“I can’t hear you, Kemal.”

“No,” I said, louder this time. But still my response was muffled in the whoosh of the international line, whose sound was that of a seashell held to the ear.

“Kemal, Kemal, I can’t hear you, please…” Sibel shouted.

“I’m here!” I was shouting as loud as I could.

“Let me have it straight.”

“There’s nothing to tell you!” I said, shouting even louder.

“I understand!” said Sibel.

A strange sea sound came down the line, then a crackle, before the line went dead and the voice of the operator cut in. “The line to Paris has been disconnected, sir. Would you like me to try to connect you again?”

“No thank you, my girl,” I said. It was my father’s habit to address all female clerks, no matter their age, as “my girl.” It shocked me to notice how soon I was taking on my father’s habits. It shocked me to hear Sibel sounding so sure of herself… But I was tired of telling lies. Sibel did not ring me from Paris again.

45 AHoliday on Uludağ

I HEARD of Sibel’s return in February, at the start of the fifteen-day school holiday when families went to Uludağ to ski. Zaim, too, had called me at the office, suggesting we meet for lunch. As we sat together at Fuaye, eating lentil soup, Zaim fixed me with an affectionate gaze.

“You’ve run away from life. Every day I see you turning into a sadder and more troubled man, so I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t worry about me,” I said. “I’m fine…”

“You do not look fine,” he said. “Try to be happy.”

“You think the point of life is to be happy,” I said. “That’s why you believe I’m not happy and have run away from life… I’m on the threshold of another life that will bring me peace.”

“Fine… Then tell us about this life, too. We’re genuinely curious.”

“Who are ‘we’?”

“Don’t do that, Kemal,” he said. “How is any of this my fault? Am I not your best friend?”

“You are.”

“We… Mehmet, Nurcihan, myself, and Sibel… We’re going to Uludağ in three days’ time. Why don’t you come, too. Nurcihan was planning to keep an eye on her niece, and so we decided to make it a group excursion. It will be fun.”

“So Sibel is back.”

“It has been ten days now. She came back the Monday before last. She wants you to come to Uludağ.” Zaim smiled, his face shining with goodness. “But she doesn’t want you to know it… I’m telling you all this without her knowledge, so whatever you do, don’t make any mistakes in Uludağ.”

“I won’t-I’m not coming.”

“Come, it will do you good. This business will be over soon, and you’ll forget all about it.”

“Who knows? Do Nurcihan and Mehmet know?”

“Sibel knows, of course,” said Zaim. “She and I talked about this. She understands very well how someone as caring as you could get pulled into something like this, and she wants to help you out of it.”

“Is that so?”

“You’ve taken a wrong turn, Kemal. We all fall for the wrong people sometimes. We all fall in love. But in the end we all pull ourselves out of it before we ruin our lives.”

“Then what about all those love stories, all those films?”

“I love romantic films,” said Zaim. “But I’ve never seen one that justifies a case like yours. Six months ago, you had that huge engagement party. You and Sibel stood in front of everyone and exchanged rings. What a lovely evening that was. You moved in together, before you even were married. You even had parties at your house. We all thought, How elegant, how civilized. And because everyone knew you were getting married, everyone accepted it, not a soul took offense. I even heard people saying it was so chic, they wanted to do the same. But now you’ve moved out of the yali, and you’re on your own. Are you leaving Sibel? Why are you running away from her? You’re not explaining yourself. You’re acting like a child.”

“Sibel knows…”

“No, she doesn’t,” said Zaim. “She has no idea how to explain the situation. How is she going to face people? What can she say? ‘My fiancé fell in love with a shopgirl, so we’ve separated’? She’s very upset, she’s heartbroken. You have to speak to her. In Uludağ you could patch things up, put all this behind you. I guarantee you, Sibel is ready to go on as if this never happened. Nurcihan and Sibel will be staying in a room together at the Grand Hotel. Mehmet and I have taken the corner room on the second floor. There’s a third bed in that room. You know, you can see the misty mountaintop from there. You can stay with us. We can stay up all night ragging one another just like we did when we were young. Mehmet is so smitten with Nurcihan he’s burning up. Think of the fun we could have with him.”

“Actually the person you’d be having fun with would be me,” I said. “And anyway, Mehmet and Nurcihan are already a couple.”

“Believe me, I would never joke at your expense,” Zaim said, somewhat hurt. “Nor would I let anyone else.”

From his words it was clear that already Istanbul society-or at least the people in our own circle-had begun to make jokes about my obsession. But I had already guessed this.

I was full of admiration for Zaim’s delicacy in setting up this trip to Uludağ, just to help me. When I was young, my family would go to Uludağ every winter, along with most of my father’s business associates, his friends from the club, and so many other wealthy Nişantaşı families. I had so loved those vacations-when everyone knew or would come to know everyone, and you could make new friends, and play at matchmaking, as even the shiest girls danced the night away-that even years later, if I happened on an old mitten of my father’s at the back of a drawer, or the goggles that my brother had used and then passed on to me, my spine would tingle. During my time in America, whenever I looked at the postcards my mother sent me from the Grand Hotel, I felt a wave of happy longing.

I thanked Zaim but said, “I’m not coming. It would be too painful. But you’re right. I need to talk to Sibel.”

“She’s not at the yali. She’s staying with Nurcihan,” said Zaim. Turning his head to survey the other diners, who were in high spirits-and like him, getting richer by the day-he was able for a moment to forget my troubles and smile.

46 Is It Normal to Leave Your Fiancée in the Lurch?

I COULDN’T bring myself to call Sibel until the end of February, when she was back from Uludağ. I was afraid that the dreaded talk might end in unpleasantness, anger, tears, and reproach, and hoping she might take the initiative and send back the ring with a fully justified excuse. But one day I could bear the tension no longer, so I picked up the phone and rang her at Nurcihan’s house; we agreed to meet for supper.

I’d thought it would be good to go to Fuaye because neither of us was likely to succumb to sentimentality, anger, or excess surrounded by people we knew. And so it was in the beginning. At the tables around us were Hilmi the Bastard with his new wife, Neslihan, and Tayfun, and Güven the Ship Sinker with his family, and (at a very crowded table) Yeşim and her husband. Hilmi and his wife even came over to our table and said how very pleased they were to see us.

Over mezes and Yakut red wine, she talked about her trip to Paris, describing Nurcihan’s French friends, and telling me how beautiful that city was at Christmas.

“How are your parents?” I asked.

“They’re fine,” she said. “They have heard nothing about our situation as yet.”

“Don’t worry about that,” I said. “We don’t have to say anything to anyone.”

“I don’t,” said Sibel, and then she fell silent, with a look as if to ask, So what’s going to happen now?

Changing the subject, I told her that my father seemed to be withdrawing from the world a little more every day. Sibel told me about her mother’s new habit of hiding away her old clothes and other belongings. I told her how my mother was even more radical about banishing all her discarded things to another apartment. But this was a dangerous subject, so we fell silent again. Sibel’s expression told me she inferred no malice in my having brought it up just to keep the conversation going, but she also understood that my avoiding the real subject meant I had nothing new to say to her.