A Strangeness in My Mind Read online

  “Now listen here, if you ever go to your uncle’s place again without my permission, if you meet up with Korkut and Süleyman again, it’ll have to be over my dead body,” said his father. “Understood?”

  “Understood,” said Mevlut. “I swear I won’t.”

  But as his oath kept him away from his aunt’s kitchen and stopped him from spending time with Süleyman, he regretted it almost immediately. Ferhat wasn’t around either, as he had left Kültepe with his family last year after high school. So after his father had gone back to the village, Mevlut spent part of the month of June wandering around teahouses and children’s playgrounds alone with his box of Kısmet. But the money he earned in a day was only slightly more than what he spent, and he found he couldn’t make even a quarter of what he used to pull in working with Ferhat.

  At the beginning of July in 1978, Mevlut took a bus back to the village. At first, it was fun being with his mother and sisters as well as his father. But the whole village was busy preparing for Korkut’s wedding, and Mevlut found it unsettling. He walked around the hills with his aging dog, his old friend Kâmil. He remembered the smell of grass drying in the sun, the scent of acorns and cold streams weaving through the rocks. But he just couldn’t shake off the feeling of missing out on all the things happening in Istanbul and on the opportunity to get rich.

  One afternoon he dug out the two banknotes he had hidden in a corner of the garden under the plane tree. He told his mother he was going back to Istanbul. “Your father won’t like it!” she said, but he ignored her. “There’s lots of work to do!” he said. He managed to take the minibus down to Beyşehir that day without running into his father. In town, he ate minced meat and eggplant at the cheap diner across from the Eşrefoğlu Mosque while he waited for the bus. At night, as the bus made its steady way toward Istanbul, he sensed that his life and his future were now entirely in his own hands, that he was a grown man standing on his own, and he was thrilled at the endless possibilities that lay ahead.

  In Istanbul, he realized that his month away had already cost him some customers. It never used to be that way. Of course some families would always just draw their curtains shut and stay out of sight, while others would leave for the summer. (Some yogurt sellers followed their customers all the way to their summerhouses on the Princes’ Islands, in Erenköy, and in Suadiye.) Still, sales never used to suffer this much during the summer, because the cafés would buy yogurt to make ayran. But in that summer of 1978, Mevlut grasped the truth that selling yogurt on the streets was a dying craft. The number of yogurt vendors was obviously dwindling fast among both the hardworking, apron-clad men of his father’s generation and the eager young strivers of Mevlut’s, who were always looking for something else to do.

  The increasing hardship of the yogurt seller’s life had turned his father into a man full of nothing but anger and hostility, but it did not affect Mevlut in the same way. Even on his lowest, loneliest days, he never lost the smile that his customers found so refreshing. The aunties and the doormen’s wives in the tall new apartment blocks with their NO STREET VENDORS signs, and the old shrews who usually took so much pleasure in pointing out “Street vendors are not allowed on the elevator,” always took pains to explain to Mevlut exactly how to open the elevator doors and what buttons he was supposed to press. There were many maids and doormen’s daughters who admired his boyish good looks from kitchens, stairwells, and apartment doors, though he had no idea how to go about even talking to them. To hide his ignorance even from himself, he became convinced that this was the way to “be respectful.” He had seen men his age in the movies who had no trouble at all talking to girls, and he would have liked to be more like them. But in truth, he wasn’t too fond of foreign films, in which you never quite knew who were the good guys and who were the bad guys. But whenever he touched himself, he still mostly fantasized about the foreign women from the movies and the Turkish magazines. He liked to indulge in these fantasies dispassionately as he lay in bed with the morning sun warming his half-naked body.

  He liked being at home all by himself. It meant he was his own master, if only until his father came back. He tried moving the wobbly table with the short leg somewhere else, he stood on a chair and fixed that end of the curtain that drooped on its rail, he put the cutlery and the pots and pans he didn’t use back into the cupboard. He swept the floor and cleaned everything much more often than when his father was around. Still, he couldn’t ignore the thought that this one-room house was even smellier and messier than usual. Savoring his solitude and his own ripe smell, he felt himself captive to the same urge that had always drawn his father toward a moody loneliness, the very same feeling that roiled his own blood. He was now twenty-one years old.

