddy outside, be careful,” they called from the living room. “Don’t let anyone mug you, don’t let the dogs tear you apart!”

  “Boza seller, come back again!” said one of the women.

  Mevlut knew full well that they weren’t really going to want boza again, that they had only called him in because they’d heard his voice and wanted to be entertained while they were drunk. The cold air outside felt good.

  “Booo-zaaaa.”

  In twenty-five years, he’d seen so many homes like this one, so many people and families, he’d heard these questions thousands of times. Toward the end of the 1970s, in the dark backstreets of Beyoğlu and Dolapdere, moving among the nightclub entertainers, the gamblers, the thugs, the pimps, and the prostitutes, he’d come across many groups of drunk diners. He became well versed in the art of not getting too involved with the drunks, of dealing with them “without catching anyone’s eye,” as some of the wily types in military service used to say, and getting back out on the street without wasting too much time.

  Twenty-five years ago, almost everyone invited him inside, into the kitchen, where they asked him whether he was cold, did he go to school in the mornings, and would he like a cup of tea? Some invited him into the living room, and even to take a seat at their table. Those were the good old days when he was so busy hurrying off to deliver orders he couldn’t pause to properly enjoy people’s hospitality and affection. Mevlut knew he’d been particularly sensitive to it that night because it had been a long time since anyone had shown so much interest in him. It had been a strange crowd, too; back in the old days it was rare to find men and women having rakı and making drunken conversation in a proper family home with a kitchen and all the rest. His friend Ferhat used to tease him, only half jokingly: “Why would anyone want your three-proof boza when they can all get drunk together as a family on the state’s forty-five-proof Tekel brand rakı? There’s no future in this business, Mevlut, let it go for God’s sake! This country no longer needs your boza to get drunk.”

  He took one of the side streets that led down to Fındıklı, where he dropped off half a kilo to a regular customer, and on his way out of the building he saw two suspicious shadows in a doorway. If he gave these “suspects” too much thought, they would know (as in a dream) that he was thinking about them, and then they might try to harm him. But he couldn’t help it; the shadows had seized his attention.

  When he turned around instinctively to check whether any dogs were following, he was sure, for a second, that the shadows were tailing him. But he couldn’t quite believe it. He rang his bell twice with vigor, and twice halfheartedly, but with urgency. “Bo-zaa,” he shouted. He decided to avoid Taksim, taking a shortcut home down the steps to the hollow between the hills, and then back up to Cihangir.

  As he was making his way down the stairs, one of the shadows called out, “Hey, boza seller, hang on a minute.”

  Mevlut pretended not to hear. He gingerly ran down a few steps, with his pole balanced across his back. But when he got beyond the light of the streetlamps, he had to slow down.

  “Hey, boza seller, I said wait! We won’t bite, we just want some boza.”

  Mevlut stopped, feeling a little ashamed for being afraid. A fig tree blocked the light from one of the streetlamps, so the landing at the bottom of the stairway was particularly dark. It was the same spot where he used to park his three-wheeled ice-cream cart in the evenings that summer when he eloped with Rayiha.

  “How much is your boza?” said one of them, coming down the stairs with the air of a bully.

  Now, the three of them were standing under the fig tree, in the darkness. People who craved a glass of boza did tend to ask how much it cost first, but they usually did so in a soft, even sheepish way, politely rather than aggressively. Something was not quite right here. Mevlut quoted half his normal price.

  “That’s a bit expensive,” said the beefier of the two men. “All right, give us two glasses. I bet you make loads of money.”

  Mevlut lowered his jugs and took out a large plastic cup from hi
s apron pocket. He filled it with boza. He handed it over to the younger, smaller man.

  “Here you are.”

  “Thank you.”

  As he filled the second cup, he felt almost guilty about the awkward silence that had set in. The bigger man sensed his embarrassment.

  “You’re in a hurry, boza seller, is there that much work?”

  “No, no,” said Mevlut. “Business is slow. Boza is over, we don’t do nearly as well as we used to. No one buys boza anymore. I wasn’t going to come out at all today, but someone’s ill at home, and we need the extra money for some hot soup.”

