A Strangeness in My Mind Read online

  The government had been working for years to bring electricity to every corner of Istanbul, from slums at the farthest outskirts, where only the poorest lived, to lawless dumps ruled by the worst kinds of thugs. The people of Istanbul had always found ways of tapping into power lines without paying. Having failed to make the cheats pay, the government handed the problem over to private companies. I worked at one of those companies. They had also passed a law adding a significant monthly interest charge to any unpaid bills, so that the same people who used to sneer at me when I came to read their meters and demand payment were now forced to pay up, whether they liked it or not.

  The man from Samsun who’d been selling newspapers, cigarettes, and sandwiches from the shop on İmam Adnan Street was smart enough, but not a particularly skilled cheat. His shop was technically the property of an elderly Greek man who’d been sent off to Athens. The man from Samsun had taken over the abandoned shop without so much as a title deed or a contract, but he’d still managed to get a meter installed through a contact at city hall. Once that was done, he’d proceeded to hook a branch line into the main line, just upstream of the meter, and this source powered his sandwich toaster and two massive electric heaters that were powerful enough to let him turn the shop into a hammam. By the time I caught him, the overdue balance plus the interest (adjusted for inflation according to the new law) was so high that he would have had to sell his apartment in Kasımpaşa to pay it all off. So instead the shopkeeper from Samsun just disappeared, leaving everything behind.

  —

  The shop wasn’t half the size of the Binbom, with barely enough room inside for a single table for two. Rayiha would send the girls off to school in the morning and then, just as she had always done, she would add sugar to the boza mixture and wash the jugs at home, before heading out to buy a few things for the shop itself (a task she undertook with proprietary zeal). Mevlut would open it every morning at eleven, and since no one wanted boza so early in the day, he’d concentrate on making things neat and tidy, taking the glasses, jugs, and cinnamon shakers they’d bought and lining them up on the table that faced the street.

  It was still cold when they decided to turn the place into a boza shop, and when they hastily opened five days later, there was plenty of interest. Buoyed by the initial success, Ferhat invested in the shop, refurbishing the fridge they were using as a window display, having the door and the exterior repainted (in creamy boza yellow, at Mevlut’s insistence), installing a light right over the door, and bringing a mirror in from home.

  They also realized that the establishment needed a name. Mevlut felt it would be enough to put up a sign saying BOZA SHOP over the door. But a clever sign maker who had worked with some of the newest shops in Beyoğlu told them that this was not a name on which to build a thriving business. He inquired about their history and got them talking, and when he found out that they were married to sisters, he knew exactly what they should call the place:

  THE BROTHERS-IN-LAW BOZA SHOP

  In time, this was shortened simply to “Brothers-in-Law.” As they’d agreed during their long, rakı-soaked lunch in the Ghaazi Quarter, Ferhat would provide the overhead (a free shop in Beyoğlu, with no rent or electricity bills to pay) while Mevlut would put in the cost of daily operation (the boza he bought twice a week, sugar, roasted chickpeas, cinnamon) as well as his and Rayiha’s labor. The two childhood friends were to split the profits evenly.

  —

  Samiha. After all those years I’d worked as a maid, Ferhat didn’t want me toiling in Mevlut’s shop. “Why bother, you can’t sell boza out of a shop anyway,” he’d say, leaving me heartbroken. But he was himself intrigued by the shop when it first opened, and he would go over there most evenings to help Mevlut, getting home really late. I was curious, too, so I would go there myself without telling Ferhat. No one ever wanted to buy anything from two girls in headscarves, and pretty soon our shop became just like any one of Istanbul’s thousands of cafés, where the men stood at the front serving customers and handling the cash, and women in headscarves sat at the back looking after the kitchen and washing the dishes. The only difference was that we sold boza.

