“He is trying. He’s just not used to talking with a girl as self-possessed as you are,” said Sibel; giggling, she whispered the rest of what she had to say into Nurcihan’s ear.
“Do you people know why boys in this country never learn how to flirt with girls?” asked my brother. He assumed that charming expression he wore whenever he’d had something to drink. “There’s nowhere to flirt. We don’t even have our own word for ‘flirt.’”
“I remember your idea of flirting,” said Berrin. “Before we got engaged, you’d take me to the cinema on Saturday afternoons… You’d bring a portable radio with you, so that you could find out about the Fener match during the five-minute intermission.”
“Actually, I didn’t bring the radio with me to tune in to the match, but to impress you,” said my brother. “I was proud to be the owner of the first transistor radio in Istanbul.”
Then Nurcihan admitted that her mother used to brag about being the first person in Turkey to use an electric blender. She went on to tell us how, in the late 1950s, years before canned tomato juice became available, her mother was offering her friends tomato, carrot, celery, beet, and radish juice when they came over to play bridge, and as the ladies were all sipping from crystal glasses, she would proudly take them into the kitchen to show them the first electric blender to arrive in the country. As we listened to light music from that era, we remembered how the Istanbul bourgeoisie had trampled over one another to be the first to own an electric shaver, a can opener, a carving knife, and any number of strange and frightening inventions, lacerating their hands and faces as they struggled to learn how to use them. We talked about all those tape recorders brought back from Europe that usually broke on first use, and the hair dryers that blew the fuses, the coffee grinders that frightened the servant girls, the mayonnaise makers for which no spare parts were to be found in Turkey, but which no one had the heart to throw away and so relegated to a remote corner of the house to gather dust. Meanwhile, as we were laughing about all this, You-Deserve-It-All Zaim sat down in the seat Mehmet had vacated, and within four or five minutes he had managed to enter the swim of the conversation and was whispering into Nurcihan’s ear, making her laugh.
“What happened to that German model of yours?” Sibel asked Zaim. “Did you ditch her like all the others?”
“Inge wasn’t my lover. She’s gone back to Germany.” Zaim spoke without losing any of his good humor. “We were just business associates, and I was only taking her out to show her Istanbul by night.”
“So you’re telling me you were just friends,” said Sibel, using one of the expressions newly popularized by the celebrity magazines.
“I saw her today, at the cinema,” said Berrin. “She turned up on the screen, sipping that soft drink with that same beckoning smile.” She turned to her husband. “I went at lunchtime-the power was out at the hairdresser’s. I went to the Site-it was Jean Gabin with Sophia Loren.” She turned to Zaim. “I see her everywhere-in every single kiosk in the city; and it’s not just children drinking Meltem now, it’s everyone. You’re to be congratulated.”
“We timed it well,” said Zaim. “We’ve been lucky, too.”
Seeing the puzzlement in Nurcihan’s eyes, and knowing that Zaim would expect me to explain, I quickly informed Nurcihan that my friend was the owner of Şektaş, the company that had recently launched Meltem, and that he’d also introduced us to Inge, a lovely German model who could be seen in the advertisements all over the city.
“Have you had the opportunity to taste our fruit-flavored soft drinks?”
“Of course I have. I especially liked the strawberry,” said Nurcihan. “Even the French haven’t been able to put out something that good in years.”
“Do you live in France?” asked Zaim.
Zaim invited all of us to visit the factory that weekend, also promising a Bosphorus cruise and a picnic in Belgrade Forest just outside the city limits. The entire table watched him and Nurcihan. A short while later they got up to dance.
“Go find Mehmet,” said Sibel. “Get him to rescue Nurcihan from Zaim.”
“Are we sure she wants to be rescued?”
“I don’t want to see my friend swallowed whole by this embarrassing Casanova whose only ambition in life is to lure girls into bed.”
“Zaim has a very good heart, and he’s honest. He just has a weakness for women. Can’t Nurcihan have a bit of fun here as she did in France? Is it absolutely necessary for her to get married?”
“French men don’t look down on a woman just because she’s slept with a man before marriage,” said Sibel. “But here even a little fun can get you a reputation. Besides, I don’t want to see Mehmet’s heart broken.”
“I don’t either. But I also don’t want other people’s love affairs to overshadow our engagement.”
“You don’t seem to appreciate the pleasures of matchmaking,” said Sibel. “If these two get married, just think of it, Nurcihan and Mehmet could be our closest friends for years.”
“I doubt Mehmet is going to be able to peel Nurcihan away from Zaim tonight. He shies away from confrontations with other men at parties.”
“That’s why you have to go have a word with him, tell him not to be scared. I’ll handle Nurcihan, don’t you worry. Go-go and bring him back here right away.” As I stood up she gave me a tender smile. “You’re very handsome,” she said. “Don’t stop and gab. Come back at once and take me off to dance.”
It had occurred to me that I might run into Füsun as I made my way from table to table in search of Mehmet, through the crowds of merry, shouting, half-intoxicated revelers, shaking my hand. There were three friends of my mother’s who had come to our house every Wednesday during my childhood to play bezique. With the same spontaneity that must have prompted them all to dye their hair the exact same shade of brown, they and their three husbands simultaneously began waving to me from their table, calling “Ke-maaaal” as if summoning a child. Next I saw an importer friend of my father’s who ten years later would be notorious for bringing down the minister of customs and excise who’d asked him for an obscenely large bribe, which he’d delivered inside an enormous baklava box packed with stacks of bills with a picture of Antep on the top. He’d later released to the public verbatim the intimate conversation that had ensued, recorded on the tape machine he’d secured under his arm with Gazo brand tape. He is now etched in my memory with his white tuxedo, his gold cuff links, his manicured nails that were doused in the perfume that remained on my hand long after he shook it.
As it was with so many of the faces in the photographs my mother trimmed so meticulously for arrangement in our albums, I found many of the faces in the crowd so familiar, so close, that it made me terribly uneasy when I was unable to work out the relations among them-who was whose husband, or whose sister.
“Kemal darling,” said an amiable middle-aged woman at just that moment. “Do you remember proposing to me when you were six years old?” It was only when I saw her stunning eighteen-year-old daughter that I recognized her. “Oh, Aunt Meral, your daughter looks just as you did then!” I said to my mother’s second cousin. When the mother told me that they were regretfully obliged to leave early, because the daughter was taking the university exam the next day, I realized that between me and my jovial aunt there were as many years-twelve, to be exact-as between me and her gorgeous daughter, an awareness that produced a momentary stupor, before I yielded to the urge to glance in the very direction I had been avoiding, but Füsun was not visible at the table in the back or on the crowded dance floor. It was shortly thereafter that this photograph was taken of me with “Ship-Sinker Güven,” who ran an insurance company. You can’t see my face, just my hand in the photo that I acquired years later from a collector whose home was littered with piles and piles of photographs of weddings and other parties from the Hilton. In another that would be taken three seconds later, the gentleman banker in the background would be shaking my hand, having introduced himself as an associate of Sibel’s father, this revelation having caused me to remember with some surprise that every time-that is to say, both times-I had been to Harrods in London, I’d seen this gentleman banker lost in thought as he was picking out an appropriately dark suit for himself.