Snow (37 page)

“All the women here wear scarves,” said Blue.

“That’s not true. Most educated women of my background and education don’t cover their heads. If it’s a question of being ordinary and fitting in, I’ve certainly distanced myself from my peers by wearing a head scarf.

There’s a prideful element in this that I’m not at all happy about.”

“Then go ahead and uncover your head tomorrow,” said Blue. “People will see it as a triumph for the junta.”

“Everyone knows that, unlike you, I don’t live my life wondering what people think of it,” said Kadife. Her face was pink with excitement.

Blue responded with another sweet smile, but this time Ka could tell that it took every bit of strength he had. And Blue knew that Ka had seen this: It created an awkward intimacy between them and made Ka feel as if he had invaded the couple’s privacy. As he listened to Kadife harangue her lover, and as he caught the undertones of desire, it seemed to him that she was dragging out their dirty linen deliberately—not just to tax Blue but also to embarrass Ka for having witnessed it. And, one might well ask, why did he choose this moment to remember the love letters from Necip to Kadife that he had been carrying around in his pocket since last night?

“As for girls who’ve been roughed up and thrown out of school for wearing head scarves, we can be sure there’ll be no mention of them in these articles.” Her tone matched the blind fury in her eyes. “They’ll pass right over the women whose lives have been ruined and instead we’ll get pictures of the cautious provincial Islamist simpletons who presume to speak in their name. Whenever you do see a picture of a Muslim woman, it’s because her husband is a politician and she happens to be standing next to him during a religious festival. For this reason I’d be more upset to appear in those papers than not to appear. I pity these men wasting so much effort to gain exposure themselves while we endure so much to protect our privacy. That’s why I think it’s important to mention the girls who’ve committed suicide. Come to think of it, I have the right to tell Hans Hansen a thing or two myself.”

“That would be excellent,” said Ka, without thinking. “You could sign as the representative of the Muslim feminists.”

“I have no wish to represent anyone,” said Kadife. “If I’m going to stand up to the Europeans, it will be on my own, to tell my own story—my whole story, with all my sins and my foibles. You know how sometimes you’ll meet someone you’ve never met before, someone you’re sure you’ll never see again, and you’re tempted to tell him everything, your whole life history? The way it seemed the heroes told their stories to the authors of the European novels I read when I was a girl. I wouldn’t mind telling my story like that to four or five Europeans.” 

There was an explosion that sounded very close by; the whole house shook and the windows clattered. A second or two later, both Blue and Ka rose to their feet.

“Let me take a look,” said Kadife finally, seeming the most cold-blooded of the three.

Ka peeked timidly through the curtains. “The carriage isn’t there,” he said.

“It’s dangerous for him to stand too long in this courtyard,” said Blue. “When you leave, you’ll be going through the side entrance.” 

Ka took this to mean
Why don’t you leave now?
yet he remained still in his seat and waited, as he and Blue exchanged hateful looks. Ka remembered the fear he’d felt at university whenever he’d cross paths in dark empty hallways with armed students of the extreme nationalist variety, but at least in those days there’d been no sexual undercurrent to the exchange.

“I can be a little paranoid sometimes,” said Blue. “But this doesn’t mean you’re not a spy for the West. You may know you’re not a spy, and you may have no desire to be one, but it doesn’t change the situation. You’re the stranger in our midst. You’ve sown doubt in this lovely and devout girl, and the strange things going on around her are the proof. And now you’ve aired all your smug Western views, probably even having a few laughs deep down inside at our expense. I don’t mind, and neither does Kadife, but by inflicting your own naïve ideas on us, by rhapsodiz-ing about the Western pursuit of happiness and justice, you’ve clouded our thinking. I’m not angry at you, because, like all good people, you are not aware of the evil inside you. But having heard it from me, you can’t claim to be an innocent from now on.”

Be Strong, My Girl; Help

Is on the Way from Kars

ka urges turgut bey to sign the statement 

Ka left the house unseen by anyone in the courtyard or the car repair shops and walked straight to the market. He went into the same little stocking-stationery-audiocassette shop where he’d heard Peppino di Capri singing “Roberta” the day before; taking out Necip’s letters to Kadife, he handed them page by page to the pale beetle-browed teenage assistant in charge of the photocopy machine. But to do this Ka first had to open the envelopes. Once the letters were copied, he put each of the originals into a new envelope made from the same cheap, faded paper stock as the letters and, imitating Necip’s hand as best he could, addressed them to Kadife Yıldız.