  Ten days after the launch of Brothers-in-Law, Ferhat started renting an apartment in Çukurcuma, with central heating, and we finally moved out of the Ghaazi Quarter. All around us were junk shops, furniture repairmen, hospitals, and pharmacies. From the window I could see part of Sıraselviler Street and the crowds flowing to and from Taksim. In the afternoons, when I got bored at home, I headed over to Brothers-in-Law. Rayiha always left at five to make sure the girls weren’t home alone after dark and to start making dinner, so I, too, would leave to avoid being alone with Mevlut. The few times I did stay in the shop after Rayiha had left, Mevlut always stood with his back to me, only looking in the mirror every now and then. So I looked in the other mirror on our side of the shop and never said a word to him at all. Ferhat would drop in later, knowing he’d find me there; he’d eventually gotten used to the idea of my being in the shop. It was fun being there with Ferhat, running around trying to keep up with orders. It was the first time the two of us had ever worked together. Ferhat would comment on every single person who came in for a glass of boza, like the idiot over there who blew over the top of his glass thinking boza was a hot drink. Or that other guy who was the sales manager at a shoe shop on the main street; Ferhat himself had installed its meter. One customer got a free refill just because he seemed to enjoy the first glass so much, and then Ferhat got him talking about his days in military service.

  —

  Within two months, they’d all realized that Brothers-in-Law wouldn’t turn much of a profit, but no one said a thing. At best, they might sell three times as much boza as Mevlut had been able to on the street on a cold winter night back when business was good. But Mevlut and Rayiha’s share of the net proceeds would barely cover half a month’s living expenses for a childless couple—and even that was only due to operating rent-free and without having to budget for bribes to city hall and the tax office, thanks to Ferhat’s contacts. Yet in such a lively neighborhood—just one street down from İstiklal Avenue—they could have sold anything else they put on the counter.

  Mevlut never lost hope. Many people seeing the sign on the door stepped in to have a glass, most of them warmly telling Mevlut what a good idea this shop was. He could happily talk to any customer—mothers bringing their children in for a first taste of boza, drunks, proselytizing know-it-alls, and oddballs skeptical of anything and everything.

  “Boza is meant to be had at night, boza seller, what are you doing here so early in the day?” “Do you make this at home?” “You charge too much, your glasses are too small, and there should be more roasted chickpeas in this.” (Mevlut soon learned that if people had spared him their criticism when he’d been just a poor street vendor, they certainly weren’t holding back now that he had his own shop.) “Hats off to you, you’re doing the nation proud.” “Boza seller, I’ve just had half a bottle of Club Rakı, now tell me, what happens if I drink this, and what happens if I don’t?” “Excuse me, am I supposed to drink boza before dinner, or is it meant for after a meal, like a dessert?” “Did you know, brother, that the word boza comes from the English word ‘booze’?” “Do you deliver?” “Aren’t you that yogurt seller’s son, Mustafa Efendi? I remember when you used to work with your father. Well done!” “We used to have a boza seller in our neighborhood, but he’s stopped coming by.” “But if you start selling boza in shops, what will happen to the boza sellers on the street?” “Boza seller, give us a shout of ‘Boo-zaa’ so that the kids can see and learn.”

  When he was in a good mood, Mevlut could never disappoint his curious clientele, especially when they brought their children along; “Boo-zaa,” he’d call, smiling. Customers who told him “You are doing something very important here” and launched into lectures on the value of tradition and the Ottoman era mostly never came back. Mevlut could scarcely believe the sheer number of su
spicious people who wanted to see for themselves that the glasses had been cleaned properly or who asked aggressively whether the boza was made using only natural ingredients. What didn’t surprise him was the people who’d never had boza before who said “eughh” right after their first sip, or who complained that it was too sour or too sweet and didn’t finish their glass. “The boza I buy at night from my street vendor is more authentic,” some would say with great disdain. There were also those who said, “I thought this was meant to be a hot drink,” and left their glass untouched.

  A month after they’d opened, Ferhat started coming by to help out every other evening. His father’s village had been among those evacuated during the army’s assault on Kurdish guerrillas in the east, and his paternal grandmother, who spoke no Turkish, had come to Istanbul. Ferhat recounted his efforts to communicate with her in his broken Kurdish. The Kurds who’d moved to Istanbul after their villages were burned by the Turkish army had been settling in certain streets and setting up local gangs. It was rumored that the new mayor from the religious party was going to shut down the restaurants and bars that served alcohol and put tables out on the pavement. As summer approached, Mevlut and Ferhat began to sell ice cream, too.