  He stopped by the coffeehouses in Kültepe and Duttepe. He felt like hanging out with the familiar faces from the neighborhood and the youths who loafed around watching TV, so he went a few times to the place where day laborers congregated in the mornings. At eight o’clock every morning, they would gather in an empty lot at the entrance to Mecidiyeköy, offering their labor. They were mostly unskilled workers who, having been put to work somewhere immediately upon arriving from the village, had then been let go to save their employers the insurance costs; now they would take any job they could get while they stayed with their relatives on one of the nearby hills. Young men living the shame of unemployment and foolish hotheads who couldn’t hold any job, they all came here in the morning to smoke their cigarettes as they waited for the foremen who came with their vans from all over the city. Among the young men who whiled away the hours in the coffeehouses, there were some who occasionally went out to the ends of the city for day jobs and boasted about the money they made, but it took Mevlut only half a day to make as much.

  At the end of one of those days, when he felt particularly alone and demoralized, he left his trays, his stick, and all of his other equipment at a restaurant and went to look for Ferhat. It took Mevlut two hours, packed like a sardine in a red public-transport bus that reeked of sweat, to get to Gaziosmanpaşa on the outskirts of the city. Out of curiosity, he looked inside the fridges that served as window displays for convenience stores, and he saw that the yogurt companies had conquered these neighborhoods, too. In a grocery store in a backstreet, he saw a fridge with yogurt in a tray, ready to be sold by the kilo.

  He got on a minibus, and by the time he reached the Ghaazi Quarter outside the city, it was already getting dark. He walked to the mosque at the other end of the neighborhood, on a road that consisted entirely of an almost-vertical slope. The forest behind the hill was supposed to be an unspoiled, verdant marker of Istanbul’s outer limits, but it seemed the city’s newest migrants had been nibbling away at bits of the woodland, undeterred by all the barbed-wire fencing. The neighborhood was covered in revolutionary slogans, hammer-and-sickle signs, and red-star stencils; the whole place seemed much poorer to Mevlut than Kültepe or Duttepe. In a daze, but with a vague fear always at the back of his mind, he wandered the streets, in and out of the most crowded coffeehouses, hoping to see the familiar face of one of the Alevis who had been forced out of Kültepe. He asked around for Ferhat but found nothing, nor did he see anyone he knew. The streets of the Ghaazi Quarter after dark, without even a lamppost to illuminate them, seemed to him more dismal than any distant Anatolian town.

  He got back home and masturbated all night. He would do it once and then, after he’d ejaculated and wound down, the shame and guilt would set in, and he would swear: never again. Some time would pass before he would begin to worry about breaking his oath, and therefore committing a sin. It would seem to him only prudent to do it quickly once more, to get it out of his system at last, and then renounce the wicked habit until the end of his days. That’s how he would end up masturbating again two hours later.

  Sometimes his mind went places he really wished it wouldn’t. He questioned the existence of God, he thought about the most obscene words he knew, and sometimes he visualized an explosion, l
ike something from the movies, which would shatter the whole world into pieces. Was it really him thinking all these horrifying thoughts?

  Ever since he’d stopped going to school, he’d been shaving only once a week. He could sense the darkness inside him looking for an excuse to manifest itself. Then he didn’t shave at all for two weeks. He decided to start again when his stubbly face began to scare some of his loyal customers, who valued cleanliness as much as a layer of cream on their yogurt. Inside the house, it was no longer as dark as it used to be. (He couldn’t remember why it used to be that way.) But he still went outside with his shaving mirror as his father did. Once he had shaved off his beard, he finally accepted the truth he had been dimly aware of for some time. Wiping the foam from his face and his neck, he looked in the mirror: yes, he had a mustache now.

