A Strangeness in My Mind Read online

Page 41


  One cold winter day in February, Mevlut slept through the morning after his daughters had left for school. When he got to work, twenty minutes later than usual, he found the Binbom Café shuttered. The locks had been changed, so he couldn’t even get inside. The shop that sold nuts and sunflower seeds two doors down told him that there had been a big fight at the café last night, obliging the Beyoğlu police to step in. The boss from Trabzon had brought some men in to beat up the workers, and they’d all ended up at the police station. After the police more or less forced both sides to make peace, the boss had come back with a locksmith he’d found God knows where, changed the locks, and put up a sign in the window that said CLOSED FOR RENOVATIONS.

  That’s the official story, thought Mevlut. Meanwhile, in a part of his mind he kept thinking that he’d been fired for coming late to work that morning. Maybe the boss had discovered the workers’ scheme, or maybe he hadn’t. All he wanted to do was to go straight home to talk it all through with Rayiha, to share his distress at being unemployed again—if such was indeed the case—but he didn’t go home.

  He spent the next few mornings wandering into coffeehouses he didn’t know and trying to figure out how to make ends meet. He was filled with a sense of guilt and impending doom, but there was a sort of joy there, too, which he quickly stopped trying to hide from him self. It was the same mix of freedom and fury he’d felt whenever he skipped school as a teenager. It had been a long time since he’d had the chance to walk the city aimlessly at noon, with no pressing business, and he went down to Kabataş, relishing the moment. Someone else had parked a cart for rice with chickpeas in the same spot he’d occupied for years. He saw the seller standing next to the big, ancient fountain, but he was reluctant to go any closer. He felt briefly as if he were watching his own life from a distance. Did this guy make much money? He was a slender man, just like Mevlut.

  The park behind the fountain had finally been finished and opened to the public. Mevlut sat on a bench feeling the full weight of his predicament. His eyes roamed over the distant outline of Topkapı Palace in the mist, the enormous, gray ghosts of the city’s mosques, big ships with metallic hues gliding noiselessly past, and the seagulls with their incessant litany of scream and squabble. He felt a melancholy coming on, advancing with the irresistible determination of those huge ocean waves he’d seen on TV. Only Rayiha could console him. Mevlut knew he couldn’t live without her.

  Twenty minutes later, he was at home in Tarlabaşı. Rayiha didn’t even ask, “Why are you back so early?” He pretended that he’d found some excuse to leave the café and come home to make love to her. (They’d done this before.) They forgot the world—including their daughters—for the next forty minutes.

  Mevlut quickly found out that he didn’t need to bring the subject up at all, for Vediha had come by that morning and relayed all the news to Rayiha. She’d begun with a cutting “How can you still not have a telephone?” before recounting how one of the café’s workers had told the boss that he was being cheated by his employees. So Captain Tahsin had called in his friends from Trabzon to raid the shop and take back his property. An exchange of insults had led to a tussle between Chubby and the boss, landing them both in the police station, where they’d eventually shaken hands and called a truce. This informant had also claimed that Mevlut had been aware of these scoundrels’ tricks but that he’d taken money in exchange for his silence; the boss had believed this and complained to Hadji Hamit Vural about Mevlut.

  Korkut and Süleyman told Hadji Hamit’s sons that Mevlut was an honest man who would never sink so low, and they refuted these slanders against the family’s honor. But the Aktaş family was also angry at Mevlut for causing this situation and jeopardizing their ties with the Vurals. Now Mevlut was getting angry at Rayiha for relaying all this bad news so sternly, without any hint of sympathy, almost as if she thought they had a point.

  Rayiha noticed this immediately. “Don’t worry, we’ll find a way,” she said. “There are always plenty of people who want their curtains and their linens embroidered.”

  What upset Mevlut most was that Fatma and Fevziye would no longer be able to have toasted cheese-and-sausage sandwiches and kebabs from the café in the afternoons. The staff had been so fond of them both, always so sweet to them. Chubby used to do funny impressions with his kebab knife to make them laugh. A week later, Mevlut heard through the grapevine that Chubby and Vahit were both very angry, calling him an opportunist who’d taken advantage of them by claiming a share of the spoils only to turn around and betray everyone to the boss. Mevlut didn’t respond to any of their accusations.

