'KIM Shatek is well sen to

challenge Orhor Pamuk

as turkey's torerrtosi
contemporarv si ove I if r

ECONOMIST

Prom the aedaimed writer of

i ff!- fj(irtf ofhltittbul and The Forty Rules cj Lcr’i.'

ELIF SHAFAK
Elif Shafak was born in Strasbourg, France, in 1971 and spent
her adolescent years in Spain before returning to Turkey. Her
first novel, Pmhan, was awarded the Mevlana Prize tor literature.
Her second novel* The Mirrors of ihe City, is about the expulsion ot
the Sephardic Jews [rom Spain and their subsequent flight to
the Ottoman Empire. Her third novel, Mahremt received the
Turkish Novel Award. The Flea Palace is her fourth novel.

Shahifc holds an MSt in Gender and Women s Studies and a PhD

in Political Sciences. Her academic background has been nurtured
by a critical, interdisciplinary and gender-conscious rereading of
the literature ot the Middle East and of the West* She is
currently a Visiting Scholar in Women's Studies ar the University
ol Michigan and writes for a number ol Turkish newspapers,

Miige Gd^ek is an associate professor in the Department of

Sociology at the University ol Michigan. She studied at
Bosphorus University in Istanbul before gaining an MA and a
PhD at Princeton University.
/
 By

Elif Shafak
Fra ns h ted by Mtige Go^ek

MARION BOYARS
LONDON * N F W > OH L
First published in Grot Britain and in the USA in 2004 by
MARION BOYARS PUBLISHERS LTD
24 Lacy Road, l ondon SWI5 INI

w w w. m a r i o n.b oyars. c o. u k

Distributed in Australia and New Zealand bv IVribo Pry Ltd

58 Beaumont Road, Kuririg-gai, NSW 20HU

Primed in
10 V 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I

lf This translation from the Turkish by Mtige Go^ek 20<M

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored an a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means* electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise except brief extracts for the
purposes nf review, without praor written permission of the publishers.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade
or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired our or otherwise circulated without the
publishers prior consent m anv form or binding or cover other than that
in winch it as published and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

The right of ElifShafak and Miigc Goyek to be identified as authors of

this sciirk has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright*
Designs and Patents Act 1988,

A ( IP catalogue record for tins book is available from the British I ibnry
A C1P catalog record lor this book is available from the Library of Congress

ISBN 0-7145-3101-4

The publishers would like Eo thank the Arts Council of England lor
assistance with die translation of this book.

*4

Set in Bembo 11.5/14pt

Printed in Great Britain by Book marque Ltd, London.
Residents of Bonbon Palace

Flat 1 Musa, Meryem and Muhammet

Flat 2 Sidar and Gaba

Flat 3 Hairdressers Cernal and Celal

Flat 4 The Firenaturedsons

Flat 5 Had] Hadj, His Son, Daughter-in-Law

and Grandchildren

Flat 6 Metin Chetineeviz and HisWifeNadia

Flat 7 Me

Flat 8 The Blue Mistress

Flat 9 Hygiene Tijen and Su

Flat 10 Madam Auntie

PEOPLE SAY I HAVE A FANCIFUL MIND probably the
most tactful way ever invented of saying ‘You're talking
nonsense!1 They ought be right. Whenever 1 get anxious and
mess op what I have to say, am scared of people's stares and
pretend not to be sot introduce myself to strangers and feign
ignorance about how estranged I am from myself, feel hurt by
the past and find it hard to admit the future won t be any
better, or fail to come to terms with either where or who l am:
at any one of these all too frequently recurring moments, 1
know I don't make much sense. Bur nonsense is just as far
removed from deception as truth. Deception turns truth inside
out. As for nonsense, it solders deception and truth to each
ocher so much so as to make them indistinguishable. Though
this might seem complicated, its actually very simple. So
simple that it can be expressed by a single Ime.
Lets presume truth is a horizontal line.

Then, what we call deception becomes a vertical one.

7
THE FLEA PALACE

As for nonsense, here's what it looks like:

With neither an end nor a beginning to its trajectory, the

circle recognizes no horizontal or vertical a?cis.
You can plunge into the circle from anywhere you want* as
long as you do not contuse that point with a beginning. No
start points* no thresholds* no endings. No matter at which
instant or with what particular incident I make the first move,
there will always be a dine preceding that start of mine - always
a past ahead of every past and hence never a veritable outset.
I never saw it myself but heard from someone wise enough,
that back m the old days* when the garbage cans on the streets
of Istanbul had round lids of greyish aluminum, there was a
game that local boys and girls played together A certain
number of people had to join in; few enough not to crowd,
large enough to entertain* just the right amount and always an
even number.
First in the 'Garbage Game* came the question * When?' For
an answer* four different segments would be chalked on the
round lid with a separate word corresponding to each
direction: ‘Right Now-Tomorrow—Soon-Never/ The hd
would then be spun from its handle in the middle as swiftly as
possible and before it found a chance to slow down* the person
m line would stop it with the touch of a finger The same
would then be repeated one by one for all the participants of
the game* so that each one could fathom which time frame he
or she stood closest to. In the second round, four separate
responses would be written down as possible answers to the
question ‘To Whom?1: "To Me—To The One I Love—To My

a
 1NTRUPUCTION

Best Friend-To All of Us*’ Once again the lid would be given
a spin and once again the players would reach out to scop its
delirious circumvolution The third round was intended to find
an answer to the question 'What?’ Four auspicious and four
ominous words were marked on the remaining eight spaces,
always equal in number* to add a dash of fairness to the
whims of fate; Tovr—Marriage—Happiness—Weakh-Sickness-
Separation-Accident—Death.' The bd would turn once again
with the answers now building up so the players could tinalh
reach the long awaited response to the question, ‘U hat will
happen to whom and when?: "To Me-Wealth-Soon? "To The
One ! Love-Happiness-Tomorrow? ‘To Mv Best Fnend-
Marruge-Right Aw ay/ or To AD of Ut-Separarion-Never*,..
Starting the ball of narration tolling is not hard, I too can
employ the logic of the Garbage Game with some minor
adjustments here and there First of all, one needs to find the rime
frame of the narration: 'Y^trrrtov—TcKiav-Tomomiw-Infinity?
m S J

Then, the places should be designated: "Where I Came

From—Where I Stand Now-Whcie 1 Am Headed—Novvhertv
Next, it would be the player s turn to assign the subject ot the act:
I-One Among Us-All of Us-None of Us? Finally, without
upsetting the four-io-four balance, sine needs to line up the
possible outcomes. In this manner, if I spin an imaginary garbage
lid four times in a row; I should be able to construct a decent
sentence. What more than a sentence does one need to start otf
a store that has no start to it anyway*
\n the spring of 20<>2. in Istanbul, one among m died before
the time was up and the tine dosed into a complete circle?

On Wednesday May 1st 2002, at 12:20 p*ra„ a white van - in

need of a wash and decorated with the picture of a huge rat
with needle-sharp teeth on one side, a hairy htiroongous
spider on the other - fading to cake notice ot the barrigSS
ahead found itself in the middle of a crowd ot two thousand

9
r H F FIFA FA l ACF

two hundred people. Among these, about five hundred were

there to commemorate Workers' May Day, one thousand three
hundred were policemen ordered to prevent the latter from
doing so, a number of others were state o the bis there to
celebrate the day .is a Spring Holiday by wreathing Ataturks
statue, and all the test were elementary school children made
to fill up the empty spaces, waving the Turkish flags handed
out. By now, these children had almost broken into hives from
standing under the sun for hours on end listening to the
humming of dreary speeches. Incidentally, a good number of
them had only recently learnt how to read and write, and with
that impetus kept shouting out the syllables of every single
written word they spotted around. When the ratty, spidery van
ploughed into the crowd, these kids were the ones who yelled
out in unison: ‘RAIN-BOW PEST RE-MOV-AL SER¬
VICE; Call-Us- And-We-Will-Re-mo ve-Them- For-You'.
The driver of the van, a ginger-Inn red. flap-eared, funny-
looking, baby-faced man with features so exaggerated that he
hardly looked real, lost his cool when laced with this
onslaught, t >n steering the van m the opposite direction to
escape the wrath of the children, he found himself in the
meddle ot a highly agitated circle of demonstrators surrounded
by an outer circle of even more agitated policemen. During
the few minutes when the driver was paralyzed into inaction,
he w is alternate!) either ‘booed" with glee 01 stoned m anger
by demonstrators sharing the same ideology yet apparently
interpreting it differently Steering his van toward the other
half of the circle in a desperate move onb helped the driver
get held up once again, this tunc bv the police. He would most
probably have been arrested at once - and things would have
conceivably taken a worse turn tor the others as well - had the
police not darted, at exactly the same moment, toward a tiny,
impetuous group determined to start the march right away
The van driver was drenched m sweat when he finally
succeeded in getting out of the tumultuous square His name
was Injustice Purerurk. He had been in the pest removal

in
 INTRODUCTION

business for almost thirty-three years and had ne%-er hated his
job as fervently as he did that day
In order not to get himself into trouble once again, he
shunned the shortcuts and made his way through the winding
roads, only to arrive a full hour and forty-five minutes late for
his appointment at the apartment building he had been
searching tor, Shaking ofiThts trauma bit by bit, he parked along
the sidewalk while staring suspiciously at the cluster o! people
blocking the entrance of the building. Having no idea why
they had gathered there, but nevertheless convinced they
would do him no harm, he managed to calm down and again
checked the address his chain' secretary had handed to him
that very' morning: ‘Cabal Street. Number HK (Bonbon
Palace).' His chatterbox at a secretary' had also included a note:
‘The apartment building with the rose acacia tree in the
garden .'Wiping aw ay the large beads of sweat on his forehead.
Injustice Pureturk stared at the tree in the garden that was in
bloom with reddish-pink flowers. This, he thought, must be
what they' called ‘rose acacia*.
Still, since he did not at all trust his secretary whom he
intended to replace at the next possible instance, he personally
wanted to sec the buildings signpost with his own short¬
sighted eyes. Parking the van askew, he jumped down. No
sooner had he taken a step, however, than a small girl among a
group of three children standing m the crowd screamed in
horror:‘The genie is here! Grandpaaa, grandpa, look, the genie
is here!'The round, grevmg. bearded elderly nun the girl was
tugging turned around and inspected first the van and then the
van’s driver, each time with an equally disappointed look.
Evidently dissatisfied w ith what he saw, he screwed up his face
so that it looked even more sour and drew the three children
closer to him.
Injustice was done to Injustice Pureturk. He was not a genie
or anything, but just an ordinary man who possessed a
disproportionate face with mammoth ears and unfortunately
coloured hair He also happened to be short. Indeed verv

11
THE FLEA PALACE

short: one metre and fatty-three centimetres in all* Even

though he had been previously taken for a dwarf, this was the
first time fie was accused of being a geme.Trying not to mind*
he doggedly pushed his way through the group toward the
ashen apartment building. He donned the th in-framed thick -
tensed glasses he habitually earned, not on his nose as the
doctor had recommended but inside the pocket of his work
overalls Despite the help of the glasses he still could not make
<mt what the messy protrusion at the front of the building was
until it was an inch aw ay: a relief of a peacock with the feathers
darkened with dirt* Had it been cleaned up, it might have been
appealing to the eye* Underneath the relief it read: Bonbon
Palace Number H81 He was at the right place.
A business card squeezed in-between the Imcd-up buzzer',
next to the door drew his attention. It belonged to a rival firm
that had two months previously started to work in the same
neighbourhood. Since the people around no longer seemed to
be paying any attention to him, he took the opportunity to
remove rhe business card and put one of his own in its stead.

RAINBOW PEST REMOVAL SERVICE

Do not do Injustice to yourself

Call Us and Let Us Clean on Your Behalf

Experienced and specialized staff with electrical and
mechanical pumps against

Lice * Roaches * Fleas * Bedbugs * Ants • Spaders * Scorpions * Flies

Spraying done with or without odour, manually or

mechanically employing an
electrical pulvenzer/aiomizef and/or misting devices
appropriate to both open and enclosed spaces

Phone: (0212)25624242

12
 INTRODUCTION

Upon haying these business cards printed, he had hired a

university student to distribute them all around the
neighbourhood, but it had not taken him long to tire the
voting man without pay, for doing a lousy job. That was ty pical
of injustice Pureturk: he never trusted anyone.
To unload the pesticide sprays he walked back to his van.
Yet, the moment he had shut his door, a blond woman with a
hairdresser's smock tied around her neck reached in through
the half-open window1 and gawked at him cross-eyed:
Is this van all you've got? Won't be enough, I tell you/ she
hooted knitting her well-plucked eyebrows ‘They <1 promised
at least two trucks. There's so much crash, even two trucks
would have a hard time/
Tm not here to pick up vour garbage/ Injustice Pureturk
frowned.‘I'm here for the insects... the cockroaches../
*Qh/ the woman flinched, "Even then, 1 tell you, what
you've got won't be enough/
Before Injustice Pureturk could fathom what she was talking
about and what exactly these people had been waiting for. two
red trucks ploughed onto Cabal Street as if they had heard the
call. The crowd stirred upon noticing a van from a television
channel right behind the trucks. Injustice Pureturk. utterly
unaware of the excitement around him. was trying at that
moment to find a better spot to park. However, finding himself
amidst chaos upon chaos against his will must have somewhat
uttered his nerves by now, for the vein on the right side of his
forehead started to thump at a crazy pace.The single movement
he made to press down on the vein was more than enough to
make him lose control of the steering wheel. Trying to back up
in a panic, he rammed into the piles of bags slung next to the
garden wall separating the apartment building from the street.
All the garbage inside the bags was scattered onto the sidewalk.

It truth be told. Bonbon Palace was used to garbage, having

\S
THH f-Ll- A PALACE

struggled with it tor quite some time now. From early

February to mid April - the period following the bankruptcy
of the private company collecting the garbage in the area and
preceding the resumption of service by a new one - a
considerable garbage hill had collected here, bringing along
with it an increasingly putrid smell, filings had not improved
much with the new company either In spite of the regular
nightly collection, both the Cabal Street residents and
passers-by kept throwing garbage next to the garden wall,
thereby managing collectively to raise up a new' garbage hill
every day.
If interested you can go there even today to see with your
own eyes how; along the wall separating the apartments garden
from the street, the garbage hill levelled by dusk rises anewr the
following day with no ultimate loss to its mass. Garbage bags
ire thrown away, garbage bags are then picked up, but despite
the continual rise and fall the garbage hill perpetuates its
presence. The hill comes with its own hill people - seekers
w ho show up daily to collect pieces of tin, cardboard, leftover
food and the like, as well as an army of cats and crows and
seagulls Them of course, there are bugs; for wherever there is
garbage, there are also bugs. Lice, too, have taken over in
Bonbon Palace...and trust me on this, bee are the verv
worst.
In order to observe this one needs to spend some time
there. If you have no time, however, you'll have to make do
with my version of the story Yet I can only speak for myself.
Not that Ml foist my own views onto wfhat transpires but 1
might, here and there, solder the horizontal bne of truth to the
vertical line of deception in order to escape the wearisome
humdrum reality of where I am anchored right now. After all,
I am bored stiff here. If someone brought me the good news
that my life would be less dreary tomorrow; I might feel less
bored today. Yet, I know too well that tomorrow will be just
the same and so will all the days to follow. Nevertheless, with
my fondness for circles I should not give you the impression

14
 INTROIHJC TJON

that it 15 only my life that persistently repeats itself. In the final

instance* the vertical is just as faithful to its recurrence as the
horizontal. Contrary to what many presume, that which is
called 'Eternal Recurrence' is germane not only to circles but
also to lines and linear arrangements*
From the monotony of lines there deviates only one path;
drawing circles within circles* spiralling in and m. Such
deviation resembles, in a way, being a spoilsport in the Garbage
Game: not abiding by what comes up when you spin the
round lid of greyish aluminum* spoiling the game by not
waiting lor your turn, erasing to spin again and again; messing
around with subjects* objects* verbs and coincidences while
comforting yourself throughout:4In Istanbul in the spring of
2002, the death of one among us was caused by
Herself-Me^Us All-None of Us.’
On Wednesday May 1st 2lM)2* Injustice Pureturk applied
pesticide dust to one of the flats of Bonbon Palace. Fifteen days
later* upon returning for the baby cockroaches born from their
dead mothers' eggs* he found the door of that particular fiat
deadlocked- However* it is coo soon to talk about these things
right now. For there had been another time preceding this
moment and* of course* one before that as well.
r,' i, - »
BEFORE.
THERE WERE ONCE TWO ANCIENT CEMETERIES
in this neighbourhood, one small, almost rectangular and well-
kept, the other huge, semi-lunar and visibly neglected.
Surrounded by ivy-covered fences and shadowy hills, leaning
onto the same dishevelled wall, thev had spread out over a
wide terrain, jointly and continuously. Both were crowded to
the brim vet deserted to the extreme The small one belonged
to the Armenians and the large one to the Muslims. On the six
foot wall separating the two cemeteries, rusty nails, jagged
fragments of glass and, in spite of the tear of bad luck, broken
mirror pieces had been scattered upright to prevent people
trespassing from one to the other. As for the two-panelled, iron
-grilled, gargantuan doors of each cemetery, they were located
exactly on opposite ends, one facing north and the other south
so that it a visitor perchance harboured any inclination to cross
from one to the other, he would be discouraged by the length
of the road he would have to walk, Just the same, no one
actually had to put up with such an inconvenience since there
had never been a visitor w ith a relative buried in one cemetery
who wished, once there, to pay a visit to the other cemetery as
well. Be dm as it may, there was many a being that hopped and
jumped from one cemetery to the other as they pleased, be it
night or day: the wind and thieves, tor instance, or the cats and
lizards. They had all mastered the many ways of going through,
over and under the barrier separating the two cemeteries.
That would not last long. An incessant wave of migrations

i*»
THE FLEA PALACE

cluttered up the city with buildings marshalled in tandem like

the soldiers of a sinister army* each and every one looking
much alike from a distance. Amidst the muddled waters of
citification* surrounding them in all directions, the cemeteries
remained intact like two uninhabited islands. As new high-rises
and rows ot houses were built continuously, around them up
popped small, sporadic, circumscribed streets resembling from
far above the veins of a bram, Streets cut in front of houses and
houses blocked streets; the whole neighbourhood swelled,
bloating like a foolhardy fish unable to feel satiated even when
beyond being frill. Finally when just about to bum, it became
inevitable that an incision must be made and an opening
created on the stretched tight node so as to relieve the pressure
mounting from within. That incision in turn meant a new road
had to be built before too long.
Due to this unforeseen, unstoppable growth, all the streets in
the vicinity had become wedged at the edges like water with
nowhere to go. An avenue, by linking them all into a single
channel, could make them re-tlosv.
Yet, when the time came for the authorities to take a birds'
eye view to decide svhere and how to build this avenue, they
realized an onerous quandary awaited them. At all the possible
sites where such an avenue could be constructed, there was, as
if bv design, either a government building or the property of
the local gentry and if not those* the jam-packed low-income
shanty-houses that could be effortlessly taken down one by
one hut were not that easy to erase when there were so many
In order to be able to build the road that would open the way,
they would first have to open the way for a road.
Istanbul being a city where houses were not built in
accordance with mad plans but road plans made so as not to
upset the location of the houses, the com true non of the new
road required tearing down as few houses as possible. Given
this precondition there remained only one option: making the
road pass through the hilly terrain of the two cemeteries.
Once the reports detailing this plan had been approved by

2n
 BEFORE

the authorities* it was decided that within two and a half

months the two cemeteries should be removed and the hilly
terrain Battened our Those who had loved ones m these
cemeteries need not worry, they said. After all, the tombs could
be moved in their entirety to various spots around the city
Muslim tombs could be transported to the slopes overlooking
the Golden Horn* for instance* and the non-Mush ms to their
own graveyards in various other quarters.
Most of the tombs were so ancient that along with their
occupants* their descendants had also changed worlds by now
There were also those that, despite having descendants still
above the ground, might yet go unclaimed In spite of all this,
the number of people snooping into the fate of the tombs
turned out to be far more than the authorities had initially
expected. Among them* some relatives simply wanted their
dead to be left alone while others discovered the proposed
alternate graveyards were already crammed full Both of these
groups had instantly started to search for ways to reverse the
decision. Still* the majority of the relatives acquiesced to do
whatever was deemed necessary and to this end set off to
shoulder the burden.
In the following days the Muslim cemetery played host at
all hours of the day to .ill kinds of visitors, each singing a
different tune, 1 he task of hiding the Traces of the nocturnal
visitors from those paying homage in the daytime fell upon the
cemetery guards who at dawn gathered the spilled bones and
closed over the tombs dug up during the night.Then* rowards
noon* the authorities showed up to inspect the guards, and in
the afternoon, families worried about their dead getting mixed
up with other peoples dropped-by in large crowds, all the
while talking and complaining* if not to the tombstones* to
one another.
Until the cemetery was officially forbidden to accept
visitors, the old and middle-aged women of these families were
there almost every single day When tired of standing up. they
would line up with their blankets spread right there around

21
THE F! EA PALACE

their relatives’ tombs. Once seated, they would either weep

alone or pray together, clutching their children tightly to force
them into reverential silence.Then time would drift by; the air
getting heavier, some children would fall asleep while others
escaped to play; and a cloud of languor would daintily follow,
forming a canopy over the women on the ground. ‘The
descent ot the spiritual this can be called. After all, even the
most otherworldly cannot remain oblivious to the forces of
gravity pulling them down to earth. In this state the women
would make it through to the night Rooting about m their
long tattered bags, bought who knows when and mutated over
time into the same grimy tone of brown, they would fish out
aniseed crackers, pour tea from thermoses while at the same
time circulating lemon cologne to wipe both their sweaty faces
and the reddish skin marks around their knees left by knee-
high nylon socks that, no matter which size you chose, were
always too tight. Next they would peruse the pages of the
notebooks of the past, recalling one by one the names of all
those who had made life living-hell tor the dearly departed.
Once they started to hammer out past controversies, it would
not take them long to abandon the mourning of the dead and
switch instead to gossiping about the living. All tea gone and
only a handful of aniseeds left from the crackers, one among
them w ould remind the others of how the dearly departed, as
if not having suffered enough on earth, were now denied
peace even deep down under the ground. With that reminder,
the gloom of the setting would engulf the cloud of languor
"1 he ascent ot the material,’ this can be called. After all, even
the most worldly cannot remain indifferent to the celestial.
Thus, these old and middle-aged women would step by step
wander off from prayers to curses, from curses to gossip, onlv
to retread to the beginning to wrap up this undulating
conversation in a final prayer
As they retread, they would start searching for the children
spread among the tombstones recklessly roaming the cemetery.
The children would be sought, collared and dragged back to

91
 RFFQRF

the gravestone of their relative for a last supplication* Bv then,

the men would also have returned to the same spot, dog-tired
from struggling all day long in vain to speak up to the deal ears
of bureaucracy, having acquired all in all a few fragments ol
documents and the map to the new burial ground but still not
a wee bit of clarification about where their dead would be
buried within it. Pretending everything to be under control
and within their purview, the aforesaid males would austerely
confront each and every galling question and gloomy
interpretation that their mothers, younger sisters, wives,
mothers-in-law7, older sisters, aunts, sisters-m-law and
daughters put to them. While blankets were gathered and
tombstones bid farewell to, several women would notice the
many inconsistencies in the men's responses and ask either new
questions or re-formulate the old ones, only more persistently
this tune* With that final touch, the men's nerves, which were
stretched tight as bow strings by the gears of bureaucracy*
would snap. With them yelling at their wives and their wives
yelling back at them, families would leave rhe Muslim
cemeterv in utter chaos and without having resolved anything.
Then night would descend, the two-panelled, iron-grilled,
gargantuan door would dose down, and thus the hours of the
cats and tomb thieves would commence.
As for the Armenian Orthodox cemetery, it too had plenty
of visitors around the same time. With one difference: the
majority of these visitors were there not to transport their
tombs but rather to say their final goodbyes. Even if able to
procure the necessary permit to transport, in what burial
ground among the orthodox cemeteries of Istanbul* long
diminished with loss and shrunk through constriction* could
they have buried their dead? Some prominent families and
church members managed to move a number of graves but
that was all. Among the dead left behind there were cherished
ancestors of eminent families, as well as those long unclaimed
or recently abandoned: those whose grandchildren had
scattered to four corners of the world and those whose families

23
1 HD nr A PALACE

still lived in Istanbul: those who had remained all their lives
utterly faithful to their religion and loyal to their state, as well
as those who refused to recognize either God or a state...
For that is how things are* It is not their quantative scarcity vis¬
a-vis the majority that makes mu unities hapless but rather
their qualitative similarity As a member ol a minority group,
you can be as industrious as an ant, even hit the jackpot and
acquire a considerable fortune, but someday, just because you
presently and will always belong to the same community, you
could lit an instant find yourself on a par with those of your
community who have idled their lives away since birth. T hat is
why the affluent among the minorities are never affluent
enough; neither are their exceptional members ever
sufficiently so. In the Turkey of the 1950s in particular, the
moment a rich Muslim bumped into a poor one, what he
would see on the latters face would be 'someone so very
unlike him,’ whereas a rich minority member running into a
poor one would encounter on the latter s face someone so
very unlike him and yet treated alike Accordingly, the same
misery might awaken compassion in the rich Muslim who has
the comfort of knowing that he will never sink to that
position, whereas for a member of the rich minority it might
easily trigger angst, with the unease of foreseeing that he too
might unexpectedly end up there. Once a person starts to fear
injustice, however, he can end up missing the real target and
mix the results up with the causes. Hence, while the gentry of
tin* Muslim majority may demonstrate a tender mercy toward
the miserable m particular and to misery in general, the cream
of the minority will approach the materially and spiritually
downtrodden of their ow n community' with chilled unease,
AH these nominal distinctions go no further however* At the
end of the two and a half month period, only a sprinkle of
tombs were transported from the Orthodox Armenian
cemetery; the majority of the minority had thus remained
behind, As for the Muslim cemetery, far more tombs had been
transported: the minority of the majority was left behind.
24
 BEFORE...

These two dusters of dead, with not an iota in common

regarding family trees, upbringing or profiles, nevertheless
concluded the very last stage of their presence in Istanbul alike*
One could bestow upon them a common rank: “Those Unable
to Depart'. The worst part of being one of those incapable of
leaving a territory is less their inability to depart than their
inability to mide.
It was at precisely this stage that a twist of fate occurred. Way
ahead of the bulldozers, thieves looted the tombstones, dogs
embezzled the bones of a number of Those Unable to Depart*
Among some couples long buried together, due to name
similarities or the negligence of cemetery officials incapable of
deciphering the Ottoman script on the old tombstones, one
ended up in one corner and the other at another Some of the
dead got mixed up and landed in different tombs, while a large
majority were done away with silently, stealthily, systematically.
Yet ultimately, it was simply fate that would determine the
destiny of many ofThose Unable to I >epart.
Once these procedures came to an end, all that was left of
that vast land was a field replete with holes, as it fallen prey to
a horde of moles When the time arrived to level the ground
in its entirety, however, the authorities would be startled to
discover two tombs had fortuitously remained intact. Their
stone sarcophagi were made of crimson-veined w hite marble,
decorated with dntemani and plant motifs germinating into
three w heels of fate, their turbans almost as big as cart wheels,
the distance from the base of their tombstones to the
headstones measuring approximately one hundred and forty-
six centimetres in height, surrounded with railings as sharp as
arrows and painted a green the colour of raw leaves. While
both were in the Muslim cemetery, one of the tombs was
located at the southern slope and the other at the northern
edge, at the bottom of the wall separating the orthodox
Armenian cemetery. This detail aside, they were exactly alike.
On the outside surface of the accompanying stone, both had
hyacinth and tulip motifs. Exactly the same turban on their

25
THE FLEA PALACE

bcads, the same sharply pointed arch around their seats, the
same heading/Htoi to baqtya to-a/ in Ottoman cel sulus*
script on their tomb inscriptions. Odd as it was, next to each
one rested a rusted sign, probably posted at the same time bv
the same people:‘Here lies Saint *Hewhopackedupandleft’ who
performed countless heroic deeds tor the conquest of Islam
while serving in the army of Ebu Hafs-i Haddad and who
reached Gods mercy before witnessing the fall of the infidel
city. A prayer to his sou/
When ordered to remove these two sarcophagi, the worker
on the bulldozer had to leave work early with a awful pain in
his groin.Though the pain had abated by the following day, he
refused to drive the bulldozer ail the same. On the third day,
instead of the worker, his grandfather, who had no teeth m his
mouth and no might in his muscles but ample ‘oomph’ when
it came to words, turned up instead. He narrated to whomever
he came across spine-tingling stories about the dire fate of
those hapless souls who had attempted to plunder the tombs
of saints. By the morning of the fourth night, not a single
worker was willing to drive the bulldozer, If truth be told, no
one except them seemed much interested in Saint
'Hewhopackedupandleft,' and things would have remained so
had the authorities not taken a sudden interest ui the topic,
upon being warned that their political opponents might use
the current state of affairs against them.The year was 1949 and
the political balance extremely fragile. Both the newly
burgeoning opposition as well as the government itself
constantly tainted one another with the brush of alleged
insolence toward religion . It w as at this point that‘The Three
Consultant Buddies’ showed up
The First of the Three Consultant Buddies came up with
the idea that in order not to disturb the saints’ tombs, the
avenue should take tw?o separate twists at two points. His
suggestion might have been considered had it not been the
* Allah has. ha^tya
* mans ‘(.kid is strength, the rest is folly and
Ottoman ert sulm script is a historical Turkish script of (hr t hrotmii Empire

2ft
 BEFORE ...

case that no one took him seriously; not since that ominous
day when he had been given a ruthless tongue-lashmg at his
workplace by his wile, upon her discovery that he'd spent their
entire month’s rent at a nightclub. The Second of the Three
Consultant buddies, in turn, proposed the avenue continue in
a straight line, right up to the two tombs* where it would
bifurcate like a piece of string cheese. Though everyone knew
he managed, albeit with difficulty, to gain the upper hand over
his wife, even dared raise his voice at home and smash
unsavory food against the wall, his idea was not accepted as no
one wanted to take responsibility for possible future traffic
accidents. It was then that the Third of the Three Consultant
Huddles asserted in a meandering speech, that they were
committing a grave error by* rushing to a solution. First they
had to grasp what exactly the problem was and, had they done
so, would indeed detect more than one peculiarity' in this
particular case Thus he paraphrased his oration:‘First diagnosis,
then treatment!1
The points of emphasis the Third of the Three Consultant
Buddies wanted clarified for diagnosis were as follows:

1. What exactly was this army of Ebu Hafs-i Haddad?

What was it doing in Istanbul?
2. If this army was one of those Arab forces that had
long ago come as far as Istanbul with the intent of
conquest* what was someone like Saint
“Hewhopackedupandlefr'- whose name did not at all
sound Arabic — doing among them?
3. If Saint HewhopackedupaniiJefV had indeed been
martyred while fighting for the conquest of Istanbul
on the side of the Arabs, why on earth did he base
two tombs?
4. Last but not least, which of the tombs was genuine?

Meticulously elaborating each point on his agenda, the Third

of the Three Consultant Buddies arrived at the conclusion that

27
r HE FLEA PALACE

though there was no harm in skipping some of these points so

as to save tune, it was absolutely essential to clarify the Iasi
detail to ascertain w hich of the two tombs was the real one.
Indeed he was a better orator than the others and a bachelor
to boot.
Be that as it may, digging a saints tomb at a time like this
was analogous to accepting a gift package with unknown
content from an anonymous sender: it probably did not
contain anything harmful but what if it did? Just to make
matters worse, right at this time, a foul-mouthed journalist
notorious for stirring bread into his raiti tor breakfast but
nonetheless alert enough to have his ear to the ground, had
already picked up the scent and written a piece in the leading
opposition newspaper entitled,'Governments Gravediggers m
Business Suits/ Though the editorial itsdf was not as
accusatory as its title hinted and the claim behind it rather
hazy, these could be due more to the journalist's basing passed
out before finishing the piece than to his concern not to
further poke his nose into this business.There was no way to
tell that once he sobered up he would not write another
editorial, this tune even more aggressive.
Still, the tombs were dug up all at once and w ithout any prior
notice. Set to accomplish this unpleasant duty in the fastest way
possible and without any onlookers present, two officials, three
guards and five workers gathered with their briefcases,
flashlights, pickaxes and shovels before dawn. They dug up me
tombs of the saints under the stunned looks of a few vagabonds
who had settled in the vacated cemetery once the thieves and
street dogs had stopped coming. Nothing came out of the first
tomb; neither a coffin, nor a shroud, nor bones or a skull, nor the
personal belongings of the saint. At least there were tree roots,
ra ked rock\ and worm* - even thCtt weir missing in the
second tomb. It was at this point that the authorities committed
the fatal mist ike of supposing the problem had thus been solved.
With too much sanguinity, they removed the stone sarcophagi
and took down the surrounding railing.

2*
 H EFORE

The following day, an unsigned editorial appeared m the

leading opposition newspaper with the title, ‘Government’s
Three-Piece-Suited Assassins of Saints' - only this time the
beginning and the end of the piece had been connected into
a meaningful whole It contended that the government, w hich
had hitherto demonstrated at every opportunity what little
respect it had tor the Ottoman cultural heritage, had now
taken upon itself to one by one raise to the ground ail the
saints’ tombs in Istanbul; that some politicians who feigned in
public to uphold customs and tradition secretly belittled
everything about the populace; that the faith bursting from
within the nation was sacrificed for the sake of an abstract
Western model; and that m the name of cleansing religion of
superstition Islam was altogether opposed.Towards the end, an
open call was placed to all Muslims to safeguard their saints.
Despite the fact that the piece did not lead, as feared, to an
upsurge of emotions, still like a signal rocket it triggered into
action all sorts of individuals and organizations all around the
country', it was as if all these people had suddenly assumed the
discovery of what had happened to the two saints' tombs in the
vacated cemetery as their sole purpose in life, demanding an
explanation from the authorities. The issue was not only
extremely sensitive but also remarkably exploitable. The
discussants started with the negligence of modernization' and
concluded with a suggestion that instead ‘modernization itself
be neglected'. Like a diving beetle that skids on water, they
hopped and skipped on ostentatious notions, such as The
oblivion of the nation,’ ‘contemporary' Bihmzcs,' ‘enforced
Wrestertu ration,' ‘sinister secularization' and so forth, thereby
traversing a whole like of antagonisms, splashing water around
all but themselves.
A local new-spaper that came out in the provinces but
happened to be particularly interested in what was going on in
Istanbul even though it had no distribution there, thus
declared: 'What is termed ‘Westernization is nothing but a
loving marriage between the Bast and the West.Yet, one should
THE REA I'AL At E

never forge! due m this matrimony the Wes! 11 the woman and
East the nun. The biter is therefore naturally the head of the
household. For that reason it should be those swanky streets
built for a few overindulged ladies to gallivant on and tor
dressed up dandies to show off their ears that show respect to
the saints, not the other way around
With the detection of a crime necessitating the disclosure of
the criminal, the time was ripe to get some people into
trouble. After a brief consideration of possible options, trouble
flew around to finally perch on the heads of the old and loyal
cemetery guards. Having managed to hide all traces of nightly
disturbances at the cemetery from people who visited in the
morning, they were not able to hide themselves from the
notice of their chief, and after being found guilty of trampling
the tombs of saints, were laid off temporarily. Of the three
guards, two were elderly men who believed there was a silver
lining to every disaster Of these two, one returned to his
village and the other retired to his house to dedicate the rest
of his life to his grandchildren. Yet the third one, relatively
younger and not easily content with Little, could not accept the
injustice that had been committed. In the months to follow he
penned reproach till letters to the directory of the cemeteries,
the mayor, ministers, prune minister and high ranking
members of the military; all the while complaining to each and
even person be encountered. During this time, there was a
change of gov ernment and the opposition assumed power, but
all the same, his letters remained unanswered and the
authorities indifferent. As they became increasingly deal to his
pleas, he became muter, drifting inward. Everyone expected
him to eventually get over the past, but just when they thought
he had, he did something utterly unexpected.
Now this nun had a wife whom he had not touched m
years and whom he had banished from his bed for snoring till
daylight like an elephant. One day out of the blue, it was rhis
woman that he started to chase around the house utterly
unconcerned about the blame neighbours would place on him

JO
 BEFORE

for such lust at this age. He finally caught his wife after a long,
scream-filled chase and, paving no attention to her excuses,
objections, entreaties and curses, with total doggedness and the
help of fortune impregnated her at the age of fifty.
He did not waste a second to rush to the registrar's office as
soon as the baby was born. In order to make sure neither he
himself, nor anyone else would ever forget the wrong done to
him, in spite of all the protests of bis wife and after giving
fistfuls of bribe to the civil servant on duty, he officially named
the son God had given him after all this time:' Injustice*.

***

Long before Injustice had become implanted in his mothers

womb, however, the scandal of the saints started to fade away.
Within two weeks after the removal of the tombs of Saint
L He who packed upandleft\ die political agenda had entirely
altered and both the government and the opposition focused
their full attention on the forthcoming elections. The
municipal authorities who had meanwhile speeded-up the
road construction project could thus assume the case closed
and easily finish up the project without tun her trouble. What
was done was done since the stone sarcophagi were removed
during the excavation of the cemetery Even so, during those
prickly days when every event clustering more than ten people
was bound to be crowned with a propaganda speech, the Third
ot the Three Consultant Buddies would have no difficult) in
convincing his business partners not only that the saints file
should not be closed, but also that it should be fifth utilized for
a public ceremony,
A few weeks before the elections, a brief ceremony attended
by a large number ot spectators occurred on the southern
slope ot the old Muslim cemetery Since the uneven ground
next to the wall that once separated the orthodox Armenian
cemetery was not suitable for the occasion, the question as to
which tomb would be treated as genuine was automatically

31
THE Ft E A PALACE

answered. Some among the spectators were people hired

specifically for this purpose. As for the rest, they were etcher
totally unaware but curious passers-by or* on the contrary,
conscientious citizens who w anted to see with their own eyes
how the scandalous event they had followed from the
new spapers would come to an end.
The ceremony comprised of three main parts. In the first
part, two men, one young w ith an aged voice and the other
old with a youthful voice, recited verses from the Qur'an
which they had committed to memory in its entirety. During
the second part, an official dressed up to the nines delivered a
rather indicting but essentially passionless speech in response to
all the accusations so far voiced* The third pan was the most
complicated. Pieces of the saint s stone sarcophagus and an
emprv coffin — brought along at the last minute so as not to
contuse those with barely any knowledge oi the situation -
were carried on shoulders and loaded onto the hearse. Then
everyone got on buses heading to an empty, rusty-soiled lot
surrounded by dilapidated buildings. There, immersed in mud.
orations and applause, the empty coffin of Saint
Hewhopackedupandlett’ was first buried, then the pieces of
the stone sarcophagus joined and erected* appearing lar more
magnificent now surrounded by a tall ornate wood railing.The
Third of the Three Consultant Buddies had prepared the text
of the speech he was to deliver days in advance. Yet that
morning, having finally mustered the courage to propose
marriage to the daughter of his maternal aunt with whom he
had been in love for years, he had been so badly rejected that
he took to the streets wandering aimlessly, thus fading to get
both himself and his speech to the ceremony on time.
Upon arriving at the site of the ceremony with a delay of
almost an hour, the Third of the Three Consultant Buddies
could not find anyone around. Only scattered cigarette stubs
and tangled footprints remained of that boisterous en>wfd. He
sat down by the tomb iti grief and* wiping his sweaty forehead,
started to read the text that had consumed so much of his time

32
 BEFORE..,

aloud to himself. Their actually no need for the paper

since he knew every single line by heart. In a voice that
quivered at first but got stronger eventually, he declared how
the person lying in the tomb was a most distinguished vaint
who had kept his appetite for worldly pleasures captive in the
turquoise-covered ring on his finger. He declared also that the
saint had, m accordance with his convictions, refused to sleep
under the same root for more than one night or eat from the
same bowl more than once: used a hrick tor a pillow in
perpetual pain; never gotten married to leave behind any
descendants, or any property or goods; wandered all year round
deeming the earth his house and the skies his roof; m short, the
name Saint ‘HewhopackedupandLeft* had been bestowed upon
him for spending his w hole life with no roots nowhere. Hence
it would not at all be contrary to tradition to move the tomb
from one place to another and whomever argued otherwise
should be mistrusted not only as to their intentions but also
the depth of thetr religious knowledge. At the conclusion of
his speech, turning pensive he distractedly caressed the worth
'bdqiya hdtiMs* on the inscriptions of the stone sarcophagus.
Then, as if responding to a distant call, he sprung up and
hurried m the direction he had come from.
It wasn't until this point that the graveyard of Saint
Hcwhopackedupandleft' achieved the unspoiled calm and
composure it had yearned for so long. Leaving aside the
visitors occasionally praying by his grave who rubbed their
bus, tram, ferry or plane tickets on hts tombstone, not a single
event would occur for about thirty-six years to upset its
turbulence-free peace, Probably because of the ad infinitum
movement of the saints tomb from one location to another, it
became a custom among travellers setting on a long journey to
stop by this place a day before their departure to seek his
blessing and to thumbprint a corner of their tickets, as if
getting the approval of an imaginary customs officer, with the
rust-coloured soil of the tomb. After the second half of the
196lk, these travellers were gradually replaced by guest-

33
THE FLEA PALACE

workers’ oft’ to Germany and their relatives, During those

years, the most faithful visitors of the saint were the women
left behind by the guest-workers going abroad. Since in their
case there were no tickets to be had. they ended up rubbing
the rust-coloured soil on their fingertips or palms, which
resembled henna when dry. In rime* most of these women
w ent to join their husbands so the number of visitors gradually
diminished. At the end of thirty-six years, first the wood
railing, then the crimson-veined w hite marble and finally the
rust-coloured soil of this imposing tomb were secretly
swallowed-up by the stores, workshops and restaurants
engulfing it in the ever-shrinking circle of a chase or hunt.
Thus the tombs ol Saint ‘Hew hopac> edupandleft that once
numbered two and then reduced to one, finally reached nil.

it it it

As for the bitty land of the two old cemeteries, it was there that
j

the fastest transformation occurred upon the completion of the

avenue. Along the slope on the northwest side of the orthodox
Armenian cemetery sprung up graceful apartment buildings,
tailed by, like kites w ith multi-hued ribbons, stores with glittery
windows, sidewalks to promenade with flair, new locales
throbbing with rhythm. When the value of the buildings
skyrocketed* those who had a house or land in this area
pocketed large amounts of money in no tune Many of the flats
facing the avenue were rented out to businesses; mostly to
doctors or lawyers. Such offices mushroomed so far and wide
that before long there would be at least one doctor or one
lawyer in any shared taxi operating in the neighbourhood. So
much so. that in each of these shared taxis* one frequently
encountered people with plenty of health complaints or legal
problems but no money; only there for a free consultation with
the doctor sitting next to them or the lawyer behind. Some of
the minibus drivers themselves, thanks to their eavesdropping
on such conversations from dusk till dawn, accumulated an

34
 BEFORE

impressive amount of knowledge on both medical .md legal

matters. If truth be told, one highly fashionable general
neurologist, whose constant use of a particular route meant he
became the best of friends with one of the most astute of the
drivers, had actually got into the habit of referring some of the
queries he received to this driver Though the elderly
mischievous doctor had originally proceeded with this game
out of boredom, he eventually got great enjoyment from it the
young driver was one ot the lew with a nund sharp as a razor
and a tolerance unique to bohemians. Besides, having little
regard for the physician s rules of etiquette or for weighing each
word, he blurted what he thought right out, utterly oblivious
to the hopes he might shatter in doing so. As he drove the
shared taxi, he would mimic the obsessions of neurotic ladies
and angst-ridden gentlemen, even managing to get them to
laugh at themselves, His performance so impressed the elderly
doctor that alter a while he offered hnn a job In spite ot their
good intentions, however, the witty tnendship of the two could
not survive the rigorous formalities of the office environment,
and the young driver ultimately returned to his minibus.
In no more than fifteen years, the appearance of the vicinity
was entirely transformed. Not a single person remembered that
there had once been, and still were, hundreds of graves under
these grandiose offices, stylish stores and fancy apartments
shining along the avenue with the perfection of porcelain
teeth. Most of the flats had narrow, double-door, carpeted
elevators. Had these elevators operated not only between the
ground and upper floors but also further down into the
ground, one would have seen, like slices cut from a colossal
cake, all the segments of life’s inner workings. At the very
bottom, there would be Uver upon layer of the earth's crust,
then rough, knobby soil; upon that a stratum of decimated
graves, followed by a very thin line of tarmac road, a couple of
flats piled up on one another, a layer of red-brick roof and. on
top ot it all, a sky of endless cerulean plastered and diffused all
over. Occasionally, some people were heard to mutter softly as

35
THE FLEA PALACE

t! to themselves, 'Once upon a time there were graves all over

this place,,Yet these words had j somewhat surreal sound to
diem though the rime referred to dated no further than fifteen
or twenty year^ ago. It was reminiscent of saying/Once upon
a time, girls more beautiful than fairies took baths of light in
the thousand room crystal palace of the sultan of the moon,"
That is how real it sounded, a past that had never been
experienced or m ethereal silver setting somewhere outside
the mundane flow of rime.
Bonbon Palace, its garbage cans knocked over by Injustice
Pureturk on Wednesday 1st May 2002 while parking his van,
was built in 1966 in this neighbourhood which had by then
little left ot its former splendor. As for the husband and wife
who built the apartment house, though they were foreigners
here, they had been to Istanbul previously.

it.
EVEN BEFORE.
WHEN AGRIPPINA FYODOROVNA ANTIPOVA saw
Istanbul for the first rime in the fall of 1920 from the deck of
a freight ship, she did so with one small swelling in her womb
and a larger one on her back. With the help of her husband,
she ploughed her way through the crow'd of passengers, who
had all stood up tor the entire three days since they left the
Crimea. She clung to the rails to see what the city that awaited
them looked like. Ever since she was a little girl, she relished
playing games w ith colours more than anything else Wherever
she went, she needed to discover the colour of the place first
in order to feel at home there. The mansion in Grosn} where
she was born and had spent her childhood, for instance, was
rhubarb, and the church they attended every Sunday
parchment yellow. In her mind s eye, the villa they lodged in
during religious festivals was a spark Jy emerald awash in dew;
the house she lived in with her husband after their wedding
was the orange of a winter sun. Not only places but aho
people, animals, even moments had colours each of which, she
had no doubt she could see if focused fully. She did so once
again. At first with curiosity, then with frustration, she stared
and stared without a blink at the silhouette of the city in front
of her until her eyes watered and the image became blurred.
Istanbul was under a heavy fog that morning, and as all
Istanbulites knew too well, during foggy days even the city
herself could not tell what her colour was. How ever, \gripnu
Fyodorvna Antipova had always been pampered with great

3*#
THE ELEA PALACE

care since birth and had been subsequently led to presume that
others were to blame whenever she could riot obtain anything
she desired. Hence she interpreted the persistence of Istanbul
in withdrawing herself behind the veil of fog as a sign of
intentional hostility and personal insult. She still, however,
wanted to give the city a chance, as she firmly believed in the
virtue of forgiveness, ! ifting her small silver Virgin Mary icon
toward the city she smiled benevolently:‘What you just did to
me was not right, but I can still show tolerance and forgive
you. For that would be the right thing to do;
‘And I will give you water and bread in return.' replied a voice*
When she bent down the rails, Agripim Fyodorovna
Antipova saw there in a bo it at the side of the ship a wiry man
gesturing at her with bread in one hand and water in the
other. Before she could even fathom what was going op, a
chubby, rosy-cheeked, blond woman with shorn hair pushed
her aside, tied the gold ring she took oft her finger onto the
belt she released from her daughter s waist and lowered it from
the ship. The swarthy man in the boat grabbed the ring, lifted
it in the air giving it a quick inspection with disgrundemerit
and relayed the belt back with a round, black loaf of bread tied
m its stead. As the blonde, who had sheared her hair when a
lice epidemic broke cm the deck, and the scrawny daughter
standing by her started devouring the bread. Agripnu
Fyodorovna Antipova looked at the sea with her eyes wide
open in bewilderment and noticed that not only the ship they
were in. but all the ships anchored in the harbour were
surrounded with such boats. Cunning Turks. Greeks and
Armenians waved foodstuff from these boats haggling with the
White Russians who had been without food or water for days.
Figuring out what was going on, Agripina Fyodorovna
Antipova fretfully w ithdrew her silver Virgin Mary as if it too
would be snatched a wav
’ from her. Over the boats and sellers
<#

and waves she stared fretfully at the city in the background to

grasp what sort of a place she had arrived at.
Istanbul was in dire straits at that time and also under

40
 EVEN BEFORE

occupation. She there lore paid little .mention to the half¬

ha tiled, half-haughty gaze of this nineteen year old woman on
the deck of yet another newly anchored ship. Her tolerance for
putting op with such selfish children having long run out,
Istanbul returned to her own hubbub with a shrug of her
shoulders, Agnpina Fyodorovna Antipova was left standing
there frozen m her smile. Though she had seen people behave
coarsely, witnessing the insolence of a city was an utterly novel
experience for her Once she had managed to overcome her
confusion, she closed down all the curtains, windows and
shutters of her heart and instead got cross with the city. Such
was her state of nund when she landed hum the boat. Even
after two months, when the swelling in her womb had grown
in contrast to the one on her back which had shrunk in next
to no time, she was still cross at Istanbul and Istanbul wav still
of an unknow n colour and just as indifferent to boot.
Unlike his wife, General Pavel Pavlovich Antipov did not
pay any particular attention to Istanbul, either that day or at
any later point, He happened to be a man whose survival
depended on his assuming responsibility for others - one of
those who either loved weak women or ended up weakening
the women they love. Hence that day as they alighted, he
embraced Agripma with the warmest consideration. His grip
held not only her but also their soon-to-be-born baby and the
entire w ealth they had been able to smuggle out of Russia,
The pieces of jewellery Agnpina had hidden at the back of
her body corset would, however, soon be sold one by one and
for much less than their true worth. Thousands of white
Russians tleeing from then homeland after the Bolshevik
Revolution had so far crammed into Istanbul and it was
rumoured that thousands more w-ere on their w ay. When the
jewellery was being auctioned oft, there were hardly enough
buyers even tor
■r
medals of honor, family f
heirlooms and
decorations of nobility'. And after two months, nothing
remained from the wealth that the couple had initially hoped
w'ould enable them to live comfortably for at least two years.
1 HE FLEA PALACE

One morning at the dormitory converted from a decrepit

detention centre provided by the French Red Cross wherein
they slept with fifty people on stained, shallow mattresses,
Agripma Fyodorovna Antipova vindictively pulled the silvery
head of her husband who was thirty years her senior toward
her and forced him to listen to the baby in her swollen belly
Pavel Pavlovich Antipov knew too well what this gesture
meant, He had two options: to find a job as soon as possible or
to write a letter to his disgraceful brother in France asking tor
help. Since even the thought of the second option was more
than enough to wreck his nerves, he chose the first.
Yet just as the military fails to provide one with a profession,
neither does the rank of general constitute a job experience
you can rely on when seeking employment. Pavel Pavlovich
Antipov then realized two things about himself: he did not
know what to do and he could not do what he did know.
While everything that had ever happened to him up nil now
had fallen into place as arranged, the revolution had caught up
with him just as he had been promoted to the rank of general,
shattering the authority' he had acquired and the life he had
erected year by year.Yet even back m those days of pestilence,
he had not had to face, as he did today, the malady termed
* ambiguity1. In order to defeat ambiguity, he first had to know
where to find it. Neither taking up a defensive position
anywhere, nor acting in accordance with a particular strategy,
it could attack from anywhere at any rime, changing weapons
all the while as it pleased. If this were an ongoing w ar, it had
no battleground, no rules, no morals. If not a war, the situation
would have been even worse as Pavel Pav lovich Antipov did
not possess the know ledge to earn a living any other way. Until
now. he had lost many things one after another, his property as
well as goods, influence* privileges, esteem, friends, relatives,
orderlies, the army he belonged to, the cities where his past
was, the country where he had presumed his future would be...
However, deep inside he assumed he was still what he had
always been: a loyal soldier

42
 EVEN BEFORE..

Conversely, thousands of soldiers ol all ranks from the Czar's

army had long been scattered into the least expected and most
excruciating jobs at hotels, concert halls, cabarets, gambling
houses, restaurants, bars, cafe chantatits, movie theatres, beaches,
nightclubs and streets. They washed dishes and carried trays in
restaurants, worked as croupiers in gambling houses jam-packed
with lies, peddled dolls at street corners, provided piano
accompaniment to cabaret dancers in boisterous entertainment
lulls. Every corner was appropriated and each job filled Amidst
this chaos. Count General Pavel Pavlovich Antipov tried to find
his way with steps as shaky as those of a new born foal learning
to walk on its trembling legs. Alter looking around for weeks
on end, the only job he could finally find was that of a
checkroom attendant in a cafe chantant - a place frequented by
arrogant French and English officers out with their delicate,
sable-coated* cherry-lipsticked lovers: by sybarite Italian
painters carving Eastern gravures with women always portrayed
as being pasty and plump and streets as shady and snaky; by
glum Jewish bankers in need of pumping loans to the palace so
that they could get back the ones previously provided; by-
pro fli gate Turkish young men satiated with the wealth inherited
but insatiable in spending it; by spies not letting anything slip
away even when blind drunk; by bohemians, dandies and all
those lost souk in search of lust or adventure.
The baki, flabby-cheeked* multiple-chinned, constantly
gesticulating Levantine owner of the cafe chantant had been
looking to hire someone ever since the previous checkroom
attendant - whose sort he had not approved of from the start
- got involved in a fight ending with his face smashed up.
Observing the imposing appearance and majestic posture of
Pavel Pavlovich Antipov; he did not hesitate even for a moment
before offering him the job. Yet when the new checkroom
attendant put on the red coat with shiny tasseled epaulets on
the shoulders and diagonal yellow' cords hanging in front, his
admiration was replaced bv disparagement;
Life is so strange, isn’t it Monsieur Antipov? We Ye both

-13
THE FLEA I'ALALE

witnesses to the demise of two glorious empires.You've started

to Westernize at least a century before us. Peter the Great! It’s
rumoured he would have those who didn't learn Western
etiquette whipped - is that true? He inspected women's
underwear and mens beards, is that so? Peter's city must be
really pretty-: a palace rising from the swamps, fake a look at
Istanbul in comparison: open on all four sides, exposed to
every breeze blowing from each direction. A rudderless, out of
joint city ! Did you know that until a decade ago. young and
courageous intellectuals escaping from your mighty empire sat
side by side at the same Parisian cates with young and
courageous intellectuals escaping from our migliry empire:
plunging into zealous discussions to draw godknowswhat sort
of short-sighted conclusions. The French waiters serving them
would eavesdrop first at one table then the other. Imagine the
contradictors things they must have heard! Those who tied
from y-mir empire would rave about destroying their state at all
costs. Those who fled from ours would instead rave about
saving their state from destruction at all costs. Within a decade,
y ours succeeded and ours tailed. 1 don't know which one to
lament more? Life is so strange, isn't it Monsieur Antipov? You
escaped from a collapsed empire to seek refuge in one about
to collapse. Could it be that your running away from the
uniformed Reds to find yourself in a red uniform here is yet
another one of Fomina s tricks?4
That night, as Pavel Pavlovich Antipov held up the
customers' coats, he heard nothing other than the daunting
echo of the things his boss had said. Only for three more
accursed days could he stand that terribly ridiculous uniform.
After that, he stopped working, stopped doing everything he
would normally do, to instead just stand still as if rooted to the
spot, as if there was no job to be sought, no life to build and
no purpose to wear oneself out tor. At the end of that week.
Agripma Fyodorovna Antipova carefully inspected her
husband as if trying to determine his true colour. Only then
was she forced to accept that he was too rigidly fixed in his

44
 EVEN BEFORE

wavs to ever change. He was so because of his age (too old*

having always advanced a couple of steps ahead ot his age, he
had now stopped and was waiting for his age to catch up with
him); because of his title (too elevated; basing ahvavs focused
on rising even further up, he had suddenly become aware there
was not much space left to rise to and froze in his tracks): and
lastly, because of Ins frame (coo imposing: he had a frame that
was so luibendable and inflexible that he chose not to go
through the doors that required his bending down), Pavel
Pavlovich Antipov was a man w ho in essence was weak and
hilly aware of it, who clung to his power with all his might less
to avoid being like others than to avoid being himself. A man
who knew too well what he craved and worked all his life to
achieve it, struggling bit by bn, climbing step by step, to reach
success in the end, The last type of person to accommodate
drastic changes!
Being so young and inexperienced, having never had to
work or even accomplish anything, and m utter harmony with
her advancing pregnancy, Agripina Fvoduruvna Antipova was
one immense, round zero. As such she could remain forever
anchored in whatever inertia she was entangled. Yet just as
easily, she could be sent rolling ahead with a strong gust. She
possessed that sheer boldness peculiar to the ignorant and that
virginal expectation that things would turn out well, an
expectation nurtured by the very fact that she had never
acquired anything in life by herself alone. Everything she did
attain had been bestowed upon her and all she had lost would
one day just as easily he somehow* returned to her. She still
spent most of her life preparing long lists about what she
would do once she returned to Russia. However,just as easily
she could spend this time working until that day arrived
Hence she gave up expecting help from her husband and
decided to do something she had never done before: to look
for a job herself
Fortune was on her side because fortune loves to test those
emerging with such a challenge, so she found a job as a

45
1 H E; H t A PAL At: E

waitress in one of the most stylish pastry shops in Beyoglu. In

that mirrored pastry shop decorated with elegantly stained
glass. all day long she went back and forth between customers
dressed to the nines and the kitchen that smelt of cinnamon
and whipped cream. From all the cacophonous languages
spoken there, each sounding to her just as u rune) odious as the
other, she acquired fragments of words sufficient to understand
the orders that were more or less the same and never tried to
learn more than that Actually, she never opened her mouth
unless she had to. In spite of the high workload and low pay.
no one had ever seen her frown or complain.Though the boss
had ordered every employee to smile continuously when
serving the customers, others grimaced the moment they left
the held of vision of either the boss or the customer, but
Agripinas smile stayed on tier face throughout the day as it it
had been nailed on. While all the other women tried to avoid
work whenever they could or kept searching for a rich
middle-aged man to rescue them from this torment, she alone
did nothing but work continually, k was more a dedication to
suffering than an effort to leave behind these insufferable days
that kept her going. It was almost as it' she was secretly proud
of her suffering, as if emhitterment purified her and giving
herself up to God's mortals brought her closer to Him. The
more insurmountable the difficulties she encountered, the
more insufferable the dangers she had to overcome, and the
more vulgar the people she served, the more 'the felt God
became indebted to her. She would sooner or later receive
w hat was her due, *Thi$ is a test,* she assured herself with a
smile. "The more arduous it is, the more exalted the outcome
will be.'
‘Why is there that grm on your face! How dare you laugh
at our faces?'
Agnpma Fyodorovna Antipova looked in surprise at the
Muslim woman yelling at her but her bewilderment only
made the latter even more furious.,The woman was 3 member
of the Contemporary Women's Association which advocated

4h
 EVEN BEFORE

the deportation of all White Russian women; whom they

believed were ripping out Muslim men's reason from their
minds and money from their pockets. Priori luted among the
agenda items of the association were the following:

1} To determine and record one by one incidents of

immoral behavior performed by white Russians with
soft and silky blond hair* fair complexion, shameless
looks and aristocratic pretensions
2) To wear out the gates of the upper echelons of state
administration in order to gather support for their cause
3) To ensure the closing down ol all the dens of thieves
and nightclubs capable of drawing the wrath of
Sodom and Gomorrah onto Istanbul
4) To ‘shoo’ away all the prostitutes who had descended
from Kiev and Odessa to bed down on the quarters
of Galata
5) To constantly and ceaselessly warn the innocent,
inexperienced Muslim youth about the danger
awaiting them
6) Until the authorities took the necessary precautions,
to pursue by their own means a policy of
intimidation by mistreating all white Russian women
they encountered.

Overcoming her initial contusion, Agripina Fyodorovna

Antipova reached her neck and squeezed the silver pendant
bearing the picture of Saint Seraphim, The strength she thus
drew* enabled her to smile at the woman whom she regarded
as a recent incarnation of the torment-filled ‘divine test’ she
had for such a long time been going through. "What you just
did was not right but I can still be tolerant and even forgive
you. For that would he the right thing to do.’
That night, only cursorily did she mention this event to her
husband. He never asked her anything anyhow. Not only did
he not want to learn a single thing about the world outside.

47
THE FLEA PALACE

but he also envied her tor nLinking to survive in that insane

world which had roughly shaken him up and tossed him aside
Rarely did he leave the dump they considered home ever since
their departure from the dormitory provided by the French
Red Cross, passing his days in trout of the window as he
penned never-to-be-posted letters to his brother in France, got
lost m thoughts, looked outside at the Muslims passing by and
watched die streets as if waiting for someone. Almost as if
arriving to put an end to this monotonous wait, their baby was
born in seven months.
Yet Agripina Fyodorovna Antipova could not welcome her
daughter with the same excitement as her husband. Her early
and painstakingly onerous childbirth may have contributed
another life to this world, but that life had been stolen from
her. She had felt far more important and so very different
during her pregnancy compared to how. she felt now'. She had
convinced herself all along that God had chosen her from
among many and had subsequently considered every calamity
yet another crucial phase in the strenuous test that was being
put to her. Never having lost her faith in God or herself, she
had wholeheartedly believed herself to be the heroine ot a
cautionary tale ot damnation the people around her could
never understand. In order to save from the claws of this idle
world both her husband and herself, she had struggled tor
them both but always on her own, awaiting, like a pearl rolled
into mud, that day when she would be cleansed to shine once
again.Yet now' she started to imagine she had been mistaken all
along, that God did not look after her but the baby in her
womb and, for that reason, abandoned her to her fate as soon
as the baby was born. However hard she tried, she could not
get nd of this feeling of diminution and abandonment. Not
one fleck of glitter remained on her face from that arrogant
luminescence; her body had shrunk and withered as it pails of
water had been drained from it. Only her breasts, they alone
were still large and full. Now and then they leaked milk like
blood oozing away from a bleeding lip. She ran home in the

40
 EVEN BEFORE

afternoons to breastfeed the bahv only to encounter time and

time again a cruelly poignant scene. She found her husband
and the baby on top of the sofa by the window, either m play
or fast asleep in each other's embrace with infinite happiness
and unmatched innocence under the daylight that sprayed
golden glitter upon them, as if it was emanating not from the
sun but from seventh heaven. Every ume a pang of sadness
seized her as she realized how the spirit she had once carried
within and believed to be a pan of had now excluded her.
So, she thought, a roily river of muddy waters this city was.
The very reason for her thrashing about all this time anudst the
water was simply because she had been entrusted with
delivering her baby from the bank of the river it was on to her
husband on the other, Thar was precisely w'hat pregnancy had
been to her: sailing to the other shore within the body of a
boat you were swollen into, to get die baby wrapped in an
angelic bliw, and to then carry her safe and sound across to the
other bank. Upon the occurrence of the birth and the
deliverance of the baby to the other shore, she had all of a
sudden become worthless, as if pushed back into the water and
abandoned to the tide, ft was useless to struggle, far away from
the bank she was kept by the waters she belonged to and the
current she was caught in It seemed as if even the babv was
aware of this situation. The moment she was picked up from
her father's arms, she would turn bright red in a fit of fury;
while being breastfed, she would crumple her face as if to
prove she was doing this solely out of need and, as soon as she
was full, would let go of the nipple and cry to be released also.
The general would then take the baby in his arms and tenderly
calm her down while Agripina Fyodorovna Antipova escaped
from the house so as not to witness this scene that hurt her
more every passing day.
Back at work, she would have to endure, along with the
emptiness swelling within, this other feeling of suffering a
terrible injustice. Every day she hated her body even more.
Her body lived for one cause only; every bite she took, every

AH
 EVEN BEFORE

would succeed in believing she had loved her with the same
intensity right from the very first day.‘I liar she might not have
done so, is so unspeakably appalling that it could not be
confessed to anyone. Not to the husband, tor instance, saying: "I
at first felt miserable for having given birth to your baby but
then recovered,1 Not to the child:"1 really did not love von at first
but gradually developed warmer feelings Not to herself: ‘How
could I fail to love my own child?' So the official history of
motherhood necessitates a meticulous cleansing of the secluded
corners of memory. Aghpi.ru Fyodoiwna Antipova s misfortune
was that before she had a chante to start hiving the baby, that is,
to love her year by year, degree by degree, to eventually arrive at
such a depth in love so as to have no difficulty' in convincing
herself she had always loved her so, she lost her.
•r

That afternoon, back home at the usual time to breastfeed,

she encountered her husband and the baby on top of the sot a
by the window fast asleep m each other s embrace under the
daylight that sprayed upon them gulden glitter as if it was
emanating not from the sun but seventh heaven. Everything
was cloaked in shades of yellow The beams curving through
the curtains were a hue of amber, the generals face alabaster,
the fabric of the sofa apricot, the baby's swaddling layette vivid
saffron and the tiny ball on top of it an aureate venniculated
with purple Blinking her eyes dazzled by the sun, Agripina
Fyodorovna Antipova walked towards this peculiar ball with an
uneasy curiosity'. She stood there, though she unconsciously
knew only too well what she was looking at
She was nglu about colours. ]ust as cities and places came in
colours and hues so did moments and situations; including
deaths. Death too acquired a new hue in every person and
each ending. In a newborn baby, it must be an aureate
venniculated with purple*
After a while Pavel Pavlovich Antipov woke up. Standing up
carefully so as not to disturb the baby in his lap, he stretched a
bit, yawned indolently and looked out the window, still
unaware of his wife’s presence. Down in the street, a ragged
 EVEN BEFORE

latter had settled in Europe long before the revolution: a

brother whom he had secretly looked down upon for
choosing trade over the family profession of the military
thereby serving money rather than the i ’zar. and whose offers
of help he had constantly turned down because of the pride
that prevented him from taking shelter w ith him. In a letter to
him Pavel asked whether they might be able to join him in
France and, unlike the previous letters, he did send it this tune
During the long years they spent in France not once did the
general and his wife talk about that inauspicious Istanbul
morning; they became more and more estranged from one
another, as well as from any spiritual rapport they once had
However fast and easy arrival m this new country might have
been, they were only too ready to risk everything just to
escape Istanbul's wickedness. Alter the baby s death, Pavel
Pavlovich Antipov had fully realized one thing right: they had
to leave this city of mourning as soon as possible. Either
Istanbul had not been good to them or they not good enough
for Istanbul. To them the city's gates of good fortune were shut,
or perhaps had never been open. The same end awaited those
whose family trees did not take root to branch out in this city,
but whose paths led here at one stage of their lives: Istanbul,
initially a port of escape enabling people to run away from
everything, w ould herself become a reason for escape.

When Aghpina Fyodorovna Antipova reached Paris in the

spring of 1922, she carried a pregnant worry in her soul. As she
looked at the wrar worn city with indifferent eyes, discovering
its colour did not even cross her mind. She had contracted a
strange eye disease on her last day in Istanbul and had thereby
lost all contact with the world of colours. Now everything she
saw, the streets and buildings, the people and the reflections in
the mirrors.,, all were in black and white. It was as if the world
wras cross at her and had dosed down all its curtains, windows

S3
THE FLEA PALACE

and shutters. She cared not. Not onlv did she not tare, she
found the world s behaviour ridiculously childish. She simpk
did not want to struggle with the world and .ill of us endless
burdens. Her only true desire was to see God. to see what
colour God was. if any Until she sasv that straight out - and
along with it. God's intention to taking her bahv assay - she did
not care at all to see the colours of this world of illusions . To her
husbands continuous insinuations about having a second baby
so as to start hfe anew' and to his consolation about nine healing
all wounds she reacted with revulsion. Agripjna Fyodorovna
Antipova had realized chat babies who died before their first
birthdays and cities abandoned before their first year of
settlement ominously resembled one another. No baby arriving
after a dead one could hillv detach its existence from the
absence of the dead sibling, just like no new acy reached would
fully welcome those exiled by the previous one.
Pavel Pavlovich Antipov did not pay anv attention to Pans
either that day or later.The helping hand his disgraced younger
brother extended with a pleasure he did not fed the need to
contain. .Antipov accepted with a displeasure he felt he had to
suppress - and did not let go until he had taken and learnt
everything he could from him. He gradually started to think
that trade was no different than the military; and once he had
believed in that, he fully dedicated himself to it. He had the
unprincipled resolve of ail those w ho. at a certain stage of their
lives, suddenly plunge full force into an option they had once
turned their nose up at. He was reckless and impatient, as if to
make up for the time he had lost.
However, it was only much later, with the sun of another
World War that his luck fully took a turn tor the better. From
black-marketeermg during the war, he acquired a considerable
fortune and an abscessed standing in society; lake a rubber ball
he succeeded in bouncing his way through the mins of war, at
rimes even conducting business with the Germans. It did not
matter to him at a 11.The war that raged on was not his. He no
longer believed in the victory of states or of causes hut only m

S4
 EVEN BEFORE

the victory of individuals. And the face of victory; however

attained, was always turned to the past.Triumph in life did not
mean reaching step bv step a future too good to pine for, but
rather restoring an unfulfilled past to us former freshness.
That is what he did. He acquired a new woman instead of
the one who no longer fulfilled her wifely functions, a new
baby for the one he had lost and a new authority to replace the
one wrested awav from him. AH. vet none of them were new.
$ #

When he held in his arms the baby the young Frenchwoman

he lived with had born him, he w is exacdv fiftv-mne vears old.
Like his first baby, this too was a girl with ash-coloured eyes.
He hid this from Agripina tor years. Had he not done so,
however, it was unlikely that she would have minded, let alone
have been jealous. If one went by what was written by the
chief physician who treated her, she was utterly indifferent to
everything around her. Exhibiting no sign of recovery she
passed her entire time painting black and white watercolours
of the peasants w hom she w atched at work in the vineyards on
the northern slope of the clinics grounds, Pavel Pavlovich
Antipov read these letters with great care, concern and sorrow
to then forget about them once they were stored in his drawer.
Content with his new relationship he seemed determined to
bestow upon his second baby all the love he could not give the
first one. Still, never did he attempt to get divorced from his
wife Though long ago having given up visiting her. he was
always careful to keep Agripina within easy’ reach. His wife had
at first been his little loser, most steadfast admirer, then the
victim of his weaknesses and infirmities, and eventually the
onlv mirror that reflected all that he had lost on route to where
j

he had arrived;she had been the closest witness of his personal

history: Neither a partner, nor a friend, but perhaps a
logbook,,. And just as a logbook would not know what was
written inside, Agripina too was unaware of what it was
exactly that she had been a warn ess of Pavel Pavlovich Antipov
decided to keep this precious memento in a safe place until it
was time to go and pick it up.

55
THE f-LEA PALAt E

Vet when that time came, Pavel Pavlovich Antipov had lived
so long and had become so old that lie had started to carry his
age like a dilapidated outfit worn over and over throughout the
years, so comfortable that it could still be worn again and again
were it not tor the embarrassment of being seen in it by other
people. All Ins goals he had actualized one by one, he had
recovered ill he had lost and lived as long as he had hoped.Yet
still, even though life was done with him, it did not come to
an end. There was not a single person around him who had
lived that long. As all those people so much younger than him
that lie had loved, protected, fought or hated, departed one by
one, Ins torment at the death of each was deposited on his
chest layer upon layer, throbbing at night with a sharp, piercing
pain. He could not help suspecting that the relatives of the
deceased, even his own woman and daughter, blamed him
deep down, that every one hated him for living so long in such
a damned age when not only life but even death had lost its
enchantment. Though ninety-four years old, not only had he
not aged, let alone become senile, he had barely even grown
old.There was nothing he could do about it.The only way he
could make up for his fault was through death but one did not
die on demand and he did not demand to die either.
At times, he blamed himself through the persona of the
tlabby-cbinned Levantine who had been his boss tor a total ot
three days, but whose castrated voice he still, after all these
years, could not forget: 'How old are you Monsieur Antipov?
So almost a century! Within this century, states fell like a house
of cards, people were wiped out lake flies, the Trumpet of
Israhi* grated on our ears nor only once, but at least a dozen
times. But what about you, did you erroneously go through
the gates opening up to a time beyond time or did you
knowingly make a pact with the devil? How much longer
do you intend to live Monsieur Antipov? ('mild it be that you
leaving your country to escape death s clutches, to now wait
* it is believed that the Trumpet of Israill will bt heard on the Day
of judgement.

56
 EVEN BEFORE

here in this country of others for death to come and take you,
is another one of Fomina's tricks?’

+**

Just when the agony brought by his incurable fault had started
to nuke Pavel Pavlovich Antipov grow more and more distant
from people* he received a letter from the chief physician:
Agripina had suddenly taken a turn for the worse. One
morning, under the startled looks of the patients, nurses and
physicians* she had suddenly ran screaming outside and tried to
talk one by one to the peasants at the vineyard but, upon
realizing that none of them understood a word she said* had
suffered a nervous breakdown. When brought back inside and
having been somewhat calmed down with the help of
tranquilizers, she had spilled out her unintelligible words to
those at the clinic. Noticing how scared the other patients were,
she had become scared herself and had withdrawn. The head
physician wanted Monsieur Antipov to come at once to see his
wife because as far as he could tell the foreign language that his
most silent and most easygoing patient had started to speak after
alt these years - without the presence of a single event that
would have triggered such a transformation - was Russian.
When Agripina Fyodorovna Antipov saw Pavel Pavlovich
Antipov, she embraced him with a contentment brought on
less by seeing her husband after all these years, than by finding
someone who could understand her,Then she started to talk.
Her words had neither meaning nor coherence. She
blubbered about the songs the peasants at the vineyards sang
at sunset. T hen she complained about the childish jealousies
of the elderly patients at the clinic and also about God's
callousness. She did not stop.That day in a monotonous voice*
neither raised nor lowered but eventually hoarse, without the
slightest indication of happiness or sorrow, she kept switching
topics all the while mentioning a kitchen with smells of
cinnamon and whipped cream. As the night drew closer and

57
THE ELEA PAL At E

her exceedingly patient audience-of-one got ready to leave,

she asked him with a hurt smile when he- would come
again, but sunk without awaiting his response into the sticky,
obligatory dumber of medication ,
I he taciturn visitor returned the following dav; this time
with a single rose m his hand and a box under his arm,
Agripma did not pay any attention to the rose, but upon taking
the fancy wrapping off the box, she greeted with exuberant
happiness the bonbons glittering on the round varnished tray
This lovely tray that Pavel Pavlovich Antipov had bought from
a canny antique dealer included a itudy by Vishniakuv* It
depicted the scene of a boy ar abducting the woman he loved
from her fathers house. The boyar had stopped just before
going down the List few steps ot the wooden ladder, using one
arm to hold with superhuman strength his loved one on his
lap, and grabbing onto the ladder with the ocher, while gazing
at the half-shady half-green forest they were about to disappear
into. Pavel Pavlovich Antipov withdrew to the side to watch
the reaction this trav would create on his wife. One of the
r

physicians he had consulted on his way over had stated that

memory occasionally played vindictive tricks; the brain
rewound when the body was nearing the end. Many patients,
upon reaching a particular, often the very last stage of their
lives, returned to their childhoods and to their mother tongue
Even a single object or a dream was sufficient to trigger such
a transformation. Watching his wife Pavel Pavlovich Antipov
wondered if the logbook was now turning the pages
backwards to erase line by line oil that was written within.
Yet Agripma Fyodorovna Antipova looked much more
interested in the bonbons than the Vivhmakov trav. Unaware of
her husbands worries, she randomly puked one. held it out
with a grateful snide and asked what flavour it was.‘Since it is
pink, it must be strawberry," was the response she got. Pink! It
had been so long since she had last seen pink She took the
wrapper off and threw the candy into her mouth. The colour
pink had a nice smell and a syrupy flavour.

5K
 EVEN BE FORE

As the bonbon melted in her mouth, first the anxiety-

stricken lips of the beautiful lover m the boyar's lap, then
everything around that was coloured in pink started to come
to life Agripina immediately reached for the other bonbons
asking her husband the flavour each time. The yellow ones
were lemon, reds cinnamon; greens were mint, oranges
tangerine; browns caramel and the beige ones vanilla-Then she
tasted them. Yellow was a sour colour, red sharp, green
scorched, orange tangv; brown was astringent and beige
puckered With each new bonbon she tasted, the colours
A grip in a hvodorovna Antipova had left in 1 scan bill returned to
her. She watched as her bed against the wall, the chair and desk
in front of the window, the cherry tree side table with all sorts
of medicine on top, the Virgin Mary icon and the august face
of Saint Seraphim swinging from her necklace revealed
themselves. She ran to the windows m bewilderment only to
be taken aback by the scenery that greeted her. All the colours
were in place. Burnt was the colour of the vineyards extending
from the slope of the hill into the horizon, tar the dresses of
the peasant women singing as they filled their large baskets
with thick skinned grapes, sharp the trees that sheltered shrill
swallows and sour the sun in the sky. Colours were
everywhere, but not as many were inside as outside. An idea
occurred to her just then. She went back and collected the
myriad of wrappers of the bonbons she had eaten. Through
these spectacles she looked at the clinic where so many years
of her life had been spent. As she put down one wrapper and
picked up another, the drears' whiteness of the cold stone
building s hails, the walls of the rooms, physicians uniforms, the
pale faces of the nurses adorned with reserved smiles, the pills
she had to swallow twice a day, the bed sheets changed by the
maids every' other day and those tasteless soups placed m front
of her; all of these things were suddenly dyed in their own
colours as was the man standing across from her The only
thing that did not change was the fretful look on his face.
Agripina did not stop. Not only did she not stop, she placed

5V
1 HE HE A PALACE

the wrappers on top of one another creating new hues. After a

few attempts she placed red on top of blue arid witnessed the
whole world turn purple. A wheezing cry escaped her lips: Ms-
tan-bul! She had found it. She had found the colour that had
escaped her on the deck of that rotten, reeking boat where she
had stood at the age of nineteen with a small swelling in her
womb and a larger one on her back. In the spectrum of
colours and hues, Istanbul was purple: a greyish-bluish purple
the eye-dazzling sun reflecting from the lead-plated domes
blotted drop-by-drop and scorched strike-by-strikc. She
remembered that accursed mixture of yellow and purple. Over
and over, again and again, she heaved m gasps: ‘IstanbulV It was
as if she w ere not repeating the same name hundreds of runes,
but pronouncing one single, lengthy name of unchanging
syllables. Pavel Pavlovich Antipov could not bear it any longer:
taking his wifes hands mto his/Agnpnui,’ he muttered/Did
you remember Istanbul?"
In the following days, Agripma fantasized two things about
herself: first, that she was young, and second, that she was in
Istanbul. Occasionally Turkish words spilled from her lips Her
palms were sweaty all the time; her reason came and left.
Every time it left her she found herself in Istanbul, and when
it returned she would have left yet another piece of her mind
back there. There was no noticeable improvement in her
condition. Every passing day not only steadfastly replicated
the previous day but also hinted that there would soon be no
more repetitions.
She should not die like this, with such an untimely departure
leaving behind the unbearable burden of her absence. On the
morning of a troubled night, Pavel Pavlovich Antipov came to
the clinic. Agripma," he asked. Would you like us to gn to
Istanbul once again?'When he saw her blushing smile, as if she
had heard something obscene, he ruled it to he a hidden ‘yes'.
He felt that he should do such a thing so that his wife's death,
even if it were to occur before its tune and much before his
own, would at least be more dignified than the life she had so

Ml
 EVEN BEFORE

far led. To this end, m spite of all the delay, he had to provide
her with the opportunity to avenge the pun of those earlier
day-s, by returning vears later to the city where at such a young
age she had been so scorned, trampled, belittled and defeated
He wanted to make sure this incomplete and stumps tale would
be completed in peace; while he spread out in front of her the
pleasures she had once been deprived of, the luxuries she had
not tasted, and the bliss she had not felt. He had made up bis
mind. Agripma should spend the rest of her life not at this clink
but in Istanbul, only this rime not as a refugee or deponee or
stranger or guest or tenant. She should not be in the others
Istanbul but her own , To make her a home there, he would first
make her a Homeowner.