Ever ready to fight for his happiness, to tell any lie, play any trick to make his dream come true, he hurried back to the hotel, musing upon a vision of Ipek he had conjured in his mind. It was snowing again, the same huge snowflakes as before. Everyone in the streets seemed as tired and tense as they would on any ordinary evening. At the corner of Palace Path Road and Halitpa¸sa Avenue, a mud-splattered coal wagon drawn by a tired horse was stuck between the snowbanks. The wipers on the truck standing behind it were barely able to keep the windshield clear. He looked at the passersby clutching their plastic bags and imagined them all running home to their happy safety; although he sensed in the air a melancholy that called to mind the gray winter evenings of his childhood, he remained full of resolve, determined to start life anew.

He went straight up to his room. He hid the photocopies of Necip’s letters in the bottom of his suitcase before he’d even removed his coat and hung it up. He washed his hands with excessive care. Then, without quite knowing why, he brushed his teeth (something he usually did in the evening); sensing that a new poem was on its way, he spent a long while looking out the window, making good use of the heat rising from the radiator; in the place of a poem came a stream of childhood memories: the fine spring morning he had accompanied his mother to Beyo˘glu to buy buttons and a “dirty man” had trailed after them; the day his mother left with his father for a tour of Europe and the taxi taking them from Ni¸santa¸s to the airport disappeared around the corner; the hours spent dancing with a tall long-haired green-eyed girl at a party in Büyükada, his neck so stiff for days thereafter that he could barely move (he’d fallen for her but had no idea how to get in touch again). None of these memories were in any way related, apart from the commonality of love; Ka knew very well that life was a meaningless string of random incidents.

He bounded downstairs as eagerly as a man just arrived somewhere he’d been planning to visit for years; with a sangfroid he was shocked to discover in himself, he knocked on the white door that divided the lobby from the owner’s apartment. The Kurdish maid answered, and her expression, half conspiratorial, half respectful, was straight out of Turgenev. He went into the room where they’d eaten dinner the night before to find Turgut Bey and Ipek sitting side by side on the long divan facing the back door; they were watching television.

“Kadife, where have you been? It’s about to begin,” said Turgut Bey.

The pale snowlight pouring through the windows of the Russian house gave this spacious high-ceilinged room an aspect that was very different from the night before.

When father and daughter saw it was Ka who had joined them, they bristled for a moment like a couple whose privacy has just been invaded by a stranger. But then Ka was cheered to see something light up in Ipek’s eyes. He sat down on a chair that faced both them and the television and allowed himself to notice once again how much more beautiful Ipek was in life than in his memories. This intensified his fear, though before long he had convinced himself that they were destined to live happily ever after.

“Every afternoon at four my daughters and I sit down on this divan and watch
Marianna,
” said Turgut Bey. There was a note of embarrassment in his voice, but something else as well that said, Don’t expect me to apologize.

Marianna
was a Mexican soap opera that was broadcast five times a week on one of the big Istanbul channels to the intense delight of the entire country. The heroine who gave her name to the series was a small, bubbly, charming girl with large green eyes and skin so fair as to suggest an affluent background; she was, however, from the very lowest class. The innocent long-haired Marianna had been orphaned early in childhood and had spent most of her life in impoverished solitude (hardly a day passed without a new setback), and whenever she fell in love with someone who refused to love her back or was the victim of some misunderstanding or false accusation, Turgut Bey and his daughters would nestle up against one another like cats; with the two girls’ heads propped against their father’s chest and shoulders, they would all shed a few tears.

Perhaps out of his embarrassment to be seen so caught up in a silly soap opera, Turgut Bey now offered a running commentary on the underlying reasons for Marianna’s and Mexico’s persistent poverty; he applauded Marianna for her own war against the capitalists and as the show began he even addressed the screen: “Be strong, my girl; help is on its way from Kars.” When he said this, his teary-eyed daughter smiled very faintly.