  He caught himself longing once again to renew his friendship with Ferhat. Whenever Mevlut asked him something, Ferhat had always had an illuminating response, even if it hurt Mevlut’s feelings. Ferhat would have had the best advice on how to deal with the secret plots at the café. But Mevlut knew that this yearning amounted to an overly optimistic view about the nature of friendship. The streets had taught him that past the age of thirty a man was always a lone wolf. If he was lucky, he might have a female wolf like Rayiha beside him. Of course the only antidote to the loneliness of the streets was the streets themselves. The five years Mevlut had spent running the Binbom Café had kept him from the city, turning him into a man of sorrow.

  After sending his daughters off to school in the morning, he would make love with Rayiha before going out to visit the local teahouses in search of a job. In the evenings he’d head out early to sell boza. He visited the congregation in Çarşamba twice. In five years, the Holy Guide had aged, now spending less time at the table than he did in his armchair beside the window. By the chair was the button by which he could buzz people into the building through the main entrance. A large side-view mirror from a truck had been screwed onto the wall of the three-story window so that the Holy Guide could see who was at the door without having to get up. On both of Mevlut’s visits, the Holy Guide had seen him in the mirror and let him in before he’d even had a chance to cry “Boo-zaa.” There were new students and new visitors now. They didn’t get the chance to talk much. On both visits, no one—not even the Holy Guide—noticed that Mevlut hadn’t charged for his boza, nor did he tell anyone that he no longer managed the café.

  Why was it that on some nights he felt the urge to walk into a remote cemetery in some distant neighborhood and sit among the cypress trees in the moonlight? Why did a huge, black wave like the one on TV overtake him sometimes, so he found himself drowning in a swelling tide of sorrows? Even the packs of strays in Kurtuluş, Şişli, and Cihangir had started barking, growling, and baring their teeth at him, just like those other dogs in the neighborhoods across the Golden Horn. Why was Mevlut afraid of dogs again, to the degree that they noticed his fear and snarled at him? Perhaps the question was, why had all these dogs begun to growl at Mevlut, causing him to start fearing them in the first place?

  It was election time again; the whole city was bedecked with political banners as swarms of cars blared folk songs and marches from loudspeakers, blocking traffic, and wearing everyone out. Back in Kültepe, people used to vote for whatever party promised new roads, electricity, water, and bus routes for the neighborhood. Hadji Hamit Vural was the one who negotiated for all these services, so he would decide what party this should be.

  Mevlut had mostly ignored the elections, worried by the rumor “Once you’re registered to vote, the tax office starts knocking on your door.” There wasn’t any party he hated anyway, and the only demand he ever had of any candidate was “They should treat street vendors right.” But two elections ago, the military government had declared a curfew and sent soldiers to every home in the country, taking people’s names and threatening to jail anyone who didn’t vote. So this time Rayiha took their identity cards and went to have them both registered.

  During the local elections in March 1994, the ballot boxes for their neighborhood were kept at Piyale Paşa Primary School, which the girls attended, so Mevlut took Rayiha, Fatma,
and Fevziye and went down to vote in high spirits. There was a ballot box in Fatma’s classroom, and a large crowd, too. But Fevziye’s classroom was empty. They walked in and sat together in one of the rows. They laughed at Fevziye’s impression of her teacher and admired a picture she’d drawn, named MY HOUSE, which the teacher had liked well enough to hang in the corner: Fevziye had added two chimneys and a Turkish flag to the red roof of the house in the picture and drawn an almond tree in the background with the lost rice cart. She’d omitted the chains that had been used to secure the cart.

  The next day, the newspapers wrote that the Islamist party had won the elections in Istanbul, and Mevlut thought, If they’re religious, they’ll get rid of the tables of drunks eating on the pavements of Beyoğlu, and then we’ll have an easier time getting through, and people will buy more boza. It was two days later that he was attacked by dogs and then robbed, losing his money and his Swiss watch; that’s when he decided to give up on selling boza.