  “How much do you make in a day?”

  “You know what they say, never ask a woman her age, nor a man his salary,” said Mevlut. “But you asked, so I’ll tell you,” he said, now handing the silhouette of the bigger man his glass of boza. “When sales are good, we make enough to live on for a day. But on a slow day like today, we go home hungry.”

  “You don’t look like you’re hungry. Where are you from?”

  “Beyşehir.”

  “Where on earth is that?”

  Mevlut didn’t reply.

  “How long have you lived in Istanbul?”

  “Must be around twenty-five years now.”

  “You’ve been here for twenty-five years and you still say you’re from Beyşehir?”

  “No…it’s just that you asked.”

  “You must have made some good money in all that time.”

  “What money? Look at me, I’m still working at midnight. Where are you from?”

  The men didn’t reply, and Mevlut was afraid. “Would you like some cinnamon on top?” he asked.

  “Go on then. How much is the cinnamon?”

  Mevlut took his brass cinnamon shaker out from his apron. “The chickpeas and the cinnamon are on me,” he said as he shook some cinnamon over the two cups. He took two bags of roasted chickpeas from his pocket. Instead of just handing them over to the customers as he would usually do, he tore the bags open and sprinkled the chickpeas onto the cups in the dark of night, like a helpful waiter.

  “Boza goes best with roasted chickpeas,” he said.

  The men looked at each other and drained their cups.

  “Well, then, do us a favor on this bad day,” said the older and bulkier of the two men once he had finished his drink.

  Mevlut knew what was coming and tried to preempt it.

  “If you don’t have any money on you right now, you can pay me some other time, my friend. If us poor fellows in this big city don’t help each other out in times of need, then who will? Let this one be on me, if it pleases you.” He moved to lift the stick back across his shoulders as if to go on his way.

  “Not so fast, boza seller,” said the well-built man. “We said do us a favor today, didn’t we? Give us your money.”

  “But I don’t have any money on me,” said Mevlut. “Just some small change from one or two glasses for a couple of customers, that’s all. And I need that to buy medicine for our patient at home, and I don’t—”

  Suddenly, the smaller man drew a switchblade from his pocket. He pressed the button, and the blade snapped open in the silence. He rested the point of the knife on Mevlut’s stomach. Meanwhile, the bigger man had gone behind Mevlut’s back and pinned his arms. Mevlut went quiet.

  The smaller man pressed the switchblade against Mevlut’s stomach with one hand, and with the other hand he did a fast but thorough search of the pockets on Mevlut’s apron, and every fold of his jacket. He quickly pocketed everything he could find: banknotes and coins. Mevlut could see that he was very young and very ugly.

  “Look away, boza seller,” said the bigger, stronger man when he noticed Mevlut looking at the boy’s face. “Now then, you’ve got plenty of money, don’t you? No wonder you were trying to run away from us.”

  “That’s enough now,” said Mevlut, shaking himself loose.

  “Enough?” said the man behind him. “I don’t think so. Not enough. You come here twenty-five years ago, you loot the city, and when it’s finally our turn, then what, you decide to close up shop? We get there late, so now it’s our fault?”

  “Not at all, not at all, it’s nobody’s fault,” said Mevlut.

  “What do you have in Istanbul? A house, an apartment, what?”

  “I haven’t got a single thing to my name,” Mevlut lied. “Nothing at all.”

  “Why? Are you stupid or what?”

  “It just wasn’t meant to be.”

  “Hey, everyone who came to Istanbul twenty-five years ago has a house in one of those slums by now. They’ve got buildings sprouting on their land.”

  Mevlut twitched irritably, but this only resulted in the knife being jabbed into his stomach a little harder (“Oh God!” said Mevlut) and in his being searched once again from head to toe.

  “Tell us, are you actually stupid or are you just playing dumb?”

  Mevlut made no response. The man behind him expertly twisted Mevlut’s left arm and brought his hand behind his back in a smooth motion. “What do we have here! It’s not houses or land that you like to spend your money on. You prefer wristwatches, don’t you, my friend from Beyşehir? Now I see how it is.”