  Mevlut didn’t like himself too much with a mustache. He didn’t think he looked “nice.” That baby-faced boy everyone thought was so cute had disappeared, replaced by one of the millions of men he saw out on the streets every day. All those customers who thought he was so charming, the old ladies who still asked whether he was in school, and the housemaids who gave him longing looks from under their headscarves, would they still like him now? His mustache took the shape of everyone else’s, even though he hadn’t touched it at all. It was heartbreaking to think that he was no longer the person his aunt used to cuddle on her lap; he realized that this was the start of something from which there could be no turning back, but at the same time he felt a greater strength in this new self.

  Whenever he masturbated, there was something at the back of his mind that he had always forbidden himself to think about but that now, sadly, he could no longer keep back there: he was twenty-one years old and he had never slept with a woman. A pretty girl with a headscarf and good morals, the kind he would like for a wife, would never sleep with him before they got married; and he would never want to marry a woman willing to have sex with him before the wedding.

  His priority wasn’t marriage anyway, but finding a kind woman he could hold and kiss, a woman he could have sex with. In his mind, he saw all these things as being separate from marriage, but apart from marriage, he found himself unable to obtain sexual contact. He could have tried to start something with one of the girls who showed some interest (they might go to the park or to the cinema, or have a soft drink somewhere), made her believe he intended to marry her (this would probably be the hard part), and then slept with her. But only a selfish brute would do that sort of thing, not Mevlut. Not to mention that he might end up getting shot by the tearful girl’s older brothers or her father. The only girls who would sleep with a boy casually and without their families finding out were those who didn’t wear headscarves, and Mevlut knew that no girl born and bred in the city would ever be interested in him (no matter how rakish he looked with a mustache). The last resort was to go to one of the brothels in Karaköy. Mevlut never did.

  One night toward the end of summer, a day after he’d happened to walk past Uncle Hasan’s shop, Mevlut heard a knock at his door and was really pleased to see Süleyman standing outside. He embraced his cousin warmly and noticed that Süleyman had also grown a mustache.

  —

  Süleyman. Mevlut called me his brother and gave me such a big hug that I ended up with tears in my eyes. We laughed about how we’d both grown mustaches unbeknownst to each other.

  “You’ve styled yours like the leftists!” I said.

  “What?”

  “Oh come on, you know what I’m talking about, it’s the leftists who cut the tips into triangles like that. Did you copy Ferhat?”

  “I didn’t copy anyone. I just cut it the way I felt like, I wasn’t going for any particular shape…Anyway, that means you’ve cut yours like a Grey Wolf.”

  We took the mirror from the shelf and examined each other’s facial hair.

  “Mevlut, don’t come to the wedding in the village,” I said, “but there’s going to be a wedding reception for Korkut two weeks from now at the Şahika Wedding Hall in Mecidiyeköy, and you’re coming to that. Uncle Mustafa is being difficult, he’s tearing the family apart, but you don’t need to be like him. Look at how the Kurds and the Alevis always watch out for each other. They band together and build each other houses, nonstop. When one of them finds work somewhere, the first thing he does is bring over anyone from the clan still left in his village.”

  “Isn’t that how the rest of us got here, though?” said Mevlut. “You lot are turning a profit, but no matter how hard we work, my father and I still can’t seem to save enough to enjoy any of the opportunities Istanbul has to offer. And now our land is gone.”

  “We haven’t forgotten your share in the land, Mevlut. Hadji Hamit Vural is a just, generous man. Otherwise my brother Korkut would never have been able to find the money he needed to get married. Crooked-Necked Abdurrahman Efendi has another two beautiful daughters. We’ll take the older one of the two for you; I hear she’s very pretty. Otherwise, who is going to find you a wife, look after you, and protect you? Being alone in this big city is unbearable.”

  “I’ll find myself a girl to marry, I don’t need anyone’s help,” Mevlut said stubbornly.

  14

  * * *

  Mevlut Falls in Love

  Only God Could Have Ordained This Chance Encounter

  AT THE END of August, Mevlut went to Korkut and Vediha’s wedding party. Even he wasn’t exactly sure why he’d changed his mind. The morning of the wedding, he wore a suit he had bought at a discount from a tailor his father knew. He also put on the faded blue tie his father wore on religious holidays and whenever he had to go to a government office. With some money he’d put aside, he bought twenty German marks from a jeweler in Şişli.