***

Thus they arrived. They armed but at first glance neither the
city' could recognize them nor they the ary. Having no desire
to spend a day more than necessary in hotel rooms, Pavel
Pavlovich Antipov started immediately to search for a suitable
house. He did not yet know if the local laws permitted
foreigners to acquire property' or not. However, given that
there were so many people in the world willing to tamper with
the gage of their nature for personal benefit or illicit gam, he
did not base the slightest doubt that he would somehow find
a way. Nonetheless, the opportunity that presented itself within
ten days was more than he could wish for. By chance a usurer
they' sat next to during a dinner reception, hosted by the
ow ners of their hotel, mentioned how the construction of an
*

apartment budding in an exclusive neighbourhood of the city

had recently been haJted midway' due to the unexpected
bankruptcy' of the ow ner. Pavd Pavlovich Antipov did not miss
this opportunity that had come hts way.
The following morning* the first thing he did was to go visit
the construction site. The construction was not, as the usurer
had recounted, halfway through. As a matter of fact, there was

61
THE FIFA PALACE

before him* The Alsatian companion and the Algerian maid

returned to France soon thereafter.Yet Pavel Pavlovich Antipov
did not go anywhere* After losing Agripina, he lived alone in
Flat Number 10 of Bonbon Palace for another two years.
When he died, he was neither a year more nor less i ban one
hundred years old-
in 1972 Bonbon Palace was inherited by Pavel Pavlovich
Antipov's daughter, born out of wedlock. Valerie Germain,
who lived in a large house in the Paris countryside with her
husband and four children, the last of which she had given
birth to w hen forty, did not attend the funeral of her father
whose presence had been nothing but an echoless void for her.
Not only did she not visit the grave where he was laid next to
Agripina, she also remained equally indifferent to this
unexpected inheritance. Neither then nor later did she feel the
need to come and see the building. Renting out all the flats
with the aid of a rather greedy but just as competent Turkish
real estate agent and managing the business front afar, she did
not interfere with anything as long as money was regularly
deposited into her bank account.
Less than three weeks after she had rented out Flat Number
HI, however, she received a letter gracefully penned in proper
French. It was from the tenant. She was informing her that the
personal belongings of Pavel Pavlovich Antipov and his w ife
were still there. Since the furniture was rather large in quantity
and value, she indicated, it would be worthwhile tor the owner
to come and see things for herself. However, it this was not
possible, she could find a shipping company to transport it all
to France and help with the arrangements.
In her response, Valerie Germain thanked the tenant for
concern she had shown and expressed her sorrow for having
inadvertently caused such trouble, but then indicated in no
uncertain terms that she was not interested in receiving any of
the mentioned items. Her tenant could choose among these
any she wanted to keep for herself, to use them as she saw fit,
or dispense them to others; she could then throw the rest in

66
 IVIN HHDIU ► i -

the garbage. The decision wav hers, Of course, if any expense

would be incurred in moving the furniture out of the house,
she wav ready to deduct it from the rent.
Another letter arrived soon after. The woman in Hat
Number 10 stated that she could not bring herselt to throw
the belongings into the garbage, and that she believed her
landowner would agree with her if and when she saw the
furniture hersell Volunteering to sate keep them for her until
then, she had attached to the end of her letter a list of one
hundred and eighty' items describing each and every one in
detail. Also included m the letter WM a black-and-white
photograph. It was a picture of Bonbon Palace, probably taken
by Pavd Pavlovich Antipov right after the construction was
completed but before anyone had moved m.
The apartment building appeared colourless and soulless in
the picture.There was not a single person in it, neither on its
windows or balconies, nor on the sidewalks or the streets It
resembled a child of war with no living relatives and no eyes
to watch her lonely growth, h looked equally placeless. One
could not get a clue about what the city surrounding it, it there
was one, looked like. It could be anywhere in the world and of
any time other than the present...
Valerie t ier main liked this picture. For a long time she kept
it posted on her refrigerator along with shopping lists, invoices
to be paid, calorie counts, food recipes, vacation postcards and
the pictures her children had drawn, Then, the children grew
up, her age advanced and she lost the picture of Bonbon Palace
so m e n me, som e w b ere.

f7
AND TODAY.
'Oh God, what wrong have we done to deserve this smell? We
literally live in garbage. It won't be long before we start
scrabbling around like roosters '
It was none other than C emal uttering these words and
whenever Cental said anything at the beauty parlour, female
laughter, some genuine, others out of politeness, would
immediately follow. That, however, was not the case this tune.
On the contrary, as soon as he stopped, a heavy silence
descended upon the place.
Here such pure silences were rare as rubies. For silence to
occur, the cessation of many street-sounds had to miraculous)v
v 4

coincide. These included the ear-splitting horns of the cars

turning down Cabal Street to avoid the traffic jam of the
avenue, only to dog the road here too. and the yelling of both
the watermelon vendor at his stand on the corner and his
competitor circling the neighbourhood in the run-down
pickup truck (whose loudspeaker could be heard from the
same place every twenty minutes)... Not forgetting the shrieks
of the children filling up the hole-in-the-wall playground
squeezed in between the apartment buildings, comprising of
two swings, one seesaw and a rickety sheet-iron slide that
when heated up in the sun burnt the bottoms of those sliding
on it.,. All of these parties had to agree among themselves to
concurrently hush.
Since the sources ot noise inside the beauty parlour were
just as plentiful as those in the world outside, for a true silence

71
THE FLEA PALACE

to rule even tor a short period of time, here coo, a number of

highly extraordinary events had to happen. The television in
the corner which was constantly on and always showing the
same music channel, had to fall silent even if only for a
moment - a chance event that could only happen during the
few minutes when either the lights went out, kicking in the
generator, or one of the customers sat on the re mote-control
by mistake. I he bellowing air from the small hairdryers, the
monotonous hum ot the large dryers placed on each
customer's head like the transparent turban of a grand vizier,
the constantly bubbling mmmr in the kitchen, the mechanical
hum of the ceiling fan, the crackle of the aluminum folios
wrapped on one by one to colour and highlight streaks of hair,
the splashing water when it was time to wash the hair, the
nagging of the customer w ho found the water put on her hair
suddenly either too hot or too cold, the itchy feeling buzz of
the manicure file upon the nails, the sizzling of the wax
emanating from the body hair removal room, the rustling of
the broom and duster brought out continually to sweep the
shorn hair, and the chats ebbing or flowing with the inclusion
of new participants, often never to be concluded or
completed...for there to be a genuine silence in the beauty'
parlour, all these had to simultaneously stop and stay this way.
Of course, on top of it all. Genial would have to stop talking.
However, the world is full of miracles. At least Bonbon
Palace is. All of a sudden lumpy clouds of silence of unknown
origin crowded into the mom through the wide open
windows and, like a muffler, softly spread onto all the sources
of noise. In that flawless silence Celal, the second hairdresser in
the salon, sighed gratefully. He had never liked the uproar and
commotion or the noisy chatter that went on day and night
but there was nothing he could do about it, After all, the one
who triggered this wearisome katzenjammer he had to suffer all
day long, was none other than his tw in, born of the very Mine
egg as he had been. Cental talked so much. He always had a
desire to talk and also a topic to talk about. He chatted with

72
 FI AT NUMBER THREE

the customers all day long (not minding his broken accent in
Turkish which he sail had not been able to get rid, of), kept an
eye on the television to vilify every single music clip,
incessantly scolded the apprentices, eavesdropped on others
conversations to put in his two cents' worth...and he did all
these dungs, not in any particular order but all at once...
Still Celal could not get angry at him. Like many who
believe their younger sibling’s childhood to have been more
difficult than theirs, Celal nurtured a tender love toward his
three and a halt minutes younger brother. The twins had been
separated when they were children, ( elal had stayed in the
village with his mother; in a suffocating yet affectionate,
Imuted yet protected womb* always where he belonged, w ith
and within his own roots. Genial, on the other had. had gone
to Australia with his father; uninhibited yet unshielded, in a
boundless but entirely solitary universe, communicating with
an estranged language, always half-setded, half-nomadic. Upon
Centals unexpected return to Turkey; their harshly parted
paths had crossed once again after a youth spent apart. Their
relatives had all presumed that the reason behind this sudden
return could be nothing but homesickness' and had therefore
forgiven Genial for not coming back years ago to attend his
mother's funeral. The truth is, the state of affairs in a country
always tinkers with the perceptions of its citizens. The natives
of less developed countries love to love those who, after
spending years m a developed country and despite having the
option to remain there, come instead to live with them. As
soon as he had returned to Istanbul, t emal too had benefited
from that distinctive love reserved tor those such as Christians
who convert to Islam, foreigners who settle in Turkey, tourists
who spend their vacations here every year and above all,
Western brides married to Turks who are willing to bestow
Turkish names to their children.
Be that as it may. Cental actually considered Australia his
country and did not much like either Turkey or the Turks,
especially Turkish women! With their narrow shoulders.
THE FLEA ^ carelcssly widen from top to
generous hips and fra ^ Y^ pcar. Besides which, they
toe, each one was a smaU. ^ h^ir,PAlways the same colours.
were so conservative a Turkish woman who
the same cuts He had not ye man’s. It was so
presence
have
happy
ineir nair tui wn, *awt «•
The only reason he did not pack up and leave this very
7 . Vii« twin was
down in Turkey. Indeed, Cemal
for the sake of his remaining half, the person whose name he
. ^ . . , i _^UUnhAr th*
had been separated from by a singl
resolute breach in his highly irresolute soul. If only he could
tear him away from this country, Cemal thought he would
surelv take his twin to Australia. However, as he could sense
with
lywhere his own
J
Vv Vi* IL* 9 v i
than to gather all
w v ^ W

belongings and savings and after all these years come to setdc
in Istanbul.
As
* ^ ^^f ^ - - ~

to anyone, a deep distress had enveloped him the moment he

* i I * 1 I * * % * # t * ft

twin
terminal, he had stared, first with
then embarrassment, at the curly-haired, large-nosed, big-
bellied man running to him with open arms and cries of
ecstasy His outfit was completely bizarre — a T-shirt adorned
Wit h kangaroos, a legume-green pair of shorts and those leather

sandals that thrust his pink, hairy, ugly feet into plain sight -
and his movements hugely vivacious. He made dozens ot
gestures just to say a single word, forever running into people
and knocking things over/! hat he was so garrulous himself was
hardly surprising. He made whopping promises that they
would never again be parted, squealing with tears in his eyes
about ridiculous plans and, damn it, never shutting up. If one
.* A

74
 r L AT NUMBER THREE

took the things he said seriously* it seemed as if he wanted to

use the money he had brought along as capital m a joint
endeavor. Amidst the bear bugs and gluey kisses, he had waved
his arms left and right like an inexperienced tightrope acrobat
trying to regain Ins balance to stay on the rope* yelling in the
middle of the airport* "Here are the magnificent twins! It
doesn’t really matter what we do. So long as we don't part
again. If we nuke it. we'll do so together, if we perish, we
perish together!’
Speaking of perishing, t lelal in his embarrassment had felt
like he had already started the process and silently wished that,
if disappearing from the airport was not a feasible option, he
could disappear from the face of the earth. Instead, all he could
do was to watch with deep astonishment and even deeper
distress this utterly unfamiliar and stranger-1 ban-a-stranger,
exact replica of his.
E hough Celal was far from being the type to plunge into
risky businesses. Ins twins excitement must have softened his
heart for he could not put up much resistance. When it was
time to figure out what common job they could find* a startling
fact awaited them: during the time they had been apart and
entirely unaware of what the other was doing, they had, albeit
for different reasons and through separate venues, undertaken
the same profession. Celal was a hairdresser and Cemal had also
spent years in a unisex haircutting salon,The coincidence had
instantly doubled Cemal s unrestrained exuberance. ‘Twin
hairdressers!' he had shouted with pride, and then, as if stating
something different, had echoed himself with even bigger
excitement:‘Hairdresser twins!' Looking at the contentment on
his face one imagined that each and every item on his wish list
had been granted. While his sluggish brother kept calculating
the pluses' and ‘minuses’ of opening a beauty parlour, Cemal
had already taken the plunge and started to look for a place.
I hat he did not have a clue what sort ot a city Istanbul was did
not seem to trouble him at all as he rushed to find a place by
himself, and before the week w as over he had already rented a

75
THE FI EA PALACE

flat, paying one year’s rent m advance. It was an apartment in

one of the many illegally constructed buildings on the steep
plains overlooking the Bosphorus, with a wonderful view of the
river. However, the moment Celal saw the flat, he struggled in
vam to explain to his twin that the panoramic view, which he
could tell was the main reason his twin had rented the place,
would mean nothing to their future customers.
Still they moved in and had no customers for months.Then
heavy downpours started and the main room got flooded, four
times with water and once by creatures which they guessed,
from the traces left behind, were street cats. At the end of the
fifth month, they finally scavenged, along with the money left
over from Centals hasty investment, whatever soaked and cat-
hair-covered furniture they could salvage and decided to try
once again - only this rime Celal was to choose the place. After
searching ior a long time and carefully weighing all the choices
under the present conditions, his choice was the flat on the
garden floor of an ashen, fairly old and unkempt but obviously
once grandiose apartment building, located in a rather lively
neighbourhood on a well-trodden street that opened up to a
busy avenue.
‘It’s so odd, isn't it?' said Cental on their first work day here.
Tm an incessant chatterer hut I went and found a place in a
lifeless neighbourhood.You re always quiet, yet you chose such
a noisy place. So we re opposites not only of each other hut of
ourselves as well!*
Just the same, their opposing characters were not reflected
in the fifty by sixty centimetre photograph, enlarged and
framed right across the entrance upon Centals insistence,taken
at the Marmara Region 19th Annual Hairdressers'
Competition that they had entered three years ago. On that
day; despite the fact that Cemal had worn a T-shirt with
carrory-parrots on it and Celal a snatte olive-green shirt, both
had ended up competing with the same flair model and
getting eliminated before the finals. The hairstyle they both
liked the most involved a strand of copper red hair from the

lu
I Ht bl t A PA L AC £

the world may have a bottom to reach and the judgement L)av
a cut-offdate, you can be sure that Israfil will not blow his sur
while you are sitting in the beauty parlour An earthquake can
happen in Istanbul at any moment, any second, hut definitely
not while you are at the beauty parlour. Not in there.
Distinguishing the differences between the two photographs
on the wall was a recurring delight tor the women customers.
The female gaze has, after all. a predilection to identify
differences before similarities. For three seconds show j man
the picture of five beautiful, young models in blue bathing
suits and ponytails lined up b\ a pool. What he sees would
probably be this: a ponytailed, young and highly good-looking
model in a bathing suit x5. Then show the same picture to a
woman. What she in turn sees would probably be:x5 models by
the pool, some with good postures, some not: some carrying
the ponytail well, others not: the blue bathing suit hitting the
figures of some well, others not; some are more good-looking
than others.
Be that as it may, when it came to the photographs of Cclal
and Cental taken at the Marmara Region's 19th Traditional
Hairdressers Contest, even the female gaze would have a hard
time detecting the nuances. Leaving aside their clothes and
C'ern.il n silver accessories, they were identical, right up to then
facial expressions. From the way they leaned their heads
sideways to the angle with which they bent over the models
whose hair they fixed, from the way they crossed their
eyebrows to emphasize how seriously they took what they
were doing to how they bent their fingers... Still, there was a
small difference that did not escape the eye: Genial lightly hit
his lower lip — perhaps because he knew he was not as good a
hairdresser as his brother, or he was not as enamoured with the
thickly braided buns w ith the curled strand of copper red hair
from the nape of the neck as he had thought. Alternatively,
perhaps all he could think of at that moment was finishing up
what he was doing so he could go and get something to eat.
How Genial, with his infatuation w ith food and ins non-stop

7H
 FI M NUMBER THRtE

consumption of all sorts of pastries since returning to Turkey,

managed to maintain exactly the same figure as CelaJ, who ate
as little as a bird and basically survived on soup, was a mystery
even the regular customers of the beauty parlour did not think
they could ever solve.
Yet the similarities between the twins came to an end when
you considered the style with which each executed the many
tasks that their jobs involved. It was due to this that Centals
customers differed from those of CelaL Of course, it did
happen that on certain days, a particular customer preferred
one twin to their usual choice of the other, tven those who
loved to shoot the breeze with Ccmal made sure at certain
times that Celal fixed their ham When it came to significant
days like engagements, weddings, celebrations and other
important appointments, the preference of all customers was
for Celal, In addition to the special occasions, he was also the
unerring choice for emergency situations. Those who had
messed around with their hair at home and ended up with it
scruffily cut, looking lightning-struck due to a cheap perm,
turned into a birds nest, dyed the colour of corn tassel when
attempting to lighten with bleach or dried out for following
word-of-mouth folk remedies,, .hair done in the morning,
hated at night, sacrificed to the careless experiments ot novice
hairdressers... a 11 ol these disasters were delegated to t'elals
adroit hands, in such difficult situations his even temperament
that was not at all like his brother's went into effect, enabling
him to calm down even the most distressed of customers. It
was unanimously agreed that there couldn't be any hair in so
calamitous condition that be could not save it,There was never
a problem between the brothers concerning which of them
should look after which customers. An unspoken agreement
reigned here as well; no one took offense as long as the
accepted distribution of roles remained intact Most of the
time they would understand what a womans concern was
within the first wo minutes after she had entered through the
door and they would greet her accordingly it the arriving

79
THE FLEA PALACE

customer blundered m roughly enough to make the chimes on

the door jangle and with a hopeless look on her face, Celal
would greet her, gauging the size of the problem awaiting him
all the while. Whereas it would be Cental's turn to welcome in
customers whose situations were less of an emergency ! ie
would stop die conversation he would most probably be
having and bend down to greet the customer with levels of
politeness which he could never get right; never forgetting, it
the person was an acquaintance, to throw in a few reproachful
words about how long it had been since they last saw her If it
were up to Genu I, he would require every woman to spend at
least an hour every day at the beauty parlour.
Yet there was one person who had from die very beginning
had her hair done exclusively by Celal - someone who
relished the silence that had just descended in the salon as
much as he did; Madame Auntie, This tiny, elderly woman
living alone on the top floor of Bonbon Palace at Fl at Number
HI carne once everv two weeks without tail to have her thin,
sparse hair trimmed and, once a month, coloured platinum
yellow That specific colour, however, had become a source of
worry to the hearts and a balm to the tongues of the regular
customers of the beaut)' parlour. They thought she was too old
for platinum yellow or else platinum yellow was too much for
her age. She was seventy-eight years old, certainly an
inappropriate age to be a blonde. Given that she still chose to
be blonde, it was considered that she should at least wipe off
that serious look, not be so grave or such a model of dignity.
If she was instead a witty* at least a tittle goofy, garrulous and
cheerful old woman with eyes twinkling the traces of the
bohemian life she had once led, paying no heed to moral
prohibitions or to what anyone said, them her hair would have
been appropriate.Yet here she was, as far removed from being
"a slacker as a proper granny* as straight as if she had been
drawn by a ruler, as heavy as cast metal* and* to cop it all.
platinum blonde. That was simply too much for the regular
customers of the beauty parlour.

so
 HLAJ NUMBER THREE

It was too much because, in the coded world of colours and

hair colours, the rules are clear-cut,Yellow has little to do with
respectability, A blonde woman can pierce through this rule on
only one condition: if she is a genuine blonde! t >ngmality is a
problem peculiar to blondes. The brunettes, red heads and
albinos can have their hair coloured as often as they like and in
as many different shades as they please and yet never have to
encounter titty times a day the question as to whether this is
indeed their natural colour. The desire to be blonde makes
women predisposed to be sly and forces them to Lie, Yet their
attempts at fraud are toiled very quickly. While they are busy
convincing people, truth insidiously grins from their roots.
Blondness makes the enthusiast dishonest and the genuine
anti-social.
Yet neither her hair colour nor her wearing make-up at this
age weakened the respect Madame Auntie awakened in those
around her. It was evident from the first day that she, with her
solemnity and taciturn nature, would be Celals customer and
always remain so. It judged by the gleam in their eyes upon
seeing each other, they got along fabulously yet, given they
rarely opened their mouths to utter a few words, it was hard to
figure out how they had bonded. If it were up to them, w ords
should have been rationed to people every' month. Everyone
should have known that words uttered are hke drinking water
and tilled soil, a scarce resource, and whenever one spoke, they
depleted their limited share.
However, this afternoon the tranquility' of this silence-
loving pair could only last four minutes. Suddenly, the door
was pushed, the bell lotted. In accompaniment to the
watermelon vendor's mechanical voice, which made him
sound as it lie was firing orders, a young woman entered the
beauty parlour with quick yet unhurried steps,Three indolent
women, all C'dual's customers, all with leopard-patterned
plastic smocks tied to their necks and lined up next to one
another on the swivelling chain in front of the wall-length
mirror, turned their heads with all the rollers, hairpins, hair

hi
THF FIFA PA1 AC F

caps and aluminum folios to give the newcomer a once over,

looking f rom top to bottom Upon realizing who she was, with
a deeper curiosity, they eyed her up again, this time looking
from bottom to top. This was a historic moment, for up until
now the Blue Mistress had never set foot in the beauty parlour,
Cehl stole a look at the door and went back to work At that
moment, he was interested in no hair other than the platinum
yellow strands of his friend; whoever this young woman might
be, she did not look like his type of customer anyhow. Cental,
however, was neither as indifferent nor as ignorant as his twin.
On the contrary, from the gossip lavishly dispensed at the
beauty parlour from morning until dark, he had distilled ample
information about the Blue Mistress He knew, for instance,
that she was only twenty-two years old. He had also heard how
a couple of weeks ago, upon being harassed by a man at the
entrance to their street, she had poured ill the contents of the
garbage bag she had taken out to dump over the head of her
assailant, Furthermore, he was also informed that she had
picked a light with the exceedingly religious apartment
manager, Had]] Hadji, who, when dividing the apartments
joint water bill among all the flats according to the number of
people residing in each unit, had prepared her invoice for not
one but two persons, It was scarcely news to anyone that
although the Blue Mistress had leased flat Number H by
herself stating she would live alone, a sour-faced, olive oil
merchant old enough to be her father lived with her at least
four days a week. C ental knew all this and was dying to tind
out more,
burning over his highlighting brush to the pimpled
apprentice, as he veered toward the door with a stuck-up smile
on his face, he took a full-length shot of the unexpected
visitor. You could hardly say that her body was great; though
not quite a pear, it was still pear-like. She was wearing a long
gauzy dress with straps that cose red up too much for a
mistress. However* under the sunlight trickling through the
glass door, her legs were entirely visible as she had not worn an
 FI AT NUMBER THKFF

underskirt. It looked as if she simultaneously wanted to hide

and expose her body; or perhaps she was just contused,. and
her face... her face was the most interesting part. Some people's
faces are like magnets covered with skin. AH the ms and outs*
ups and downs, core and gist of their personality reside there.
They think with their faces: converse* promenade, quarrel, get
hungry', feel happy, love or make love with their faces. Their
bodies art* necessary, albeit unimpressive pedestals, merely
added on to carry their faces. Such people are essentially
walking faces. Accordingly, they can never hide their feelings
away. Whatever they feel gets reflected, totally and immediately,
upon their faces. The petite* pale face of the Blue Mistress,
adorned with an azure htzmd, screamed out that, right at that
moment, she was trying hard not to show her distress. Comal
took a step toward her and though this was not at all his habit,
shook hands with the Blue Mistress, flagrantly violating
womens hairdressers custom of greeting customers. Like all
repressed homosexuals who generally got along well with the
delicate sex hut also somewhat sneered at them, he too was
particularly interested in those women who are partly envied,
partly hated by other women.
Trying to ignore the inquisitive, impish stares directed at her
from different angles of the beauty parlour, the Blue Mistress
moved with brisk, uncertain steps toward the swivel chair
Cental pointed out to her. As she took her place in front of the
long, wide mirror with other women* the looks directed at her
folded into one another and multiplied. The blonde w ith a
slight cast in her eye, the jittery chain-smoking brunette who
kept shaking her pedicured toes svith cotton pieces stuck in
between each one, the short and plump gingerhead sitting
with two thick carrots lines on top of her eyes having her
eyebrows coloured along with her hair, and finally the elf-like
elderly lady at the very corner; all stared at her as if waiting to
be introduced.
The pimpled apprentice tied the leopard*patterned, plastic
smock with dubious stains onto the neck of the Blue Mistress*

13
THE FLEA PALACE

arrful to couch her as little as possible, It was an agonizing

misfortune tor the apprentice to have to work at a beauty
parlour at this sensitive stage of his life, hearing all sorts of
obscene jokes from women about the way his face divulged
the sins his band must be committing at nights. As the teenage
boy backed otF with unsteady steps* he did not notice the cat
that had without a sound snuck in through the open window.
All eyes were turned toward the animal when it let out a
mighty ‘meow’ upon having its tail trampled.
It was a thick-coated, grim-faced, strapping cat as black as
tar: one of those that looked upon every human they saw with
narrowed eves as if there had been .1 bloody fight between cats
and humans from time immemorial. Still, as the round strand
ot hair starting from the sides ot its nose down under its chin
looked as if someone bad dipped it in a howl of yogurt, it had
a cute side in spite of everything.
"Come, Garbage! Come here* you nuisance!' C’enul called
out when he realized that the Blue Mistress was fond of the cat
‘Why do you call the cat “Garbage T asked the Blue
Mistress, The animal had immediately sensed who to get
attention from and started rubbing against her feet. The Blue
Mistress grabbed it with her two hands and lifted it up*
directing the same question this tune to the cat in the sugary
syrupy voice women use when admiring babies;’Why do they
call you Garbage?Tell me why, im beauty'? How could one call
such a beautiful cat Garbage?1
‘Perhaps because this Mister Garbage never leaves the
garbage dump, t’emal remarked with joy. Now that Garbage
provided a means for him to communicate with the Blue
Mistress* it seemed cuter to Cetnal than ever."There is probably
no other street cat in all of Istanbul as fortunate as this one,
Not that he has an outstanding beauty, look at his face for
(iods sake. Have you ever seen a cat with such dirty looks? It
is as if he was going to be a snake but could not find the
appropriate skin. But he still finds a way to get people to like
him. Does be have an irresistible charm or what? How does he

H4
 FIAT NUMBER THREE

manage to wrangle food out oi whomever he visits? But do

vou think he’ll be satisfied? Never! He eats his fill and then
ends up in his kingdom; the garbage dump. I swear I would not
have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. We had
just rented this place, were in the middle of the final
preparations, dog-tired from working all day long and hungry
like wolves. We decided to order food from the chicken place.
You know how huge their portions are, don’t you? Rice, salad,
fried potatoes, all come heaped high. Well, let me cut to the
chase. There w as some mix-up and they had sent an extra
chicken. We didn't return it as we thought we could eat that
one as well. Of course, we couldn't. Everyone could barely
finish what they had in front of them. Especially Celal, he
pecked at it like a bird. As we were earing, guess who picked
up the scent and showed up? I didn’t know then that they
called him “Garbage’1, but along he comes, begging food so
desperately you'd think the poor thing had been starving for
days. So we put the extra chicken in front of him and may the
curse of God befall me if I’m lying, he gobbled that chicken
down so ferociously you’d think a pack of Dobermans were
chasing him. Not a single bone was left behind. Can you
imagine, he devoured a plate of chicken heaped full right m
front of our eyes. Back then the “Car Prophet” lived in Flat
Number 2. Had you heard oi him? Another nut! He had some
twenty, thirty cats. T he whole place smelt o\ cat piss. Still, even
that was better than the snnk of this garbage. We were talking
about that before you arrived. I was just saying to Celal, we live
in so much garbage, we ll soon start to peck like roosters.
Right, Celal?"
Celal shook his head in agreement*
"After all that he had wolfed down, this Mister Garbage here
went after the cat food of the Cat Prophet, but her tribe must
have given him a sound beating for he returned with his tail
between his legs for our leftovers. We put out the fried
potatoes which he pretended not to like much bur he finished
them oft’all the same. At that point we all stopped working to

H5
THE FLEA PAI ACE

watch the animal; we placed bets on when he was going to

explode/
Not only the women lined-up by the mirror hut also the
manicurist and the apprentices who had heard this story at
least tom times were all ears listening to CemaL He may not
have been as fine a hairdresser as his brother* but when it came
to garrulousness* he beat everyone hands down. His linguistic
aptitude was amazing* If he were picked up from here and
dropped off m a country lie could not even place on a map, he
would learn their Language in a flash just to be able to
understand what was being spoken around him and then put
m his two cents worth. Likewise, in just five years he had been
able to repair his Turkish, which had lost its lustre during the
long years he spent in Australia and had polished it brand new,
The only problem was his telltale accent, However, Celal was
not certain as to whether his three and a halt'minutes younger
brother actually failed to get rid of his accent or deliberately
kept it intact thinking the customers liked it more this way.
He ate and ate, then got up stretching. The animal had
turned into a giant stomach! He couldn't even walk, dragging
along that tummy. We dashed after him, following him outside
where he jumped on the wall ot tins side garden...and what a
jump! He had become so heavy that his belly got caught and
he almost fell down. We thought he would curl up somewhere
and sleep for at least two days. No way! Instead he leaped to
the other side of the wall, You know those garbage bags they
leave there? Alas, we live in a garbage dump! Anyway this one
had found a bunch offish heads. I honestly have no idea what
else he could have eaten that day. We felt sick as we watched
him, you know, I swear ! have been frightened of this cat ever
since that day, We’ve heard a lot about cate who eat their
owners when hungry but this Garbage here, he could gobble
all of us down even when full What's more, 1 bet he would
polish it all off with what he finds in the garbage1'
1 swear hrs understood all we’ve been saying about him'
exclaimed the plump gingerhead with a frozen face, afraid of

B6
 FL A f NUMBER THREE

getting wrinkles on her forehead if she laughed.

'Let him understand. Is it all lies? He has a trash can instead
of a stomach! Hence the name: Garbage!' grumbled C’emal as
he shook the hairdryer m ins hand towards the cat carefully
watching him behind narrow ed eyes.
The hairdryer] Knowing that being subjected to the breath
of this howling monster was worse than falling into a bucket
full of water, die cat took off in a blink from the lap of the Blue
Mistress and leapt onto the open window. After staving there
lor an instant to give those in the beauty parlour a final and
unhappy once-over. he lumped towards the nearest empty
space like a stuffed toy filled with swagger instead of stuffing.
However, before his paws reached the garden, something weird
landed on his head: a cerulean child's dress, adorned with many
tiny mermaid figures ruffled all around and a starched collar,
which descended like a dry leaf or a piece of paper with an
almost stir real slowness from the top floor of Bonbon Palace,
for approximately five seconds, landing just moments away
from the soil right on top of the cat who had cut across its
path. Both Sanded on the ground at the same time.
4Oh, look, look! It s raining clothes from above!1 shouted the
manicurist in excitement, having been rummaging through
the shelf m front of the window to find the Number 113
burgundy nail polish,
Cemal, the plump ginger-head, the blonde with a slight cast
in her eye and the apprentices all dashed over to the window
in an instant, A little later, upon their insistence the Blue
Mistress came abo with reluctant steps and the jittery brunette
limped over trying not to step on her pedicured feet. Clothes
were indeed raining from above; childrenk clothes hi all types
and colours, fudging by the crowd of eight to ten people
gathered on the sidewalk, there were other spectators ot this
unexpected show All had turned their heads up and were
fixated on a single point trying to see the person throwing the
clothes Yet the perpetrator of the incident refused to reveal
themself Just a naked, unadorned, snow white womans arm

HI
I HE FLEA PALACE

appeared at regular interv als from the window on the flat at the
top floor of Bonbon Palace, on each appearance dropping yet
another piece of clothing.
As the clothes rained down one after another, the
manicurist stretched out of the window to catch the falling
clothes with the happiness of someone erving to touch the first
snow oi the season. From among the dresses, socks, sweaters,
shirts, pullovers, she managed to catch a resin yellow ribbon.
1 )on't do that, it's not proper,' said Madame Auntie who had
maintained her composure through it all. Her lifeless voice
raised and lowered like a knobby watt or a jagged piece of paper.
The manicurist grumbled with the deep disappointment of
being forced to be virtuous just as she had started to savour
being witness to another persons insanity'.With a long face, she
threw the ribbon on top of the mound of cloches in the garden.
It did not last long. Afrer a minute or two the rani of clothes
stopped by itself. The concluding act of the show was a royal-
blue school uniform. Like some sort of coy parachute it opened
up to land quietly on cop of its predecessors. The windows of
the top floor were noisily shut and the snow white arm
retreated inside. As the spectators on the sidewalk dispersed one
by one, the ones inside returned to their places as well.
'Sonny, make all of us coffee." said Cental to the apprentice
without pimples. ‘Cod knows, our nerves are on edge." He
collapsed onto the large couch, suddenly feeling exhausted.
Were sick of it. Ever since we moved in here, things have been
raining on our heads The cracked woman has not left a thing
in the house, she open* the window's whenever she loses her
temper and “whoosh!' whatever there is comes down. One ol
these da vs she’s going to throw daw n a TV vet or something
like that and whichever one of us gets it in the head will die
tor nothing/
Though he remained pensive for a moment, it would not
take Cental long to collect himself together. He was always
somewhat scared of sadness settling in with no palpable reason.
‘So inventive! Never have 1 seen her throwing the same

m
 HAT NUMBER I Hkkfc

thing twice. Celal, do you remember* she once threw down her
husbands ties and they remained stuck on the rose acacia tree
tor days/
A hearty response from his brother being one of the last
things he expected to get at this moment, Cernal turned not
to him but the customers instead; Cdal got out and brought
the ties down He didn't let the young ones out fearing they'd
break the branches of the rose acacia. He climbed himself. Had
it not been for him. the stupid mans ties would have been
hanging out for days.'
Cchl smiled with a visible distress, i hope someone will
gather the clothes up. It’s getting dark, god knows someone
could steal them/ he mumbled to escape being the focus of the
conversation.
‘She’s gathering them up. 3 lie new cleaning lady is down
there gathering all of them up. What a shame, the poor woman
is red with embarrassment as if shed thrown them down
herself/ blurted out the manicurist.
Tt wont be long,This one will soon quit as well/ mumbled
the jittery brunette as she puffed away, examining the
permanently waved strands of hair chat had started to appear
from under the dun rollers that the apprentice with the
pimples had started to undo.
Oh, can any cleaning lady survive fijen? Whoever comes
runs away/ remarked Genial.
Hygiene Tijen! Hygiene I yen!' giggled the blonde with a
cast m her eye 1 I he woman hasn't stepped out of her house
lor exactly four months. Can you imagine? She hasn't been
able to go outside for fear of catching a disease. She's utterly
mad these days '
Come on* what do you mean by these days* for Gods sake?
Those who are in-the-know- will tell it straight* she's always
been nuts. Madam Auntie s known them since day one. Isn’t it
so. Madam Auntie?’ shouted the manicurist. Like many ol her
peers* she too leh the need to raise her voice when talking to
an elderly person,
1 Kt FLEA PALACE

Ail heads turned to the old woman. Actually no one knew

whv she was called*'Madam Auntie’. Neither had they hitherto
wondered whether she was Muslim or not, though if asked,
chances are they would affirm that she was a Muslim and a
4

Turk just like everyone else. The reason they could not help
but call her "Madam1, was not because they had any doubts
about her religion or citizenship, they just felt deep down that
she was different, though they were unable to explain why It
was not because she was so advanced in years (though she
certainly was) or because her manners were unusual (though
they certainly were) that she differed from others; her oddness
was less visible and yet was easily detectable. Since her nature
little resembled that of the others, "Madam1 she remained.
Besides, having been here for so many years she had much
older roots than anyone else, she w as the only one among them
who was born and raised in Istanbul. While most of the
neighbours were immigrants, her entire life had been spent in
this neighbourhood. Unlike the others, she had not popped up
out of now here, turning her back to a future that never came
and a past that was never left behind. Here she was, neither
dragged along by others nor having dragged others behind her.
Her name was "Auntie* because her very being was a residue of
a past none of them had lived.
Madam Auntie low-ered her head with a withered smile, She
looked at her blue, purple and burgundy hands with brown
spots drizzled over them, i he same spots, only smaller and more
faded, had been randomly sprinkled from her temples to her
cheeks. If these had been the loudest colours on her skin, she
would have looked, like many women her age, too old to age
further.Yet the orange of her lipstick that seemed less spread on
than glued oti, the sunny yellowness of her leaf-shaped gold
earrings, the rouge on her cheeks that made the concentric
wrinkles stand out line by line, the purple tones of eye shadow’
that collected on her eyelids laser upon layer, the navy, blue and
grey twinkle of her turquoise eyes, and then ot course, the
platinum yellow of her hair, had opened up wayward

90
 FL AT NUMBER THREE

pas^wjys to the unknown, behind her tar from sombre

appearance. Her putting on so much make-up regardless of her
age had bestowed upon her a grand ridiculousness. Like all
grandly ridiculous people* she too had a scary side.
As such, she was a live-wire that added extra spark to all
chats. When she was around, it was hard to talk behind people’s
hacks or get any pleasure from the art of slander or
exaggeration , but the opposite was also true.The jir of sobriety
of Madam Auntie made the women m the beauty parlour
recall the mixed pleasure they had last tasted during their high
school years when they took a common stand against a very
righteous teacher* while craving to impress her at the same
time. Their convoluted chats were tidied up so that they
reached the right consistency as they trod around and
penetrated from many dm.Ltions the principles she voiced and
the values she detended. In addition* the pleasure they received
multiplied when they were at times able to include her in their
aspirations. For great is the pleasure of drawing the pure to
slovenly ways* to then see how they are like everyone else*
worth only as much.
The plump brunette must have felt the same for she could
not resist; she backed the manicurist in a collective attempt to
convince the old woman; 'The\ say Hygiene Tijen was no
different as a voting girl but defrmteh got worse after getting
married. She's a hygiene-freak
'Come on, is that so bad. She's just a fastidious woman,
objected Madam Auntie making an effort to put the matter
behind them.
"Auntie* this isn't fastidiousness, its an illness,' shouted the
manicurist with the courage pumped into her from the
reinforcements*"Maybe even worse. When you’re ill, vou know
it. You go to the physician and get treated* right? There's no
cure for hygiene-freaks! If there was one. Misses Tijen
wouldn’t put it in her mouth, she’d find it too filthyV
What a shame! Her child suffers the most*’ said the blond
with the one eve cast.
m

11
THF Fi R A PAL AC t

Don’t say that*’ muttered Madam Auntie, *Tijen dotes on

her daughter. How can a mother possibiy want any harm to
come to her child?"
Fine, Madam Auntie, but what kind of a love can we
understand from it. Look, she threw down all of the poor kid s
clothes," yelled the manicurist.
'Really?1 uttered Madam Auntie in astonishment.
Hie manicurist exclaimed w ith the thrill of having finally said
something the old woman could not object to: i >f course, all
those clothes raining upon our heads belong to that poor kid. See
that she doesn’t throw out her own clothes. The woman is nutty
but not insane. Shes perfectly sane when it suits her interests!'
The old woman puckered her thin lips with suspicion.
■Really, so she threw out the child's clothes. Why 1 wonder?"
"Why do you think, because she s nutty.:
Madam Aunties face darkened. Realizing she had gone too
far the manicurist hushed, nonetheless pleased that she had said
all she wanted to say
Oh, what s it to us? if shes nutty so be it!- roared Cental.
Though enjoying the gossip, he was worried the manicurist's
idle calk would bother the old woman and so anger Celal/Are
we to bother with the troubles of every nutter? Is there
anything more in Istanbul other than nutters? Here we see lots
of them, as many as bulgur. If we talk about each one of them,
well do so until the end of our lives. Sonny what happened to
the coffees? Bring them here, we re parched’
In an attempt to change the topic, Celal intervened. This
garbage smell has increased again, We complained to the
municipality so many times, It didn't help at all ’
'What did they say? They said they've turned the garbage
collection business over to a private company; added Genial
instantly, always fond of completing the half-uttered sentences
of Ills twin. 'Then we found the company's phone number.
They too are boors. They send the truck out right in the
middle of rush hour when people are on their way back from
work, as if out of spite.’

92
 FLAT NUMBER THRtL

"They do come and collect the garbage regularly, though at

the wrong hour. Alas however, we still haven’t been able to get
rid of this smell,* summed up Celal,
*0f course we can't get rid of it. With so much bulgur around,
we can be rid of neither garbage nor cultural backwardness.*
CemaJ said heatedly ‘Now can you believe it, Madam Auntie,
We spend our days scolding the people who leave their garbage
by this wall All the ignorant illiterate women in this
neighbourhood leave their garbage by our garden wall and
always the same rypes - so pig headed. I’m tired of repeating it!
There’s one in particular you especially don’t want to know
about. The woman's house is right at the end of the street. She
doesn’t mind, she walks three hundred metres every day to
dump her garbage here. I long pondered why on earth
someone would do such a thing, I finally came up with an
explanation: there was probably a field here long before this
apartment building was constructed. Back then, this woman s
grandmother would dump her garbage here. Eventually; that
woman had a daughter and when that one was grown up. she
too would always dump her garbage at the same place Then she
too had a daughter. That’s the bulgur I have a row with every
one of God’s days.Their interest in garbage is hereditary; passes
from mother to daughter, A ty pe of family tradition! Mind you,
what could she do, she’s just continuing whatever she has seen.
But unlike her ancestors, she doesn’t pour it out of a pail, she
puts it in a plastic bag first, A modern W^rT
While the others laughed and Cetnai grumbled, Madam
Auntie shook her head deep in thought.'But Genial' she said,
'this place wasn’t a field in the past. Underneath this entire
neighbourhood are graveyards,..'
Not at all prepared for such an objection, Cetnai swallowed
back all the words that were getting ready to leave his tongue.
As he looked around him in distress as if lor help, he was
waylaid by a teeny-tiny, constantly moving shadow at the
bottom of the counter in front of the mirror. It was a
cockroach. It had climbed the basket of rollers, moving his
THF Ft F A PALACE

antenna as if listening to the chat. Good thing it had not yet

attracted anyone's attention. However, if it decided to get out
of the basket and walk along the counter* it would shortly be
parading in front of each and every customer. Cemal grabbed
the large bristle hairbrush and approached sideways in a crab-
walk, at the same time talking even more excitedly so as not to
let on.
“Took here, woman!** I say; “Do 1 come and dump my
garbage on your carpet? With what right can vou leave your
garbage on someone ekes wall? Wait tor the garbage truck to
come at night, then you can take it outside your own door and
the garbage men would pick it up " No* she doesn't understand
at all — because of that bulgur 1 tell you!’
‘What bulgur? asked the iilue Mistress, popping her head up
trom the third page news where >he was hiding from the
constant looks of the apprentice with the pimples.
Oh, don't you know my Mgm theory? Let me tell you right
jw.iv. cmi Cemal without taking his eyes ofl die cockroach. * It'-
actually very simple. Now, is there population planning in
Turkev? No! Oh God gives them to you. so keep giving birth
and let them loose onto the streets. Okay, let s say you let them
loose, but how are you going to teed so many kids? One person
you feed with meat, five people with meat and bulgur* ten with
only bulgur. OK, is this bulgur beneficial to human intelligence?
No! You can then keep on telling the woman as mam times as
you want. “Come on sister, don’t dump your garbage in my
garden!" I keep on hollering. She stupidly stares at my lace.Then
the following day at the same time she comes again and dumps
again as if wound up like a watch. She doesn’t understand* how
could she, with the brains of bulgur?'
Celal coughed clumsily; Cemal had received the message,
but preferring the interest of the Blue Mistress over the
political correctness of his twin, he did not back down.
just this past month 1 personally confronted this woman. It
was an afternoon like this one; late* we were fixing a bride's
hair. 1 lie bride was on one side, the relatives of the bride on
 FLAT NUMBER THREE

the other; the bun of one was finished and the other one had
just been started. We d been up all day long, totally beat, I
looked outside and saw this woman coming again wobbling
with garbage bags in her hand, 1 opened the window's, stuck
my head out, waiting/‘ May be shell be embarrassed when she
sees me and go back, 1 thought. No wav' This creature of God
tame looking right into my eyes and still threw down her
garbage. Oh, if l could only understand! Who declared our
garden wall a dump? Who told these people, “Come throw'
your garbage in from of your neighbours house?" The
apprentices could barely hold ine back. 1 was going to tear the
woman to pieces. I lost it, 1 was hollering, hurling insults.Youd
think a person would be a little embarrassed and at least feel
reluctant in front of all the people, right? Guess again! She
stares at my face with a stupid naivety. I swear to God she
didn’t even understand why I was angry. She must've thought
I d escaped from a mental institution. “Even if she doesn't
understand, she’d probably be afraid to come again,’ I said to
myself. Yet didn't she come again at the same time with the
garbage in her hand? There she w as, eyes wide open, fixed in
an idiotic stare to see what 1 was going to do. She’ll make a
murderer out of me. Oh my beautiful God, one doesn’t
meddle in vour business but why on earth do you create such
people? Now' w hat do we have to do to these bulgur, I don’t
know ? Because of them, the apartment building is thick with
the smell of garbage, i he wav things are going, no one will
come m here. Well lose our jobs, our daily bread. Child, spray
a bit, okav?*
w

The sweet sugary perfume of the spray with the picture of

a deserted shore shadowed by palm trees and a turquoise sea,
rained in particles on all corners ot the shop and mixed with
all the various smells Cental stole a glance at the cockroach in
the hope that it would be poisoned by the room spray.
However, not only was it not at all affected bv the particles
landing on it, it had even succeeded in climbing up to the top
of the pile of rollers and was now getting ready to move onto
T H £ ELEA PALACE

the Br illumine box next to it.

‘God knows you’re right, all your customers would run
away,' the high-strung brunette jumped in, as she witched the
Number 113 burgundy nail polish that had already dried on
her toes now being put on her fingers, ‘Of course you've
grown accustomed to the smell because vouYe here all day
long. Sometimes when 1 enter this apartment building, I feel
suffocated by it.'
The windows are wide open all day long, the breeze
blows pleasantly and still the smell does not go aw ay. They say
it increases as you go up to the higher floors. Is that so
Madam Auntie?1 shouted the manicurist causing the nail
polish to overflow.
4And the across from us claim we take their garbage.
Now look here, are you crazy? What would I do with your
disgusting garbage?' Cemal intervened and looked sharply at
the manicurist so she would understand his discomfort about
her asking questions of the old woman at every opportunity.
‘How so? What does that mean?’ asked the Blue Mistress
taking a break from bemoaning her new image that had just
started to appear on the mirror. 1 ike many other women who
witness even just the trimming of their hair they had tried so
hard to grow long, she too had already started to tee! remorse
even before getting up from the swivel chair.
‘Oh, don't you know were in dispute with the nutters at
Number 4? And 1 thought there wasn’t a person left who hadn't
heard about it* Cemal said. "One day these people came and
"Welcomef" I said, for why else does someone come to the
beauty parlour? ! thought they'd come to have their hair done,
but apparently that wasn’t their intention. This crazy woman in
front, her stark ras ing mad husband behind her, their old maid
older daughter next to them and the other old maid younger
daughter behind them, all four of them wfere standing in front of
me, out on a family campaign, first 1 didn't understand a thing
from what they said, ft turned out they’d tied up their garbage
bags and placed them in front of their door and w hen they
 FI AT NUMISHR THREE

looked five minutes later, their garbage wasn't there! “ Where s

our garbage?" they said, ’Meryem might've picked n up," 1
suggested.“No sir, the janitors had gone to their village that day"
“The garbage men might have picked it up", I said, “What sort
of a garbage man would enter the apartment building?1* they
retorted. “I tow would I know where vour garbage is?" They
obstinately maintained. “You took it, give our garbage back"
What luck! Of all the places in Istanbul, we opened up a beauty
parlour in an apartment budding full ol nutters!'
Absorbed in talking. Cental suddenly realized he had moved
away from his prey Though he turned around scrutinizing the
situation warily, the cockroach was nowhere to be found.
‘For goodness sake, whoever took the garbage bag, took it.
What’s the big deal?' muttered the high-strung brunette,
lighting a new cigarette,
‘Heyt the incident isn't as frivolous as you think,1 stated
Crnial as he looked under, around and in the vicinity of the
basket of rollers.'The mans a paranoiac. His wile is even worse.
Who knows what scenarios they invented in their heads?
Something like the CIA took the garbage bags or the terrorists
kidnapped them, this was on the tip of my tongue but I
swallowed it/'Now look here, who do you think you are to
imagine you might have your garbage stolen?" How sad! Being
a poor bulgur but thinking yourself a blessing like beans/
The pimpled apprentice started to collect the teacups
accumulated on the counter, each stained by different coloured
lipsticks. As Genial stared fixedly at each teacup fearing the
cockroach would emerge from under one of the saucers, his
apprentice looked at the nipples of the Blue Mistress with a
gaze just as fixed.
Since the Blue Mistress, finally rid of the plastic smock, was
busy inspecting her new hair model, she was not aware of
either the apprentice's looks or Centals anxiety. If only she
could muster enough courage to one day have her hair cut
very short.,+ but the olive oil merchant would most certainly
not approve of such a change. Far too many times he had said
THE f-LEA PALACE

he liked hair long in a woman. God knows he was going to

complain a lot at her trimming her hair even this much. She
looked at her watch. She was late, very lace, She still had a lor
of errands to run. (iemal was standing right behind her with a
bristle brush in his hand, she thought the anxiety on his face
was due to her not liking the haircut, and because she wanted
to please him and had also decided she should say her
"goodbye' in the same way she had been greeted, she fervently
shook his hand, violating the customer departure custom of a
womens hairdresser.
I he Blue Mistress’s hand had still not left Centals when the
outside door opened harshly once again. As the bell shook
mightily, with the yell of the watermelon vendor at the corner,
who now seemed determined to suppress his competitor with
the loudspeaker, a woman plunged in dripping with agitation
all over. AH heads m the beauty parlour once again turned to
the door to see the new addition to their ranks. They looked
and were left dumbstruck, as if frozen stiff by a new command.
The door closed and the last remaining echo of the bell
stopped by itself as it reached the rest with a puny sound. The
new customer was none other than Hygiene l ijen.
No wav, 1 won't go1' shouted Mu hammer from where he had
squeezed into, He then pounded his fist, as if it were
responsible for ill this, on the closest of the velvet sofas whose
colour had first been egg yolk yellow, next sour cherry
burgundy and then aquamarine.but now was ultimately a total
mystery under these flowery covers. He would have preferred
his kicks over fists, having lately made a habit of kicking
everything he tame across,but right at tins instant the scrawny
frame of ho six years had been so tightly squeezed between the
wall and the sofas that he was not even able to move his legs
properly Unable to free his body, he instead unleashed two of
the longest barrages of swearwords he knew, tying one onto
the tail of the other Upon hearing him swear again, Meryem*
pushed with her feet all of the three sofas that were lined-up
and pinned her blasphemous son to the wall, in the meantime
guarding her swollen belly with two hands. Now literally
cornered, Muhammet turned red with anger and opened his
mouth to swear anew but did not dare go that tar As
surrendering to his mother without resistance was a wound to
his pride, he angrily bit the side of the sofa that had started to
hurt his waist The flowery cover protected the chair from all
such outside pressures but maybe he could leave teeth marks if
he bn hard enough..-
*Mrr\Tm mean* Mjrv in Turkish and ‘Meryem, Musa, Muhammet’ i\ 4
trilogy rrferritic it» the three monmheisi religions Mari. Mims ami
Muh jmriief are the names of the fjmilv members).
THE FLEA PALACE

I he history at this scuffle that was repeated every weekday

morning went back exactly five months and one week to the
enrollment of Muhammer into the 1-G section of the only
elementary school in the neighbourhood. All he could
remember from the first dav of school was the anxious
j

mothers', distressed children's and sulky teachers' faces. With

time, the mothers' anxieties* the children\ distress and even the
teachers' sulkiness had abated bit by bit, yet all these bits,
instead of scattering away to eventually disappear, had
altogether been transferred to Mu hammer. Hence after five
months, one week to the day, Mubammet was an anxious,
distressed, sulky child who still did not want to go to school.
His starting school had coincided with his mothers sofa
obsession. Around that time, Meryem had somehow heard that
her cousin's son who resided in an Aegean town by' the coast
and made a living by repairing boats like his father and
grandfather before him, had decided out of the blue to settle
in Istanbul and go into the furniture trade., Within thirty-six
hours ol hearing this news, Meryem had arrived at her cousin’s
workshop and plat ed an order for sonic furniture* the colour
and style of which she had not discussed with anyone else I he
agreement was as follows: the cousins son. who had not yet
received Ins first order, was going to give her a family discount
and Meryem was going to hand over her old sofas and a
minimal payment.The thing neither side knew at the time was
that Meryem was three weeks pregnant This bit of knowledge
was not as irrelevant to the situation as it might seem at first
glance, for as it had been observed when she was with
Muhammet, pregnancy made Meryem rather stubborn, quite
apprehensive and a little ‘bizarre,1 When the cousins son had
finished the sofa set, Meryem"s pregnancy had progressed two
months and was going strong.
When the time came* she went to the workshop to see the
finished work, looked at the colour of the sofas and threw* up
Egg yolk yellow*! When even the thought of egg yolks was
sufficient to make her feel like vomiting, it w as out of question

100
 FI AT NUMBER ONE

chat the sofas she was going to put in the living room be egg
yolk yellow, When the cousins son tried to contain the
situation by reminding her that it was she who had chosen this
colour, Meryem could not help throwing up again. She threw
up so many times before noon that finally she got her way.The
new agreement was as follows: die cousin's son who had still
not received his first order was going to change the colour of
the upholstery and in re turn, Meryem would give both her old
sofas and more money than they had initially discussed,
Meryem $ pregnancy had reached its third month when the
cousin's son notified her that the sour cherry burgundy sofa set
was ready. In the meantime her morning sicknesses had
considerably diminished. Now she instead suffered from
schnialtziness. When the time came she went to the workshop
to see the completed work, looked at the colour of the sofas
and started to weep. Sour cherry burgunds! When even the
image of a single sour cherry tallen from its tree was enough
to remind her of untimely death, the possibility of the sofas in
her Living room being sour cherry burgundy could not be
even brought up. When the cousin's son tried to defend
himself and reminded her that she herself had chosen this
colour, Meryem could not help weeping again.That afternoon
she cried so much that she finally got her way. The ness
agreement was as follows: the cousins son who had not yet
received his first order was going to change the colour of the
upholstery and in return, Meryem would give both her old
sofas and tw ice the money they had initially agreed upon.
Only this time the most innocuous of all colours was going to
be selected to guarantee customer satisfaction: aquamarine!
h worked. Two weeks later, when Meryem saw the
aquamarine sofas she neither vomited nor wept.That night the
cousins son slept peacefully for the first time in days. The
following day, he threw the aquamarine sofa set in a pickup
truck and brought it to Flat Number I, Bonbon Palace, with
two skinny porters he hired at the last minute as his big and
burly apprentice had suddenly been taken ill Meryem had

mi
THE FLEA PAL AC! t

been waiting for them excitedly since early morning with

her ear on the doorbell and her hand on her not yet too
swollen belly.
In the folly crowded living room that was already small and
had become almost impossible to walk around, with the arrival
ol the new sotas. the porters and the cousin s son jumped over
the coflee tables and perched on whatever they could find to
drink a cup of coffee to take away their tiredness. Then it was
time to leave,The cousin's son put in his pocket the agreed fee,
and made each porter take a large piece of the old melon pink
sofa set on their back, thus heading toward the door in a
convoy. Unfortunately; they then had to stop abruptly before
they could take even a single step. Such instances happen every
so often on the road as well. You see the vehicle in h ont ot you
come to a sudden stop and know instantly that the road is
jammed, but being unable to see what had happened ahead,
you have no idea what the problem is and are forced to a
standstill. The cousin's son and the porters, who were now
doubled under the loads on their backs, were slightly more
fortunate. Even though they did not know the ‘why’s and
wherefores' ot the jam, they could see the immediate cause.
Meryem stood at the threshold with ill-omened glitters m her
eyes, her heavy frame and large belly, which seemed to have
grown even more in the last few minutes, blocking the exit and
not letting them pass.
Her husband Musa was the first to grasp what Meryem s
problem was. He drew to the side with silent resignation and
started to fathom the course of events. Musa had an ulcer ot
the stomach. Whenever he became irritated, his stomach
started to burn sourly: So he had found the road to a serene life
in accepting his wife as she was. He was particularly
determined to avoid conflicts with her during her pregnancy
Yet, since lie felt pity for the porters, he deemed they should
at least be provided with some sort of explanation for the
situation thev were in. He began by spying simply.'She cannot
give up her old sofas. She cannot. 1 know.'

1(12
 FLAT NUMBER ONE

III point of tact, this last 1 know" was some sort of a

forewarning. It was like suggesting ‘Why don't you simply give
up while you are ahead of the game! Yet neither the cousins
son nor the porters could get the message* Accordingly they
put the sofas down and started to argue forcefully. Their
steadily swelling anger, however, did not do anything other
than make Menem embrace her cause even more fiercely.The
melon yellow solas were indeed worn out but they had a
common past with the family.The set had been bought when
Meryem and Musa had finally moved out to their own house
after spending live miserable years with the latter s mother and
father Muhammet s babyhood had been spent on them. The
tiny pitch black hole at the corner of the double chair was a
memento from the cigarette ash of a relative who had come to
see the baby.That relative was no longer alive. Occasionally his
scratchy voice smoked from the cigarette burn he had left
behind.Thar is what the past was, that which you could not get
rid of.The past did not resemble the crumbs spilled over a rug
You could not shake them out from open windows.
‘Well, in that case, we Ye taking these new ones back.' said the
cousins son as he shouldered one of the aquamarine sofas.
Taking his lead, the porters immediately reached lor the other
pieces of the set. Meryem looked at them with eyes filled with
sheer sorrow like a small child witnessing the Lamb she had
lovingly led tor days now being taken away to be slaughtered.
For the following hour, the cousins son and the porters tried
to persuade her in vain, the former furiously the latter
desperately, having now realized that they might not be paid in
the end. Since it could not be decided which sofas were to go
and which to stay* all throughout the steadfastly flaring dispute,
everyone (except Musa) was left standing, which made them ali
(except Musa) even more likely to explode. Mans times
Meryem’s eyes filled with tears, many times she telt nauseous.
Considering her nausea, if not her tears, to be a message sent b\
the baby in her womb. See? she asked, joining her hands on
top of her belly ‘Even this unborn innocent's heart is not

103
THE FLEA PALACE

willing to let go of the sofas.'Joining her two skilk to maximize

power, she both cried and threw up so much that afternoon
that by the end of the day the victory was Meryem V The
cousin\ son was furious at himself for violating the oldest rule
of trade history, 'Never conduct business with relatives,\md he
and the porters, who were equally furious at him for his
obvious failure, all left Flat Number 1, Bonbon Palace.
Even though indubitably victorious, an unexpected
problem awaited Meryem. How they were going to place two
separate sofa sets and their coffee tables simultaneously inside
the already narrow janitor s flat with its low ceiling, was a
challenge to the mind as well as being an eyesore but Meryem
would not give up. Making use of every square centimetre
available, she managed ro make two three-seated, two double-
seated and six single-seated sofas fit into the twenty-metre-
squared living room by lining them up like a wagon with the
coffee tables placed in between. Hence the largest mistake
Mu ha mm et had committed this morning when declaring to
his mother his intention to not go to school was to take refuge
behind one of these furniture w agons.
‘You'll go whether you want to or not,' Meryem said as she
continued to push the sofas with one foot and started
preparing her son s lunch.
Once again she had made a toasted-cheese sandwich with a
slice of white cheese, a slice of tomato and three sprigs of
parsley in between. Depending on the day, she also put in a
single fruit and just enough money, no more no less, to buy
one bottle of buttermilk drink which Muhammet bought
from the school canteen, roasted-cheese sandwiches were
prepared at the school canteen too and they were definitely
much better and warmer than the home-made version, but
even though he had told his mother over and over again noi
to prepare a toasted-cheese sandwich, not once had he been
able to make her listen to him. If only she could be prevented
from putting the tomato in and, if not that, at least the parsley,
as he could not understand what that was doing there anyway.

1114
 flat number one

l low ever, whenever Meryem had her mind set on something,

oblivious to all stimuli pointing in the opposite direction, she
would simply hide like a sea-creature in the deal silence of a
cave, refusing to come out until the other side had totally given
up. It was simply impossible for her to veer-off from these
things she had learned at who-knuws-what stage of her life:
that toasted-cheese sandwiches, tor example, were to be
prepared with a slice ot tomato and three sprigs of parsley,That
is what she had been doing every morning tor the last five
months and one week, and today was no exception.
Muhammet, however, felt as it it was not only this tomato and
parsley chat he carried to school every day, but also his mother’s
eye and ear. Should he ever not eat his sandwich or commit
the much worse crime of skipping school, he somehow felt
sure that this red eye ot the tomato and green ear ot the parsley
would immediately break the news to his mother.
Until school started, it was not with fear but with love that
he took pieces of bread into his hands. In those days, the two
noses of the breakfast bread belonged to him. As Meryem gave
the noses to her son. she did not neglect to take off the small
piece of paper attached to either one or the other of the noses.
She told Muhtnmet that this notched piece of paper was a
letter from the bakers daughter. The letter would be made to
wrait on the side until he had finished off his breakfast. Only
then would Muhammet have gamed the right to learn what
was written in it. To that end, he would eat without am- fuss,
w m

Even though he was forced to finish one boiled egg every

morning, lor the sake of reading the letter, he would complete
his breakfast without a peep. And when the time came,
Meryem took mischievous pleasure in clearing the table as
slowly as possible to increase her son's curiosity, then poured
herself a cup of tea and started to read, dissolving the words
slowly in her mouth like a lump of sugar.
The baker's daughter was a lunch child; she had no friends
or siblings. While her father baked bread at night, she would sie
alone in between the flour sacks and secretly write a letter to
4

105
1 Hr HM PM ACE

Muhammet, I ler mother bad died while she was Mill .1 baby
and her father had remarried. I he step-mother constantly
tormented this rmy orphan because she had a stone instead of
a heart. T he poor girl escaped from the house at every
opportunity to spend tune at the bakery with her dear father.
Sweet-smelling soft breads were prepared at the bakery, ako
crisp jimifs As Meryem kept reading these, it never occurred to
Muhammet to wonder how so much information fitted onto
a piece of paper that was only one times three ccntimetres-
squared. In the universe of nought-to-one years, bread was
sacred and every piece of paper with writing on if remained
an absolute mystery; as the abstruse magic of the two met on
the nose of the bread, the baker's daughter would shimmer
under a halo of sheer enchantment.
Muhammet wanted to learn everything about her: what the
bakery looked like, what she did there, it she liked to sleep in
the morning and be up at night when all children her age* had
to go to bed early, the games she played and, most of all,
whether she was beautiful or not,., Meryem described the girl
as ‘blonde and a* delicate as a water lily that blooms in the
water.' She kept her hair long. It reached her waist on each side
m two braids. Muhammet. too. bad long hair then. 1 hose who
saw him on the street thought he was a girl.
In her letters, the baker's daughter mostly talked about the
people who stopped by the bakery all day long, Old people
came, leaning on their canes; they dipped the hard biscuits they
bought 111 their teas and dissolved them noisily in their
toothless mouths There were ako the sirnit sellers, who came
earls every morning with round wooden trays on their heads
I he baker’s daughter wanted to be friends with them but some
behaved rudely toward her and said impolite things. Still, there
were some among them with hearts of gold. For instance, there
was i freckled boy who could hop on one foot while whirling
in each hand imi/% put onto two thin sticks, Muhammet was
offended at the bakers daughter talking so frequently about
the talents of this boy bur wouldn't object, Then there were the

Irtfi
 FLAT NUMBER ONE

pastry-sellers who stopped by with their hand cans. There

were also women who came by to have pita-bread made at the
bakery They treated the bakers daughter well. They would
always give her a pita before carrying their heavy trays back
home.The bakers daughter would write these things at length,
Meryem would read them one by one, time would flow by at
a snails pace, This halcyon innocence was going to be,
however, roughly smashed to pieces in the fall when
Muhammet was registered to the 1 -G section of the
neighbourhood s only elementary school. First his hair was
cut. Now nobody could say he looked like a girl. Then the
breakfasts got shorter, and after some time, he learned how to
read and write. It was then that he had discovered those tiny
papers stuck on each bread were actually the labels of the
bakeries and there were no letters coming from the bakers
blonde daughter. Since then, there were no more letters left to
be read, nor that moon-faced girl to love. To learn to read was
to lose forever the mystery of writing.
‘No wav, I won't go!’ Muhammet yelled shrilly, unable to
take his eyes off the lunch bag, but his voice was much weaker
this time and within a couple of minutes, when Meryem
heard a c rushed moan like that of a puppy, she knew her son
had given up and stopped pushing the sofa. As he emerged
from his corner crestfallen, Muhammet threw his mother a
vinegary glance.
Next to the huge frame of Ins mother, he was tiny ike one
of the dots on the letter *0'. When his sibling was born, s/he
would be the other dot. Even though Muhammet was only six
years old and knew all kids his age were smaller than their
mothers, unlike orher kids, he had long known and accepted
that he would always be smaller than his mother no matter
how much he grew up. whatever age he reached, whichever
unattainable future lie accomplished. His mother, with her
wide forehead that wrinkled up when angry, her round face
with rosy cheeks amassed, her huge hazel eyes that grew wide
when stubborn, her breasts swollen like balloons, her dimpled

H>7
THE F1 EA PALACE

arms* her chubby flesh bulging from her thighs, her feet as big
^ a child's grave and her endless superstitious beliefs and
mi believable energy were all so big as to totally crush even”
obstacle into dust...and would always remain so.,,
Hence he put his toasted sandwich with parsley into hn
lunch bag, stepped on the flattened corpse of the cockroach he
had crushed just this morning at the corner of the aquamarine
double chair and, dragging his feet, set out on his wax to school.
Upon entering Bonbon Palace* the inhabitants ot the flat on
the right, like all family residences on the ground floor,
complained about being in front of people's eyes too much. All
day long, the residents of the building and their guests of all
kinds, as well as the door-to-door salesmen who always failed
to read the written sign strictly forbidding their presence,
could not help stealing a glance through the living room
windows of Flat Number 4. With the snooping customers of
the beauty parlour across horn them added to all these people,
the glances aimed at infiltrating the living room via its
windows increased ten fold as did the anxiety of those inside.
Some of the families living on the ground floor might
eventually get used to such traffic. There are even several
among them who made the most of the situation of being
continuously watched from the outside by continuously
watching the outside in return — some sort of‘an eye for an
eye' policy! Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the most well-
informed peepmg-roms of apartment buildings usualU reside
in flats at the entrance level.*.but the Firenaturedsons were not
of this type.They could neither tolerate being seen by those
coming to the apartment nor intended to spy on them. In their
view, the world outside their house was a boundless terrain of
everlasting trepidation. In point ot fact, when the ‘surname
law' was promulgated in Turkey, if rather than letting each
family make the choice, their characteristics were taken into
account, the doorbell of Flat Number 4 would have read
THE FLEA PALACE

‘Everlastingtrepidatiousom" rather than ' F trenaturedsons'.

All daylong the wide windows of the flat were tightly
covered with different yet similarly impenetrable armour - first
with cambric, then a sunshade of white cotton calico when the
sun was up Once it started to get dark outside, the thick velvet
curtams of the same ashen-colour as the apartment building
were drawn .ill the wav across. It was then that the living room
windows of Flat Number 4 hid frutn and guarded against the
eyes of the outside world* like a vigilant animal camouflaging
itself in the colour of the surrounding soil to avoid being
noticed by its enemies. Still, even when all three drapes of
cambric* sunshade and velvet curtains were hilly drawn, there
remained a sliver of light on the right. There at that corner sar
fifty-six year old Ziya Firenaturedsons, who had planted
himself at that spot ever since the day he was dismissed from
die State Water Works for taking bribes. While reading the
papers and watching television, drinking coffee and eating
pumpkin dessert, he would occasionally peep from this sliver
with great caution and case the surroundings with anxious and
suspicious eyes, without quite knowing what to look for or
why. At those rare moments w hen Ziya Firenaturedsons got up
from his soli, the retired, organic-chemistry teacher, fifty-five
year old Zeren Firenaturedsons would replace hum She too
would look out from the opening once in a while, but did so
less to look outside than to check on the canary m its cage
next to the window. The tact that tins canary, unlike the
preceding one. hadn’t chirped even once, was a burning
concern for Zeren Firenaturedsons. She kept saying she had to
open the w indow for the canary to chirp but never found the
courage to do so. The memory of that cursed morning when
she found her first canary' in its cage covered with blood was
still too fresh in her mind. Though the criminals behind chat
deed had vanished when the wretched man called the 'Cat
Prophet had moved away from Bonbon Palace (taking all his
stuff and entire tribe of cats with him) given all the street cats
that roamed around wagging their tails, she worried to this day
 f L AT NUMBER FOUR

about the odds that her new canary would meet a similar end.
She was particularly suspicious of that tar-coloured, grim-
faced giant of a cat, with fur so fluffy it seemed it had skinned
and donned the furs of at least four cats.
Actually Zeren Firenaturedsom did not have the slightest
interest m either canaries or any other bird of breed until
Zekenya Fireruturedsons (thirty-three years old) broke his
nose tbr the fourth time. A long time ago, when her son's nose
was a pleasant protrusion on a soft cartilage that had not yet
found its form, life was so nice and uncomplicated.Then, as he
stepped into adolescence, the gentle curves of his baby face
were totally wiped aw ay and his nose somehow underwent an
unexpected change, first insolently growing longer and then
curving down. All the meanwhile Zeren Firenaturedsonv had
anxnmsK watt heJ this transformation as it following die
approach of a menacing stranger. She was very content with
her own delicate nose; her husbands, though it might not be
regarded as beautiful, was at least well-shaped. Given these
facts, Zeren Firemturedsons felt the need to climb further up
the family tree as she firmly believed that all types of flaws m
the world stemmed from the genes. In this vein, when she
painfully realized that her son's nose had completed its
transformation and would never again be as before, she started
to search with a gene-map m her hand to at least find out the
person responsible for this mishap. Going back systematically
step by step, concentrating more on her husbands lineage than
hers, she first reviewed the relatives she knew and w hen that
did not turn anything up. combed through the old albums one
at a time, only to return from her countless trips to the gene-
map empty handed. With time, she gave up the search.
Then Zekerlva turned fourteen and smashed his nose to
pieces when he took wings with the speed of puberty and flew
down a hill on Ins bicycle. Upon receiving the news, Zeren
Firemturedsons felt a relief she could not confess to anvonc.
Despite her hopes that this unfortunate accident would be a
new beginning,setting straight not only her sons nose but also

in
THE FLEA PALACE

his behaviour, everything had got worse afterward With

surgery, the cursory performance of which w-as quickly
revealed, the nose that was already rather ugly achieved a
hopeless crookedness and stayed this way. Curiously, Zekeriya's
turn toward bent-and-twisted wayi occurred around the same
tune. In the ensuing years, Zekenva Firenaturedsons would
pan at every opportunity from the straight and narrow road his
mother had placed him on* plunging one by one into all the
turns he could find and continuously losing his way until he
finally emerged a total source of embarrassment and torment.
The year he broke his nose, he started to steal money from his
parents; at age fifteen to dedicate his spare tune to
masturbation, at sixteen to see school as an arena where he
could trample on the weak, at seventeen to smoke two packs
of cigarettes a day and ai eighteen decided to "make it in the
quickest way possible, thereby sticking the nose that
increasingly irritated his mother into even' kind of filth that he
could smtT out, When the outcome of his second nose
operation was even worse than the first, Zeren
Firenaturedsons worries about her son peaked to the highest
point while her expectations plunged.
With the strength Zekcnya collected during convalescence,
at twenty-two he got mixed up with various parking-lot
mafia, at twenty-three he became infatuated with a divorced
bank clerk with two kids, at twenty-four he stabbed the bank
security officer his former lover had sent after him and got
arrested, at twenty-six he took a nasty revenge against life fry
breaking the nose of the president of the Association to
Beautify Kuzguncuk (who had started to organize the
neighbourhood inhabitants into a protest group against the
construction of a parking lot in the back garden of an
Ottoman mansion), at twenty-seven he went into hiding from
his family, then, at twenty-eight, after the discovery of his
hiding place, he svas hurriedly married off to a relatives
daughter the family elders had found suitable and produced a
child that same year. Yet, according to the account of his

112
 FLAT NUMBER FOUR

willowy wife who often came round to the Firenatureckons*

flat to complain m tears, marriage had not straightened out his
habits one little bit. Not that he wandered around outside day
and night like before, but he had turned instead into a highly
irritable nervous wreck. At the end of one of these nervous
breakdowns* he had ‘roughed up' an inexperienced woman
driver who had bumped into his car at an orange traffic light,
and after a terrible beatmg from the brawny husband the
following day, had his nose rearranged once again
During this time, Zeren Firenaturedsons had eagerly
awaited the baby her daughter-in-law was pregnant with. For
babies who are conceived when a conjugal relationship
stumbles — coining to term while the marriage is still unable
to get up from where it had fallen flat on its face — are like
cement sacs: tiny cement sacs that plaster the visible cracks,
keep the columns of the nest bound and fortify those
marriages which are on the brink of collapse. When Zekeriya's
baby was born* like every cement sac, it too had a mission, a
double one: to prevent the destruction of first his father's nose
and then his marriage.
It worked, at least tor a while. Exactly one year and five and
a halt months passed without any incidents. Then came the
shocking news which shocked no one. While carrying the baby
carriage around in the house, Zekeriya had fallen down the
lauding of the stairs. Fully prepared to encounter the same
scene for the fourth time, each more annoying but much less
moving, Zeren Firenaturedsons went to the hospital her
daughter-in-law had named on the phone in between sobs, She
angrily stormed into the room and looked in bewilderment at
her son who stood in front of her m excellent condition, A nose
had indeed been broken in the accident at the house, onlv this
time not Zekeriya $ but that of the little one sleeping in. the
carriage sent down the landing. Upon detecting the bandages
she had grown accustomed to seeing for years, right m the
middle of her son's face, which she every tune interpreted as a
rebel flag waved against her rule, now being transferred to her

113
THE FLEA PAS ACE

grandchild’s face, Zeren Fiienaturedsons was convinced that

there had been a grave genetic transfer somewhere and this
defect would never be corrected. There and then she gave up
all hope about her son and his bloodline.
The first thing she did when she returned to Bonbon Palace
in hopelessness, was to shut herself in her bedroom and
reorganize the drawer of the chestnut wardrobe in w'hich she
had kept her sons baby belongings. After all, whenever we
decide to no longer love someone, we must first work out
what to do with the belongings we have of theirs Yet since
Zeren Rrenatu reckons could never and would not ever discard
anything related to her family, the most severe course of action
she could manifest was emptying out all her son s belongings
to thoroughly examine each and every item before putting it
away once again. As she went through the enure chestnut
wardrobe, the culprit gene she had sought for years suddenly
appeared inside an old etiquette book jammed behind one of
the bottom drawers. A photograph had been wedged, who
knows when and by whom, in the ‘How does one talk to an
unfamiliar lady in a train compartment?' section of the book
that had an illustration on every page. The answer Zeren
Rrenaturedsons was dying to find out was hidden in this faded
photograph. For the fourth male brother of her husband's
grandfather - the effeminate, coquettish, worthless one who
had constantly relayed gossip from one person to another and
been primarily responsible for so many family tights so as to be
remembered by all as 'Hoopoe' - also had a nose exactly like
ZekenyaV In the photograph taken in hts later years,
HoopoeHamdi, with a fedora on his head, a rather long
cigarette holder in his hand, and smoking a cigarette while
gazing dreamily into the distance over the shoulders of the
family members, had given his profile to the camera as it to
better high light the ugliness of his nose. Zeren Firenaturedsons
was not interested in the fact that the family dictionary bad
made a basic mi stake, in that the bird called Hoopoe had never
relayed gossip to anyone except when taking news from the

11#
 FLAT NUMBER FOUR

prophet Suleiman to Belkis.The only thing that interested her

was the man carrying this nickname. It was a terrible injustice
that her one and only son, her firstborn, had seized, rather than
those of his own father and mother, the nose of a senile elderly
man whom he had not once met in his life and who possessed
the most despicable genes in die whole family. What was even
more terrible was the link of her one and a half year old
grandchild to the same genetic chain.
With a sudden impulse, she upped and threw this ugly
document and the etiquette book into the garbage, And m
spite of the many complaints of the apartment administrator
Hadji Hadji concerning the putting out of trash at
inappropriate times and thus rendering the apartment’s
entrance an eyesore, she put the yellow garbage bag outside her
front door.
Five, ten, thirteen...exactly seventeen minutes later, Zeren
Firenaturedsons felt a deep remorse. Within a minute, it
occurred to her that having until today carefully collected
everything she had concerning her family, she should certainly
have saved this old photograph regardless of its unpleasantness.
When she reopened the door, however, the garbage bag had
vanished. A story she had once heard from her mother
suddenly came to mind. Her father and mother had placed the
cat they had kept at home for years but no longer wanted into
a sack, and had driven out as far as they could to leave this sat
in some desolate field outside the city. Upon returning home
at night, they had found the cat in front of the house
indolently waiting tor them. Now, as she looked at the empty
space left by the garbage bag, Zeren Firenaturedsons caught
the cold shudder her own mother had felt upon seeing that
tabby in front of her For the disappointment of seeing how
something we thought we had gotten rid of has stuck to us,
and the disappointment in observing how something we
suppose vve could get back anytime has slid awra\ liom our
hands, arc actually reminiscent of one another.
■r

Similar dungs had happened in this apartment building:

ns
THE FLEA PALACE

garbage hags were mysteriously taken away from doors before

Meryern had a chance to collect them. Yet since those bags had
been of little concern to Zeren Firenatuiedsons, the riddle of
who took them and with what purpose had never intrigued
her. Now she wanted her garbage bad, Suddenly in her mind's
eye the lost garbage bag turned into a sealed letter - one that
was so personal it should never be seen by strangers. Our
garbage is private as long as it is still in front of our door: it
belongs to us, is about us. The moment it ends up in the
garbage can, it becomes anonymous. I hose who make a living
from garbage can stick their fingers into the cans in the middle
of the street or in the garbage piles that rise up at certain
corners or in the dumps near the city, but only when they dare
to open or even worse kidnap the ga rbage in front of our door,
is it considered an invasion of privacy.
In the following hour, Zeren ran up and down Bonbon
Palace looking everywhere she could chink of getting
suspicious of everyone. At one point, guessing that the garbage
bags in front of each door could all end up m the same place
like streams that all flow into the same river, she went outside
and rummaged through the garbage pile accumulating by the
garden wall; but the ground had split open and the yellow
garbage bag tied with a bow had slid within. Since the janitors
were away visiting their village, only one possibility remained:
the beauty parlour across from them! Yet she returned from her
exploratory visit there with her husband and daughters empty
handed and with shot nerves. As if it was not enough for the
garbage bag to vanish with the photograph of Hoopoe Ha nidi,
she had received on top of it a bunch of insults from that shrew
of a hairdresser CemaL
It was some time after chat incident that Zeren
Firenaturedsom purchased a canary. Before the canary
however, there had been fish of all colours and sorts.,.
Actually, Zeren Firenaturedsom hadn't the slightest interest
in fish until the day when she finally accepted after many
denials that her older daughter had neuropathy. She loved her

II*
 FLAT NUMBER K)UK

older daughter; at one time she had loved her more than
anything else. In the days when her son started to follow that
crooked nose of his, she in turn had started to pour all her
attention and love onto her older daughter. Back then,just as
today; Zeynep Firenaturedsons (now thirty-one) was far more
active and outgoing than either of her siblings. At age eleven*
she wanted to be the principal at the school her mother
worked at, a firefighter to spray all the water of the Stare Water
Works where her father worked, bum-around like her brother,
crochet lace like her younger sister and become an actor like
the father of her best friend at school - all at the same time.
Little had changed at age twenty-one* She sull wanted to be
more than the sum of everyone around her, Bulling the day
apart into chunks of rime and squeezing a separate occupation
into each chunk, she had divided herself mto many pieces,
doing first one thing then another and, strangely enough,
succeeding in most of them. Her intelligence was sharp
enough to flatter her mother’s genetic pride. Yet, she was just
as unhappy. Whatever she possessed was far from being
sufficient* in fact, nothing was sufficient,There was not a single
thing m life that was complete: to her 'completeness was just
a hollow word in dictionaries. There was no sea. for instance;
even within one sea, there were an infinite number of seas each
one trying to flow in another direction. 7 he height and
frequency of the waves we saw reaching the shore was what
remained of inter-sea wars. They arrived only to be decimated
bubble by bubble, particle by particle. Likewise* there was no
Istanbul. There were tens, hundreds, thousands, millions of
groups, communities and societies.The 'pluses took away the
'minuses', opposite svmds prevented each others drift and
because no one group was strong enough to dominate
another, the city' managed in the end to preserve itself though
it could not help being constantly diminished, ill the process,
just like the waves, Istanbul svas what remained from the total:
from what the rats nibbled on, the seagulls pu keel 10 shreds, the
inhabitants shed, the cars wore out, the boats earned, the very

n?
THE ft f A f A l ACE

lirvt air breathed in by all. godknowshovvmany babies born

every hour...the remnants scattered and shattered. ahvays
lacking, never to be completed... Zeynep Firenaturedsons was
twenty-two when she had her first breakdown.
Zeren Firenaturedsons was not at all affected bv what the
*

physician said as she took neither the physician nor his words
seriously. There was no leaf on any branch of the family tree
where one would come across such a disease. The mind of
even the darkest blot. Hoopoe Hanidi was in excellent
condition. That aside, her older daughter was the smartest,
brightest one among her three children The crisis she went
through could be nothing mote than late puberty despair.
Zeynep Firenaturedsons' quick reeosrry convinced her
mother further that she had been right Yet, as it soon became
evident, this recovery was not permanent but temporary. From
then on life for the older daughter of the Firenamredsons
would be divided into rwo seasons: when she was sick, it was
as if she would never recover from her illness, yet when she was
well, it seemed as if she would never be ill again There was no
middle ground. No one could tell when she would make the
transition from one state to the other The most evident
difference between the two states was her reaction to bad
news. When sick, she would only be interested in certain items
of news, like a colour blind person only nonces certain
colours, and she would read the newspapers for this type of
news. Street children who got high on painr-thmners, honour
crimes, suicides, women forced into prostitution, suicide
bombers, babies kidnapped from hospitals, souths taking
overdoses, all sorts of tragic occurrences... In addition to the
papers, she also carefully searched through the community
news: uncovered sewer pits, burst water pipes, uncollected
garbage, dosed roads, ferocious pickpockets, pastry shops sealed
up for filth, butchers selling horse meat, grocers marketing
contraband detergent, parking lot gangs, old wooden houses
mysteriously destroyed by tire, gas explosions, gas leaks...
Unsatisfied with simply following this maddening news.
 FLAT NUMBER FOUR

Zeynep Firenaturedsons loved to relate in fullest detail each

and every item to whomever she came across. Since she did
not Lome across many people, as she spent most of her time at
home with her mother, she recounted the same stories over
and over to the latter,When she was well, however, she skipped
the amply illustrated news of doom. She was, subsequently, the
only otie among the Firenaturedsons who read the newspapers
consistently.
Whenever the excited voice of her older daughter talking
about catastrophes grated on her nerves, Zeren
Ftrenawredsons listened to the peaceful bubbling sound of the
aquarium she had filled with colourful fish and
phosphorescent accessories. Before the fish, however, there had
been decorative plants of all kmds.„
At twenty-three, Zelish Firenaturedsons was neither a bum
f

like her brother, nor as intelligent as her sister. Actually, just as

one could not say that since childhood she had looked like the
other members of her family, neither could it be said that she
was like them in type or disposition - and this difference
became most striking when compared to her sister. Like a
bulky, plump mushroom somehow grown next to a wild,
rough plant with flowers that soothe the eye, and inured to the
plant so as to suck aU its sun and water, Zelish had attached
herself to her sister perching on a corner ot her life. She was
mediocre and hesitant, lazy and inadequate, ft was as it seeing
her sister incessantly swing between two poles, intelligent and
attractive at times, nutty and weepy at others, had confused her
so badly that she had decided instead to stop somewhere in
between, at a secure threshold. While her brother craved‘to be
something", her sister to be everything", she for years had only
wanted ‘not to be".
Among the Firenaturedsons, Zelish was the one least
resistant to anxiety For other family members, anxiety
consisted of a menace coming from the outside. Even though
its causes varied, the address remained constant and the world
remained outside the thick, velvet, ashen curtains. Where that
THE FLEA PAL AC E

world was involved, each had their own concerns, Ziya

Firenatureckons was most apprehensive that the bribery trial
would reopen to lead to his imprisonment, followed by his
appearing in all the newspapers and becoming the talk of the
town. The major anxiety of Zeren Firenaturedsons was her
children, and after that came, in the following order: die
growth of Islamic fundamentalism, being attacked by
pickpockets on the streets and another earthquake in Istanbul,
l or his part, Zekeriva Firenaturedsons mostly feared failing in
bed, being powerless in life, the people to whom he had
gambling debts and, finally, fear itself. As for Zeynep
Finenatu reckons, she was a pendulum that carelessly swung
between fountains ol apprehensiveness-anxiety-tear and
fe a rl ess-c a re free - u n tro ubled seas.
Yet for Zelish Firenaturedsons, anxiety was something
abstract* It was everywhere like air and almost as intangible;
with causes far harder to identify than the reopening of a
bribery' case, being nailed because ot a gambling debt or the
coining to power of fundamentalists, To start with, anxiety was
nor external to a person but rather the very fauna in which
s he lived. For tear and anxiety and worry are nourished by The
horror of the probability’ that every thing could turn out to be
different.' (Here are vour house, friends, body, family,. 1 hese arc
yours, but unfortunately they could ali be taken away from you
one day!) As for apprehension, that is fed by The horror of the
probability' that nothing could be any other wap’ (Here are your
house, friends, body, family ,1 hese are yours, and unfortunately
could always remain the same!) When she was in middle school
Zelish had been to her friends1 houses a few times. These visits,
which gave her the opportunity to see up-close mothers,
fathers and families not at all like her own, were a turning point
for her, as until then she had thought "mother*, "father and
"family meant basically a carbon copy of the ones she had. The
embarrassment she felt about her family grew over the years m
folds like the interest rate of a slyly increasing tine
The hesitant syllables of the stuttering physicist in the

120
 FLAT NUMBER FOUR

schoolroom rang in the ears of Zdish hrenaturedsons;‘Ill-let

us aaattach cwo cups that bbb-both have equal amounts of 111 -
hqmd with the sss-same density and at the sss-same level, Lil¬
let us www-wait for lll-bquid to transfer from one ett-to the
other.' Having said this he then added; *Aaa-ctually let us not
wait m vam. Ddd-don t forget kids, aaa-always from high to
low and more to less,.. Otherwise, nnn-no transfer occurs
between things that are at the sss-same level,’ If chat be the case,
Zehsh thought, the apprehension levels of both her house and
the world outside of Bonbon Palace were one and the same.
This made it impossible tor her to muster the courage to
escape from Flat Number 4 never to return. She had made
numerous plans until now. However, since these had been plans
to leave rather than to escape, she still had no idea about where
to go and what to do if and when she left the house.
Anyhow, Zeren Fireiuturedsoris expected little from her
younger daughter, whose only distinctive characteristic as far as
she could determine was to taint on the spot when she saw
blood or anything that reminded her ot it. She compensated
for the lack ot the daughter she would like to have with
decorative plants The only problem was that they demanded
far more sun than the rays chat barely penetrated the curtains
could provide.
As the curtains of Flat Number 4 blocked off the suns rays,
these decorative plants withered away one by one just like the
glances of strangers. The fish in the aquarium also suffered
huge losses over tune. The canary was massacred by the tribe
of the Prophet of Cats. Although there was a new canary in the
same cage now, for some inexplicable reason, it had not
chirped even once.

