“Ömer,” said Ceyda. “But life never turns out the way we want, Kemal Bey.”

When weeks had passed without an answer from Füsun, Ceyda’s parting words came back to me often, but I never doubted that Füsun would answer my letter, for Ceyda had confirmed that Füsun was aware I had broken off the engagement. In my letter I had said that her earring had turned up in a box of my father’s, and that I wanted to bring it back to her, along with the other earrings of my father’s that I had tried to give her, and the tricycle. The time had come for the evening we had planned so long ago, when I would come for a meal with her parents.

In the middle of May, on a busy day, I was at the office reading correspondence from our distributorships in the provinces, along with other letters, personal and professional, offering friendship, thanks, complaint, apologies, and threats. Most had been written by hand, and I was struggling with some of them, because I couldn’t read the script-and then I came upon a very short letter, which I devoured with my heart pounding:

Cousin Kemal,

We too would very much like to see you. We await your company at supper on May 19.

Our phone line has not yet been connected. If you are unable to join us, send Çetin Efendi to let us know.

With our love and respects,

Füsun

Address: Dalgıç Street, No. 24, Çukurcuma

There was no date on the letter, but from the postmark I could tell it had been sent from Galatasaray Post Office on May 10. The nineteenth was more than two days hence, and though I longed to bolt straight to that Çukurcuma address, I restrained myself. If my aim was to marry Füsun in the end, and to bind her to me ever after, I should take care not to seem too anxious, I told myself.

49 I Was Going to Ask Her to Marry Me

ON WEDNESDAY, May 19, 1976, at half past seven, I set out for Füsun’s family’s house in Çukurcuma, telling Çetin Efendi only that we were going over to return a child’s tricycle to Aunt Nesibe. I gave him the address and I sat back in my seat, watching rain pour down on the streets, as if someone had upended a giant glass. Not once during my thousands of dreams of our reunion had I imagined such a deluge, or even a light drizzle.

Stopping at the Merhamet Apartments to pick up the tricycle and the pearl earrings that my father had given me in a box, I got completely soaked. Still entirely contrary to my expectations, I felt the deepest peace in my heart. It was as if I had forgotten all the pain I had endured since last seeing her at the Hilton Hotel 339 days earlier. I remember even feeling thankful for every minute I had spent writhing in agony, because it had brought me to this happy ending. I blamed nothing and no one.

I saw stretching out before me the same wondrous life I’d seen at the beginning of my story. Stopping off at a florist on Sıraselviler Avenue, I had them make me a huge bouquet of red roses that was as beautiful as that prospect. To calm myself, I’d had a half glass of rakı before leaving home. Should I have stopped off for one more at a meyhane-one of the taverns in the side streets leading up to Beyoğlu? Impatience, like the pain, had taken hold of me. “Be careful!” warned a voice inside. “This time you can make no mistakes!” As we passed the Çukurcuma Hamam shrouded in rain, I suddenly realized what a good lesson Füsun had taught me with these 339 days of agony: She had won. I was ready to do whatever she wanted, to avoid the punishment of never being able to see her again. Once I had recovered from the initial excitement, once I was sure that Füsun was at my side, I was going to ask her to marry me.

As Çetin Efendi peered through the rain, trying to read the house numbers, I conjured up the proposal scene, which I had already imagined somewhere in my mind, hiding it from my consciousness: After entering the house, handing over the tricycle, making a few jokes, taking a seat and settling in-was I up to doing all this?-I would sip the coffee Füsun brought me, and then, summoning my courage, I would look straight into her father’s eyes and say point-blank that I had come to ask for his daughter’s hand in marriage. The tricycle was just an excuse. We would laugh about it, like so many jokes we would use to keep from ever talking about the agonies, or the sorrows that had caused them. As I drank the Yeni Rakı her father would naturally serve me at the table, I would look into Füsun’s eyes and feast on the happiness that my decision had brought me. We could discuss the details of the engagement and the marriage at another time.

The car stopped in front of an old building; the rain made it impossible to see what sort of structure it was. My heart racing, I knocked on the door. Almost at once Aunt Nesibe answered. As I carried the tricycle inside, I remember how impressed she was by the sight of Çetin Efendi, who stood behind me holding an umbrella, and how delighted she was by the roses. I sensed unease in her expression, but I was not the least deterred, because I was climbing the stairs, and with every step, I was drawing closer to Füsun.

Füsun’s father was waiting on the landing. “Welcome, Kemal Bey.” I’d forgotten I’d seen him a year earlier at the engagement party, somehow imagining that we hadn’t embraced since the last of the old family meals at the Feast of the Sacrifice. Age had not made him less handsome, as is so often the case; it had simply made him less visible.

Then I thought I must be seeing Füsun’s sister, because there, standing behind her father in the doorway, I saw not Füsun, but a dark-haired beauty who resembled her. But even as I was thinking this, I realized that this was Füsun. It was a tremendous shock. Her hair was jet-black. “Her natural color, of course!” I told myself, as I tried to calm my nerves. I went inside. My plan had been to ignore her parents, hand her the flowers, and throw my arms around her, but I could tell from the look on her face, and her discomfort as she approached me, that she didn’t want me to embrace her.

We shook hands.

“Oh, what lovely roses!” she said, without taking them from my hands.

Yes, of course, she was very beautiful; she had matured. She could tell how distressed I was that our reunion was turning out so differently from what I’d imagined.

“Aren’t they lovely?” she said, now addressing someone else in the room.

I came eye to eye with the person she had indicated. The first thought to cross my mind was: “Couldn’t they have found another evening to invite over this sweet, fat adolescent neighbor?” But once again, even as the thought passed through my mind, I knew I was wrong.

“Cousin Kemal, let me introduce you, this is my husband, Feridun,” she said, trying to sound as if she’d just recalled a detail of minor significance.

I stared at this man called Feridun, not as a real person but as if he were an obscure memory I could not quite place.

“We married five months ago,” said Füsun, raising her eyebrows as if waiting for the penny to drop.

I could tell, from the way this fatso shook my hand, that he knew nothing. “Oh, I’m so pleased to meet you!” I said to him, and smiling at Füsun, now hiding behind her husband, I said, “You’re a very lucky man, too, Feridun Bey. Not only have you married a wonderful girl, but this girl is now in possession of a nifty tricycle.”

“Kemal Bey, we so wanted to invite you to the wedding,” said her mother. “But we’d heard your father was ill. My girl, instead of hiding behind your husband, why don’t you find a vase for those beautiful roses Kemal Bey is holding in his hands.”

My beloved, who had never once been absent from my dreams all year, took the roses from my hands with a small, elegant gesture, first bringing herself close enough for me to see the blush of her cheeks, her ever-inviting lips, her velvet skin, and her neck, and I would have done anything at that moment, just to know I could spend the rest of my life this close. I inhaled the fragrance of her exposed bosom before she drew back. I was dumbstruck, amazed at her reality, as one is amazed at the reality of the natural world.