  The Şahika Wedding Hall was on the sloping road from Duttepe to Mecidiyeköy. It was often used by municipal authorities and labor unions for circumcision parties or to host the wedding receptions of foremen as well as laborers, typically with the support of their employers. During those summers when they had worked together as street vendors, Mevlut and Ferhat had snuck inside two or three times toward the end of a party to cadge a free lemonade and a few biscuits; and yet this place, which he had so often passed, had not left much of an impression on Mevlut. When he walked downstairs into the hall, the place was so packed, the little orchestra was so loud, the subterranean atmosphere so hot and stuffy that, for a moment, Mevlut had trouble breathing.

  —

  Süleyman. Me, my brother, and all the rest of us were so happy when we saw that Mevlut had come. My brother, looking sharp in his off-white cream suit and a purple dress shirt, could not have been nicer to Mevlut, introducing him to everyone before bringing him over to our table, where all the young men were sitting. “Don’t be fooled by this baby face,” he said. “He’s the toughest guy in our family.”

  “Well, my dear Mevlut, now that you’ve got a mustache, plain lemonade just won’t cut it,” I said. I showed him the bottle under the table and filled his glass up with vodka. “Have you ever had genuine Russian Communist vodka?” “I haven’t even tried Turkish vodka yet,” said Mevlut. “If this stuff is even stronger than rakı, it’ll go straight to my head.” “It won’t, it’ll just make you relax, and maybe you’ll even find the courage to look around and see if anyone catches your eye.” “I do look around!” said Mevlut. But he didn’t. When the first sip of vodka and lemonade touched his tongue, he recoiled as if he’d been burned, but then he pulled himself together. “Süleyman, I wanted to pin a twenty-mark note on Korkut, but I’m not sure it’s enough?” “Where on earth do you find these marks, if the police catch you they’ll lock you up,” I said, just to scare him. “Everyone does it, though. You’re a fool if you keep your savings in Turkish liras; with all this inflation it’ll be worth half as much by the end of the day,” he said. I turned to the rest of the table. “Mevlut here might look all innocent,” I said. “But he’s the craftiest, most tightfisted street vendor I’ve ever seen. For a s
crooge like you to pin twenty marks on the groom…it’s a big deal…But enough with this yogurt business, Mevlut. Our fathers were yogurt sellers, too, but we’ve all got different jobs now.” “I plan to set up my own business one day, don’t you worry. Then you’re all going to wonder why you didn’t come up with it yourselves.” “Go on, then, tell us what you’re going to do.” “Mevlut, you should come and be my business partner!” said Hidayet the Boxer. (This was his nickname because he had a nose like a boxer’s and because, once he knew he would be kicked out of school anyway, he knocked out the chemistry teacher Show-Off Fevzi with a single punch, just like my brother.) “I haven’t got some grocery store or kebab joint like this bunch. I’ve got a real shop, it sells building materials,” said Hidayet. “It’s not even yours, it’s your brother-in-law’s,” I said. “We can all manage that much.” “Guys, the girls are looking this way.” “Where?” “The girls at the bride’s table.” “Hey, don’t all stare like that,” I said. “Those girls are my family now.” “We’re not,” said Hidayet the Boxer, still staring. “Those girls are too young anyway. We’re not child molesters.” “Careful, guys, Hadji Hamit is here.” “So what?” “Are we supposed to stand up and sing the national anthem?” “Hide the vodka, don’t even try to have it with your lemonade, he doesn’t miss a trick. He hates this sort of thing, and he’ll make us pay for it later.”

  —

  Mevlut was looking at the girls sitting with the bride at the far table when Hadji Hamit Vural came in with his men. All heads turned as soon as he walked in, and he was immediately surrounded by people wanting to kiss his hand.

  Mevlut would also have liked to marry a pretty girl like Vediha once he turned twenty-five. This would only be possible after making lots of money and gaining the protection of someone like Hadji Hamit. He understood that, for this to happen, he would have to go and do his military service, work very hard, and leave the yogurt to find a proper occupation or run a shop.