  The Swiss watch that Mevlut had received twelve years ago as a wedding gift was off his wrist in an instant.

  “What kind of person robs a boza seller?” Mevlut asked.

  “There’s a first time for everything,” said the man holding his arms back. “Be quiet now and don’t look back.”

  Mevlut watched in silence as the two, one old and one young, walked away. In that moment, he realized they had to be father and son. Mevlut and his late father had never been partners in crime like these two. His father was always blaming him for something. Mevlut went down the steps. He found himself on one of the side streets that led to Kazancı Hill. It was quiet; there wasn’t a soul around. What would Rayiha say when he got home? Would he be able to rest without telling someone what he’d been through?

  He imagined for a moment that the robbery was a dream and that everything was as it always had been. He was not going to tell Rayiha that he’d been mugged. Because he hadn’t been mugged. Wallowing in this delusion for a few seconds made him feel better. He rang his bell.

  “Booozaaaa,” he called, out of habit, and realized immediately that there was no sound coming out of his throat.

  Back in the good old days, when something happened on the streets to upset him, whenever he felt humiliated and heartbroken, he could count on Rayiha to cheer him up when he got back home.

  For the first time in his twenty-five years as a boza seller, Mevlut rushed home without calling “Boo-zaaa,” even though he still had some boza left.

  When he walked into his one-bedroom house, he deduced from the quiet that his two daughters had both gone to sleep.

  Rayiha was sitting on the edge of the bed, doing some needlework in front of the television with the volume turned down, as she did every night while waiting for Mevlut to return.

  “I’m going to stop selling boza now,” he said.

  “Where’s this coming from?” said Rayiha. “You can’t stop selling boza. But you’re right, you need to get another job. My embroidery isn’t enough.”

  “I’m telling you, I’ve had enough of boza.”

  “I hear Ferhat makes a lot of money at the electricity board,” said Rayiha. “He’ll find you a job if you give him a call.”

  “I’d rather die than call Ferhat,” said Mevlut.

  PART III

  * * *

  September 1968–June 1982

  I was hated by my father from the cradle.

  —Stendhal, The Red and the Black

  1

  * * *

  Mevlut in the Village

  If This World Could Speak, What Would It Say?

  IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND Mevlut’s decision, his devotion to Rayiha, and his fear of dogs, we must look back at his childhood. He was born in 1957 in the village of Cennetpınar in the
Beyşehir district of Konya and never set foot outside the village until he turned twelve. In the autumn of 1968, having finished primary school, he expected to join his father at work in Istanbul while also continuing his studies, just like all the other children in his position, but it turned out his father didn’t want him there, so he had to remain in the village, where he became a shepherd for a while. For the rest of his life, Mevlut would wonder why his father had insisted that he should stay in the village that year; he would never find a satisfactory explanation. His friends, his uncle’s sons Korkut and Süleyman, had already left for Istanbul, so this was to prove a sad and lonely winter for Mevlut. He had just under a dozen sheep that he escorted up and down the river. He spent his days gazing at the pale lake in the distance, the buses and the trucks driving by, the birds and the poplar trees.

  Sometimes, he noticed the leaves on a poplar quivering in the breeze and thought that the tree was sending him a message. Some leaves showed him their darker surface while others their dried, paler side, until, suddenly, a gentle wind would come along, turning the dark leaves over to show their yellow underside and revealing the darker face of the yellowed leaves.

  His favorite pastime was to collect twigs, dry them, and use them to build bonfires. Once the fire really got going, Mevlut’s dog Kâmil would bounce around it a couple of times, and when he saw Mevlut sitting down to warm his hands over the flames, the dog, too, would sit down nearby and stare into the fire, motionless, just like Mevlut.

  All the dogs in the village recognized Mevlut, they never barked at him even when he crept out in the middle of the darkest, quietest night, and this made him feel that this village was a place where he truly belonged. The local dogs barked only at those who came from outside the village, anyone who was a threat or a foreigner. But sometimes a dog would bark at someone local, like Mevlut’s cousin Süleyman, who was his best friend. “You must be having some pretty nasty thoughts, Süleyman!” the others would tease.