121
Upon seeing their all time favourite subject of gossip walk in,
the people in the beauty parlour had plunged into the uneasy
silence that is typical of those caught in the act. Encountering
right in tfonr of your eyes the person you were ruthlessly
gossiping about a minute previously might lead you to suspect
something mysterious is going on. Likewise, it seemed to the
people inside as ii HygieneTijen had heard the mention ot her
name from the spirit world. Still the reason for the nervousness
they fell in front ot her, did not solely stem from their inability
to figure out hem" to straighten the facial expressions they had
so carelessly slackened while gossiping. They were equally
bewildered at seeing a person who had not stepped our of her
house for months now; visiting a place that was probably one
of the last locations on her list of potential places to stop by if
and when the time is ripe enough to step out one day.'
The first to shake off this immobility w as Genial, He headed
towards the door, saying in an almost merry voice/ Welcome,
come on in. Misses Tijen! without even noticing how impolite
it was for him to address by name someone he had not once
before met. Such are the side effects of gossip addiction: if you
wag vour tongue too much and too often about someone, you
ought may well start to believe that you have known them
personally for quite some time. Had Centals intimacy been
reciprocated even the tiniest bit, he might have gotten so
carried away with this delusion that he could have even
reproached Hygiene Tijen, as he did to his regular customers,

122
 FIAT NUMBER THRFF

tor nor coming more often-,*but that did not happen. Giving
him a once over from cop to toe with a coldness that revealed
she was not at all thrilled with this greeting, the woman facing
him turned her head without saying anything and started to
scrutinize everything. Her eyes got stuck one by one on the
shorn hair on the ground waiting to be swept away, the
threadbare towels that had lost their colour from frequent
washing, the stains on the leopard-patterned plastic smocks
tied to the necks of the customers, the thin crack on the wall-
to-wall minor, the dead mosquitoes lying around the edge of
the counter adjacent to the mirror, the dust on the shelf lined
up with boxes ot the same brand hair gelT hair foam and
bri Ilian tine, hair-balls jammed in the hair brushes, the filling
that was sticking out of the tears on the chairs, the shabbiness
of the furniture and the bubbly water with doubtful contents
on the three-byered manicure cart,The dissatisfaction she felt
at what she saw was so deep and her desire to immediately
leave the premises so evident, that Genial, who felt both the
place he worked in and himself demeaned, swallowed hack all
the cries ot greeting that were on the np of his tongue and was
reduced to silence.
However, Hygiene Tijen did not, as Cemal had feared, turn
her back and run away. After standing stock-still for a few
seconds unable to move as if nailed to the spot, she cut her
scrutiny halfway along so as not have to witness any further the
hideous and slovenly world surrounding her and slid her looks
outside the open window.There she saw her cleaning lady who
had come down to the garden to collect the clothes- The
woman, whose displeasure at being forced to collect so many
clothes so meanmglessly thrown down could he read from her
hlearv eves, had seen her .it the same moment Her nerves shot
dwf

from cleaning all day long, she was so tired that she did not even
have the energy to wonder what fijen was doing down here.
Leaving the laundry basket heaped up with clothes on the
ground and with her elfin body remaining out in the garden,
she slipped her head covered with a mildewed lemon headscarf

123
THE FI EA PALACE

inside the window of the beauty parlour and murmured in a

dead beat voice: Tm going Misses Tijen, I've got a family to
look after But even she had trouble making a connection
between the situation and the words that had left her mouth,
for she felt the need to add some sort of an explanation: ‘This
is the last basket, t gathered them all. fll take it up right now
and leave it in the house, fve already been up and down five
times. Don't wait for me on Thursday. This neighbourhood is
out of the way for me anyhow’
Slightly crossing her eyebrows* Tijen gave a silent nod of
approval* Even though her turbid facia! expression did not
reveal what she was thinking, the distress she fell ai being
here among people she did not know was too evident. She
remained standing like that until Celab eager to save her from
this torture, drew near to mend the bridge his twin had tried
to build but had smashed-up instead, and asked in a
reassuring voice what she wanted done to her hair* It was
then that Tijen turned to Celal, redirecting her glance from
the space now vacated by the cleaning lady and muttered:
'Not mer my daughter’ Next, as if to make her point clear,
she slowly drew aside.
Only then did those in the beauty parlour notice the little
girl with curly; ebony hair and exceptionally white skin in
contrast, with large eves ringed with no other colour but black.
Her hair was wet. with drops that flowed down from the
zigzags of her hair to leave shallow puddles at shoulder level,
she looked as if she bad been caught on the way over in tine
of those drizzlv summer showers.
j

While Cekl was busy taking his voting customer to the seat
in front of the mirror, Cental, resignedly enduring the
treatment he had been subjected to by the child’s mother,
invited her to one of the sofas on the side. Hygiene Tijen did
not sit down right away. For a few seconds she remained
standing, stuck in her uneasiness. She then gave up and
halfheartedly perched on the closest sofa she had been directed
to. When the manicurist, whose habit it was to ask every

124
 FLAT NUMBER INK EE

customer if they wanted a manicure within thirty seconds of

their entering the parlour, suddenly appeared at her side,Tijen
was sitting still, her gaze fixed on a stain on the flour, her mind
floating elsewhere. The moment she heard the question
directed at her, however, she withdrew her hands in disgust, as
if touched by an invisible rat, and hid than behind her. Utterly
unprepared for such a brusque reaction, the manicurist
returned to her seat flabbergasted but as soon as she vat down,
a gnawing suspicion crossed her mind. Could she have called
her “Misses Hygiene' instead of‘Misses Ttjeif? Could that be
why the womans face had soured all of a sudden' 1 hinking in
this vein, it would not take the manicurist long to be convinced
of having made a blunder. After all, the mind has a proclivity to
pessimism. Whenever it wavers between two contradictory
options, it lends toward the negative one. For a moment the
manicurist thought she should go back and apologize, but the
only thing she ended up doing was cowering uneasily behind
the manicure cart and secretly glancing around to figure out if
anyone else had heard her blunder
In the meanwhile, Su, placed by Celal in front of the mirror
right next to the old woman, kept routing her chair to observe
her surroundings with a genuine curiosity brought about by
bang at the beauty parlour for the first time. Unfortunately,
she had to cut her study short since wherever she turned she
would encounter female eyes staring at her and rouged lips
talking about her.The only person in this strange place who
did not inspect her with such a sticks stare, thought Su, was the
old woman sitting by her side. She knew her, She was their
next door neighbour whom she rail into from time to time
and who was always so nice to her. Now, with her tiny, overh
made-up face sticking out ot the plastic smock covering her
entire upper body all the way to her neck, the old woman
looked like a bust placed askew on us base, impishly painted in
all colours.
Noticing the girl’s gaze on her. Madam Auntie turned aside
and gave her a smile. It seemed as if die was on the verge of

125
THE FLEA PALACE

saying something but Celal appeared right at that instant with a

rectangular wooden plank. Whenever a child came to the beauty
parlour, the turns placed this plank on top of the arms of the
chairs to extend the height of the small customer. However, is
soon as $u had fathomed Celals intention, she fervently shook
her head from side to side* glancing aU the while jt the old
woman. But 1 am taller than her! she finally protested m a
piercing voice/Why doesn’t she sit on the plank too?'
The objection was more than enough to leave Celal, who
had never been much of a speechmaker anyway, speechless. On
seeing that in response to the girl's outrageous remark,
Madame Auntie was so far from being offended that she was
actually laughing, he handed the plank back to the apprentice
without pimples. Right afterward, however, as if having sensed
a secret wisdom in the child’s words, he carefully observed
through the mirror the reflections of his two unusual
customers Sitting there side by side in front of the wide and
long mirror with leopard-patterned smocks around their
necks, they were startlingly alike. In point of fact thev stood on
two opposite poles of time - one was eleven, the other
seven tv-eight* and yet both existed somewhere on the
borderland of the human Life-span, 5u was mistaken. She was
no taller than the old woman. Actually the\ were exactly the
same height and maybe even the same weight- Uncanny as it
was, that the frame an old person kept shrinking into would
equal the frame a child had been growing into, they were like
two elevators having fleetingly stopped at the same level while
one was on the way up and the other down. After a second, an
hour, a month... one of them would inevitably grow taller than
thev were at the moment, while the other would move
correspondingly in the other direction* and no longer would
chey be alike. It was extraordinary that they had found each
other* thought Celal, at this point of ephemeral equality.
Once he had found a resemblance between the old woman
and the girl, it would not take Celal long to duplicate his love
for the former by carving out a similar affection for the latter,

126
 FLAT NUMBER THREE

That is precisely why he personally undertook not only the

preparation of the girl's hair for trimming but also the
trimming itself. He let loose the thick, curly, ebony hair tied up
haphazardly by a resin ribbon and brushed with care the
strands that still had water dripping off them. In the meantime,
he had not neglected to ask the child her name, for whenever
adults embark on a communication with a child, the very first
thing that occurs to them is to ask their name and then
immediately afterward to praise it. "Vthat a beautiful name
youVe got1' Cdsd beamed but Su paid hardly any attention to
his comment, having now plunged into an ad-tilled woman's
journal with wild hairstyles on every page. She would have
remained glued to the journal for quite some time had it not
been for her mother’s bloodcurdling scream.
|ust as dogs approach those most scared oi them or as the
hair fails m the soup oi the one person at a dining table who
will be most disgusted by it, so the cockroach Cental had long
lost track of had decided to enter none other than Hygiene
Tijen s held of vision. The apprentice without pimples,
determined to grovel to the bosses, immediately intervened.
The bug was transformed under his shoe into a compressed
residue of revulsion.
‘These bugs have taken over everywhere,* Celai stammered,
not knowing quite what to say next. Recently, he had been
seeing creepy bugs around that he could not recognize at all.
It was as if the variety of different breeds had increased along
with their numbers. Some left a nasty smell when crushed.The
r

apprentice ran to get the room spray.

‘You need not wait Muses IgenJ wheedled Madam Auntie,
detecting the horror that hid appeared on the latter s tace.l *ont worry
about your daughter Well come upstairs together
Hygiene Tijen was so desperate that she did not even wait
for the offer to be repeated. In two seconds flat, she jumped
over the corpse of the cockroach, left the price of the haircut
on the register and reached the door. Before going out. she
stopped for a brief moment to wave at the old woman with

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THE FLEA PALACE

appreciation and at her daughter with affection.

As soon as she left, the manicurist, having sat stiff as a poker
for longer than she could tolerate*jumped to her feet. The lady
couldn’t stand it!* she bellowed misting her face into a sour
expression.‘I bet she couldn't drink the coffee because she found
it difty. she must have disliked not smelling any bleach in it.'
The plump ginger-he ad and the blonde with the cast eve
jumped into the tittle-tattle. Cental turned up the volume of
the TV when he saw the video dip he had been awaiting for
days finally being broadcast* another round of tea w as served to
all customers, cigarettes were lit one by one and with amazing
speed the beauty parlour became immersed in its usual
languor. Having now gotten rid of the guilt of being obligated
to look the woman who was an all-time-favourite topic of
gossip in the eye* they had no difficulty in going back to where
they had left off.This can be called the ‘Full-speed* full-throttle
return of the repressed’, just as nature detests emptiness*so too
does the gossip-machine crave the completion of the missing
pieces. The fact that there was now a child among them did
not stop the gossipmongers m the beauty parlour, nor did the
fact that the child belonged to the person they' were la\ ishly
criticizing behind her back. For when women start gossiping*
not for the simple sake of chewing the fat* but authentically,
unreservedly and with all their heart* they tend to deem either
their voices inaudible or their children deaf
As for Su* it was hard to tell if she was awrare of the
innuendoes revolving around her mother's persona since she
kept hiding behind that gaudy journal* On the page in front of
her eyes stood the picture of a w oman of mixed-race* who was
naked from waist up and with her very short hair spiked and
coloured in different phosphorescent hues.
‘Do you like it?" asked Celak upset about the talks and
worried about the child*’We can do your hair like that if you
want. It would be a great hit at school.’
‘No! griped Su sullen-faced* 'My hair has to be shorter
than that.'
 H A1 NUMHtk THRtt

'Come an. yau don’t have to have it so shore. Let it grow a

bit!'Celal objected.
finally lifting her head from the journal. Su gave him an
appraising look. An infinitesimal light furtively flickered and
then faded inside the dark well of her eyes,
‘No! Then my lice won t go away,' she protested, almost
shouting.
The jittery brunette, ,i]| her permanent-wave rollers just
removed, raised an evebrou at the blonde with the cast eve.
However, realizing she had an audience only goaded Su to
increase her voice.
'The teacher called me at school. She had written a slip.
“Takt- this, make sure your mother reads it,**she said.Then they
vent me home. My mother was very upset when she read it.
She said I had lice. We went into the bathroom and washed it
with medicine. Wre went through two shampoos, 4 You stay
here. ” she said* I sat in the tub* Then she took off my clothes
from the closet. She threw all of them out the window* She
threw the sheets coo, and my backpack* she threw that as well.*
'We didn't see a backpack.’ the manicurist brood ingiy
grumbled, with the discontent of someone who right after
leaving the movie theatre learns that she has missed the most
significant scene ot the film.
You probably picked them up at school* It happens all the
time* Cdal said* trying to dismiss the matter lightly
I didn’t pick them up at school.’ Su shrugged her shoulders.
'Besides* there's no one at school with lice except me;
The women looked at one another with meaningful smiles.
It was scarcely news to them that Hygiene Tijen had
adamantly sent her daughter to a high-priced school no one
else could afford and* by spending .ill their money to this
purpose, had totally wrecked not only her husbands nerves but
also the foundations of her marriage.
lNo one in the classroom has lice but me. Now it’ll spread
from my head to the whole school.'giggled the girl There was
a shadowy, blemished tinge to her laughter. It was blemished

129
THE PLfcA PAL Alt E

because it was a laughter oblivious to the reactions of the

people around her, originating m her alone to then flow once
again back to hen not knowing where and when to stop, and
perhaps only indicating a starvation for entertainment. It was
shadowed because it was a laughter accelerating at fill! speed as
Su egged herself on, getting our of control as it gained
momentum, bordering silently on pain. Her laughter was
inconsistent and maladjusted, totally detached from the
contents of her talk. It was too unwieldy, toe? heavy, too much
for a child her age.
’My mother says the lice came from my father He got it from
his hookers and then when he cuddled me, 1 got it from him.’
As if all the windows had been simultaneously opened
wide and an unbridled wind rammed in, the women lined up
in front of the wide mirror shuddered from top to toe. For it
is awesome to hear the most private family secrets spill from
the mouth of a child, pretty much like reaping the fruits of
your neighbours garden without actually stealing them*
Though there might be a crime, there is no criminal around.
Since when is u considered a crime to softly pull aside and
make way for the muddy waters that will flow anyhow?
Likewise, the beauty parlour populace had backed aside,
becoming entirely silent so as to let the child speak fully and
freely They writhed impatiently to hear more, as much as
possible, without getting involved, mixed up or messed up.
Even Ceinak despite his long-established inability to stay still
for more than two seconds and his tendency to poke his nose
into each and every conversation around him, managed to
keep utterly quiet. Only Madam Auntie felt the need to take
action to end this unpleasant topic, but since she could not
quite figure out what to say, all she did was to warn t chi to
finish his job as quickly as possible and then shrank back into
her chair to stay stock-still. Lost m her thoughts, she pulled
out the pendant inside her blouse and distractedly caressed the
stern face of Saint Seraphim.
Su twirled her chair around in a full circle and, as if to
 IIM NUMBER THRF-f

determine die impact of her words, took stock of everyone's

faces. When she completed the circle and returned to her
former position, her pitch black eyes met in the mirror the
navy blue-grey eyes of the old woman which were glittering
like a bead. As Madam Auntie delicately let out from her small,
sharp nose the air she had drawn in with melancholy, she
smiled with an embarrassment that contained an apology
somewhere within. It was difficult to tell if she was apologizing
to certain people present on behalf of the child for what she
had told or, just the opposite, if she apologized to the child for
the curious listeners surrounding her. Though unable to
decipher the meaning of this nebulous smile, Su could not help
but smile back at her
Having now speeded up, Celal called both apprentices to his
side for help Within a few minutes, all three resumed work
with apparent intensity and blow-dried the hair of both the
old woman and the little girl. By having his two apprentices
hold two oval mirrors to their necks, he enabled them to see
how their hair looked from the back. Thus besieged with
mirrors from both the front and back, the images of the child
and the old woman multiplied while their similarities
concomitantly increased and coalesced.

***

Yet when they said goodbye to Celal, who saw them off all the
wav to the door, and started to climb the stairs of Bonbon
S ' w

Palace, the age difference between them became woefully

apparent, The child stopped frequently to wait for the other,
sometimes descending the stairs to accompany her up. When
they reached the third floor in this manner. Madam Auntie
Slopped to catch her breath. As Su leaned against the door
standing on one leg as if she w ere punished, she used this
opportunity to share more with her new elderly friend that she
had started to relax with,
"Three girls in the class, they nicknamed me, Those name

lit
THE FLEA PALACE

stickers on the notebooks, you know, they wrote “LICESLT in

capital letters on mine. My real name is Bengisu, E just shorten it "
You know, 1 too had lice when 1 was a little girl,"
muttered Madam Auntie, in spite of her discomfort about
the girl’s laughter
‘Really? Did they nickname you as well?" said $u, while
trying to figure out who the red-bearded, frowning
‘grandfather’ dangling from her necklace was.
No, they didn't nickname me. We had a washer woman, she
used to line all her children up and split their lice. She picked
all my lice as well My poor mother had a fit. She was a delicate
woman, couldn’t handle such things.That was the way she was
brought up. What could she do? If a rose in the garden
withered, she would take to her bed with grief if she saw' a
dead rat, she could not recover tor da vs. I guess she was born
in the wrong age..,’
The woman s navy blue-grey eyes became lustreless, if only
tor a moment. With the intuition unique to those who have
long prohibited themselves from remembering specific events
and mentioning certain names, she sensed she was about to
enter the forbidden garden of her memory and withdrew
immediately As if sharing a secret, she teas mg] v winked at the
child whose head appeared even smaller after her haircut.
Don’t pay attention to their calling you "Licesu” or
anything else. Everyone gets ike as a child and not only as a
child. People get lice when they grow up as well. How can you
know who has lice and who does not? Can you see lice with
the naked eve? Everyone claims to be clean as a whistle but
believe me thev too have lice somewhere m them!"
J

More convinced of the good intention behind the words

than the words themselves* Su ran to ring her doorbell as soon
as they reached the fourth floor. Tin baaaaackl she veiled
when the door opened. Though Hygiene Tijen looked
worried that they were late, she seemed to have cleared away
her earlier anxiety as she thanked her neighbour. It looks
good, both short and vers chic," responded Madam Auntie.

132
 FLAT NUMBER T H K E [

Then they looked at one another with the stress of feeling

obliged to say a few more things but not quite knowing what
those could be,
"I would've invited vou in but the cleaning is. still not
finished. Everything was interrupted when the cleaning lady
took otfV stuttered Hygiene Tijen,The stressed, skittish woman
at the beauty’ parlour seemed to have disappeared, leaving a
timid, reticent copy in her place.
"Of course, of course, go ahead with your cleaning, but don 't
tire yourself out too much.You were exhausted today; ]ie down
and rest a little. Anyhow, I have things to do.
They had never visited each other’s houses until then.The)
sometimes ran into each other at the door and exchanged a
few courtesies,
"How can I possibly sleep!' Ttjcn broke in.T get headaches
from this disgusting smell. My husband savs 1 exaggerate. l>o
you think 1 do?You too get the same smell, don’t you?Tell me.
Madam Auntie, do you get the garbage smell?*
An indiscernible shadow crossed Madam Auntie's face.
When she started to speak again, her voice was rough and
rugged, lust like her faded hands with the protruding veins.
Years ago my brother travelled to Cairo. He said one heard a
hum' as soon as one got off the plane.The hum ol Cairo! Yet the
airport was quite a way from the city. It turns out a city’ spreads
its hum for miles Just think, what kmd of a city it must be, what
kinds of people must live in it for them to overflow like chad Isn 't
our Istanbul like that. Misses Tijen? Though Cairo hums, Istanbul
smells Strangers are aware ot its smell before they even approach
the city We can't smell it, of course. They say a snake Likes milk a
lot and finds nulk through its sense of smell, but could it detect
the smell of milk if it swam in the milk cauldron? Probably the■r

Cairene wouldn't hear die hum and the Istanbulite couldn’t spot
the smell of his or her own cities — and these are such old cities.
When l was young, I didn't know Istanbul was so old. Naturally,
as it ages, the garbage increases, I no longer get angry Neither
should you be angry; Misses Tijen*

133
THF FLEA PA L ACE

Not knowing whit to say Hygiene Tijen emptily blinked

the round, long eye-lashed ebony eves she had passed on to her
daughter. Another prickly silence descended upon the two
women. Such intermittently scattered silences are retrain* in
the conversations of those who are not used to talking to one
another: they repeat themselves with set interludes. They
uttered a few more words about garbage, a few more words
about various other things and wished each other a nice day.
The doors were carefully closed, with special attention being
paid to not banging them loudly, hut the women did not
immediately get back to their own tasks. Both stood without
a sound for about ten seconds becoming all ears to try to figure
out from the noises what the other one was up to. No matter
how hard they tried, however, neither could hear a thing.

1 u
'Once upon a time there lived a much venerated saint,*..’
But you said it was gonna be a real story this time!* veiled
the seven and a half year old*'Why did you start it again like
a fairytale?*
Hadji Hadji pouted at the bov in anguish Among his three
grandchildren it was this child who upset him most, upset him
like no other. He was not human, this boy, but a /tMnr disguised
as human or, even worse, the mixed oft spring of a jmni and a
human being That was why he had turned out to be so
peculiar, with a head like a demijohn , but the moment the old
man caught himself thinking of such things, he felt ashamed.
He immediately repented and shooed such wicked thoughts
aw as. Repentance had with time produced some sort of a
spontaneous effect on him. Whenever ashamed, he would
immediately repent, like a muscle spasm, with an urge almost
as uncontrollable He did so again, three tunes successively First
he repented for attempting to grasp and even question with his
limited mind why Allah had created people as He had. After
that he repented for having indirectly and inadvertently
mistrusted his daughter-in-law's chastity by tracing the
bloodline of hil grandson to the finm Finally, he repented fur
having such dreadful thoughts about a little sick child. This last
one. however, he had uttered out loud 1 he seven and a half
year old narrowed his moss green eyes into a hire and, as if he
had understood something had been said about him, observed
the old man even more carefully Hadji Hadji hastily averted

135
THE FLEA PALACE

his ryes. Even it not a jinni, who could deny that this child was
jinn-like.
Allah had conferred to his siblings all the beauty He had
withheld from him, but then, to ensure justice, had bestowed
upon him tar more intelligence than his siblings, actually even
more than the entire family line What was he going to be like
when he grew up? Not only his body, but the disproportion
between his head and his body grew day by day How much
bigger could his head expand than the one and a halftimes its
normal sire it had already grown to? His hands could not bend
back but twisted inside like a monkeys. How much longer
could he live with these clawed hands and w ith the *Ma-ro-te-
jux-h-syu-drome* that no one m the family had even been
able to correctly pronounce? Suddenly feeling a tug at his
heartstrings, he forced his face into a smile.
'This isn't a fairytale, it’s the plain truth? he said with a
gentle expression/The saint lived a very long time ago, that's
why it came out of my mouth sounding like a fairytale. These
things reallv happened. He even has a tomb. If you don't
believe me, you can go and see it with your own eves?
The moment he said this he recognized what a1 gaffe' he had
made. His oldest grandchild could no longer leave the house.
It was to Ins best interest that he did not. Unlike his peers and
ablings the boy s entire world consisted of this one hundred
and five metres square house; With a compassion rolled up in
mercy the old man patted the child's puny back.
This great saint, before he was a saint, used to be a dervish.
When his Excellency Sultan Muhammed the C onqueror
besieged the city of Istanbul, lie immediately ran to help,They
beat the city walls with canons. They fought for days but
weren't able to get the Byzantine infidel to surrender. Then
our dervish had an audience with the sultan. He said, “My
sultan, give me permission to open a big breach in these walls
so our soldiers can get m from that gap and snap off the
infidel's neck like that of a chickcn?*The sultan looked at the
ordinary, ragged dervish standing in front of him. What could

I Vi
 FLAT NUMBER FIVE

such a meek man accomplish? He didn't believe him and

expelled him from his audience.Weeks passed by and they still
weren't able eg take Istanbul. The great Ottoman army was
exhausted from thirst and fatigue.Then the sultan remembered
this dervish and beckoned him back to hiv presence/ Here is
your permission, go ahead he said. The delighted dervish
kissed his Excellency Sultan Mu hammed the Conquerors
hand and sleeve. He said his goodbyes to all the other
dervishes,Then lie walked around the city walls to think about
which point of attack to pick and finally decided on one
particular spot. The walls were thicker there and there were
more soldiers to boot. For behind diat wall was the palace of
the Byzantine king.Then the dervish said, “Now throw me to
those walls ."They were of course surprised but still carried out
his wish.They put the dervish in the cannon and hurled him.'
"Come on. They killed the man, exclaimed the seven and a
half year old.
"No they didn't! He is not like you and I, he didn't become
a saint tor nothing' Hadji Hadji softened his voice tor the sake
of all he had repented a moment ago.*They threw the dervish.
With that speed, he went and attached himself to the walls. He
didn’t fall, that is. He opened wide his hands and feet and
grabbed onto those thick walls like a spider. The Byzantine
soldiers were teeming like ants there. W hen they saw the
dervish, they threw poisoned arrows, Not one of them fell on
the target. Next they showered flaming arrows. Wherever the
arrows fell, fire erupted. They set the grass on fire, burned rhc
trees, the whole place was in flames like doomsday* but nothing
happened to the dervish. Not even a single thread of his hair
caught on fire. He stood in the flames like a salamander. From
afar he looked and smiled on the Conqueror s soldiers. There
he prayed until night fell, performing the ablutions at sunset.'
I flies glued to the wall, how could he perform the ablutions?1
hollered the seven and a half year old in a shrill voice.
He performed them with hrs eyes,' replied the Hadji Hadji
now staring angrily/ Your deceased grandmother, may she rest

137
THE FLEA PALACE

in peace, also performed her ablutions with her eyes. Those

who can’t bend down and up do so. Then when the dervish
finished his ablutions he said,'"My Allah, take my life and turn
me into a void!"Allah accepted his prayer and lightning struck
in the sky. Remember how the arrows of the Byzantines had
been showered right onto him from up close and not even one
had found its target? But now a faraway lightning came from
the seventh heaven and hit him right on target. The dervish
turned into ash.Then, where he had clung to the wall, a large
hole appeared. The Conqueror’s fighters could not believe
their eyes. The hole they could not open for days was all of a
sudden created thanks to the dervish. They immediately
plunged in through that hole, put the commander of the
infidels to the sword and took the city. When his Excellency
Sultan Muhammed the Conqueror settled in Istanbul, he
didn’t forget the self-sacrifice of this dervish. He wanted to
have a tomb built for him Vet the dervish didn't have a corpse.
“If there is no corpse, how could there be a grave? What shall
we bury?" grumbled the soldiers.”
The five and a half year old, who was accustomed to suck
till the last drop the privileges granted to her for being the
only girl and the youngest child, looked at her grandfather
with eyes glazed in fear. Jn her ornate 'grammar bag’, where
she put the new words she learned every day she collected
some other words in a place separate from the others, in a
wallet with snaps, for instance: ‘spirit*/doomsday', or ghost’;
likewise: ‘demon’, ‘devil', ‘deceased’, ogre" or hellhound.' She
rolled in her little fingers the word ‘salamander’ she had just
heard and placed it there as well. All these words had one
meaning tor her:jinttl As for what the jitm was, she did not fully
know, but whenever she felt the need to know, she plunged her
hand into the wallet with snaps, inside her smart ornate bag,
randomly pulling out a word. Hence, somewhere in the
recesses of her mind, the indistinct figure of a jinn that had so
many different names though it did not exist, transparent like
the gossamer wings of a fly, was nourished from all sides and

138
 flat number five

constantly grew fatter, spreading every passing day like a

shameless smokescreen to cover an ever larger terrain,
'They performed ablutions for him in absentia arid then
they rook the empty coffin onto their shoulders,' continued
Hadji Hadji after taking a small break to sip on his tea. ‘They
started to walk, but where were they to go? They could never
decide where to bury' him. However, at this point the coffin
suddenly took wings! It started to move by itself, right in front
of them,They crossed many rivers and hills, coffin m the front,
mourners in the back, up and down six of the seven hills of
Istanbul, When they came to the seventh hill, they looked and
saw in a distance an empty grave: a grave dug deep and left
open.The coffin immediately dashed in that direction, started
to descend right onto the top of the grave and remained
hanging in the air until one hand span from the bottom, fhen
a howling was heard from the grave. T
The five and a half year old gulped loudly but deep in his
trance, Hadji Hadji did not notice that detail. Whatever
attention he had left he reserved for his oldest grandchild.
"They then lowered the coffin into this empty grase. After
that they built a tomb over it.The saint's name became father
Void The passers-by always recited a prayer for Ins sou).*
But the man isn 't even there! Don't they know the grave is
empty? Who are they praying to?
‘Women who can’t have children pay a visit to Father Void,'
muttered Hadji Hadji pretending not to hear the question, Tf
brides with empty wombs go to Father Void, pray and then sit
alone by his tomb all night long without falling asleep, their
prayers will be granted at dawn.They'’ll give birth to a healthy
child within a year.'
AH three children reacted in their own way to these words.
I he five and a hah year old reopened her wallet of snaps,
gingerly placing 'void" among the words that corresponded to
'jinn! The six and a half year old, who was particularly
interested in all topics that could somehow he associated with
sexuality seemed more concerned with the brides part than
THE FLEA PALACE

the surm. As tor the seven and a hall year old, he in turn had
questions to articulate, objections to raise. Still, however, he did
not say a word. It was time tor the noon nap, and that, the kid
reckoned, was far more imperative than identifying the
numerous mistakes in the rationale operating behind his
grandfather's tales
Around these hours of the afternoon, time in Flat Number
5 gradually slowed down The same things were always
repeated every day in the same order Rarlv in the morning
their mother went to work and their father to look for work.
When left alone with their grandfather, every weekday
morning with out tail, an argument broke out among them
regarding the television, Hadji Haji would rather not have the
children watch much television but, it thev did, preferred it to
be one of those insipid childrens programmes or even better,
the cartoons that were simultaneously broadcast on a couple of
channels. The kids how ever had a different choice, insisting on
watching the morning programme hosted by a chatty and
flirtatious person who wore outfits that, depending on the day.
either left bare the red rosebud tattoo on her belly or the
cleavage of her breasts. When their request w as not granted,
thev either took out the battle-axe and went on the attack or
became fussy and refused to talk to their grandfather Hadji
Hadji $ reaction also varied daily: Now and then he put up with
the situation and while the children watched the programme,
he kept reading one ot the tour books he owned — a number
which had remained the same over the years. At times he got
hold of the remote control and. in spice of all the objections
buzzing around hum fixed the screen on the first cartoon he
could find. On other occasions, he tried to draw' his
grandchildren s attention away fiom die screen and wore out
his imagination by concocting various games, each more
strained than the other. Whatever he did, however, he could
not wrest power away from them, especially not from his oldest
grandchild, until noon. After that things got worse for the old
man tor they' would, just like thev had been doing every
 HAT NUMBER FIVE

weekday for the last two months, pile up all the sheets, pillows
and covers in the middle ol the living room and start to create
'Osman',
Two months previously* Hadji Hadji had read to his
grandchildren the first three chapters of one of his four books
entitled. ‘How Was a Magnificent Empire Born and Why Did
it Decline?’ When he took a break, he got* as usual, three
dissimilar reactions from his three grandchildren. The seven
and a half year old had listened austerely, attentively and was
now ready to voice a couple of issues of great interest to him:
'Grandpa* how many tents did the Turks have when they
arrived m Anatolia?''A thousand!' Hadji Hadji hastily made up,
Yer that response did little to satisfy the child’s curiosity." About
how many people m all were there in these thousand tents?'
*Ten thousand!' Hadji Hadji roared. The anger dripping from
his response only provoked his oldest grandchild even more,
'When the Turks came with their tents, weren’t there already
other people in Anatolia?’ No, there weren’t, this land was
empty, whoever was there had run away,* grumbled Hadji
Hadji. Okay, did the Turks settle m the houses of those who
had run away? Or did they continue to live as nomads tor
some time? Did they build their first cities due of tents- In that
case would that he a tent-metropolis? How could one draw on
a map a city that was peripatetic? How...?'
‘Shut up!’ Hadji Hadji had replied losing control.
The child had indeed shut up but all the questions that had
accumulated on Ins tongue circulated in his mouth, moved up
through the passages of his nose and climbed up from there to
trickle into his teardrop ducts* so in his moss green pupils
curious, insistent, accusing sparks of questions continued to light
up and fade away like fireflies flitting about on summer nights.
In order not to keep looking at him. the old man had turned
with a weak expectation to the six and a half sear old, but
judging from the indifferent expression on his face the only
thing he registered from the story was that there were many
concubines in the harem and it was not a good thing to be

141
THE FLEA PALACE

born as the brother of a sultan. With a final crumb of hope,

Hadji Hadji turned to his youngest grandchild, the five and a
half year old. It was then that the little girt, her face bright with
excitement, jumped on her grandfather's lap, nudged him with
her pinkish-white dhows and with the cutesy manner she
assumed whenever she wanted anything from grownups,
cooed:‘Come on, grandpa* let’s build a tent too!'
Had Hadji Hadji not been so distressed with the apathy of
his male grandchildren, he probably would have hesitated
before jumping at this idea, but since with a sleight of his hand
he had transferred all of his love to the youngest grandchild in
order to punish the other two, he soon found himself among
piles of sheets and pillows busily building a tent in the middle
of the living room They too would have a tent just like the
dynasty of Osman,
Compared to the tents they later built, the first one was
rather primordial.The grandfather and the child had produced
a small, covered area by throwing a few sheets over the four
chairs arranged in a square and then filling this area with
pillow s. Yet the tent, even m this simple form, had succeeded
in drawing the attention of the other two who had not
participated in the game and had, until then, suspiciously
watched everything from the side. After a while, they could not
resist and, dying to see this hidden, compressed world
constructed m the middle of the living room, had parted the
sheet intended to be the door and joined their grandfather
who was sitting cross-legged on the pillows. Surprisingly I ladji
Hadji felt swelling within him the type of pure pride he had
yearned for so long. It was this pride or the possibility of it that
had led the old man to wholeheartedly embrace this game.Yet
how wretchedly shaky the foundations were, and how fragile
the domination he had hv chance established in the house,
m

would become evident in no more than a day, m

Around the same time the next day, the five and a halt year
old had placed herself in his lap in exactly the same manner:
‘Come on. grandpa, let’s make Osman!' When the old man

142
 FLAT NUMBER FIYF

heard the name “Osman*, his hair stood up as he had not yet
been able to get nd of the fatigue the previous tent-exercise
had produced on hi* out of shape legs and stiff back, Alas,
neither his dulcet warnings nor his seeching anger had been of
much help in teaching the girl that the tent was not supposed
to be called ‘Osman'* Such was the girl s nature. Once she
coupled one word with another, no authority in the world
could sever this linguistic connection m her mind. Just as
ghosts, spirits, ogres, hellhounds and the deceased were
altogether lumped in the category of JINS', so too was the
tent called OSMAN’.
After that Osman became an essential part of their lives.
Now even dav around the same time the children started to
get antsy like drunkards awaiting their drinking nme. Within
half an hour, all the sheets, bedspreads, mattresses and pillows
were piled in the middle of the living room. Even chough
Hadji Hadji hoped in vain that, with their record of getting
bored with all the games they played, his flighty grandchildren
would also get their till of Osman, this was not to be. On the
contrary, they gradually expanded the boundaries of the tent
adding new rooms, sections and cavities, leading a blissfully
nomadic life m an area of five and ten square metres- Osman
was rebuilt at noon even* day, stayed m the middle of the Imng
room until lace iti the afternoon, and then when it started to
get dark outside, was taken down in a flash minutes before the
parents were due back from work.
There were a number of other incidents repeated daily
without exception. For instance, the phone rang around the
same tune, around 11:45 a.m., after the last minute theatre¬
goers had settled in their seats for the noon show Each tune it
was the oldest kid who answered the phone. He reported what
they had done since morning, alw ays giving the same responses
to the same questions: yes, they had finished their
breakfasts.,, no, thev* weren't being naughts...yes, they were
watching television...no, grandfather wasn t telling a
story...no, they hadn’t turned on the gav. no, thev didn't mess
THE FLEA PAL At! £
the house up...no, they didn't hang out of the balcony...no,
they didn't play with fire..,no, they didn't enter the
bedroom...Allah was hn witness that grandfather didn't tell a
story,,.' and so forth.. *
Even though deep down the Daughter-in-Law was
suspicious of her older sons honesty, never willing to call her
father-in-law to the phone, she had to be satisfied with what
she heard. Meanwhile, as the seven and a half year old held the
phone in his hand and recited his usual responses with a
suggestion of slyness in his voice, not even for a second did he
take his eyes off his grandfather. Lie was more than aware of
the continuous tension between the two adults and had long
since discovered that he could bolster his power by favouring,
as the occasion dictated, one adult over the other.
Not only did they have their meals inside Osman, but they
listened to their bed-tune stones there as well, Every day after
lunch before their nap, new- personalities joined them:
coldhearted stepmothers, ill-fated orphans, hellhounds
escaping from the bowels of the earth, bandits wavlavmg
people, female jitws seducing men, bloodied fighters, certified
madmen, poisonous rattlesnakes, spiteful hags with sagging
flesh, malicious skeletal demons and ogres with protruding
eyes.„all crammed into the tent. Once they arrived, they never
wanted to leave. As the concluding sentences of the fairytale
still smoked in the air weariness descended upon them.
Everyone curled up in their place. Hadji Hadji was the one to
fall asleep the fastest and the easiest, followed by the five and a
half year old and then the six and a half year old. As his
grandfathers snores and his siblings puffs filled the tent, the
seven and a half year old got up quietlv. First he stopped by his
grandfather and watched him. He watched as it examining a
creature he did not know; a tropical fruit he had not tasted or
a clam tilled with surprises, Hadji Hadjis round, greying beard
rising and tailing w ith each intake of breath, the amber prayer
bead that had slid from his fingers, the greying hair creeping
from his chest to his neck, his cracked lips, the deep wrinkles
144
 FLAT NUMBER FIVE

that had cut paths across his forehead... He had started to

exami ne his grandfather two and a half years ago and was soon
about to complete his discovery
That mild, fragrant day when he had met his grandfather tor
the first time had been a turning point for the child, as it also
happened to be die last day he was able to walk around outside.
Then his illness had advanced so rapidly and had become so
visible that he had never been out onto the streets ever again.
In the fading residues of that distant past, when he was still
considered or at least looked looked like a normal child, when
his father and mother had to go to the airport to pick up his
grandfather, they had taken him along as well. Until that day;
he had not heard much about the old man. All he knew was
that his name was Hadji, he Lived with his wife in a far away
city, they had had a traffic accident when travelling to Istanbul
to see their grandchildren lor the first time and the
grandmother had died in the accident. After losing his wife,
grandfather Hadji had cried a lot, been hospitalized for a while
and gone on the pilgrimage to Mecca as soon as he was
discharged. Having now completed the pilgrimage he was
coming back. This was all the seven and a half year old who
had then been five knew about him. On the way to the
airport, he had also acquired another piece of noteworthy
information: from now on, grandfather Hadji was going to live
in Istanbul with them.
The part of the airport reserved for the passengers' relatives
was jammed. After descending from the plane and completing
a whole bunch of bureaucratic procedures the passengers
passed through the automatic door swishing open to be
reunited with their awaiting relatives. As the kid waited in the
crowd holding tightly onto his mothers and fathers hands, lie
carefully looked at every person passing by. All these old men
back from their pilgrimage were surprisingly like carbon
copies of each other and the reason for this similarity was not
only that they were all dressed in the same colour, were of the
same age and height and possessed the same round, greyish

145
THE FLEA PALACE

beard, I hey also unerringly repeated, as soon as they went

through the door, the same motions in the same sequence.
When the door opened, they all narrowed their eyes as if
suddenly encountering a beam of light, looked at the crowd,
took a tew steps in this state, then saw someone and slashed in
that direction, put down the suitcases and exuberantly
embraced the acquaintances who scurried toward them. In
making their entrance, the elderly copied one another exactly
it was as it. rather than a plane load of different people, the
same man kept walking in through the automatic doors again
and again.
Then the door swished open one more time and through it
entered a man whom he guessed, from his mothers and father s
reactions, was his grandfather. This man, though dressed just
like the other pilgrims, still looked like a stranger who had
mistakenly become mixed up among them, It was as if he was
not even old but was rather a successful imitator who had
plunged into the changing room at the last minute to don the
clothes of one of the others. He almost looked like them but
was nevertheless an imitator because something was obviously
missing. Blinking his moss green eyes, the kid looked once
again and only then he grasped where the deficiency
originated: this old nun did not have a beard! Where there had
to be a beard shone a dazzling white crescent curving up - the
area within the crescent having amply received its share from
the sun, the north of his face was pitch dark as night while the
south as pallid as a cloudless morning.
The man with the‘unfinished face’had longingly embraced
the grandchild he was seeing for the first time. Then he had
sequentially embraced his son, again his grandson, the
Daughter-in-Law, again his grandson* again his sont and then
again and again his grandson. Meanwhile, soon everyone
around them was embracing one another, the airport waiting
area filled-up entirely with clusters of humans who cried,
kissed, embraced and bumped into one another. When the
elderly men returning from the pilgrimage had somewhat
 N AT NUMKF R FIVE

satisfied their yearning tor one another, they became deeply

occupied with introducing each other to their own families
which this time around led to handshakes hugs and embraces
across the clusters. In that uproar, the kid passed around from
one lap to another had registered another observation in his
memory book: those ‘Mehmets* returning from the pilgrimage
were called Hadji Mehitiet* and the Ahmets' were called
Hadji Ahmet.' On the way back, he had asked his father the
question that had preoccupied lmn/lf one had to go to the
pilgrimage to deserve the name Hadji, how was it that his
grandfather’s name had become Hadji by birth, before going
to the pilgrimage or indeed anything? And since his name was
already Hadji, why on earth had he gone to the pilgrimage?'
While his face was incomplete, it was as if his name was overly
complete.‘You rascal!' his father had scolded him. As that wii
tar from being a satisfying answer, it only helped to serve the
kids conviction that his grandfather was unlike any other
grandfather. Ever since then he thought his grandfather was
somewhat ‘eccentric/That the old man bad been obliged to
cut Ins beard because of a bad rash a day before his return from
Mecca and had quickly grow n it afterwards, thus after a short
while looking like all other grandfathers at the airport, had
little effect in convincing the hoy to the contrary.
Now after all these years, even though he still studied his
grandfather, he had begun to cut his examinations shorter with
every passing day, mainly because he did not find him as
interesting as he had in the past . Once bored of watching the
old man, he got out of Osman w ithout a sound and started to
tiptoe around the house. To be up when everyone else was
asleep was a terrific privilege. I he house would then resemble
the castle in "Sleeping Beauty'. For, unlike his siblings, the
seven and a half year old did remember the fairytales his
mother used to tell them in the mornings long before she had
started working at the cinema of a shopping mall. He recalled
those fairytales and discerned the difference between those and
m

the ones told by his grandfather.

147
THE FLEA PALACE

While the others slept, he would go into the kitchen, light

the oven, pby with matches, leaf through the four books of his
grandfather, die total number of which had stayed constant
through the years, snack on junk food, go mto his parents'
bedroom and poke around the wardrobes, dump his mother s
jewellery on the bed, count the money his lather hid at the
corner of the wardrobe.,.he made the most of doing
everything that was forbidden Then, when the others" waking
up time approached, tiptoeing back into the tent, he lay down
in a corner and patiently waited. He did not have to wait too
long. Every' day the garbage rruek entered Cabal Street around
5:30 p.m.The voices of the garbage collectors, the clatter of the
emptied cans and the grumble of the engine rose up from
below. There were cars parked on each side of the road, so the
garbage truck could not maneouvre easily and the traffic
would be jammed for sure. As soon as the honks of the car
horns reached Flat Number 3 of Bonbon Palace, Hadji Hadji
was jolted out of his sleep, almost screaming. In point of fact.
Bonbon Palace was one of the last places where this old man,
who carried in the wrinkles of his forehead, his face and in his
heart the traces of the traffic accident he had been through,
could comfortably take a snooze.
The children also awoke with Hadji Hadji s scream. First the
five and a half year old woke up, muttering fussily Then the six
and a halt year old got up, lazily yawning. As for the seven and
a half year old, he would not immediately get up from the
place where he had laid down only a couple of minutes
previously, hut instead counted silently to twenty to give the
others enough time to fully wake up. Then, standing up
groggih he would rub his moss green eyes and, hiding the
sharp glint within them, approach the open window and
stretch his neck to look at the- doors of the outside world filled
with secrets which he deeply sensed could be much more
horrifying than all the fairytales he had heard.

NS
Strange as it was, I w oke up without the help of an alarm dock
this morning. As if that was not astonishing enough* when I
woke up, t found myself already awake. My eyes were opera as
if they had awoken by themselves and having once done that,
had taken to wandering around the ceiling. Tor a fleeting
moment 1 thought 1 was looking at myself from the ce ling. I
cannot say I liked what I saw.
Whenever 1 fall asleep here, my legs spiU over from the
couch but this time l seem to have forgotten to take off my
shoes to boot. My head had slipped from the pillow, my neck
was sore. In the dent extending from the side of my mouth to
my car, 1 detected a bubbly, pasty spittle - befitting a dog gone
rabid or a baby regurgitating the food just consumed. My shirt
had wrinkled up on me, the pain of lying down lopsided had
hit my back and my mouth was parched. I had also thrown up
on the corner of the rug. At least 1 had thought of taking off
my trousers, but as Ethel the Cunt1 likes to articulate in yet
another aphorism ot hers^To be without pants while in socks
and shoes can make a man only as attractive as a candied apple
with the exposed parts all rotten../ or something like that.
When viewed from this angle, perhaps 1 should consider
myself lucky for waking up alone this morning, just like S had
done for the last sixty-six days
It is all because of this house. It has been two months and
five days since I moved in here, I have come to realize that for
all its abstractness and vastness the terms in which time is

14^
THE FLEA PAL ACE

measurable are no more concrete and no less petite than mere

driblets. I count up every day that has passed, every drop of it.
By now J should have fully settled down and established some
son of an order in this house. Yet not only have l failed to settle
down, 1 live as if 1 might pack up and leave any moment. As if
to make moving out easier, the flat is still not much different
from the way it was the day 1 moved in, with boxes piled up
on top of one another, some opened but most only roughly so:
a perfunctory, transitory dwelling amidst parcels yet to be
opened...the fleeting order as evaporative as room sprays,.,a
‘Lego-home* constructed of parts and pieces to be dissembled
at any moment... When single, one lives amidst 'belongings in-
a-house ; ones past, trajectory, personal worth all contained in
possessions that bear symbolic value. Upon getting married,
one starts to live in 'a-house-of-belongings’, established more
on a future than a past, more on expectations chan memories;
a house where it is doubtful how much one personally
possesses. As for divorce, depending on whether one is
the person leaving or the person staying behind, it is like
camping out all over again, only this time one either stays
behind in a * house-1with-belongings-gonC or departs, carrying
' beloi igings-w i thout - a - house'.
My situation is both, because of this house and because of
Ethel che Cunt1. The day l had to move in here, no matter
how hard I tried, 1 could not convince her to stay out of it and
not mess things up by helping. When I had finally perched
myself in the front seat of the truck belonging to the moving
company that had agreed to transport the books, clothes and
knick-knacks l had deliberately refused to let go from the
tastefully decorated home of my marriage (as well as some
cheap and simple furniture 1 had recenth bought tor ihe dingy
apartment that would be the base for my post-marriage era);
there right next to me was none other than Ethel. As if her
presence was not alarming enough, she teamed up with the
dim-witted driver, utterly stunning the man with the premium
quality cigars she offered, preposterous questions she asked and

ISO
THE FLEA PALACE

drop she drank, every ray of sunlight she received, every

particle of air she breathed; all were moulded and converted
into milk for the baby. The more robust the baby grew, the
more strength Agripina Fyodorovna Antipova lost, with every
passing moment swaying further and further from the vim and
vigour of life,
Impossible as it might sound to those who believe that every
woman is by nature maternal and that motherhood is as sacred
and pure as the rivers in heavenT Agripina Fyodorovna Antipova
did not love the thing* she had given birth to. Upon coming
face to face with the child she had carried within her for so
long, the child she had considered a part of her without
knowing what it would look Like or bring about, she became
scared of tins being that was so tiny in size but enormous in
need She became scared of the impossibility of reversing time
to go back to being a young woman again, of being given no
other choice than to love unconditionally. One thing she knew
for sure, she wanted to get rid of the baby Inconceivable as this
might seem to those who believe even woman by nature
maternal and motherhood as sacred and pure as the rivers m
heaven, Agripina Fyodorovna Antipova was no exception. It is
not onlv nationhoods that coin official histories of their own. so
V

do motherhoods. Mothers often create a maternal

historiography written retrospectively and gracefully, dating
back to the very first day, picking out the weeds and furnishing
the stepping stones along the way. For love does not always
come without effort but sometimes flourishes belatedly and
grows gradually, drop by drop, under the tutelage of time The
care of those around them, a poignant instance, a fleeting
moment of affection and myriad sediments of tenderness, these
may coalesce in the mind of a new mother to chase away like
an industrious fan with a harsh yet invigorating breeze, all
inappropriate thoughts and unpleasant feeling?. As long as the
fan is kept on. a young mother might manage to increasingly
love her baby, the maternal halo embracing them both, In fact,
she might in time come to love the baby so much that she
THE FLEA PALACE

street-seller, with a small screened kitchen cupboard filled with

livers mounted on a horse on the brink of death, was having
ferociously with twfo old Muslim women each more
quarrelsome than the other, While talking back to the women
on the one side, the liver-seller also tried to chase the clingy
thes drawing drclcs-within-circles around the cupboards w hile
his horse, looking like it might give up living any moment,
accompanied hnn with a swing of his tail. The weariness was
scattered around by the wind that had been continuously
blowing warm air since the early hours of the morning,
penetrating everyone and everything so deeply that even the
commotion of the liver-seller and his customers could not
disturb the lethargic silence that prevailed on the streets, Pavel
Pavlovich Antipov absentrm ndedly dosed the window's, leant
back and looked at the b.ibv He looked and at first did not
nr

comprehend a thing. The baby's mouth was slightly ajar, her

eyes open and her eyebrows crossed as if she were trapped
inside a dream, dejected. Hair-thin, striped, purplish veins had
covered her entire face. She resembled a porcelain bowl that
managed not to break even alter a rough fall to the ground, but
had instead acquired multiple cracks across its enure width and
length, Pavel Pavlovich Antipov cupped this round, cold and
purplish yellow' head in his hands like a crystal ball within
which he hoped to see his future. And like all people wrho
having not cried tor years have totally forgotten how. in order
to cry he too had to first how].
The liver-seller, putting the livers he could not sell to the
cranky old women back into the screened cupboard, mstanfiv
sensed the ill-omen behind the scream and sauntered away,
tugging at the halter of the drowsy horse, dragging behind him
regiments of Hies and divisions of cats.

AAA

After the funeral, Pavel Pavlovich Antipov wrote a letter to his

youngest brother whom he had not seen tor a long time as the

$2
THE FI t A PALAt'E
nothing there except a pit, but this was better, much better, I ic
then tuned to track down the White Russians who had shared
the same fate with them in the 1920* but had stayed to become
Turkish citizens. Realizing the advantage of having the name
of a Turkish citizen on paper to ease the legal procedures, but
unable to trust anyone not from the same origin as him, after
some rescan i . he finally reached an agreement with a reticent
couple who had become Turkish citizens and made a living
selling delicate lampshades at a dingy shop in Asniahmcscu. A
company in which the couple had no shares provided a front
to cover the ow nership of the apartment building. Without a
single false move Pavel Pavlovich Antipov calculated
everything precisely and paid abundantly. His chequebook
speeded up transactions that would have otherwise taken a
long tune and cause ample trouble. For an architect he hired
an Armenian Istanbul)tc whose tamilv he had conducted
business with in France. He had also left a large chunk of
money to his mistress there, to make the lies he told her more
convincing. Hardly did he complain. For the first time in years,
he was content spending money freely without any
reservation. Whilst he did not Withhold any expense, he did
want control over all the expended materials. Even though he
did at times consult his wife about the trimmings such as the
gates, the gaiden walls, the iron grills of the balcony, the frontal
decorations, the curl of the stairs or the marble used in the
entrance, all in all he did what he wanted.
Agripma did not seem interested in such details anyhow.
Ever since her arrival in Istanbul, she spent her tune either
watching the sea from the window of the hotel room or
listening to the squabbles of her Alsatian companion and her
Algerian maid w ho did not even for a moment leave her side
The expression on her face while looking at the w aters of the
Bosphorus was no different from that which she had worn
whilst gazing at the vineyards from the window of the clime
m France. Not only did she seem unmoved at being back at
the place where they had buried their baby but she

hi
 EVEN BEFORE

occasionally confused which city she currently was in. Anti yet,
she did not look unhappy either. 1 ike a timid, tremulous
raincloud she floated above Istanbul, ready to shed tears but
impossible to touch.
For Pavel Pavlovich Antipov, his wife’s insulation from the
world was an indication not of her illness but her innocence
Many a time at the front, he had witnessed how soldiers of
different nationalities retained a common belief that if there
was even one innocent person among them, this would spare
them all from a portentous end. He too sought refuge in his
wife with a similar conviction.
When the outside walls were painted in ashen tones, the
window frames and iron grills of the balcony m two shades of
grey and the line decorations on the double-panelled entrance
door completed, the apartment building emerged in all its
dazzling beauty The most striking characteristic of the
building was that no two storeys were alike, having been
constructed upon Pavel Pavlovich Antipovs insistence in An
Nouveau style, even though no longer in fashion. As if to
compensate for their lack of balconies on the facade, the flats
at the entrance had much larger windows than the rest. The
balconies too changed from one floor to the next. Those of the
second floor extended outward in a semi-circle, while the
balconies on the third floor were buried so far inside the
building one could easily sir in the apartments without
worrying about being seen from [be outside. Instead of an
iron-railing, the sides of the balconies on the fourth floor had
been surrounded by a stone wall adorned with floral reliefs and
two large marble flowerpots on either end. So striking were
the differences that one could not help but think the residents
of the building shared the same space without living in the
same place.
In front, the relief between the windows of the first and
second floors was particularly eye-catching. Here placed
within a circle was a small-headed, large-bodied peacock.The
five feathers of the peacock, one on top, two to the left and
TH F FLEA PA l ACE

two to the right, pointed in five different directions Suitably

large eyes were drawn at the tips of the feathers and the eyes
in turn were adorned with thin* puny lines resembling
eyelashes. C ontrary to the feathers, one heading to the sky and
the other four in four separate directions, the head of the
peacock was bent dow n. At the spot on the tip of its feet,
which it looked towards, embroidered within an oval frame
and barely visible from the street were the first letters of the
names of the husband and wife.
"What will you name it?' he asked when he showed her the
apartment building with pride, A jasmine-scented offshore
breeze sweetly blew in between them and gave voice to things
Pavel Pavlovich Antipov could not express: 'Agripina. here is
your baby with eyes the colour of ashes. Shell always love you
very much but will not expect in return more love than you
are capable of giving. Shell solely and completely be vours but
will not demand dedication from you. Never will she fuss, cry
get sick or die. Nor will she ever gross up. She’ll not abandon
you as long as you do not leave her. She'll be referred to as
whatever you say. What name will you give your baby?'
^gripina Fyodorovna Antipova listened with excitement to
what the offshore breeze murmured. She remained pensive tor a
moment and then, with a spark m her eyes exclaimed:‘Bonbon!’
Pavel Pavlovich Antipov stared at his wife puzzled. Then he
must have concluded that she had not understood what dies
were talking about for he repeated the question, this rime
adding m a tew suggestions himself She could choose names
that alluded to their motherland: or a word that would remind
them of the Istanbul of the 1920s, as a tribute to those day s. Or,
even better, she could select names that could demonstrate how
very different their second arrival in the cits had been from the
first. "Triumph’ would be highly befitting, for instance, as would
Pride’, Blessed T 'Zenith*. ‘Memory’, ‘Escapade*, or ‘Saga’, It
could just as well be the 'Forget Me Not' apartment. "The
Reuniting’, ‘The Placatory' or ‘The Appeasing.' There were
hundreds of meaningful names with which they could crown

M
 EVEN BEFORE

their success* and should indeed do so* since there was so much
effort, suffering and also money behind it. Agripina Fyodorovna
Antipova listened to her husbands soliloquy with a docile
smile. But each time her response remained the same.

++★

When Pavel Pavlovich Antipov and Agnpim Fyodorovna

Antipova moved into Flat Number 10 of Bonbon Palace on
September 1st 1966* the entire sky was filled with plump* lead-
coloured clouds. The whole world had assumed the same
insipid tone as if God had run out of bonbons with coloured
wrappers. After giving the flat a cursory' look over, Agnpim,
trailed by her Algerian maid and the sullen Alsatian
companion, headed directly to the balcony. She opened the
double-panelled door and stepped out.The city was spread out
right m front of her. It had changed...and how*.. Site looked
at Istanbul with the malicious pleasure ot a woman who years
later encounters the rival whose beauty she once secretly
envied, now aged* decrepit and shrivelled. Then a strong
northeast wind blew* her own image confusedly crossed her
mind and her eyes became misty but she still continued to
smile. At that moment, Pavel Pavlovich Antipov watched from
afar with pleasure the smile that had settled on his wife's face.
She looked so content! There* it had been worth it, worth
returning to this city after all this time. Men* especially those
like Pavel Pavlovich Antipov who expect Life’s uncertainties to
confirm their truths* relish in the satisfaction of their women
as proof ot their own success. Looking at his wife that Istanbul
night, as a strong northeast wind replaced the jasmine-scented
offshore breeze of the past few days, Pavel Pavlovich Antipov
too felt proud of himself*

Time proved Pavel Pavlovich Antipov right. His wife died

65
 FLAT NUMBEk t II M l

nape of the neck being curled, thickly braided and loosely

fastened into a bun,The similarity between the photographs of
the t wo of them creating the same bun on different models at
different tunes was startling Hie customers loved to keep
looking at the two photographs to try to locate the differences
between them, one by one and over and over. Repetition is.
after all, an intrinsic par t ot beautv parlours, there everything
and everyone relentlessly keeps repeating themselves l ime,
hurriedly chasing its own tail outside, gets chubby in here as it
slows down; like dirty gum stuck to the bottom of your shoe,
time here lengthens when pulled, lengthens when pulled,
lengthens,.,The best thing about repetition is familiarity. When
surrounded in repetition, one feels safe and secure as if in a
well-known place amidst old buddies. Women's hairdressers
owe their languor, a quality not usually welcome in any other
workplace, to the constant turn of their wheel of ivpctmun
Everything the customers do in here, not only have they
certainly dune many times before, but are also able to repeat
infinite times m the future i hough all the beauty parlour
catalogues are identical, each and every one still gets looked
through igain and again. The womens journals being passed
around are never read until the end. they are just desolately
thumbed instead. No one feels there is any harm m going back
to the same sections again and again. The women in front of
the mirror keep vtutimzmg each other; keeping at it even
though there is barely a change in the other person's
appearance from one glance to the next Newspapers are read
not page by page but instead endlessly scanned; the tea they
serve always remains hall drunk, gets cold, is replenished, stays
in the halt full i up. gets cold once again; the continuing chats
get tut here and there, topics keep changing, the same things
are talked about repeatedly, the same music videos appearing
on television are watched in bus and pieces; the same singer
and soup ire subjected to scrutiny over and over again, to the
same comments nothing has to be completed. Life is a series
of perpetual repetitions with no beginning or ending. T hough

77
 Ft AT NUMBER SEVEN

the absurd topics ot conversation she came up with - which

included making a list of the most difficult neighbourhoods in
Istanbul to move in and out of. When we had finally reached
#

Bonbon Palace, Ethel meddled with the porters, running

around excitedly in that hand-to-believe skirt ot hers, which
was no bigger than the size of a beggar s handkerchief on that
huge, hideous ass she so much enjoys exhibiting.
Shooting orders left and right, she instructed the porters
where to put each box, how to arrange the book parcels and
where to stick the common, slipshod packages of shelves of
what was supposed to turn into a self-made library, which she
herself had forced me to purchase from one of those huge
stores in which families paid homage at the weekends The
porters were wise enough to know that it is the woman who
has the last word in these matters and in their wisdom
unashamedly ignored me, the real owner. All day long l do not
remember them even once paying attention to what 1 said,
except when the time came to pay them. It was only then that
they favoured me over Ethel. Even when they accidentally
banged the cardboard box packed with all kinds of glasses,
cups, and goblets, the authority they addressed and the person
they apologized to was not me, trying to mildly dismiss the
incident, but Ethel who gave them hell about the probable
damage they might have caused.
All day long, I had to stand at a corner and be content v ith
watching what was considered appropriate for me. My
exclusion reached its peak during the installation of the 180 x
21K) am, golden bow, system ^orthopedic king size bed — one
of the two hearty spoils 1 had wrested from my former house.
When, after six tries, u had become only too evident that the
bed would not fit the shapeless space of a room that Ethel had
decided to make into my bedroom, an argument broke out
among them, Ethel wanted the bed to be put m sideways and
would sacrifice the showy headboard, if necessary. As for the
porters, they were all for locating the bed head-on. even
though there would then be no space left to move around.

151
THE H I A PAL At E

Mean whilst no one asked my opinion and if someone had, I

would not know what to say anyhow. When they finally agreed
to put the bed in sideways* still leaving no room to move, 1 did
not object. I hat bed was too big for me at any rate.
Accordingly* I have not slept on it once since I moved here. I
am pretty much consistent in sleeping on this narrow couch
that torments my posture and tortures my back. In the past,
during her lengthy Masnawi season, Ethel had once lectured
me about how kunu had to reckon with his body. Though nor
in such a mystical manner, in these last two months 1 too have
probably shown little gratitude to my frame Still, like .1
desperate lover ever more attached to his oppressor or a
despicable apprentice inured to scorn, 1 too can nut break away
from this cruelly uncomfortable sofa. Before the end of the
term, [ should assign 1 The I )iscourse ofVoluntary Servitude' to
the Thursday section.
m

The television oppposite is, no doubt, the main reason tor

my preferring this couch,These days, having given up regular
sleeping hours. I seek refuge m television and can only sleep
with it turned on. Likewise Last night, back home so late and
high, l must have turned on the television. Now on the screen
some madcap of a young girl with a short, multihued shirt
with tropical birds, a crimson rosebud tattoo almost as big as a
fist on her bare plump belly and orange-coloured hair tied-up
in handfuls with phosphorescent green ribbons, chirps with a
glee not many people are bestowed with this early in the
morning Though the girl does not move her body around that
much and talks with simple hand gestures, her breasts keep
wobbling m that way particular to women scurrying to catch
a bus at the last minute. This is not to my taste though. I have
always gone for contrasts; I like them either as small as the palm
m a big frame, or huge in a petite body.
Jen days later, when Ethel came to inspect the house and
saw everything was as she had left it. she kept her comments
to herself Nothing had changed by the third week- Still not
even a single package had been unwrapped, not even a single

152
 I I AT NUMBEk SEVEN

shelf mounted. When she stopped by one month five days

later, I wished she would keep silent once again. However,
with a disagreeable smile on her face and whilst clicking her
Long, brightly polished fingernails together, she blurted out in
that particular manner of hers intended to stress the
importance of whatever she was going to say, Look, sugar¬
plum! Its none of my business but you'd better stop treating
your new house like you've treated your ex-wife You neglect
your house assuming its all yours and will never go anywhere,
hut God forbid it too might be taken away from you, just like
your wife was.1 1 did not respond. I have always hated long,
polished fingernails
1 rhel uses her tongue the way a frog catches a fiv. Whatever
comes to her mind she blurts out and before the victim has
even had a chance to get the message, catches with her harsh
pink tongue the momentary' bew ilderment on the latters face
and then gulps it down with great pleasure, without even
bothering to swallow. Although following the divorce 1 had
barely hesitated in ending numerous friendships in my life, I do
not know, and frankly do not want to know, svhv I am still
friends with her Not that I make any special efforts to see her,
but I do not take any steps to stop seeing her either! he issue
is not that I do not like her any longer, for I have never liked
her more or less than I do now. It a bond has kept us together
all tins time, I do not think it is one of love, companionship or
trust. Ethel and I are as compatible as each single w ing of two
different butterflies positioned side by side under a collectors
magnifying glass. We are very much alike in our
incompleteness and vet it is two different halves, with utterly
distinct designs and colours that we eventually pine for. As we
waft along with the wind, we have been coming together, even
sticking together, but never in such as way as to complete one
another If I dojfir see her for a month, I barely miss her and
am sometimes hardly even aware of her absence; yet, when we
meet after a month, l do not feel the slightest distress next to
her or ever think about cutting short the time we spend

m
THE FLEA PALACE

together. Ethel is Ethel, just as some things simply are what

they are, in spite of this, or maybe precisely because of this, I
see her more frequently and share more things with her than
with anyone else. That is how it has been for many years.This
loose relationship of ours may persevere as such or brusquely
unravel one day like the nail of a haemorrhaged finger. At
times 1 wonder, it such a thing happens, which one of us will
be the first to realize and how long after the fingernail has
fallen?
As 1 was getting up from the couch, my foot got caught on
the phone cable. Hie receiver emerged from under my pillow,
as it 1 had tried to squeeze the life out of the phone last night.
It is so annoying, all the data at hand indicates that 1 was not
able to resist calling her last mghc before I passed out.
Nobody would object to the fact that it is dangerous for
drunks to drive. Making phone-calls whilst drunk, however,
could produce even more deadly results than driving whilst
drunk, and yet there are no legal procedures for dealing with
this particular danger. Drunk drivers hit random targets, like an
unfortunate tree that suddenly appears in front of them or an
unrelated vehicle moving on its way..in these accidents there
is neither purpose nor intent. Yet those who use the phone
when drunk always go and hit the ones they love.
It is enough of a torment to realize that you've called your
loved one when drunk, but it is even worse not to remember
w hether you called and, as you force yourself to remember, to
try to convince yourself to the contrary Since my divorce, this
scene kept repeating itself at almost regular intervals but 1 had
not yet called Ay shin on her new number. She probably does
not even know that I managed to get this number. That is, of
course* if we did not talk last night... 1 had to he certain. 1
pushed the redial button. One, two, three...it was answered on
the sixth rmg There she was herself1 In the morning, her voice
alw ays sounded as if it had come from the bottom of a deep
well. She likes to sleep. Highly unattractive upon waking up,
she cannot possibly come to her senses before having her

154
 FLAT NUMBER SEVEN

filtered coffee. No sugar* no milk* Her second 'hellooo'

sounded even more furious than her first. I hung up.
I tried to collect my thoughts. In spite of everything* there
was snll some hope. The fact that I called her did not mean that
we actually talked. Maybe the phone was not answered. If
Ayshin had answered the phone last night and said a few good
or bad things, I would have at least remembered bits and pieces
of what had been said. As I did not recall a single word,
probably nothing worth remembering had occurred, but there
was no wav I could find solace on the bosom of this slim
jf

chance I he most plausible explanation for Ayshin s not

answering the phone last night was that she was not home at
the time. At that time, outsideOutside, at that time...
On the bathroom floor he two dead cockroaches half a
metre apart. This must be rwo of my accomplishments last night
but I cannot, in the doubtful records of my memory come
across any explanation regarding this matter. 1 take my shirt off.
It is suffused with a sharp smell: an unbearable smell jointly
produced by the smells of the deep-fried turbot, lots of side
dishes, the raki [ drank and the premium quality cigars 1
smoked, all mixed up then totally dredged and made
unrecognizable by my stomach acid. The washing machine is a
divorce gift from Ethel. She has always been a practical woman,
handy and generous. I throw my navy-blue linen pants into the
machine as well. 1 have learned by now that tor linens one uses
r

the 40 temperature and the second short cycle, but even it I

succeed in purifying myself from the unpleasant sediments of
last night, it is amply evident that I will not be able to free
myself from the disgusting garbage smell engulfing this
apartment building. I am extremely regretful about acting so
hastily during the divorce process in my search for a house. For
the same amount of money I could have been living in a much
more decent place if I had not, with the intent of getting away
as soon as possible, attempted to land the first relatively cheap
and adequately distant flat. I miss the comfort of my old house.
The issue does not solely consist of my yearning for the lost
1 H t ML A PA LAI £

comfort uid the lost heaven from winch I personally arranged

my ow n downfall The house ac tually belonged to Ayshin or, to
put it more correctly, to Ayshin's family; but after a three and a
halt year long residency, l had thought the house was mine too
until that unfortunate moment after gathering my underwear,
books, lecture notes and razor blades when I went back tor a
List look to check if l had left anything behind Such a puny
little word: ‘too!’ Like a child enthusiastically expecting that
what his brother has received will be given to him too;\Me too,
me too!"Yet it seems that in marriage* just as in sibling relations,
one side gets more than the other* while peoples traces can be
removed from the places they lived, or sometimes even thought
they owned, as easily as the string off of a string bean What 1
find hard to take, what thrusts pains into my stomach, is exactly
the part about the string. It upsets me to think that now Ayshin
has a great time by herself tn the house that was once mine too.
One should of course be always grateful* for there ln worse than
the worse imaginable she could be having a great time not all
alone..*
I took stock in the bathroom* freezing at times or getting
scalded at others under the shower that either heated up so
much that it then suddenly turned icv, or turned cold and then
became boiling hot, managing never to end up lukewarm
Even though it was unclear how I had found my way home
List night imbibed* it was certain that I had called Ayshin with
iuv drunken jellyfish-head. Okay* what then? It we had talked*
a memory; a moment should have been left behind, A
sentence*** As 1 soaped my face, the headquarters of my brain
sent the news that a sentence fitting the description of the
sought suspect had been observed wandering around and been
arrested:‘I )on t you see that 1 will totally cease to care about
you if you keep calling like this? Before we lose our respect for
each other...11 I did not see anything. Even though I tried to
open my soapy eyes for a moment, I again shut them when
they started stinging from the soap. No* the information
proved to be groundless* This was not the sentence I was

15*
 F I AT NUMBER SEVEN

searching for. I remembered l had not heard this one last

night, but earlier, sometime before Ayshin had tried to change
her phone number.
1 stepped out when the maim depressive si lower started to
push my endurance. I he pain m my stomach was unbearable.
The kitchen was not too small, hut became rather narrow
after the installment, right in the middle, of an impressive
burly refrigerator more or less the size of the cottages that
low-income holiday-makers perch along sea shores and fill up
with then families. Rather than insisting on taking from my
old house this American bullock, designed to satiate the tribal
appetites of consumer society's nuclear families with their
hangar-like homes, 1 should have gone and bought myself
one of those boxdike, knee-high refrigerators used in either
hotel rooms or flats in Tokyo, I probably would have done so
if Ay shin had not objected by stating "It's too lug for you,1 1
had heard this remark twice in a row: firstly, for the king-size
bed and secondly, for the refrigerator. It was only then, upon
realizing that what was tun big for me was run that big for
Ayshin, had I been able to surmise that there was another man
in her life .md my place would be shortly Idled up. So even
though I did not cause any difficulties on any matter and was
more compliant and docile than necessary so as to hurry
along the divorce process, no one, Ethel included, could make
out my uncompromising stubbornness concerning the bed
and the refrigerator
My loot might have been substantial but it was totally hollow
It looked pathetic empty like that. I arge refrigerators are distant
relatives of those old locomotives who gobble-up coal all along
the Way; they are,just like them, never lull and as they get tilled,
constantly want to be filled some more Forget s.nhs of coal
mine is bereft even of a shovel full of cod dust On the top shelf
there was a box of opened cream cheese coated with a thin layer
of mould, inside the door are five cans of beer and half a large
bottle of mkt> m the vegetable container sat three tomatoes and
wilted leaves of lettuce. That was all. Then , on the bottom shelf

is?
THE FLEA PAt ACE

there was the mushroom pizza slice sent by that elderly woman
neighbour. I had seen many who send puddings and the like* but
had never before encountered one who made pizza and
distributed it slice by slice. ] was going to throw it away but
forgot. Now; however, as the alcohol panicles left over from the
ilight slowly gnawed on die membrane of my stomach* I
reached for the pizza slice with gratitude. It took three minutes
to heat it up tn the microw ave oven and approximately thirty
seconds to get it down my stomach, It was a bit stale but so
what: it was great considering the conditions! Having thus
appeased my stomach, just a tad, I embarked on preparing my
medicine. This included a pot of skimmed milk with two
heaped spoonfuls ofTurkish coffee* one spoonful of pine honey,
a generous quantity of cinnamon and a little cognac. This n my
miracle medicine for hangovers, its curing power proven
through experience. It may not suit every coustitunon. Actually
everv constitution should, through trial and error, develop its
ovsti cure. That is hovv I found mine. That day I made the
proportions more generous than usual, as 1 needed to sober up
as soon as possible. It was Thursday and since the beginning of
the term, every Thursday afternoon I have taught the course I
love the most to the class I love the most.
While waiting for the milk to boil, 1 looked through the
brochures F.thel had thrust into my hand. Another private
university was being founded m Istanbul. 1 had been aware of
some of the details for a long time, like the long preparation
process for example. What I did not know was that Ethel the
Cum was involved as well; she was actually at the very centre
of it all and told me more than 1 ever wanted to learn at
dinner. Only two minutes after we had met, she introduced the
topic with a “plop' and talked of almost nothing else until the
end of the night when* under the weary looks of the skinny
Kurdish waiter who could barely keep his long black eyelashes
open, we wobblmgly departed from the restaurant that had no
other customers left except us She kept talking continuously
about howf this university was not a financial investment but a
 Ft AT NUMBER Sf VEN

moral one; how she had not so wholeheartedly believed in a

project for quite a long time; she personally knew the founders
and that she herself was actually one of the eight investors
behind the scenes; she had enjoyed life much more since she
got involved in this and that she was sure when she looked
back in her old age this would be the job she would be most
proud of m her life; about how they would educate a group of
youth much more conscious and knowledgeable than their
generation within five years at the most; how the size of this
group of youths would increase from year to year and how
they would altogether affect the fate ot our haggard country,
As she kept speaking. I kept on drinking. If I had drunk less,
or more slowly the summary of the night would have been
something like this; Ethel talked, l laughed; Ethel got angry, I
burst out; Ethel shouted, we fought. So in order not to cause a
fee tie, not to muddy the waters for no good reason, and not to
spoil the night, Ethel talked and l drank
What upset me was more the perpetrator of the worth than
their content. Of course, Ethel the Cunt could go and talk
about this bullshit with anyone she wanted, anywhere she
wished, but of all the people in her life, she should not have
acted like this to me. Not that I take it personally The issue is
not personal, but rather "linguistic/ At dinner yesterday, for
whatever reason, Ethel either decided to break our tradition or
simply forgot the language we have been speaking when alone
for as long as I can remember
Language' is one of the most nonsensical words in a
language. It is by definition something more than the sum of
all words but in the end it, too, is a word. Should there be the
need for a connection with another word, you could say that
the word language- is like the wend'meal/ I here is just as little
sense in labelling everything a ‘meal - which totally overlooks
very different food mixtures with differences m taste,
nutritional value and calories as there is in labelling as
language’ all the expressions that play totally different tunes,
talk about different words at fandom and emerge in different

iSf>
THE Ft E A PA L AC' E

styles, I should of course add that m making this observation,

linguistic1 differences such is the Chinese cuisane, Turkish
cuisine, Spanish cuisine and so forth are not even taken into
account Otherwise, I would have to multiply all these with a
global coefficient. In short, hundreds of languages" reign even
within a single language’. Just as we do not all eat the same
’meal’m a restaurant we also do not and can not speak the
same 'language with everyone alt the time, and just as meals
have residues, languages have remnants. A garbage dump
language comprises words we not only do not use everyday
but are reluctant to even pronounce, words we silently pass
over, nonsensical words we keep to ourselves because they
would not be proper, criticisms that come to the tip of our
tongues but we lack the courage to voice, innuendos we slice
into thin strips at the tip of our tongues to then gulp back,
curses that blow up m our palate before we can take out the
fuse and throw them away, expressions that a a- too loaded or
jokes too light tor our milieu,There might also he a remnant
left over from the attention we pay, the tact we demonstrate
and the care we take when we talk or write to others. We can
call this a recyclable language of "Solid Accumulated Waste
(SAW)’; accumulated, if not m the basement or the attic or
under the pillow, then on the nasal passage, in between the
palate and under the tongue; a language which, once
adequately accumulated, we till into .1 bag, ne up and throw'
away to stop the smell and the stink.
I should say right out I never leave evidence of rhis language
lying around and not only do I not use u in front of my
students m class, I do not like to hear it from them either Yet
just like a teenager secretly smoking in a secluded spot without
his parents' knowledge, I too am occasionally thrilled to \ass —
as Hthel and I call it — m this Language as I open my cache in
a dark and dings corner, unbeknownst to my moral principles
and conscience. It is exactly at this point that Ethel's presence
acquires significance. For sassing", just like making love or
quarrelling, requires that someone else be there with you at the

160
 FLAT NUMBER SEVEN

yme time You might smoke jione but to speak in this kind of
garbage-language you definitely need a companion.
For years, whenever left alone, Ethel and I would speak, or
used to speak until yesterday, m SAWish. Whenever we got
together, without stating that one needs to be serious to call
die other sills, without making any claims to he just or
equitable, we loved to recklessly and coarsely belittle
everything and shower this or that person with insults. Just like
a bully brushing off an attack to then plunge into a tight by
randomly pruning the noses and ears of his adversaries, we
attacked social hie with our cutting tongues and did our best
to prune the maladies and blunders ot whomever chanced to
appear in front of us.
Who says you cannot make fun of other people's detects?
With spears in our hands and waterproof goggles on our eyes,
we would dive headfirst into the seven depths of the sea of
flaws* faults-failures and bring each defect captured to land,
with the intent of examining it at great length and tearing it
to shreds. Sometimes, not content with this, with an appetite
befitting calaman-lovers we would lift our catch up in the air
and hit him against this or that rock for hours on end. In the
final instance, no one escaped our tongues but some received
from our shower of generalizations more of their share than
others. Peasants, the lumpen proletariat, advertisers and
academics, housewives and lawyers...all were a target, albeit for
different reasons. Yet the diameter of our net was rather wide,
enough to easily contain all sorts of people. There was a place
for everyone there.
We pitilessly and coarsely belittled those we saw to be
unsteady or those who attempted to look smart. We were
irritated by those who caned about their appearance but totally
drowned in derision those who dressed tastelessly as well; had
no respect for the masculine heroes of the have-not's' but were
beside ourselves with anger at the pnma donnas ot the "have V.
We turned up our noses at those who feared death to then
merrily trample on those who had no concern about death. We

161
THE FLEA PALACE

could not bear to read a poorly written article, story or novel

but also slung mud left and right on those well written ones.
We did not even take note of those who turned religious in the
aftermath of a serious surgery or trauma but also carelessly cast
aside the Ones who remained at exactly the same level of belief
either with or without religion, all through their lives. We did
not forgive the decent ones because of their decency but also
took the crookedness of the crooked and danced around with
it, We threw on the ground and trampled on those guilelessly
naive secularists who thought Christianity was less
interventionist or Judaism less patriarchal than lshm; glee hilly
gnawed on those who were unaware of the variations within
Islam but also bruised with cannon salvoes those who imagined
themselves privileged tor happening upon mystical movements;
and tore to pieces those w-ho, m the name of the trinity' of
Being, Becoming & Transcending Sainthood', sought
alternative Indian, Chinese, Tibetan messiahs for themselves. Wfe
rammed into those breeders married with kids but laughed our
hearts out at those w ho regarded not getting married a form of
political resistance. We also covered m tar and paraded naked
before us both those who perceived their heterosexuality to be
a socially given ‘tor once-and-always' yet erased to take at least
a petite bite of the apple of sodomy, as well as those w-ho
regarded their homosexuality as entirely an individual choice to
then sluggishly' sit in the oases of isolation, closing themselves
oft to all. We did not like those we knew personally but also
expended recklessly those we knew intimately.
We did not feel the need to express all of these attitudes and
beliefs at length and were content with using codes instead.
With the meticulou&ness of the archivist, we one by one
classified and filed everyone and everything. We were
deliberately, recklessly unjust, to everyone and every thing. In
any case, if you combed through the section covering the letter
*J’ of the basic illustrated dictionary of the SAW language, you
would never come across either'just or Jurisprudence', just as
you would not be able to find under 'S'/sacred or sacrvdness j

162
 FLAT NUMBER SEVEN

or under E\ ‘exalted' or exaltedness'. As tor injustice, the

definition given in this dictionary is as follows;

1, To do wrong to that which is wrong (example: to take

the fur coat oft oi someone in a desert or to take the
wine glass in trout of a pious person)
2, Indirect attribution that produces no harm (example:
to spit at someone’s photograph),

Whenever Ethel and I spoke SAW is h, we committed

injustice against this or that person in the second meaning of
the word. We'd never sugar-coat our words when alone. Yet List
night at dinner while Ethel the Cunt talked about her
grandiose goals in relation to this private university' to be
founded in Istanbul, it seemed as if she had checked our
mutual language into the cloakroom at the entrance.
‘Don't you realize? Your all-time dream is finally becoming
a reality," she exclaimed as she held her jasmine cigarette-holder
tightly between her teeth. No more political appointments
from above, or the usual sterility and similarity that budgetary
restrictions produce in state universities. Instead they will
gather the highest calibre facuity' in Turkey, recruit the most
brilliant minds snatched away by the universities abroad, and
bring to Istanbul lots of foreign experts from different corners
of the world, ‘just think, well put a stopper on this chronic
brain-drain, and within the first five years we will even reverse
the current. Then Western minds will be at our service. We'll
cure the inferiority' complex of the nation,* she added with .1

giggle, as it she had made a witty, naughty remark.