  —

  Rayiha. We brought a mirror of our own to the shop, just like Ferhat and Samiha. On some afternoons, I noticed that Mevlut wasn’t really looking out at the street but at our mirror next to the shopwindow. I became suspicious. I waited until he left one day, and I sat in the spot where he usually did, and looking in the mirror, I could see Samiha’s face and her eyes right behind me. I had a vision of the two of them looking at each other through the mirror, hiding their glances from me, and I became jealous.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about it. There’s no need for Samiha even to come to the shop in the afternoon when I’m there with Mevlut. Ferhat’s pockets are bulging with all the cash he takes from the people who don’t pay their electric bills, so why is Samiha so interested in working when they don’t even need the money anymore? Late in the afternoon, when it’s time for me to go home to the girls, Samiha leaves with me, but sometimes she’s too busy with something: four times now she’s stayed behind in the shop after I’ve left, alone with Mevlut.

  The one thing that keeps Samiha busier than the shop, though, is their new house in Cihangir. I thought I’d take the girls over there for a visit one evening. She wasn’t home, so we went to the shop—I couldn’t help myself. Mevlut was there, but Samiha wasn’t. “What are you doing here so late?” he said. “How many times do I have to tell you not to bring the children here?” This wasn’t the kind, sweet Mevlut I used to know; this was the voice of a mean man. I was so hurt that I didn’t go to the shop at all for three days. Of course this meant that Samiha couldn’t go either, and soon she came to visit me. “What’s wrong? I was worried!” she said. She seemed sincere. “I’m sick,” I said, ashamed of my jealousy. “No, you’re not. Ferhat is mean to me, too, you know,” she said—not because she was trying to get me to talk, but because my smart little sister had figured out a long time ago that, for girls like us, the worst trouble always started with our husbands. I wish we didn’t have this shop now; I wish it could just be me and Mevlut alone again.

  —

  Around the middle of October, they started selling boza once more. Mevlut thought it would be best to get rid of the sandwiches, biscuits, chocolates, and other summer offerings and concen trate only on the boza, cinnamon, and toasted chickpeas, but as usual he was being overly optimistic, and they didn’t listen anyway. Once or twice a week, he would leave the shop to Ferhat in the evening and go out to deliver boza to his regular customers. The war in the east meant that there were explosions all over Istanbul, protest marches, and newspaper offices bombed in the night, but people still thronged to Beyoğlu.

  At the end of November, a devout key cutter across the road told Mevlut that a newspaper called the Righteous Path had written something about their shop. Mevlut rushed to the kiosk on İstiklal Avenue. Back in the shop, he sat down with Rayiha and examined every inch of the paper.

  There was a column under the heading “Three New Shops,” which started off with praise for Brothers-in-Law, followed by some words on a new kebab-wrap shop in Nişantaşı and a place in Karaköy selling rosewater and milk-soaked Ramadan pastry and aşure, the traditional pudding of fruits and nuts: keeping our ancient traditions alive, rather than discarding them to imitate the West, was a sacred duty, like honoring our ancestors; if, as a civilization, we wanted to preserve our national character, our ideals, and our beliefs, we had to learn, first and foremost, how to remain true to our traditional food and drink.

  As soon as Ferhat came in that evening, Mevlut was very excited to show him the newspaper. He claimed it had brought in loads of new customers.

  “Oh, drop it,” said Ferhat. “No one reading the Righteous Path is going to come to our shop. They haven’t even included our address. I can’t believe we’re being used as propaganda for some disgusting Islamist rag.”

  Mevlut hadn’t realized that the Righteous Path was a religious newspaper, or that the column was a piece of Islamist propaganda.