  PART V

  * * *

  March 1994–September 2002

  Every word in Heaven is a reflection of the heart’s intent.

  —Ibn Zerhani, The Hidden Meaning of the Lost Mystery

  1

  * * *

  The Brothers-in-Law Boza Shop

  Doing the Nation Proud

  NOW THAT our story has again reached the night of Wednesday, 30 March 1994, I would advise my readers to reacquaint themselves with part 2 of our novel. That night, Mevlut was attacked by stray dogs and robbed of the wristwatch Hadji Hamit Vural had given him as a wedding present twelve years before—two incidents that caused him great distress. The following morning, when he talked to Rayiha about it after Fatma and Fevziye had gone to school, he remained firm in his resolve to stop selling boza. There was no way he could walk the streets at night while he carried this fear of dogs in his heart.

  He also wondered whether it was a coincidence that he’d been attacked by dogs and robbed the same night. If the dogs had attacked him after he’d been robbed, he might have reasoned: The robbers scared me, and the dogs attacked smelling my fear. But actually, the dogs had attacked him first, and he’d been robbed two hours later. As he tried to find a link between the two events, Mevlut kept thinking back to an article he’d read a long time ago in the middle-school library. The article, in an old issue of Mind and Matter, had been about the ability of dogs to read people’s minds. Realizing quickly that it would be very difficult to recall the specifics of the article, Mevlut put it out of his mind.

  —

  Rayiha. When Mevlut decided to stop selling boza because of the dogs, I went to see Vediha in Duttepe the first chance I got.

  “They’re not too pleased with Mevlut after what happened at the Binbom Café; they won’t be helping him find another job anytime soon,” said Vediha.

  “Mevlut isn’t too pleased with them either,” I said. “Anyway, it’s Ferhat’s help I’m thinking of. I heard he’s making good money at the electricity board. He could find something for Mevlut, too. But Mevlut will never go to him unless Ferhat offers.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “You know why…”

  Vediha looked at me as if she understood.

  “Please, Vediha, you’ll know just what to say to Samiha and Ferhat,” I said. “He and Mevlut used to be such good friends. If Ferhat’s so keen to show off his money, let him give his old friend a hand.”

  “When we were little, you and Samiha used to gang up on me all the time,” said Vediha. “Now I’ve got to get you two talking again?”

  “I don’t have any quarrel with Samiha,” I said. “The problem is the men are too proud.”

  “They don’t call it pride, though, they say it’s honor,” said Vediha. “That’s when they get vicious.”

  —

  A week later, Rayiha told her husband that on Sunday they would be taking the girls over to Samiha and Ferhat’s place, where Samiha was going to make them some Beyşehir-style kebab.

  “Beyşehir kebab is just a flatbread topped with walnuts as well as meat,” said Mevlut. “I haven’t had it in twenty years. Where’s this coming from?”

  “You haven’t seen Ferhat in ten years, either!” said Rayiha.

  Mevlut was still unemployed: ever since he’d been robbed, he’d been nursing a grudge against the world and feeling ever more vulnerable. In the mornings he wandered around the restaurants of Tarlabaşı and Beyoğlu in a bitter, halfhearted search for some job that might suit him. In the evenings, he stayed at home.

  On that sunny Sunday morning they got on a bus in Taksim, the only other passengers a handful of people who were also going to see friends and relatives on the other side of the city. Rayiha relaxed when she heard Mevlut telling Fatma and Fevziye that his childhood friend, their uncle Ferhat, was a really funny man.

  Thanks to the girls, the moment when Mevlut saw Samiha and Ferhat again—something he’d been dreading for ten years—passed without any awkwardness. The two old friends hugged each other, Ferhat picked Fevziye up, and they all headed out to see the plot he had marked with white stones more than fifteen years ago, as if they were there to inspect some land on which they planned to build a house.