Why she giggled like this was no mystery to me I am
actually used to Ethel's ascription of an erotic connotation to
the word "brain. She was not much different back in our
college years, harbouring a layered hatred of other women and
a boundless passion for intelligent men... Now that I think
about it, the large number of male students outnumbering the
females and die ‘brains' surrounding her must have pLived a

161
THE nr* PAlACE

considerable role in her decision to major, though she never

intended to practice, in such a difficult field Bike civil
engineering. In those days at Ethels house, there was the pick
of dozens - if calculated over the years perhaps more than a
hundred - exceptionally intelligent male students from
different departments. One could even argue thai the Cunt
made a substantial contribution to Turkish education if one
considers the tact that this place operated like a kind of soup
kitchen where these male students could feed themselves, or a
kind of dub where the members could utilize the library as
they wished Even though we may, as regular customers of this
alms house, have appeared at first glance to be rather different
from each other, we were very much alike concerning one
matter: the way in which we invested in our intelligence. In
those days, no matter which department or class they belonged
to at Bosphorus University, all the male students who. in order
to escape the complexes induced by the unjust distribution of
life, successfully pushed their brains to the limits; would have
definitely heard of Ethel’s name and most probably touched
her body. T he overwhelming majority were those who had
devoted themselves to read, study and research, having put
their demands from life away into the deepfreeze of their
expectations, not to be thawed out until the arrival of'that big
day’ Some of Ethel’s aphorisms addressed this point: Just as the
blind man perfects his other senses, so too the ugly male who
goes unnoticed develops his brain.’
Among Ethel s favourites, in so far as they succeeded m
developing their brains, were those male students who were
either unable to establish relationships with women or were
rejected by all the women they were interested in,
subsequently giving up on love, practicing love and even
making love. After those who were broke in terms of looks,
came the chronically shy whose relationships with the fair sex
had soured for one reason or another and others...These others
included: asexuals who composed panegyrics, praises and
poems to a life without contact; avant-garde marginals; overt
 FLAT NUMBER SEVEN

or closet homosexuals; highly dignified critics; asocial* who

hated exams but whose greater thrill in that period of their
lives consisted of taking exams; those who came from the
provinces and lost their way in Istanbul; those who could not
leave their shells let alone Istanbul; valedictorians who
managed to get an education despite coming from the wrong
families, as well as those‘hidden talents’ getting an education
in the wrong departments because of their families; the rare
geniuses of the natural sciences; the passionate orators of the
social sciences...all the hopeless, unhappy, maladjusted,
extremely intelligent young men who struggled to cope with
society lor various physical, financial, psychological or
incomprehensible reasons were within Ethefs held of interest;
If she had her way* she would not let any female brain enter
her house*,,although somehow,sometimes, upon realizing that
a male she cherished happened to have a girlfriend, she would
not let on and invited them both. In spite of all this, for some
reason, exempted from her notorious hatred for her sex were
a few girlfriends left over from private school. One among
these frequently stopped by the temple-house. She was so
attractive that a comparison with Ethel could not even be
considered: with long shapely legs, flawless milky skin* pearlv
teeth and breasts kneaded in accordance with the laws of
dialectic: vibrant within the context of her large body yet tiny
enough to fit into the palm.,. Yet she had one flaw Like all
women who lose their naturalness as soon as thev become
i#

conscious of the admiration thev arouse in others, she too

assumed a forced toughness and made the common mistake of
thinking that keeping a guy waiting in purgatory, neither too
much at a distance nor needlessly close, would render
permanent the attention she received. Even when telling
people her name she sounded as if she thought she was doing
a favour:'Ay-shin!*
Oddly enough the other men in the house fell in love tint
with this arrogant fairy but instead with the hideously ugly
Ethel, Actually many among them obviously liked Ay dun, vet
T H t F L Ef A PAL AC F.

'like’ is a flimsy verb. As expressed by a contestant in ,1 highly-

contrived contest, while listing his hobbies: ‘I like to read
books, listen to music, take walks and also long-legged, tight¬
hipped Ayshin.’Yet when the name of Ethel, the ugliest one of
all tune, came up, they would go full throttle beyond the liking
phase and, burning up with desire, fall m love headfirst: either
with her or her house - or both,
I he temple-house belonged, not to Ethels mother and
father or any other Jewish family member, but to her
personally. Whereas the band of students around her stayed at
either their parents' insipid-loo king homes, worn-out bachelor
pads or in overcrowded dormitories where one could only be
In oneself inside the wardrobes, the Cunt was the owner of a
villa in which she lived all by herself Though this alone
sufficed to make the situation rather surreal, m addition her
house was a dream world and just as dreams flirt shamelessly
with the art of exaggeration, Ethel too was susceptible to
overkill With its garden overlooking the Bosphorus (every
square of which was totally covered up with jonquils and
jasmines, that in warm winds released delicately sweet smells at
night overflowing with the scent of pleasure); its small but cute
pool in which Ethel floated lanterns of all colours at night; its
high quality drinks, tasry food and furnishings each more
interesting than the next; its vast collection of records and rich
library; not forgetting the premium quality- cigars constantly
being passed around; rhis place was almost like a miniature
version of the world during the Tulip Period of the Ottoman
Empire the excess of which the contemporary historians had
attacked with clubs and defaced with extravagant praise.
However if you ask my opinion, it was not only the wealth
that stunned the guests who came here; not the ostentation or
the luxury either. What was even more striking was the
"endlessness of it all The dwindling cigarette boxes were
immediately replenished, the collection of records was so vast
you could not count them all, the library did not hist its
splendour even though the borrowed books were never

iMi
 FLAT NUMBER SEVEN

returned, and in spire of our eating in hoards, the kitchen

cupboards never emptied out, the stock of delicatessen never
diminished. We liked to joke among us that when the ground
was broken for the villa, the venerated Saint Hizir happened to
be one of the workers and had blessed this place: Let ii
multiply but never lessen, let it overflow' but never spill." Even
the magical cave of the forty thieves, with its jars of gold, chests
brimming with jewellery, holts of satin and barrels of honey
and butter could not rival Ethel s temple-house.
As much as the house was prosperous, so was our host
generous. Ethel watched closely the things her cherished
guests enjoyed. Her offers increased in accordance with how
much she valued someone. For instance, was there someone
among us who liked whisky? As soon as she learned about it,
Ethel would fill up the drink chest with the highest quality
w hiskies. If another person liked puzzles, Ethel would order ,m
acquaintance going abroad to bring puzzles each more
challenging. Most of our time, however, we dedicated
ourselves not to such games but to wearing ourselves out with
various gatherings or k get-togethers \ We would burrow
ourselves in the comfortable sofas in the living room, eat,
drink, smoke and ‘sass about this or that person, but mostly
about each other. We would quickly tree ourselves of our past,
focus on who we w ere now, reveal our dreams and constantly
debate with each other. Our host did not at all care about the
content of our conversations. In fact, as individuals, l don't
think she cared much about us at all. She I iked the
environment she provided for us..,and she also liked fireworks
For each guest plunged into this place was like a firework
speeding through the night's darkness. He would first glide
with shaky, staggering steps and, when convinced he had risen
high enough and adjusted to the environment, would burst
with A magnificent bang and light the place up by scattering
the colourful rays he had hitherto hidden. As we found our
voices, became encouraged and burst out with explosions of
our own, Ethel provided every comfort by constantly serving

167
THE ELEA PALACE

us.The genie in the lamp, the houns of heaven, even Peter Pan s
fairy ,, none would have served their masters with as much
devotion. Ultimately, sooner or later, all these guest-masters
ended up falling in love with their host. Yet this aKo brought
their downfall. Those who had the freedom to swim as they
pleased in this vast sea, often moved so far away from land as
to suddenly realise, upon looking back, that they had lost sight
of the land. Ethel was no longer at their side; she had lost
interest in them just when they had miserably fallen for her.
The only drawback of being a guest at this house was the ease
with which one overlooked the fact that both the guest status
and also the visit were temporary. Hence each departing guest,
just like the infinite replenishment of the materials of the
temple-house, was quickly replaced with another. Saint Hizrr's
prayer for abundance was valid for Ethel s 'brains' as well: they
constantly multiplied and never lessened.
As for me. I was the exception. From the beginning till the
end, I was the only constant visitor of the temple-house; a type
of honorary member. 1 was ambitious, more than was
necessary according to some. My report card was filled with
'AY for a couple of solid reasons. For one thing, I was tall
(three stars), then wide-shouldered (three stars). 3 will not be as
modest as to say i w as ‘considered handsome’ for I w as always
the most handsome in the places 1 frequented (four stars) and
1 was extremely impatient and*difficult’ (five stars). Unlike the
others, l had choices. 1 certainly enjoyed being here but could
have left at any moment 1 could have gone and not returned.
Ethel was too well aware of this.That is why 1 was so dear to
her. The seed of discord in the middle of heaven. My presence
enchanted Ethel and disquieted her guests. Little did I care.
Being considered a threat by other males was old news to me.
If] had cared about these types of looks, I would have done so
much earlier: back when walking the distressed corridor of an
eleven year old. With a plate filled w ith wedding cake in one
hand and only underwear on my wiry body, I had almost
collided by the kitchen door with my stepfather, I was so

168
 FI AT NUMBER SFVEN

relaxed and hungry with the warmth of the wedding night,

Unri] that moment, the poor man had always seen me as the
older son of the woman he was going to marry; a boy who had
problems but was in essence hungry for love and needy of
compassion. I should not do him wrong, he wanted to be a
father to me: a talented sonny bestowed by God to a childless,
fifty year old man. Yet on the morning of his wedding night
when we unexpectedly met m the hall, with my facial features
inherited from mv father, mv half-nakedness that revealed 1
was about to leave childhood and my tremendous appetite
revealed by mv filling up my plate (signalling also that l would
be getting bigger very quickly), 1 must have seemed tar from
being the 'sonny' he envisioned. An apprehensive gleam
flickered and faded in his pupils. The bad thmg was that my
mother also realized this, and did so without losing any time.
It was as if she had found the remnants of that look when she
swept the floors the following day This did not bode well for
anyone because my mother was one of those women who
took the tensions that ricocheted among the men in her
family, established fickle and knotty alliances and always turned
them to her advantage until the last drop; one of those whom
whom, without knowing his name, made Bismarck's soul
rejoice... She turned her older son against her younger one, the
younger one against her late husband, her late husband against
her new husband and her new husband against her two sons.,.
Hence I was rather used to unvoiced maliciousness, I did
not care about the looks of others. I was Ethel’s favourite and
Ayshnfs lover. I was fond of hanging around the temple-house
but that was all, l had other alternatives and more important
things to do. As I said, I was ambitious, very ambitious. Not
wasting a moment after graduation, 1 started the doctorate in
England and finished it here in Istanbul, in a field that signified
nothing to my family: political philosophy. Ay shin too had
passed, on her second try, the sociology assistant ship
examination. We looked good together. Ethel barely caught up
with us. When she final) managed to graduate, she made

169
THE FLEA PALACE

brazen oaths about never entering through the gates of the

university ever again and then burnt her diploma with a
ceremony at a party she threw in her temple-house. Then,
while Ay shin and l gradually buiir a decent life for ourselves,
Ethel destroyed hers with startling speed. First she sloped living
as a dan. Then she left that villa and moved into a penthouse
that, when compared to its predecessor, was very spacious and
cute but was undistinguished She no longer gathered
everyone in her house, spent most of her time not by drawing
attention in large crowds but instead by putting up with the
w hims of her lovers in crowds of two, and though she devoted
all her money, love and energy to them, was still not loved the
way she wanted. We heard that her congregation was not
happy with her behavior, but Ethel was not happy with them
either. She grumbled behind their backs at every opportunity
even though she knew it would eventually reach their ears.
'Since you have read more books than I did and chose to
become social scientists, could you please solve this little puzzle
tor me? It you observe a wide range ot countries nil around the
world, from the most democratic to the most oppressive, you’ll
find m all of them quite a number of writers, painters and the
like among the jews. It s as if whatever the circumstances, they
somehow find a way to develop their brains. With the
exception of one country! In Africa, the Middle East, the
United States. Europe. Russia...just keep on counting..,in all
these countries,,. Only in Turkey something went wrong with
the jews. For whatever reason, in Turkey they didn’t feel the
need to use their brains as much.’
‘You’re mistaken,' objected Ayshin frowning. ‘Many of my
friends are Jews,'
Ethel giggled ruthlessly. She never forgave such mistakes. 1
however was spin in two. One part of me had relished the
naivety Ayshin had displayed in defending Jews in front of her
Jewish inend - this must be the part of me in love with her.
My other half had looked at Ayshin with the anger 1 felt
toward those who tried to roll up the qualities they acquired

nii
 FLAT NUMBER SEVEN

thanks to their family trees, the exceptional family structures

they were horn into, the due schools they attended and the
things life had bestowed upon them which they then tried to
pass as merits they themselves had developed - this must be the
pan that made her fait m love with me.
Yet Ay shin must not have been aware of either Ethels solid
reaction or my bifurcated one, for she plunged into her
assertion full force: ‘They all entered good university
departments Many of them received very wonderful grants
and they've now risen to quite good positions '
' And l tell you this,' Ethel had said, clicking her fingernails
again.‘You talk about occupation, I* talent.You mention career,
1 genius. Economists, academics, lawyers, surgeons.,.! beg you,
please put these aside and move on, 1m talking about
something else. Why don't the bohemian, bibulous poets or
hedonists, the perverse or even better gory film producers and
such emerge from among them? Why don't mv people make
music? And on those rare occasions that they do, why is that
that they always sweetly sing the syrupy tradition.il songs of
our Sephardim grandmothers and can't come up with
something totally wicked, like a protest song?'
‘My people" was the final stage: against Ayshms insignificant
defense, Ethels regal attack Whenever the location of a group
is debated between someone belonging to chat group and
someone not, the patent right always comes smack onto the
agenda : the end of the road, the dry well of all debates, the last
curtain.,.when everyone withdraws to where they ultimately
belong, the married to their family-homes, the peasants to
their village-homes... At that point I lit a cigarette, having
drawn both of them into my own vicinity, and sat back. It did
not make a difference to me. Both of them were, at the same
time, wry u*vf«rn.
Men committing adultery find quality significant: they enjoy
receiving from another woman love that is in essence different
from what they receive from their wives. Yet women
committing adultery find quantity significant: they enjoy

171
THE FLEA PALACE

receiving from another man love that is more than that which
they receive from their husbands. Cheating on Ay shin with
Ethel flattered my vanity. Those days, I very much enjoyed
observing their differences. As to whether Ayshin cheated on
me or not, I never attempted to find out.
‘Okay; but these are so for a reason.' Ayshin had spoken up,
by no means intending to give up, Then she had gotten down
to business and commenced with a detailed explanation.
Trying to employ objective expressions, she had talked about
the shaky psychology of being a minority, the constant
insecurity generated by the crisis of belonging and the
■domination nurtured not by concrete threats but by abstract
tenets. She did so neither to be a smart alecks nor to display her
interest in talking big. She talked like that because this was the
only language of debate she knew. Yet debating in an academic
language is like going to bed with a woman who does not put
a drop of drink into her mouth. You can rest assured rhat she
will remain standing until the end of the night, never go
overboard and never lose it.Yet you have to accept upfront [rut
you would not be able to relax around her. let out w ild yells,
hit bottom, pass out in each others arms; in short, that you
would not have any fun whatsoever*
'What you say is nice but totally useless,' Ethel had
remarked, girding up the swords she had just sharpened* ‘It
gloomy writers, slovenly producers or socially undesirable
painters had emerged from among the jews in Turkey, do you
know what explanation the generations succeeding us, say fifty'
or a hundred years later, would've given? Exactly the same
ones you used just now.They would’ve said/4Yes, so and so was
a great artist or thinker. What made him so great, what
separated him from all the rest?' I hen they would’ve started to
count the reasons you gave: the psychology of being a
minority, alienation from the language* insecurity; being
unprotected and so on. Thus everything you now see as an
obstacle would have become a cause for difference, for
privilege even. This is how these things operate. If a lame man

172
 M AT NUMBtk SIVt N

cant dance, we say, “Of course he can't dance, he's lame!" but
if the same man is an expert dancer, then we say/*Of course he
has to be better than others, for he's lamer
Aysftiin had flinched, as if avoiding a pushy salesman,
shaking to one side then the other both her head and hands.
1 knew that motion too well. It meant, "Thanks, but I'm not
buying that nonsense " During our three and a half years of
marriage, she would conclude almost all our arguments wLth
the same gesture.

171
Shooting up the stairs,'I he Blue Mistress unlocked the door of
Flat Number H panting. She was very late, As if it weren't
annoying enough that the visit to the beauty parlour had taken
so long, she had also spent too much time afterwards shopping.
Once inside the flat, she emptied the contents of the shopping
bags onto the kitchen counter. The food could wait, her
appearance could not. She dashed into the bathroom. While
brushing her teeth, she scrutinized the waves in her hair with
discontent.This new style had seemed much nicer in the mirror
down at the hairdresser than here m her bathroom. Being one
of those women who sometimes envied curly hair and
sometimes straight, but in each case only ever on others, her
hair had all this time been oscillating, unable to lean in either
direction. Now that chatterbox of a hairdresser had upset this
delicate balance, making it far curlier and trimming it far
shorter than she had asked for. She stole another glance at the
tuU-length mirror while taking her clothes oh m the bedroom.
Though her hips had somewhat widened lately, she was still
fond of the way she looked. If only those cuts were not so
visible ,. She applied a handful of foundation cream, the same
colour as her skin, managing to conceal the scars once again*
The drawers opened one by one and she paused for a
fleeting moment but did not have to ponder for long over
which underwear to pick since it seemed to make no
difference to the olive oil merchant,That had not been the case
in the beginning. Back in those days, he wanted her to wear

174
 \ i vr NI Mi'F k nGill
the naughtiest underwear possible, buying it personally as a
‘present’ to her He always chose the same colour: a lucid,
brilliant* infinite sky blue,The Blue Mistress liked this colour,
she really did, except in panties or bras, When it came to the
underwear in her gift packages, she tele uneasy about the
incongruity' between the docility ol their colour and the
licentiousness of the intention behind. A garter could be as
desire-inducing a colour as cherry; as carnal as black or as
deceptive as white; even violet in its flirtatiousness or pinkish
in its hypocrisy,.,but it could not he a lucid, brilliant, infinite
skv blue, Fusing that specific hue with those specific intentions
was pretty much like diluting milk with water, or even worse,
adding milk to rah. Not that it wasn’t possible for a man to
enjoy both, just as long as he refrained from drinking them
simultaneously. Of lambs turning into wolves or wolves into
lambs, she had seen plenty; but it was the ones trying to be
both lamb and wolf at the same time who spawned the worst
monstrosities while believing themselves to be innocuous in
the meantime.
It was the half-lamb half-wolf who had harmed her the
most - even more than those who liked to remind her of the
unsurpassable border between women-to-marrv and women-
to-bed. Such men lusted after what thev vilified and vilified
what they lusted after. The Blue Mistress had once seen a
hoodwinker on the street tricking the passers-by with three tin
cups on a cardboard box. As he changed the places of the cups,
the bead hidden in one of them was displaced too. At the onset
it was in the first cup: 'Be ashamed ol your desires!’ In a flash
it moved into the second cup:"Be ashamed of the woman you
desire!’ Then, in one move, there was the bead again, now
under the third cup: ‘Desire the woman who brings you
shame!’ That, in turn, meant that sooner or later these men
would start to scorn the women they slept with.
In order not to repeat this vicious pattern, the olive oil
merchant kept seasoning their affair with spices that would
outweigh both the zest of desire and the tartness of shame.

i?S
THI FLEA PALACE

Always a prolific diary-keeper, the Blue Mistress had written

down when she hid first met him:'If someone awakens in us
a desire we'd rather not have, we try not to like that person.
However, if that fails, we then seek something likeable in
him, something good enough to make the desire for him
less bothersome, more endurable." It was akin to wearing a
celestial glove, of lucid, brilliant, infinite sky blue, so as not to
have to touch muck or mess while enjoying rummaging
through the debris.
In the spice basket of the olive oil merchant there wasn't the
slightest trace of lust. All sorts of other things were present there
but for some reason during the past few years he had always
fished out the same spice: compassion. He felt compassion
toward the Blue Mistress: she uu not the type of girl to I nr d life
like this. Then there were times when he felt compassion toward
himself hr was not the type of man to five a life like fins, loo often
he talked about Kader as if she were a wicked w hore. As for the
Blue Mistress, foe regarded this lust covered with compassion
like a dirtied, mud-covered slice of jellied bread K ing on the
ground. She had no appetite for it. At times like this, she likened
her position to her hair. On the one side was the wife of the
oiivc oil merchant, smooth and even like straight hair, on the
other was tins whore called Kader, bumpy and imbalanced like
hair with permanent wave Then there she was, in the middle
of the two, swaying toward either end,. .semi-wife, semi-
whore..,both blue and a mistress.,.
She knew how heartbreaking it had been for her parents
when she had left home for good but still could not help but
suspect they had also been relieved deep down, t hey were
both nice people but the nets they repetitively threw into the
sea of parenthood rarely turned up anything decent. Though
never at ease with their love and hardly able to bear their
attention, this ingratitude of hers was hard for even her to
handle. She could have gotten a better education if she had so
wanted, could have at least graduated from high school, but
after that ‘incident*, she had felt barely any desire to return to

176
 I L AT NUMBER EIGHT

school. Before she knew it, the scar on her face had drawn a
hair-thin boundary, first between her and her peers, then
between her and the age that she lived in. She had to leave that
house. If given a choice, the only place she would like to go
was, undoubtedly, the universe that her grandfather
inhabited...a grandfather whom she loved dearly, lost too
early,..After losing her dedeJ tracing the jumbled footprints of
people from all walks of life in Istanbul, she had tried to track
down those that belonged to the dervishes.
Hard as it was she had managed to find them - scattered
here and there on the two sides of the city and gathered, like
moths attracted to light, around their own dedes. She had
joined them. For two years, she had participated every week
without tail in the sermons of three separate religious orders in
Istanbul, seeking solace in the resemblance between the words
she heard from their sermons and those she had heard back in
her childhood from her own dede. bur it had not worked. It
wasn’t that the words were not reminiscent of those of her
grandfather's, lor they were. Nor was it that the people who
uttered them were not sincere, lor they were. Still, tor some
reason it just did not sound the same. Little by little she came
to realize that in these meetings it wasn't the talks that she was
really interested in but the chants that followed. She would sit
side by side with the other disciples while the dede calked, but
rather than be all ears like the rest, she would withdraw behind
a solid deafness, Only when the chant started would she
reopen the sealed gates of her ears. How profoundly she loved
that moment, that true and total desertion of the body, again
and again, sealed in the minuteness of repetition. It wasn't the
words articulated there but instead the beat of the drums and
the notes of die underlying melody that took her away
However, no matter how far she swerved she could never quite
shake that old feeling of incompleteness. After a while she had
started to feel like a hypocrite. Why had she insisted on being
one with those she felt so apart from? Every' chant attended left
her yet another mile awa\ from the other disciples, just as she

177
T HI H FA PA 1 Art

had been unsuccessful in reciprocating the love of her parents*

neither had the found peace next to those who constantly
preached peace.
I don’t know how to be satisfied with what I have,’she had
solemnly confessed to herself* ‘because I'm not able to show
gratitude.’ Surprisingly* rather than causing offence this
confession had relieved her. She had been suffering from the
malady of those who, while still children, realized how
extraordinarily beautiful their childhood is; the malady of
those who started life with the bar set high.,. Thereafter* all
the people she met were destined to remain in the shadow of
her dede while even the most pleasing things in Her life would
embody a harrowing sense of absence, Such incompleteness,
however, was utterly unbeknownst to others, and therein
resided the problem: (he absolute wholeness of $ood. Those who
unreservedly believed m then own goodness and the
superiority of their morality were doomed to failure far more
than the bad for they were so smug in their completeness
l here were no leaky roots in the edifices of their personalities,
no crumbling floorboards, neither a hole to be filled, nor a
notch to be fixed. The Blue Mistress had found them
incomplete in their gorged fullness but being unable to express
this, she had gradually recoiled from the good, distancing
herself step by step from their learned codes and credo of
goodness. It was thus that she had started to suspect
somewhere m her innermost soul she was inclined to
depravity and immorality. Before long* she had entirely cut her
ties with all three religious orders. Be that as it may, moving
away from the believers had not once shaken up her beliefs
Faith for her was not living in accordance with the
unchangeable rules of a commanding God or joining the ranks
of a conscientious community, but rather a sunny* dulcet
childhood memory And as her childhood memories with her
dede were the best moments of her life, she had steadfastly,
doggedly remained a devout believer. Even when not as full of
taith as she had been in her childhood, her faith had still

17H
 FI AT NtUMBFR EIGHT

retained a childish side.

Yet there was neither a home she wanted to return to and
nor did she have enough money to continue on her way. It was
during those days that she had started to get used to the
attention of men as old as her father and managed to not
remain indifferent to the attention she had got used to,These
men who thought they had everything, discovered at one
point the incompleteness embedded in their lives and
thereafter became eagerly attracted to her as if she and only she
could right that wTong. In any case, being a mistress was a good
start in terms of getting aw ay from the humdrum wholeness of
the good She was first blue, then a mistress, but there were also
periods when she was thrown around in between the two.
When the olive oil merchant rented Hat Number 8 of Bonbon
Palace, she had finally stopped tluctuanng between being blue
and a mistress to become both. As soon as the man provided
her with a house, his manner had drastically changed,
becoming visibly coarsen For he was that type* He was an
LTGM of the SPEM section and the WCWl sub-seed on, and
he naturally acted in accordance with that.
There lives on earth another type of creature whose world
is as crow ded as that of humans and that is at least as complex:
bugs They- have succeeded in spreading everywhere and stay
alive in spite of everything. They display a magnificent
variation, even a particular type of bug can come in ten further
varieties, sometimes even reaching thousands, It is assumed that
the sum of all bug types is more than one million at present.
In spite of this harrowing complexity, the scientific world does
not stop classifying them. It divides them into their upper
categories, classes, lower classes; upper sections, sections and
lower sections, A tree worm, tor instance, belongs to the bug
category; ‘changeling sub-class, sheath-w inged upper-section,
different-stomached section, plant-eater sub-section' The
overwhelming majority of the disappointments women
experience in their relationships with men originate in their
unwillingness to accept that, like bugs, humans too come in

nv
THE fit A PALACE

ry^es and therefore the men they are with also belong to a type
- with only one difference: a bug cannot leave its type and
make the transition into another type. A horsefly, tor instance,
cannot at any stage of its life turn into a praying mantis. It stays
the same. However, Adams sons and Eves daughters can
indeed accomplish this transformation. The trademark of a
human is the faculty' to deviate from what it was originally; to
betray its own type. Accordingly; the table of modern human
types is less complex but much more convoluted than that of
the primitive bug. Nevertheless, making the transition between
categories is not easy. After all, m order to preserve their
stability and maintain their existence* not only do all types
nuke, without exception* their members exactly like each
other but they fix them in that guise as well. The olive oil
merchant belonged to upper category of the mens type/Long
Term CompUiners about Marriage’, svas on the 'Can't Quite
End Marriage team and also m the Want Change Without
Loss' subsection: a harmful type whichever way you looked
at it.
'You are my betrothed,' he had said as they silently drunk at
the raki table they had, on their first night in this house, set
together He liked to dnnk and often drank at night. He was
not one of those w ho made do with a fistful of appetizers* half
a mould of cheese and a slice of melon. Instead he always
insisted on having a table filled to the brim. It couldn't be
ready-made either, everything had to be prepared at home
from scratch. Chicken with ground walnuts was his favourite
dish I hat night, w hilst using a piece of bread to wipe off the
last crumbs of chicken with ground walnuts from his plate, he
has! remarked: ‘Gur religion permits it as well. As long as you
are fair enough* you can have up to four women * The Blue
Mistress had tittered* a bristly; edgy' snigger, He had grimaced.
She had left the table: unlike the olive oil merchant* she did
know the mentioned verse of the Qur’an m its entirety*
Choosing a gauzy green dress from the wardrobe, she
dressed in no time, then ran back to the kitchen to open the
 FLAT NUMBER EIGHT

packages from the grocery More. First she placed the hummus
in a bowl, decorating it with mint leaves. Next, she arranged
the other appetizers on plates: dried bean stew, eggplant puree,
green beans m olive mb liver with stewed onions,,* She lined
up the cheese pastry on one side, planning to try it when he
arrived. There was also the Russian salad Madam Auntie had
sent yesterday with the janitors son. This she actually had
found rather odd. The Blue Mistress had never before seen a
housewife sending Russian salad to neighbours and the like,
but she guessed that the ohve oil merchant might enjoy it on
the rnkt table. She could place it on the table as if she had
prepared it herself After inspecting the plates for the last time,
she crumpled up the packaging paper into a ball and threw it
in the garbage; then tied up the garbage bag and took it
outside. It was then that she recalled the conservation at the
hairdresser She had not mentioned this to anyone but her
garbage had also been stolen a couple oi times from her front
doorstep. Inspecting the garbage bag suspiciously, warily; she
took it inside again to put it out later w hen Meryem was due
to come to collect them,
The delicaaes she bad prepared the Blue Mistress then
earned to the table with the azure tablecloth. She set the
napkins that matched the tablecloth in colour, then the plates
and the glasses. She rook out from the refrigerator the rah she
had seasoned with ground mastic and poured it into the crystal
water pitcher with the turquoise handle. Finally, she poured
into a maroon bowl a small amount of the heavy-smelling
olive oil the merchant had brought and sprinkled it with red
pepper, sweet basil and thyme. Though it w as still early she
could not resist lighting up the lily-shaped candle that floated
on a glass bowl ball-tilled with water. With a soft, satisfied
smile, she scrutinized the table and then everything around.
She liked her bouse. Ef only this horrendous smell of the
apartment building could be gotten rid of.,*
She lit a green apple-scented incense stick and plated u m
the middle of the living room. As the smoke delicately

mi
THE FLEA PALACE

dissipated in the air, she sprayed, first on herself and then at ah

the corners of the house, half a bottle of perfume. Recently she
had Started to spend J considerable amount of her money on
perfume. As the smell of garbage circumnavigating the
apartment building had augmented, so had her perfume
expenditure. She frequently stopped by the stylish store at the
end of the avenue* always buying her bottles of perfume from
the same place even though she knew too well that she did not
have the same standards of living as the women shopping
there. She liked fruit smells the most: mixtures of peach,
watermelon and papaya. She had no clue what papaya was but
found the name cute.
1 he perfume she bought Listed at most ten days. She poured
the different scents everywhere: on her clothes, onto die
pillows and sheets, the curtains and the armchairs, her toys of
all sizes and types, and on the evil eyes she hung all around the
house. Instead, she could have saved up this money, or she
could have bought long-lasting things for herself. The
merchant must have realized the wastefulness of his little
mistress for he had reduced the amount of pocket money he
gave her Yet the Blue Mistress kept on doing things as she
pleased. She did not know and did not try to understand why
she behaved like this. The only thing she knew was that if the
money she received were five times what it w^as now, she
would purchase five times as many bottles of perfume.
The table looked fine, tasteful and refined. She sent a
message from her cell phone asking him when he was going
to come. While waiting for the response, she pushed on the
remote and randomly turned on a channel. On the screen
appeared two women throwing resentful looks at each other.
One of them, the one with the fashionable lavender suit and
four strands of pearls, crossed her hands on her chest and
snorted:‘Admit it Loretta, I'm the one he loves,' The long
haired brunette wearing a dress that reminded one of a held of
daisies with one such specimen also placed on her hair,opened
wide her green eyes* pronouncing syllable bv syllable:‘But you
 FLAT NUMBER EIGHT

do nor love him,’ Pulling on her necklace almost to its

breaking point, the other one replied; That doesn’t concern
you Loretta, it doesn’t concern you at all.1
‘May stones as big as Loretta rain on your heads,' grumbled
the Blue Mistress. Even though 'Loretta1 was as of the same
type of word as 'papaya', it did not sound as cute at all.
As she reached for the remote, her cell phone beeped,
delivering only a single word: “Night. Such a long, abstruse
slice of time. She heaved a sigh, changing the channel A
middle-aged woman with a wide forehead and a chubby face,
who either had not considered or did not much care about
removing that moustache of hers, was listing the ingredients
for cooking spinach an gratia.

1H3
I went out to the balconv and lit j cigarette,The balcony the
only place 1 enjoy in this house. It is almost detached from the
house inside; whatever attachment it has to the flat seems
fortuitous, as it it doesn't really belong here, I notice a brick-
coloured bug wandering on the iron grills. Mv presence
annoys it and its presence annoys me. There are bugs
everywhere. They spread out from the kitchen cabinets, under
the refrigerator, the cracks on the tiles,..
For a fleeting moment I ponder calling Ethel to ask her help
to And out w hether I had talked to Ayshin or not the night
before but l soon decide against it. Since I already had had
more than my fair share of the Cunts whims, to ask her for
Ayshin's new phone number, asking once again for help, would
he of no use other than further inflating her already over¬
inflated ego. I can't stand hearing her grouse one more time;
Tm going to lose my best girlfriend became of you sugar¬
plum! If it were up to me 1 am sure I’d have done both a great
favour by putting an end to that gangrenous relation ship of
theirs but why bother?
This twosome, the closest of buddies in high school, used
to meet without fail once every two weeks to dine, always at
the same type of restaurants. After our engagement, u hadn't
taken Ayshin long to convince first herself, then me, chat I’d
better join this uninviting routine. In order not to upset the
balance, Ethel too had started to bring her partners to our
meals* Before long, these partners were gracing our table one

1H4
 FL AT NUMBER SEVEN

after another, with no apparent consistency or similarity

among them, like the winning numbers in a lottery. Before
we found the chance to get acquainted with one number,
another one would have already replaced him. During that
period* Ethel’s love atYairs were so slapdash and so fugacious
that we did not feel the need to hide our amazement when
a lover succeeded in attending three dates in a row. Such
exceptional partners we would inspect all throughout the
meal with an admiration mixed with awe. During that three
and a halt year long parade of lovers, Ethel introduced us to
partners of all kinds and sizes If there was one thing all these
men had in common, it should have been their incapability
to bring to a close what they had started. All were allergic to
anything conventional, obsessed with being original by doing
things never done before and had ambitious projects which
they had abandoned halfway through for one reason or
another.They happened tu be enormously enthusiastic about
a myriad of projects, the only problem being that they could
not flesh them out any further than the beginning phase. Like
mussels in their shells, they had gotten stuck in their hall-
developed projects, waiting tor someone to pull them out by
their hands to continue on, It was precisely at this stage that
Ethel the Cunt appeared, plunging m and randomly pulling
them out with her long fingernails painted in harsh colours.
What she did not like she threw back in the water; after all,
Istanbul was a huge mussel field and she was an accomplished
mussel-hunter.
There was an edgy young scriptwriter, for instance, who
must have been at least ten years younger than Ethel, He was
working on a script he assured us must be sent to European
producers as he resolutely believed those in Turkey were not
worthy of him. The scenario was definitely ready, he claimed,
if only he could decide on how to end the film . We dined with
him once. W hile Ayshin grumbled and Ethel giggled, the two
of us put our heads together and - as we downed rakt with
ice* proceeded from cold to warm appetizers* from warm

IBS
THF FLEA PALACE

appetizers to the main dish, and from then? to desert and

codec - came up with a total of lour different endings to his
film, all of which we were particularly proud of . Then there
were the other lovers: a photographer who nuned amazing
grudges against the managers, workers and even the readers of
all the journals he worked for; a haughty advertiser who saw
no harm m claiming that everyone who kept a television at
home was an idiot; an amateur actor who did not find any pJay
staged in Turkey successful and therefore went from door to
door seeking a sponsor to establish his own theatre company;
a foul-mouthed satirist who had a reputation for leaving
everything he started halfway through and thereby speeding up
the bankruptcy of all journals he became mixed up with; an
alcoholic psychiatrist who had as his patients all the
intellectuals of the city, who kept going to him even though
everyone knew he could not hold his tongue when he got
drunk and happily divulged his patients innermost secrets,,. At
times, l could not help thinking that Ethel brought these men
to eat with us just to upset Ayshin. If that were the case, she
certainIv succeeded. Even though Ayshm never thought of
ending their friendship because of this, she always had a grisly
opinion about the life Ethel led. She knew 1 did not approve
of Ethels ways either. What mv wife did not know, however,
was that disapproving of a womans habits was no obstacle to
sleeping with her.
Ethel was actually a threat to all her partners. She would
help them out, pouring money on them, all the while daring
up that spark of i wouldn't be the man I am if only my
circumstances were different’ ready to char the wooden
cottages of their characters. As soon as these men — who for
one reason or another had repetitively failed to accomplish
their goal but accepted both themselves and their fate as given
— bumped into Ethel at an unexpected turn ol their lives and
were pumped-up with money and flattery, they would
abandon their life-long projects to go after far more avaricious
ones. Shortly after that Ethel would abandon them without

186
 FLAT NUMBER SEVEN

nonce, just as she had done years ago to her guest* in the
temple house. As she did not love herself, she did not love the
men she turned her lovers into either. However, there was one
among them who did not tic this pattern and whom Ethel
cherished like no other...
He w as a ney player. In the days when the principal Mawlawi
order had bifurcated over the debate/Is it permissible tor male
and female dervishes to whirl together?* he had taken issue
with both sides and retreated into his shell, ever since that
moment devoting half his day to seeking refuge in sleep and
the other hall to escaping from his dreams. How exactly and
on which part oi the day Ethel had met him l had no clue.The
only thing l do know for sure is that she had once again
plunged her hands into the water to pull our yet another
mussel and, as soon as she parted the shell to look inside, had
encountered what she least expected: a shy pearl! For a while
she gave to him what she had given to others: financial help,
excessive attention, suffocating love , but unlike all the others,
there w as no visible change in the nature of this heavy- eyed,
big-nosed, absentmuided Mawlawi. hi the guy's calendar of
life, the longest time period vvas one day. Whenever Ethel tried
to plan something, say go on a trip in a week’s time or get
married in the spring, the only response she got from her lover
was ‘I et s see what that dav looks like when it comes/ From his
#

perspective, one could nor reach days, let alone land up on

them; rather days came to people and, when rhey did, always
brought something along. He was the most unambitious,
uncalculating, un-futuie-oriented man and the only anti-
tjrikdt tarikat master I ever knew. He would no doubt have
replaced my place on the throne in Ethel s harem had he not
taken off from us \o suddenly.
'You and 1 are standing by the seashore. We dangle our feet
into the water. Ethel. You are saving. Come on lets swim
together otic to the fifty-fifth wave Look how appealing that
wave is!”And 1 ask you "‘Which oner ’ Before l can even finish
my question, the wave you had pointed out changes place.

1K7
t HE fit A PALACE

Look* its no longer where you said it was! Now it isn't the
fifty-fifth hut perhaps the thirty-fifth one. It keeps coming
closer. That is, it moves toward us by itself and as it draws near,
it brings many things along with it. I'he sea being what it is,
you are left with only two options Ethel,You can either forget
about the waves and dive into the sea to become a drop within
or sit by the shore and simply wait. Watch the waves get
smashed as they hit the shore, each turning into a drop in from
of your eyes. Life is lived in one of two ways, if it's to merit the
name. You either render yourself invisible within life or render
life invisible within you.*
Poor scandalous Ethel! It must have been the curse of all the
lovers die had frittered away. As she listened flabbergasted to
the dazzling words of the Mawlawi, she kicked me under the
table, throwing me despondent looks begging for help.Though
she sure could manoeuvre around all the ins and outs of the
language of the mundane, when confronted with these
spiritual abstractions she was as inexperienced and helpless as a
child. After a while, she started to blame herself. She should hair
I'/jtmw r/ib How she repented now turning her nose
up at her grandmothers attempts to teach her the basics of
Jewish mysticism.To nuke up for her shortcoming, she started
to read in a frenzy, devouring first the books given to her when
she was a child and then others. Her increasing interest in the
Kahala was a bridge she hoped would lead her to all those
things her dear ncy player kept prattling on about. She
wouldn't go around without at least a couple of books to hand,
including, for sure, a copy ot the Mathnawi, Frequently
stopping by a senile bookseller m Beyazit, she parleyed with
the man behind the counter in w hispers, as if tracking down
an art ane hand-written manuscript, and each time emerged
from the store with bags full of books. So seriously had she let
her heart be captured that she was ready to go anywhere and
even settle wherever her lover wanted. Ethel the ugly crow,
w hile gliding guilelessly in the sky, had all of a sudden spotted
something shiny down on earth, and now wanted to grab it,

188
 FLAT NUMHEK SEVEN

whisk it away and make it totally hers. Why didn't they wander,
say for a couple of years, around the most mystical cities of the world f
like Jerusalemf Tibet and Delhi, or go in search for the lost tomb of
Shams? 1 have seen people mess their minds up but Ethel had
literally lost her identity Yet however much she tried, she could
not convince her beloved to go on these exotic trips. The
serene Mawlawi was as inclined towards the idea of taking a
trip as a cat to the activity of taking a bath.
Be that as it may, this young man who was so unwilling to
go anywhere turned out to be too much in a hurry to change
worlds. A week before New Year’s Eve that year, he was one of
the four victims claimed by the bomb that had exploded in
one of the garbage cans on lstikl.il Avenue — an explosion
tor which no revolutionary organization would claim
responsibility. I do not think Ethel cried so much for anyone,
nor even her own mother and Either, though perhaps with the
exception of the older brother she had lost to suicide when
she was fourteen...he was the only person she might have
loved so intensely...
I got married to Aysliin two months and two weeks later.
Ethel attended the wedding alone.
A day before the wedding, she was lying down stark naked
Parading in front of my eyes all of her fat body, so big,
belligerent and bulky. When her body turned into a heap of raw-
white meat, that hairy reddish birthmark spreading from below
her neck to the top of her breasts was even more pronounced.
She could have had this removed if she wanted. Just as she could
have gotten nd of her body fat, fixed up her nose or nipped and
tucked pans of her body like everyone else. Women as ugly as
Ethel and just as rich spent everything they had on plastic
surgery, cosmetics and dimes to become beautiful. As tor Ethel,
she had put her entire wealth into the service of her ugliness.
Not only did she not try to beat her ugliness, she did not even
care to spruce it up and hide it away either, The door* of the
wardrobes taking up two of her bedroom walls were covered
with full-length mirrors. After making love, she had the habit of

I8ll
THE FLLA PALACE

stretching out on the bed lost in watching herself, At nines she

looked at her reflection with such desire that I wondered what
she saw there. As she displayed her body, she acted Jess Like a
woman who wanted to be desired than a man desiring what he
regarded. It was as if being admired meant nothing to her: her
aim was simply to display witli the intent to starde. Even so,
w hile the victims of a flasher ran aw ay screaming, those of Ethel
kept coming back to her bedroom with then* own two teec
There were, ot course, exceptions: the Mawlawi ney player was
one and so was 1,
‘Oh sugar-plum, you Ye making a gross mistake. You 're
gonna regret it. I've sullenly accepted the very fact that from
here on life won't bring me anyone better than you and thats
precisely where your problem lies.You haven't yet reals/ed Em
the best you’ll ever get. Well, what s there to be done, except
to wait tor you to see the truth? Keep roving around, londle a
tew more asses, crumple a couple more times. Then you U
finally pull in and admit I was right from the start," she had
glibly stated. Sooner or later you ll hit vour head against the
wall, lamenting, “Why didn't I get married to Ethel then?"
Look. I mark it right here? she had flashed a grin as she marked
a jagged thin line on the side table, making it screech with her
long fingernail painted m glittering cobalt. Affixing a cigarette
on her jasmine wood cigarette-holder, which she constantly
lost only to replace it with a new one, she had then waited lor
me to light it up,
‘Why? Is tt because you are the richest woman MI ever
encounter?’
1 probably' could not have fathomed how well-off she was
even if I had the inventory of her w orldly possessions Though
the rich are never able to get tins, there is. in the minds eye of
the non-rich, a threshold at which wealth gets riveted. Once
that threshold is surpassed, no matter how much you go over
it, tt is bound to remain the same amount: a lot! Just as the folk
tales of the penniless fix the wealth of a merchant m the
chimerical cornucopia of the number ‘1<hm)\ Ethel also, it you
 FLAT NUMHFR SEVEN

had isked me, owned a 'thousand' properties,

‘No sugar-plum! Not because I'm the richest woman vou ll
ever encounter but because fm bad Of course, not any worse
than you, but with badness there can’t be an amount, can
there? Wickedness is no flour we can measure by the cup, i et
me put it like this: you and 1 are of the same breed but poor
Ay shin isn’t one of us. Okay, she may not be a good person, bur
she isn't bad either. She is at most a capricious young lady; the
one and only daughter of her elite family, a little too much of
i straight arrow and. J should confess, at times a bit too boring
and all, but certainly not bad. And do you know what the
saddest thing is? As you rough her up, shell try to defend
herself. She’ll first compete with you logically, strive to make a
case; then frustrated she'll burst into tears and end up believing
she’s suffered terrible injustice. Whenever you make her
miserable, shred her self-esteem to pieces, she won’t even
realize that the issue at hand isn’t really what you are arguing
about. You know av well as I do that Avshiti too is one of those
#

types. The type eager to bow down before God without

getting to know the devil first.,/
hihel loved this remark and uttered it repeatedly, J suspected
she had stolen it from one of her bright men - maybe it
belonged to the wry player - but it suited her well Rinse who
were eager to bow down before God without getting to know
the devil first; those who never wondered about the source of
the gale of destruction breaking the huit-filled branches and
destroying the flower beds of the garden they had fortunately
been born into, never to get a glimpse of the world outside;
were outrageously confident that they lived in the most
habitable place on the face of the earth. Not once did they
worry about how mans rooms or exits there were in the house
# m

they lived in, and did not, in spue of the noises they heard day
and night, find it necessary to go down and unlock the old,
musty door on their pantry floor.The types who think they are
right basically because of the rights they were granted... Ethel
was not mistaken. Avshin was indeed one of those.
i

191
THE ELEA IMLACE

What is so distressing is that 1 had frequently remembered

these words during my marriage, but had not confessed them
to Ethel so as not to further stroke her ego that already
wandered onto the summits. Last night while we drank
together, however, l was careless enough to let this already stale
confession slip out. She listened to me with barefaced pleasure,
When she got up I watched her huge ass sway as she wobbled
to the bathroom, suspecting all the while she was aware dial I
was watching her big ass sway as she wobbled to the bathroom.
She has the ugliest ass 1 have ever seen. No way can it be
groped; there is no shape that it fits into. Like a gooey, soggy
jelly; Ethels ass is less solid than fluid, if you just let it flow; it
might just as well drain away, I have seen much fatter asses and
more formless ones as well, with cellulite, pimples, wounds,
hair that has grown more than necessary or in wrong spots; but
all had something, one thing that turned me on* Ethels had
not, *.none whatsoever...
Once back at the table, luckily Ethel seemed to have
overcome the delight of my confession as she delved again int o
the topic of upmost interest to her these days: the university
project. At long last she let out the morsel of information she
had all tins tune hidden from me. Thev had made an oiler to
JF

Ayshin as well, and she had accepted. Though she knew 1

would never ever, even it I were desperate for money, work at
the same place as Ayshin, she continued to insist as she kept
looking right into my eyes:‘Come on sugar-plum, why don't
y ou have faith m my word once in your life. Join us, come to
this university. You can philosophize as much as you want; no
one will meddle. We are readv to serve your brain professor
That obscene association the word ‘brain' assumed in the
Cunt's mouth aroused me. Bizarre as it is that even though
during my marriage to Ayshin. Ethel and I had been screwing
regularly, we had not once slept together since my divorce. I do
nor remember w hy we returned apart last night, I don't even
know how 1 got home. May be Ethel played a game wheeling
in at the last minute, but 1 don't think so. that wouldn’t be her
 FLAT NUMUER SFVFN

style. At the mast, she must have seen I was too crocked to
wind her up and decided to drop me off home. That is more
Ethel-like.
[ stretched my legs to the rails of the balcony and lit another
cigarette..The brick-coloured bug remained under my foot. It
had had a chance to escape but n did not. Down below on the
street I noticed a skinny swarthy woman throwing garbage
bap onto the pile in front of the garden wall just at the same
time a fuming voice roared from somewhere in the lower tl.u -
The woman stood still for a couple of seconds and then,
heedlessly, absentniindedly, as if in a dream, scampered back
and hared away. This place pisses me off l have ro get out of
here one way or the other. Perhaps J liken Bonbon Palace to
myself - a disgruntled apartment that bitterly misses the
prosperity it was once accustomed to. I need to move
somewhere eke but do not have the money. All throughout my
marriage, Ayshui and I had maintained a division of labour, the
absurdity of which l can only novv comprehend. Since the
house we lived in belonged to her parents and therefore to her,
I paid all the other expenses. How scatterbrained of me! I do
not have any money saved ‘on the side’ either. When faced
with unexpected expenses and the need to pay rent, my salary
shrivelled ridiculously. 1 could no doubt borrow' some money
from Ethel, but that I won’t do. Such a move would only upset
the symmetry in our relationship. I d better start making some
money soon.
‘That's none of your business Loretta l cell you* none of
your business/
‘You are wrong honey!’ bellowed the woman with the
daisies, narrowing her eyes with rancour. Everything that
concerns hint concerns me too.'
‘Everything that concerns him atmerrts me too' repeated
HbWifcNadia, trying to pronounce the words in Turkish
exactly as she had heard, 1 he soap opera she watched was
called "The Oleander of Passion’ and it had been broadcast
every weekday afternoon for the past two and a half months.
At the outset it was broadcast before the evening news, but
once it had become indisputably obvious how slim its chances
were of becoming a hit. the scheduling had been altered m a
flash. Now in its place was aired some other soap opera, one
far more ostentatious Unlike its precursor, this soap opera had
been so successful and drawn so much media attention from
week one that quite an uproar revolved around it. especially
when the leading actors were flown to Istanbul to sign
photographs for their fans after a glitzy press conference.
However* HisWifeNadu was not interested in either this or
indeed any other soap opera. It was only ‘The Oleander of
Passion' that mattered to her. Every afternoon at the same hour
she took her seat on the divan with the burgundy patterns on
a mauve background, the re-upholster mg of which she
constantly postponed, and watched the soap opera while
simultaneously doing some other work. I >ependmg on the day,

w
 FLAT NUMBER SIX

she would haw a tray full of rice or beans on her lap to sort
and shelf look at old photographs in old albums, try to do
crossword puzzles with her limited vocabulary in Turkish,
reread the letters from her great aunt or write her a response.
Yet everv so often the tray would become weighty, the puzzle
unsohable and the sameness of the photographs and the
dullness of the letters depressing. At such times, HisWifeNadia
would scurry to the kitchen to get a few potatoes and, as she
watched the soap opera, would craft yet another potato lamp.
Though the whole house was filled up with these lamps, she
still could not keep herself from making new ones. Anyhow;
given the frequency of power-cuts at Bonbon Palace, one
might need a potato lamp any time.
As to why she could not watch 'The Oleander of Passion'
without doing something else at the same time, there were a
couple of reasons bclund that. Firstly, she found the soap opera
so mind-numbing Ehat she could barely bear it without some
sort of a distraction. Secondly, when she kept herself busy with
another task at the same tune, the hidden discomfort of having
become a hackneyed viewer of a hackneyed soap opera tended
to diminish Perhaps most importantly, however, by keeping
busy w ith ocher things she could prove to herself how much
she disparaged not onJ\ the soap opera, but also that leading
actress of it, namely Loretta.
'The Oleander ot Passion', like all other soap operas, was
broadcast on weekdays only. However, despite the fact that all
the other soaps were constantly in the public eye, via fragments
from upcoming episodes and gossip from the real lives of the
actors saturating the papers, not a single ime - good or bad -
had yet appeared about either ‘The Oleander of Passion’ cast
members m general or Loretta in parDcuiir. It w-as not onh the
new spapers that remained so indifferent on this matter. Among
the acquaintances HisWifeNadia had made in Istanbul, there
was not l single person w ho had heard of the programme, let
alone become a regular viewer. I t was as if die entire country
had unanimously pledged to feign ignorance of'The Oleander

195
THE FLEA PALACE

of Passion'. The tact that nobody took the wap opera seriously
did not by any means please HisWifeNadia, After all, for the
vilification ol anything to have any value whatsoever, the thing
sneered at should at least be of some value for some people in
the first place. Under these circumstances, it was neither
gratifying nor consequential to vilify Loretta, Thus,
His Wife Nadia kept her thoughts to herself. No one knew
anything about her obsession with this soap opera: not even
her husband,,.least of all him...
Be that as it may, the fact that the papers mentioned nothing
about the future episodes of the The Oleander of Passion’ did
not seem that awful to HisWife Nadia. There wasn’t much to
pry into anyway since almost every forthcoming event,
including the most imperative secrets, were already revealed in
the early episodes. As such, perhaps the real riddle was less to
fins! out what the ending would be than to find out how the
already proven ending would be eventually arrived at If there
was anyone who still did not know* the mysteries woven in the
soap opera it certainly wasn’t the viewer but other Loretta
herself In the fire that had erupted in episode five,she had lost
not only the mansion she lived m. along w ith her title of a lady,
but her memory as well. Ever since then, she had been
struggling to recall who she was and mistaking an unknown
woman for her mother. She could not even fathom that the
famous physician whose photographs she kept seeing in the
new spapers had once been, and actually still was, her husband.
Since her condition had worsened m the ensuing episodes, she
was nowr about to be checked into a clinic - a move destined
to complicate things further given the fact that her physician-
the-husband/husband-the-physician happened to work there.
Deep down HisWifeNadia wras fond of being so we
informed about all these things that still remained a mystery to
Loretta herself. Whenever the latter made a wrong turn failing
to spot the truth behind the intricacies she faced,
HisWifeNadia was secretly thrilled. At such moments, her hie
and the one in the soap opera would sneak into one another.
 PLAT NUMBER SIX

Between these two entirely dissimilar universes it was [ ore eta

who stood out as the common denominator, the passageway
from one to another. Physically, she was there in the lite of the
soap opera; and vocally, she was here in the life of
HisWifeNadia. Ultimately there were two distinct women
around: the Latin American actress who played Loretta on the
one side, and the Turkish speaker who voiced Loretta on the
other. Though none of them was named Loretta in real life, in
her mind HisWifeNadia had identified both with that
particular name She had no problem whatsoever with the first
Loretta, the Latin American actress being of no concern to her.
Her foremost target was not the Loretta she watched but the
one she heard It was that voice chat she had been after for so
long; a voice with no face.,,a velvety, dulcet voice that came
to life in a knobby peach-putT kneecap,** Nonetheless, since
every voice required a visage and every visage a voice, as she
stood watching The Oleander of Passion’, the voice slue heard
and the face site saw would so easily blend into one another
that HisWifeNadia would soon miss Ehe target, shifting her
focus from the woman doing the voiceover to the Latin
American actress on the screen. Then she could do little to
prevent herself from watching the soap opera with a twisted
gaze; taking pleasure in the scenes where Loretta was in pain
and feeling distressed w henever things went well tor her.
The Loretta on the screen was a slender brunette with jade
eyes and long legs. When she cried, tears round as peas rolled
down her cheeks. As for the woman who did Loretta s
voiceover, HisWifeNadia could not quite surmise what her
bodv looked like since she had not been able to cyc-her-up
thoroughly o-n that ominous day when the two had ran into
each her. She must be one of those ephemeral beauties,
HisWifeNadia guessed, as fleeting and frail as a candle flame
Slime as she might with the freshness of youth at the present,
her beauty would be tarnished sooner or later, in five years at
most When that day arrived, she would have to pull herself
together and stop going after married men. Still, five years was

197
THF FLEA FA 1 ACE

•i long time - long enough to cause His Wife Nadia anguish, as

she had to face the prospects of all the things that could
happen until then.
It was a pure coincidence that had made His Wife Nadia
aware of Loretta's voice three months ago. On the morning of
that lil-surred day, she was m the kitchen once again to cook
iishuff. Even though she had considerably improved her
culinary skills since her arrival in Turkey, her ashurt was still not
as good as she - Metin Chennceviz more precisely — wanted
it to he. Countless experiments had all ended up in flop. There
was either too much or loo little sugar or some ingredient
missing altogether, and if not these, even when everything w as
mixed in properly, something would go wrong in the cooking
phase. When cooked for an adequate amount of nine, she
would remove the oiliurr from the stove and dole it out into
frosty pink cups. Desperate to have made it right this time, she
would take great pains to garnish each and every cup with
pomegranate seeds. In the beginning there was a tame when
she used to overdo this, dissatisfied with the hackneyed
decorations ot Turkish housewives. I ongmg tor novelty, instead
of a dash of grated coconuts, roasted hazelnuts or pow dered
sugar, she would sprinkle a tew drops ot cognac or place sour
cherries fermented in rum. Back then she was interested more
m the legend of the ashure than in how the Turks consumed it.
The itehuu' in the legend was the epitome of a triumph
deemed unachievable. All the creatures boarding Noahs ship in
pairs to escape doomsday had cooked it together at a tune
when they could no longer endure the journey, when they
were surrounded on four sides with water and were in danger
of extinction given an empty pantry and with a long wars still
to go. Each animal had handed over its leftovers and hence this
amazing concoction had emerged by mixing things that would
otherwise never match. Though there was not much doubt as
to what modern-day ashurr was composed of, still the
components of this dessert weren’t entirely evident* and extra
ingredients things could be added into it any time. It was

19H
 FLAT NUMBER SIX

precisely this kick of a fixed recipe that made ashure so unlike

other desserts Neither the ingredients were restricted nor the
measurements fixed. As such, it ultimately resembled a
cosmopolitan city where foreigners would not be excluded
and latecomers could swiftly mix with the natives. Ashure was
limnlessjiess generated by limited options, affluence born from
scarcity and vast assortment burgeoning out of extinction.
About all these HisWtfeNadia wrote at length to her aunt —
an elderly spinster with legs covered with purplish varicose
veins and hair as red as hell. In her letters His Wife Nadia wrote
extensively about how drastically she had changed since her
arrival in Turkey, how much time she now set aside to cook
and also how she had come to acknowledge her aunt's
analogies between meals and the verses m the sacred book 1 ler
aunt wm highly pious and just as good a cook, She resolutely;
if not condescendingly, believed these two attributes of hers
amounted to the same thing since ‘The kingdom of heaven is
like unto leaven, which a woman took and hid m three
measures of meal, till the whole was leavened’ (Matthew 4:3 A j
The meals she cooked for her family she placed upon God s
table and watching her children gobble them down she felt
blissful as if it were He who had been fed.
I here exists a command of God in every meal we
consume,' the aunt was fond of chiming. ‘Needless to say, that
is w ith the exception of the slapdash meals invented by those
messy women who apparently have no tune to cook and
mistake freedom with neglecting their homes, preferring the
praise of their bosses to the gratitude of their children!'
Now in her letters to this (mnt. HisWtfeNadia wrote that
among all the food of the world, if any were to be likened to
the Tower of Babel in the Holy Bible, it had to be this a shun1.
Just like m the l ower of Babel, in the pudding cauldron too,
miscellaneous types that would otherwise never come together
managed to mingle without fusing into one .another.Just as the
workers at die Tower had tailed U> comprehend each other's
language, so too did each ingredient in the cauldron retain its
Tilt FLEA PALACE

distinctiveness within that common zest*The fig m the ashure,

for instance* though subjected to so many processes and boiled
tor so long, still preserved its own flavour,As they boiled there
on the stove, all the ingredients prattled on in unison but each
m its own language*
Hence supplementary ingredients could be incessantly
added to this totality. If there was room in ashure for garbanzo
beans* why not add corn as well? Where there was fig, there
could be plum coo* or why not peach alongside apricot, pasta
in the company of rice,.,? In her first few months at Bonbon
Palace, HisWifeNadia had for a reason still unknown to her
fervently busied herself with such experiments. Yet, ramming
each time into Metm Chetmceviz's fierce retorts1 she had in
next to no time exhausted her daring to experiment with
further combinations. Whatever the legend ot Noah s Arc and
the adventure behind it, when it came to putting the teachings
into practice, ashure turned out to be a highly unadventurous
food* It did not welcome innovations. Her aunt, though never
in her life having cooked tishure, must have arrived at the same
conclusion for she had felt the need to caution in her letters
that just as one could not modify the verses of the Bible as one
pleased, it was better not to play with ingredients freely either.
Eventually HisWifeNadia had given up. starting to cook the
aslntrc in line with the routine. Be that as it may, perhaps
because deep inside she still pined tor a boundless sanation
and had never been able to make do with the ingredients m
hand, the end product had failed to meet her expectations all
this time.
Nonetheless, there was one occasion* that ill-starred day,
when she had inexplicably been satisfied with her a±him\
Having finished the cooking, as usual, she had put the cauldron
aside to cool off, prepared the frosty pinky cups and started
waiting eagerly for her husband co come home. Now that she
had accomplished the outcome she had craved for so long, she
expected to finally receive Metm Chetmceviz's appreciation.
Yet, she had soon noticed that stinking amber briefcase of his

200
 FLAT NUMBER MX

was not in its place.That could only mein one thing: Metm
Chetincevii was going to head to his second job this evening,
from which he would probably return around midnight. Her
achievement at asltare had excited 11 is Wife Nadia so much that
she couldn’t possibly wait that long. Hence she decided to do
something that had never crossed her mind before: to pay a
visit to Metm Chednceviz’s workplace with a cup of
Though it had been four years since she had arrived in this
cm; Istanbul remained a colossal mystery to her. She had seen
so little of the city so far that she had no sense of the direction
in which its streets lay nor any sense of its structure in her mind.
Her ensuing audacity might therefore be attributed to nothing
but ignorance. In such a state she headed to the studio on the
Asian Side.Though crossing the Bosphorus Bridge had cost her
two hours, finding the address turned out to be unexpectedly
easy. She left her identification card at the entrance, received
information from the receptionist, got in the elevator, went up
to the fifth floor, walked to Room 505, peeped inside and stood
petrified. Metin Chednceviz was there sitting knee-to^knee
with a woman; he had placed one hand on the knobby, peach-
puff kneecap of the latter which puckered like a blemish too
tinud to come to light. As for his other hand, he employed that
to rotate a tiny coffee cup, as he told the woman her fortune. It
must have been good news, for a dimpled smile had blossomed
on the latter's face Fixated with her husband, HisWifeNadia
was not able to eve-up the woman as much as she would like
to. It wasn’t so much the fact that she'd been cheated on which
rendered her speechless, rather the affectionate expression on
Metin Chednceviz s face. Neither the woman in the room, nor
the hand caressing her knee seemed a sight as horrid as the
affectionate expression upon her husband's face, so dulcet and
tender, so unlike her husband.
Up until now. His Wife Nadia had forgiven each and every
one oi Metm Chednceviz s wrongs and in her jaded way
endured his never-ending jealousies, callousness, even slaps,
believing that he did it all involuntarily, almost against his own

2fll
THE FLEA 1'Al.At F-

will.Yes. her husband created her in an awful way occasion.illv

that is, frequently - that is, constantly but this was because
he did not know any better. To sustain a flawed marriage
requires, in essence, rather than an obstinate faith in marriage
a faith in obduracy as such. We can endure being treated
brutally by the person we love, if and only if, and as long as.
we can convince ourselves that he knows no better and is
unable to act in any other wav;
«r #

‘Love is nothing but neurochenuc.il machinery,' Professor

Kandinsky used ro contend. 4And the most faithful lovers
are simply bird brained. If you meet a woman who's been
married for years, still head-over-heels in love with her
husband, be assured that her memory works like that of
a titmouse/
According to Professor Kandinsky for love to be immortal,
memory needed to be mortal. In point of fact memory had to
be fully capable of incessantly dying and reviving just like day
and night, spring and fall, or like the neurons in the
hypothalamus of those teeny-weeny titmice. These birds with
their simple brains and with bodies just as frail had to
remember each year a bulk of indispensable information,
including where they had hidden their eggs, how to survive
the winter chill, where to find toad. As their memories were
not large enough to shelter so many crumbs of information,
rather than trying to stockpile every experience by heaping up
all items of knowledge on top of one another, every fall they
performed a seasonal cleansing in the cavities of their brims.
Hence they owed their ability to survive under such
convoluted conditions, not to adamantly clinging on to one
fixed memory, but rather to destroying their former memories
to create fresh new ones. As for matrimony, there too, just like
m nature, being able to do the same tilings for years on end w as
only possible if one retained the ability to forget having being
doing the same things for years on end/l hat’s why, while those
with weak memories and messy records were able to bandage
much more easily the wounds inflicted throughout the history

2112
 FLAT NUMHFR SIX

of their affair, those who constantly and fixedly thought about

the good old days and yearned for the wo - men they married
were bound to have a tough time in coming to grips with the
fact rhat "today would not be like ‘yesterday*. The miraculous
formula of love was to have a mortal memory, one that
dithered and wavered incessantly.
Yet, that day standing by the door with two cups of ashurt
in her hands, HtsWifeNadia had not been able lo thwart a
particular scrap of information long forgotten in its return to
her consciousness. She had remembered. As she stood there
watching her husband flirt with another woman, she had
recalled how doting he had once been toward her as well, that
is, what a different man he once was. Even worse than
remembering this, was the observation that his tenderness was
in tact not a thing of the past and that he could still behave
courteously He was perfectly capable of acting, if not
becoming, altered. If Professor Kandinsky were here, he would
have probably found the incident too preposterous to bother
with. The aptitude to renew memory by erasing previously
stored knowledge was a merit germane to the nny titmice, not
to unhappily married women.
HisWiteNadia had then taken a step inside, her gaze
irresolutely wander ing, if only for a minute, over the lovers still
unaw- re of her, still reading fortune in a coffee cup giggling and
cooing. As she gaped, first at both of than and then the woman
alone, she had found herself immersed in a scientifically
dubious contention which was once of profound concern to
her;*It and when you look attentively at someone unable to see
you, unaware of your presence, be assured that she will soon feel
uneasy and abruptly turn around to see her seer
However, before the other woman had a chance to do so, it
was Mean C’hennceviz who would notice His Wife Nadia
standing there. With visible panic he had jumped to his feet.
Struggling hard to adjust his gleefully relaxed body to this
brusque shift, he had hobbled a fewr steps only to make it as far
as the centre of the room* wfhere he had come to a full stop. In

2U3
r he nr a vm ac t
an attempt to nuke his body a perfirn draw n m between the
two women, he had stood there wriggling tor a moment, not
know mg whu h side to turn to. Not only his mind but his face
too had bifurcated as he struggled to smiultancnudv give a
cajoling smile to Ins lover, whom he had always treated gently,
and frown at his wife, whom he was used to treating coarsely.
Unable to ding on to this dual mission any longer, he had
grabbed his stinking amber briefcase, along with his wife's
hand and hustled both outside, I har quarrel that night had
been no shoddier than the ones before, except that it had lasted
longer. HisWifeNadia had hitherto been afraid at various
instances that her husband might kill her, hut now for the first
time she had felt she too could kill him* Oddly enough, this
gruesome feeling had not seemed that gruesome at all.
What uvts truly gruesome for HisWifeNadia was to know
nothing about this other woman. Since she had no
acquaintances among Metin ( hetmcevizs colleagues, getting
this precious information would be more arduous than she
thought. Startlingly, she could not even describe her to anyone
tor however hard she tried, the woman's lace remained hazy in
her memory. Still not giving up, she had made oodles of plans
each more complex than the previous one. and kept calling the
studio with new excuses under different names each time.
When unable to attain anything like that, she had started going
to the studio every day, w asting four hours on the road, just to
patrol around the building. She sure knew that her husband
would break her legs if he ever spotted her around here but
even this dire peril had not urged her to give up.
"The gravest damage psychopharmacology has wrought
on humanity is its obsession with cleansing the brain trom
Us quirks.1
According to Professor Kandinsky, the human brain
functioned like a possessive housewife priding herself on her
fastidiousness. Whatever stepped inside its house, it instantly
seized, remarkably vigilant of preserving her order. That,
however, was no easy task since, tike many such possessive

204
 FLAT NUMLtLR ^IX

housewives, so too did the brain have several unruly, cranky

kids, each of whom were baptized under the name of a distinct
mental defect. Whenever any one of these kids started to crawl
around, sprinkling crumbs and creating a mess all over the
house, the brain would crack up with apprehension, worrying
about the disruption of her order. It was precisely at this point
that psychopharmacology stepped into the stage- Fo solve the
quandary it tried to stop the coddling child and, when that
failed.it took the child by the ear and dragged him outside:'If
you wish to control uncontrollable movements, stop
movement altogether! In order to prevent the damage
thoughts might generate, bring your patient to a state where
he won't think anymore.’ Hundreds of drugs and dozens of
practices aimed repetitively at this result. The world of
medicine, notorious lor deeming the physician who invented
lobotomy worthy of a Nobel, muffled ear-piercing screams
into an absolute silence, and favoured death over life bv taking
from the brain's hands the boisterous children whom she
indeed found troublesome but held dear nevertheless
According to Professor Kandinsky, there was infinite gain in
acknowledging straight out that one could never entirely get
rid of his obsessions and all attempts to the contrary were
bound to cause far more damage than good. There was
nothing wrong in entering into the brain’s home and playing
according to her rules, as long as the movement inside was not
curbed and what was hers was not appropriated from her.
[rue, the brain could not tolerate seeing her order being
upset. Nonetheless, since there was more than one room in her
house and more than one memory within her memory, she
could certainly contuse what she put where.The interior was
like a multi-drawered nightstand. In the top drawer were the
undergarments, in the drawer below the folded towels and the
laundered bed sheets under that. In this scheme, wherein the
place of every obsession and each mania was pre-deter mined*
one should not strive to fully get nd of a fixation somehow
acquired. One could, with the aid of science or deliberate
ns V f l BA I* A I ACE

absentmindedness, take something out of its drawer .md place

jt in the tine above. After all, the fastidious housewife the brain
w as, it would certainly search tor a towel in the fourth drawer,
and not in the fifth one where the undergarments were.
"Carefully fold the towels you took out from the front lobe and
then leave them in the subcortical centre. Do not ever attempt
to wipe out your obsessions for it is not possible. Rather,
suffice to put them at a place where you cannot find them Let
them stay in the wrong drawer You will soon forget. Until
vour brain accidentally finds them again one day while
searching something else,,/
Though she was well aw are of making her professor’s bones
shudder m his grave. HisWtfeNadia had still refused to take her
obsession from its corresponding drawer and put it somewhere
else. In the following days, she had made frequent calls to the
studio her husband worked in. keeping it under surveillance
for hours on end. Finally, one day a voice she had not heard
before but recognized instantly, intuitively, answered the
phone. It was her. 'Hello, how can I help you?' she had asked
graciously "Who is this?!" His Wife Nadia had exclaimed in a
voice devoid of fury but blatantly shrill. So harshly and
snappily had the question been posed that the other, taken
unaware, had immediately told her name. Often, identify
resembles a reflex - becoming some sort of an involuntary
reaction to a stimulus. That must be why, when asked to
identity themselves, quite a number of people end up
involuntarily introducing themselves rather than asking back,
‘Who the hell are you?'
Upon hearing the name pronounced, HisWiteNadia had
hung up on her, C )nce having learned the name and workplace
of her competitor, it had been painless to discover the rest.
Before long she was holding two bunches of information
about the woman whose details she now had in her possession.
First of all, just like Metin Chetinceviz, she did voiceovers on
TV. Secondly, she currently did the voiceover for the leading
character in a soap opera titled *The Oleander of Passion*

2m
 MAI NU M HER. SIX

On the following day, before the news was broadcast,

HisWifeNadia had sat down in the divan with burgundy
patterns on a mauve background - the reupholster mg of
which she constantly put off - and watched in complete
calmness an episode of'The Oleander of Passion'. When it was
over, she decided that she simply loathed it. The plot was so
absurd and the dialogues so jumbled that even the actors
seemed to he suffering. Nonetheless, the next day and at the
une tune, there she was once again in front of the TV Ever
since then, with every passing day and every concluding
episode, her commitment, if not immersion, had escalated.
Academics researching housewives1 addiction to soap operas
tend to overlook this, but there can be a variety of reasons for
becoming a viewer, some of which are not at all palpable.
Before she knew it, HisWifeNadia had become a regular
viewer ot The Oleander ot Passion', Soon the soap opera
occupied such a prominent place in her daily life that she
could barely endure the weekends when it was not broadcast.
She hardly questioned her fixation and barely attempted to
overcome it. She solely and simply watched,just like that...and
months Liter, as she sat there watching the eighty-seventh
episode, she could not help the voice and image of 1 oretta
jumble in her brain.
Though 'satisfactory failure* was an oxymoron, there i mild
still be unsatisfactory successes m life Professor Kandinsky was
fond of saying he was both 'unsatisfied1 and 'successful*; which
was better oft than many others, he would add, especially those
who were both satisfied and successful: for that specific
condition was germane to either the dim-witted or the
exceptionally lucky As excess luck ultimately stupefied, the
end result was the same. Nevertheless, toward the end of his
life, the professor too had tasted a breakdown. Both the
dissatisfaction and the failure grabbing him stemmed trom the
same cause: *The Theory of the Threshold Skipping Species,' a
project he had been working on for four years.
Even when wiped out by a catastrophe, bugs still retained

2117
THE Fit A PALACE

an amazing immunity to anything that threatened them with

utter extinction. Around 1946 they seemed to have been
resilient to only two types of insecticides* whereas by the end
of the century they had developed resistance to more than a
hundred kinds of insecticides. The species that managed to
triumph over a chemical formula skipped a threshold. Not
only were they unaffected by the poisons that had destroyed
their predecessors, but they ended up. in the Jong run,
producing new species.The crucial issue. Professor Kandinsky
maintained* was not as much to discover how on earth bugs
acquired this particular knowledge as to discover knowledge
in its entirety, According to him, those premonitions that were
a long source of disappointment for the Enlightenment
thinkers, who regarded the social and the natural sciences as
one totality, would be realised in the century that was just
arriving, along with its catastrophes. Humans loo were sooner
or later bound to skip a threshold. Not because they were
God’s beloved servants, as the pious believed, not because they
possessed the adequate mental capacity, as the rationalists
assumed,but mainly because they too were condemned to the
same ‘Circle of Knowledge as God and bugs. The societal
nature of bugs lives and the intuitive nature of human
civilizations had been attached to each other with and within
the same durable chain: stxiobiolvgy. Consequently just as
artists we rent as inventive as supposed, nor was nature aloof
from craftsmanship. To stay alive, whenever they could,
cockroaches and writers drew water troin the same pool ot
knowledge and intuition.
i doubt if they have read even the first page,* Professor
Kandinsky had roared when the news of Ins report being
rejected had reached him. It was a week before his death.They
had sat side by side on the steps of the little used exit door of
the laboratory where they worked together - a colossal
building where Russia’s gifted biologists w orked systematically
for thirteen hours a das,Yet from a distance* it was hard to teU
how huge it was for it had been built three floors under the

211*
 f LAT NUMBER MX

ground. Since the feeling ot being among the chosen brings

people closer to each other, everyone inside was highly polite
to one another. Only Professor Kandinsky was unaffected bv
# w •

the molecules of graciousness circulating m the air. Not only

did he decline to smile at others but also sealed his lips except
w hen forced to utter a few words. He had Htde tolerance for
people, the only exception being Nadia Onisstmovna who had
been his assistant for nine years and who had won his
confidence with her submissive ness as much as her
industrious ness. Professor Kandinsky was as cantankerous and
reticent as he was glum and impatient. Deep down, Nadia
Omssimovna suspected he was not as grumpy as he seemed,
and even if he was, he had probably turned into a w reck of
nerves only as a result of conducting electrically charged
experiments day and night for years. Even back in those days
she couldn’t help but seek plausible excuses for the coarse
behaviour of those she loved.
They don't know what they re doing to me! Failure isn't a
vims I'm acquainted with! I have no resistance to it
Rvo security guards were smoking further down by the
grey walls surrounding the wide field of the laboratory. The
gale was blowing so hard that their smoke could not hover in
the air for even a second-
‘Some mghts [ hear the bugs laughing at me. Nadia, but 1
cannot see them. In my dreams 1 meander into the empty
pantries of empty houses. The bugs manage to escape just
before the strike of lightning or the start of an earthquake.
They migrate in marching armies. Right now; even as we
speak, they are here somew here near. They never stop'
A week later, he was found dead in his house: an electrical
leakage, a unfussy end... Nadia Omssimovna always reckoned
he had died at the most appropriate moment. Fortunately he
would never learn what had happened to his laboratory. First,
the experiments had been stopped due to financial restrictions
and then numerous people were fired. Nadia Omssimovru also
received her share of this turmoil When she met Mean
THE FLEA PALACE

( herinceviz, she had been unemployed for eight months.

