Here I exhibit a cutting from Akşam, a column from the “High Society” page, dated November 8, 1979:

SOCIETY AND THE CINEMA: A MODEST WARNING

We all like to boast that Turkey ’s film industry is the third largest in the world after Hollywood ’s and India ’s. Sadly, the situation is changing: The new sex films and our citizens’ growing reluctance to go outside in the evening, in view of the terror wrought by militants of the left and right, has kept our families away from the cinema. Even the most esteemed Turkish cineastes are now unable to find the audiences or the backers to make their films. The Turkish cinema has never had as great a need as it has today for rich businessmen to come to Yeşilçam to make “art films.” In the past, artistic-minded cineastes tended to come from new money-families recently arrived from the provinces-and their aim would be to make the acquaintance of beautiful actresses. Of the many “art films” that our critics praised so lavishly, not a single one has gone on to be shown to the intellectuals of the West, despite what has been claimed, nor have any of them received an honorable mention in the bland small-town festivals of Europe; instead they have served as vehicles for any number of scions of the nouveau riche to meet and engage in amorous affairs with female “artists.” But that was in the old days. Now there is a new fashion. These days our wealthy art lovers don’t come to Yeşilçam to have love affairs with beautiful actresses; they come to make girls they already love into stars. As a consequence, we now find the bachelor son of one of the most illustrious families of Istanbul society (having chosen to withhold his full name, we shall call him Mr. K) is so infatuated with a young married woman he describes as a “distant relation” and so jealous of anyone who comes near her that he cannot even bring himself to arrange for the “art film” (for which he has commissioned a screenplay) to go into production. This reporter’s sources tell him that Mr. K has gone so far as to admit, “I could not bear to see her kissing someone else!” And such is his jealousy that he shadows the young woman and her director husband, crawling after them in Yeşilçam bars and Bosphorus restaurants, a glass of rah in his hand, and apparently he gets upset if the married would-be actress so much as steps outside her house. According to these sources, our society bachelor-who not so long ago celebrated his engagement to a graduate of the Sorbonne, the adorable daughter of a retired diplomat, with a fabulous party at the Hilton attended by all society and described in lavish detail in this space-was irresponsible enough to break off the engagement, all for the sake of the beautiful relative to whom he has now said, “I am going to make you a star!” We, meanwhile, are reluctant to stand by while this feckless rich boy, who has already done so much harm to the diplomat’s lovely young daughter, goes on to blacken the name of F, the beautiful would-be actress, to whose charms a great many philandering gentlemen are particularly susceptible. So, after apologizing in advance to readers who have tired of lectures, we would like to pass on the following wisdom to society’s Mr. K: Sir, in this modern age, when the Americans have gone to the moon, it is simply not possible to have an “art film” without kissing scenes! You must decide once and for all, and either marry a headscarf-wearing peasant girl and put Western art and films out of your mind forever, or give up on this fantasy of making stars out of young girls you guard so closely that you can’t bear anyone else even looking at them. That is, if making stars is what you’re really after.-WC

My mother read the two newspapers delivered daily to our house from cover to cover, never missing the society gossip. As we were having breakfast the morning that column appeared, I waited until she had gone to cut out the offending page, fold it up, and slip it into my pocket. “Something’s bothering you again-what is it?” my mother asked me as I left the house. “You’re so gloomy!” At the office, too, I tried to feign high spirits, telling Zeynep Hanım an amusing anecdote, whistling as I walked down the hallway, and jovially making the rounds of the aging and ever more idle employees of a moribund Satsat who whiled away their time by doing the Akşam crossword.

By the time everyone came back from lunch, it was clear from the expressions on their faces and in particular the compassion-and fear-in Zeynep Hanım’s eyes that the entire staff of Satsat had read the column. Maybe I’m just imagining things, I told myself afterward. My mother rang me to say that she’d been expecting me for lunch, and also asked, “How are you, darling?” straining not to let concern inundate her normal voice, from which I could tell all the same that she’d heard about the column, sent out for another copy of the paper, and had a good cry over it (her “normal” voice now full of that gravitas people acquire after they’ve cried); just as she could tell from the torn-out page that I’d read it, too. “The world is full of people with monstrous souls, my child,” said my mother. “You are not to let anything upset you.”

“What are you talking about, Mother?” I said.

“It’s nothing, my child,” she said.

I was tempted to pour out my heart to her, but I was certain that if I did, she would, after ample expression of love and understanding, feel obliged to tell me that I was at fault, too, and then press me for all the details of the Füsun story. She might even have burst into tears and told me I’d been bewitched. She might have said, “In some corner of the house, inside a jar of rice or flour, or at the back of one of your drawers at work, there’s an amulet hidden-someone’s cast a spell on it, and breathed on it, to make you fall in love-so find it and burn it at once!” But I sensed that she was downcast because she’d been unable to share my sorrow, unable even to broach the subject. It was all she could do to show respect for my predicament. Was this an indication of how bad my situation was?

At this moment, I wondered about the readers of Akşam: How contemptuously were they regarding me, how heartily were they laughing or raging at my passion, and how many of this report’s details did they believe? I couldn’t dislodge these questions from my mind, nor the thought of how upset Füsun would be when she read the column. After my mother’s phone call, it occurred to me to warn Feridun to keep Akşam away from Füsun and everyone else in our family. But I didn’t place the call. My first reason was fear that I might be unable to explain things to Feridun in such a way that he wouldn’t get so upset as to feel compelled to act. But my second reason was deeper: Despite the humiliation and being made out to be a fool, I was still glad about the column. I hid this satisfaction even from myself, but when I look back now, so many years later, I can see it perfectly well: My relationship with Füsun, my closeness to her by whatever name, had been reported in the papers, and thus, in some sense, society had accepted it! This column was read by absolutely everyone with an interest in Istanbul society; malicious columns like this one were discussed for months on end. And so I tried to convince myself that this gossip augured my return to my former place in the social order, with Füsun at my side-or, at the very least, to imagine that our story might arrive at this happy resolution.

But such was the hopelessness to which I’d been delivered that I could entertain such sweet dreams. It would not be long before I felt that society gossip and mendacity and innuendo were slowly turning me into a different sort of man. I was no longer the one who had, by force of his own will and passion, embarked on an unconventional course, but someone who had been ostracized after being featured in a gossip column.