It is only now, so many years later, as I recall each and every person who came through those revolving doors, that I realize how insular and intimate was this circle of rich, Westernized families, and how familiar we all were with everyone else’s business. There was the Halis boy, known to us since the days when my mother would take us to Maçka Park to play with our pails and shovels, and whose family fortune in olive oil and soap from Ayvalık did not prevent him from taking a wife with the same lantern jaw as everyone else in his clan (“inbreeding!” my mother charged)… There was Kadri the Sieve, my father’s friend from the army, and mine from football matches, the former goalkeeper and now a car salesman, arriving with his daughters, each glittering with earrings, bracelets, necklaces, and rings… The thick-necked son of a former president, who had gone into business and blackened his good name with corruption, arriving with his elegant wife… And Doctor Barbut, who’d taken out the tonsils of every member of Istanbul society in the days when that operation was still fashionable-it wasn’t just me but hundreds of other children as well who went into a panic at the mere sight of his briefcase and camel-hair coat…

“Sibel’s still holding on to her tonsils,” I said, as the doctor gave me a warm embrace.

“Well, these days modern medicine has more modern ways of scaring beautiful girls into submission,” said the doctor, repeating one of his oldest jokes as he gave me a wink.

As Harun Bey, the handsome representative for Siemens in Turkey, passed by, I feared my mother would notice and get annoyed. She judged this serene, mature man to be “an oaf, a disgrace,” for undaunted by all the society cries of “Scandal! Calamity!” he had taken as a third wife the daughter of his second wife (in other words, his stepdaughter). With his cool manner and his sweet smile, he had eventually been accepted back into the fold, though he still had to bear the occasional glare. Then there was Cüneyt Bey with his wife, Feyzan. Cüneyt Bey had bought up for next to nothing the factories and other assets of the Greeks and Jews who were sent off to work camps when they were unable to pay the “wealth tax” imposed on minorities during the Second World War. Though his overnight transformation from loan shark to industrialist offended my father, it was more by reason of jealousy than righteousness, and he was still a treasured friend. Their eldest son, Alptekin, had been my classmate in primary school, and when we discovered that their younger daughter, Asena, had been Sibel’s, we were all so pleased as to agree the lot of us should get together very soon.

“Don’t you think it’s time to go downstairs now?” I said.

“You’re very handsome, but you must learn to stand up straight,” Sibel said, unknowingly parroting my mother.

Our cook, Bekri Efendi, Fatma Hanım, Saim Efendi the janitor, and his wife and children came through the revolving doors, one behind the other, looking very bashful in their best clothes, and each in turn shook Sibel’s hand. Fatma Hanım and Saim Efendi’s wife, Macide, had taken the chic scarves my mother had brought them from Paris and fashioned them to look like traditional headscarves. Their pimply sons were in suits and ties, and though they did not stare at her, they could not hide their admiration for Sibel. After that we saw my father’s friend Fasih Fahir and his wife, Zarife. My father didn’t like it that his dear friend was a Freemason, and at home he would rail against the clandestine network of “influence and privilege” that had infiltrated the world of business, clucking his tongue whenever he pored over the lists of Turkish Masons put out by anti-Semitic publishing houses; but whenever Fasih was expected at the house, my father would hide away all the books with names like Inside the Masons and I Was a Mason that had so fascinated him.

Just behind him was a woman known to everyone in society, whom at first glance I mistook for one of our guests: Deluxe Şermin, the only female pimp in all of Istanbul (and perhaps the entire Muslim world). Around her neck was the purple scarf that was her trademark (since it concealed a scar from a knife wound, and she could never take it off) and at her side, in impossibly high heels, was one of her beautiful “girls.” Walking into the hotel like guests, they headed straight for the patisserie. And here was the strange, bespectacled Faruk the Mouse (as children we used to go to each other’s birthdays, because our mothers were friends), and there, behind him, were the Maruf boys, onetime playmates of mine, as our nurses were friends. Their family, whom Sibel knew well from the club Cercle d’Orient, had made a fortune in tobacco.

The aged and rotund former foreign minister, Melikhan, who was to present our rings, came through the revolving doors with my future father-in-law, and because he had known Sibel as a child, he threw his arms around her and kissed her. He looked me over and turned back to her.

“I’m very happy for you!” he said. “And he’s handsome! Congratulations, my boy,” he said, and he shook my hand.

Sibel’s girlfriends, all smiles, came to join us. The former foreign minister took on the air of a playboy, heaping extravagant praise on them for their dresses, their jewelry, and their upswept hair, in that tongue-in-cheek way that is the preserve of indulged old men, and when he had kissed each one on the cheek he went downstairs, as if never more pleased with himself.

“I’ve never liked that bastard,” said my father, heading down the stairs.

“For God’s sake, let it go!” said my mother. “Watch the steps.”

“I can see them,” said my father. “I’m not blind yet, thank God.” When he saw the view from the garden- Dolmabahçe Palace and beyond it the Bosphorus, Üsküdar, and Leander’s Tower-and the crowd of chattering guests, he cheered up. I took him by the arm, and as we walked among the waiters offering colorful canapés, we began the long process of greeting our guests, offering each kisses on the cheek and a suitable interval of small talk.

“How proud you must be of your son, Mümtaz Bey. He’s the spitting image of you at that age… I feel as if I’m looking at you when you were young.”

“I’m still young, madam,” said my father. “But I’m afraid I don’t recognize you…” Then he turned to me. “Would you mind letting go of me?” he whispered sweetly. “You’re holding my arm too tight and I’m not lame.”

I discreetly extracted myself. The garden sparkled with beautiful girls. Most were wearing stylish open-toed high heels, and I imagined the expectant and joyful care with which they must have painted their toenails fire engine red. Though they were in sleeveless or backless dresses with plunging necklines, it cheered me to see how much more at ease they were in this fashion than they were in their usual short skirts. Just like Sibel, they were clutching small shimmering handbags with metal clasps.

Sometime later Sibel took me by the hand and introduced me to a large number of relatives, childhood friends, classmates, and other chums I’d never heard of.

“Kemal, I’d like to introduce you to a very dear friend of mine,” she said each and every time, her face beaming, and she would go on to praise that person in a voice that, for all its joyous sincerity, still carried the weight of obligation. The joy was most certainly the effect of life having gone her way, exactly the way she planned. She had devoted such an effort to the perfect placement of every pearl on her dress, made sure every crimp and curl was in impeccable harmony with every curve on her body, and now with the evening proceeding so smoothly, she assumed that she could just as smoothly slip into a happy future. This was why Sibel treated each passing moment, each new face, each embrace, as a fresh cause for jubilation. From time to time she would nestle up to me, and with maternal attentiveness she would use her thumb and her forefinger to pick off an imaginary hair or piece of lint from my shoulders.