Metin Chennceviz was a total nuisance, one of the last types
a woman would like to fall in love with* Unfortunately, Nadia
Omssimoviia was so inexperienced with men that even after
spending hours with him, she had still not realized she was
with one of the last types a woman would like to fall in love
with* Anyhow that night* she had been dazed by the
incomprehensible enormity, the bold crowds and the ceaseless
booming noise of the discotheque she had stepped into for the
first time, had thrown up all the drinks she had and was
therefore in no condition to realize anything. She was there by
chance; having been dragged b\ one of her girlfriends, from
whom she hoped to borrow money b\ the end of the night.
Metin Che ante viz was among a group of businessmen
coming from Istanbul. By the tenth minute of their encounter,
before Nadia Omsstmovna could comprehend what was going
on, the tables were joined, women she was not acquainted with
were added to these men she did not know, and a deluge of
drinks was ordered. While the rest of the table rejoiced m
laughing at everything, she had shrunk into one corner and
drank as never before in her life. A little later, when everyone
else scampered onto the dance floor in pairs, she saw a swarthy
man sitting still, distressed and lonely just like her. She smiled.
So did he. Encouraged by these srrules they exchanged a few
wotds. Both spoke English terribly. Yet English is the only
language m the world capable of giving the impression that it
might be spoken with a little push, even when one has barely
any know ledge of it. Thus in the follow ing hours, rolling their
eyes as if hoping for the words they sought to descend from
the ceiling, snapping their fingers and drawing imaginary
pictures in the air with their handy; doodling on napkins,
sketching symbols on each other s palms, giggling whenever
they paused; opening up whenever they giggled and
continuously nodding their heads up and down; Nadia
Onissimovna and Metin C hennceviz plunged into one long,
deep conversation.

2111
 FLAT NUMHfck SIX

*+*

"Rather than marry a Turk. Id lick a crammed-full ashtray on

an empty stomach every morning/
'You can lick whatever you want/ Nadia Onisamovna had
replied impishly “Nor that which goeth into the mouth
dehleth a man; bur that which Cometh out of the mouth, this
dehleth a man/"
Do not recklessly scatter in my kitchen the teachings of
)esus as if they were epigrams of that untrustworthy professor
of yours/ her aunt had bellow ed, as she blew on the ladle she
had been stirring for the last fifteen minutes in a greenish soup.
‘You know nothing about him/ Nadia Onissinicwna had
muttered shrugging her shoulders, * Only prejudice,./
I can assure you that 1 do know what I need to know,
honey/ her aunt had pontificated sprinkling salt in concentric
circles onto the pot, 'And if you had not wasted your most
beautiful years chasing ants with a good-for-nothing nutter,
you too would know what I know/ She pulled a stool by the
oven and. jangling her bracelets, kept stirring the soup. Due to
varicose veins, she could not stand up for more than ten
minutes.'Ax least you must know that Turks don’t drink wine/
she said with a distraught expression, but it was hard to
determine what distressed her more, the subject matter or the
soup s still refusing to boil.
Desperate to object, Nadia Omssimovna had started to
recount, though with a dash of exaggeration, the whiskies,
beers and vodkas her future husband had consumed at the
discotheque, refraining from mentioning how he had mixed
them all and the outcome,
‘Whisky is another story Do they drink inVte? Tell me about
that. No. they done! If they did, thev wouldn't have destroyed
* r w r #

the fountain of Leon the Sage when they captured Zavegorod.

The fountain gushing wine for three hundred years was raised
to the ground when the Turks got hold of it. Why did they

m
THE FLfcA PALACE

destroy that gorgeous fountain? Because it gushed wine instead

of water! I he Turks tore down its wall with axes. Idiots! Fhey
thought they would unearth a cellar crammed with barrels of
wme somewhere down there but von know what they found
instead? A bunch of grapes! Hear me well, Nadia, 1 say a bunch
of grapes! And only three among them had been squeezed.
Apparently with only one grape, wine flowed out of the
fountain for a century. What did the Turks do w hen thev saw
9 ■£

this niirade? Did they appreciate it? No way! They demolished

the walls, broke the fountain and even destroyed the grape
bunches.They don't honour wine, don’t honour things sacred
and don’t honour the sage.' Still grumbling she had shaken the
ladle toward her niece, They don't honour women anyhow!’

+++

When coming to Istanbul, Nadia Onissimovna had not

fantasized at all about the milieu that would be awaiting her.
In spite of this, she couldn't help feeling disappointed when
she saw Bonbon Palate for the first time. Not that the
apartment building she was going to live in from now on
was more dilapidated than the ones she had lived in so far. If
anything, it was more or less the same. That was the issue
anyhow-, this sameness* For moving somewhere brand new
only to encounter there a pale replica of your old life is a
good reason to be disappointed. To lop it all, there was
neither a sandy beach nearby, nor a job tor an entomologist,
but the gravest problem was Me tin Chetinceviz himself.
For one thing, he had lied. He did not even have a proper
job. He made a living by doing minor voiceovers at
irregular intervals for various TV channels. In addition, he
occasionally went to weddings, circumcision ceremonies or
birthday parties of affluent families to perform the shadow
theatre Karagoz. He kept his reeking leather puppets in his
amber coloured briefcase, but lately Bonbon Palace had
started to stink so awfully that the smell of the leather

212
 FLAT NU.Mbtk SIX

puppets was nothing compared to the smell of garbage

surrounding the apartment building.
To cap it all, HisWifeNadia soon realised how badly mistaken
her aunt had been. Metm Chetmceviz glugged down low-price
low-quality wine at a rate even the miraculous grapes ot Leon
the Sage could not compensate for. When drunk he lost not
or:]y his temper bur also the ability’ to work. If doing a voiceover,
he forgot the text; if performing with the shadow theatre, he
stirred up a ruckus by making his puppets talk gobbledygook,
peppered with slang and slander At the weddings he attended,
as he played the puppets, behind the shadow screen he gobbled
down every drink in his reach, causing a disgrace by the end of
the day. Once he had been kicked out for hurling from die
mouth of the puppet named *Hadvat\ lascivious jokes and
loutish insinuations about the groom in front of the guests. Since
those witnessing his scandals never gave him work again, he
incessantly had to set up new job contacts.
Still Nadia Omssimovna did not go back. She stayed here at
Bonbon Palace. Even she herself could not fathom when and
how she had internalized the role of a housewife she had
started performing temporarily, with die idea chat this would
only be until she found an appropriate job. One day the
writing on a wedding invitation captivated her attention: ‘We
wish Metm Chetmtevtz and His Wife Nadia to join us on our
happiest day.’ She stared at the letter blankly, there and then
realizing that she was not + Nadia Omssimovna anymore, not
‘Nadia C’hetincevi? either, but LHisWiteNadia\ Though
shaken by this discovery, she still did not attempt to make any
significant changes in her life The days had for so long been
impossible to tell apart, as if they were all photocopies of a
particular day now long gone. She cooked, cleaned the house,
watched TV, looked at old photographs, and w hen bored, she
made something other housewives might not know much
about: potato lamps that lit up without being plugged in. Both
Professor Kandinsky and his ‘threshold skipping species' had
remained behind in another life.
THE FLEA PALACE

Why can't l remember my past? 1 wish I knew who 1 was.

Why can’t I remember, why?' moaned Loretta spinning in her
hands the daisy w inch was in her hair a minute ago.
‘You're searching for it in the wrong drawer* honey! Look at
the one below, the one below!1 yelled HisWifeNadia, without
noticing that she repeated the gesture on the screen* spinning
in her hands the latest potato lamp she had fabricated.
It was precisely then that she heard a sound by the door. He
was coming. Earlier than usual today. He would probably
munch a bit. take a nap and then go out again in the evening,
taking his smelly briefcase with him. You could never tell when
w ould he come or leas e, but no matter what hour of the (.lay
it was* he never cared to ring the doorbell.
As the key wiggled in the lock* HisWifeNadta grabbed the
remote and switched the channel. When Metin Chetinceviz
appeared at the door, Loretta had already been replaced by a
cooking programme. A woman with a wide forehead, round
face and a remarkable moustache was busy tasting the spinach
an gratin she bad just removed troni the oven.

214
Keeping an eye on the door for Muhammet\ return, Menem
embraced her swollen belly with her dimpled arms and heaved
a deep sigh.1 hat day, she had again had success in sending her
son to school but god knows what he would look like when
he returned home, In the beginning Muhammet used to cell
her in great detail everything that happened in school, be it
good or bad. Yet he had sunk into arrant silence over time.
What her son did not put into words, Men em heard anyhow'
from his troubled eyes, or the split seams and ripped out
buttons of his school outfit, or the bruises on has arms. As she
listened her worries soared.The thought that somebody might
be hitting her son, be it a child or a grownup, killed her: his
own father had not yet given turn a flick. Only Menem, she
alone had slapped him a few times, may' Allah forgive her, and
occasionally pinched him too but that was different. As a
matter of tact, ever since she had discovered that others had
been ‘roughing-up' her son, Meryem had retrained from even
this minimal disciplining. When in her minds rye she saw
children raining blows on her son, her blood boiled.There w as
a time when she thought it was nothing other than a simple
scuffle among children and vet weeks and months had passed
without any change for good. What infuriated Meryem the
most was not so much her son's being smacked by his peers as
seeing how he gradually became indifferent to torment
As to why her son was relentlessly bulbed she had a hard
time unravelling. Was it because he was a janitor s son? But she
THE FLEA PALACE

had sounded out the neighbourhood kinfolk who held the

same job and found out that their children faced no such
calamity at school What else then? Muhammet was neither
Inter nor uglier nor more dim-witted than the other kids so
why couldn't he struggle against the wicked? In despair she
eyed her swollen belly. The answer, she knew too well, was
right under her nose: it was because of Musa. Blood takes after
blood, they said. Muhammet was his fathers son. brazenly
compliant and docile. Even a wee bit of his mothers splendid
bulk had not been bequeathed to him; he was so tiny so short
and wiry. For years she had force-fed the boy five times a day,
making him eat a soft-boiled egg every morning, but to no
avail. Not only had lie not put on weight or grown taller, lie
still looked at least two years younger than his peers. True,
Muhammet had always been petite, but his frame had shrunk
visibly since he had started elementary school and thereafter to
butt into the barricade of his peers scorn.
When Muhammet put on the school outfit that was tailored
a size larger so that he could still wear it in the years to follow,
and shouldered that huge knapsack of his, so noticeably did he
dwindle that everyone who saw him in that stale scolded
Meryem for not waning another year before sending him to
school. When next to his peers Muhammet s runtiness became
all the more striking as if he was held under a magnifying glass.
He was the smallest child in his class and, of course, in the
entire school Had this been the only problem, Meryem would
not have made such an issue of it. She would have simply
patched over her yearning for a son as robust as a pine tree and
awe-inspiring as a sultans skiff; one who could squeeze the
water out of a stone and make whomever he frowned at shake
m their shoes, yet at the same time possessed a heart so soft to
take care of his bv then senile mother. Despite Meryems
visions, nor only had Muhammet proved to be his father’s son
in terms of physical frame, he had started to acquire the latters
habits as well Oddly enough* e%ren though from cradle to
school he had been glued to hi* mother and had an at-all-

216
 FLAT NUMBER ONE

rimes-asleep-or-sleepy nun for a father, as soon as released

from his mothers wings, the person Muhammet ended up
taking after was none other than his father. That was what
troubled Meryem the most. After all, she firmly believed that if
Musa had .1 root over his head and a job to keep him fed, it was
all thanks to her. Musa had hitherto been able to stand on his
feet precisely because he had handed himself over to his wife.
What if his son was not so lucky? What if life did not present
Muhammet with another Mervem? Then there was no way
could he survive in Istanbul. This dry would give him a
beating worse than the one he now got from Ins peers.
Lost in her thoughts, Meryem started to grind her teeth.
This si ie did rarely now, only \s hen truly distraught or
confused. Yet as a child she used to grind her teeth so much at
nights that would wake up everyone m the household. Her
great grandmother was alive then; alive and so old that her
emaciated body had been entirely cleansed of the dual malady
of angst and baste. One day she had sat Meryem down to warn
her that only when she learned to be patient could she ever
leave her teeth alone, otherwise she would be of no use in life,
and just as she robbed people of their sleep today, she would
rob them of their peace of mind tomorrow. The way to learn
to be patient was through learning how to fill up a‘patience
sack.' This required an empty sack, which should be left
somewhere high, tied sidewise to the end of a stick like a
banner, Meryem, who was no older than Muhammet at that
time, had listened to this counsel attentively and fast as a rabbit
climbed up the roof of the coal cellar in the garden, where she
hang an empty sack to a broom with great difficulty. As the
wind blew, the empty sack would accumulate various things
inside, filling up bit by bit in time. As such, the only tiling
Meryem was expected to do was wait without doing anything
and as she waited, to make sure she did not forget what she was
waiting for.This was what they called ‘patience,’
Yet even at that age Mervem was impulsive, not to mention
alarmingly impatient, Whenever faced with a challenge, she

217
THE FLEA PALACE

would do everything in her power to beat it, Filling up the

‘patience yck’ had been no exception. In the days to follow,
she would i heck the sack first thing m the morning only lo
come down the Udder disappointed each time, The burden of
not doing anything was so unbearable that each night in her
sleep she would carry buckets of soil to till sack upon sack. As
this dream labour had made her teeth grating even worse than
before, the mghts had turned into a nightmare for the entire
household, Her great grandmother was despondent, her
grandmother baffled and her mother infuriated. All three
women kept talking about a prophet named Eyup.
“( >K, 1 11 wait, but tell me tor how long?' Meryem wanted to
know. 'Until the sack tills up by itself,* suggested her great
grandmother; ‘Until you are ready/ snarled her grandmother;
'Until the sack is tilled and you are ready/ concluded her
mother In the meanwhile, her father sick and tired of the four
generations of women at the house and this sack business of
theirs which was getting nowhere, had already brought down
the wooden ladder/Waiting without doing anything'counting
for nothing in her book, Menem had only been able to
endure two weeks without climbing to look inside the sack.
After two weeks, when no one was at home, she had earned
the kitchen table out to the garden, placed a chair on top,
hopped onto the roof of the coal cellar and stuck her head
inside this sack of patience. Then and there she had seen the
outcome of what they tailed patience: dry leaves, thorny
shrubs, broken branches and two dead butterflies,..such were
the rewards of those who endured: either a handful of dry
twigs nr the lethal wounds of the prophet Eyup...
That was it. After that day, she had stopped peeping into the
sack and had never given it a second thought. Waiting leniently
was not meant for her. Had that not been the case, Meryem
would not have married Musa but waited instead for Isa, her
favourite among her other suitors, to return from Istanbul.
However, instead of waiting for Isa to come back
'godknowswhen/ she had decided to come to Istanbul herself

218
 FLAT NUMBER ONE

and to this end married Musa, dragging him along.

Unfortunately, once they were back in the city things had not
gone at all as she had expected. Realizing Musa wasn't going
to be able to cope with Istanbul, Meryem had found herseh
remembering after all these years her great grandmothers
Patience Sack.There was no w ay she w as going to sit back and
wait for the wind to till up the sack, Musa to mature and life
to bring them a few dead butterflies or dry twigs. Instead she
would take charge of their destiny. As for Musa, his wife’s
indusmousness. enterprising skill and w illpower would leave a
chilling effect on his nerves, rendering him more and more
weak-kneed, sluggish and pessimistic. Subsequently, once m
Istanbul, Musa and Meryem had turned into two opposite
tides, just like the waters of the Bosphorus. This contrast in
their dispositions was further reflected in their appearance. In
the years to follow; while Meryem, tall and big boned to start
with, gained day by day more and more weight, Muu shrunk
like a hand-knitted sweater laundered in the wrong cycle.
Not that Meryem expected anything from her husband,
having by now resigned herself to the man lie had become. At
night, half an hour before the arrival of the garbage truck, she
collected the bagged trash from the flats of the Flea Palace and
distributed in the morning then bread and newspaper. The
latter she finished early in the morning so there would be tune
left for her scuffle with Mu ha in met, as well as for fortune*
telling She lingered before work while having her coffee, but
once she got going, did not easily stop. Five days a week she
went to five different flats for housecleanmg. Though by now
in the fifth month of her pregnancy; the sum total of her
activities had not lessened a bit. Perhaps she now went up the
stairs more slowly but that was all. Her energy resembled her
weight; however much she ran around it didn’t decrease a bit.
Similarly; her fortitude resembled her energy; like a machine in
perpetual motion she kept turning her own wheel.
Every so often it occurred to her she would actually be
better of! w ithout Musa. Had she received the news that Musa

2i*i
THE FLEA PALACE

was dead hit by a ear, she would of course have been distraught
with sorrow but her life would not go astray, in point of face
it would not even change. Yet if she were the one hit, Musa
would be smashed to smithereens as if the car had hit not his
wife’s body but the mainspring of his ow n life and livelihood.
Though Meryem struggled hard not to think such
inauspicious things, she couldn't help doing so.and the more
her pregnancy moved ahead, the more fixated she became on
the ghastly thoughts parading full force in her mind.
Laielv she had been more and more scared at outlandish
apprehensions, having nightmares upon nightmares, waking up
every morning her heart pummelling, agonized by the thought
that something ominous might happen at any moment Given
her score in the Patience Sack episode, how could she be
expected to wait passively for evil to come her way?!hus she
took precautions If researchers conducting ethnological
analyses on the birth customs and beliefs m Turkey had. instead
of surveying each and every village and town, simply come
across Menem, they would indeed have obtained the same
data with much less expense and effort.
Meryem s package of precautions concerning birth came
under three clusters:

1) Never do those things that should never be done.

2) He careful in doing those things that need cannon.
3) Do those things that are felicitous as much as possible.

Those 'things that should never be done' had no explanation

and no justification for their categorisation, just as one should
not clip nails at night, one should not interpret dreams then
either. As the mysteries of dreams are barely comprehensible
even in plain daylight, how could one possibly interpret them
in the darkness of the night: Meryem never left her nail
clippings around, always throwing them into the toilet to make
sure no one else would get hold of them. Likewise she
fiequench checked and collected the hairs on hairbrushes and
 MAE NUMHfcK i )NI

then burnt them, If a single strand of her hair accidentally fell

some place outside her house, she would immediately pick it
up and put it in her K>-,nin. She was particularly sensitive about
hair and nails, holding the belief that these were the only two
things in the human body which continued to live lor
sometime, even after the body thev belonged to passed away.
According to Meryem you shouldn't take a knife from
anyone’s hand, leave a p ur ot scissors open, bring to the tip of
your tongue the name of the living while passing by a
cemetery, speak of animals in a room where the Koran was
kept, mumble a song and if possible, you shouldn't even open
your mouth when waking up to go to the bathroom where
the jitmi gather at night, or kill spiders. . The list ot the tilings
you should avoid doing extended interminably and births were
accorded a special place on this list. Women had to be watched
both during pregnancy and for forty days after the birth and
the plasma of the baby needed to be buried deep under earth.
I hough Meryem had not been able to convince that
spectacled, cold fish of a physician to dig a hole for
Muh.unmets plasma in the garden ot the hospital where she
had given birth, thanks to the goofy nurse she had eventually
emerged triumphant. Deaths, too, were as sensitive as births.
When visiting someone on their deathbed, Meryem addressed
the patient by different names one after another to bamboozle
the Angel of Death, If she still could not fool Azmei and the
patient died, vhe would give away every single item of the
deceaseds cloth mg to a peddler of old clothes whom the
former had never met. If the peddler committed the mistake
of uttering a few words of courtesy about the departed one,
she would instantly take the clothes away Irom him to give
them to another.
After all, anonymity lay at the essence of the profession of
peddler hood. On a peddlers can one should never know
which goods were left by whom, in point of fact, one should
not even think that they once upon a time belonged to
someone. The noble task of delivering familiar clothes to

221
THE FLEA 1*A l AC! E

unfamiliar people was incumbent upon the peddler

Ultimately, while those who gave away these clothes needed to
get rid of their past, those who purchased them didn't want to
know anything about that past. In between the two groups of
people crisscrossed the peddlers, cleansing personal items of all
the memories they had gone through and the poignant ends
they had met. so that they could start life anew. That’s the way
it had to be so that the old could yield the new and death
engender life. Actually, if asked to name the most consecrated
professions on earth, Meryem would name the peddler before
the teacher or the physician. Not that the wanted Muhamnier
to become a packman blit she sure felt deep affection for these
men cartmg away the remnants of a dispersed home or a
departed acquaintance, to then bung from afar others’ goods,
and thus steadily* spontaneously mixing up bits and pieces of
Istanbul's seven hills and motley communities.
As for the kthings-that-required-care', it was better not to do
them at all but if you had to you should at least take
precautions. One should refrain from sewing a doth on a
person, for instance. Alternatively, one should bring an object
that could counterbalance any misfortune the needle might
bring. Thai's why whenever Meryem sewed a cloth on
someone's body, she would put a wooden spoon in her mouth.
If she accidentally broke a mirror, she would instantly go and
buy another one, and since fire could be fought with fire,
smash that mirror into pieces as well. Nonetheless she would
rather have as little contact as possible with mirrors, each being
a silvered sealed gate to the unknown. Since she deemed it
inauspicious to we one's image repeatedly, the only irurr.u m
their house always faced the wall As jnr normal doors,she paid
great care when passing through them. Even cemeteries did
not scare her as much as thresholds. When passing through a
door, she would never ever step on the threshold, opening her
legs to the widest step possible and always with the right foot
first. Differentiating her right front her left was a constant
concern for her anyhow. When at the table, she would place a

222
 FLAT NUMBER ONE

piece of bread to her right side to feed the eyes of chose who
coveted the bounty of their table. Reserving her left hand tor
the dirtiest jobs, she took great care to turn from her right
when someone called her name on the street, hung up her
clothing from right to left as if writing in Arabic and always
made sure site got up from the right side of the bed. Though
this inevitably meant that Musa would have to get up from the
left side* he did not seem to care about this as long as his sleep
was uninterrupted
All day long, Mervem collected premonitions and read
signs. It was good portent if her right eye twitched but she
instantly got wary' if her left eye did so. A ringing in her right
ear w as good news but she would start to worry about her fate
when the ringing was in the left one. Itchy feet was a sign of
a journey on the way, itchy palms meant money and an itchy
throat suggested a tight spot. If she got goose bumps, Mervem
suspected that jinn were nearby; As for tea leaves...if an
unexpected tealeaf escaped the sieve and appeared in her tea,
Meryem would expect a visitor that same day. From the leaf 's
shape, she would try to surmise the identity of the guest and
from its colour their intention. It a dog howled after midnight
she forlornly concluded someone would soon be dead.Yet she
was no longer as resolute about this matter as she used to be
since a dopev. skin-and-bones medical student had moved into
the flat across from hers with his ogre of a dog.
Meryem resorted to the coffee cup in order to find out the
calamities bevond her grasp. Morning coflee was reserved tor
fortune telling and night coffee tor the simple pleasure of
drinking it. Recently she had formed rhe habit ot topping-up
her night coffee with three thimblefuls of banana liqueur It
wjs that Blue Mistress in Flat 8 w ho had introduced her to this
liqueur business.There were all types of liqueur there, lined up
with olive oil bottles of all sizes. She had made Meryem taste
each and every one. The raspberry was scrumptious and the
mini left a pleasant freshness in one s mouth, but it was the
banana liqueur that Meryem had relished the most and could
THE FLEA PAlACfc

have drunk in heaps if only die weren't concerned about

harming the baby. Mistaking Meryem s hesitation for fear of
sm the Mistress had chuckled: ‘Who says a liqueur is an
alcoholic drink?!' Menem had instantly grabbed on to this
explanation: a liqueur was not an alcoholic drink after all ‘If
you like them so much, go ahead and take the banana liqueurs
with you,' the mistress had urged. Her man brought new ones
anyhow. Meryem had seen him a couple of times: old enough
to be her father and married on top of it. She had nude no
comment on the matter, however, tor she considered private
matters truly private*
Yet there were other things she could hardly stay away from
no matter how much she tried,The evil eye, for instance; it was
like an echo. Just as one could not detect the original voice
behind an echo, one could not track down the source of the
evil eye either. Fearing an attack from four different directions
in forty different ways, Meryem had equipped every corner of
the house svith preventive measures. On the walls, she hung evil
eye beads, praser placards, horseshoes; she sprinkled and
scattered holy water from Mecca, \alt lumps or blessed black
cumin seeds under the pillows, behind doors and especially in
Mu hammer's pockets; she kept tortoise shells, crab lej^ and
horse* chestnuts over the thresholds, and had charms written on
almonds, dates, copper plates, aU types of paper and annual
skins. By now' both Musa and Muhammet had become
accustomed to living with this ever expanding hodgepodge
concoction of items, most of wfhich constantly changed
location. Still, none of these precautions could ease Meryem s
fear of the evil eye even a wee bit. At different times during the
day, when a sudden sorrow settled in her heart, she instantly
broke a plate inside the kitchen sink If hot water cracked a glass
cup, she concluded the curse of the evil eye was on her family
and spun salt over fire. When she bumped into someone whose
eyes looked menacingly blue, she surreptitiously covered
Muhammet s face with her hands and if Muhammet happened
to be away, closed her ow n eves thinking of him. The thought

22*
 FI AT NUMBER ONE

that the curse of the evil eye might touch upon her son
terrified her. Thus ever since he was a baby, Muhammet Used
his life going around with amulets pinned to his undershirt and
blessed black cumin seeds in his pockets; finding papers covered
with Mervem’s scrawl under his pillow; getting under a sheet
once every ten days, its four corners held by lour women while
melted lead in cold water was poured over his head to break i
spell. Muhanunet would readily endure all ol these things as
long as he was not forced to eat eggs.
Having spent the interval between six months and six years
being spoon-fed a soft-boiled egg every damn morning,
Muhammet had a small problem with eggs. What he found
even worse than their taste was their shells being used as
complaint petitions. Every morning, once the egg was eaten
and the shell was sparklingly clean inside, Meryem had penned
on the shell whatever complaint had been left over from the
day before: "Yesterday Muhammet lied to his mother, but he
will never ever do so again,"'Yesterday he did not want to eat
his egg, but he will never ever do so again,’ ‘Yesterday
Muhammet cursed the auntie w ho poured the lead, but he will
never ever do so again.,/. These empty egg shells were each
time thrown tn the birds so that they could take these
complaints to the two angel clerks recording on their celestial
registers all the sms and good deeds committed on earth, Until
the day he started elementary school, every morning before
breakfast Muhammet would peek out of the window to see his
winged informants .Yet each time he did this, the only species
of birds he could spy were either the screeching sparrows
perched upon the branches of the rose acacia ui the garden or
the ugly crows recklessly hunting the streets.There was also the
caged canary inside the window of Hat Number 4 but that
bird could not even flap its w ings, let alone fly.
It was the seagulls Muhammet was suspicious ot. He spotted
them as they dug into the garbage bags accumulating by the
side of the garden walk In the damp breath of bdm* they drew
circles as they descended onto the trash piles and it seemed to

225
T H JF- FLEA PA I At F

Muhammet th.it each tune they chanced upon a precious piece

of information they would then glide into the sky squaw king
with pleasure. At nights, they gathered together on the roofs to
watch the sins committed in the apartment buildings of
Istanbul. Unlike his father, seagulls never went to sleep.

226
 FIAT NUMBER TWO

He opened the door with a grim look on his face. It was not
screwing up the anatomy exam that upset him so much, hut the
fact that he had taken the anatomy exam in the hot place,
knowing only too well he would screw it up. He now
profoundly regretted that when waking this morning, on
realizing the alarm clock had again failed to go off* rather than
hitting the pillow he had scurried out of the house and paid for
a cab to hoot. He even more profoundly regretted that aiter the
exam he had joined his friends, who were clustered like pigeons
flocking to wheat, to learn how each had answered every single
question, to then complain unanimously about the instructor
and then the w hole university structure. To top it all off, once
having joined them, he had ended up spending the entire dav
in cafes amidst non-stop chatter. Now he regretted all the
energy' he had so lavishly squandered. Energy, Sidar reckoned,
was a finite commodity, like an eye lotion in a any dropper.
Accordingly, he spent no more than two drops a das. one to
wake up in the morning and the other to go to sleep at night.
Closing the outside door behind him without turning on
the hall light, he found himself engulfed in darkness. He must
have forgotten to draw the curtains back when he left
hurriedly in the morning. Not that it would have made much
difference, as its miniature windows were at ground level, this
squat, narrow basement floor could get only a morsel of light.
Cursing the dim-wit who had placed the switch two metres
further in from the entrance, Sidar wobbled in. He could not

227
THE FLEA PALACE

get Mr. however, is his passage was blocked by the hefty

silhouette emerging behind him. As the two bumped into one
another, Sidar lost his balance, lurched forward hitting his head
against the thick pipe passing right through the middle of the
living room. Scared out of his mind, he reached the
switch...and frowned at Gaba...Having got what he wanted,
Gaba, on the other hand, was happily chewing on the simil he
had snatched from his pocket.
Rubbing his head Sidar reclined on the sofa. Since the
dirty, dusty pipe passed right through the middle of the living
room - which ako served as his bedroom, dining room and
study - just at his ear level, he kept banging his head at the
same spot. Just this morning, while rushing co leave the house
he had bumped his head again, and if it went on like this he
would soon have a bump there. Fortunately, as soon as he
stretched out on the sofa, his grumpiness faded out. He so
much enjoyed being at home. Here he could ^uv away from
the turmoil that plagued every corner in Istanbul: as long as
he was home, contrary to the world outside he could remain
entirely still and utterly calm, just like Gaba did when his
hunger was fully satiated.
It was particularly during late afternoon periods that the
insularity reigning in Flat 2 became all the more blatant.
Around this time every day, an excruciating mayhem
swallowed Bonbon Palace. As the immediate surroundings
assumed the hullabaloo of a fairground — synchronized by the
brazen honks of the cars caught in traffic, the howls of the
children playing at the park and the yells of the street peddlers
- the melange of sounds seeped in through the cracks and
crevices of Bonbon Palace, getting hold of each and every flat
except this one. It wasn't only the clamour chat failed to
penetrate Flat 2; the heat waves could not break through
either. Getting almost no sunlight, the house was cool as a
cellar during the summer when all other flats burned up.
Likewise, the sour smell of garbage tormenting ail the other
residents was least detectable down here.

228
 FLAT NUMBER TWO

The rruth is that when Bonbon Palace was built. Flat 2 had
been designed not as a residence but a storage area, and had
been used as such for many years. However, alter the death of
the owner, when the control of the apartment building had
passed onto his daughter who had preferred to take care of
everything from afar, this place too had received its share in the
changes that occurred, each more problematic than the
former. During the disarray that had prevailed, such huge
tights had erupted when each and every neighbour attempted
to pile their unused personal belongings up in this narrow
space, that no one had the good fortune to use it tor a long
tune- In the end, upon the instructions received from France*
this stumpy narrow* single-room basement floor was rented
out at half the amount of rent of the other flats. From then on,
a myriad of people had taken shelter here: people blatantly
different from one another but with poverty and bachelorhood
in common. Among these were, m the following order; a local
radio news announcer living on chicken sandwiches three
tunes a day; a depressed accountant whose best friend had
snatched away his entire bank account along with his wife of
eight years; an army deserter who turned the ! V an full blast
during Ramadan making everyone listen to sermons and
hymns; a fishy fellow w hose job no one had been able to guess
at or dared ask about and a droll artist who used the place as
an art studio painting the legs, ankles and shoes he watched
from the window. Among all the tenants Flat 2 had seen thus
far, the Cat Prophet, who had moved in next, was the one who
had left behind the most in terms of traces and smell
After the Cat Prophet, Sidar had appeared with his St.
Bernard breed dog. As he* unlike the previous tenants, barely
had any belongings, though it had for so long been
accustomed to being chock-full Flat 2 was now going through
the most barren phase in its saga,
tiaba was such a bizarre dog, a walking contrast when
compared with his breed, famous for their ability to go for days
without water and food, to sense impending danger and make

2?>
THE ELEA PALACE

life safer for their owner*, trace narcotics stashed aw^v in

secluded corners, rescue the victim* trapped under debris and
keep faithful company to the children, the blind and all those
in need of aid. If there was one thing in the world Gaba could
not possibly stand,it was hunger. His was a bottomless stomach
and a never-to-be-satiated appetite. If left without food for a
couple of hours, let alone a day, he would create havoc by
chew ing on w hatever came to its pasvs, be it an anatomy book,
a wooden chair or a plastic pail.,. He would pull all sorts of
tricks just to get an additional morsel. Once hav ing tilled his
stomach, however* he would lay in the comer, huge, fuzzy and
dead still as a stuffed bear, wnth no trace left of the ‘oomph*
from a moment ago. Perhaps because he withheld even a dab
of enthusiasm for food from all other spheres of daily life, there
was no activity he enjoyed, not even being taken out for walks.
Sidar might have suspected Gaba was going deaf with age if it
weren’t for the fact that he did not seem to experience any
difficulty in hearing sounds that were of significance to him,
such as the rattle of the dog food poured into a bowl, the
crackle of a tin can being opened or the footsteps of Mervem
bringing bread in the morning.
Deep down Sidar felt guilty. Having shoved this majestic
dog of the Jura Mountains into a dingy basement in a
dilapidated apartment building in one of the most jam-packed
neighbourhoods m Istanbul, how- could he expect him to
behave normally? If the truth be told, pan of this guilt
stemmed from his guess that ail the pastries with opium poppy
and cakes with hashish he had made Gaba eat — at first simply
for the tun of it and then because he had become addicted -
might have a role in the dog's lassitude, not to mention the
impact of the second-hand smoke all throughout these yean.
Such were the brief contours of the pangs of conscience that
gnawed Sidar deep inside,
Gaba was matchless m the eyes of Sidar,'the one and only'.
Actually there was only one of evervthmg in this house; one
Gaba, one Sidar, one computer, one sofa, one chair, one

230
 M AT NL'MHtK T WO

armchair,one table,one lamp,one pot* one sheet,one pencil...

When an item was worn out* the book had been read or the
CD had become tedious; only then was a second item acquired
and the old would be either immediately thrown away or
chewed to smithereens by Gaba
Yet the plainness of the place came to an abrupt end at the
ceiling as if cut off by a knife. Onto the surf ace of the ceiling
Sidar had posted, nailed, taped or pmned on top of one
another black-and-white pictures dipped from various
journals. These included: some of his parents letters, Nazim
Hikmet’s ’My Funeral Procession', fanzines he had gathered
from here and there, fanzines he had made himself, strips from
Art SpiegelmanVMai3&\ a gigantic Dead Kennedy* poster, the
picture of a ship trying to make its way through fog (taken
from an old photograph and used as a menu cover at a
restaurant he had dined in a couple of times upon his arrival
in Istanbul never to visit again after getting used to the price
difference between Istanbul and Switzerland and realizing how
expensive it was), pages torn from the Batman: Dark Night
series, a black T-shirt with the + Receipt for Hate tour of Bad
Religion’printed in front, an anti-drug campaign poster with
letters nude with pills writing Wfa l ie Peat Em Diffm tiU\
photographs of Gaba as a puppy, the enlarged photocopy of
Goya's 'Boogevman Is Coming’, collage with quotations
plucked from Cioran's essay on Meister Eckhart, sketch of the
health goddess Hvgieia with her rounded breasts, soft belly and
the big snake she wound around her necklines from Allen
Ginsberg's Kaddish", a sign that instructed: ’A civilized person
does not spit on the ground,You should not either!'(a placard
he had painstakingly removed one night when stoned),
Wittgensteins photograph taken right before his death*a faded
picture of Otto Weminger, a poster of Spideiman squatting
down to watch the ary from the top of one of the towers of
the World Trade Centre, right next to it a photograph of the
moment of explosion when the second plane dove into the
towers on September 2001, words from i song of the band

231
THE FLEA PALACE

This Mortal Coil, sett-portrait of the Turkish philosopher

Nevzen Tevfik with a tag saying 'Nothing’ hanging on his
neck, newspaper clips about Robbie Fowler, midterm exam
with 'COME AND SEE ME IMMEDIATELY written on it
with red ink, a faded computer print-out of Leonara
Carrington’s ’Zoroaster Meets His Image in the Garden’,
collages made with all sorts of prescriptions and Xanax boxes,
an advertisement with the writing, '1 )o not fool around with
your son’s future Circumcision requires sensitivity. Sensitive is
our middle name. Leave us all your circumcision business,' as
well as a passport picture of a bushy-moustache, beetle-browed
Scientific Circumciser (a poster he had chanced upon while
wandering around the streets of Fatih and, being unable to
remove it from the wall, had to go and personally procure it
from the address written on it), cassette covers of Kino
recordings he had once made, photograph of the ash-bone-tar
tram wreck which became the collective grave to four
hundred people in Egypt on February 20Q2, notes of Walter
Benjamin from the "Moscow Diary', reproductions of William
Blake’s drafts of "Songs of Innocence5, cartoons of Selcuk
clipped from Wianiere de Voir\ one of Freud s later photographs
wherein he did not stare into the camera, engravings from the
Lisbon earthquake/Istanbul postcards, a family picture taken
exactly thirteen years ago at the Haydarpasa train station
before leaving Turkey, notes with phone numbers or messages
and last but not least, the silver necklace with a black-stripped
transparent stone which was a souvenir from Nathalie whom
he was tired of loving though whose love he had not tired of.
When Sidar had moved in, like all other urbanites he had
the habit of decorating his walls with cherished pictures and
posters. Before long, however, Gaba had rendered this
impossible. On the way from Switzerland to Istanbul the dog
had passed out in the train compartment in which he had been
leashed, let out a terrible howl as if his flesh was being torn out
and refused to calm down, even though food was placed in
from of him even’ ten minutes. By the time his paws touched

232
 FI AT NUMBFR TWO

thtf Istanbul soil. his nerves were so shot that be was too
confiiscd to know where to look or who to bark. Finally, when
stuck in this tiny fiat, he had developed the habit of attacking
the walls and started to chew any kind of paper he could find,
due to hunger or irritability induced by love of his homeland.
In desperation. Sidar had then begun to move his pictures and
posters a bit higher Yet *a bit higher’ could not be high enough
for Gaba whose height, when standing up, was taller than the
Turkish national average. Bit by bit, all pictures and posters
escaping Gabas sharp teeth, like refugees heading for the hills
to flee from the warfare in their country; kept constantly
climbing north to finally transcend the boundary of the wall,
rushing altogether into the lands of the ceiling. Sidar had
enjoyed this unexpected innovation so much that he had
expanded the business over rime and filled his topmost part
with all types of visual and written material he held dear.
Lately; this daily increasing bedlam had, like a vigorous vine,
started to branch out into the kitchen ceiling on the one side
and the bathroom ceiling on the other.
When stretched out on his hack onto the only sofa m the
living room with a rolled cigarette in hand, Sidar would fix his
eyes on this ceiling for hours, While the smoke circulated in his
blood full speed, the ceiling would acquire an astounding
vivacity. At such times, Wittgenstein’s black and white picture
reddened, as the philosopher's face blushed; the miniature
figures in the cartoons ofSelcuk hopped and jumped around
the ceiling; Spiderman dangled from a thread climbing up and
down; the coronas in Blake s drafts started to blink as if relaying
messages m code; Carringtons hairless magician melted into
Ins own image and disappeared; Goyas bogeyman all of a
sudden took the white sheet off to reveal his face; a cruel smite
appeared on the Scientific Circumcisers face; Hygieas breasts
heaved with excitement; the figures on the photograph at the
Haydarpasa train station one by' one withered away. Before
long, Sidar would fed the blood in his veins, as well as the two
droplets of energy he possessed withdraw from his body, and

233
THE FLEA PALACE

he'd abandon himself in a woozy; putfy sea of ecstasy. When

Ciaha too came along and curled under his legs* the Flat 2 and
its two inhabitants swimming in composure would form one
flawless whole.
There existed only one thing that Sidar enjoyed ruminating:
death. He did not do so consciously; in fact* consciousness was
not at all the issue here, tor he didn't invite die thoughts, rather
they flocked to his mind on their own. His obsession with
death was not a choice; he had been like this since childhood.
He found death neither scary enough to grieve, nor grievous
enough to be scared of. All he wanted was to understand it
fully, truly. Whenever he met new people, before anything else,
it was their attitudes towards death that would arouse his
curiosity: whether they were scared of death or not* had lost
someone close, had someone die before their eyes* had ever felt
they could kill someone* did they believe in the afterlife
There were so many questions he had to ask, but seldom
could. He had long before succumbed to the convention that
he must hold his tongue on this particular subject. However,
whether he could fail in love with a woman or not, feel
comfortable at someone's house, liked a character in a film,
how he regarded the author of a book he read, what he
thought of the singers he listened to... it all depended on their
relation with death. He could appreciate some bastard solely
because he bad died beautifully or just as well turn up Ins nose
at a dignified person if he had met an ordinary end. Since \m
interest kept whipping up Ins knowledge and his knowledge
his interest, Sidar possessed a magnificent archive of dear! in
his mind. He never forgot where and how' book characters,
film stars, national heroes, philosophers, scientists, poets and
especially murderers had died. This curiosity of his had cost
him dearly at high school wherein all his history teachers hated
him: ‘Alexander the Great, oh yeah* he met his end with such
a debauched illness: he either burst or, after a two day long feast
thrown in his honour, got diarrhoea,' His interventions in the
philosophy class were nq different: “But in his letters to Voltaire,

2>4
 FLAT NUMBER TWO

the same Rousseau had mentioned with gratitude the Lisbon

earthquake that killed hundreds of people. Such occasional
cleanings, he thought, were necessary in terms of population
quantity and quality.'
The nuggets of knowledge Sidar thus scattered would wreak
havoc at each lesson. Upon learning Alexander had breathed
his last due to diarrhoea, his greatness tended to wane and his
reputation dwindled considerably. In the students minds,
Rousseau turned into a modern age terrorist while his
philosophy fell on deal: ears, When confronted by death, the
credibility of a religious scholar notorious for advising his
disciples constant abstinence who himself could not make it to
the morning after a night of gorging, the respectability of a
we 11-esteemed elderly politician caking his last breath in the
nuptial bed the same night he took a new wife half his age, the
command of an Ottoman sultan w ho raided taverns hunting
and hanging all those w ho drank even a drop of wine only to
meet his own end through cirrhosis, and the esteem of a
scientist squished hke a hug while crying to cross a street
without looking. ..all perished drastically. .. The deaths of the
East were at least as preposterous as those of the West. In fact,
death itself was preposterous.
+Since you seem to he paying no attention to my third and
final warning, could you please step outside the classroom?'
His teachers never shared his views. Each time he would
be thrown out of the classroom but unlike all the other
male students who were ejected from the classroom, he would
never become a hero in the eyes of the female students.
Probably because girls, just like the teachers, did not find
death preposterous.
Sidar had expected things to be different in Turkey. After all,
dying was easier here; deaths occurred in larger numbers and
life was shorter. Alas! Hard as he tried, his remarks on death
were largely dismissed. At first he suspected it was because of
his Turkish, perhaps he could not properly express himself
However, due to the dogged efforts of his mother — who had

235
THE FLEA PA I AC E

Worked as a Turkish teacher until the day they were forced to

escape out of the country and who had been worried her son
would become alienated from his native tongue through being
carried away not only by the French but also the Kurdish his
father had tried incompetently to teach hi in - the long years
Sidar spent away from Turkey had caused his Turkish to regress
only a couple of steps. The issue was not how he expressed
himself but what he expressed. Sidar had detected a number of
differences between Switzerland and Turkey on the subject of
death, and each point was written on a tiny piece of paper
among the bedlam on the ceding:

L People in Turkey did nut like death to be brought up

as a subject {just like in Switzerland)
2, Whenever people in Turkey brought up death, they
talked about the actual ».lead rather than the insubstantial
idea of death (somewhat different from Sw itzerland)
3. People in Turkey were not able to distinguish death as
something abstract (quite different from Switzerland).

Yet Istanbul, unlike its inhabitants, was not a bit bothered

about the allusions to death. On no account did she shun this
subject. At one of the lessons he had not been thrown out ok
Sidar had listened attentively to how in the West the fools were
put on ships and sent a wav from the cities. He likened the
cemeteries in Switzerland to those ships with unwanted
passengers, albeit with one difference, they had cast anchor,
unable to drift away All the same they were just as much
insulated from city life. One could go visit the cemeteries at
any time but the graves themselves often disembarked to
become a part of the city, However, Istanbul had eirher
forgotten to assign its ships to the graves, or the graves had
escaped from their ships to disperse into the streets with
turbans on their heads and marble stones on their arms. They
were everywhere. Scattered all over the city like pollen strewn
by the wind. At the corners where local markets were set up

2.1*
 FL AT NUMBER TWO

every week, in the midst of shopping malls, in swarming

streets, on roads off the beaten track, in fields where the
children played, on slopes overlooking the sea, in courtyards of
dervish lodges: next to walls, hills, hedges, far and wide they'
popped up in front of the people in the shape of a tombstone,
vault or numerous graves squeezed in between apartment
buildings. Pedestrians passed them by as they strolled, scurried,
promenaded, shopped... In this city; the dead resided side by
side with the living.
I fence after a thirteen year interval, Sidar had spent his first
year in Istanbul discovering graves and cemeteries. Sometimes
he would consciously stroll around desolate neighbourhoods
for this purpose alone, at some other times he would
accidentally come across a cemetery and wander off into it,
Walking around non-Muslim cemeteries had proved to be tar
more difficult than the Muslim ones since almost all of the
former were surrounded bv towering walls and were closed
except on certain days. Once when m the garden of a Greek
church he had asked what the relief of strewn pomegranate
seeds on a tombstone meant and what the writing under it
was, the custodian had hopelessly' bobbed his head from side to
side. He could not read a single word of Greek Anyhow, he
was not Greek but a Gregorian Armenian; for years he had
worked at this church during the week and went for religious
service to his own church on weekends. Since that encounter,
Sidar had stopped presuming that ail the people he saw in the
Greek cemeteries in Istanbul were Greek, the ones in the
Jewish cemeteries Jewish, or the Assyrian ones all Assyrians...
With their low walls and permanently open gates, the
Muslim cemeteries were easier to roam. Most of these were
badly neglected: it was as if it was not the lives of Muslims that
were mortal but rather their cemeteries, Especially the more
recent ones gave the impression that they might at any
moment get up and migrate soniess here else Sidar had until
now met all sorts of people while walking around these places.
C oarse guards, men who read the Qur'an for money bv the

237
THE FLF.A PAL ACE

graves, slovenly kids with pitchers lit their hand who followed
the visitors to fork out some money, those who came with all
their family and tilled baskets as it* for a picnic, those who
arrived alone and were tor hours lost in thought, drunks w ho
imbibed nearby at night, pickpockets who mushroomed
wherever there was a crowd, clairvoyants with young, old,
urban and rural women as followers... Over time he had
learned to differentiate them. The habitual visitors of the
Muslim cemeteries fell in two groups: those who came to leave
a trace and those who came to follow some sort of lead . The
former visited their relatives at regular intervals and then
departed leaving behind their prayers, tears, pitchers foil of
water and flowers.These were harmless, self-contained people
when compared to the latter.Those who came to follow some
lead or another were rather sinister. They came to steal goods,
milk people out of their money, cast a spell, gather signs... That
is, they came to get something bom the cemeteries and did nor
leave until they got what they had come for. Those who
acquired a profession, wealth, status or a past from the
cemeteries were included in this group, as were ail soothsayers,
the insane, thieves...and also Canadian gynaecologists.
He had met the Canadian gynaecologist and his charming
wife, who did not seem to have any knowledge whatsoever
about either Turkey or the Turks, at one of the Muslim
cemeteries while they were searching the grave of the mans
Turkish grandmother,The young couple had gone around for
hours with a cemeterv guard eager to help, and as they were
on their wav out to try their luck at another graveyard, Sidar
had not been able to resist asking why they had undertaken
such an endeavour‘So that 1 have a family cree to give to my
future children,5 the young man had said, his eyes shining.
Meanwhile his wife, as if holding the thing called the family
tree in their hands, had softly crossed her fingers on her breast
and smiled as she lifted her hands up like branches,
Sidar had remembered the brass picture frame in the shape
of a tree at their house, one of the few pieces they had taken

23 M
 FLAT NUMBER, TWO

with thorn when they escaped from Turkey. It could fit a total
of ten photography in round frames big as plums, hung from
five separate branches, two on each one His mother had
somehow decided to hang here the pictures of all the family
members, starting with her own mother and father. As Biting
out all the frames had become a problem, as they were unable
to reach ten in this manner* they instead exceeded this number
by leaps and bounds upon the inclusion of distant relatives,To
solve the issue the photographs of the two cousins they loved
the most were included. As the frames were too small, each
photograph had to be carefully cropped, leaving only a tiny
head behind. The heads of the family members had swung on
that braw frame for years like the fruits of the mythical Vakvak
tree with fruit shaped like humans that, upon being plucked,
rotted away in screams.
/ do not share the same Mood as jwr My htrth into your family r*
just a coincidence l am one of those children udto are given life to mk
to sleep the fear of mortality. / am one of those children you abandon
to produce yet another one upon realizing you sftll amid not escape
death. I scatter rw)1 semen to the ground. I do not want to fertilize
anyone... and t that being the only way not to end by dtattce th>es
started by chance; / Mess not yuw f but suicide., *
His interest m death had incited further rebukes from
Ktanbulitev The people he consulted instead of giving him an
answer almost always counselled him to recite the opening
chapter of the Qur'an. This he did not do, as he did not know
how to recite anyhow and not only did he not know? much
about Islam, he did not intend to learn anything either* He did
not think that any rehgion had the right to expect obedience
from him as long as it continued to ban suicide.
Still he was not as ignorant about Islam as he thought Even'
now and then he realized he knew things he didn't even know
he had learned. For memory is like a cyclist going downhill
fast against the wind; all sorts of knowledge carried bv the
wind hangs onto you. gets inside your mouth or into your hair
and sticks to your skin.,, lim and pteces of prayers, the pillars

239
THE FLEA PALACE

ol Islam, sections from the prophets life; he knew all these,

though rather feebly. I hey say that any language Learnt as a
child will never he forgotten. Sidar was not so sure about that
but he could easily defend the claim that the religion learnt as
a child will never be forgotten.
When he walked around the cemeteries, he was forced to
leave Cuba at the gates. Upon his return, he found him either
snoring away or eating a stmit of} the guard's hand. As he was
penniless and also because the bus. minibus or cab drivers were
largely unwilling to let Gaba in. they often returned home on
foot. Neither did they pay anyone a visit, nor did anyone visit
them - with one exception. Only once had they entertained a
guest in their house and a female to boot...
Sidar had met her at one of the bars on Istikla] Street. She
was the friend of a friend of a friend he had recently met. Other
than her coppery hair, the girl had two instantly noticeable
characteristics; her eves and a talent to imbibe beer like a
■r

sponge. When the bar had closed down late at night, on her
own she had followed Sidar to Bonbon Palace. Once inside, she
had scrutinized the flat in a vain attempt to find an item that
could be a rapport between the guest and the host There was
no object to talk about. Thank goodness there was Gaba.
Spotting the hazelnut wafer the girl offered him out of her
purse, Gaha had sprinted toward her rolling like a ball of fur.
Like all burly creatures, he was unaware of more refined
techniques of expressing his love, the two of them had
tumbled around the floor together in some sort of a game
invented there and then. Meanwhile Sidar had watched them
from aside, scowling at Gab s unexpected v igour and ogling at
the girl's belly appearing every time her T-shirt slid up a bit
Then suddenly, like the men in the ‘Tales of a Thousand and
One Nights,’ who go mad with anger when the woman they
had their eves on is interested not in them but in an animal, he
had interrupted the game, chased Cuba away and drawn the
girl to himself, just like her belly, her breasts too were milky
white,They shivered when kissed.
 FI At NUMUtk T VI- O

Shut m the bathroom Cuba had stumbled headfirst from the

crest tit jtlee he had climbed just a moment ago. After a while.
Ins bewildered barks had turned first into angry growls and
finally into .111 endless hawk As the girl had shared ins sorrow,
Sidar had the most spoiled se\ ever, coming 111 castrated ec stasy
When die door opened, Gaba had refused to move an inch,
lying there down by the toiler, indifferent md immobile, as it
hadn't been him scratching the door and nuking all that noise
all this time,There he stayed that day; the following day and the
dav after that. Desperate to win Ins heart Sidar had bought his
favourite foods, sacrificing part of the money put aside for the
electricity bill. Gaba had reluctantly smelt the meat, ^ heese and
sausages placed in front of him and remained glued to his spot
by the toilet, all the while shooting diggers with his eyes. Only
three days later, upon sniffing the roasted rabbit that had cost
the rest of the money Sidar had put aside for the electricity
bill, had Gaba finally returned to his old self. Sidar listened to
his dog’s slurping and munching with a grin on his lace as it
listening to enchanting compliments.The tear of losing Gaba
had been so unnerving that he had decided never again to
bring another guest into this house.
He bad remained true to his word Meddling m love affairs
did not match the life he led anyway One needed a decent life
for such things; it required time, money and energy. He had no
money. His energy was limited. As for time, it was becoming
short. To dodge his fixation with death, the year 2» '02 seemed
an appropriate time, through its completing a circle - b\
moving from the nothingness of zero to the amplitude of two
only to follow the same path back - and the earthquake ridden
Istanbul, which smelt as rankly of death as 18th century
Lisbon,seemed the most appropriate place. Inside his head,just
at the spot where he kept banging on the dirty, dusty* pipe
crossing the living room, Sidar carried his rage like a malignant
tumour tattenitig day by day, making plans to die soon.

241
House cleaning sessions fall into rwo types; those that stem
from yesterday and proceed into tomorrow and those that have
neither a yesterday nor a tomorrow. So utterly different they are
from each other in terms of both causes and consequences that
where there is one not even the name of die other comes up.
Accordingly, women w ho do house cleaning also fall into two
type'*: the traditionalists, with a strong awareness oi yesterday
and tomorrow, and the radicals, writh no notion of either.
When the traditionalists clean their houses, they know' too
well that this will be neither the first time nor the last. The
cleaning done at the moment is an important and yet ordinary
hoop of an extended chain that advances at regular mtervah.The
last house-cleaning stmt lias usually been done only a week (or
fifteen days) previously and will be repeated within a week (or
fifteen days). Hence every cleaning-day is part of a solid routine
and more or less the same as the one before, k always
commences and ends m the same w^ay: first the windows are
cleaned and the rugs shaken out, then the floors are swept,
starting always with the same room and proceeding in order.The
furnishings are dusted without altering priorities, the kitchen
alw ays receives great attention, tea and meal breaks are taken at
approximately the same hours and finally, in the last phase, the
cleaning is completed when the bathroom is given a once over.
Since the traditionalists have such firm ties with the pa'*! and
their confidence in the future is just as strong, there is no harm
in leas ing the unfinished parts until the next cleaning episode

242
 FIAT NUMHER Nl N t

The cleaning of traditionalists is not a bustle* performed in

the name of keeping the house m order, but the very mark of
order itself
As for the radicals, in the eyes of these who are les^ in number
and more scatterbrained* every cleaning operation is unique and
absolute. It does not matter one single bit if they have done
cleaning fifteen days* a week or even a day ago. Since there is
not, in the map of their lives, even a single suspension bridge
conn ecu ng the two separate cleaning days, the cleaning of the
past remains there.Thus they always go through their houses as
if they had never gone through it before.They set on the task as
if held responsible for cleaning it for the first and the last time,
as if making a damp den, long uninhabited by anyone except the
gemes* liveable* It is haul to predict when and where they are
going to commence cleaning since any impetus at any moment
can incite them into action be it a melon seed stuck on the
switch, soot on the curtains, lime traces m the sink, oil drops on
the cable cloth, forgotten liquid at the bottom of a glass that has
turned mouldy, a bit of mud on the floor.*, the tiniest detail can
suddenly provoke the radicals to launch an all-out cleaning stint.
As such, all cleaning activities are different from one another as
no one, including themselves, knows where to start and how to
proceed Actually at the outset they' might not even be conscious
of embarking on yet another cleaning mission*They could find
themselves cleaning the whole kitchen when they are supposed
to be simply washing a glass* the whole bathroom when
scrubbing the sink or the whole house w hen wiping the switch.
Their cleaning has neither a 'before' nor an 'after’. For the
traditionalists housedeannig is one of many such bouts of
activity, for the radicals it is the one and only.
Rather than bringing order* the cleaning done by radicals is
the very reason behind the chaos m the house.
Hygiene Tijen was one of the radicals. Perhaps she had
always been so. but her radicalism had reached in the List three
years a level that was worrisome to those around her Not only
was she capable either by herself or with the help of a cleaning

243
7 H f- hi k \ !>A I A t k

wonun of turning the house upside down at any time, she

could ^iso devote her entire day at other times to scraping off
the burnt oil deposits wedged in the handle of a single pan
Stain or rust, dust or soot, crumb or residue, mildew or dirt;
she couldn't stand to see any of these. When she deemed an
object could not be cleaned enough, she had lately acquired
the habit of opening the window and throwing it out.
Staunchly believing that filthiness was an invasion by microbes,
what she really wanted to get rid of at such impulsive moments
was not the objects she threw down, but the microbes
emanating from them. The tiniest amount of dirt would never
stay still bur would generate microbes that every mmute
increased three, even five told, So she immediately threw this
hive of microbes out of the house. Not only the residents of
Bonbon Palace but also quite a number ot pedestrians
happening to plough the street at the wrong time had been
witness to Hygiene Tijen’s catapulting of items. First she had
thrown a burnt-out pot out of die window; upon failing to
cope with the feeling that she would never ever be able to
remove the tarry marks that betrayed the snow white rice.
I hen, she had hurled out an old rug after whisking tt for hours
upon becoming anxious that she could not at all get rid of the
dust in the tassels. Yet just like her cleaning, her way of
throwing out items also lacked consistency. When she hurled
an object, sometimes she would utterly forget about it,
abandoning it in the garden to its fate, whereas some other
times she would instantly regret her actions and ask tor it to be
returned.Then, it fell either upon her daughter, husband or the
cleaning lady on duty to go down to pick the item, since she
hadn't stepped out ot Flat Number 9 tor about four months.
There was only one person who could keep up with her
pace: Meryem. Their relationship was a perpetual ebb-and-
flow. With her constant bagging and caprices Hygiene Tijen
too often offended Meryem w ho, though not it all irked by
the amount of work piled in front of her, was extremely
sensitive about how she was treated. W hen Meryem quit/! ijen

244
 E- L AT NUMBER MNI

would hire other daily cleaning women in rapid succession,

ending up woefully yearning to get Menem back and
eventually managing to do so with pleas and a wage increase.
These days Mervem had again signed an armistice. Though
they were at peace now, Hygiene Tijen was worried about the
advancing pregnancy of her most trustworthy sanitary soldier.
She would evidently have to stop working before long, at most
in a couple of weeks.
However* the sour smell of garbage engulfing Bonbon Palace
worried Hygiene Tyen even more than the thought of being
left without Menem. She could not stand this smell. Like never
before, nowadays she regretted marrying her husband heedless
of her parents' advice and thus having to forego a considerable
inheritance, as well as the prosperity she once used to live m.
Along with the garbage smell. Her misery also escalated day by
day. Every morning as she opened her eyes into this smell, she
felt like throwing up and slammed open all the windows,
without realizing that in so doing she scared everyone below
into thinking that a new set of items would starr to rain down.
Before long, unable to judge if the open windows decreased the
smell inside or not, she would close them all again and repeat
this pattern at least ten times a day.
Hygiene Tijens nerves, which were already strained to their
limits by the garbage smell, had entirely snapped the moment
she read the letter sent by the school administration. The
teacher writing the letter requested that as a favour to the
other children Su should not be sent to school mini it was
ascertained that she was rid of her lice. Since that day, the
washing machine worked non-stop, Sus clothes were all kept
in bleach and a feverish cleaning routine reigned in the house.
Hygienes soldiers were fighting a war at dozens of fronts
against an enemy immensely fecund and invisible to the naked
eye. Yet the cleaning militia, too, were everywhere. Each had
taken up a position at a separate location. There were cleaning
lltnds, some in spray form, some liquid and still others you left
to dry (with separate ones for the windows, metals, wood,

24s
1 HE I LEA PALM E

marble and tiki); brushes, a different one tor die sink, toilet and
the tub, lime removers, rust removers, stain removers; floor
wax, silver polish, sink drainer, toilet pump; a vacuum cleaner
{with different hose accessories for liquids,, dust, curtains,
armchairs, rugs, corners, air filters), carpet-sweeper, mop,
duster, pail, brush, sponges and coated sponges (separate lor
smooth or rough surfaces); detergents with cider, lemon, lilac
and pacific islands smells; throat searing disinfectants; cloths for
the floors, walls and dusting; nvoth balls, lavender pouches,
garment bags, soap pieces,,,all had been mobilized and, along
with special shampoos from the pharmacy, were defending Flat
Number 9 of Bonbon Palace against lice shoulder to shoulder
at every' possible corner.

24*.
4Please grandpat plcease.*/ repeated the seven and a half year
old while looking sideways at his siblings.
The other two children were glued to the TV, Though the
programme they watched had ended about ten minutes ago,
they had not yet been able to detach themselves from the
vacuum left by the coquettish announcer with the rose bud
tattoo. Still., Hadji Hadji considered the demand of her older
grandson the joint wish of all children, 'Well, okay, let me tell
you the tale of the fisherman Suleyman then,* he said, as he put
aside his four books - the number of w hich had not changed
m years - the second one entitled/Interpretations of Dreams
with Explanations.*
'During the old days in the Ottoman Empire, there lived in
a cottage a fisherman named Suleyman. He was so poor his
hands had not touched money even in Ins dreams, but he had
a golden heart. He lived alone without getting mixed up in
anything, not hurting even an ant* Those were the most
wretched days for the Ottomans. It was the period of The
Rule ofWomen\a time when the country had hit the bottom*
The concubines in the palace pulled a thousand tricks every
day So many innocent souls were strangled because of them.
The bodies of the victims were thrown into the sea from the
palace windows,The corpses would bloat in the water for days,
sometimes getting caught in fishermens nets/
The six and a half year old, unable to adjust to the spirit of
his grandfathers tale after the vivacious morning programme

247
THE FLEA PALACE

he hid jList watched on TV swallowed hard as if to get rid or t

bad taste. The little girl right next to him had bent her head
down, thrust out her lower hp and sat still, almost petrified.
‘One night, Suleyman went out fishing. Luckily, oodles of
fish were caught in his net, but he was such a soft-hearted
fellow that he was unable to kill any and instead returned them
one by one to the water/
What kind of a fisherman is that?’ croaked the seven and a
half year old,
No Suleyman was going hack to his cottage empty handed/
continued Hadji Hadji, having no intention to quarrel with
him this morning. "But all of a sudden he noticed a white
protrusion on the water. Though it was dark, there was a
shadowy moonlight . He paddled in the direction of this shape
and when he was dose enough, saw a corpse floating on the
water Had he been some other fisherman he would have just
let it float there, ferdng the fish, hut being the good man that
he was Suleyman could not do so. After some struggle, he
pulled the corpse into the boat with the help of his oar and
uncovered it What did he see but a young and very beautiful
woman! There was a dagger thrust right between her two
breasts, and yet, if you looked at her face, you would think she
was alive! She smiled sweetly, as it* not at all align at her
murderers. 1 fer lips were like cherries, her eyelashes arrows, her
nose an inkstand; as for her hair, it curled all the way down to
her heels. Our fisherman Suleyman could not take his eves oh
this beauty/
The ringing of the phone ripped the story apart. The seven
and a half year old grabbed the receiver with hands that were
becoming more contorted and inward curling by the day. Yes,
they had/wished their breakfast. So, they wm nor being naughty. Yes,
they watched television. So, grandpa uw rwf telling them one of his
toles. So, they had not turned on the gits. So. they dtd riti-r mess up
the house, Sot they did not suing from the balcony So, they did *k*r
play unth fire. So, they did not go into the bedroom. Hr sm>re it mis
true that grandpa was not telling a tale His mother must have had

:4H
 FLAT NUMBER FIVE

j gnawing suspicion that day since she insisted:* If your grandpa

is idling you kids a tale, just say: “It is warm today" 111
understand.'
I he seven and a half year old turned and intently looked at
the old man who was looking intently at him.Without taking
bis eyes off the old man. the child murmured distinctly: ‘No,
mom, it isn't warm today.'
He placed the receiver back. Waiting for a couple of seconds
to pass so that he could enjoy this game he played every day,
he tilted back his large head the growth of which could not be
stopped and urged with an indistinct smile,‘Come on grandpa,
continuer Only this time, his voice sounded not as it he were
making a request but rather as if he were giving his approval.
‘Fisherman Suleyman could not possibly leave the corpse of
this mysterious beauty back in the water,1 continued Hadji
Hadji, trying hard to beat the distress of taking reliige in \m
grandson s compassion.‘He took her to his cottage and watched
her all night long, heartsick with sorrow. At dawn, he dug up a
deep grave in his garden. He did not at all want to part with
her, but nothing could be done about it. The dead are under the
earth and those alive over it. This is how it will be until the Day
of judgment when we w ill all gather together.'
‘Couldn't he just not bury her?* blubbered the five and a half
year old.
‘Nof jumped in the seven and a half year old. if you don't
bun a corpse, nil stink. It'll smell so awful you can t stand it/
‘But it smells awdul here too/ whined the other one,
thrusting her lower lip out even further.
/Maybe there's a corpse in here too. Did you ever open the
closet and look inside?'
There’s no corpse here/ roared Hadji Hadji seeing daggers
in front ot his older grandson, it just smells of garbage. No
wonder it stinks when the entire neighbourhood dumps its
garbage in our garden! Yet, as the building administrator. I'll
certainly find a solution to this problem. Don't worry/ He sat
the little girl on his lap.‘And listen, the beautiful woman in the

249
THE FLEA PALACE

tale had not died anyhow. Before burying her in the soil,
fisherman Suleyman said, “Let me remove the dagger on her
breast" The moment he took out the dagger, the woman
moaned. She had not died after all. Tlie dagger had reached the
bone but not the heart.’
Trying to find solace in tins unexpected explanation the five
and a half year old gave a crooked smile. She cowered on her
grandpa’s lap, and certainly would have felt a lot more
comfortable had she not felt her older brothers gaze upon her.
‘Our death is written on our foreheads. Even if they thrust
a dagger to your heart, you won't die if it is not so written on
your forehead. When the poor woman came back to life, she
asked fisherman Suleyman for a cup of water. Then she started
to talk. Apparently she was a concubine at the pa! ice. The
sultan liked her the most.The other concubines were so green
with envy and their hearts were so tainted with evil, they had
decided to kill this innocuous soul. Buying ofi the harem
eunuchs, they had made them stab the beautiful concubine's
white chest. She told this story in tears and then said: ‘ It you
take me back to the palace, our master the sultan will surdy
reward you with heaps of gold." Upon hearing all this, our
fisherman Suleyman became lost in thought. He didn't want
gold or anything. He had fallen m love. That night this
beautiful concubine slept in his bed in the cottage but
fisherman Suleyman slept outside in his boat. Some time in the
middle of the night the devil approached him. “Don e take the
woman back." he hissed, *‘Hosv could one take such an
attractive woman back? ! er her he yours. She could stay here,
wash your clothes, cook for you and be your wife." That s
exactly what the devil whispered.'
Hadji Hadji silently studied his grandchildren as if expecting
them to put themselves in the hero's shoes. Yet, that
pertinacious smile on the face ol the six and a hall year old
hinted his mind was not on the moral dilemma of the tale but
on the parts that promised sexuality. As tor the five and a hah
year old* she was busy adding another word/concubine’, into
 FLAT NUMBER FIVE

her wallet of words newly learned. Once again, the seven and
a half year old was the only one left. When his grandfather *
eyes turned to him, he slurred sarcastically/Of course he didn’t
take her back*
* Of course he took her back!' thundered Hadji Hadji/He
personally delivered her to the palace. The sultan was
delighted. You can ask for anything from mc,‘ be declared, but
fisherman Suleyman asked for nothing. He left the palace gates
as poor as he had entered them.’
There ensued a prickly silence. Finally convinced that the
tale w as over, the six and a half year old hollered: ‘I'm so
hungry! The five and a half year old, closing the wallet in her
mind, jumped off her grandfathers lap:4Osman first, Osman
first!’ While the pot warmed up on the stove, they set upon
building their tent, piling sheets, pillows and bedspreads in the
middle of the living room Only the seven and a half year old,
he alone kept sitting where he was, maintaining his
composure. He had picked up an illustrated novel and
pretended to be reading it with interest, but his moss green
eyes, that looked contracted as they failed to keep up with the
growth in his head, were fixated on his grandfather and
siblings. Every passing day, he detested them more.

2Sf
Ants raided my balcony today - or perhaps it was just today
that I noticed ants had raided mv balcony I hev never remain
still* In step with commands chat only they can hear, in orderly
russet strips they now march back and forth between the dark
fissure at the wall and the hot dog I had forgotten on the coffee
table, 1 cannot figure out where they came from and how on
earth they made it to the third floor. This apartment building
is teeming with all types of bugs. At nights they keep me
company w hilst I down a few drinks.
My father’s curse, 1 guess. Either his curse or his genes,
Back in those days when I assumed my drinking had nothing
to do with his, 1 thought my father’s greatest problem in life
was not to know how to drink. Ever since I realized how
badly my drinking habits resembled his, I started believing
instead the problem was not his drinking but his not
knowing when to stop. He couldn't break it off, it was that
simple. At the outset, he couldn't possibly foresee w here to
stop and once he armed at that point, he would have gone
too astray to care about stopping. After he had polished off a
few, it didn't take him long ro pick up the pace. Before long
his bloodshot eyes searched for a road sign, A clear sign, a
concrete warning: ‘Slow dow n, fine gravel at ten metres!' or
‘Slippery surface! Sharp turn! Graded road! It was at those
times that he needed most someone to come forth and tell
him how he looked from the outside. Only we could do that,
being closest to him, but we never really tried Both my

252
 FL A1 NUMBER SEVEN

mother and I would take our place at the table with him,fill
uur plates with appetizers, pee! apples, dice oranges, make
lanterns out of orange peels and simply wait for what was
going to happen to happen. My mother had convinced first
herself, then me, that my father should not he disturbed
while drinking. She was so diffident when she was around
him, and perhaps rightly so, but even at that age 1 knew this
was not the only reason tor her behaviour. I hough it
certainly pained her to witness my father's collapse, 3 couldn’t
help but think that she also secretly, unknowingly enjoyed it.
Observing him squander every night the grandeur he would
not even momentarily be bereaved of during the day gave
her pleasure. That is why she set those rakt tables lavishly
garnished with appetizers and Inezes each more delicious than
the other every night... Every night for twelve years...
Alter all, my father was too much of everything. He was too
handsome, too dexterous, too pedantic, too intricate, too
egotistical, too unflappable, too frivolous.,.too much for me
and my mother; too much for the housing complex we lived
in, the army he served at, the towns he was appointed to, the
animals he failed to heal ...too much for the life he led.., I
cannot tell for sure if there ever was a time w hen I loved him,
but I do remember being proud of him once. As a kid I was
proud of him because he was tall and handsome, far too much.
Back in those days, oodles of stories circulated about children
being kidnapped and raised by the gypsies and I remember
thinking of my father being one of the kidnapped kids
thereafter accidentally mixed in with us. He was so unlike
everyone else. We all had similar features, brownish hair,
average height and the same laughter. When annoyed we
averted any eye contact, even our stormiest moments looked
composed, so patient, ordinary and meek we were, men and
women all the same However, amidst us there he was, with a
height that did not fit through doors, a head of hair that turned
burning blonde under the rays of the sun* piercing hazel eyes
that darkened when sad and always looked you directly m the

253
THE FLEA PALACE

eye as if to get you to account for your actions, a temperament

that swayed between opposite poles and a checkered record of
outbursts, flaws and failures piling up day by day along with
his sins.
If my father had not been so handsome, robust and self-
assured, my mother would have probably been more at ease.
That malicious angst furtively gnawed at her bliss and cast
shadows in her eyes — shadows that could be deciphered even
in her engagement photos where she stood fretfully smiling on
his arm, wearing an aquamarine engagement dress with a huge
synthetic magnolia attached to her collar She must have
abhorred the hypocrisy of time. First having me, next my
brother, then two miscarriages one after another, and finally
the daughter she so much wanted, raised spoilt and turned in
the end into a replica of" herself... f have alw ays found pitiable
the way in which middle-aged women who were once
beautiful vent half-coy Iv. half-supercihously, howr be aim hi 1 they
were in their youth, showing every one, each and every time
the same old photographs to make their claim credible. Even
more pitiable than that is when their children, especially their
sons, show the same photographs oPmy-ma-w’as-so-beauniul-
w hen-voting' in a rather coy* but mostly supercilious manner
to their own acquaintances, especially to the women they tall
in love with. As for us, because of my father* or maybe 1 should
say thanks to him, neither my mother could play this game, nor
my brother and myself
If my father were, could ever have been, any different, my
mother would have probably found it easier to come to terms
with the evanescence of youth - just like all those house w ives
around her with their two or three children, middle income,
middling life and die poison of their many compunctions
seeping out from either their tongue or their gaze. Those
women and their husbands were normal. What was far from
being normal was mv fathers condition,'I hey were married;
their lives, children, money, home, frustrations and past were all
identical, but the passing years had treated my mother and my

2>4
 I L AT NUMBER SEVEN

father very differently, While my mother had soon become

worn-out, my father would even decades later still look as
young and robust as he had been in their engagement photos,
I can1! blame im for failing to bow to the ephemera lity of her
youth when next to her was a youth that never faded. Then'
was nothing she could da. and in the fullness of time the lenses
through which she viewed herself became more and more
hazy Since the photographs she could have otherwise
exhibited to prove how beautiful she had once been were
bound to disclose not only the drastic change m her but also
the complete lack of change in my father, unlike the other
housewives with two or three children, middle income,
middling life and the poison of their many compunctions
seeping out either from their tongue or their gaze, my mother
kept no photo albums m our guest room.
Being too busy priding in and imitating my father, for a
long ntrie 1 must have failed to notice my mothers fretful
nature. From every new branch of age 1 perched on over the
years. I watched rny father with admiration. When he put on
his uniform his face acquired a deliberate toughness,just like
those of all the other soldiers. Yet, unlike them, his was a
deliberation that could dissipate and a toughness that could
thaw at any moment. The clues of this transformation were
already there during the day. That strrn stare of his — which
glazed over as if he needed to prove that he took care of
animals not because he was fond of them but simply because
it was his job to do so — would soften, if even for a moment,
when he healed a cok. relieved the pain of a cat w hose jaw had
melted in the acid-filled hole it had tumbled into or gave a
sveasel attacked by dog£ the final peace it yearned for. At any
one of those moments, I could perceive howr bored he was
from incessantly taking off and putting on two contradictory
faces. A contradiction reflected in the two professions he
carried out simultaneously: veterinarian and soldier.
As he ran around all day long hurling orders left and right
with that impressive air of his. he awakened among women an
IMF FLF A PAL At L

admiration fainted with envy and among men envy tainted

with admiration. Yet inside the uniform he wore he kept
another personality* as if carrying around a baby porcupine he
could not heal: someone who purported to live beyond sorrow
and pleasure, was scared silly of death, could not bear to afflict
ot be afflicted by pain, could not easily recuperate when
confronted with injustice, someone who knew, not rationally
but intuitively, that he was doomed to screw up sometime
somewhere; someone unsteady and tender, troubled and
untrustworthy, pessimistic and enraged, aggressive and
alcoholic... As long as the sun was up in the sky and he was
doing his job, he could indeed hide the baby porcupine. He
was so captivating and striking at such times that even my
mother liked to grab one oi us three to stop by his workplace
with any old excuse Both my siblings and I were thrilled to be
next to him during the day. Alas, these were die times when
we saw him the least.Then night would come along and, as his
aura would lose its sparkle and his face its appeal, my father
would metamorphose.
Mv mother had made a division of labour the rationale of
if

which 1 could never grasp. According to her scheme, w hile my

father drank each one of us had certain tasks to perform and
roles to play. My brother anti sister were to quietly watch
television and go to bed early, whereas my mother and I were
to stay at the table and act as witnesses. Since my father hated
to be alone at the mb table, we watched him in shifts. First it
was mv turn. As soon as he sat down at the table, 1 took mv
9 9 W

place across from hint. My mother would then be busy deep-

frying the pastry, mixing the sauce of the meatballs or carrying
out to the table the appetizers each prepared m a more
burdensome fashion than the other. Meanwhile, l would
remain at the table and answ er my father's questions. He always
asked the same questions, which were all about school, and
always cut short mv answers to tell his, which were all about
life.That wouldn 't offend me at aU.As a matter of fact, this first
phase of the evening was the most enjoyable tune of my

2S6
 FI AT NUMBER SEVEN

fathers soliloquy. When halfway through the first glass, he

would be so cheery and chatty that, even though I knew to the
letter what was going to happen soon, 1 couldn’t help but feel
blessed to he there with him. Then my mother would come
and sit next to my hither with an expression that bardv
revealed her thoughts, and as they started charting about the
events of the day in a muttering, monotonous v oice, I would
go to my room to do my homework.Two or three hours later
when I returned to the table, time would have elapsed, my
mothers eyes would have drooped with sleep and the chat
would have long come to an end. Thus begun the third and
final phase of the evening - the phase when everything
gorgeous rapidly rotted.,.the phase wherein the baby
porcupine scuttled over the table and I, upon touching its
quills,got offended...
Depending on the day, my mother would either walk
around the house grumbling, curl-up crying next to my sister
and sleep there that night or. if all was fine and dandy, wash the
dishes in the kitchen humming a cheery song. However,
whatever she chose to do, she’d never return to the table,
delegating to me the task of keeping mv father company until
the very end of the third phase. Yet this was the longest part,
the longest and indisputably the most gruelling The ice in the
bucket would have now turned into a lukewarm, cloudy water
afloat with cigarette ash and breadcrumbs, the meatballs at the
plate would he cold and congealed, the fine-chopped onions
in the salad a smelly squander, the ashtray filled to the brim;
the leftover appetizers would have lost their delicacy; the sliced
melons their freshness and my father lus grandeur.
When 1 think about it after all these years, it seems bizarre
that even though 1 was the only one among the three siblings
who witnessed our fathers most disgraceful moments, it was
again I who took over his bad habits. My younger brother
drinks and smokes once in a while, only when he has to
mingle with drinkers, As for my younger sister, she ended up
becoming one ot those women who never frequent smoke-

257
THE FLEA PALACE

tilled locales, who sulk when someone smokes around them,

regard a drunk with dismay, an alcoholic with disgust, and a
hobo by changing their route; deeming in the final analysis
every drunk an alcoholic and every alcoholic a vagabond. To
top it all she transferred these festering habits to her little-
daughter in their entirety. Whenever 1 attempt to light a
cigarette m their house, my little niece reacts like a tiny robot
whose buttons are being pushed, and, wrinkling her nose m
visible repulsion as if she had just seen a dead rat, starts to
deliver a memorized speech about the dangers of smoking. It
boils my blood to see people, especially kids, embrace with
such rehearsed passion a statement that is not even their own.
At their house there isn’t a single ashtray I could use. Inside the
ostentatious walnut cupboard in their living room, in addition
to all sorts of hefty drinks with different glasses for each type
of drink, there are dozens of porcelain, marble, crystal, silver,
gold-coated, steel, bronze, wood, beaded, miniature painted,
marbled, statue-like, toy-1ike. kitschy or far too classy ashtrays
bearing the emblems of the resorts and foreign cities they have
visited as a family; bur when it comes to flicking the ash ot my
cigarette, there is not a single ashtray in use. I wonder, from
among her three children, did my mother keep me away from
my siblings and close to my father at nights because among her
children it was only 1 who resembled him? Or, on the contrary,
did I, among the three children end up resembling our father
because she kept me away from my siblings and dose to him
at nights? Put differently, is this my father's curse for the day i
left him prone and alone at the table during yet another‘third
phase’ wherein l could no longer stand his offhanded and
uncouth words? Or is it because ultimately he and l are simply
the hoops of the same genetic chain where numerous,
industrious genes in tidy strips march on ad infinitum in
accordance with pre-deiermined codes:
I must have been twelve or thirteen. When my brother had
the mumps, we shut ourselves in the house tor days, forever
scuffing ourselves with Ltfottter, watching TV glued to our seats
 FIAT NUMBLR StVI N

and only ever getting up to go to the bathroom, i it one of the

old Turkish movies we watched back then, the leading actress,
who was secretly in love with the man her snier was about to
marry, vomited blood onto snow-white needlepoint bordered
handkerchiefs and was diagnosed with tuberculosis. During the
scene where the physician told her she would die soon, my
brother and I had burst into laughter spewing out oleaster dust,
The him was outrageously ridiculous and just as surreal; it
belonged to a stale age and was miles away from credibility. It
was no more possible to believe in the death from tuberculosis
ol the actress on the screen with a face paled with make-up,
hair whitened with flour and eyes sloppily empurpled, than u
was to believe in the death troni cirrhosis six months previous
of our father
Toward the end of the film, my mother came back from the
market with my sister Since neither had had mumps, they
were supposed to stay away from my brother. Still, my mother
sat right in between us with a doting smile. Holding our hands
in between her palms, she muttered in a hesitant yet composed
voice that he was about to remarry. On screen the actress with
■/

the tuberculosis stumbled down as she tried to descend the

stairs to jom the crowd celebrating the marriage of the man
she loved and her sister. She collapsed coughing. My brother
and I bent double in laughter, my mother laughed too. Still
standing by the door my sister stared at my mother with
astonishment soon replaced by tears. We chuckled again, bur
this time my mother did nor join in.'Tilting her crumpled face,
she blew her nose into her needlepoint bordered snow-white
handkerchief. Perhaps there was no handkerchief after all but it
has been seared as such in my memory because that was the
way I wanted to remember it. All the oleaster dust we had been
spewing out lilted oil with a sudden gale and swirled and
swirled in the uuddJe of the room like a gauzy snowstorm
escalating in anger until no one could see one another
anymore; it then drizzled down, forming a canopy over us all,
delicate and yellow, Like every thing, every thing was surreal.