Ka’s lips curled into a smile too, but then he caught Ipek’s eye and, seeing that she didn’t like this smile, assumed a more serious expression.

During the first commercial break, Ka broached the subject of the joint statement with swift confidence and managed in no time to arouse Turgut Bey’s interest. The old man was flattered to be taken so seriously. He asked whose idea this was and how his name had come to be suggested.

Ka said it was a decision he’d reached himself after consulting with the liberal press in Germany. Turgut Bey asked about the circulation of the
Frankfurter Rundschau
and whether Hans Hansen called himself a humanist. To prepare Turgut Bey for Blue, Ka described him as a dangerous religious fanatic who had nonetheless grown to understand the importance of democracy. But Turgut Bey seemed unperturbed; people gave themselves to religion because they were poor, he said; he went on to remind Ka that even if he didn’t believe in what his daughter and her friends were doing, he respected them. It was in much the same spirit that he respected the Kurdish nationalist, whoever he might be; were he himself a Kurdish youth living in Kars today, he’d be a fierce Kurdish nationalist too. Turgut Bey said all this in the same jocular tone in which he offered his support to Marianna. “It’s wrong to say this in public, but I am against military coups,” he declared. Ka calmed him down by reminding him that this bulletin was not going to be printed in Turkey anyway and went on to say that the best place for this meeting to happen in safety was the shed at the top of the Hotel Asia. He could get there via the back door of an adjacent shop giving onto the same courtyard, and no one would be the wiser.

“We must show the world that there are true democrats in Turkey,” said Turgut Bey. He spoke fast because the soap opera was about to resume. Just before Marianna reappeared, he looked at his watch and said, “Where’s Kadife?”

Ka joined father and daughter to watch
Marianna
in silence.

At one point Marianna climbed a flight of stairs with her lover; once she was sure no one could see them, she wrapped her arms around him. They didn’t kiss, but what they did Ka found even more moving: They embraced each other with all their might. During the long silence that followed, it occurred to Ka that the entire city was watching this same scene. All across Kars, housewives just returning from the market were tuning in with their husbands; girls in middle school were watching with their retired and aging relatives. With everyone watching, Ka realized, it wasn’t just the wretched streets of Kars that were empty, it was every street in the entire country; at that same moment he also understood that his intellectual pretensions, political activities, and cultural snobberies had brought him to an arid existence that cut him off from the feelings this soap opera was now provoking in him—and worst of all it was his own stupid fault. Ka was sure that, after they’d finished making love, Blue and Kadife had curled up in a corner and wrapped their arms around each other to watch
Marianna
too.

When Marianna turned to her lover and said, “I’ve waited all my life for this day,” Ka saw it as no coincidence that she was echoing his own thoughts. He tried to catch Ipek’s eye. She was resting her head on her father’s chest, and her large, sad, lovelorn eyes were glued to the set, lost in the desires the soap opera had awakened.

“But I’m still so worried,” said Marianna’s handsome clean-shaven lover. “My family won’t allow us to be together.”

“As long as we love each other, we have nothing to fear,” said the good-hearted Marianna.

“Watch out, my girl, this man is your worst enemy!” Turgut Bey shouted at the screen.

“I want you to love me without fear,” said Marianna.

Looking deep into Ipek’s mysterious eyes, Ka now succeeded in getting her to notice him, but she quickly averted her gaze.

At the commercial break, Ipek turned to her father and said, “Daddy dear, if you ask me it’s too dangerous for you to go to the Hotel Asia.” 

“Don’t worry,” said Turgut Bey.

“You’re the one who’s been telling me for years that it brings you bad luck to go out into the streets of Kars.”

“Yes, but if I don’t attend this meeting, it has to be for a matter of principle and not because I’m scared,” said Turgut Bey. He turned to Ka. “The question is this: Speaking as the Communist modernizing secularist democratic patriot I now am, what should I put first, the enlightenment or the will of the people? If I believe first and foremost in the European enlightenment, I am obliged to see the Islamists as my enemies and support this military coup. If, however, my first commitment is to the will of the people—if, in other words, I’ve become an unadulterated democrat—I have no choice but to go ahead and sign that statement. Which of the things I’ve said is true?”