  When he realized that his friend wasn’t following what he was saying, Ferhat lost his patience. He picked up the newspaper. “Just look at these headlines: The Holy Hamza and the Battle of Uhud…Fate, Intent, and Free Will in Islam…Why the Hajj is a Religious Duty…”

  So was it wrong to talk about these things? The Holy Guide spoke beautifully on all these subjects, and Mevlut had always enjoyed his talks. Thank God he’d never told Ferhat about visiting with the Holy Guide. His friend might have branded Mevlut a “disgusting Islamist,” too.

  Ferhat continued to rage his way through the pages of the Righteous Path: “ ‘What did Fahrettin Pasha do to the spy and sexual deviant Lawrence?’ ‘The Freemasons, the CIA, and the Reds.’ ‘English human rights activist is found out to be a Jew!’ ”

  Thank God Mevlut had never told the Holy Guide that his business partner was an Alevi. The Holy Guide thought Mevlut worked with a normal Sunni Turk, and whenever their conversations touched upon Alevis, the Shias in Iran, and the caliph Ali, Mevlut always changed the subject immediately lest he have to hear the Holy Guide say anything bad about them.

  “ ‘Full-color annotated Koran with protective dust jacket for just thirty coupons from the Righteous Path,’ ” read Ferhat. “You know, if these people take power, the first thing they’ll do is ban the street vendors, just the way they did in Iran. They might even hang one or two like you.”

  “No way,” said Mevlut. “Boza’s alcoholic, but do you see anyone bothering me about it?”

  “That’s because there’s barely any alcohol in it,” said Ferhat.

  “Oh, of course, boza’s worthless next to your Club Rakı,” said Mevlut.

  “Wait, so you have a problem with rakı now? If it’s a sin to touch alcohol, it doesn’t matter how much there is in your drink. We would have to close this shop down.”

  Mevlut felt the hint of a threat. After all, it was thanks to Ferhat’s money that they had this shop in the first place.

  “I bet you even voted for these Islamists.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Mevlut lied.

  “Oh, do whatever you want with your vote,” said Ferhat in a condescending tone.

  There followed a period of mutual resentment. For a while, Ferhat stopped coming by in the evenings. This meant Mevlut couldn’t leave the shop to deliver boza to his old customers and that, during quiet spells when no one came by, he got bored. He never used to get bored when he sold boza out in the city at night, not even in the emptiest street where no one ever opened any windows or bought any boza. Walking fueled his imagination and reminded him that there was another realm within our world, hidden away behind the walls of a mosque, in a collapsing wooden mansion, or inside a cemetery.

  The Righteous Path had published a picture of this world as it existed in Mevlut’s mind. The image illustrat
ed a series of articles entitled “The Other Realm.” When he was alone in the shop at night, Mevlut would pick up the newspaper that had written about Brothers-in-Law and open it up to the page with this picture.

  Why were the gravestones keeling over? Why were they all different, some of them sloped sideways in sorrow? What was that whiteness coming down from above like a divine light? Why did old things and cypress trees always make Mevlut feel so good?

  2

  * * *

  In the Little Shop with Two Women

  Other Meters and Other Families

  Rayiha. Samiha is still as beautiful as ever. In the mornings, some men get disrespectful and try to touch her fingers while she’s handing them their change. So now we’ve started putting people’s money down on the glass counter rather than giving it to them directly. I’m usually the one who prepares the ayran, as well as the boza, but when I look after the cash register no one ever bothers me. A whole morning can go by without a single person coming in to sit down. Sometimes we get an old lady who sits as close to the electric heater as she can and asks for a tea. That’s how we started serving tea, too. There was also this very beautiful lady who went out shopping in Beyoğlu every day and came in sometimes. “You two are sisters, aren’t you?” she used to ask, smiling at us. “You look alike. So tell me, who’s got the good husband, and who’s got the bad one?”

  Once, this brute with a face like a criminal came in with a cigarette in his hand, asking for boza early in the morning, and after he’d downed three glasses, he kept staring at Samiha saying, “Is there alcohol in boza, or is something else making my head spin?” It really is difficult to run the shop without a man there. But Samiha never told Ferhat, and I didn’t tell Mevlut either.