2s4
THE FLEA PALACE

When someone in the family die* unexpectedly, his

belongings render surreal not only death or the God who
deems that death befitting but also the lives of the ones left
behind. Since my siblings had spent less time with my lather
and had not seen him surrounded by his belongings in his nest
as much as 1 had, they probably did not experience this
alteration as much as my mother and (.When night fell and the
table was set, my mother would involuntarily scan cooking her
usual appetizers and I would take the same place always at die
same hour, with a stale sense of duty, If was then that my
father's belongings prevented us from acknowledging that the
emptiness which sat on the chair across from us was death, and
death was real. It was not only his emerald-green spiral striped
mki pitcher, his leather wallet embroidered with a horses head
or his chiselled lighter, that always flickered unevenly even
when its gas had been refilled and its flint changed, that
prevented this. Nor was it his snuffbox embossed on the lid
with a purple-bodied and russet-winged owl, whose
mistakenly connected eyes made it appear neither ill-omened
nor wise but bewildered at most. As long as the living mom
and the house stayed put and we were unable to leave, there
always would be a surreal side to my fathers death. Eventually*
when it became only too apparent that just as we couldn't
move into another house, neither could we fend off this
confusion, my mother and l ended up in a tacit partnership
that involved our dressing up the ghost of my father and
making it sit down at the table with us at night.Yet this secret
collaboration which could have brought us closer, in the end*
irretrievably separated our paths.
J-or what she did next was nothing other than being a
complete spoilsport. As she served my fathers ghost at the
table, she increasingly depicted him not as he had been but as
she had always wanted him to be. Being the good housewife
that she was, she aspired to sweep away from our collective
memory all the traits of her dead husband she had never liked
in the first place. When she had finished with her sweeping*

2m j
 FLAT NUMBER SEVEN

sirring at the- table with us was this facsimile of a man as

colourless and lustreless as a droning elegy - a man who had
always worked for the good of his family, had no other luxury
than sitting down with his wife at night to down a glass or two,
kept whatever venom he might have to himself, never faltered,
never complained; it was if he hadn't been made of tlesh and
nerves. My mother so loved this bogus apparition, and so
wholeheartedly believed in it that when she decided to
remarry ■six months later, the man she chose as husband for
herself was exactly the same as the ghost at the table.
All through this period, every crumb of information she
swept outside her memorv 1 collected one by one, less because
of my devotion to my father than because of my fury towards
my mother. In the end, however, the alternative ghost 1 i i.id
tailored did not turn out to be any closer to truth than the one
she had created. All in all, my father was neither as distinguished
as my mother later convinced herself, nor as ignominious as I
claimed m contrast. Still, both of us tenaciously embraced our
respective delusion, In point of fact, it cannot be considered
total deception since we were merely covering up each other's
partial unfairness with our own partial righteousness. It was as
it the same cadaver lay in two different graves: buried in one
grave were my father's mornings, and in the other, his nights.
Whenever we wanted to recall his memory, my mother visited
one grave and 1 the other.
Years later, when Ayshin had conducted with a British
colleague a survey m three Istanbul neighbourhoods on how
popular Islam shaped everyday life, she had mentioned in
surprise seeing two graves for the same saint, a fact that none
amongst her sample groups found odd. 1 did not either
It was at around this time that I finally surrendered to the
unremitting requests of both Ayshin and my mother to meet
one another On our way back from a visit to my mother,
Ayshin - apparently unable to identify the "father1 she had
heard about from me with the "first husband* she had heard
about all day long from my mother - had already reached the
THE FLEA PALACE

conclusion (railways happens in such situations) that one of us

was lying and that this tic was addressed especially to her. After
.1 brief hesitation wherein she tried ro track down the real
personality of the deceased, she drew the conclusion that 1 was
the one who lied and did so solely to justify' "my condition*
What was meant by my ‘condition" was my escalating
alcohol consumption. What Ayshin did not know then was that
I did not have such a problem until we got married. Not that
I blamed her or our marriage, l cannot determine a starting
point anyhow.The only thing 1 do know is that after a while*
my life drew a circle of allusion returning to the beginning and
l found myself on the chair my father once sat on. However*
there were significant differences. Ay shin was not like my
mother. She did not set lavish tables for me and neither did she
remain passive. She pretended to take ‘my condition' lightly
and then was offended; she approached me compassionately
and then was offended: she got upset and then was offended;
she threatened me and then was offended; she belittled me and
then was offended; she supported me and then was offended;
she abandoned me and then was offended; she returned to me
and then was offended... She tried hard in every' way she
could think of to fight my drinking, with frequent intervals of
being offended* l too tried hard to please her. 1 guess I felt
grateful to her. especially at the beginning. Her interventions
verified the fact that unlike my mother* she didn't enjoy seeing
her husband stumble and nor was our marriage like that of my
parents. With genuine gratitude I struggled and everything
went well tor about five months. 1 managed to cut down the
drinking. Yer before long, this most praiseworthy progress
turned me into my own rival. At first when I overdid it, then
when 1 drank a bit too modi, and finally whenever 1 drank,
she rebuked and sarcastically scolded me for my inability to
repeat my earlier success. * We know you can do better than
this,' said Ay shin, We know it, don't we?’
There is something in this we' that is like the sour core of
a sweetly sucked candy,..a dulcet magma...a scorching.

262
 HAT NUMBER SEVEN

burning, conquest-obsessed Lava sprouting from a single source

to spread to every corner, taking everything in its way under
its coattails until there is no being Left outside itself... God
talks like this in the holy books; addresses is ‘we1 when
narrating all the acts of creation, destruction, punishment and
reward. Mothers too talk in the same format with their
children. * Are we hungry?’ they ask, or conclude,‘Though we
have been naughty today, actually we are well-behaved/
Despite the fact that the decision leached and the choice made
belongs solely and entirely to them, they annex into the
borders of their own existence that of the other us if there were
not two separate personalities out there. The “we formula
employed by God in the Qur’an, by mothers when addressing
their children, and by Ay shin when referring to my drinking
problem is not ‘(We = 1 + You)/, but ‘(We = J + I)1.To remain
outside of such a sw eeping4 we' is simply impossible.
I could not remain outside either. Consecutively, repeatedly
I stopped drinking numerous times in rapid succession, first
with enthusiasm and perhaps a bit of success, subsequently
with a somewhat slackened interest, then with weakened
effort, and towards the end, with no hope, L.ich time we
prepared new calendars together; calendars where days, rather
than years constituted the turning points, where time was
measured by promises that could not be kept. In neat squares
we would draw monthly calendars box by box. Whenever 1
deviated from the plan, I would convince Ay shin with great
difficulty not to indicate it on paper like a stain but rather
prepare a ness one from scratch. To nty calendars, each trivial
event presented an appropriate opportunity, everv special das a
genesis I'hus when I received my doctorate, on New Years
Eve, on my thirty-third birthdav, on the first snow of the year,
when we survived in one piece the traffic accident that totalled
the front of our car, on our wedding anniversary, on Ayshin s
thirty-first birthday, when I learned my thesis director had lung
cancer, on the night when my sister and 1 brawled raucously at
long last spilhng our guts out, on the day when 1 received die

263
THE FLEA PALACE

news about my stepfather's death, on all sorts of gatherings

acknowledging the value of life, on the pretext ofAvshin and
I going out of Istanbul for the weekend, on roads, parties,
hotels, shores,.. 1 ga-ve up, ga-ve up, ga-ve up drinking, each
time zealously supported by my wife,,,,
I achieved success but not enough. Since I had once
managed not to put a drop in my mouth tor weeks, every glass
I had thereafter inevitably meant a move backward. 1 myself
was the role model I craved to be; the ideal which shd out of
my palms like a slippery soap, whom 1 kept chasing after but
could not seize even when I caught it by the trouser leg was
me, After a while. Ay shin coo started to confuse what was
insufficient with what was a 'fiasco1. Front that point on, the
reason for her interventions tended to be blurry. Her worrying
about my health was no longer the reason tor her to force me
to compete against myself Words and actions lost their primary
meanings; through convoluted ways, everything became the
indication of something else. My calendars were each a
barometer now, Avshin measured how much I loved her by the
number of days 1 spent without imbibing,Yet when love is the
issue, numbers and proportions only cause trouble, ‘Very1
became such a feeble adjective whenever‘more’ was do-able. I
loved Ayshm verv much but if* hoth knew7 I could do better
than that. Somewhere along the way there had been a
misunderstanding, leading Ayshin to believe that it was
necessary for me not to reduce drinking but to stop cold, and
that I could only reach this goal with the help of love, her love.
If t could ever accomplish this it would be 'for her sake.' 1 was
trapped. She had initially wanted me to reduce drinking for
the sake of my health* then for the sake of our relationship and
next, before I knew ir my drinking had become not my
problem but hers.
On one of those days, I drew a huge crimson *X on my
calendar.This latest re-birh which had by chance fallen on the
22nd of the second month w as in two ways different from the
previous ones. First, while hitherto I had honesdy stopped

264
 HAT NUMBER SEVEN

drinking, now I was stopping drinking honestly. Second,

unlike my previous oaths, I remained true to this one till the
end. From 22/2/2001 to 22/2/2002 when the court divorced
us in one hearing, I did not put .1 drop of alcohol into my
mouth in Ayshms presence.
She watched for a while this brisk, definite development
with a contentment marred by incredulity. Still she did not go
any further, playing the detective to uncover the truth. Even
though she constantlv kept me under surveillaiu e while I was
with her, she did not once pry into what I w as getting up to
in the shade zone outside her field of vision.
*r
I wonder if the
Mint w ith two graves had ever crossed Ay shin's mind during,
those days, for at this juncture my circle had rotated once again
and, just hkc my father, I had assumed two separate
personalities in two separate parts of the day.There was a clear
difference between the two of us however My father was
teetotal during the days and drunk at nights. With me, it wpas
the opposite* as necessitated hv my circumstances; l was sober
during the nights and drunk during the days.
The human body shelters w ithin it a clock that works not
onlv from right to left, but also the other was round. It all
depends on how you set it up. 1 had become fully adapted to
the new system within at most two weeks. Not having regular
work hours at the university was a blessing. During daytime 1
did not miss any opportunity that came my way and went
around constantly drunk* but at night as soon as 1 went home
1 sobered up as if hit on the face with a pail foil of ice water. I
stayed sober during the nights and right after Ayshin left for
work in the morning, started drinking at breakfast. In the last
analysis* day or night did not make much of a difference: to
properly manage one, I needed to mess the other one up.
Contrary to what l had feared, this particular arrangement did
not weigh heavily either on my stomach or my conscience.
Perhaps one gets used to any thing as long as he knows there is
no alternative on the horizon.
When making this arrangement, however, I had simply

2b5
THE FLEA PALACE

overlooked the fact that everything has a life cycle of its own
- a hint my father knew all those years. The morning hours
were not apt to hide secrets away. Not only because we mingle
with others all day long or have duties to perform in full view
of everyone, there is something else m daytime, intrusive and
insidious, transforming the city into an open forest of unseen
creatures The moment 1 placed a few crumbs of secrets into a
p-

tree hollow, somebody would snatch it away. Wherever I

turned my head, I saw among the branches, twigs and leaves
that surrounded me hundreds of eyes dazzled by the sun; a
harsh beam oflight which made it impossible to comprehend
who was looking from where and with what intent. In that
suffocating brightness of daytime* 1 wobbled amidst whispers,
unable to distinguish the faces behind the voices. I could sense
that others caught the smell of liquor on me, and every so
often my tongue stumbled at words or my mind was distracted,
1 could sense it all but never could I discern who around me
knew of my secret and to what extent.
It was precisely at this juncture that Ethel came and perched
amidst my life with all her weight. We had not been seeing
each other for two years. After losing the Mevlevi ney player
and hurling enough poison to last me forever over my decision
to get married to Ayshin, she had gone to the United States to
settle down there with a bright, versatile Pakistani brain
surgeon. Then she returned, just as suddenly and impetuously
as she had departed, barging into my life fortuitously at a
moment when I needed her or someone like her the most- I
had forgotten that Ethels greatest pleasure in this life was
walking with her muddy feet on the priceless carpets in the
spotless living rooms of women like Ayshin. She was quick to
make me remember that. It didn't take her long to discover my
addiction and when she did, she neither disparaged me, nor
put me on trial, nor suffocated me with questions that already
had the answers within.
Instead she handed me an expertly draw n map - created in
how many years on what kind of a life exper ience I stiU cannot

266
 FLAT NUMBER SEVEN

fathom - so that I iould wander around in the forest of

bodiless eyes and faceless sounds with minimum damage. This
chart of hers was so technical It included short liquor breaks
adjusted to my work hours, one shot of hard liquor hidden in
fancy thermoses, dny clues about what would suppress the
smell of the particular drinks, reinforcing drugs that would
help me collect mv thoughts, antioxidants, vitamins, minerals,
artichoke tablets to appease my liver.,. With the seriousness
and perseverance of a seasoned trainer coaching for the
international games a young athlete with measly means but
boundless dreams, she prepared the best possible program
available under the circumstances. In fact, she did much more
than that. All during those years, at every Single opportunity
she kept me company and drank with me
One of the gravest strokes of misfortune a married woman
could face at a time when her husband is searching for ways to
trample on the rules and prohibitions set by her is for life to
present him with an accomplice in the guise of another
woman. Once such a chance event occurred, I instantaneously
found myself in a room filled with contorted mirrors that
made Ayshin appear far more distant and Ethel much closer
than they actually were. Perhaps, however, the outcome was
not as clear-cut as 1 believed it to be. After all, when Ayshin
initiated divorce months later, the reason behind this decision
was neither Ethel nor my infamous addiction.

267
I he Blue Mistress had been sitting without taking her eves oft
the thin, crimson stripes of peppered oil oozing from the halt-
eaten. halt-messed-up chicken with ground walnut.There was
nothing she could do. She did not even want to talk, let alone
raise objections. There wasn't much to say anyhow She bad
been caught in the ultimate trap of nusiresshood: children!
Being the mistress of a married man is to know too much
about what should remain unknown but not know what to do
with this surplus knowledge. Mistresses are cognizant ot the
most hidden, most shameful secrets of certain members of the
same sex who they have never met before and are probably not
at all likely to meet hereafter While spouses know’ httle about
them and are most probably not even aware of their existence,
mistresses have long since gathered by the armloads all sorts of
information...thorny, meaningless, morbid details... If the
at ore mentioned have the habit of plastering their faces with
cream before going to bed at night, for instance, a mistress will
even know what this cream smells like, Likewise they would
know the latter* taste in clothes, their devotion to make-up,
the type of mothers they were, the sort of jewellery they wore,
at what time they went to bed and got up, their eating habits,
unceasing curiosities, hideous obsessions, frigidities,
hypocrisies, complexes, and also, what their possible reaction
would be if (hey learrH the truth. Mistresses know all the answers
without having asked the questions about these kinds of
things. They do not seek confidential secrets, rather secrets
 r IAT NUMBER EIGHT

come to them. They come became in order to provide their

mistresses with evidence of the kind of pandemonium the\
live in, men who are "Long Time Complatncn of Marriage
Who Still Don't End Marriage,' and "Want Change Without
any loss', throw about headlines each more blatantly
provocative than the last, like a crummy, popular daily
newspaper ends up goading itself while trying to inflame its
readers' emotions. Contrary to what spouses suppose, those
who grumpily, maliciously gossip about them arc not the
mistresses but their husbands in person. Mistresses are just good
listeners. Not only do they not make the slightest effort to
learn more, but also, as long as they are confident about their
power and content with their privileges, they do not even
touch these armloads of unpleasant knowledge heaped onto
their laps,They get to probe, pardon and protect their foes who
in the meantime would not hesitate in drowning them in an
inch of water.
However, even Achilles has a heel and even on satin sheets
there is a mothhole at some spot, an air hole that deflates all
the power of mistresses with a hiss. From the moment they
have a mistress, men who m* ‘Long Time Complamcrs of
Marriage Who Still Don't End Marriage' and Want Change
Without Any Loss'start to lose their children as if they have
never loved rheni before. It is a sincere love and just as
pathological. Just like Adam has covered his nakedness with a
grape leaf, so too do the 'LTCM‘ men of the "SDEM* team and
‘WCWU sub-team cover all their shortcomings with their love
of children. As years move along and the number of mistresses
increases, their fondness tor their children spreads tar and wide.
Just like Eve was obliged to obtain herself the same grape leaf,
so too are the mistresses hound to appreciate their I oven*
attachment to their children, an attachment that steadily
increases in folds, getting more sensitive with each fold and
acquiring immunity m the process
The Blue Mistress lifted the gaze she had fixated on the
thin, crimson oil stripes oozing from the chicken with ground
THE FI FA PALACE

walnuts, half-eaten half-messed-tlp, and looked at the olive oil

merchant with a weariness bordering on fury. The mans
twelve year old daughter had taken to bed with a fever, He had
been snapped at by his wife when he had attempted to scold
her for neglecting the child; "If you love your daughter so
much, try not to go to your mistress tonight!' Having been
until that point confident of hiding his illicit affair from his
wife, the olive oil merchant had been truly flabbergasted. A
dreadful brawl had then erupted in the house and the sick
child had heard everything.
The Blue Mistress got up from her chair and gave the man
a warm hug. She told him in a cruelly soft voice there was
nothing to worry about, his daughter would get well soon, and
her broken heart could be easily mended since the kid loved
her father very much. She had uttered exactly what was
expected, not a word more or less. The olive oil merchant
looked at his mistress with a sour gratitude. He seemed more
comfortable now that he had heard exactly what he expected
to hear.
As the Blue Mistress saw him off all the way to the door, the
olive oil merchant smiled for the first time in hours. ‘Well
done*' he murmured just when about to go out, pointing at the
table left behind,
‘It wasn't I who made them, shrugged the Blue Mistress. \
bought it all from the market.' From her voice, it was hard to
tell whether she was enraged or not
The olive ml merchant stood still for a moment. From his
stare, it was hard to tell whether he was surprised or not.

27i >
In the lassitude canopying Flat Number 2, entirely severing it
from the world outside, Gaba snored away each paw pointing
in a different direction. Since he had curled himself not only
within the serenity taking over the house but also on top of his
housemate, there was no way Sidar could budge until Gaba
woke up. Not that Sidar minded that. He loved to stay still
without achieving anything, not even trying to. with barely
any energy, feeling slightly zany and slovenly, embraces! by
aimlessness, next to the being he loved the most in this
world..,to stay just like that, simply and purely stay,.. He too
slid into sleep.
In a wide, weed-tilled garden trained by an ornate steel
railing, Sidar stood gazing at an amber-haired young girl who
had wrapped herself in silvery tulles and stretched out on a
chats? bng> The girl looked astonishingly like one of his sisters
but was more beautiful. She had been motioning him to come
hither. Sidar checked Gaba sleeping away at the entrance.
Though he knew only too well that Gaba should not be left
there alone, he pushed open the humungous entrance gate
without taking his eyes off the girl and plunged in.Though the
garden was greener than it appeared from the outside, the pool
at its centre was lor some reason bone-dry. Bugs the size ot fists
wandered around in it. The girl got up smiling and Sidar
suddenly saw that she was much, much taller than him.What's
more, the girl did not stop growing, as she stretched toward the
sky. The shoes she wore had towering heels. The girl suddenly
THE FLEA PALACE

stumbled and while trying to recover her balance* she stomped

her foot on the ground, making a noise that sounded like
lock!'‘Don't!’ Sidar exclaimed, but this plea of his created just
the opposite response from the girl, for she started to stamp her
feet like mad/Tock, tock, tock!
'Stop doing that. Are you nuts? Stop id’ Sidar yelled,
worrying that Gaba might wake up. He turned back to check
him, but the humungous gate with the steel railings that only
seconds previously had been cracked open was both dosed and
now very far away. As the girl kept hopping/Tock, tock, tock,'
what Sidar had feared happened, Gaba started to bark, tearing
himself apart. Throwing the girl a bitter look, Sidar ran
hurriedly toward the gate. At the same moment he found
himself running dazedIJy toward the door in Flat Number 2 of
Bonbon Palace. There was an ear shattering noise all around.
While Gaba barked, the door joked; while the door jolted,
Gaba barked some more.
When Sidar had finally opened the door, standing in front
of him was Muhamtuet, proud to have made his kicks talk,The
child gave him a once over from top to toe and held out a
napkin-covered plate:‘Madam Auntie sent you this.’
Sidar rapidly rid himself of his grogginess and smiled
brazenly A joke had come true The traditional /iti/ivr that old
women neighbours distributed from door-to-door had
reached him just at the right time, just when he was yearning
for sweets after an acid trip. Sidar and his friends had termed
this among themselves: ‘Tradition infiltrating the
unconventional.' I le thanked the child, stumbling over bis
words in delight, grabbed the plate and slammed the door on
him. Having caught the smell of the recently delivered food,
Gaba had stopped barking, waiting eagerly with his wet nose
in the air. Sidar winked at him teasingly, lifted the napkin and
stood dumbfounded. What faced him was not halva, but two
floured cookies. Floured cookies until the ends slightly crushed arid
the pondered sugar <?fi top spilled. Sidar s face paled
He had remembered.

27 2
As I sat on the balcony sipping my drink. Why don’t you think
of something to stop these folks?' Ethel asked, grabbing the
railing with fingernails painted a hue of dried apricot. Where
she pointed, l spotted a headscarfed woman throwing her
garbage by the side of the garden wall.
[ shrugged. It doesn 't make any difference anymore if I open
or close the windows. With the weather warming up every
passing day the garbage smell gets worse. If exposed to this
malodour on the street, one walks faster, if in the car, one rolls
the windows up. However, it the house you live in, the
morning you wake up into, the night yon steep through, the
walls, the windows, the doors and ever) direction you turn to
stinks, then you are trapped. There is no way of stepping
outside the yoke of smell. Every night when I return home I
encounter yet another warped garbage hill by the side wall of
the apartment building. Every night a brand new garbage
mound awaits me comprising of stuffed plastic bags of all
sizes marked with the emblems of the grocers and markets
in the neighbourhood, bags with their tops tied but for
some reason always with a hole or slit at the bottom, cardboard
boxes tossed here and there, items that once belonged to
godknowswhom, and black clouds of buzzing flies landing on
and taking-ofr from the leaking watermelon juices and
scattered scraps. Cats too... dozens of cats loom hither and
thither,., some skinny, some chubby, all indifferent to passers-
by, bedridden in their foul-smelling kingdom, basking all day

273
THE FLEA PAl ACF

long over, inside and under the garbage bag*, as their number
increases incessantly, alarmingly.,,
1 watch the garbage hill at various hours of the day. Before
noon there already is a substantial pile, which mounts further
during the rest of the day. Close to dusk, two gypsies, one
juvenile, other elderly arrive with their handcarts and pick
at the garbage.They load tin cans, new spapers and glass bottles
into separate sacks to take them away. Lile down there
seems to be based on endless repetition where each part
complements one another: the cats dig up what the flies have
set their eyes on, the gypsies pick on what the cats have dug
up. the garbage truck that enters the street every evening at the
rush hour cakes away w hat remains from the gypsies, what the
garbage truck scatters, the flies, cats and seagulls swipe at once
again. Within this ceaseless rotation whatever diminishes is
speedily replenished, never letting that sour smell fade assay.
*What do you want me to do?' 1 asked-‘Should I stand guard
by the wall?’
‘Do something so drastic that they’ll never again want to
dump garbage here. Come on sugar-plum, use your brain!
You'll think of something, she said once again finishing her
ralri before I did,
1 leaned back lighting a cigarette. Oddly, there are no ants
tonight. As the smoke coiled like gauze in the air, out of the
blue, an idea as tiny as a louse crossed my mind.

274
Watching Gaba lick the crumbs of the floured cookies with his
rough, rose-pmk tongue. Sidar couldn't help recalling a
particular day of his childhood. It was a snowy Saturday. They
had paid a visit to grandma, as they always did on Saturday
mornings, but this time for some reason their visit lud been
shorter than usual. Ever since they had left the old womans
house, his mother and father had been walking arm-in-arm,
murmuring reticently. Suiar, whom no one expected would
grow up to be so tall and lanky back in those years, was
covered in layers of clothes, lolloping like a cabbage; Ins
reindeer-motif wool beret pulled down to his can and the
same coloured scarf wound around his neck. As the distance
between him and his parents who were coming at a snail’s pace
from behind extended, Sidar took the liberty of tramping
through all the puddles on his way. He could thus estimate the
guveness of the quiet quarrel between his parents. The only
thing adults need to do to make their children sense the
iuauspiciousuess hovering in the air without explicitly
declaring the news is simply to not get angry at things that
always anger them Accordingly, Sidar had fathomed something
was wrong. For him to be convinced this day was like any
other day, he first had ro find a deep, dirty mud puddle to
march in, and upon doing so, be rebuked by his mother and
conceivably slapped by his father.
Before long he came across what he wanted, a russet, murky
hole full of mud, the depth of which he could not possibly

2n
THE FLEA PALACE

estimate. ] >oggedly, almost blindly he stomped in it and would

have simply spurted ahead had he not heard an indistinct growl
right at that instant. He flinched, checked the surroundings hut
couldn't see anyone. It was as it the voice had come from under
his feet,..as if the mud had been hurt,.. Perhaps it was a
warning urging him to stay back. Perhaps this hole in front of
him was one of those infamous death holes the municipality
dug up to then forget to refill; a brown, bottomless dirty death
hole... ft frightened him, but the fear of death, Sidar sensed for
the first time, was not that frightful He moved forward.
His heart pounded wildly. How deep was the hole, where
was its bottom? Perhaps in a step or two he would be
swallowed up,,. In his minds eye he visualized his death, the
hole gulping him up, leaving behind nothing but his red deer
patterned beret. He imagined his mother and father passing by
the hole, still talking fervently, then returning down all the
roads they had passed searching for their only son,The more
he thought about it the more he took pleasure in making
everyone pay for past offences; slanders that had hurt him,
squabbles that had injured himT the injustices he had been
subjected to.,. It felt good to envisage how his friends and
relatives who had been separately responsible for each one of
these slights would repent upon learning he had died.
Yet before he was able to arrive even at the midpoint of his
dreams, he had reached the end of the puddle, I le grudgingly
stepped out and still stomping his feet, dropping burly mud
drops, he turned the street corner only to stop there flummoxed.
Right across from him, by the sidewalk, lay a puppy. Those
blaring sounds had emanated not from the death-hole of the
Istanbul municipality but from tins puny, black-eyed puppy It
had no blood on its coat, no visible cut or wound. The wheel
tracks of the minibus that had sped over it were not detectable,
Sidar's face paled. Realizing that the death he had lavishly
dreamt of a minute previous was now so dose and yet so
external to him, he felt stupid, All these visions that carried him
away were incongruous and all the aspirations he set up futile.

276
 FLAT NUMBER TWO

1 he only things that were real to him at that moment were the
mud left on his trousers, which was already drying up. and the
pain tormenting this puppy, The rest was entirely meaningless.
He had a family but was lonely; he was constantly behrded by
everyone and he in turn constantly belittled everyone; he did
not know how to be happy and did not think he could learn it
either; he had turned eleven but was still a child in everyone's
eyes; no one asked his opinion on anything and even if they did,
he did not have any opinion anyway.
No doubt he should have returned and asked lor help from
his parents or else, moved forward to help the puppy himself
but he could do none of these things. He nervously thrust his
hands into his pockets and simply waited. The sour
despondency of his parents was approaching step by step from
the back: this was life. In from of him, a puppy speedily slid
from pain into oblivion: that was death. As tor Sidar, he did not
want to join either side; he would stay as far away as possible
from both the death that excluded him and the life from
which he had excluded himself If only he could withdraw
behind Ins eyelids the way he had hidden under the coat,
gloves, beret and scarf. I ost in his thoughts it took him some
time to realize what the soft thing in his left pocket was. It was
a floured cookie.
‘The girls will stay with me,’ grandma had remarked
broodingly that morning.‘But the male child, he has to be by
the side of his father.'
When Sidar had entered the kitchen, the two women had
their backs to him, 3 hey were doling out the freshly baked
floured cookies into the porcelain plates lined up on the
counter. Don't leave me without news,' grandma had
mumbled.‘But as soon as your new phone is connected, call a
candy store first thing.’
When a new phone was connected at a new house, whom
one called first determined all the rest. That was W'hy, with a
new phone, before calling friends and relatives, one had to
randomly call a candy store so that all the following calls made

377
1 HE H EA PA1 ACE

from that phone would end sweetly. After having talked to a

candy store, one could trail a bank, foreign currency bureau or
.1 jeweller to bring m money for future phone calls, a real estate
agent to bring in a house, or a car dealer to bring in a car and
the like, hut possessions and such did not matter that much.
What really mattered was for the things to run sweetly.
Accordingly, while calling ail others depended on ones own
pleasure,, calling the candy store was some sort of a duty.
Sidar had been bored still there, as he was every Saturday
morning. Fortunately they had not staved for long this time.
While the adults had become wobbly with emotion and the
children had still not comprehended how different this
Saturday morning was from others, they had all been swept
toward the outside door with the current of such incessant
farewells that it was uncertain who kissed whom and why, l he
only thing apparent was that the girls were to stay behind with
the grandmother.. Sidar had no objection to this. He was so
pleased to learn that he would be spending the weekend away
from his sisters* yakking that he had not even objected to bis
mothers instruction to put on this beret which was made for
a girl However,just as he was about to leave in that covered,
wrapped-up state, his grandmother had pulled him to herself
fast, stuck him onto her breasts that touched her belly and
keeping hold of him tight like this, she had crammed things
into his pocket.‘You'll eat them on the way,’ she had snivelled
as she sniffed her red nose and pointed with one arm to some
place in the sky as if the road she referred to was up there
somewhere. In that state she had remained stock-still at the
threshold, like a burly statue of a woman turned into stone.
With her blot king the door in this way, all family members
had lined up next to one another along the narrow corridor
hke forgotten clothes pinned up on a clothesline and left to
freeze outside in the cold of the night.
Always confused when confronted svith excessive
expressions of love, Sidar had finally succeeded in escaping the
mangle of grandma's breasts that smelt slightly of sweat,

J7H
 FI AT NUMBER TWO

intensely ot lemon cologne and a whisk ot fresh baked bread.

That was the exit. From that moment on they had been
wandering the streets, he in the front and his mother and
father at the back.

★★★

As soon as the puppy spotted the floured cookie Sidar took

out of his pocket, it stopped wailing. They stood eve-to-eyc for
an awkward moment. Sidar felt a hatred surge in him; he
couldn't help loathing the animal. Here it was on the verge of
death and yet the desire to devour a damn floured cookie
flickered like a flimsy flame m its already lustreless black eyes.
A couple of minutes later, his father and mother turned the
corner. They approached and saw their son indifferently
munching on a cookie in front of a dying puppy Confronted
with such cruel insensitivity, the nerves of both adults, which
were thoroughly stretched under the influence of the topic
tbev had been talking about, completely snapped. While his
mother yelled at him. his father slapped him on the face*
At long last his wish had come true. Both his mother and
father seemed to have turned back to their normal selves. Still
however, that malignant feeling pulling Sidar apart inside had
not lessened a bit. As he started to weep, it was neither the slap
nor the rebuke that had hurt him so badly In truth, on that last
Saturday morning in Istanbul, his conviction that the life he
had become accustomed to would forever continue the way it
was, had perished for once and all.
That same night Sidar travelled on a plane for the first time
m his life He would with rime comprehend why his mother
and father had become so agitated before going through
pawpon control and w hy they had left Turkey in such a hurry.
At the end of the trip w hich he spent watching the charming
flight attendant smiling the same smile at everyone, when the
plane si,med to descend, he saw under him a city that scattered
bright lights without shadows into a calm darkness: Switzerland!
THE FIFA PALACE

Two months bier, when they had 1 eh the school dormitory

set aside for those seeking political asylum and settled mto the
dwelling: they were going to share with an Assyrian family
similarly in asylum, the first thing his mother had done was to
run to the phone* She had talked with her daughters m tears,
constantly repeating the same sentences over and over again:
not a patisserie, not a candy store, nor a chocolate factory ,..
Perhaps because they had used their new phone to call their
family first, and to hold a most doleful conversation,
throughout the long years that followed, at every single call
they received they feared the worst news from Istanbul Even
when grandma died five years later and the girls also arrived in
Switzerland this barely changed. In all the phone calls to ensue,
there was some news from Istanbul and if not that, certainly j
mention and a steady; thorny anguish.
Be that as it may, Sidar was the only one of the family to
return to Istanbul, after eleven and a half years and one day...

2W0
Shut in her room, sitting cross-legged on the carpet next to the
cockroach she had squished, Zelish FireriatUredsons had tor the
last half hour been staring at the mirror she solemnly and
dolefully held, as if some grave injustice had been inflicted
upon her by the face she saw there* Until some time ago
her face had been as pallid as if she had run into a ghost at
night and as round as a pastry tray. Yet, for about five months
now, it had been spotted with tiny, ruby blisters ,is if she had
had a heat rash without knowing. ! he dermatologist w ith
bleary eyes and hearty- laughter they visited, diagnosed them as
being neither adolescent acne nor an allergy but instead
psychosomatic* Under extreme anxiety, he had maintained, the
skin could transform itself into a red polka-dotted tablecloth.
Chuckling at Ins own joke, the physician had given Zclish a
whopping slap on the back and thundered in Ins bass voice:
For goodness sake, if you get so anxious at this age, you’ll end
up racking your husbands nerves when married. Relax, my
daughter, relax’1
If there js one thing in this life that starts to multiply out of
spite and proliferate all the more the moment it is intended to
be reduced, it must be anxiety. Even fear has an ending, a
saturation point When that particular point is reached, even if
one were up to the neck m fear, one would and could not be
frightened any longer Excessive fear anesthetizes itself As for
anxiety, that is the venomous water of"a bottomless well. It has
neither an overdose nor an antidote [mi .is inmh .is [hi mhitlC

2H1
THE ELEA PALACE

of fear is concrete and evident, the source of anxiety is vague

and abstract. A«s such, even though one would have no trouble
determining the reason behind fear, there is no way to detect
the cause tor constant anxiety. Given that, warning an anxiety-
ridden person w ho is already worn out from battling not some
corporal enemy but a chemical one, about the menacing things
that might happen if she did not appease her anxiety would
solely serve to create just the opposite effect, rendering her all
the more anxious.
Not onlv did Zelish Firenaturedsons not know how to
w

relax* she did not think she could ever learn either. Finding out
that the cause for all these blisters was not a particular allergy
but an ambiguous anxiety had simply heaped more angst upon
her pile oi angst.There was no soap, cream or lotion on earth
that could heal her. Anxiety had no cosmetic solution. The
blisters hitherto confined to her forehead and chin had since
then increased twofold, spreading all over her face.
All of a sudden she overheard some music seeping through
troin the fiat downstairs. Getting down on her knees, her face
turned to the dead cockroach, she glued her ear to the floor.
By now she had formed the habit of eavesdropping on the flat
below at various times of the day. Her room was right above
the living room of the wiry guy residing in the basement flat.
At notes she heard this strange ‘tap* and ‘rap* as if he had been
walking on the ceiling or was taken hostage downstairs and
was trying to climb up ..or perhaps he was sending her a
coded message... Once she had even heard moans jumbled-in
with dog barks.That dav she had patiently waited bv the living
room window to see what this female guest looked like. She
had seen her. A pence girl with short, spiked, coppers hair and
loose, baggy pants that looked like they would tall ofl at any
moment. As soon as she had left Bonbon Palace, the girl had
lit a cigarette there in the middle of the street. She didn 't seem
to have any blisters and thereby no anxieties.
‘Every human being spends life searching for her own
image,’ wise men said*‘To become one w ith her and to find

282
 FI A I NUMbtk FOUR

herself til her.' Due even if that were the case, just as the Tuba
tree in heaven had turned upside down with us mots up in the
air and branches under the soil, so did certain mirrors turn
what was sought upside down. In the girl who had left Sidars
house, Zelish Firenaturedsons had seen the opposite of her
image If only she could, she would entirely do away with
herself and be converted into her.
“What the hell are you doing on the floor"'
Zelish Firenaturedsons bolted to her feet and trow ned Lit her
brother who had dashed into her room without bothering to
knock on the door first. Zekeriya had come to dinner that
night with his wife and child. In slow, heavy steps Zelish left
the room in silence. She found everyone seated around the
table m the living room having their soup while watching the
news. At one end of the table stood three pieces of the coffee
cake the old widow at number ten had sent them
As Zelish perched on the chair at the corner, the TV screen
caught her eyes, A sixteen year old mother who had left her
three-days-old baby in the dumpster of a supermarket was
trying to hide her face from the cameras.Thc lut kless baby had
slept in the barrel among the litter quietly all day long and only
when it started to wail at night had it been noticed and saved
by passcrs-hy.The policemen who took her to the station and
ted her had named the baby-from-the-garbage 'Kader
All of a sudden Rader appeared on the screen, her tiny face
flushing crimson. She kept crying and crying, turning a deeper
and deeper colour with each cry, Zelish Firenaturedsons broke
out in a sweat.1 be baby was so red.Though she tried to release
her glance from the pressure of that nasty colour, it was too
late. As baby Kader was being passed around from the lap of
one policeman to another, all darkened - and the darkness was
a vivid red.
Zelish Firenaturedsons had fainted.
Awakened with the squeal of the alarm dock at 5:45 a.m.,die
idea l had relished so much last night now seemed pure
nonsense. 1 would have hit the pillow and gone back (o sleep
if only 1 could. Instead I got up and looked out the window.
It was still dark outside. That was when I felt like trying my
plan out. At least it would provide me with something to
laugh about with Ethel the Cunt. Taking the bag l had
prepared at night, 1 slipped ghost-like down the stairs. The
apartment building was dead silent. As soon as I opened the
building door, the cool morning breeze hit my face - and
then the subtle garbage smell, It had started already. Who
knows, maybe my plan will have some use. If I succeeded in
convincing even one person not to dump their garbage here,
1 would have considered myself as having served not only the
residents of Bonbon Palace but the entire city.
In all its fudonmess, for the first tune since I had moved
here the street I lived on looked gorgeous to me. Two sturdy
street dogs sprung from the corner. They advanced zigzagging
tram one sidewalk to the other, got in trout of each other;
slowed down upon reaching the garden waif stuffed at the
garbage reluctantly and failing to come across anything worthy,
trudged away. As 1 looked after them, for a fleeting moment I
felt someone s eyes on me. Yet when 1 turned around Bonbon
Palace was in utter darkness with the exception of Fiat
Number 9. A shadow rapidly passed by the living room
windows of the top floor, The lights of all the rooms in the

2JCI
 FLAT MUMMER SEVEN

direction the shadow moved were lie and then for whatever
reason were turned off in the same order, I fck awkward. As I
cased my surroundings, the silliness of what 1 was about to do
upset me. Still, something in me refused to give up. My plan is
pure nonsense but perhaps it is better that it be so. At times the
only way ot stopping ongoing nonsense is not to fight it back
with rational rules or despotic prohibitions but to launch back
some thing just as nonsensical.
As 1 got on the sidewalk and faced the garden wall, a grim
pair of eyes accosted me. 1 had seen this cat before. It stares at
humans with such pure hatred. Disturbed by my presence, it
got up and walked to the end of wall with klutzy steps from
where it continued to watch me. Taking the paint can out of
the bag, I opened the lid with difficulty. When buying the paint
the day before, I had asked the salesclerk for 'Muslim green' to
match the occasion but what emerged from under the lid now
was downright pistachio green - certainly not an apt colour
for otherworidlmess. What's more, another nuisance struck me
once 1 faced the wall with the brush in my hand. 1 sure knew
what sort of a message I wanted to write but hadn't given
much consideration to how to phrase it most effectively A
bread van passed behind me noisily, continuing on its route
after leaving a crateful of bread in front of the grocer opposite.
Realizing what little time 1 had left before the whole city
woke up, I hurried to write the simplest expression that came
to my mind, going over every letter twice, As I worked
conscientiously the bastard cat watched my every move,
swinging the tar black tail it had dangled off the wall.
When finished, l stepped back and examined my handiwork.
It was not bad, Though the pistachio green was far too vivid
and l had apparently tailed to centre the w riting, it still was all
right. Large and legible enough to be perceived from even the
middle of the street. I winked at the cat, collected the pamt and
the brush and returned to Bonbon Palace.
Just as I was about to enter, someone was getting ready to
go out.
THE FIFA PALACE

T he aged lady at Number lu was the last person l expected

to see at this godtnrsai en hour oi the morning, bin it was as it
she too felt at least as uneasy about this encounter as I did.
While 1 tried to hide the contents of the bag in my hand* the
ones in hers caught my eye. She was carrying four large bags
that seemed empty. Her bags as light as a feather, she as light as
a feather.,* 1 held the door open for her Crowning that
quizzical smile of hers with a polite, Thank youhshe embraced
her tiny Frame and slithered away.
As soon as J entered the house. 1 went out on the balcony.
I hough I had intended to perch there to see with my own
eyes the effect of my writing, the sleep 1 had left incomplete
came and captured me like a cling)’ creditor
After checking one by one the kitchen, living room, corridor
and the back room. HygieneTtjco finally turned off the lights
and lay down on the bed exhausted. In the dead-calm of the
darkness, sliced by the gradually dawning day, she turned and
gazed with curiosity at the body next to her as if she saw it for
the first time. She indeed gazed, but what she saw there was
less a body than numerous infinitesimal bits and pieces. Her
infatuation tor cleaning, having long progressed to a chronic
level had after a certain phase affected her eyesight like some
insidious disease. Her eyes now subtly slieed-up everything she
regarded, dividing the whole into pieces, the pieces into details
and the details into bits. When she looked at the rug in the
living room for instance, she perceived not the rug but its
designs and the stains sheltered in those designs and the specks
of dirt hanging onto those stains. While her eves had become
sharp enough to see indistinguishable details and hunt down
the parasites invisible to the eve, she conversely had lost the
ability to grasp anything in its totality.As such when she turned
around in the bed and stared at the body next to her, she did
not see her husband but the two drops of dried saliva by the
corner of his mouth, the sand that had accumulated in his ev es,
the food sediments on his teeth, the nicotine yellowing on his
fingertips and the dandruff at the roots of his hair. In a flash she
turned her face away so as not to have to see this any more but
was too late. The disgust had already set in.
Disgust is no ordinary feeling, distributed lavishly to all

2K7
THE Ft FA PALACE

living creatures on earth. To hem with, it is exceedingly

particular to humans. Women are disgusted more often than
men, and among women, some more so than others. Whenever
Hygiene 1 ijen was disgusted, the sides ot" her mouth turned
down, her legs got stuck stock-still and her whole body first
got a subtle tickling sensation and was then covered with an
intensifying itch. She curled into the foetal position, scratching
herself non-stop w hile the feeling of disgust prickled her toes,
spreading from there to the upper parts ot her body in wave
after wave.
So tar, she had become disgusted an infinite number of
times for all sorts of reasons, but this time she felt a tingling not
only on the tips of her toes but also on her temples. The
tingling increased in a couple ot seconds to cover her entire
head; it then ran down her neck, squeezing left and right as if
passing through a bridge and as soon as it left the bridge
behind, started to descend in splintered, orderly strips. Behind
this swiftly mobilized army was none other than Hygiene
I ifen's brain. Predicting well ahead the possible perilous
consequences of Hygiene Tijens sudden disgust for her
husband, her brain had acted on its own.
For sometimes our brain grasps before us the likely results of
the action we are about to take and, if it deems necessary; sets
about taking precautions of its own accord. Hygiene Tijens
brain too had independently decided to take over the way
things were going as it could envision that tins disgust did not
resemble the preceding bouts and that, when she started to be
disgusted with the man she had once married, risking a
confrontation with her own parents, the issue could transform
into an interrogation of an entire life. During the following
couple of minutes. Hygiene Fijen experienced a peculiar,
terrible cramping in her stomach. For it was exactly at this
region that the rebels fighting in the name of Disgust-for-
hiisband1 and the forces of‘Devotion-to-husband’ confronted
each other. It was the latter that emerged triumphant,The brain
had successfully put down yet another mutiny. Now relieved

2 KM
 FLAT NUMBER NINE

from her stomach ache Hygiene Tijen breathed a sigh and

headed to the bathroom dragging her feet. She turned on the
light.The surrounding area was snow white. She poured a few
drops of bleach on a paper towel and thoroughly w iped the
toilet seat. As she peed she scrutinized even'thing around.There
was nothing w ithin an eye range that could pierce through the
absolute dominance of white, her favourite colour.
There was an aura of a certain colour surrounding each and
every person, according to a brochure she had once seen — the
brochure of an organization established in California where
the members called each other not with their names but
colours, held hands to form colour scales like impressive
watercolour sets, but ultimately had to disband when the
members started to separate into tactions based on their hues.
Perhaps the reverse was also true. Perhaps/There is an aura of
a certain type of person surrounding every colour , and if that
indeed is the case, the aura of people surrounding the colour
white will no doubt be comprised of housewives. White
confers pride and dignity to housewives. To Hygiene Tijen it
only conferred comfort.
After flushing the toilet, she dripped a few drops ot bleach
on a paper towel and wiped the seat. Having thus embarked
upon the task, she also cleaned up the toilet cover, under it and
around it; then the toilet paper and towel hooks, the sink, the
tub. and unable to stop herself, pulled up the washing machine
to mop behind it. Just before she got out, she turned around
half-wearv half-content to lake a look at the whole bathroom
m

one last time. She closed the door behind her, but stood still.
For the brain does not always go in the front blit occasionally
comes from the rear like this. Hy giene Tijen s brain too had
decided with a lag of few seconds that it had seen something
black, pitch black, wandering somewhere within the whiteness
covering the entire bathroom. She reopened the door; she was
not mistaken. A black and disgusting antenna was rapidly
making way on the w hite tiles. Her heart in her mouth,
Hy giene Tijen drew closer with cautious side-steps and only
THfc FLEA PALACE

when really close could she distinguish that the thing she had
been looking at in its details, but had failed to see in its entirety,
was not a black and disgusting antenna, but a black and
disgusting cockroach.
Before she let out a scream, the black, repulsive owner of the
black repulsive antenna had already vanished into a hole on the
bathroom walk

290
Because of the squabble inside, Musa woke up earlier than
usual this morning. As soon as he entered the living room he
spotted Muhammet there, squeezed between an armchair and
the wall. Pretending not to notice the plea tor help flickering
in his son’s eyes, he sat doss il at the breakfast cable. Grudgingly
shovelling into his mouth a lump of cheese, he reached for the
teapot only to let go of it even more grudgingly. Alas, the tea
had gone cold again.Though he pointed the teapot out to his
wife, Mervem. too busy pushing the armchair with one leg
while stuffing parsley twigs into half a loaf of bread, paid no
attention to him. Sullenly bowing to the fact that he had to
take care of himself Musas sluggish gaze scanned the
surroundings and, passing at a tangent to his son s despondent
stare, inspected one by one the armchairs, coffee tables and
chairs weightily lined up. Having thus drawn a complete circle
in the living room, he finally focused on his wife once again,
Meryem’s belly seemed even bigger this morning.
Gobbling half the cheese on the plate, three slices of bread
and all the olives left in the bowl as fast as he could, Musa left
the house without a word. At this hour of the day, as the only-
place he could think of going was the grocery store opposite,
that is where he headed The grocer - who was notorious for
sitting hunched-up on the same stool and in the same spot, all
the time spying on the passers-by - hadn’t arrived yet. Like
many a grocery store in Istanbul, in this case too, what made
the store different from others was less the qualities of the

291
r HE H FA PA I A< F
groceries sold than the traits of the grocer So prof oundly had
this identification of shop-with-owner been internalized by
the hunched-up grocer himself that for a long rime he found
it impossible to accept the simple fact that his store could open
in his absence. Nevertheless, ultimately facing the risk of losing
customers if he kept on closing the shutters even time he
went to the mosque to pray, he had been forced to entrust the
store to his freckled apprentice
The apprentice happened to be his brother s son. but since
the hunchbacked grocer was a firm believer in the need to
keep kinship and trade apart just like water and 01L he treated
the youngster not like Ins nephew but as an apprentice ought
to be treated. As for the boy, on no account could he work out
how on earth this uncle of his, who bombarded him with
callous orders and icy scoldings six days a week could then on
the seventh day, on a Sunday family visit, turn into an utterly
different person, bringing him chocolates he would not even
let him get near to in the store. On such Sundays, whenever
his uncle asked - as if they had just run into each other tor the
first time in weeks, as if it w asn't him who had sworn at the
boy only that morning in the store in front of ev eryone - *Tell
me, my nephew, what do you do in your spare time after
school?', at those thwarting moments how desperately the boy
wished to vanish from the face of the earth. The acrimony of
the past F east of Sacrifice was still seared fresh in his memory
i )n that day, all their relatives gathered together, sacrificed a
bulky ram early in the morning, then spent the ennre day
gulping down tea, almond paste, roasted meat, yogurt soup,
w heat boiled with meat, vogurt drink, rice and meat sausage,
apricot compote, meat pilaf tea again, baldava with pistachios,
semolina dessert for the spirits of the dead, grapes, watermelon,
again baldava with pistachios and coffee; only to end up
suffering from severe indigestion at night.7 he next morning,
when the boy had arrived at the grocery store later than usual
and still drained of colour, his uncle had yelled at him,
crowning his reprimand with a sermon on an apprentices

2^2
 FLAT NUM HE K ON F

responsibility lo go to bed early and rise early. Unable to match

in his minds eye the jittery grocer at the store and the fatherly
uncle he ran into on family occasions, the freckled apprentice
had in the fullness of rime started to perceive them as two
distinct persons.This apparent solution, however, caused a feu
problems of its own: each time his parents asked him to deliver
a message to his uncle at the store something inside the boy
seemed to short-circuit, for he always forgot to do so.
When Musa approached the store* the freckled apprentice
had placed the Book of Quranic Verses on the counter, and
with one eye on the door and one hand in the peanuts case,
kept wolfing nuts while memorizing sections of the Qur an*
Not at all used to getting up this early, and apparently
disappointed to see the apprentice instead of the grocer. Musa
thought, why not distribute the bread of the apartment
building himself this morning? The moment he took a step
toward the glass cupboard where the breads were lined-up.
however, he stopped, highly perplexed* In a daze and almost
frozen to the spot, what he looked at from chat angle was the
garden wall of Bonbon Palace, which he soon pointed out to
the freckled apprentice. The two of them stood side by side,
studying the pistachio green writing there.
‘1 hope Meryem won’t ever see this,’ Musa exclaimed. Then,
as if sharing a joke with hnnself* he chuckled* displaying his
rotten teeth.
Why so?* the freckled apprentice grimaced* having just
missed the nut he had flung in the air.
*Whv so? Why do you think? Simply because she'd accept it
as true!'

2*13
Having emptied every single one of the hags she had brought
in. Madam Auntie opened the double doors and stepped onto
the balcony, fhe roofs of the apartment buildings across were
dotted with hordes of seagulls, all staring in the same
direction, all similarly sullen, as if compressed under the
weight of the same cryptic contemplation. Her eyes fixated on
them, Madam Auntie distractedly caressed the pendants on
her two necklaces, one of which she never took off On the
long chain there hung a key, and on the short one, the austere
face of Saint Seraphim,
Istanbul, she thought, resembled a woman heavy with child
a woman who during the last months of pregnane)1 had put
on far more weight than she could carry. With every step, the
swish of water rose in waves from that belly of hers, long
swollen with grandeur. Though she constantly devoured
whatever she could get hold of, she was no longer able to tell
how much of what she ate benefited her or the crowds of
teensy, touchy and voracious beings growing within her body
day by day. How desperately she would like to, if only she
could, get nd of this excruciating burden. Instead all she could
do was to simply swell up throughout the centuries. The
comestibles which she consumed in one gulp were transported
to her by ships and boats, cars and trailers, shaky-legged porters
and caravans, their tails long lost on the way. Had she, with this
insatiable appetite of hers, not been able to spurt anything out,
Istanbul would have long before blown up, taking the life of

2SM
 FLAT NUMBER TEN

both herself and those dwelling in her. Auspiciously she could

always spew things out. She purified her worn-out body, just
like a person would use expectorants to oust putrid gases,
bodily fluids and vomit in order to live and keep living.
Istanbul poured the pus oozing tVom her festering wounds into
lulls of garbage. That she could still persevere, she owed to the
garbage mounting m piles upon piles even when buried deep
in holes, emerging from its ashes even if burned shovel by
shovel, never to wane even when carried tar away It was thanks
to the glorious garbage that Istanbul could still carry on,
As such the garbage dump was not an end Life did not
terminate there but merely changed form and essence. The
items thrown in the trash, as if churned out from the invisible
walls surrounding the city, were then dissolved into their
components, sorted out. burned up, pressed, buried - yet they
never wholly perished. Like a fugitive on the run, the garbage
ultimately sneaked back to Istanbul — through the soil, water
or at times air. With the help of the garbage-gatherers, the lottos
or the seagulls.
The seagulls seemed to be of the same opinion as Madame
Auntie.These theoretically carnivorous, originally directionless
birds had in time become so accustomed to feeding on
Istanbul's trash that they had fully integrated into this
everlasting gastral circle incessantly begetting waste from life
and life from waste.
Every night and every morning. Madam Auntie sat on her
balcony looking tar and down on the r asset hill where the
shanty houses with cursorily painted facades had been heaped
to the brim while she listened, as attentive as a silence-
worshippmg seagull, to the hum of the city flocked together by
the gale only to be scattered by it once again, In this final stage
of her life, if she were offered a chance to be born again
wherever she pleased and as a different species, Madam Auntie
would no doubt choose to be born here in Istanbul, only this
time, disguised as a seagull.

2^5
It was almost noon when I woke up. Thrusting into my briefcase
today's lecture notes, js well as yet another Kierkegaard for Ece,
who apparently preterred to borrow them from me rather than
purchase her own. I rushed out. While 3 was leaving my flat* the
neighbour at Number 8 was going into hen In a hurry, as always.
She seemed to have done something to her hair. It was better
before but she soil looked fetching, indeed very fetching. She
greeted me warily with a nod, averring her eyes.Yet 1 caught dial
glance in her eyes. She is not as timid as she seems tu he. Neither
is she that indifferent to the world around her. Down on the
ground floor, the door of Flat Number 4 was ajar. That nasty
woman was standing at the threshold, asking Meryem to do her
chores. Upon seeing rue, her lips twisted into a galling smile.
’Professor, did you hear what happened to our apartment
building?' she blurted out, ‘It turns out there was a holy saint
in our garden!’
I had completely forgotten about it.
T am not at all surprised,' I said, not losing my cool. It is a
well-know n fact that there are countless graves left from the
Ottomans, as well as the Byzantines, at various corners of
Istanbul,' I added without taking my eyes off my watch. Are
we to claim that all the dead in this city lie within the existing
cemeteries? Of course not!5 There must be still thousands ot
undiscovered graves. What could be more natural than the fact
that some of these graves belong to people regarded by the
populace as holy saints?

2%
 FLAT NUMBER SEVEN

Zeren Firenaturedsons injected mt from tup to toe, trying

to grasp whether I was making fun of her or not. When she
pouts, the creases on her forehead make her look even more
edgy,‘Academics!' she heaved a sigh, and as if with this single
word the whole conversation had turned to her advantage, she
crossed her arms on her chest, remaining silent. So did I
Zeren Firenaturedsum* thorny sure stirred toward Meryeni,
standing next to ust listening to our conversation with a look
of anguish and tightly closed lips as if worried she might let
slip a word she d rather not. For a fleeting moment it seemed
to me that upon hearing my response a gleeful gimt glimmered
in the depth of her eyes, but the very next second, hurry ing to
get rid nf us both, she grabbed her list of chores and turned
out ahead of me.
‘But grandpa, what if l step on them by mistake?" exclaimed
the five and a half year old.
‘If you step on them, the genies will get into you*They will
twist you out of shape,' roared the seven and a half year old*
l ike you've got a giant head!'
Hadji Hadji intervened: Don't talk like char with your older
brother. Neither the genies nor Allah will like those who don't
respect their elders/
The five and a half year old tilted her head, tugging her
pinky-ginger pleated skirt. Utterly immobile for a while, from
the corner of her eye she then looked at her older brother only
to see the other pouting at her. Without a sound she slid closer
to her grandfather
‘The genies have a sultan,They call him Beelzebub. Never
do they dare to disobey his orders, but there are times when
they get involved in all sorts of intrigues without Ins
knowledge. The genie gang comes in all types. The genies are
like humans, some are good, some wicked. Some are devout,
some infidels* There are three ty pes of genies: firstly; there are
some in the form of snakes or bugs, secondly are those in the
shape of wind or water and last but not least, there are those
who take the form of humans. It is this last group that is the
most menacing of all! You can never tell if they are really
humans or genies. They throw weddings that last until dawn,
eating, drinking and dancing to ihe rhythm of drums and
^urnas. If you ever happen upon a genie wedding late at night,
 f LAI NUMBER HVE

you should instantly turn your head. Don't ever try to sneak a
look! When you get up to go to the bathroom at night, don’t
ever take even one step without uttering Allah's name aloud!
Particular attention needs to be paid to thresholds because
that^ where the gomes like to linger.The only way to eschew
the genies is to not do anything without uttering Allah\ name
If you forget to do so, the gomes will surely reach you and
meddle with your life"1 repined Hadji Hadji, leaning his aching
hack on one ot’ the pillows piled up on the couch to build an
Osman afterward. The little girl next to him cowered and
moved in tandem, as if glued to the old man.
The most horrible one is the “Crimson Broad ". When she
haunts a woman w ho lias just given birth, she’ll never let go of
her prey. All night long, she mounts the new mother's chest as
if riding a horse, Only ,u daw n does she leave the pour thing
drenched in sweat and fear, hut the next night, she's back there
again, this time mim king the cradle, throwing the habv up in
the air like a soccer bait.’
*Oh I remember her," the seven and a half year old blurted
out, eyeing his siblings,'She came to their birth!'
lOf course* she would! If, instead of having the birth her
way, your mother had called for your deceased grandmother,
there would be no quandaries. Your grandma, peace be upon
her, would certainly have managed, to get rid of the "Crimson
Broad ’, but the poor soul passed away without seeing her
grandchildren *
Deeply vexed by their grandfathers response, the five and .1
half year old and the six and a half year old grovelled at once.
While the little girl s lower lip drooped down* the boy h id
started to suck his thumb which was already thinned out from
#

constant sucking,
'And you better be cautious about the “Black Congokw1
too, the most merciless of them all,.. She disguises herself as an
aged woman, wandering on the streets, waiting for her prey at
street corners She asks questions to the passers-by: “ Where are
you coming from?” and “Where ire you going to?” she
THE FLEA PALACE

inquires. ’ Which family do you descend from?" she further

asks. If you stumble upon ‘'Black Con^los ', you have no
other choice than to respond to her questions by using the
word “black” each time Say, for instance, “1 am from the black
ones" or '"I come from the black town". Only then will she
leave you in peace. Even’ so often she asks for an address. If you
don't know the address, I pity you She takes out her cane*
whacks you on the head and beats you so bad that,..1
His words were ripped apart by the ringing of the phone.
The seven and a half year old reached for the receiver with no
hurry.Yes, they had finished their breakfasts. No, they were not
being naughty.Yes, they were watching television. No, grandpa
was not telling tales. No. they were not turning the gas on No.
they were not messing up the house No, they did nor hang off
the balcony No* they did not play with fire* No, they did not
go mto the bedroom. Really, grandpa was not telling a tale.
However, that day his mother must have been in need of
confirmation for she insisted: Tf your grandpa is telling tales
simply sav, “The weather is cold*" and 1 11 understand.'
rhe seven and a half year old hesitated for a moment. A
nocturnal gleam slid from his moss green eyes.There followed
a prickly silence. When the gleam had disappeared, he had
already changed his mind. Without feeling the need to lower
his voice or take his eyes off his grandfather* he answered in art
indifferent voice:‘No, mom, the weather is not cold. However*
grandpa does keep telling us creepy stories*

:\nn
'You seem to he in good spirits today. Professor,' Ece sitting at
the front row twittered in the most glib voice she could
manage. She was dressed in pitch black from top to toe, as
usual: black lipstick, black nail polish, black eyes made to stand
out with black eye pencil. I took out the copy of‘Sickness
Unto Death' from my briefcase and placed it on her desk.
1 have indeed come to class in good spirits, but whether I'll
still be in this state when we are done depends on you. Let’s see
if the articles have been read.1 f said, proceeding with a typical
introduction to a typical Thursday lecture.
‘We have read from/In Praise of FollyT, by Erasmus.The part
where he mentions Fortuna we compared to Machiavellis
Fortuna, Entirely read, analyzed and memorized/ Fee spoke up.
Fine, then can somebody please tell me what sort of a thing
this Fortuna is?” I asked, taking pains to address not Ece but the
whole class.
‘For sure, a female.’ Ece raised an answer, apparently pleased
with trampling whatever prudence I maintain, ‘In both
Maehiavelli and Erasmus, Fortuna is personified and feminized
and because she's a female, its no big surprise that tbev don’t
find her reliable The church fathers shared the same opinion -
and we Turks are no different. We say destiny is either blind or
a slut. If blind, she can't see w hat she distributes to whom, so
can't be expected to be fair If a slut, she’ll have nothing to do
with fairness anyhow. At tunes there’s a wheel in her hand At
other omes she herself forms a wrheei by swirling her skirts.

301
THE PLEA PALACE

Hence the expression ‘Wheel of Fortune’! There is no way of

knowing when or where she'll stop, bringing who-knows-
what to whom. According to Machiavelli, Fortune controls
halt tit our lives and there’s nothing we can do about that part.
However, it is possible, even if only partially, to make Fortuna
obey our demands. Since each and every one of the
fountainheads of political philosophy happen to be male, it
Looks like in the persona of Fortuna they are unanimously
searching for ways with which to bring women to their knees.’
'Huh? So this Fortuna you are calking about is our good old
KaderV Gem blurted out, apparently having not the slightest

problem m revealing his ignorance on the assigned articles.

In the ensuing fifteen minutes or so, constantly interrupting
each other's sentences, they talked about our good old Kader.
'I think it’s really cheap to criticize Machiavelli from the
standpoint ot contemporary feminist paradigms," said the
curly-haired girl with the glasses whose name always escaped
me, and who I knew did not like Ece one w ee bit but for some
reason always sat behind her/The issue is, do you think you’re
living a life that’s been drawn up for you ahead of time? Ha**
your life been determined a priori? That is the question we
need to ask. In struggling against Kader, the man's dearly
coming to terms with religion. Neither Enlightenment nor
progress would've been possible without breaking away from
Fortuna, or bringing her to her knees, if you will.'
Ece stretched raudy as she crossed her legs. She does this
repeatedly, knowing too well the beauty of her k gs. So far, I
have not seen any colleague suffer serious academic damage
lor getting mixed up in some sort of a love affair with a
student. If someone is hunted down for this reason, it is
because he would have been hunted down in any case. At any
race, I do not reciprocate Fee s interest in me. Not because I
am worried it would reach my colleagues' ears. What really
matters is not what the academies pretend not to know, but
what the students pretend to know; for female students always
talk.They can never hold their tongues. Each one lias i dose

iu2
 J L AT NUMBER SEVEN

friend to confide in, each confident another one of her own,

and so it goes, C omplete disenchantment! All of a sudden you
are not the "esteemed, unknown' professor you once were,
always watched by prying eyes from a distance, but an ordinary
mortal whose weaknesses, lunacies, baloneys and fixations are
paraded m front of all. To be with a young girl could indeed
provide a pleasant boost to self-esteem for middle-aged men,
but that comes at a cost: it is a shaky status bound to shatter
any time It might easily capsize at the verv first flick. 1 hen, ill
the letters you have written, the confessions you have made
and the secrets von let slip will altogether vex you.Your sexual
performance will be the talk of town and before you it, know
youdl have become the butt of all jokes. It is not worth u I
never considered any female student of mine to be worth II
this. Not even f ee.
"Why don't we just simply confess that we can't control our
lives? I may be held responsible for what I do but I can’t be
blamed for what I spark off,’ Ece said, watching my every move
all the while. Tin. from birth the daughter of this or that
person. I can choose neither my father nor my nation and
certainly not my religion or language, If they’d asked my
opinion, I’d have preferred to have been born in another
environment; if refused the alternative, Td rather not have been
born at all It s that simple. If you had been born somewhere
else, rather than a scarf on your head you would have had a
cross on your neck/ she poured out. Though she luid turned
back, it was not clear as to which one of the three headscarfed
girls she had addressed her words
*1 too believe m destiny", answered Seda, always sitting in the
middle of the always together headscarfed threesome.
But thats not at all what I’m talking about,'grumbled Ece
the blabbermouth. * You believe in a divine justice. Things are
what they are at the moment but you dunk some day everyone
will be held accountable for what they did in life. The
*

debauched v\ ill be punished m hell, the gullible rewarded m

heaven and so oil. You reiam a notion of justice in your mind.

303
THE R EA PALACE

Otherwise your faith will smash to smithereens, Fortuna is

exactly the opposite. She has nothing to do with the other
world, so solidly mundane!'
Frankly guys, J have a hard time understanding why you
got so hooked up on this Fomina, interjected Cem, bringing
his chair closer to the wall as if getting ready to flee through
the window. 'The real question is not Fortum or anything
similar but concerns the very difference between a line and a
circle. If you believe this life you are living is a line, you might
just as well presume you'll triumph over the past, reach the
future. However* if tt is a circle w hich your life resembles* rest
assured that there is no such thing as 'progress’. Are you at
peace w ith recurrence or not? That's the fundamental issue. A
man like Maehiavelli can't be at peace with recurrence because
that requires acceptance of the sullen fact that the life you live
now, you'll live again and again, that tomorrow won t be any
different than today - exactly the same question as Nietzsche
asked of Rousseau. When you're alone, at the loneliest hour of
your life, say, if all of a sudden a teensy weensy devil descends
all the way from hell and exclaims. Have no fear, 1 guarantee
you, there is no such thing as death, it anything, there is only
recurrence. Every single thing you’ve lived until this very
moment, you'll live all over again. Then again and again.
Forever.,/ how would you feel then? How many of us can
tolerate living our lives over and over again? Those who can
put up with Fortuna's whims will never go mad. Its that
simple* To endure life, a man like Maehiavelli has to cut the
circle somewhere and transform it into a line. Only then can
the idea of progress surface, and along with it, the notion of
individualism/
I looked at my watch; five minutes left to the end of the
second hour. ‘Once again you manage to surprise me with
vour ability to deviate from the subject matter/ I muttered as I
took out my pack of cigarettes, indicating a break/Next week
you’ll have completed ail the reading! and we ll only talk about
what you've read. No one will blabber without proof/

3iu
 FLAT NUMBER SEVEN

During the third hour, I lectured and they listened without

a comment. While everyone else took notes, Cem looked out
the window and Ece munched half a pack of bitter chocolate.
A speck of chocolate, almost black, stuck there on the side of
her lip like a naughty mole.
 Flat Number 5:The Daughter-in-Lair
and Her Children

Mom, why are you taking us with you?’ whined the five and
a Sialf year old*
‘Come on, isn't this great? Don't you want to see where
your mother works?" the Daughter-in-Law said, as she held
more tightly onto the hands of the two children forcing them
to adjust to the speed ol her footsteps. How on earth she was
going to restrain the kids at the box office all day long she
hadn’t quite yet worked out, besides which she was afraid of
angering her boss, but she was too high-strung to think
rationally after the fight with her father-in-law. As they neared
the end of Cabal Street, she slowed down and looked back
over her shoulderThe seven and a half year old was two metres
behind them. Despite the inquisitive looks of some passers-by,
he seemed remarkably happy now' that he had stepped outside
Bonbon Palace after two years*
Soon the lump of anguish the Da ugh ter-in-Law was used to
savouring whenever she watched her older son chased away
the wisps of worries pullulating from her mind. Though she
knewT too well that her oldest child would be the shortest to
live with her, among all her children it was he that she was
most deeply attached to. Children born with a lethal illness,
unlike their peers and siblings, belong only to their mothers
and always stay as such.
At the corner of the Cabal Street, just when she motioned
her older son to hurry up, a swarthy, skinny hand slowly tapped
the Daughter-in-Law's shoulder.
 FI A I NUMBER FIVE

‘My child, how can 1 get to this address?* It was an old

hunchbacked woman* bent double inside a beige-coloured
raincoat worn to shreds. In her call used hands she held out a
wrinkled piece of paper. She looked lost.
Taking no notice of the horror on the faces of her two
children, the Daughter-in-Law let go of their hands and
concentrated on the address on the paper. Unable to decipher
the scrawl*die returned it to the old woman, shaking her head.
'Mom. you couldn't answer the question' the five and a half
year old squeaked. Teardrops pitter-pattered down her cheeks.
1 he mx and a half year old was no better. Simultaneously
sucking the thumbs of both hands* he persistently repeated the
same words:"How can sou not know; how can you not know?'
‘She could not,' roared the seven and a half year old as he
approached from behind, quick to grasp the situation. The
instant he reached the end of his words, the other two
started wailing.
'What on earth are you talking about? What is it that 1
didn't know?1 the Daughter-in -Law stuttered bambocvled*
staring first at her children, then at rhe old woman walking
off. But instead of a response what she got from her ch ildren
was some more sobs and the sqiushy sounds of a frantically
sucked thumb.

*17
 FLAT NUMLJER SEVEN

skV’Scraping levels if Ayshin had enjoyed soccer rhe least hit or

supported a team just for the sake of it,
‘I've come up with the ultimate solution to the garbage
problem of Bonbon Palace/1 muttered as l tilted her glass. 1 hen,
slowly and assuredly, I told her about the writing 1 had written
on the garden wall. She can t have been expecting to hear such
nonsense from me. for at tirst she looked dumbfounded, if only
fur a few seconds, and then she made me tell the whole storv all
over again, as she tossed out hearty laughs, The more I narrated,
the more hilarious I too found the story, Goading me to
describe mvself as 1 stood there at the crack of dawm in front of
the garden wall with paint and brush in hand, she hurst into
laughter She had either got drunk quicker than usual tonight or
had come to the appointment already high We left toward one
o’clock, Ethel shook hands with all the waiters one by one and
said her farewells. Nor did she neglect, in accordance with the
information she had acquired from them, to send her regards to
their families, concluding with comforting speeches about their
respective worries. When we had finally reached the street and
somewhat sobered up with the night breeze, she insisted that 1
show1 her the writing on the wall*
We jumped into a cab, Ethel's convulsive laughter, which
had rolled out back in the restaurant and shot up a notch while
we were walking on the sidewalk, turned utterly hysterical m
the cab. Giggling non-stop, she launched attack upon attack, all
the while attempting to undo the buttons ot my trousers while
my hands struggled in vain to shove hers away. I soon stopped
resisting. As her fingers wiggled to fondle me, I kept under
surveillance the driver who looked barely of driving age T he
mans beardless face being devoid of any expression
w hatsoever, there was no way of telling whether he could see
what was going on m the back or not. In the meantime, Ethel
had reached her target, having enough of an opening to insert
one hand once the third button was undone. 1 was just about
to cover with my jacket what her hand was up to when a
hoarse yelp escaped my mouth. How 1 hats* those razor-sharp

309
 FI M NUMBER SEVEN.

fingernails of hers. At the same instant,a crooked smile dawned

on the driver's face* levelling his awareness of what was going
on. Brusquely grabbing Ethel's hand, 1 treed myself from the
l unts claws. She flinched, grumbling and grimacing, and
instantly lit a cigarette. The driven who now seemed to be a
close observer of .ill the attraction and repulsion going on at
the back, intervened with perfect timing and asked us where
on earth we were heading. Blowing a circle of smoke from her
jasmine ihihouk, Ethel cheerily exclaimed:
We are going to pay a visit to Bonbon Dedc* The holy saint
of the broken-hearted* of all those separated from their beloved
and notorious for screwing everything up!'
The driver, w hose youthful appearance l realized stemmed
more from .1 I ick of facial hair than age, shot both Ethel and
me a nervy glance as if weighing-up how1 grave things could
get However, Ethel would not leave the man alone. Offering
him a cigarette, she catapulted questions at him, asking where
he came from, if he believed in saints or not, if he was married
or not. if at some time m the future he had a daughter whether
he would educate her, whether he would renounce Ins son if
the latter ever turned out to be homosexual, and finally, .isking
which soccer team he supported As luck would have it, they
supported the same team.
‘Once 1 picked up a couple, no less nuts than s ou two,’ the
driver said the moment he found a lull amidst the deluge of
questions. Ethel released another chain of guffaws,
accompanied by wheezing coughs as if she had a fish bone
stuck somewhere in her throat,
‘Back then 1 was new to mghtshifts and wasn't vet famthar
w ith rhe mght-time customers. So these two get in, quarrelling
non-stop. The woman keeps yelling and hurling insults The
nun doesn't do zilch to appease her. Instead he too slurs back,
and they utter such slanders. I'd better not repeat those now !
Sail, it is obvious the\ are in love. It turns out the man is going
abroad to work,The woman doesn't believe hell ever come
back/If you go you won't ever return!’ she sac’s, weeping hard.

310
 FI AT NUMBER SFVFN

Then, before S know what's happening* she starts punching

him. Dead drunk no doubt. Anvvvav. we bead to the address
they gave.The plan is to first drop the woman off and then the
man. So we go to her house but she doesn't budge, she doesn't
want to get out of the car. “Come on," she shrieks all of a
sudden, “Lets go visit TcHi Baba!" Glued onto the seat, 1 am
not going anywhere before I seeTelli Baba!" she insists. In the
end the man gives in, as for me I am already convinced. Tclli
Baba is a long way out tram there, but does she care? Back in
those days I used to say,‘‘No way, I’ll never work at night/' So
you see how one changes his mind in the fullness of rime
Anyhow, they' didn't want to take another cab. instead they
offered me twice as much as the normal fare So we sped off'
in the middle of the night. Once there we pulled over, the
woman got out, opened her purse, groped for something and
then got lost in the dark. The man and L we're waiting in the
cab. Alter ten minutes or so, the woman comes back crying,
says to the guy,'Bend your head!“The guy obeys and she pulls
out a handful of hair. The guy hollers, in pain, they then have
another fight. Thank goodness the woman leaves again, finds a
piece of doth from godknow sw here, ties the man s hair to the
tree, prays, sits down, prays, gets up. So we let her do whatever
she wants. In the end she calms down a tad. “Next time 1 11
come to lelli Baba with niy wedding veil/' she murmurs. The
man softens,They embrace. They' ask for my name and phone
number to invite me to their wedding/
i am sure they girt married and then strangled each other
m next to no tune/ Ethel bellowed, jerking her head toward
the driver while launching another attack on the buttons of
my pants
'No sister, it's even worse/ the driver grimaced, shaking his
head wisely. *Twfo yean later, winter time, during such a
bhzzard, you couldn't see a damn thing. Doesn't this nun get
into my cab again? Only this time with a different woman! Was
she his wife or lover? There was no way to tell. I insundy
recognized the guy. He recognized me too. We both fell awful.
THE ML E A PALACE

r le looked away, 1 looked away. The woman next to him lud

no idea what was going on. She was blubbering and
blubbering to deal ears. Before we could move even ten
metres, the man stopped the cab and jumped out. The woman
dashed straight after him flabbergasted'
Joining her hands on her lap, Ethel heaved a doleful sigh. If
1 could only have a wee bit of an understanding of when and
why the Cunt is moved. An unwieldy silence engulfed us. No
one uttered a single word until we turned the corner of Cabal
Street, but as soon as we came to a stop in front of Bonbon
Palace, embracing her stunted joy Ethel bolted from the car.
Unable to resist her pushiness, the driver too got off. At
1:30am. there we stood, the three of us lined-up reverentially,
and gaped at the writing on the garden wall,

‘UNDER THIS WALL

LIES A HOLY SAINT
DO NOT DUMP YOUR GARBAGE HERE!'