  The girls wouldn’t stop running around; they were thrilled with the forest at the edge of the city, the dreamy outline of Istanbul in the hazy distance, and the gardens full of dogs, clucking hens, and little chicks. Mevlut thought of how Fatma and Fevziye, born and bred in Tarlabaşı, had never in their lives been in a field that smelled of manure, a village hut, or even an orchard. It delighted him to notice their amazement at everything they came across—a tree, a well sweep, a watering hose, and even a weathered old donkey and the metal sheets and ironwork railings that the neighborhood people had pilfered from Istanbul’s historic ruins and used for the walls around their own gardens.

  But Mevlut also knew that the real reason for his good mood was that he’d accomplished this friendly reunion without sacrificing his pride and come here without upsetting Rayiha. Now he regretted the silly grief of all those years over this business with the love letters. But he still made sure he was never alone with Samiha.

  When Samiha came in with the Beyşehir kebab, Mevlut went to sit at the opposite end of the table. A deepening sense of inner contentment had temporarily eased his worries about work and money. Ferhat kept laughing and making jokes and topping up Mevlut’s rakı glass, and the more Mevlut drank, the more at ease he felt. But he remained vigilant and didn’t speak much for fear of saying something wrong.

  When the rakı began to make his head swim, he started to worry and decided not to say another word. He listened to the conversation at the table but didn’t join in (the talk had turned to the TV quiz show the girls had switched on), and whenever he felt the urge to speak, he would talk silently to himself instead.

  Yes, my letters were meant for Samiha, and of course I would have been struck by her eyes! he thought. He wasn’t looking in that direction now, but she really was exquisite, and her eyes were certainly beautiful enough to justify every single word he had written in his letters.

  Still, it was a good thing Süleyman had tricked him into addressing them to Rayiha, even while thinking of Samiha all along. Mevlut knew he could have been happy only with Rayiha. God had made them for each other. He loved her so much; he would die without her. Beautiful girls like Samiha could be difficult and demanding and make you miserable in all sorts of irrational ways. Beautiful girls could only be happy if they married rich men. But a good girl like Rayiha would love her husband rich or poor. After working as a maid for all those years, Samiha was finally happy only now that Ferhat had begun to make a little money.

  What would have happened if I’d put “Samiha” on my letters instead of “Rayiha”? thought Mevlut. Would Samiha ever have eloped with him?

  Mevlut recognized—through a mixture of realism, jealousy, and inebriation—that she probably wouldn’t have.

  “Don’t drink any more,” Rayiha whispere
d in his ear.

  “I’m not,” he hissed. Samiha and Ferhat might get the wrong impression if they heard one of Rayiha’s unnecessary comments.

  “Let him drink as much as he wants, Rayiha,” said Ferhat. “He’s finally decided to stop selling boza, he’s right to celebrate…”

  “There are people out there who’ll mug a boza vendor on the street,” said Mevlut. “It’s not like I want to stop.” He suspected with some embarrassment that Rayiha must have explained everything already and that the point of this meal was to find him a job. “I wish I could sell boza for the rest of my life.”

  “All right, Mevlut, let’s sell boza for the rest of our lives!” said Ferhat. “There’s a little shop on İmam Adnan Street. I was thinking we should make it a kebab place. But a boza shop is a better idea. The owner didn’t pay his debts, and now the shop’s ours for the taking.”

  “Mevlut knows how to manage a café,” said Rayiha. “He’s got plenty of experience now.”

  Mevlut didn’t like this pushy Rayiha who was so intent on setting up her husband with a job. But at that moment he lacked even the strength to sit there frowning at what other people were doing. He said nothing. He could sense that Rayiha, Samiha, and Ferhat had already decided everything. The truth was that he didn’t even mind. He would be managing a shop again. He could tell that it was better not to ask in his drunken state how on earth Ferhat had scraped together enough money to open a shop in Beyoğlu.

  —

  Ferhat. As soon as I got my college degree, an Alevi relative from Bingöl got me a job with the municipal electricity board. Then, when power distribution was privatized in 1991, the most hardworking and enterprising among us got their break. Some of the meter readers took the retirement package and left. Those who thought they could just keep going the way they had as government employees were quickly fired. But people who showed some initiative—people like me—were treated well.