'How does it look?' I asked the driver,

"It’s OK. I guess, but off centre, brother,1 he said with an
expression so subtle it was hard to tell whether he was joking
or not. ‘I don’t like the colour either?
Ethel doubled up as i] about to throw up. in a flash, she let gp
of herself, bursting into laughter until she was in tears. She caused
such a ruckus that the lights of a few flats in the apartment block
went on. The driver on one side and I on the other, we pushed
the Cunt back into the cab. On the way, her steadily decreasing
chortles were replaced by steadily escalating sobs. It had been a
long time since I had last seen her go to pieces like this. When
we reached her house, 1 did nor fed like staying with her. She
passed out the moment her head touched the pillow anyhow.
The cab waited downstairs. On the way back I sat in the front.
The cab fare had shot up Ever since my divorce, hall my salary
goes on rent and the other hall on such mghts of carousing. 1
offered the driver a cigarette. He first Hi mine, then his. Now that
 FLAT NUMBER SEVEN

the garrulous, raucous female had got out of the car, a brotherly
silence echoed around us in her absence.
'Sorry about the fuss,' I muttered.
'No problem, brother,’ he shrugged, *1 wish things like this
were our onlv troubles *
jr

While waiting at a red light* right out of the blue, anguish

began to surge within me. A police car sped by Ahead of us ran
a garbage truck with two lanky garbage men holding with one
hand onto the back of the truck, their other hand swinging
free. As they passed under a streetlight, their pale face s emerged
from the dark, if only tor a less- seconds,The two garbage men
were quizzically smiling at each other, or so it seemed to me.
There were no other vehicles around. The moment the light
turned green, my anguish really took off 1 asked the driver to
steer in the opposite direction. Ten minutes later we were in
front ofAyshink house. I did not get out. The curtains were
drawn, the lights off. As I stood there staring at my old house,
the smooth-faced driver waited patiently, without a word.
On the way back, we turned on the radio. Oddly enough I
enjoyed every single song that was played, Finally, as the cab-
tare gained another zero, vse reached Bonbon Palace, Under
the headlights, we jerked our heads out the windows on each
side, feeling the need, for some reason unknown to us, to look
at the writing on the wall once again,
‘Hey brother, now that you've written this thing, have s ou
ever wondered whal'd happen if someone believes it?' the
driver asked as he gave me the change.
'Oh, come on. who w ould believe in that?’ 1 chuckJed.'Even
if they do, so much the better. Hopefully they’ll stop dumping
their smelly garbage here.’
‘Yeah, okay,’ he slurred, his fingers tautly rubbing his upper
lip as if pulling on an invisible moustache. Its just that this
city's folks are a bit bizarre. Especially the women, they are
truly wacko brother, you've seen it yourself. Basically what Vm
asking is this: what if someone earnestly believes in this writing
of yours?'
Faith, like a train schedule, is essentially a matter of timing. The
grand, rounded, ivory clock at the train station chimes at
various specific hours of human life. The train leaves at specific
hours. There is only one run before noon: those who have
internalized a belief system while they are still children get on
this one. There is another train that leaves in the afternoon,
carrying along the troubled passengers of teenage years. After
that there is no other direct run until night. Only then, when
the first pressing regrets crop up in one’s life and the
unfeasibility of redeeming past wrongs is acknowledged; when
even the most strongly built nests begin to topple and the first
serious health complications occur; the train leaves tor the
third tune For some unknown reason, the passengers of this
tram get on it at the last minute. Then as midnight draws
closer, after critical surgeries and on the verge of near-death
experiences, there are two more runs, one right after another.
These happen to be the most cross'ded runs. Without stopping
at any station, they go directly to God on the intercession
express. Unlike the daytime passengers, the nocturnal ones, so
as not to miss this last chance, appear at the station way too
early. Then, after a long wait when the clock finally strikes
midnight and the circle is complete, from that swarming crowd
only a handful of non-believers are left behind.
Being a passenger of the earliest train, Meryems faith was
not only far less calculated than that of others but also less 'bv
■i ■/

the book". Its hard to teU, it she would have done the same
 FIAT NUMBER ONE

thing had she not been pregnant at the time when the writing
appeared on the wall. Since pregnancy rendered her a bit
bizarre, early that morning she went out into the garden with
an empty jar in hand to collect from the soil of the nameless
saint Not that she really believed there was a genuine saint
buried in the garden, but as that university professor had stated,
given the fact that under all these Istanbul sidewalks rested
ancient graves* one could not predict what would emerge from
where. If the writing turned out to be bogus, she would be left
with just a jarful of soil, that was all However, if there really
was a saint under the rose acacia in the garden of Bonbon
Palace, then there was only one request she would like to make
to him: to infuse Mu hammer with courage, even it it were only
a morsel.

MS
When the doorbell rang, Nidar scurried to answer it, hoping
that Muhammet had once again brought them something to
eat. However, when he opened the door, there in front of him
stood not the little emissary of Madam Auntie but the nutty
girl with the coppery hair, Either the girl had drastically
changed since they had last seen one another or Sidars
memory of her bad gone awry but her eyes were just like he
remembered, so beautifully solemn. She barged in with a
bewildering smile and without waiting to be invited. As it tired
she tottered unsteadily towards the cnuch and asked her host,
still standing fixed on the spot, lor something to drink Sidar
shuffled to the kitchen scratching his head. He opened up the
only bag of coffee in the cupboard and poured the water
heated up with the only pot in the house into the only mug
on the shelf
Aren't you going to have one too?1
‘Later,’ Sidar shrugged There is only one mug in the house
anyhow,'
Three hazelnut wafers emerged from the girlV backpack,
immediately arousing Cabas interest. Still, however, he refused
to move an inch,
‘What was the dogs name?1
‘Gaba,’Sidar grumbled, suspicious of having alreads told her
this in their previous meeting,
‘What does it mean?'
'Gaba is the abbreviation for gamma-amino-butiric add —

Oh
 FLAT NUMBER TWO

which is an inhibitor nerve transmitter, something to do with

the anxiety centre of the brain. Anri-convulsants, ami-anxiety
ptUs and of course alcohol slows die Gaba receptor down.
Consequently, you feel less anxious.
‘Cool! So you can speak German like your mother tongue,
right? How long did you stay abroad?' the girl enthused before
lying back on the couch. Upon seeing the ceiling, she fluttered
her eyelashes in astonishment; then not knowing what to sav,
she fluttered her eyelashes some more.
’French,' Sidar corrected her tensely. Apparently the girl did
not remember a word he had told her before. It she didn't care
for the answers why on earth did she ask these questions?
Besides she looked too sleeps' to grasp a word. Her eyes were
on the verge of closing while listening to the second, at most
the third response. For what reason did she pose one question
after another when it was all too obvious that die answers
would remain incomplete, and that even if she learned the
most that she could in the least time possible, she would have
only attained straggly parts and snioggy pieces, not even the
dimmest silhouette of the entirety of his life. The simple desire
to get to know a person is a hollow pledge and a life-size
burden! It requires that a person listen and observe, poke and
sense, unwrap and amass for nights, weeks, years; to be able to
peel otT scabs and endure seeing the blood ooze from
underneath. If a person is unable to put up with all this, it is
much better, and certainly more honest, to throw in the towel
straight off.
Not that I am a hitherto unappreciated treasure, locked in a
chest awaiting exposure to sunlight. The answers to all the
questions you ask about me are more or less already hidden
inside vou. I do not want you to desire to discover me or to
m ■*»

even think you can do so. We do not have to know one

another when we know so little ot ourselves. Collecting
information about others is like gathering food from garbage.
What's the use of rotting the supplies in our brains if we are
not to savour them in time?

*17
THE FLEA I* A L AC. E

A dipped snore interrupted the course of Sidafs thoughts.

The girl hid tallen asleep with her mouth agape. Taking a last
puff from the cigarette he had rolled up at noon, Sidar curved
up next to his guest. Watching them fretfully from where he
had crouched down Gaba must have been finally convinced
chat nobody was out to get him lor he hobbled closer. In a
single breath, he wolfed down the hazelnut wafers, then, soil
licking away, he too came and curved up on the couch. As the
headlights of the cars outside penetrated the petite w indow's
spurrmg shadows on the wall, all three of them drifted off into
three separate dreams*

318
Tired of criss-crossing a path between the kitchen and the
living room, the Blue Mistress threw a last look at the table.
Everything seemed ready. She lit the lily-shaped candle
floating in the water-filled glass bowl and placed blue napkins
next to the blue plates.They had agreed to meet at seven.The
doorbell rang at ten to seven.
Welcome,* she chirped. Though she was already wearing
high heek she instinctively left the need to rise up on her toes.
‘Do you always arrive early like this?’
I tried hard not to, but it turns out that it takes three and a
half steps to get from my fiat to yours,’ ] said smiling,
‘Of course, yntir tegs are so long,' she cackled, blushing at the
end of her sentence* as if she had made an erotic remark.
We stood up by the entrance in a daze germane to people
who* after long desiring each other, come to a sudden halt die
moment they notice how close they actually are to obtaining
what they have so badly craved. Though the intensity and
frequency of our acquaintance had been limited to running
into each other now and then, and chatting about this and that,
I had long been aware oi how deeply attracted she was to me.
Hers is a face that cannot mask secrets. Still however, S hadn’t
been expecting this thing between us to run its course so
speedily, so effortlessly...
Taking her face between my palms, I caressed that tiny, azure
Tve made chicken with ground walnuts,' she breathed
when she drew back, trying to urge me to continue not from
THE FLEA PALAC E

where We left off kissing, but where we had been reservedly

conversing/1 hope you II like it
Oblivious to her forged reticence, oblivious to the dinner
table, I steered her inside into the bedroom.To nay surprise, she
was at ease. So was I. Couples wise enough not to harbour
future expectations from one another keep little back when
nuking love Nevertheless, lace at night when we sat down at
the table, it tell as it, though devoid ot a common future, we
might have shared a common past, as if we had been living
together for a long time, sharing the same house., and it
seemed to me we both enjoyed this illusion deep down... For
regardless of where you stand on the matter, a man abandoned
by his wife and a mistress unhappy with the husband of
another have a communal need m the worst wav; to be assured
that their constant disappointment with the marital institution
does not stem from their failures, and that they could make it
work with another person.
There were seventeen seeps on the stairs at the entrance gate of
the school. Upon reaching the sixteenth, counting out loud*
Muhammet turned back with a wee bit ot hope , bur once
again the miracle he ached tor tailed to happen His mother did
not disappear Instead there she was waning tenaciously at the
same spot, leaning against the bolted garden gate with her
swollen belly and all her weight, looking after him with the
touching melancholy of someone at the dock saying farewell to
her beloved on the parting boat. The moment she saw’
Muhammet looking at her, Meryem s face lit up with a smile
compounded from a third each ot compassion, pride and
tenderness. She flapped both arms simultaneously; gesticulating
with some sort of a peculiar athletic motion. Seeing that much
of an effort there one would think she were trying to grab her
son's attention from amidst an immense crowd. Yet* since the
last weeks of the second semester, she was the only mother
among all mothers of the eight hundred and forty-eight kids in
the elementary school who insisted on bringing her child to
school in the morn mgs and waiting at the gate until the bell
rang — a policy' she had been pursuing since receiving the news
that Muhammet played truant.This, m turn, meant there would
from now on be a twenty-five minute delay in the distribution
ot newspaper and bread to Bonbon Palace. So tar nobody had
complained. Madam Auntie did not buy bread anyhow; she
seemed to nibble like a bird. As for Hygiene Tijen, every
morning tfoni her window she lowered a basket into w hich the

m
THt HE A PALACE

grocers apprentice left one of those breads that came wrapped-

up. touched by no one,The Blue Mistress did not eat bread, so
as not to gam weight, and the bachelor professor at Number 7
did not seem to be expecting consistent service since even he
himself did not seem to know when he would come in or go
out- Sidar, because he had no money, and the hairdressers,
because they bad set up their own system, would not mind this
delay That left only two fiats and Meryem was definitely not
going to risk her sons education for the sake of those two.
Shrivelling more and more w ith every wave of his mother,
as if he was being hammered on the head. Mu hammer finally
reached the seventeenth step and billowed through the pitch
black door of the primary school. The lunch bag m his hand
got heavy, his backpack even more so. He looked around in
vain for something to kick. As the ring echoed in the hall for
the last time, he entered into his classroom to take his place
among the thirty-two students.
Contrary to his fears, the first class passed without a single
incident The bully of a bench-mate in front had turned his
back at him, fully concentrating on the writing on the
blackboard, looking utterly unruffled; as if it wasn't him who
had made a habit of slapping Muhammct at least twice a day.
Muhanimet eyed gratefully this back that was twice the size of
his. He just w ished it could always stay like this. If only he
could be bench-mates not with this overgrown child but with
his back instead. Dropping his shoulders, he crouched behind
the sturdy back and, with the comfort of knowing he would
not be spotted from this angle, surveyed bis surroundings The
windows of the classroom were painted grey halfway up to
prevent the students front looking outside but from the fissures
and flakes on the painting one could still spot the blue sky.
Then he turned his gaze to the pufty ribbons of the girl at the
board and the sharp, pinkish fingernails of the teacher whose
veins would swell up whenever she yelled. He thought that the
girl at the board and the teacher matched well. After all, if the
girl faded to give the right answer and the teacher yet again

322
 FLAT NUMBER ONE

stuck one of those long fingernails of hers into the

unsuccessful student's earlobe, there would be no big
difference: the girl's ears were pierced anyhow. In spite of this,
the ones whose ears were pulled the most happened to be
boys* Until itdw, Muhammecs ears were pulled a-plenty, and
each time he eared less about the pain than ending up with his
ears pierced against his will. Having lived the first six years of
his life on earth long-haired like a girl. he did not want to
spend the rest of his life with his ears pierced like a girl.
Hoisting his tears up the flagpole, he inadvertently flinched
and it was precisely then that whatever happened happened.
The back next to him abruptly turned around, now
transforming into a chubby, beet-red, sulky face* Grinning
insolently, his bench mate bulldozed Muhimmet.
Since the very beginning of school, every day without
exception, Muhamniet had dreamed about running away. Yet
as he gritted his teeth in pain now it was not fleeing the place
that he pined tor but to perish altogether. If only a disaster
would happen right at that moment, a real bad earthquake for
instance, so that the earth would split open, leaving not a
single stone upon stone or a head on a body, smashing to
smithereens the grades in the teachers notebook, the gold
stars of the girl at the board and the limbs of his bench mate,
along with his elbows, slaps, insults*..if only they would
scatter on all sides never to unite again...
While Muhammet had dosed Ins eyes and was dreaming
about the worst possible disaster imaginable, a siren ripped the
air apart. There was some scurrying and dash outside in the
hallway, doors were banged 1 hey all stood sail as the teacher
stared at the students and the students stared back. In next to
no time the door was harshly' shoved and in walked a dainty
woman with piercing glances behind her pince-nez. She
smiled first at the teacher, then at the students and. with a
courtesy filtered through a fine sieve, ‘Dear teacher, beloved
students.*/ she bayed as if delivering joyful tidings. Tins is an
earthquake drill.'

323
THE FLEA PALACE

As soon as the dainty woman finished her sentence, three

men looking startlingly alike, all stout and with droopy
moustaches, dished into the room. They had chick-yellow
helmets and T-shirts with “Negligence kills, not earthquakes*
written on them, Remarkably agile, they took out one by one
the various tools they had brought in their bags and hung
posters of all sizes on the hoard hooks, Curtains were drawn
shut and a slide machine started to light up the wall,
Muhammet caught his breath as he followed with excitement
the slides brought to life one by one with the dusty' beam of
light slashing through the darkness.
After the last slide was shown and the curtains pulled open*
the dainty woman clapped her hands to announce how the
drill was to take place, There would be two phases. I )unng die
first phase* the students were required to cower under the
benches and, pretending everything around them was shaking
violently, wait there calmlyr and courageously with their heads
in between their arms. As for the second phase* that was meant
to teach them how to evacuate a building m the shortest
possible time. So the siren pealed* and all thirty-two of the
thirty-two students went under the wooden benches giggling
non-stop.
Muhammet rolled up into a ball to squeeze inside the
morsel of space left from his bench-mate, Minutes later, he too
got out from under the bench with the others to line up in
pairs to evacuate the classroom Yet since his bench-mate did
not care to hold his hand as bench mates were supposed to.
Muhammet could not gun the chain of children .The two kids
standing up at the corner away from the others must have
draw n the attention of the dainty woman for she suddenly
blundered out in a voice bubbling with delight,“Will you two
please come this way? We were looking for two brave boys.
While all the other kids flowed out into the hallway
streaming in perfect order, Muhammet looked longingly after
than, his eyes brimming with anxiety. When the classroom
totally emptied out* he realized the dainty woman and the

.124
 Ft AT NUMBER ONE

teacher had departed too. Before he could find something to

kick at, to diffuse the resentment of being left out of the game,
and alone with the bully of a bench mate to boot, the three
moustached men snapped into action. One picked up a
stretcher, the other took out a longish rope and the third
unfolded a blanket. They then laid the children down on the
stretcher side by side, enveloped them in the blanket and tied
them up tightly. Of the four separate ropes, two were fastened
onto hooks and dangled down from the window, while the
other two were oed to the doorknob of the classroom.
‘Don't be afraid,' rasped one of the men and then let his
voice dwindle as if letting slip a secret:'We are going to lower
you down from the window/
Five minutes later, when Muhammet had finally mustered-
up enough courage to open his eyes, he found himself sixteen
metres above ground on top of a stretcher with his arms and
legs nghtly tied up inside a smelly blanket side by side with the
boy he liked the very least in this world. AH the children had
gathered in the garden, watching them from below; cheering
in umson.The sky was £i clear blue; a lumpy cloud swaved lazily
above. As the ropes were loosened from above, the stretcher
came down in jolts, but no matter bow much it w as lowered,
it never seemed to get closer to the ground,
I bet you must be shitting in your pants/ his bench-mate
croaked. So close was the hovs beet-red face that Muhammet
inhaled the smell of his breath. He opened his mouth to
declare that he wras not afraid at all, but before finding a chance
to say anything, spit rolled into his mouth.The other bos burst
out laughing. Wriggling to get rid of the spit m his mouth
Muhammet managed to spew out; only not to his right into
the open space, but to the left onto the face of his foe.
This was not something the other boy had expected at all.
Once he had got over the mm.il confusion, he counterattacked
by replacing the spit gun with a spit machine gun Though
they had meanwhile dropped closer to the ground, none ot
those clustered below seemed to be aware of what was going

325
!H b HfcA PALACE

on up here, three and a half metres above ground/Now watch

what*s corning*1 the beet-face snarled. *Youll descend in the
middle of everyone with green sputum on your face!'
Muhammet hurried to avert his head but was too late, l le felt
.1 globule stick onto the middle of his forehead* stay still for a
second or two* slowly ooze down, and then start sliding tow ard
his nose. He almost threw up. The stretcher went down
another half a metre. Now one could dearly see the faces of
those down below. The children were gleefully cheering-on
their heroes sent from the sky. Struggling in vain to free himself
from the straps, Muhammet felt like crying. Though he tried
hard to convince himself that the liquid on his nose could not
be sputum and that the beet-face had bluffed, little did he
succeed. The stretcher slid dow n another half a metre, the
cloud wafted and Muhammet made a wish: that if the earth
ever had a post, it had better collapse now and brmg on the
end of the world... Before he could complete his wish,
however, both children were brusquely hurled, as if to fling
them out of their places, first to the front, then back and then
again to the front. Screams rose from below, Mi]hammer closed
his eyes, the rope on the left side broke off and the stretcher
turned upside down, nose-diving to the ground from a height
of two and a half metres. The beet-face let out a wail.
‘Are they dead? Are they dead?' shrieked the classroom
teacher with the pinkish fingernails, the veins swelling up on
her neck.
As the earthquake officials tried to rein in the children who
flocked around the victims like chicken running to feed, one
of those with the droopy moustaches turned the stretcher over
carefully only to meet two pairs of eyes opened wide as
saucers, one with pain, the other with fear.
Lls there sputum on my face?' asked Muhammet when he
succeeded in breathing out a sound.
The official, ashen with worry; gazed at the childs face
distractedly* almost dreamily* and shook his head. It w as then
that Muhammet felt a surge of vigour inside. It had been a
 fLAT NUMBER ONE

bluff after all! Once the ropes were untied and rhe smelly
blanket lifted, he sat up on the stretcher with pride. While the
beet-face whose leg had been broken was carried off to the
hospital with the same stretcher, Muhammet was enjoying the
sweet syrupy taste of bravery for the first tune in his life.

117
‘Oh, Fra dying to learn about the imn who put up the saint
writing on the wall Is he pulling one over us, or has he lost his
mind, if only l could tell! 1 swear to God, l can't wait to see
what's going to happen next. Last night, my good old bulgur
didn't appear. I have been waiting for her. I guess I've gotten
so used to her dumping garbage into our mouths, I'll miss the
woman if she doesn 't show up anymore. Could it be, I wonder,
that she has taken that writing on the wail seriously. Not that
its impossible. This place is Turkey! The West long finished
exploring the moon; they are now busily dividing Mars up
into parcels and will soon clone humans. What about us. what
have we been doing in the meantime? Finding holy saints m
our backyards! Bless him, but is he a saint or some sort of a
flower that sprouted from the soil? After that we ask in vain
why on earth the European Union does not take us in? What
would they want us for? Only when they are running short of
saints will the Europeans ask us to join.’
A few flimsy giggles followed but Cental did not seem to be
offended at all with such limited backing from his audience.
‘I swear to God, it wouldn't come as a surprise if one of
these days we had a red alarm meeting at Bonbon Palace: an
emergency meeting with a special ‘holy saint agenda’, in the
house of our building manager Mr Hadji Hadji! Sonny why
don't you spray a little!'
The pungent smell of the bug spra\ they had amply used last
night all over the place had still not dispersed. In the morning.

328
 FLAT NUMBER THREE

they hid encountered dozens of dead hugs on the floor All

were swept away and dumped into the garbage can, before the
fine customers showed up.
lSo here we are in the flat ot Mr. Hadji Hadji, sitting around
the table side by side,’ Cental voiced his vision as he emptied
the wicker basket for rollers and turned it upside down/We are
all there, nice and neat, in full gear. I tell you, even Hygiene
Tijen has managed to make it out of her haven, perched at the
corner of a chair, ready to explode at any moment. Canal cook
a hairsptay with gilded mm and placed it on one end of the
basket. And here is that penniless student in the basement, next
to him that overgrown dog of his. Not that thev care about the
saint, these two are there to till up their stomachs {mjm.
He stuck a fine-toothed comb through a hole in the basket
and right next to that to represent Gaba he placed a chunky,
carton, notched hair-roller.
‘Oh, what is being served? marvelled the blonde with a cast
eye who came to have her hair dyed once a week, never
convinced that she need not have it done so often. She was
now inspecting the w icker basket curiously, as it waiting tor a
thumb-sized child to spring out of it to entertain her
‘You seem to have confused this meeting with a tea-party,
honey,* snapped Cemal. ‘We are talking about a serious
apartment meeting here.'
'But if you re making up a story; we would like to hear the
details too,’ protested the Blue Mistress from the corner where
she sat.
'All right, all right/ Cemal thundered, feeling no need to
hide his pleasure in managing to attract the Blue Mistress s
attention. ‘So be it, Mr. Hadji Hadji’s daughter-in-law has
baked us a spinach horek and they serve a samovar of tea with
it. Are you satisfied now?"
‘Yes, yes,' nodded the women, chuckling, but no sooner
had they given their consent that an objection was voiced;
‘No, it's not okay!’ It was the clerk of the Criminal Court,
whom everyone deemed the most informed woman of the
* i

32V
THE FLEA PALACE

neighbourhood* making money out of putting down on paper

the most criminal features of people's most private lives. Once
a month she dropped by to have her hair coloured dark
chestnut When certain of being the centre of attention, she
leaned back and superciliously recited the data in hand: 'For
one thing, the daughter-in-law works at the box office of a
movie theatre from early morning nil late evening five days a
week. She has no time to toll the dough into pastry. Even if she
did have the time, though, let me assure you she still wouldn't
do so, That woman must have more affection for her sins than
for her father-in-law* She wouldn't even lift a finger for him.'
Cental frowned at this over-informed customer of his/If that
is the case, there is no pastry at the table Just pure, plain hot tea.
Okay? Can I now please continue onto the main subject?'
But it doesn't make sense.’ said the Blue Mistress with her
sauciest smile* determined to foax the limits of Centals
fondness for her. ‘Then there would be a logical flaw in the
storv You had claimed that the student in the basement and the
huge doggie were there to gorge themselves. Now you'll have
to oust them.'
Cental stared crossly at the chunky, carrots, notched hair-
roller and the thin, long fine-toothed comb as if deciding upon
their fate. ‘OK* l surrender,' he humbled, giving a wink at the
Blue Mistress. Running to the kitchen he returned with half
ot the simit he had bought in the morning and pi iced it on top
of the roller basket. Tor this special meeting, our respected
manager Mr. Hadji Hadji has picked up a box each ol sweet
and salty canapes from the patisserie. He has also hned up
sesame sticks into oval places. Is this pleasing enough? Now are
you all satisfied?'
‘Yes, yes,’ chortled the women* looking at each other and
then at the Criminal Court clerk tor a final approval,
Tnnklv 1 would never believe, not in this life, that that
stingy man would go to this much expense but let's assume he
did* tor the sake of the story; decreed the woman* hiring up an
eyebrow plucked dreadfully thin.

330
 FLAT NUMBER THREE

Nmv that he had full permission. Omal excitedly plunged

into the game* lining up all the remaining neighbours.The no-
alcohol, extra-volume hair foam with nourishing vitamin B
was the university professor at Flat Number 7; the hair dryer
was Madam Auntie at Flat Number 10: the electrical hair-
curler vs a* the Russian housewife in Flat Number 6: the
colouring brush and the pair of scissors were the husband and
wife heading-up the Firenaturedsons family across from them
and the manicure tile was their young, despondent daughter*
After a brief pause* (’ema! found the brush with the bone
handle to be suitable for the manager. Lastly, he fetched the
transparent* glittery container with bright blue gel inside:‘And
this one here is the graceful young lady in Flat Number H' he
cooed. Ah the Blue Mistress responded to the compliment with
a composed smile, all the other women stirred nervously in
their chairs.
‘Ob, 1 shouldn't forget to place Celal and me. We of course
have to be the same '
From the haircare set on the shelf, (>mal picked two multi-
vitamin sachets of hair repair with keratin, locating them
side by side.‘Yes, this is exactly how we've lined up. Mr. Hadji
Hadji explains why we’re having this special meeting.1 he
grabbed the brush with the bone handle and coughed
pretentiously to silence his audience/In case some of you have
not seen it yet let me inform you alt a saints tomb has been
found in our garden. Given this situation, we urgently have to
make new arrangements,'
’Hnim.. .but sir, can a holy saint sprout from earth like a
dower?’ spoke up one of the multi-vitamin hair repairers with
keratin. Turning to his customers over his shoulder. Cemal
footnoted with a whisper:'ThatV me!’
‘Yeah, we guessed so*' chorused the women.
'You. as individuals, are free to believe or disbelieve. We are
not obliged to convince you of the saints existence either*
However, if you want democrats to flourish in this country;
you are bound to show some respect to other people s beliefs.*

331
THE FLEA PALACE

decreed the brush with the bone handle, if we are all of the
same opinion on this matter, there are specific agenda items we
have to settle without further ado. The very first item on our
agenda is the following question: whose holy saint is the one
lying in our garden?You can't just call it such and be done with
it. Every saint helps a certain segment of the populace in our
cou ntry. Some are the saints of the sailors at sea; others care for
the soldiers on land. Several saints heal women who cannot
become pregnant, several others help the lepers. One should
always go to a saint relevant to his particular problem, if the old
maid mistakenly pays a visit to the Saint of the Bedridden, the
most she can obtain will he an extra hop and a jump.*
‘Someone should record all this in the minutes,’ piped-up
the clerk ol the Criminal Court, lifting up her other eyebrow.
'All right,’ said Cental, and after brief consideration,
appointed the manicure file for the job, ’ Write this down
missie, the first item on the agenda is to find out whose father
this honourable saint is.'
'How do we know that? Maybe the saint is a woman,'
objected the Blue Mistress.
Nonsense,* roared the brush with the bone handle.
‘Why? Couldn't a woman be a saint?' the Blue Mistress
asked obstinately, without taking her eyes off the gel container
that represented her. And since she had the floor to herself, she
delivered a speech there and then;‘Plenty of pious people have
emerged from among women. Let’s first count the exalted Ayse
and Fatma. Then there is Rabia, tor instance. Of course.
Mother Kadincik is also notable, as is Karyagdi Hatun.There is
Huma Hatun, the mother of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror.
Mevlana s mother, MLimine Hatun, is another example...not to
mention the ‘Seven hides'
The women lined up in front of the mirror turned to the
Blue Mistress in bewilderment, She had too much knowledge
on religious matters, way too much for a mistress. Cental
seemed to be the one who was most impressed He gaped at
her with adoration, as if the matchless concubine Canayakm

332
 FLAT NUMBER THREE

who had. stunned every one in the audience of Caliph Harun

a)-Rashid with not only her beauty but also her wisdom, had
been reborn in - of all the places in Istanbul in the year 2iK)2
- Bonbon Palace-
Then jot down this, missie/ proclaimed the brush with the
bone handle to the manicure file/Our first agenda item is to
find out whose father or mother this holy saint is. In order to
carry out the necessary research, we hope our honoured
university professor will not w ithhold his valuable help from
us.’ The extra-volume, no-alcohol hair toam with nourishing
vitamin B, kind of stirred. He seemed pleased with the esteem
bestowed upon him,
‘Now lets proceed onto the second agenda item. Ladies and
gentlemen* now rbat there Ls a saint in our garden, we have to
confer extra care on our everyday manners. With this purpose in
mind, I myself have prepared a list, a list of things we must strictly
refrain from doing. With your permission, I’m reading aloud:

“Article t: At night-time, residents should not extend

their feet in the direction of the holy saint. Those beds
with the foot side facing the garden have to be turned
around immediately
Article 2: Residents should nor go around naked in
their flats.
Article 3: From now on, rugs and carpets needing to be
whacked should not be hung outside the windows facing
the garden and nothing should be flung down from these
windows either/”

‘But how could that be? squawked the gilt-trimmed

hairspray
‘Please do not interrupt!" scolded the brush with the
bone handle,

uAftkU 4: From this time forth, no clothes shall be hung

out to dry from the windows facing the garden.

353
r H f FLEA FA LAC E

Article 5: From this day forward no hair shall be cut

within she boundaries of this apartment building/’

Hut sir, please take some pity on us, if we don't cut hair,
we'll go hungry. This is our livelihood, spoke up one of
the two multi -vitamin hair repairers with keratin. Ccmal
whispered another footnote winking at his customers: That
was Celalr
*We guessed so,' trolled the women in unison.
It absolutely can't be done. Don’t forget that of all the flats
in this building it is yours that happens to be the closest to the
grave of the honourable saint As such, the deepest reverence is
incumbent upon you.You can no longer open the windows to
sing popular songs, shake out hair or clip nails, just like you
cannot cut hair or pluck eyebrows whilst looking at the tomb
of the saint. If you cannot abide by the rules* go open your
beauts- parlour somewhere else,

*k Article 6 From now on. the flesh, hair, feather and the like
of animals such as hones, donkeys shall not enter into this
apartment building.,.and this includes dogs as well,./1

The fine toothed corub blurted out from the top of the
roller basket: "And why is that so, may I ask?"
Tor the very reason that according to our religion dogs are
reprehensible," snapped the brush with the bone handle.
However, realizing at this point he had barely any knowledge
to support his claim, c/emal stared at the Blue Mistress for help
She spoke up as if waiting for an opportunity:‘See the Araf sura
in the Qur'an: if you go at it. it breathes dangling its tongue, if
wu let it lo<im-, ir bie.itIdangling its tongue In addition, let’s
not forget that Mevlana too calls human greed canine.'
None of these apply to my dog* Gaba isn't Turkish. He's
Swiss!' shouted the fine toothed comb,
The women lined up m front of the mirror looked at the
chunky, carroty, notched hair roller m sympathy
 FLAT NUMBER THRfcf

'Bui Mr, Hadji Hadji, as you already know the “Seven

Sleepers" in heaven had dap as well,’ said the Blue Mistress,
taking pity.
"Okay, okay,' the brush with the bone handle surrendered.
"But from now on. that dog will take a bath every7 day.There
wont be even a single ilea on it. No fleas in the apartment!
Needless to sayr, no lice either. We've got to get rid of these
bugs as well. All the flats will be fumigated from top to bottom,

“Artide 7; From now on beggars, vendors, garment

peddlers, pastry sellers and such shall not be let into
the building."

“ Very appropriate, sir,' chorused the husband and wife of the

colouring brush and pair of scissors.
'And last but not least...

*'Article H: From now on, the garbage of Bonbon Palace

shall be collected regularly. A circle with a thirty metre
diametrc shall be drawn around the holy same and not a
bit of garbage will be dumped within. Maximum
attention will be paid to keeping the apartment building
sparkling clean. It shall be spick and span all around.
Whatever needs to be done to get rid of this disgusting
smell engulfing Bonbon Palace shall be done at once. All
this time we’ve been suffocated by the putrid smell, Let's
at least make sure the praiseworthy saint doesn’t suffer the
way wTe did."

Cental suddenly realized he had forgotten to include

Menem. He quickly placed an eyelash curler onto the basket.
However, just as he was getting it ready to speak up, an ear-
splitting noise broke out in the back. Celal, whose face
revealed how7 little he had relished the ongoing game, had
dropped a hairdryer. When all the eyes turned on him. he
flashed crimson with embarrassment Without picking up the

m
THE FLEA PALACE

dryer, he hurried to the door stammering: Tm gomg out, I

need to get some air.*
‘With all due respect. Genial,' said the blonde with one eye
cast, once the door closed behind Old, 'There have probably
never been twins with as different dispositions as you two. It
you had at least one single thing in common, lor God’s sake.'
As a bristly discomfort fell like drizzle on the parlour, each
and every one of the performers around the basket turned mto
the inert items they once had been.

m
I sure hadn't been expecting the Blue Mistress. It turned out
she had applied bug spray all over her house, so she asked if she
could stay at my place until the smell faded away 1 told her 1
was etem; lly grateful to the bugs. She laughed. Her grin curled
into a quizzical smile, when she caught sight at the mammoth
plate oi cheese and smoked salmon on the table inside.
Tin coining into money’ l said. Meryeni stopped by this
morning. The woman at Number 9 had sent her as an
emissary. She wants me to give English lessons to her daughter.
1 w asn't interested at first.The last time I had given such lessons
I was a studenr myself, but then, tor some reason unknown, the
woman ottered a hefty fee per hour.'
its probably because she hates the idea of her daughter
going out of the apartment building/
‘Whatever! Weil have the lessons at their house/
"Perhaps she preferred to have the teacher from within the
building/ she beamed before gulping down a large piece of
cheese., ‘Or perhaps, she too has fallen for you, |ust like ine!'
When she smiles the scar on her left cheek becomes more
visible. I like caressing that scar Slowly, I pulled her hand and
dragged her inside, 1 like the taste her tongue leaves on mine,
"Do you know 1 was raised by my grandfather/she mumbled
as she grabbed my fingers stroking her cheek and lifted them to
her lips. I lit a cigarette and leaned back. I’ve always enjoyed
pillow calk. Thanks to the Blue Mistress, 1 had started after all
that time to sl^ep again in the bed chat was Too big’ for me.

337
THE FLEA PALACE

'He was such a witty, well-bred person. My father and

mother never got along, there were always rows at the house.
They got divorced when 1 was four years old* Both got
remarried within a year.Then my grandfather said to ma/Lct
me look after this poor child. You set up your house, come and
see your daughter whenever you want; Ma accepted. I'm so
glad she did. I loved grandpa immensely. If he had not passed
on at such an early age, I would’ve been at an utterly different
place now. Anyway, after grandpa died* 1 was left alone with
grandma* I liked her too* hut not the way I liked grandpa. I
returned to my mother's house. Everyone makes ftin of Mrs.
Tijen for not being able to leave her house, yet I* at such a
young age, almost never left the house, not for two long years,
would you believe it? Not because of a cleaning sickness or
anything like that. Frankly 1 don e know why I couldn't leave.
I wouldn't even step onto the street, let alone go to school- Not
that l wasn’t curious about the world outside, but l guess 1
pined for a different sort of place. Both my mother and
stepfather tried hard to encourage me to go out. Odd isn't it?
Normally youngsters feel restricted by their parents It was just
the opposite at our house.
Anyway, one morning around the breakfast table, my
mother and stepfather were talking about how to pay the
phone bill, I heard myself say: *Give it to me, I'll pay it .Their
eyes were wide with astonishment, l took the bill and threw
myself outside. It had been so long since l had last left the
house. I swear I wobbled like a drunk at first. I entered the post
office.There was a line. I kept waiting and waiting, finally only
a few people remained in front of me. That's when I first saw
him. He was the ofticer taking the bills, behind the glass. He
wasn't handsome like you, but his eyes w^ere one of a kind.
Could one's pupils be tinged mauve? His were. When at last it
was my turn, he asked for the hill, 1 held it out. He gave me
back my change, stamped the bill, and then looked at me
carefully as if he wanted to see through me. I tell a chill run
down my spine/Have a nice day’, he said* I couldn't breathe a

338
 FLAT NUMBER SEVEN

word. In that state I found myself back home. Next morning,

I rushed outside early, straight to the post office. There was a
line even at that hour. When it was my turn, with mv heart in
my mouth, I held out the already paid bill. He looked at me
perplexed, and I too looked at him to see if his pupils were
really mauve. Thev indeed were. The people waiting behind
me started to grumble. He had a hard nine hiding his
amusement'
I couldn't help thinking ot Ayshin. In her entire life, she will
never fall tor a man just because his pupils are tinged mauve
Ayshin s love is like the helm of bureaucracy She files her
correspondence, makes calculations, keeps records, deducts the
expenses from the income and thus maintains a colossal
archive. She never forgets a quarrel; not only does she not
forget, she makes sure it is not forgotten as well. If we were
married, 1 wondered for a moment, would the Blue Mistress
be like her? Not likely, There is a stupendously rowdy, almost
ammal-hke aspect to the way she relates to life She is only
twenty-two years old, though, conceivably shell change
Maybe as soon as she gets married, she too w ill rapidly turn
into some replica of Ayshin.
*What happened after that?" I asked.
'The rest is rotten, We went around together. My mother
wus mad but wrho listened to her? I couldn't really tell if I was
in love or not bur I must have fallen badlv for him. He wanted
to get married right away and though I didn't, I guess I lacked
the courage to say no. It was a capsule of a neighbourhood,
wallow-mg in gossip, how can you not marry the man vou
date5 Anyway w^e got engaged and that's when be started to
change, becoming a different person almost. He was such
an unhappyr soul. 1 w^as unhappy' too. possibly, hut my
despondency wras targeted at myself alone whereas his was
targeted at everyone but himself...not that he was malicious...
That was the problem at any rate. He wasn't a sly man. but the
man he was died to become one. He would not utter a single
pleasant word to me, not any longer. He was constantly
ini ft ea i*At ac:e;

complaining about the post office, its managers and, of course,

hills. Still that was not the reason why we separated ’ Her lips
curved into an edg\ smile. 'You know, it was actually a horse
that caused ns to separate?'Watching the confusion on my face
she gave another laugh, this time even edgier.
One day, while strolling together, l saw a horse and
carnage, You may find tins silly hut I'm gonna tell it all the
same. You sec, grandpa was a remarkable man, so out of the
ordinary,‘If you can't manage to die before death, the life you
live and the death you die wilt be nothing but an obligation,'
lie used to say. He cared for neither the iwum of heaven nor
the flames of hell. He had this habit of saluting every single
animal he saw on the street. “Perhaps that's an old friend nl
yours there, it would be awfully impolite not to pay your
respects,' he would cLum,**Whcn one departs from this life, he
doesn't actually leave, but conics back to earth, at times as a
hum.nu at other times as an animal. Every time we take on a
different form, whether it's a donkey, swan, butterfly or frog, its
all up to chance. No need to become embittered lb
prevent an It rescnmicni, our iiieirmnrs instead of our souls
will die upon death. So that we won't be able to keep track of
all the creatures we had previously been.You know the moit
vivid incidents from my childhood were when grandpa and [
used to wander the streets greeting every animal we met. We
would yell greetings at cats, dogs, sparrows, donkeys and
crickets. “How do you do my dear friend?" shouted grandpa
and I imitated "1 low do you do my dear friend?" How fun it
all was!'
I gingerly caressed the roundness of her belly, now hidden
under the sheet tightly wound around her.
Anyway, as soon as 1 saw this horse on the street, I
uncon Scion sly greeted it. When he saw me i i,Iking to the
horse, the Mauve Prince started to make fun of me...mocked
in such awful ways, hurt me so bad.*, lie kept going on and
nn In the following days, whenever he saw a donkey on the
road, he would sneer "There, run, kiss the hand of your

Hi i
 FLAT NUMBER SEVEN

grandfather!” !t was then that truth struck me: I didn't love the
Mauve Prince! The things that l cherished were of little value
to him/'How am I gonna spend the rest of my life with him
then?” 1 asked myself Upon hearing of my decision to break
up with him, he refused to take it seriously. “Oh. you are so
touchy/he smirked, thinking my mood would change in a feu
days and when he saw that it did not, bullying was his next
move. Such threats! One night, we were having dinner at
home; he came to the door, stinking drunk, He hurled insults
at my stepfather Then he grabbed me by the arm and pulled
me outside. He smelt so strongly of liquor, it was as if he'd
fallen right into the bottle/'Hey. look here, if you leave me, 111
cut up your face!”That’s exactly what he said/‘Don’t bother.
Ill do it myself I replied. I know you won't believe me. I can't
believe myself either, I don't know why l spoke like that or
why I did what I did I was seventeen years old then, but it still
happens to me from time to time. Whenever in pain, I do such
things without thinking... harming myself.. Not intentionally;
afterwards I'm amazed, 1 say, “Goodness how did I do this?"
But my mind is blank while doing such things. You know what
I mean? It I gave a thought to it before doing it, I probably
couldn't do it, right?
I smiled. One end of naivety leads to negligence, the other
to innocence. The negligence part can be flawed but there is
probably not much in this world as alluring as innocence.
'My mother and stepfather were listening from behind the
door, ready to intervene if something happened, fearing harm
tram the Mauve Prince.They had no clue what 1 was about to
do. i >f course. I didn't have a knife or anything.There w as only
this steel pm in my hair bun - sharp enough - back then my
[lair was so riiick, no other hairpin would do. Anyway, that's
what I used to slash my left cheek. Though l couldn't see m\
face at the moment I could see the Mauve Prince's: ashen with
honor, almost lemon yellow. He started yelling and shrieking
to stop me. My mother ran to the noise, she too let out a
scream. Only then did I understand I must be in pretty bad

34
THE FLEA PALACE

shape, cut up bad. My stepfather started hitting the Mauve

Prince, thinking he was the one responsible, and the other
didn't even defend himself, as he was still in shock' While mv Jr

stepfather was giving him a thrashing, my mother and I

jumped m a cab. straight to the emergency7 room. 1 was amazed
that it didn’t hurt at all Apparently pain only comes later*
There was a fatherly physician at the emergency room, almost
a soulmate of grandpa. He talked sw eetly, amiably, trying to get
information out to learn who had done this to me. When he
sensed the truth, he was livid with rage, bur even his rebukes
were sweet, l tell vou. They gave me narcotics, sewed up the
wound. Just as 1 w as leaving the hospital, he held my hand. "My
crazy little girl, now that you bas e transcended the threshold
of sanity and sliced up this beautiful face of yours, do nor ever
go back to the meadow of reason and common sense What is
even worse than slicing up your own face w ithout remorse is
the remorse that follows. In that case vou'U really suffer and
suffer for nothing. So be true to yourself, remain as crazy as
you have been once the sutures are removed, promise?” I
promised. W'e shook hands. It was lucky tor me that he did
such a neat job. Any other doctor, 1 tell you, would have sewn
my face up like a sack. Still a scar remains, that doesn't go away
I didn’t know w bar to say. Her story was not quite what 1
expected to hear.To fall in love with a person is tantamount to
retrieving repressed stones from their house of sorrow - stones
that have never seen davlight. As for staving in love, it ls to
nose-dive, once having heard those stones, into the bouse of
dreams of your beloved only to stay put even upon
encountering other stones that are far worse. I had acted
impetuously concerning the Blue Mistress She was not blue.
At least, her blueness was not as lucent as it seemed at fini
glance. I pulled her toward me. She snuck closer, fidgeted until
she had made her head comfortable on mv chest. Then she
silently, softly let herself go.
‘I loved the Mauve Prince because of who he was but then
he pretended to be someone else. Never lie to nie, please?

342
 FLAT NUMB E k S L V t N

Everything should be what it is!'

I just nodded. A person who claims to abhor lies, if not
telling one herself will inexorably bring bad luck to those
around her,just like a smashed mirror. One who asks never to
be told a he actually yearns tor it. It’s similar to showing a gun
in a film - sooner or later it has to be put into use. Still. J did
not want to demur. Before long, she fell asleep under the light
seeping through the window. She was not that beautiful but
her face had a sort of magic. Watching her always gave me
great pleasure.
1 got up. Groping around for something to wear tn the
dark, I turned on the lamp. The sheet covering the Blue
Mistress had slid across, exposing her right leg. Only then did
it occur to me for the very first time that we had always made
love either in the dark or half-dressed; her naked body still
remained a mystery.
The upper part of her leg was covered with scarlet stripes of
scars, l ined up vertically next to one another like those five
line clusters of lines we imagine are used in prisons to count
the passing, not-pissing days. 1 took a closer look The majority
did not seem to be very deep, as if slashed open in a hurry.
However, one among them was quite deep and seemed to have
been opened more recently, having had no time yet to heal.

★**

02:22 a.m.: She turned onto her lace with a clipped moan. I
covered her body and turned off’the light. Rakt would have
gone down well at that moment. As soon as [ turned on the
kitchen light, several cockroaches vanished like greased
lightning. Sooner or later 1 too would have to have the house
fumigated. I sliced plenty of white cheese and melon. On the
cheese, I poured the olive oil the Blue Mistress had brought
and thyme, a great deal of thyme.The olive oil merchant w ould
probably not want to know that the bottles he carried to his
little mistress were consumed bv another man.
jf

U3
THE ELEA PALACE

1 stepped out to the balcony. Careful riot to squash the

duster of ints busily shouldering home the bulky corpse of a
black beetle, I pulled my chair closer to the railing and lit a
cigarette. How many more cuts were there on her body? 1 did
not know what had opened up those wounds... Was it a razor
or a knife; Or a hair pm? I glanced at the garbage bags piled
up by the garden wall down below. Nothing had changed. I he
sour smell ot garbage was still with us.

M4
Madam Aunde had been watting tor hours bv the seaside
together with collectors like her. With each gust of lodos, that
enraged southwest Wind, the waves brought bits and pieces, torn
sails, broken oars, compasses with shattered pointers, rudders that
had lost their course, the letters spilled from the names of the
boats left behind from those voyages that were never to reach a
port of tranquility and those travellers long disembarked.
The sea, once satisfied with pUsing with those plastic balls
or in datable beds the waves had long ago snatched away whilst
you were on vac anon and the straw macs or hats the wind had
carried far away from their rightful places, brings and delivers
them all to different shores.
Next to collectors like her. Madam Auntie was waiting to
collect what the sea would ferry to the shore.

345
As soon as Ola] left the beauty parlour, he blasted through the
back streets right out to the avenue. After walking for about
fifteen minute?; in the crowd without a destination in mind, he
entered a street lined up with live bars looking exactly alike,
[ hough n was not at all his habit, he tell like having a beer.
From among them, he chose one randomly and dashed in.
Inside it was crammed full He headed directly to the table
closest to the doort as it was his habit to be as close to the exit
as possible, asked for a beer, and also tries from the gaum, runty
waiter with gestures that displayed not only his distaste tor his
job but also the fact that his mind was occupied elsewhere.
As Celal waited to give his order, he spotted at the table
across a swarthy man with three rings in three different shades
of purple under his eyes, who either could not stand still or was
simply on the verge of collapsing onto the cable. The man $
eyes were fixed on the raki in front of him. Though not taking
a single sip from his glass at present, it was only too evident that
he had already had more than his share. He had not touched
the fried anchovies either
‘ W hy-1 h e-hetl-a re-you-star-in g-a t- n i e- mate ? c roa ke d the
man all of a sudden, slurring the words hoarsely, Celal shrunk
in his seat not knowing what to say but thankfully the waiter
sprung up by his side at precisely chat moment. "Take it easy on
him, brother,’ the waiter advised, his attention fixed on the
passers-by scurrying on the other side ol the windows, as if he
would like to be there among them rather than here in the bar.
 FLAT NUMBER THREE

A harmless fellow. |ust feeling down today."

The beer was decent enough, the fries nut at all,There w ere
lengthy strings of mayonnaise and ketchup spurted all over
them. Mayonnaise was fine but Celal couldn’t stand ketchup.
He got angry at himself tor not having warned the waiter.
Fidgeting edgily he turned aside so as not to have to face the
table across.
One of the four strapping men at the next table had liked
his thumb up, as if trying to hitchhike from where he sat. He
was a scars, brawny man with a hooked nose and a bottomless
craving to have his opinions confirmed by others, given the
frequency with which he asked Isni that so?' Guzzling a swig
of beer, he wiped his moustache with the back of his hand and
blitzed his friends:‘What** up? Why are you all silent? We aren't
the type to chicken out and run away! Isn't that so?' He
brought down the blunt knife smeared with hotdog dressing
he was holding, right in the middle ot the table with a bang.
You want a bet? Be my guest. This is how 1 make a bet, my
man. We are no kids who'll bet on two marbles, three bottle
caps, isn't that so? If I lose. I II chop of] this thumb and leave it
at the table, but if you lose, the same rule goes for vou, isn’t
that so?"
To this end, the knife on the table must not have been
impressive enough, tor he snapped the blade of a pocket-knife
out in a flash, placing it next to the other one.Then he once
again lifted his thumb tip in the air, frozen like a statue. As the
others gawked at the squat and chunky thumb aimed right at
them, a chill swept over the table.
If it were any other time, afraid of a row Celal w ould have
left the place, but today he felt tike drinking, So he stayed and
continued to drink m spite of the provocations of the drunk at
the table across from him, the ketchup on the fries and the
thumb terrorizing the next table.
Unused to alcohol, his eyes turned bloodshot before lie was
halfway through the second beer. Fixating his glance on the
stains and cigarette burns of the tablecloth, he heaved a deep

347
THE FLEA PALACE

sigh. Why was his twin so different from him? They did not
have one single thing in common. Why were they not alike in
any way? And if they were so very dissimilar, why did they still
work together? By the time the third beer had vanished, he
had reached the decision to part ways with CemaL

34K
Su was going to haw her first English lesson tonight 7:<X» p.m.
was the time agreed upon She looked at the glow-in-thc-dark
svatch her father had given her as a binhd.n girt: 4:35 p.m. I here
sull was a lot of time. Bored stiff, she w andered around the house
wherein everything had turned white. Her mother was sleeping,
having once again spent the night awake and cleaning.
Opening the windows she peeped at the children playing
dow n on the street. Though she watched them with interest, it
did not even cross her mind to join them She wouldn't want
to be among them even if given the chance Like all lonely
children who had not a friend outside of school or buddy at
home, who had mastered the an of being is w ell-behaved as
expected and as docile as was not expected and who were now
searching for ways to subvert the an, she too looked down on
the street games with a hidden fury Ex c ceding) \ careful not to
nuke a sound, she sneaked outside. The intimacy that had
blossomed with the old woman that day at the hairdresser was
still fresh in her memory Not that she had forgotten the ban
on leaving Bonbon Palace, w'lth the exception of attending
school., .but on second thoughts, the flat right across could not
be considered "outside', could it?
Thus, she did what she had never done before, daring to
visit the neighbour next door. Not a sound was heard from the
flat after she rang the beQ. She pressed it again, this time a bit
more tenaciously and w as just about to give up when the door
of Flat Number 10 opened.
Offended that his twin brother had not come back* Cental saw
oft the last customer and turning over the beauty parlour to
the apprentices, went out into the street feeling depressed.The
night breeze felt good. He blasted through die back streets
with speedy steps, as if sliding, and went right out onto the
main street. After walking for about fifteen minutes in the
crowd without even knowing where he was headed, he
entered a street lined up with five bars, all looking exactly
alike, Though not at all his habit, he felt like having a beer.
Among all the bars on his way, he randomly chose one and
dashed in. Inside it was crammed full. He headed directly to
the table closest to the door as it was his habit to be as near to
the exit as possible. He then asked for a beer and also fries from
the gaunt, runty waiter with gestures that displayed not only
his distaste for his job but also that his mind was hooked-up
somewhere else.
As he waited to give his order. Cental spotted at the table
opposite a swarthy man with three rings in three different shades
of purple under his eyes, who either could not stand still or was
simply on the verge of collapsing onto the table. StiU without
shifting his gaze from the mkt in front of him, the man beckoned
the waiter and whispered, his breath smelling profusely of liquor,
to the latter! e,^r:'Ask~hilTl~why-he-is-back4ef~us-knQw., Upon
seeing the confusion on the waiters face, he impatiently
dar ified:4 Ask - h m 1-why-did - he -leave-if-h e-was-to- c omc-back -
if- h e- was - to -come - back- why - he-did-he-leave -1 f?*
 FLAT NUMBER THRFE

Hv now Cemal had realized the man across was talking

about him but he just could not gauge what on earth he was
saying- He shrunk on his chair not knowing what to say, but
thankfully the waiter sprung up by his side at precisely that
moment;'Take it easy on him, brother,' murmured the waiter
in an exasperated voice/He's a rcguLr customer. Just feeling
down today, provokes whoever he sees, but he'll never
behave shamefully."
The beer was decent enough, the fries not at all.There were
lengthy strings of mayonnaise and ketchup spurted on them.
Ketchup was fine but Cental would have none of that
mayonnaise. He got angry at himself for not having warned
the waiter. Fidgeting edgily he turned aside so as not to have
to face the table opposite.
At the table to his right were four strapping men, one of
whom had lifted up the thumb of his right hand which was
bandaged m gauze with a lump of dried blood around the nail,
and kept sitting like a statue. One of the others quietly
murmured: ‘Why don't you go home man, why are you still
sitting around with a bandage and stitches?' The one next to
him piped up in support: Anyhow. 1 do not have the foggiest
idea why we came back here,Were probably the only ones on
earth to return to the bar after a visit to the emergency room '
*No!* thundered the big and burly man with the hooked
nose, shaking his head vehemently/We made a bet, didn't we?
Since I lost the bet. I'll face my punishment like a man. If I
were scared of three stitches and one injection. I'd have to wear
a ^kirt. isn't that so? Since we are here to drink, drink we shall!
We will drink to my thumb. For if 1 weren't an honest man, if
1 hadn't kept mv word, this thumb of mine would still be in
one piece, isn't that so? But what did 1 do, I kept my word So
this knife wound is proof of my honesty, isn't it? Therefore i!
we drink to my thumb, well be drinking to honesty, isn't that
so?* As the others reluctantly raised their glasses, a chill swept
over the table.
If it were any other time, atraid of a now, Cemal would have

351
I H t EL E A PA L At E

left the place, but today he felt like drinking. So he stayed and
continued to drink in spite of the provocations of the drunk at
the table across from him, the mayonnaise on the tries and the
thumb terrorizing the next table.
Unused to alcohol, his eyes turned bloodshot before he was
halfway through the second been Fixating his glance on the
stains and cigarette burns of the tablecloth, he heaved a deep
sigh. Why was his twin so different from him? They did not
have one single thing in common.Why were they not alike in
any way? And if they were so very dissimilar, why did they still
work together? By the time the third beer had vanished, he
had reached the decision to part ways with Celal,

352
When the doorbell rang. Madam A untie was busy emptying
out the bags she had brought in from the street. She stood still,
completely startled. No one rang her door except Meryem
who distributed bread every morning and collected the
apartment maintenance fees once a month. At first she thought
the bell might have been accidentally pushed downstairs, but
when it rang again, this time even more tenaciously, a gnawing
worry grabbed hold of her. She thrust into the bags everything
she had taken out and then carried them all to the small room.
Panting hard she closed shut the white door with the frosted
glass separating the living room from the rest ot the house and
double locked it just in case. As for the key hanging on a
purplish velvet ribbon, knowing too well she would lose it
otherwise, she hung rt around her neck. Giving the living
room a last once over, she headed to the outside door feeling
hesitant and anxious,
lOh, was u you, Su?" she marvelled, relaxing visibly, as soon
as she had opened the door. ‘How are things my dear, are you
comfortable with your hair short?’
Su, three and a half centimetres taller than Madam Auntie
when in sneakers, nodded with a beaming smile. The old
woman once again felt ill at ease with the exuberant joy of the
child. Her discomfort gave way to considerable anxiety upon
realizing the other was there to be invited in. Warily she threw
a glance back at the living room. For years not a single visitor
had stepped into this house. Not even her brother whom she

>53
1 He H BA PA E AC £

loved so much. They would instead meet at a patisserie

adorned wuh stained glass and famous tor its age* where they
would, every time without fail, have a piece of apple pie and
drink two cappuccinos amidst the scent ot cinnamon and
whipped cream. 1 hough still thinking of excuses that would
send the child away without breaking her heart, she vvas drawn
into the depths of die latter s large, black eyes. In spite of the
cheeks smile stuck on her face, this child was extremely
unhappy- She did not find it in her heart to send her away.
Besides, she had taken all the necessary precautions, what harm
could it cause to invite her in?
‘ComeJets have coffee with milk, she said, moving aside to
let the child in.
‘I don't like milk*" Su exclaimed.
Tve never met a child who liked milk. Madam A unde
nodded. But since you're grown up enough to be a fifth
grader, I thought you might enjoy' drinking it/
Faced with a line of reasoning she could barely object to, Su
took her shoes off without a sound and unable to see a basket
with disposable sanitary slippers at the entrance, realized in
wonder that this was a house where one could walk in her
socks.
Jt smells worse here than at our house,1 Su exclaimed, as
soon as she entered the living room, and with an effervescent
smile as if proud of making this observation, she started to scan
her surroundings whilst whistling a song she heard on the
minibus on die way to school every morning.
As he watched the items the girl took out one by one from her
backpack Sidar felt <1 tension descend upon him: a turquoise
toothbrush (so now there were two toothbrushes in the
house), an unpalatable mug with popped-out eyeballs on it,
some open and others shut (so now there two mugs in the
house), one jojoba shampoo for frequently washed hair (so
now there were two shampoos in the house), one box of
tampons (there w as none of these in the house), one towel (so
now there were two towels 111 the house), a lot of books and
CDs (so now there were a lot of books and Cl >s 111 the house).
This was not what he had in mind when agreeing to the
girls wish to stay here. He had said she could stay once in a
while, not move in permanently. If this girl with beautifully
solemn eyes and coppery hair wanted to feed Gaba with
hazelnut wafers, he down 011 this couch to watch the ceiling,
make love to him, that was OK. He had no problem with her
presence as long as there was only one Sidar. one Gaba and one
girl. What disturbed him so much were these possessions of
hen.The instant people infiltrated others' lives they seemed to
feel obliged to bring their belongings along.
Yet, whenever Sidar rode the ochre can of hashish or the
chromatic horses of add galloping into the uncharted maze of
his brain, he would stumble at the threshold of the same old
question:*Which one? That was the quandary he most feared
when high. Failing to come up with an answer he would each
time he catapulted into a bottomless torpor. If, say, there were
THE b LEA PALACE

two mugs in Iront of him, lit* could never decide which one
to drink from; if there were two towels, lie wouldn't know
which one to wipe his face with; two books, two CDs..,any
option would be more than battling. As long as there was
more than one, the question of which fork or glass or plate or
coffee-pot turned into a daunting enigma worthy of the ones
asked in purgatory. Many a time he had been petrified with a
sesame cookie in one hand and a creamy cookie in the other,
only to realize he had been standing at the same spot without
budging for forty' minutes or so. Wrestling his way out of this
tight bind, he would sink in deeper; whenever he felt inclined
to choose one item, his thoughts would get stuck onto the
one left behind T he objects would then, just like rowdy baby
birds whose mother had still not returned, open their In tie
mouths wide and shout in unison;*Me! Me! Me Sidar! Please
choose me!T
However, he did not want to choose. Everyone thought he
had made a choice between Switzerland and Turkey m coining
to live m the latter. That was not true. He had not decided on
anything, be had merely arrived and maybe some day he
would merely leave. Likewise, the act oi suicide, which he had
lately started to think about more often than ever, did not
mean, as deemed by everyone, choosing death over life. Suicide
was like Gaba, the one and only. He would merely commit it.
Of course, that credo was subject to scrutiny when not the
why but the way of suicide was considered because in that case
he would once again be confronted with the question 'Which
one?1 There was such an assortment of choices presenting so
many different ways of committing suicide, and whenever
Sidar rode the ochre cart oi hashish or the chromatic horses ot
acid galloping into the uncharted maze of suicide, he got stuck
there on the verge of the same quandary. Then the gas oven in
the kitchen, the rope waiting to be hung down trum the gas
pipe crossing through the living room, the pills m the bottles,
the razor in the bathtub and the Bosphorus Bridge with its
Goliath feet would start to scream in unison: Me! Me! Me,
 H AT NUMBER T WO

Sitin'! Please choose me!"

‘You cannot stay here,' he mumbled, averting his eyes away
from hers.
‘But I asked before.You didn’t object then.
*1 know,' Sidar admitted fretfully as he spotted the spider
dangling from the ceiling."But I’ve changed my mmd’

357
Though Cental had intended to go home directly after the bar,
either because he found it hard to walk straight or came to
realize his decision to part ways with his nvm meant saying
farewell to their joint workplace as well* he soon found himself
in front of Bonbon Palace, Trying not to touch the reeking,
leaking garbage bags huddled on the sidewalk* he leaned over
the pistachio green writing on the garden wall and stared at
the beauty parlour with sorrowful eyes, hut what he spotted
there was quick to replace his sorrow with agitation. I here was
a candle flickering inside. He had no doubt that the
apprentices had locked up the door and left hours ,igo. With a
frown on his face he stood still* staring at the low set balcony
of their flat . That must be where the thief had gained entrance*
Though he was hardly experiencing a tidal wave of courage,
after guzzling three large beers* Cemal was more than ready
to give any thief a black eye. Grabbing a broken hanger
godknowswho had thrown in the garbage he rushed into the
garden, passed by the rose acacia and managed to land on the
balcony on his first try, As predicted* the door was slightly ajar. He
rushed inside toward the shadow of a man standing by the
candle*..and instantly dropped his weapon of a broken hanger...
Meanwhile* the other, faced with such an aggressive
silhouette plunging in from the balcony* had scampered to his
feet* taking cover behind a hair-removal machine, Celal was
hardlv experiencing a tidal wave of courage. Had it been am
other time, he would have been scared to death but he too had
 FLAT NUMBER THREE

left three large, emptied beer mugs behind. Nonetheless,

probably because compared to his twin* he was either less
impervious to alcohol or simply less agile, even though he had
indeed unravelled the identity of the encroaching silhouette at
the very last moment, he could not withhold his arm quickly
enough. By the time Celal’s right arm had processed the
1 Retreat!' command coming from the brain, it was already too
late. In a flash, the hair-removal machine smashed onto Cental's
shoulder* leaving its heat control button there.

The tw ins were ten years old when their father had returned
from Australia where he had emigrated many years previously*
In united awe they had listened to the stories the man they so
much admired told them. He had worked hard, made heaps of
money, and had now' returned to take his family back with him
to that land of prosperity. Awaiting them there was a house*
vivid yellow like boiled corn* with a tyre swing in the
backyard. While the twins had listened to their father with
bated breath, their mother had been busy packing* bidding
farewell to the neighbours and doling out all their belonging?,
since they weren't going to take any of these things w ith them
The day before their departure, while Celal and Cental
tossed and turned in their beds on the floor* their father had
sneaked into their room. Patting their heads, he had taken out
from his chest-pocket one photograph. There was a house in
the photograph which indeed looked huge and corn yellow;
and the backyard was just as he had described. There was a
swing there as well and on that swing sat a plump woman with
a smile blooming on her face. She had ginger hair with a strand
curled* thickly braided and loosely fastened into a bun at the
nape of the neck,‘What do you think of her? Beautiful* isn't
she?’ their father had asked, i’he twins had nodded shyly. She
did not at all look hke the women they had hitherto seen,
especially not like their mother. Putting the photograph back*

35*J
THE FLEA PALACE

their father had once again patted them on their heads.

Tomorrow, we three are gonna leave/ he had whispered. "Let
your mother stay here for the time being. Once we get to
Australia and settle down there, we can come pick her up/
Though their age was small and their admiration of their
father only too deep, both boys had instantly grasped dial this
was a lie. When left alone m the room they had shunned any
further word on this matter Both had feigned ignorance, as if
by doing so thev could manage to somehow unlearn wh r
they had learned When they had finally fallen asleep that
night, both had beckoned to the ginger-haired woman in their
dreams.The following morning, however, neither could tell for
sure if she had come or not.
‘I was so thrilled to hear the things daddy had told us
then.,/ Cemal murmured to his twin whilst still on his knees
and searching for the heat control button.
"That vast countre, that pretty woman/ Cental droned on
broodingly. 1 sold my mother in exchange for those. That's
what a despicable person I im. In return tor these, I peddled
the woman who had given birth to me, suckled and raised me.
God damn it, one can become a materialist in time, so you’d
think life made a person one, but how on earth could one be
a materialist when still a child> at that age?!’
The following day, once having sent their mother away on a
pretext, the three of them had loaded the suitcases into the car.
/But you? You did not peddle our mother for these things!’
Cental sighed, as he watched his brother crawl under a swivel
chair to dig out the heat control button. You didn't put your
soul up for sale or your very humanity! Fuck the money, fuck
the luxury, you decided, and jumped off the car. You chose to
stay with our mother and you tried to persuade me too. You
were running so hard behind the car as dad and 1 drove away
from the village.That poignant scene was seared forever m my
mind You were veiling so hard: Stop! Stop! You ran iftcr us all
the way to the end of the village/
As Genial folded a handkerchief into two, four, eight, sixteen
 FI \T NUMHF R TH IU F

folds, blowing his nose on die Use fold, the power came back
Cdal ran to the kitchen to fetch has twin a glass of water. Before
handing him the glass, he put in five drops of lemon cologne.
‘Thank you,’ Cental said,
i had lost my shoe.' Celal replied.
Staring with lustreless eyes at the candle flame, which
looked so rickety and flintsv now that the electricity had
come, CemaJ tried to make sense of what lie had just heard,
M had lost my shoe, Celal repeated. He would rather have
remained silent but has mouth talked w ithout consulting him.
How he wished he had not had that third beer, 'Just as I was
getting into the car, one of my shoes fell oil That's why I got
off the car, to put on my shoe. However, before 1 had the
chance, mother showed up. As soon as father spotted her
coming, he started the engine. I ran after you with one shoe
on but the car careered away. I kept veiling at the top of my
voice. 1 ran after you all the way to the end of the village.'
Celal, bruised all through his life from being the child his
father had abandoned and Cental* bruised all through his life
from being the child who had abandoned his mother, stood
staring at one another, half-dejected, half-confused, their
respective identities turned inside out in the mirror chat each
provided tor the other.,.and whatever it was that they saw
there led each to believe that his situation had been graver than
the others...
There's one more thing I need to tell you,' Celal bumbled.
"You kno\vr ma was an uneducated woman. After your
departure, she fell ill with sorrow. People urged her to seek
hdp from this famous spell-caster. She took me there with her.
A young man with eyes like glass, turns out he was blind. He
must have taken pity on my mother. “To this day I have never
prepared a bad spell," he said, “and 1 nev er will hereafter, but
this husband of yours deserves the worst so I*11 make an
exception and help you Let’s block their way. capsize then car,
sink their ship if need be, let's make sure they never make it to
Australia Do you want me to do that? Do tell, is this what you

361
HU FIFA PA I ACt

really want?" he asked. Poor tiu stood still, cried, moaned and
then unable to take it any longer she said: "Yes!1
As that mght it was taking Cental longer than usual to
comprehend his twin's words, he was lagging behind, lus mind
functioning no quicker than an icicle feigning ignorance of the
sun He would have liked to intervene and put in a few words
himself but not only did he not know what to say; at that
moment even the idea of moving his jaw tired him. How he
wished he had not finished off that third beer.,.
‘Poor nia. she was so exhausted she couldn't even follow
w hat was said. So it was me who had to get the instructions on
how to cast the spell,The sorcerer gave me a corn husk, filled
i bottle with blessed water md wrote who knows what on i
piece of paper, “Separate the corn husk into two pinches and
tie them tight. Put them in the paper and roll the paper up
lengthwise like a cigarette,Then bum jt all up" he instructed,
"Right then, you'll hear a voice. A sound will speak out of the
fire. When you hear that sound, rest assured you're doing the
right thing Do not ever touch the fire, Let it burn away its
course, When the flames are entirely out. sprinkle the ashes
over the blessed water and then pour the water at the bottom
of a red rose tree. The rest will, come by itself,’ he concluded "
The power went out once again. Fhe puny flame of the
candle visibly heartened, appreciating the sudden darkness.
"As soon as we reach home, get to it" said nu, "Do exactly
what the sorcerer told you!1’So 1 tied the corn husks, making two
hunches (one small* the other big)* put them in die paper,
w rapped it up nicely and then kindled it. You should have seen
ira, her eyes were wide as saucers! (iod, that hope in her stare, she
expected so much from me The paper really went up m flames. I
tried to convince myself, "Nothing will happen " but suddenly 1
heard, just like the sorcerer said 1 would, a scream.ls if someone
was crying...then another scream, 1 thought 1 heard your voice.
Shaken up ! took the blessed water and poured it right onto the
burning fire. It went out with a hiss. I felt so relieved. Of course,
1 didn't tell my mother what 1 had done. She thought I'd poured
 FLAT NUMBER THREE

it all out at the bottom of the red rose tree. Next we went to bed.
At dawn a noise woke me upt I get out of bed and what do I see?
Mj is out ui the garden weeping on her knees! “Celal, what have
I done? How could 1 have murdered my sweetheart son” she
moaned, "I wish to God not a single stroke of harm happens to
them on the way”,“You mean both?" I asked “Yes. 1 mean both?
she said, I noticed her hands were covered with scratches. She had
uprooted the rose ore to break the spell, "Nothing bad will
happen, right, Celal?" she begged, "Nothing? I consoled, “You
didn't do everything you were told, right" she asked. “Right," I
replied. She was so relieved. “Good for you. my smart boy," she
smiled. Then hugged me w ith such gratitude that I understood
right then. I understood she loved you more dian me. The son
who had left was the one she loved the most?
Cental shivered, He struggled to get up to dose the balcony
door but was so dizzy he had to squat right back down,
‘From that day on Cemal, whenever someone mentions saints,
sorcerers and the like, 1 get scared. Not that 1 believe it or
anything. If you ask my opinion, 1 believe none of it. If the truth
be told, after all these years, 1 even doubt those corn husks had
really made a sound. 1 was so frightened I must have imagined it.
However, the doubt is always w ith me. Were it not lor that doubt
my poor mother would spin in her grave. That s how 1 feel?
The silence that ensued lasted two minutes.The lights came
back right in the middle, leaving one minute m the darkness
and the other in the light.
'So that’s w hy you got so mad at my making fun of the saint
in the garden! But I promise you, I'll never ever open my
mouth again!"
Celal sighed. His twin set the gage of his temperament to
either excess or dearth,
'Let s close down tins parlour if you’d like. That is, il you’re
worried about this idea that cutting hair is against the hob
saints wishes We can get a parlour somewhere else?
'Oh, come on!' Celal said laughing, I think you are
confusing me with the brush with the bone handle?
‘At the fatsos with the headscarves! The fatsos with the
headscarves!* yelled Su, her head popping in and out of the rear
window like the wound up bird of a dock, Jn the front seat
two boys with chickpea guns in their hands were waiting,
taking turns sliding into the window seat where they would
shoot at the targets she pointed out.
The women with the headsearves Su had her eyes on had
been caught m the middle of a two-lane road struggling to
cross. They did not notice the school minibus hurtling along
behind, never mmd being aware of the chickpeas whizzing past
them- Before the boy who missed his goal turned hi% seat over
to his friend with a long face, Su had already designated the
new target:"At the chap with the dog! T he chap with the dog!'
One of the chickpeas made it into the hood of the casually
dressed man but his terrier was not as lucky k took a couple
of barks and tail-chases to figure out what was raining on it. It
could only chase the minibus the length of its leash, at the end
of which it stopped with a painful whine waiting for its owner
10 catch up. One of the chickpeas must have hit the dog in the
eye tor it constantly winked after them. 'Awesome!!!*
exclaimed the sniper commending himself - awesome being
more in fashion in their circles these days than ‘cool’
r

I he three pony-tailed girls, who always sat in front and

treated the driver as their buddy of many years, goading him
to play their pop cassettes over and over, turned back
simultaneously to throw daggers-of*looks at the perpetrators

364
 FLAT NUMEJtH NINE

of the incident* Su paid no attention to them* Ever mice the

day her hair was cropped short she had abandoned the world
of girls from which she had already been banished the moment
the news of her having lice had spread out and which she had
had difficulty in joining in the first place* She only ever got
together with the other girls before and after gym, in the
changing room. At those moments Su simply pretended they
did not exist. What she asked for in return was to be treated
likewise, as if she did not exist. But whenever they lined up on
the benches, sdnking-out the squat, narrow changing room
with their flowery, syrupy deodorants and putting on their
pantyhose while exchanging meaningful looks, speaking in
some sort of a cryptic code, they wanted to make Su feel how
unpopular and unwanted she was. However* boys were
different, Getting lice was deemed so ordinary in their circles
it was scarcely news,
Su leaned out of the window up to her waist, tweaking her
thumb at the terrier left behind* but just as she was about to
draw back, she caught Sight of a man a few metres ahead* with
an unkempt beard and hair long unwashed, digging around in
the garbage, i he man was busily stuffing the sacks on his
shoulders with tm cans he fished from the thrash. Now and
then he scratched his head pensively as if some mysterious
voice was addressing him with taxing questions from within
the trash container. He had a burgundy beret and petroleum
green overalls which were worn to shreds. From the rips on
the overalls one could see his kneecaps covered with dirt.
At the hobo! At the hobo!’ Su shouted.
The sniper boy on duty by the window loaded the paper
roll with new chickpeas and bless with all his might. Exactly
at the same moment* however, the targeted vagabond stopped
doing what he was doing* turned around with an aiumal-like
intuition and. like victims smiling at their murderers before
taking the bullet* opened his mouth wide and caught the
chickpea m one move while tt svas still in the air, gulping it
down without even caring to chess, Pressing his hand on his
THt HfA PA l At: £

heart he subtly tilted his head forward as if to thank them in

return and opened hh mouth once again for the second bullet.
When no chickpea was fired, he impatiently rattled his
yellowed teeth. The sniper boy flinched in horror, Su stared
flabbergasted at this weirdest man she had ever seen, a man
who did not at all look like anyone she knew.
As soon is the girl left,banging the door behind hen SicUr felt
like shit. He waited until midnight, hoping she would forgive
him and return. It was only when he had to accept die tact that
he was waiting to no avail, chat he put the leash on Gaba and
threw himself out of the house.
The Armenian Catholic Cemetery was twenty-live minutes
by foot. This was the one he liked the most among all the
cemeteries in Istanbul, To help Gaba pass through he pushed
all the way back the humongous ornate door that did not give
even the slightest hint about what a luminous space was
hidden behind. Upon seeing him coming, the guard grumbled
as usual.Though suspicious of Sidar s every move the first time
around, he had gotten used to him over time and must have
finally deemed this wiry, scruffy young guy batty but harmless;
for he didn’t object to his presence anymore.
When Sidar showed up on the wide stone road intersecting
each and every path in the cemetery, an old man sitting alone
on a bench waved at him. They had run into each other a
couple of times. Though they had been exchanging greetings,
they had never conversed before.
So you’ve come again,1 smiled the old man. patting the seat
next to him.‘But you're still too young, Why the hurry ?'
Sidar perched on the other end of the bench. Before
responding, he inspected the old man. He must have been at
least seventy-five years old, maybe even eighty. Small and
round were his eyes, a deep bluish-grey.

,V>7
THE ELEA PALACE

Hut iVe seen lots ot childrens graves here,’ Sidar replied

obstinately.
*1 didn't say you were too young to die* 1 said you are too
young to think about death.’
Gaba's bark was heard from a distance, probably nothing to
be worried about. Sortie stranger must be giving him
something to eat. He barked like that when he was about to
get a treat from a stranger. It was the ‘Thank you for the sunit,
vou are very kind!’ bark.
‘I too was thinking about death today,’ muttered the man,
apparently interested in a t hat, ‘This morning my sister called,
she'd had a bad dream last night. We were children with milk
bottles m our hands. Vet the milk was kind of strange; it
wouldn't flow bur came out in lumps. White mice the size of
my little finger scurried from within. My mother grabbed our
hands and took us away, but my sister went back. In spite of
knowing too well that the milk was contaminated* she drank.
My mother was furious at her "Why did you do that? You
sinned!'1 she yelled, but she couldn't bear my sister's tears and
seated her on her lap to console her. ‘"Don’t you worry” she
soothed her,1‘God will certainly forgive you,"
Gaba started barking once again* probably because some
stranger had attempted to par him. Both Sidar and the old man
turned around inadvertently, looking at the entrance of the
cemetery though they knew they could not see him from this
angle. No problem. It was probably just the "I will let you pat
me if you give me one more sitffif!1 bark.
'1 haven’t dreamt in years, wouldn't even remember it if 1
did, but my sister does and her dreams always come true. She
is a cultured woman. It you had just seen her as a young girl,
she wasn’t interested in anyone* All she thought about were
books! My mother, the poor thing, was distressed; she forbid
my sister to read too much for it made her nose bleed, but my
sister still kept reading secretly, novels mostly...from the
French originals,.. In my minds eye I can still picture her bent
double over a book, lost in another world, l always knew when
 Ft At NUMBER TWO

her nose was going to start bleeding again. I could have

warned her but, I don't know why, 1 could not even get near
her while she was reading, 1 just watched, waiting soundlessly
for that drop of blood to fall. There were many such red stains
on the pages of the novels she read back then. You couldn’t
wipe them off or tear them out, so what could you do? They
remained like that. She iho had a diary, wouldn’t talk to us, but
she did to her diary. Then one day mv sister and I returned
from school to bud all the books and the diary gone. “I threw
them ah away!" mother snapped My sister turned white. She
loved ma, she did, but 1 don't think she ever forgave her;
Gaba s barks accelerated in folds, getting louder each time,
he was probably upset by something. It was the ‘If you are not
going to give me any more ffimts, could you please leave me
alone1* bark.
As she was so fastidious, she married very late. Her husband
#

was an eve doctor, had an office in Sisli. Thev truly loved one
# ” # #

another. Didn’t have any children. Then the poor man

unexpectedly died; simply crossing the street, must have lost his
foresight or something, stepped on the road without even
looking. The car'hit and ran' in plain daylight. I’ve seen many
a person's hair turning white with grief, but with my sister it
was her body that shrivelled from grief Before long she bad
shrunk into an elfin, doleful woman. She gave up everything*
went of! food. Hung her husbands pictures ail around the
house. Just like she used to talk to her diary as a young girl, she
started to talk to those photographs 1 made a grave mistake
then. I thought if I removed my brother-in-laws belongings
out of her sight, it would be easier for her to forget. One day
1 secretly gathered the photographs, all of them, and gave them
away to friends and relatives Just as she had never forgiven
mother, my sister did not forgive me either That was when she
moved to another house You see, l had presumed it would be
hard for her to live in a house surrounded bv mv bfother-in-
law 's memory. To the contrary, it was hard for mv sister to live
there the moment those reminiscences were gone She moved
THE KtA PALACE

somewhere else. After all these years she sea]I doesn’t let me into
her house. She didn't get re-married either. All this time she
stayed single like that. Whenever we get together, we meet at a
patisserie, i >o you know anything about dream interpretations?
My sister sure does and her dreams always come true,"
*So how did she interpret this dream?" Sidar wondered.
4She said she might die before waiting for her time to come.
That's why my mother was angry at her like that.'
* You mean suicide?" Sidar exclaimed with a tinge of a thrill
in his voice.
However, blinking his hluish-grey eyes the old man looked
deadpan, as if never before had he thought of such a word or
even heard of it.
Gaba sounded far more distraught now. He was using the/If
you so insist on not leaving me alone, then I will leave!’ ba 1
Sidar scurried to his feet though he had more questions to .e
At the entrance of the cemetery, he found Gab a. just as he had
predicted, barking in distress in the middle of a circle of
affection and attention formed by inquisitive onlookers. Before
he ran to the rescue of his dog. he stopped for a second to wave
to the old man, but the latter had turned to the other side still
murmuring, as if he was unaware that he was now alone on the
bench.

T7I5
6:54 p.m.: Dangling from the armchair, her stick-thin legs
covered with myriad mosquito bites each «f which she had
turned into an abrasion from scratching non-stop, 5u thrust
her hands into the pockets of her shorts and hilly concentrated
her ga/e on the minute hand of the clock on the wall, is if by
so doing she could make time run faster. Her tutor was always
prompt.To this day he had never been late, not even a delay of
few minutes, but such punctuality had recoil of its own. He
always ended the lesson right on the dot. He had never stayed
longer, not even for a few minutes. The instant he started the
lesson, he placed his watch with the leather strap between the
two of them on the table and though he did not keep glancing
ar it as a bored man would, he still jumped to Ins feet as soon
as the hour was up,
6:57 pan,: She sprung up with the ring of the doorbell
Three minutes earlv!
/

Hygiene Tijen was by the kitchen sink, scraping off the

sediment that had collected at the bottom of the teapot
Drying on her snow-white apron her hands with fingertips
creased from having stayed in hot water for hours on end, she
headed to the door Upon opening it, she inspected her
daughter s tutor from head-to-toe. The man looked neat and
trim as always. He submissively took off his shoes before
entering and put on his beige-socked feet a pair of sanitary
slippers from the basket,The mother and daughter meanwhile
watched his gestures with deferential courtesy. Then all three

371
THE HE A PALACE

of them moved to the living room, nuking squishy noises as

they walked. On one end of the rectangular dining room table
there was, as usual, especially prepared for the lesson ahead of
time; coconut cake slices lined up on two porcelain plates with
white napkins on the side, the notebook with the white lilies
spread open* pencil tips carefully sharpened* the ashtray laid
ready. One could smoke in this house. Neither smoke nor ash
fell into the realm of Hygiene Tijens conception of'blth.*
1 hope it won t be impolite if we keep working inside as
you lecture here?'
She always asked the same question before every' lesson. I
always gave the same response:‘Not at all, Mrs. 1 yen. Please
Continue with your work
The new^ cleaning lady showed up at that instant scuffling
out of the bathroom* in one hand a pail filled with soapy' water
and in the other hand a doormat with tassels so messed up it
looked trodden on. Behind her trundled Meryem with her
sharply protruding belly. She had dangled a longish, snow-
white towel from one shoulder like a boxing trainer or a
Turkish bath massager. Both women seemed to be waddling
with the discomfort of wearing sanitary' slippers
‘How' come you are still working?" I asked her.
However* before she could respond* Hygiene Tyen jumped
in. ‘No, no* Meryem isn't working really* she stopped domg so
last week, but 1 was m dire straits without her assistance. So this
is the solution we came up with: Meryem says what needs to
be done and Esma Hamm, thanks be upon her, does it.’
Upon hearing her name mentioned Esma Hamm tilted her
head and gave a lackadaisical greeting* apparently not as
enthusiastic as others about her share in the division of labour.
Then all three women squished on their slippers back to their
respective chores, leaving the tutor and student alone.
7:00 p.m.: As Su pulled her chair closer to the table* she
threw a distressed glance at the wristwatch with the leather
strap stretched like a barrier between them.

Ml
Back home after the lesson, I found the Blue Mistress sail
there. What’s more, she had put in place a number of the boxes
that had been waiting to be opened since the day I moved in
and had also straightened the place up. However, she told me
she would soon leave to go cook for the olive oil merchant. I
refrained from delving into that story — it being no new s to me
that things were not going well between them lately
'Tell nu\ she cooed. What sort of food do you want?’
‘Pasta; l grumbled. Despite her initial frown, she tound the
idea practical. As 1 boiled the pasta, she set out to prepare a
tomato and thyme sauce with the limited ingredients in the
house, I guess that is why she loves me. Unlike the other men
in her life. I demand from her far less than what she is willing
to give. In return, 1 receive far more than what I had demanded
initially.
The doorbell rang just when we had sat down at the table
Su was such an odd little girl. With her book in her hand, there
she was, telling me 1 had forgotten to give her homework tor
the weekend. The Blue Mistress invited her to rhe cable She
did not want to come. While they talked, I chose a number of
exercises way above her level. If ruining her weekend with
extra homework is what she pines lor, so be it.
’Well, it turns out I am not the only neighbour to have
fallen for chat handsome face of yours. Mister,1 snorted the Blue
Mistress when we were able to sit dow n again to eat
‘Don’t talk nonsense, she’s just a child.'

.173
THE FLEA PALACE

“So what? C lift children tall iti love? I swear to (iod, 1 know
1 could when i was about that age. Weren’t you in love with
anyone as a child?’
It suddenly felt so awkward The Blue Mistress talked about
her childhood as if referring to a distant past whereas she must
he at most ten to twelve years past it.Come to think of n. there
WM only eleven years between Su and the Blue Mistress*
‘You didn’t answer! Have you ever been in love as a child or
not?* she insisted, apparently annoyed with my silence,
I indeed had, except that it had never been a memory worth
recording. There was a flighty, freckled, loud'mouthed girl I
went to school with, 1 recall being attracted to her,To this day
] have never met someone so naturally inclined to theft. All
that mattered was that an item belonged to someone else, there
was nothing on earth she would not enjoy stealing: fruit from
the neighbouring gardens, slippers from the thresholds of
homely homes, pencils and erasers of classmates.,.she would
embezzle them all and share her loot with me each time...
Every now and then she lurched into the foul smelling store
of a hideous, glue-addicted shoe repairman we passed by on
our way to school While 1 chatted up the man, she would fill
her pockets with handfuls of nails and soles. God knows why,
we would then hammer these onto all the fences, benches,
cases or doors we came across, After all we shared, however, my
beloved played dirty for no good reason and ratted to my
parents. My father was barely shaken upon receiving the news
of his sons thefts but with my mother it was a completely
different story. She blew her top, exaggerating her parental
punishment out of proportion. Ten days later, however, tny
father died, thereby erasing off my mothers agenda the scandal
of mv offence forever,
Jr

'What was her name?’ asked the Blue Mistress, shaking the
salt-mill for the umpteenth time, as if determined to find
its bottom.
Hard as I tried, l couldn’t remember her name - just as I
can’t remember what the majority of my childhood friends

374
 FLAT N U M 11 L K SEVEN

were called. 1 confessed to her bow hard it usually was for me

to remember people's names but 1 did not reveal how this habit
of mine used to infuriate Ayshin. I he Blue Mistress asks little
about my ex-marriage anyhow. Perhaps because she is sick of
hearing about the marriage of the olive oil merchant or
perhaps she is one of those people who are all ears when it
comes to hearing about still enduring childhoods but not
immediate pasts l told her 1 was much better with nicknames
- those I don't easily forget.
‘Then find me a nickname as well, she said finally able to let
go of the salt-mill and dizzy from all that shaking.
'You already have one,' 1 confirmed. ‘You are "The
Blue Mistress."’
She did not say anything but 1 could vee it in her eves all the
same. She liked the name I had given her.

***

3:33 a.m.: 1 woke up, she was not by my side.

[ found her on the balcony. She looked pale, as if she had
woken up lit the middle of a nightmare so daunting that it had
robbed her off the longing to go back to sleep. I sank into the
chair next to her and lit a cigarette. Under the coffee table in
between ust there were armies of ants circumambulating a
piece of melon that had started to rot where it had fallen, As
they toiled we sat still, watching the empty street.
‘I bet that girl didn't rat on you,' she murmured
absentnnndedly ‘It must have reached your mother through
another route. Why would she do it? You two were
accomplices,'
1 went in and fetched two double rah tor us. She took hers
with a snule but only slightly sipped, evidently not a drinker.
Yet she evidently didn't want u> display this, probably because
she had always run into men who drank like sponges. On
second thoughts, I decided that 1 was perhaps wrong about
this, after ah she was not the type to fool others Perhaps she
.175
the flea palace
herself was unaware of her dislike for alcohol in the first place.
'Maybe it is just the reverse,' I said. When I finish my raht I
will drink hers as well - as long as she does not smear the glass
with lipstick.‘Being accomplices ought connect people to one
another but that union is bound to be fleeting. In reality, if you
are accomplices with someone, you will try to get rid of then
at the first opportunity. If you don't, they will. A wrongdoer
might indeed return to the scene of crime but not to the
partner in crime ’
‘Oh, blessings to you, my teacher, you sure know how to talk.'
She placed on the table the glass she had been fiddling with.
Good, no lipstick /Do your students enjoy listening to you?’
‘Come to a class with me one day, sit among the students
and decide for yourself.'
‘What if someone asks, "Who is this person?'" What’ll
you say?’
‘Youll be a student from somewhere else coming to listen
to the lecture.You re so young, they’d buy it,’ I muttered while
caressing her face,The scar on her left cheek is not at all visible
in this dint light. ‘But I can, if you w ant, tell them instead that
you 're a triend of mine.’
'That would be blatant lie!' she frowned, suddenly riled.
‘How could 1 ever be regarded as your friend? It would take
them only a minute’s chat with me to fathom the lie* 1 haven't
the foggiest idea about many of the things you talk about, 1
didn’t go to college. It’s too evident that I'm not going to do
so at this age,'
What age? At times I doubt if she is really aware how voung
she is,
‘Friendship is based on compatibility/ she volleyed upon
realizing I was about to object. ‘One can fall in love with
someone incompatible but one can't be friends with them. For
one thing, when you talk the other has to get it in an instant.
To do so one has to be at the same cultural level. You and I
can’t ever be friends. We can’t be married either or be lovers.
We tried to be neighbours but made a mess of that as well.’

376
 FLAT NUMBER SEVEN

‘And why on earth can't we be lovers?’

Instead of answering my question, my little lover with no
lipstick and no serenity; took a large sip from the drink I
thought she had long abandoned. Her face soured right away,
Why does she force herself to drink when she does not like
alcohol at all?
‘I think if we ever could be anything together* we’d be
accomplices,’ she blurted out all oi a sudden, the harshness ol
her words incongruent with the indolence of her moves as she
reac hed for the stale nuts to get rid of the taste in her mouth,
A white car with black windows ploughed through ( abal
Street, its cassette tape turned on full blast. The Blue Mistress
jerked her head over the railing and swore without any
reservations whatsoever. I gently pulled her towards me, kissed
her.The piercing music of the car decreased bit by bit. in that
stillness, a burned mosquito slyly made a dive, buzzing. The
wind came to a standstill, filling the air with the sour garbage
smell,The Blue Mistress finished the pistachios in the bowl and
I the rab in my glass, continuing on to hers. In the next attack
of the mosquito, my applause echoed in the air, I opened my
hands hoping to see it dead.They were empty.

377
Are you upset about something Su?‘
I m fine, Su grunted a jagged response* constantly
squeezing the English exercise book she had rolled up.
Why don't I make us a nice cup of coffee with milk and
you go choose mo coffee cups from the glass cupboard honey*'
Madam Auntie said, trying not to tret over the child’s
bitterness. Despite having solemnly pledged to herself to send
the girl awav with an appropriate excuse if and when she
appeared at her door again, seeing her in such a sullen state
today, she had not been able to keep her word.
Su heaved a pompous sigh as she followed the old woman
inside. In this warm weather coffee with nulk was the last
*

thing she wanted to drink but what difference would it make,

things were ‘crappy* anyway - ‘crappy" being in fashion in
their circles nowadays instead of‘awesome*. What difference
would it make if she had a crappy coke or a crappy coffee
with milk? Scratching her scrawny legs, droopily and
indolently, she walked into the living room, opened the glass
cupboard at the corner and peered inside in deep wonder.,
There were so many things in here! Lined up on the shelves
were inverted porcelain cups, liquor cups, champagne flutes*
crystal pitchers, embroidered frames and all kinds of tiny
carved boxes the function of which she could not fathom.
After a quick survey, she honed in on two amethyst cups with
intertwined ivy handles, Right behind them was a round*
glazed, illustrated tray: a aibust man with a moustache and

s-h
 FI AT NUVtlJFR TEN

raven-black hat was carrying a woman down ■ ladder in hn

lap, her tulle dress flowing to her heels. I he woman had put
her head on the man s shoulder, dreamily gazing into the
horizon, as if she were not on top of a ladder from w hich they
could topple down any minute hut on an idyllic hill with a
magnificent panorama, It was as if they were fleeing the fairy
tale to which they belonged One could distinguish a tew
houses and behind them a forest in shades of green. Su turned
the back of the tray as if hoping to see there the fate awaiting
this dignified couple, but there was no other illustration at the
back, only an inscription at one corner: "Vishnia kov\
Placing the amethyst cups on the tray, she closed the
Clipboard door shut with her foot. fust as she was about to go
back, her eves caught a spot further down. The living mom
door leading to the hall was partly open and the interior ..the
interior looked somewhat uncanny,..
Without really thinking she approached the door, opened it
all the way and stood almost petrified. As if lured, she started to
advance step by step down the hall of Madam Auntie s house.
With every step, her uneasiness gave way to utmost incredulity'.
“How much sugar would you like?' Madam Auntie called
out from the kitchen but when there came no response, she
turned down the heat under the milk and went back to
retrieve her guest. Finding the living room empty she first
suspected the child had left, but then she noticed the wide
open hallway door. In escalating panic, she involuntarily
brought her hand up to her neck. It was not there. I ler bluish-
grey eyes fretfully scanned the living room until she spotted
the velvet benbboned key sitting guiltily on the coffee table at
the corner. Colour drained from her face. Her heart
pummelling hard, she dashed into the hall after the girL

J7'i
"Keep walking/the Daughter-in-Law bellowed/Keep walking
or 111 break your legs!"
Upon hearing these words, the two children tugged along
by their hands started to cry even harder The seven and 4 half
year old walked behind languidly, tranquilly. Though he had
indeed had lots ot fun today, it had been a rather awful time
for his mo in. Probably as a result of the other box office
worker complaining, the big boss who usually showed up once
in a blue moon had appeared at the movie theatre around
noon. 'Do you think we run a daycare centre here?' he
growled, scowling at the five and a half and six and a half year
olds who were standing in the corner, mouths agape at the
huge Aladdin and the big-bellied genie sitting cross-legged on
the 1 x 2 metre cardboard carpet hanging from the ceiling to
promote the film. Both had been crying non-stop from that
moment on.
‘If you could only manage tor a couple ot days. I'm sure iTll
sure find a solution by then/the Daughter-in-Law- had pleaded
crestfallen, though she knew only too well boss unlikely that
would he.
As they approached Bonbon Palace* the kids' crying
dwindled and their bawl transformed finally into a barely
audible buzz but as soon as they plunged through the door of
Plat 5, like a watch with its spring loose, both ran screaming to
their grandfathers lap.At that moment. Hadji Hadji was having
.1 little snooze on the divan with one ot his four books slipping
 FLAT NUMBER FIVE

off his hand. Bowled over by this unexpected deluge of love,

blinking in bewilderment he struggled to get to his feet.
‘Father, I’m entrusting the kids to you. said the Daughter-
In-Law, averting her eyes/1 have to get back to work.'
Hadji Hadji pulled the heads of the little girl and the little
hoy into his beard. Thus encouraged, the kids started another
round of crying. The Daughter-in-Law stood silently, forlornly
watching this scene w hilst she heard herself mumble:
‘But 1 beg you, please have some mercy and don’t poison
their infantile minds with those fairy tales of yours.
The door closed,The three young children and the old man
were left alone. As the little kids, feeling drained from all that
crying, sighed deeply and their grandfather collected the hair
shed from his beard during that uproar, a prickly silence settled
among them. They did not know what to do next. Before
long, the seven and a half year old threw his big head back and
smiled with a ghnt in his mossy green eyes. In point of fact, he
too had enjoyed coming back home. Being outside had indeed
been fun, but he had also felt himself as tiny as a ilea and just
as alien among all those people who watched his every move
with pity. Unlike the outside world, here m this house he was
the sole commander of his little kingdom and the only
undisputed sovereign of his cocooned life.
‘Come on, grandpa,' he proclaimed solemnly. ‘No need to
dilly-dally,You can tell us whatever story you want!'

3*1
You have so much stuff in here Madam Auntie?!' exclaimed
Su, bobbing her bead in escalating amazement.
When the old woman had caught up with her, the child had
already reached the end of the hall; reached it and seen inside
the three rooms opening up to the hallway.
it isn't all mine.'
‘Really,T then whose is it?1
4

it belongs to different people. I'm looking alter their

things,7 said Madam Auntie, without caking her eyes off the
tray carrying the amethyst cups. Her mind was pullulated with
the lear that they would break, but die was so stunned that
could not make any move to snatch the boyar and his lover
from the child.
Yet at this particular instant, Su was the one who was most
astounded. Brought up in a house with white as the dominant
colour, where everything was incessantly cleaned and polished,
swept and purified, relentlessly whitened and yet never
whitened enough, the child now felt as if she had been dropped
into a magical garden she could not have even fathomed to
exist upon earth. There was plenty of every colour, except
white.The belongings, piled on top of one another, one inside
the other, had seeped into each and every nook and cranny so
thai all three rooms were jam-packed up to the ceiling. Amid
this multihued jumble it was impossible to separate the valuable
troiii die useless. All was inextricably mixed up. With so much
scuff, Su couldn't help but suspect this place was way bigger

382
 FI AT NUMBER TEN

than their flat. Never mind their flat, it was much bigger than
all the other flats in this apartment building, even larger than all
the flats she had hitherto seen put together! In tact, it seemed
that Number 10 was not a flat at all, but a convoluted
contraption with heaps of different pieces and hundreds of
different buttons. If even one piece pulled out, the whole
structure would break down and become inoperable.
There were ballpoint pens everywhere...and burnt-out
bulbs, used up batteries, torn tulles, burst balloons, expired
medicine, used clothing, buttons with no two looking alike,
stickers that had lost their adhesive, empty cartridges, lighters
without gas, glasses with broken lenses, jar-lids of all sizes,
money no longer in circulation, torn pieces of cloth, cracked
trinkets, photographs turned yellow, pictures with no frames
left, torn tassels, tattered wigs, keys that had lost their key
chains, mugs with broken handles, baby bottles without the
nipples, threadbare lampshades, worn out books, boxes of all
sizes (some plastic, others wood), lustreless mother-of-pearl,
cardboard, empty tndk bottles, candied apple sucks, ice-cream
sticks, food bowk, dolls with missing heads or limbs, umbrellas
with wires sticking out, strainers turned black, doorbells that
even themselves could not recall which doors they used to
make ring, pantyhose with runs stopped by nail polish,
wrapping paper, door knobs, broken household items, tilled
out notebooks, journals turned yellow, empty perfume bottles,
single odd shoes, shattered remote-controls, rusty metals* stale
candy, rings with missing stones, macrame flower-holders, shoe
liners, rubber bands, bird cages, typewriters with missing
letters, mildewed tea m tin boxes, tobacco parcels, bracelets of
all colours, barrettes each more beautiful than the other,
binocular lenses.,, As Su looked around in bew ilderment, her
eyes caught a large fishing net hanging over a pile of objects,
'The sea brought that,1 Madame Auntie said, her voice lilting
with pride,
'You said the sea brought it?’
‘The sea becomes so generous when the loiios blows hard.
THE FLEA PALACE

carrying piles of items by the shore With aH these the waves

playing the way children do with balls, passing these items back
and forth to one another, they bring these to the shore Waves,
like human beings, quickly tire of things and you know. I'm
not the only one there by the shore, Many other Isunbuhtes
are also after the items the sea conveys/
However, Su was no longer listening to her, she was instead
eveing-up a child’s hat of purple velvet. It was beautiful and
looked brand new:
"Madam Auntie, where did you get this?' she asked as she
thrust the tray into its owners hands and shot off to touch the
soft surface of the hat
The old woman hesitated tor a split second but what was
done could not be undone.What could she now hide from her
little friend who had already gone too far, and for how long?
"It was in the garbage,' she replied. *1 don’t know why they
threw away such a beautiful hat/
Su caressed the hat absentmindedly. In her mind's eye, the
hobo who had boldly confronted their bullets gave a dirty
smile, waving a bag of chickpeas he taken out of the garbage.
His yellowed teeth became ail the more visible,
"What about these.Why did you take them?
"Arc they bad?’ wondered the old woman, throwing a
cursory glance at the empty pill bottles, 'One always needs
empty bottles. It’s not right to throw them away/
Su inspected the old womans teeth. Oddly enough, they
were white and clean,Just like her mothers,
"If you like the bat* do take it, Its perfect for you/
'Really?' Her large eyes glimmered as she eagerly reached
out for the mirror she had seen among the empty tin cans piled
up by the wall. As soon as she donned the purple velvet hat, she
burst out laughing. It turned out to be a magnifying mirror.
"Oh, no. we forgot about the milk!' bellowed Madam Auntie
at the same moment.‘Run! Run!'
With Su m front and the old woman rattling the amethyst
cups behind, both raced into the kitchen.The milk in the small

3«4
 FLAT NUMUER TEN

pot bad long boiled over and spread everywhere over the oven,
putting out the gas tire
Once they had cleaned the oven and moved back to the
living room, Su took another look into the still ajar hallw.iv
door, exclaiming at full blast. ‘Heavens dubetsyV - ‘heavens
dubetsy' being in fashion in their circles these day* instead of
'crappy'. Perching on the nearest armchair, she started to swing
her scrawny legs,‘This is the Castle of Garbage. If only the boys
save this, they’d be thrilled.’
'But the boys shouldn't know about this place! No one
should...* the old woman stammered as she handed the child
the coffee with milk She then offered white chocolate from
the crystal candy bowl on the coffee table. Su threw one into
her mouth without thinking only to tense up right away. What
if this chocolate had been dug out of the garbage as well? Su
gaped fretfully at the old woman as if the answer was written
somewhere on her forehead. Vet, before the chocolate melted
in her mouth, a new question struck her mind.
Madam Auntie,' she hooted, her voice instantly,
inadvertently dwindling into a whisper. ‘Is this why Bonbon
Palace smells so had2’

3#$
"Hey, what's the matter with you? Did the cat get your
tongue?1 asked the blonde with one eve cast, there yet again to
have her hair dyed, never persuaded that she need not have this
done so often.
Cental paid no heed to the womanV teasing, preferring
instead to fullv focus on the strand of her hair he was about to
highlight, I hough determined not to respond to his customers,
be now the pressure of each word squelched on the tip of his
tongue had so much inflated that in an urge to speak, he turned
around and yelled at the pimpled apprentice for no reason.
Being wound-up in front of all these women the apprentice,
who was already hapless enough to have to spend this delicate
pubescent stage of his life working in a womans beauty parlour,
blushed crimson. As soon as die gaze he averted from everyone
accidentally met the Blue Mistress’s, he blushed even more,
turning a darker hue. He didn’t know- it, but when he flashed
this particular shade of red his pimples almost disappeared,
‘What’s wrong with Cental?" whispered the Blue Mistress to
the manicurist next to her, She had never had a manicure
before, but today was no ordinary day as, after a lengthy hiatus,
she was going to meet the olive oil merchant again. He had
sent a text message to her mobile phone in the afternoon
saying he wanted to stop by and have a heart-to-heart. Not
that the man had any special interest in manicured hands; it the
truth be told, it was doubtful whether he would even be able
to tell the difference, but as she sat there with one hand

w.
 Ft \T NUMBER THREE

pleasantly numbed in a bowl of lukewarm foamy wateF, the

Blue Mistress still believed she w'as doing the right thing Why
they remain oblivious to the fact that they are getting prepared
for men who will remain oblivious to their preparations is a
riddle germane to women.
The manicurist, now concentrating on a broken nail*
answered in a hoarse whisper:‘We have no idea what’s got into
him. He's like a powdered keg. ready to blow his top off. He
hasn't uttered a single word to the customers but keeps Lashing
out at us. You'd think he's a chain-smoker who quit cold this
morning That touchy? Its as if he's got PMS.‘
Cental frowned at the manicurist and the Blue Mistress
giggling between them. Afraid of another rebuke the pimpled
apprentice held out lour aluminium iobos at oner.*Sonny. why
don't you hand them out one at a time?' growled the other
with the thrill of having found another excuse to scold the
hapless apprentice. It was precisely then that a hand tapped on
his shoulder.
‘Could you come to the kitchen for a moment?' said Celal,
careful not to draw attention to himself or his brother.
There they stood in the kitchen* with the persistently
passionately boiling samovarm between them Celal stared with
compassion at the man who today looked more like himself
than his twin, solemn and almost stock-still inside his sage
green shin.
‘I surrender.' Celal said with a weary smile/For Clod’s sake,
please just go back to being your old self. Just be like you
used to be. I had no idea how unbearable you'd become
when solemn.'
Before the other found a chance to bear a grudge, t elal put
his hand on his shoulder, giving an avuncular squeeze.‘Frankly
brother, when you don t chat and make these women cackle,
the beauty' parlour becomes dull.1
In a few minutes, the twins drew open the curtain
separating the tiny kitchen from the parlour. All heads
popping-out of leopard patterned smocks turned toward
THE FLEA PA I ACE

them. Celal gingerly pushed his brother to step forward as if

encouraging an actor afraid to get on stage.Then, with a smile,
he winked at the apprentice without the pimples:‘Sonny, make
some nice foamy coffee for us all so that we can slurp away at
it whilst gazing at the holy saint*
His edginess thawing visibly upon hearing these words,
Omal at long last gave the smile he had been withholding
since early morning.

3HH
Ac first I thought the kid was lying* Children make things up.
[ checked my watch. It had been fifteen minutes since the end
of the lesson We had been whispering since then, fust as I was
about to leave, she said, "Sir, I need to tell you something/
Hygiene Tijen, Meryem and Fsma Hamm were all in the next
room busily putting up the curtains they had just washed*
From the way they were talking, one could tell that Esma
Hamm was up somewhere high, probably on top of the ladder,
and Hygiene Tijen was holding her steady from down below;
Meryem seemed to be the one giving out instructions* As for
us, we talked in wary whispers so as not to be heard.
M swear to God I'm telling the truth / Su groaned, miffed at
my Jack of faith.
1 feigned being convinced but this time it was her turn to
doubt, She wanted me to give my word that I would never
ever Jet shp the secret she had entrusted me with. My word
must not have been enough for she then made me repeatedly
swear an oath — first on my honour and after that, one by one
and name by name, on all my loved ones, fust so that the angst
in her big black eyes would abate, I obeyed her every demand.
Yet it was as if far from comforting her, eadi of my promises
rendered her even more anxious. At one point, she went inside
swishing around on her slippers and came back earning a
miniature Qur’an with an emerald green cover, the ty pe that
people carry in their wallets and handbags Just so she could be
soothed, I swore with the Qur’an in mv palm When I finished.

m
THt ELEA PALACE

realizing chert was nothing else left to do except crust me, die
breathed out a final sigh. Demanding as she is, how could 1
become annoyed by her demands? Love makes all and sundry
miserable, even a child,
‘Come on, lets pul an end to this topic,* l said.‘Don’t worry.
My lips are sealed. I won't tell anyone.'
Seeing her smile cheered me up. df I do tell your secret to
anyone, let God turn me Into an ass!*
‘Not an ass, not an ass!* she objected m a voice that sounded
hke a chirp,
'What should I be then?'
By now she had shrugged off all her anxieties and regained
that galling glee of hers. She walked around me talking
pedantically, listing all the repulsive creatures she knew, in order
to find the worst beast ever on the tace ot the earth. Owls were
macabre but not sufficiently wretched; rats were dirry but not
gross enough. Cockroaches were nauseating, spiders
bloodcurdling, alligators chilling, jellyfish odious, scorpions
poisonous, wasps dangerous. Pigs scrabbled in dirt, vultures fed
on carrion, bears could devour their ow n offspring, hats sucked
blood. Sea urchins pricked, frogs gave us warts, centipedes
snuck into our ears,The worm that emerged from the soil after
a rain, the caterpillar that writhed in lettuce, the grasshopper
gobbling up the field, the lizard running away leaving behind
its tail, the fiv not giving anyone peace, the mosquito sucking
blood ..all had an unpleasant side to them but none were
malicious enough. Even the leech, which looked more
disgusting than all of them put together, could be of use to
humans and was thus disqualified. What she searched for was
something much worse than all of these creatures; something
that was ot no use either to itselt or to others, something
incompatible with any kind of benevolence, whose existence
was apparently without any real purpose and one
comparatively worse than all those absolutely useless but just as
harmless creatures God had created with leftover day. Such
was the sort of creature she needed to scare me with turning

3<*l
 FL AT NUMBE K \i V I X

into it I did not hold my oath one day.

‘If you're searching tor the worst creature, you should pay
attention to the eyes. Those whose eyes you can look into are
usually not as bad as those whose eyes you can't see.'
This she liked so much that she instantly ripped out a page
from her lily adorned notebook and started making a list of
creatures whose eyes could not be seen. So seriously she took
the task that it wasn't possible to change the topic or to get up
and leave. While she tried to pick up a punishment among an
assortment of punishments for my potential betrayal, I tried to
help her as best as 1 could,
‘Let me be a rattle snake,’ I hissed, squeezing my tongue in
between my teeth.
■r

‘NooqooT
*Let me be a piranha,' 1 rattled, opening my mouth wide,
‘Come on, 110000!'
i cant get you to like anvhmg,' 1 pretended to be
disgruntled,
I guess until that moment, I was having fun, but all of a
sudden an abstruse distress descended upon me. 1 put on my
watch. This preposterous game had gone on too long and l
don't know why but it had started to get on my nerves,Just as
I was thinking about leaving/1 found it, 1 found it,’she cackled
her voice hiring with delight, ‘1 here was no need to search
after all!'
‘YouVe now going to repeat after me, ok?" she asked, so
easily and swiftly shifting from the formal speech form we
normallyff used to a tar more casual one, l nodded meekly She r

stood across from me, staring at me directh in the eye.

Tm a big man ’
Tm a big man,’
‘But if I tell our secret to anyone else.,/
*

‘But if I tell our secret to anyone else,. / 1 said, as 1 narrowed

my eyes and added a furtive tinge to my voice. Yet she no
longer smiled. In the darkness of her eyes, two slender, pitch
black water snakes slithered in silvery sparkles.
TUF FI FA PAL AC F

May God turn me into a louse! The biggest louse ever1' $u

hollered, pompously stressing each word.
‘May God turn me into a louse!’ 1 hollered, pompously
stressing each word.‘The biggest louse ever!1
1 jumped to my feet, assuming as fearsome an expression as
possible, crossing my eyes, pushing my front teeth onto my
lower tip like a vampire, jutting my jaw forward, making my
hair stand up, my forehead all wrinkled, opening my nostrils
wide and moving my eyebrows up and down„ I had never
attempted to imitate a louse before, I’d never realized how
lough if could be! I did not have the foggiest idea what the
faces ot lice looked like. In point of fact, I could not even tell
whether lice had faces or not. One of the tew things I knew
about lice was that they could be identified from afar, only from
afar, as no one could tell what they looked like up close.
Another thing: 1 also knew/ lice were petite enough not to be
seen by the naked eve and evil enough not to display their eyes.
Mulling it over together we came up with further
assumptions. Perhaps what rendered a louse so base and bad
was its unique ability to become one with its victim. As such,
a louse was not some sort of a foe lying in ambush outside,
waiting for an occasion to assail, but rather an affliction that
gnaws surreptitiously from within. The mosquito sucks our
blood as well, for instance, but it leaves its victim alone once it
finishes its job and has gotten what it hankered after. A
mosquito, even at the instant it finds our vein, continues to be
a part of the outside, never a part of us. So apparent is this
detachment that even when we squish a mosquito that has just
stung us, we are disgusted by the blood in our palms as if it was
nor ours but the mosquito s. Nevertheless when it comes to
lice exactly the reverse is true. The louse belongs not to the
exterior but the interior, distinctively to us in person.
To picture it, 1 too tore a page from the lily-bedecked
notebook. Since we could not figure out whether a louse had
a face and, if it indeed had one, what it w ould look like, and
since our only hint was that it stood out as the worst of die

392
 FLAT NUMBER SEVEN

worse, we could capture its monstrosity by borrowing a bit

from each bad creature on earth and then bestowing upon it
the imaginary body we had thus formulated. When I was done,
what emerged was a real freak. Since it had borrowed each pan
of its body from a different creature, it resembled many Site
forms but did not look like any particular one of them The
eyes, one borrowed from a hog and the other an owl, appeared
so strange together that it was as if it had been hit on the head
with a sledgehammer Below the page. 1 wrote,'Dazed Drunk
Louse" in small letters.
Su started to giggle as soon as she saw the picture.
‘Excellent! That's exactly it. If you don't keep your mouth
shut, God will turn you into Dazed Drunk Louse!' I tried to
act as if 1 was scared but could not help laughing midwav
She tried to act as if she was offended but could not help
laughing midway.
Then abruptly, apprehensively, she stopped talking as it
scolded by an invisible authority m the room.The vulnerability
of someone who had just realized they had revealed things that
could never be taken back cast ,i shadow over her juvenile face.
It was only then that l had a sneaking suspicion that what she
had told me could actually be true.
Jf

m
*1 told you not to give up hope in God, Loretta. My daughter,
you should be grateful now that you have recovered your
memory.You so much deserve to he happy,' cooed the nurse to
the woman who was about to be discharged.
‘Its so strange/ the other one smiled, opening wide the
green eyes which she had made more dramatic with loads of
even greener eye shadow/What I most desired thus lar was to
remember my past, but now ! want to escape from it. I'm
going to start a new life nurse, and will never leave you from
now on.'
‘See? Loretta will never leave us from now on; snorted
HisWifeNadia to the bug struggling in the empty jelly jar she
kept rotating in her palms. ‘Unlike you, BhrteUa Germanic*f you
were going to abandon ust weren’t you?'
Toward the end oflast the century, on a dreary, hazy day in
the middle of a dirty; muddy street, a scientist excitedly
reported witnessing the en masse migration of a cockroach
breed named Biatclla Gerrnanka. Of the migrating Hock almost
all were female and w hen Dr, Howard encountered them, they
were in the process of leaving the restaurant they used to reside
in, getting ready to cross the street. The migration of the bugs
took approximately three hours* at which point they reached
the place they would hereafter dwell in. When Dr. Howard
started to question why these cockroaches had left the
restaurant in the first place, he could not come up with a
satisfactory answer. As much as one could observe, nothing
 FI AT NUM HER MX

extraordinary had happened at the restaurant on that day;

neither large-scale cleaning nor fumigating. There remained
only one other factor that might have triggered the migration:
overcrowding! for these female hugs to risk abandoning both
their males and domicile even though no catastrophe had
fallen upon them, it must have been crammed pretty tight back
at that restaurant. Since hundreds had taken to the streers, there
must be thousands left behind.
HisWifeNadia pensively pouted at the jar. How could so
many Blatcfla (romawat - notorious for their deep dislike of
daylight - keep appearing in the middle of the day at different
corners of the house and particularly in the wardrobe where
she kept her potato lamps? More significantly,did this obscured
migration of flocks of cockroaches up and down the apartment
building mean there could be hundreds or perhaps even
thousands more someplace nearby?

3MS
As I was heating up the leftover pasta from the day before, the
doorbell rang piercingly and persistently. I opened the door. I
had never teen her like this.
“I sure deserved this,' she moaned. Swollen bags as red as raw
meat had gathered under her eyes; the gleam of her young face
had vanished along with the brilliance of her eyes and the
histre of her skin. The sides of her nose were so irritated from
the constant wiping that they were peeling off. This was a
strange face and since the Blue Mistress existed and subsisted
with and within her face, she too was .1 strange woman now
Still waiting for the pasta to heat up* 1 held out my raki to her
She refused to sip from my drink but waited patiently for me
to sw ig half a glass before starting to speak.
*He was going to come tonight,’ she sighed,/having sent me
a message on the mobile phone. 1 made pureed eggplants I was
actually going to prepare chicken with ground walnuts but
didn’t feel like it this time, J guess 1 was a bit offended.You know
he hadn't stopped by for ten days. That’s why 1 prepared the
pureed eggplants. He likes that dish too* but not as much as the
chicken with ground walnuts. All day long. 1 grilled eggplants.'
Stern as l stared at her. she did not even notice howf
uninterested I was in all these details. Hurrying full blast, as if
someone might any minute declare her time svas up* she sliced
to shreds dozens of details each more meaningless ihan the
one before and piled them all up in front of me. 1 did not
intervene anymore.

3'Jft
 FL AT NUMBER SEV I N

‘He’s had 4 heart attack, t an you imagine? He had a heart

attack on the way here,* die cried out when she had finally
finished with the dinner details.* They called from the hospital.
I guess since mine was the fast number on his mobile plume,
they thought 1 was his wife or family.*
Tm sorry,,,'
As soon as she heard me, she started to choke and sob is if
I had disclosed a long awaited decision in the negative. Perhaps
she doubted the sincerity behind my words. Not that she
would be wrong,The olive oil merchant, whom I had not met
face to face and whom 1 passed judgement upon though l had
seen him tw ice at most and only from a distance, was no more
than a typecast for me: a hairy, greasy pitiable excuse of \ rival
with his belly hanging over his pants I was sorry for my little
lover more than him.,.and also somewhat surprised, Up until
now f had not considered the possibility that she could have
been so attached to that coarse figure of a man,That she loved
to rat on him, did not object to and even enjoyed hearing me
insulting him, was no indication that she was not attached to
the man. Indeed she was more committed to him than I had
ever suspected. 1 raked rny fingers through her hair. Yet she
harshly pushed away my hand.
You don't understand; she snorted her disapproval, * Its my
fault. If the poor thing can't make it through to the morning,
it*s all because of me.’ She swallowed stiffly; as if trying to get
rid of an acidic taste in her mouth. ‘I paid a visit to the saint.'
*What did you do? What did you do?"
Well, you can t actually call it paying a visit, Meryein put
the idea into my head. There were a few bottles of banana
liquor left in the house. I gave them to her a few days ago. I
don’t drink the liquor and she likes them a lot.We were talking
about whether it would be harmful to the baby and that kind
of chit-chat. Thank goodness this time around her pregnancy
is not as difficult. Meryein told me she lost three male babies
before Muhammet, two were stillborn, one died w hen six
months old. So when Muhammet was born, she let his hair

397
THE FLEA PALACE

grow long tike a girl*The kid went around like a girl until he
started school* in order to trick Azmet.'
I am curious, do women have special machinery or
something chemical m their brains that prevents them from
expressing themselves straight out. So many details, so many
introductory statements, so many stones whirling circles
within circles that never get to the point... f refreshed my rakt
but found no soda left on the empty shelves of my huge
refrigerator. 1 needed to go out and get some.
Anyway, the kid survived but he was then constantly
beaten-up at school.Yet, Meryem said recently he had changed
so much I hat fainthearted boy was replaced by someone
utterly different and is no longer beaten up by his (fiends. Its
like a miracle.1
[ wondered whether the Islamist grocer across the street had
dosed yet. Though he did not sell gin, he carried tonic.
Though he did not sell liquor, he stocked chocolate with
liquor. In a similar vein, he does not sell mki but indeed sells
soda to mix with raki.
4We were talking about how at could be possible for this
child to change so drastically. Menem then confided to me
that she had made a vow to the saint. Which saint?' 1 asked.
Don't ask!'she replied puzzlingly,Tf you have a long awaiting
wish, you too should go for it. If it ever conies true, only then
will 1 tell you which saint 1 visited." So she asked me for a clean
scarf, I wrote my wish inside, then folded it up like a Hidrelicz
request and gave it to her.’
[ gave up By the time this story was over, the Islamist grocer
would have long closed the store and gone home, (oven my
preferences, I decided to make do with water.
'She said, ‘If your wish comes true, so much the better. It
would be my gift to you.You gave me so many banana liquors.
If it doesn't come true, no one will know. All we would have
done is try1 That's what she said. Well, maybe that's not exactly
what she said but it was something like that, I can't remember
right now.'

vw
 FLAT NUMBER SEVEN

The rah tinted awful! That damn drink is no good with water.
4So I folded it like a Htdrellez letter, as she’d instructed me.
‘ Let me be treed of this state!’ 1 wrote. Or perhaps 1 wrote/Let
me be freed of this man!1,.. If I could only remember!
Everything got mixed up. What did 1 w rite? God, what did the
saint understand? The man is dying there because of me.’
What I had just heard was so enor mously, astoundingly and
fantastically ridiculous. I could hoe even consider it likely that
she could really have believed this claptrap. Even if she did, I
couldn't place much significance on the pam she would sutler
because ot it. After all. that is how things are. In order tor us to
truly share a person's pam. they first have to share the same
reality with us. When we calm down a child who is crying
because a part of her rickety tov is broken; when we swear to
the anorexic who looks skeletal but stall imagines herself obese
that she really is not a fatso; when we put up with the absurd
talk of our best buddy, mad ac life having been cheated on by
a worthless woman he s only been with for a total of two
weeks; when we strive to distract until the arrival of his
psychiatrist the mentally ill man who suspects his soul has been
stolen by a pigeon and thereby chases ail the pigeons out in the
square to search inside the beaks of each and every one; in ;
of these cases we stand by these people but look at their pam
from wav yonder. The child shedding tears tor such a simple
thing, the anorexic who camps so tar away from reality, the
miserable buddy who cannot see it is not worth getting upset
by such a worthless woman, the nut incapable of
comprehending chat the poor pigeons flock around real
concrete for wheat kernels instead of intangible elusive souls;
all might plausibly expect from us some degree of attention
.md compassion, soothing or solidarity, fhey’ll most likely get
it too. We could indeed fulfill the role of comforter without
much hesitation. Upon seeing how they talk nonsense because
of their suffering and how they suffer because of their
nonsensical talk, the chances are we might even led
emotionally close to them deep down...but that is the very
THF FLEA lJA L AC F

limit. They might require and possibly receive our

kmdheartedness at one of those moments but they cannot
convince us to enter their reality. We can pity or even love
them, provided they do not expect us to sincerely share in their
suffering.
At room temperature of 27 C and a humidity rate of 65%, the
early stages of a housefly s lifecycle involve one to two days as
eggs, eight to ten days as larvae and nine to ten days as pupa.
In laboratory research conducted under the same conditions, it
has been observed that 50% of the male flies die within the
first fourteen days and 50% of the female flies die within the
first twenty-fout days.
At a room temperature of 27 C and a humidity rate of 36-
4(1%, cockroaches prove to be far more resistant than flies.
Under such circumstances, they can survive without any food
intake tor twenty days. With only water, they can stay alive for
thirty-five days,The eggs laid under the same temperature and
humidity levels hatch between twenty-seven to thirty days.
The hatched offspring change skin between five and ten times
to become adults. Adults can live for approximately six to
twelve months. Then they too die. They rot and decompose,
break apart and scatter, are no longer themselves and are
muddled up into different things.
|ust like flies and cockroaches, food too has a lifecycle. In a
cool and dry place, pasteurized milk stays fresh for one year,
halm with pistachios, two years, diet biscuit with cinnamon,
two years, granulated coflee, two years, raspberry chewing
gum, ten to twelve months, chocolate with rice crackers, one
year, a can of tuna, four years, a can of coke, six months and
corn nut with cheese flavour, six months. If left in a
refrigerator sliced whiting stays fresh for one and a half weeks,
THE ELEA PALACE

yoghurt drink tor sewn days, mozzarella one and a half

months, packaged chicken twelve to fourteen days. At the end
ot this period, these things also sun to die. They rot and
decompose, break apart and scatter, are no longer themselves
and get muddled up with different things. Once tea or
tobacco, wheat or cheese expires, these things start to produce
lice, bugs or larvae in the cavities of the cups w here they are
kept, t lothes engender moths, furniture becomes infested
with worms and grain gets raided by beetles. Cockroaches too
arrive at such places. Cockroaches are everywhere anyhow'.
fust like tlicrs and cockroaches and food, objects also have a
lifecycle. On average, overalls worn as a baby Last one to two
months, a battery pow ered tram acquired as a child lasts one
hour and one year, diaries kept at puberty' thirty to sixty* days,
the sweater given as a gift by a relative with no fashion taste
ten seconds, the pipe bought with the desire to stop smoking
only to discover afterward how difficult it is to clean, two to
mx puds, a printer cartridge fifteen days and three months, a
train ticket one to twenty hours, the gaudy ornament lovingly
acquired when drunk only to seem not that nice when sober,
one long night. Then they too die. They die and are thrown
away, either to one side or to the garbage.
From the moment they wake up till they" go to bed the
demzem of Istanbul pass their days incessantly, unconsciously
throwing things away When calculated in terms of weeks,
months, and years, a considerable garbage heap accumulates
behind each and every person and just like flies and
cockroaches and food and objects, humans too have an
expiration dace. The average life expectancy is sixty five years
for males and seventy years for females. Then the inevitable
end comes and they too die they rot and decompose, break
apart and scatter, are no longer themselves and get muddled up
with different things.

***

4J12
 FL AT NUMBER TE N

When, alter losing her husband in an accident twenty-five

years ago. Madam Auntie had moved alone into Flat Number
10 of Bonbon Palace, she had encountered there objects
belonging to the former residents: a hundred and eighty-one
ownerless and out-of-date objects. Even though the letter from
the buildings new owner in France had openly stated that she
could dispense with these objects in any manner she chose, she
hadn’t felt like throwing away even a single one of them. When
she read the letter from Pavel Antipovic'% daughter in France,
she had not been infuriated Yet there were times in the past she
had been infuriated at the ease with which people dispensed
with the objects ot others. Yes, she had been infuriated
before.. and even before... When she had been a young
woman, her mother had thrown away her novels and diaries
and years later, when she had suddenly lost her husband, her
brother had dispersed all photographs she had of him to friends
and relatives. Perhaps she had not been able to reclaim her
belongings in the past, but from now on she was going to look
after the belongings of others as a steadfast safe-keeper.
To acquire items so as to use them tor awhile and then
throw' them in the garbage, is a habit germane to those who
believe themselves to be in possession of these items. Yet
objects have no possessors. If anything they have their stories,
and at times it is these stories that have possession of the people
who have meddled with them,..

4(13
Following the lecture, Ethel came to pick me up in a honcy-
coloured CCherokee. We left my car at the faculty parking lot
and continued on our way m this new toy of hers. She did not
seem in the mood for chatting at first but then, as we got stuck
m the traffic jam her tongue loosened, 1 would have rather she
had just paid attention to the traffic. Her driving gets worse by
the day. As she started to chatter about the last phase they' had
reached in the university project, I noticed she had lost her
initial enthusiasm. Either this business is going totally down the
tubes or Ethel has decided to part ways with it, I refrained from
asking which. She will eventually, if not today; tomorrow,
report to me everything anyhow.
Hey; tell me, how are things going at the apartment
building of the wacky?' was the first thing she said when, after
struggling in traffic for fifty minutes, we had finally reached
our reserved table at the restaurant;just as I wanted, all the way
down, by the window.,, I chose to turn my back and Ethel
her face to other diners. She apparently wants to keep an eye
on other people. What do I care?
‘Don’t ask! Bugs all over the place/
‘So bugs too are coining for entertainment. What a blessed
bastard you are! You’ve ended up dwelling in a most hilarious
place. Rather than an apartment building it resembles an
insane asylum/
’I knowf its bard for you but try not to exaggerate/ I
gtoaned/God knows, the apartment building 1 formerly lived
 FI AT NUMBER SEVEN

in was probably no different, but back then I didn't have a clue

The only difference now is that I'm not indifferent to the
neighbours at Bonbon Palace *
‘Oh,yeah, I can see that,You re particularly interested in one
among those,1 she snorted as she placed the first cigarette of the
night onto her jasmine-wood cigarette holder and sent in my
direction three smoke rings, one after the other
l pretended not to have heard that last comment, having no
intentions of quarrelling with her tomght, but my deafness
seemed to provoke her even more.
‘You can't make it with that woman, sugar-plum.You know
why? Not because of a moral reason or anything, hut simply
because of keeping up images! At present there are no
problems. You stay indoors, screw as you like, all is fine and
dandy, but what will happen afterwards? Could you go out
into the public with her? Could you take the arm of your
twenty-two year old high school dropout, deeply religious but
just as immoral and decisively- in decisive lover, to promenade
and hang around together? Do you really believe an academic
with such a clear-cut intellect can ever make it with that
walking confusion of an ignorant petite missie?
I could not come back with a response. Instead I laughed
away whatever she said. Before long, she got fed up with
pesteri ng me. Neither of us were in good spirits. As we waited
for the mixed fruit plate, we made guesses about the people at
adjacent tables, thus keeping the damage wtr could have
indicted on each other to a minimum, but it turned out Ethel
had saved her real surprise to the end.
‘Listen sugar-plunn l didn't want to be the one to tell you
this, but, maybe it s better that you hear it from me. Who else
but me do you have to pour out your poison? Anyway, let s save
the conjectural comments till the end first the actual data’
Here's the astounding news: Ayshin is getting married, oops,
re-tnamedr
Timing was the gravest error the moon-faced albino waiter
committed when at that instant he reached out to change my
THF F I fc A A L At: F

plate. Not that I ant one of those people who constantly cause
trouble at restaurants, shouting reprimands left and right, hut I
do hate to have my plate changed without my asking for it
Waiters generally do not want to even consider this as a
possibility but there are people in this city who relish the
pleasure of munching on their leftovers. I cannot stand seeing
the remains of my food being instantly removed as if it wen-
something disgraceful. I fit were up to me, I would not part
with my plate until the very moment I leave the table. I could
mix the remnants of the cold appetizers with the hot ones and
keep nibbling for a whole night. Not only do I not feel the
slightest discomfort at having the fruit slices smeared with the
oil, sauce, salt and spice of the hot appetizers, 1 sometimes sit
down and make sweet and sour compositions with these. If 1
like this final fusion, 1 cat it: if 1 do not, 1 rum it. Ethd knows
this habit of mine. She does not meddle. The waiters do not
know it. They' meddle.
‘Please excuse him. Its just that hes going through a tough
phase, just got divorced from his wife,1 croaked Ethel to the
waiter now standing beside me with a scratched white plate
utterly unable to comprehend why he had been snapped at.
The man intuited the mockerv in these words and curled his
£

pale lips into a smile, but at the same moment he must have
felt the need to be cautious just m case, for he suppressed his
lip movement, thereby lingering behind me with a face like a
mask; one half smiling, the other half sad.
"Please, go ahead, you can change my plate. Vm perfectly
normal,' Ethel smirked. The waiter, defeated by this proposal to
share a confidence, grinned with her while removing the duty
plate in front of her.
"If you ask me, the guy is a total pushover.' Ethel said
shrugging, when we were once again left alone. It took me an
additional minute to fathom it was not the waiter she was
talking about but Ay shins husband-to-be. 'He's a well-
in ten noned pushover — meek and almost gullible - but a
pushover nonetheless. Docile, compliant, and of course,

406
 FLAT NUMBER SEVEN

domesticated. His limits are only too evident, corners on each

side. Whichever way he faces you run into a wall. In order to
find just a spark of vigour in the guy; you have to dig at least
seven layers deep down into his past, 1 wonder if he ever
experienced any exuberance, probably once in his childhood.
Even then, don’t expect much, only a few drops. Now you'll
be curious about his appearance!' she conjectured, holding my
hand. "Let me put it this way: next to you, he would look like
a senile badger.’
So than it, Ayshm ts going to get married to a senile badger
I place a slice of melon onto the corner of my plate where a
duck garlic and walnut sauce had spread out.
‘The buck-toothed one, was that a badger or a mole? Ethel
mumbled as she removed her hand, leaving on my wrist traces
of her nails painted a glittery indigo.'Any way sugar-plum, one
thing 1 know lor sure is this guy is really, really ugly. Basically;
I'd say. Ays bin is using the trial and error technique. Once
bitten* twice shy, she shuns handsome young academics,’
When we left, I sat next to her with more confidence,
knowing that compared to when she is sober, she drives more
carefully when drunk. She brought me all the way to Bonbon
Palace without any trouble. Then she took off in the gloomy
street radiating a corona of honey in the dark

***

Once cm the third floor, 1 stopped to eavesdrop at the door of

the flat across from me. No sound came from within, 1 hough
I had not been planning to sec her tonight, I rang the doorbell
without really thinking. She had forbidden me to come
unannounced but l could violate the ban that night.The olive
oil merchant would not probably spend the night in his
mistress's bed right after a heart attack
Soft, almost fluffs footsteps approached, The golden light
seeping through the peephole darkened. We stayed just like that
on either side of the door tor a long minute. 1 he door opened
THE FLEA PAl ACE

with an annoying tardiness. Her chestnut eyes looked at me with

no radiance, love or feeling. Without uttering a single word,
good or bad, she turned her back and staggered into the living
room dragging her leer. I did not care. However weird her
movements were, mv drunkenness was just as good. I parked
myself on the couch, turned on the TV We starred to watch
without a sound A singer of classical music, having smeared gold
glitter on all parts of her body under her transparent, stone
studded, lilac costume, was telling the microphone what she had
been through. She had broken her leg during a skiing trip, but
because she could not bear to cancel the concert tickets and
upset her dear fans, she had made the hemic decision to appear
on stage in crutches. Standing next to her was her physician,
w'ho occasionally intervened to answer the questions the
journalists spurted backstage.
'Dead,'croaked the Blue Mistress,
1 looked at her face in perplexity, unable to figure out who
on earth she was talking about. My eyes slid of their own
accord in the direction of the television screen. The singer
looked alive but perhaps paler now'. She blew a kiss toward the
camera. I turned otT the TV Not knowing what to say* I sat
next to the Blue Mistress, t held her hand. She did not hold
my hand. She went to sleep. So calm,.. Too calm...
1 sat alone in the living room trying to collect my thoughts.
I hadn’t reali7ed how much I had drunk tonight* A bulky
lethargy swathed my movements. I could not think fast, act
agile. Not only did 1 not know how to comfort my little lover,
I did not fed a wee bit of sad ness. The only thing I wanted to
do was to go home and pass out.
Still however, I headed not towards the door, but to her
bedroom In the darkness, I laid next to her. pricking my ears
up to all sounds to try and work out whether she svas asleep
or not. She was awake, "He couldn't get over the attack,1 she
whispered. He died at three in the morning.' I touched her
cheeks: drv. She was not crying. 1 snuck closer to her. She
neither pushed me away nor responded to my touch. She kept

44 IK
 FIAT SUM BE R SF V F N

lying down like an empty sack. The bed was warm. We

embraced. I tell asleep.
I woke up during the night burning up with thirst
( Plugging down all the water in the glass on the table, I shuffled
to the bathroom. As l peed. I gazed groggily at the perfumed
soaps in a glass stilt, the papaya shampoos lined up at the corner
of the sink, the delicate perfume bottles shining in front of the
mirror, the turquoise bach sponges, body lotions and minutely
detailed middle-aged supplies. I flushed the toilet. Amidst all
these knick-knacks 1 caught sight of two razors. One had fallen
on the ground and the other in the sink.
This was enough to sober me up. 1 dashed to the bedroom.
1 turned the light on. dress the bedspread assay from her. As she
tried to sit up from her sleep. I pulled up her aquamarine
nightgown extending down to her knees 1 here was nothing
on her left leg, nothing ness, but the cop pan of her right leg
was wrapped up with a towel covered svith wide, brick red
stains. This loose wrap was so bulgy I could not understand boss
I had prev iously failed to notice it. As 1 hurried to untie the
thin, long towel, she stmpH; pan ends waited without resistance.
Five scarlet cuts emerged from under the towel, each one
almost the length of a hand span. Three of them did not seem
that deep. It was as if they were opened accidentally or
reluctantly, as it they svere the rehearsal for the other two. For
d ■ d

those were awful l ran back to the bathroom. L nable to find

anything useful in the cupboards, 1 scampered to my house. As
1 ran from one end of Bonbon Palace to the other with
hydrogen peroxide and cotton balls, the entire effect ol all the
alcohol I had consumed tonight evaporated.
She watched me mutely, as I cleaned and wrapped up her
wounds,Then, thanking me, half-bashful, half-glum, she pulled
over her the aquamarine nightgown that had somehow not
been stained during this period of time, and once aga in curled
up as round as a ball. 1 turned oft the light I waited tor her to
cry, blab, snuggle, seek shelter. In the dark, when she curled up
into herself leaving me alone by her side, I had to admit to

44>9
THE FLEA PALACE

myself that I did not know her at all. It is such an inexcusable

gullibility to think that by cracking open the vaginas of
women we make love to we can see through their body and,
upon entering them, reach into their depths.,.

410
The first garbage trucks and garbage company in Istanbul
started work in !H68. Before them, the same job was
incumbent upon the Guild of Seekers working under the
control of the litter Superintendent, Just like todays garbage
men, the seekers of old times were in charge of getting nd -
even if only partially - of what the in habitants of Istanbul
wanted to get rid of entirely* eternally. However* when the
issue came to how they did so, there was a grinding difference
between the contemporary garbage men and their
predecessors. The foremost purpose of the Guild of Seekers in
gathering what was to be thrown away was to find among the
gathered what should be saved from being thrown away. Before
they discarded the waste, muck and debris they had collected
into dumps, they would carry7 it all to the seashore m their
haversacks and there they would sort, rinse and rummage
through this pile over and over. There were rimes w hen they
encountered copper plates, steel rods, nails that could be re¬
used, clothes not yet threadbare, nan-oxidized silver or gifts
that had been unappreciated If lucky enough, they could even
hit upon lost jewellery.
The Guild of Seekers visited the sites of fire frequently.
Whenever a house turned into ashes in Istanbul* the city of
tires, they carried away the wreckage. Just like from the
garbage, from the ashes too, they collected items. 1 he seekers
would gather to sift through, Yet the garbage men collected to
throw away. For the city to modernize the order of things had

4U
THE FLEA PALACE

to be capsized. Once what was thrown a wav on all sides was

gathered in one place by the seashore, now what was gathered
on ail sides was thrown away in one place by the Garbage Hills.
As for Madam Aunue, being a seeker she didn’t belong to
this age. Just like the bygone members of the Guild, she too
was rummaging around in the garbage for objects that should
not have been thrown away. To this day she had never failed to
find them.

412
In spue of steeping only m dribs and drabs,! woke up early this
morning. As I tucked the hair stuck on her sweaty forehead
behind her ear, the Blue Mistress stirred slightly. I let her sleep.
Lighting a cigarette I headed to the kitchen. She had crammed
the refrigerator with food, as usual. All of the things the olive
merchant would have liked- In our happier days with Ay shin, 1
had become used to getting up late during the weekends to
have lengthy, lazy breakfasts. Now she is probably breaking that
old badger in to her own rhythm. If the man is as Ethel
describes, I have to meet him, Not that I expect to change
anything, hut I still want him to see me. I could trigger the fuse
of the inferiority complex in him. I may even succeed in
embedding in his mind the tiniest louse of suspicion. Let hint
then struggle with sitting through the sourness of the
possibility that the woman he is about to marry might go back
to her old husband one day.
1 must have awakened the Blue Mistress with my clatter. As
she stood by the kitchen door wrapped up in her speckled
shawl, she looked much better than the night before even
though her face was still pale and her eyes miserably baggy
‘I hope you are not blaming yourself anymore.’ I said, as I
tilled up her teacup.
She does..,and I blame her too... I blame her and everyone
who acts as if they are the god of their squat universe. There is
no way I can comprehend those who first pray with all their
heart that harm be given to someone they cannot reach

413
THE FLEA PALACE
otherwise and then, when fortuitously then wishes happen to
come true* simply breakdown in guilt and shame. I cannot
stand those who, on the one side, delegate all the problems
they cannot handle and don't even lift a Unger to resolve, to
some ochcrwurldlmess purportedly purified of all evil and* on
the other side* yearn for receiving a slice ot otherworldly evil
to purify their most mundane problems. It enrages me to see
what people are capable of doing to themselves when they' fail
to distingueh their limits. Not because they overestimate
themselves way too much but because they' underestimate
evil way too much. I he world is full of people who watch
trom alar lor a chance to hurt someone and, when by chance
that happens, do not hold Fortuna responsible but the
thoughts and wishes that had once crossed their minds. 1 did
not want the Blue Mistress to join their ranks I did not want
to lose her in this way and instead hoped to spare this lovely
naive crearure w ho believed that this God of" hers w ho created
the universe by pronouncing1 BET could likew ise destroy w ith
the pronouncement of ‘DIE! * So I decided to explain w hat 1
had done.
‘Will you please get this saints tale out of your mind?
There’s no truth to it,' I said, as I \hd onto her plate half of the
best omelet I had made in a long while. "The holv saint
Meryem talked to you about most likely emerged from the
writing on the garden wall but it was l w ho wTote that.'
If I could only have grasped w hat she was thinking right at
that instant. If I could only be sure that I was doing the right
thing by disclosing this.
Look, I'm sorrv about the olive oil merchant — and don t
m

get mad at me for referring to him as the 'olive oil merchant’,

I hope you're aware of the tact that even if there were a saint
lying under the garden wall with his bones crumbled to dust,
the outcome would not have been any different. Sim-ply-be-
ca-use-my-litt-le-one-your-guy-pass-esi-a^w'ay-not-be-ca-
* Ac cording to the Muslim frith, in order to create the uiuvervc AJlih
uttered BEr

414
 FLAT NUMUER EIGHT

use-you-wan-ted-to-get-nd-ofehim-but-he-ca-use-he-had-a-
he-an-at-tack
There it was again. Her looks became cast in shadow. Once
again in my life, 1 witnessed that dusky phase wherein f started
to awaken hatred in a woman whose loving eyes l had been
accustomed to.
‘Basically my sweet, it you are going to blame yourself for
every calamity and keep slicing up your bods; there is no way
[ can stop you, but if you intend to give this habit up. I'll do
everything to help. Now, if you’ll see me not as vour enemy
but as your friend, let s sit down together and talk about what's
going to happen from now on. After all your life won t be like
it used to be. But maybe, why not, it can be more beautiful.’
lWhy did you lie?' she maundered.
If you mean the saint business, I don’t consider myself as
having lied-The only thing I wanted was to get the apartment
building rid of this awful smell. I just wanted to make those
who dump their garbage here feel uncomfortable. It didn't
even cross my mind that anyone would take that silly writing
seriously,'
Her face clouded up, as she once again got immersed in .1
thorny silence, 1 made a last effort to win her heart.
‘The truth is, if the smell had indeed been coming from the
outside, niy writing might have helped to overcome tins
problem but we d been suspecting the source of the smell to
be in the wrong place all this time- It turns out the smell was
coming from the inside, from within Bonbon Palace ’
It worked. Now she was looking at me with less hatred and
more interest, I shovelled the breakfast plate toward her, Seeing
her take the fork into her hand I felt a childish joy. She was
going to taste the omelet l had made. She was going to make
love to me again.
Tm announcing our Garbage Commander. Hold onto your
seat!' I rasped.The thrill dribbling from my voice disturbed me
for a fleeting moment but I did not mind.'Flat Number 10!
Our respected neighbour, the widow

415
THE FI E A PALACE

'You mean Madam Auntie?" whispered the Blue Mistress,

No way, I won't believe that. You must be mistaken. She
wouldn't do such a thing!'
‘She has indeed, my beauty. She's tilled her house with
garbage all the way up/
‘How do you know ?' she asked, narrowing her chestnut eves.
‘Forget about where I've found out about it. I'm telling the
truth. God knows that's the reason for all those bugs infesting
your house/ Oddly enough, I had not thought about this link
previously, hut all of a sudden all the bits and pieces of events
interconnected in my nund,
‘I don’t believe you. 1 won t believe you any more, she said,
putting down her fork.
‘Oh really?' I repined* feeling no need to bide ray loss of
composure. ‘What if l prove it, my sweet?*

416
"Lets throw a big p-tm, nurse. Let's invite everyone, even our
enemies*' hollered Loretta, as she slid at the clinic door away
from the arms of the faithful elderly woman crying tears of joy.
Standing by her was the husband-physician who had been
struggling lor so long to treat her. so that she could remember
being married to him. Before they got into the ear that was
waiting for them, they turned around and waved
simultaneously to the continuously crying wet nurse and the
continuously smiling clinic personnel.
HisWifeNadia turned off the FV. I hen. inspecting rhe
contents of the smelly, amber suitcase for the last time, pulled
rhe zipper shut The shadow puppets looked at her offended
from the corner in which they had been thrown. She could
easily have picked up another suitcase, but for some reason
unknown to her, she wanted to take this one in particular.
HisWifeNadia was leaving. The State of Dormancy had ended.
Just like bugs, humans too, have an ecological potency, that
is, an endurance limit. When and where they run into negative
circumstances, they react by limiting their life functions,Their
bodily mechanisms thus function less or perhaps differently
and. thanks to this ability, they adjust their metabolisms to the
new conditions they are subjected to. Within the circle oi life,
such a state of consecutive dormancy could emerge ar any
time, at any phase, and could be repeated many times over
Certain ty pes of bugs, for instance, survive through winter bv
going through different stages of larvae as an egg. The>

4E7
THE FLEA PALACE

minimize their material change by either stopping or slowing

down their transformation until the cold weather has passed.
Nevertheless, there is a limit to this stationary phase
whereupon it has to cease. If the inapprupruteness of the
surrounding circumstances continues way too long, irreparable
damage could he done to the metabolisms of the bugs.
In order to be able to really know what we already know;
every now and then we insist on waiting for a sign, if not a
messenger, but who says the messenger has to be in a certain
form and of a certain proportion? What matters eventually is not
the guise of the messenger but our very ability to decipher the
message. As Nadia Onissimovna pouted at the bugs infesting the
cupboard where she kept her potato lamps, she had abruptly
been swept by the thought that this* His Wife Nadia' state of her
life had been a stare of consecutive dormancy. All though this
period she had limited her life functions, dropped down below
her capacity and frozen her transformation, and if she did not get
out of this shallow' stage as soon as possible, irreparable damage
would be done to her personality.
She was going back to the Ukraine. Taking with her the
BhttfUa Germiittka that had come all the way to her feet to give
her the message, to remind her that she was something else in
addition to and beyond being baffled and lonesome, a
bewildered soul searching for difference within sameness, a
foreigner out of synch with the city she lived in, a spouse
openly cheated on, a housewife incompetent in making ashurc
savoury enough, a victim of the domestic violence of a wine
imbiber even the grapes of Leon the Sage could not satiate,
glum enough to expect help from her monotonous
correspondence with a religiously strict aunt w ho heard god's
voice m the bubbling, of soup cauldrons, a dispirited person
whose every dav was >ust like the previous one and blind
enough to expect enlightenment from potato lamps,,. In
addition and beyond all of these things, the bug bad helped her
remember, she was a scientist who loved the world ot bugs way
more than that of humans.

418
On Wednesday May 1st 2fNl2t at 12:20 p.m., a white van - in
need of a wash and decorated with the picture of a huge rat
with needle-sharp teeth on one side, a hair)' humongous
spider on the other and signs of various sues all over it -
stopped in front of Bonbon Palace, The ginger haired, funny-
faced, flap-eared driver who did not at all look his age was
named Injustice Puieturk. He had been fumigating bugs for
thirty-three years and had never hated his job as much as he
did today As he parked close to the sidewalk, he suspiciously
eyed the gathering at the entrance of the apartment building.
He checked the address his chatterbox of a secretary had
handed him in the morning: ‘Cabal Street. Number
(Bonbon Palace}.'The chatterbox secretary had also put down
a small note below:‘The apartment building with a rose acacia
tree in the garden/ As Injustice Pureturk wiped off the sweat
beads covering his forehead, he inspected the tree in the
garden with pinkish flowers on some branches and purplish
ones on others This must be, he thought, what they called a
rose acacia.
Still, since he did not trust his secretary, whom he planned
to replace as soon as possible, he wanted to see personally \\ hat
was written on the door with his near-sighted eyes. He could
easily have asked the people gathered in front of the apartment
building but having become so terribly, immovably used to
taking care of his own business and as he never trusted others,
he left the van askew in the middle of the street and jumped

419
THF FLEA PALACE

down. As soon as he had taken a step, however, the small girl

among the three children standing within the crowd screamed
in horror: 4The genie is here! Grandpaaa, grandpa, look, the
genie is here!" The older man with the round, greying beard,
wide forehead and a skull cap on his head whose trousers the
kid tugged, turned and eyed with a displeased look first die
van, then the van driver. He must not have liked what he had
seen, for his face turned even more sour as he dress all three
children tosvard himself
Trying not to be offended. Injustice Pureturk plunged into
the crowd with determined steps. He shoved the people aside,
got near the apartment block and succeeded in reading the
sign, relieved to see he had arrived at the right address. After
removing a business card squeezed in between the lined up
buzzers and putting his own in its stead, he jumped back onto
his driver's seat and put his van in reverse. Just then a female
head popped in,
‘You came with only one van? It wont be enough,’
hooted a cross-eyed blond woman with a plastic bib with
leopard patterns tied to her neck. ‘They had said they were
going to send two trucks. Even two trucks could hardy pick
up all this garbage.'
As Injustice Pureturk tried to decipher what the hell this
woman was talking about, and manoeuvre his van amongst the
trucks plunging into the street from two opposite ends on the
other side, he lost his control over the wheel, crushing the
garbage pile by the garden wall.

**+

That day, other than the van driven by Injustice Pureturk, two
other trucks turned up in front of Bonbon Palace as well the
car of a private television channel. They left Bonbon Palace at
the end of the day, the trucks jammed with garbage and the
vehicle of the television channel with all the shots it
required. Rather than the neighbours who were eager to be

430
 HON HON PA l At I
interviewed, the anchorman had wanted to interview the
woman Living in the garbage house, hut once her apartment
had been emptied out and fumigated she had sealed the door
of Flat Number HI, refusing to open it to anyone.

■121
Zelish hiremturedsom panted as die dosed herself up in her
room and hurled her little suitcase onto her bed. As she tried
to regain her balance by holding onto the side of the bed. she
waited for her heartbeat to return to normal. She had chosen
the wrong day to run away from home. As soon as she had
stepped out to the street, she had found herself in the middle
ot an insane mayhem with two bright red trucks approaching
from either direction. It was unbearably red out there in the
outside world. Amongst all the colours, the streets of Istanbul
were closest to red.
‘Whv am I so disconsolate? I should have known I'll never
£

be able to get out of this house,’

She picked up the mirror The rash had covered up her
entire face. The rash too was red as hell. She cried, first
noiselessly and then howling increasingly. All of a sudden she
heard a chirpy sound. Someone was answering her from inside.
Though her head still swam and her sight fading out from
seeing too much red. she followed the sound with wobbly
steps. The canary in its cage by the window in the living room
was merrily chirping.
‘Why are you so joyful? You'll never be able to leave this
house either/

422
No matter how hard 1 try not to, 1 recurrently recall
everything we talked about that day, As to what happened
afterward, Vd rather entirely erase it from my memory or at
least only rarely, vaguely remember. However, Su's curse
seems to be working. Even if my body didn't, my memory
did turn into a louse. Like a fleshy louse wedged tightly onto
my head, my memory has become menacing, procreating
every passing day. In my mind’s eye 1 see my memory
wandering around my head, sometimes on top of it, inside it
at other times, making squeaky sounds as it lays its invisibly
small, innumerably many, white eggs all around. Out of these
eggs thousands of damned and unabashed hungry mouths
come out, feeding on me, in spite of me. In tandem with
their number, their appetite also escalates. Voraciously they
bite through my flesh, numbing my head from pain as if
thousands of pins have been stuck on it. 1 do not mention this
to anyone. As I can no longer stand the person I am when
with others, I trv to stay alone as much as.possible and seek
out the answers to the same unanswerable questions.
If I had not written that nonsensical writing on the garden
wall and had nor babbled away, if I had used the intellect which
1 prided myself on so much and so unreservedly to fathom the
consequences of my act, to foresee the damage I was about to
cause to another person, would alt this still have happened? If
I had never moved into Bonbon Palace and had not mixed
with these people or learned their secrets, it I had succeeded

423
THF FIFA f*A LACE

for once m my life in being someone other than my typical

self, would this tale still wind through the same routes toward
the same ill-fated end? I can think of two different answers.
One belongs to my mentality and the other to my heart. Mv
mind says:‘Don't worry; sooner or later this catastrophe would
have occurred anyhow. You are not as significant as you think
or as malicious as you fear. What difference does it make
whether this tragedy happened because of you or for another
reason, as long as the end result is the same? If it makes you feel
better, call it Fortuna’. In any case, what else but Fortuna can
account for the fact that every secret eventually ends up in the
hands of the one w ho will divulge it?'
l console myself. I need to believe in the righteousness of
my mind, The issue is neither this incessant failing nor that
flawed willpower of yours. Whether you like it or not, you are
not the one making the impossible possible,' There is an
offensive consolation in what my mind claims. The human
being is so vulnerable and primordial. It is coincidences rather
than the consequences he causes that make an imprint on his
life. Given that humankind is so wreak, to what extent could
you be blamed for what you did?’The more I am degraded*
the more 1 get acquitted.
My heart instantly protests. Even if there is a Fortuna,
weren't you the one wrho deemed its whorishness doubtful?
Are vvr to own up to all victories but blame adversities on the
cileness of an uncanny feminine powner? Wasn’t the individual
supposed to admit right out that he himselt is the maker of his
own fate rather than attributing the course of events to hollow
superstitions? There is an honouring indictment in what my
heart claims. The human being is so complex and capable.
What we consider to be chance only marks the results vve
personally cause. Given that humankind is so capable to what
extent could you be absolved for what you did?The more l
am elevated, the more I get besmirched,
I do not drink more than before, but these days, I do sleep
more than I used to. As my anguish swells, 1 seek refuge in sleep

424
 FLAT NUMBER SEVEN

co then wake up even more anguished. It does not matter

anymore if I leave or stay. However far [ move out, never will
f be able to step outside the range of the stink emitting from
Flat Number 10, At my every awakening, the smell has become
even more sour.
No smell in life, even that of garbage could be as venomous
as this one.
Occasionally I overhear the neighbours. They are planning
to break down her door. 1 do not want to be here when they
break into Flat Number 10.

425
The boyar and his lover on rhe wooden ladder leaning against
the wall fretfully snuggled closer The house smelt ot death.
They no longer dared to breathe. Averting their eyes from one
another they stared at the halt-emerald, half-obscure torest
extending languorously yonder.
When the door was broken, men with masks fully dad m
white dished inside. They placed the stinking corpse on a
stretcher and carried it away The old widow's corpse was so
light, so petite,., the residue of a body that had refused for days
to eat-to drink-to take its pills. Madam Auntie had not been
halt as resistant to thirst and hunger as cockroaches.
As soon as the men departed, the ilat was fumigated once
again. The insecticide spray drizzled on the eggs of the bugs,
as well as on the one hundred and eighty-one objects from
the past, but fortuitously the boyar and his lover managed to
escape at the last minute. They' went down the ladder,
ploughed into the woods and walked out of the round, glazed,
delicate tray ofVishmakov.
m

A shadowy forest, half-emerald, half-obscure remained

m

behind on the tray. The forest smelt of neither death nor

m

garbage, but solely of cinnamon and cream.

42h
Back in his house, Sidar threw himself on the couch, gasping
hard. He had been brooding on suicide for so long, hue that old
widow who in all likelihood had never contemplated it as
much, perhaps not even considered it until the last moment,
had committed it much faster. When he got up, he wrote on
small pieces or paper the nine factors he had deduced that day
and stuck them on whatever empty spot could be found on
the ceiling:

1 Just like civilizations, suicides too, have an East and

a West.

2 The progressive mentality focused on rendering life

meaningful through reason and reason alone, and
expecting each day to be more advanced than the
preceding one, feels the need to weigh suicide
meticulously, reasoning it soundly People of this
mentality, regardless of where they happen to be
living, commit suicide in the West.

3 The suicides of those in their early-to-middle,

middle and late-to-middle ages usually tall within
this category.

4 Since the close relatives of those who commit

suicide in the West cannot find comfort until they

427
THE FLEA PALACE

get a satisfactory answer to the question/1 Why?”

they follow the same line of reasoning to make an
analysis of cause and consequence.

5 There are also those who commit stuctde at the least

expected moment, the very last minute, without
having organized the details. Such people, regardless
of w here they happen to be living, commit suicide
in the realm of the East.

6 When children and the elderly commit suicide they

do it in rhe East.

7 There is nothing as mind-boggling as the suicides of

the elderly who-were-so-close-to-death-anyhow and
child ren who - w'ere-yet-so-fa r-away- fro m -death,

8 The suicides m the East, unlike the ones in the West,

are m essence a mystery, or 'esrar' as the Istanbulites say

9 Esrar should not be given an explanation.

At the beginning I used to draw circles around Bonbon
Palace, brief walks that did not end up anywhere. Step by step
the circles started to widen, Over time 1 started to veer*
sometimes on foot, sometimes by car, into the far-flung
neighbourhoods of Istanbul. It was the writings on the walls
on the streets I was after.
When Ethel told me she wanted to keep me company on
these urban trips. 1 did not object. While I look notes on the
writings* she filmed diem one b\ one with her digital camera.
With the honey Cherokee, we snaked the rugged streets of
destitute quarters, steered through the middle-income
vicinities dickering with the ambition of opportunities long
lost, toured around mansions, derelict grasslands, sanctums and
dens At squares, courtyards, construction sites, squat houses,
places of worship: far and wide the writings were everywhere.
Most had been written on the walls with paint but there were
also some written with chalk, penal, coal and brick on doors,
cardboard and assorted signs. Just like garbage, the writings
about garbage had also been scattered everywhere m the city.
At the places we went, we were immediately noticed
Children followed us curiously Women suspiciously spied on
our every move from behind the lattice tulle of windows 1 he
most inquisitive among the artisans surrounded us each time
and showered us with questions. When forced to offer a
plausible explanation, we cold them it was our school project
to gather the "Garbage Writings* of Istanbul. Despite the
[ HI r t. r A PAl At E

absurdity, it made sense to them. It did not at all stick out that
bo til Ethel and I were too old to be students In their eyes
somehow school was deemed untouchable a place where
every absurdity was considered permissible.
Finding the people who had written these things proved to
be more arduous than finding the writings themselves. We had
to accept the fact that nearly all the writings were anonymous,
but l did once manage to find out the perpetrator behind the
writing on the wall of a dilapidated, soot grey edifice.‘Don’t
make me swer, I'll sav bad things to garbage trowerx. He who
trows plaster here, come and get it, don’t trow agen and make
me swer.4
I he children of the street knew the man who had written
it. Though nobody knew his name, they knew Ins profession
He was a gatekeeper it one of the universities who had resided
there with his bedridden wife and mother-in-law until last
spring. While the adjacent construction continued, he was so
infuriated at the construction workers dumping plaster in front
of his house that he had gone out and written that, The man
had passed away in the tall, the construction had ended right
afterwards, but the writing on the wall had stayed all this time.
'Can't you dress more modestly seeing as we create a centre
of attention wherever we go anyhow?’ I grumbled at Ethel
after we left the neighbourhood of the gatekeeper
'Don't pick on me. Out subject matter is not my clothing
but your guilty conscienceshe snapped as she changed gears.
'This mess we are in is vour 4TAGHHO\ not mine/ She
pushed on the gas pedal though the road was getting rougher,
narrower ahead/We hit the road for the “Project to Acquit the
Gentlemans Heedlessly Hardened Conscience "! All your life
you saw yourself as different from, if not superior to everyone
around you, but the moment you realize you've messed up the
whole lot, you need to prove to yourself that, after all, you are
like everyone else! Only that conviction can ease your guilt.
You seem to hope that the more we go around collecting
garbage writing, the more uncontestable your innocence will

4511
 Ft AT NUMBER. SEVEN

be. “God what have l done! On me resides, if not the blood,

the curse ot an old woman. I am paving heavily for treating
people lightly. At long last I saw the devil and with my very
own eyes. I indeed saw him but believed in you, my God- I’m
just like everyone else. Look, your other subjects too have
written on the walls of Istanbul Thus what 1 had done in the
past was way too ordinary. Accordingly, 1 wasn't as
extraordinary a man as I thought 1 was. Thank God for my
ordinariness! If you do love them, you can forgive me as
well,,*You will forgive me God, won't you?" Pull yourself
together sugar-plum1 You won't get anywhere w ith such futile
hopes. Don't you see the irony in your efforts to purify
yourself via garbage?'

After a while, we began to classify the writings into groups.

Ethel would transfer the pictures she took to her computer the
same day. filing them separately, scrupulously The most packed
category comprised those writings with a slur or smear in
them, "He wrho dumps garbage here is an ass/' was
undoubtedly the most popular one. In Galata, on a wall at the
Old Bank Street rested: “HE WHO DUMPS GARBAGE
HERE IS SON OF A +*++*!,tThc rest of the sentence was
scrawled out. In Fatih, just at the corner of Usturumcu Street,
both fronts of a house w ith its plaster falling apart w ere entirely
Oiled up with garbage w ritings, as if inscribed by someone
punished by the teacher who had to write the same thing over
a hundred times: “SHE WHO DUMPS GARBAGE IS A
WHORE, " Again in the same neighbourhood, in the Broken
Water Pump Street itTead:“HE WHO DUMPS GARBAGE
HERE IS AN ASS WHO IS ALSO THE SON OF AN ASS,”
Though swearwords were widespread, the variety was rather
limited. In Dolapderc, on the wooden sign tied onto a
mulberry tree with a string was written:"IF 1 ML PERSON
WHO DUMPS GARBAGE HERE IS A WOMAN, SHE IS

431
TH E FLEA PAL At E

A WHORE, IF A MAN, HE IS A PIMP" A few steps down

the street, another bit of writing caught the eye, this time m
front of a house: “THOSE WHO THROW GARBAGE
HERE DESERVE ALL SORTS OF SWEARWORDS" In
Ornektepe, on top of a wall that was falling to pieces, there was
loads of writing in black and white. Each bit of writing seemed
to have been produced on top of an earlier one, augmenting
the bedlam. One among them, written in indigo, looked prettv
new:“HE WHO DUMPS GARBAGE HERE IS A SON OF
A BITCH: ONE WHO IS A HUMAN BEING WILL
UNDERSTAND WHAT 1 MEAN"The most vulgar in the
swearword file was some writing in Do la pd ere: "HE WHO
THROWS GARBAGE HERE, FUCK HIS MOTHER,
WIFE, SISTER, HIS PAST, HIS FUTURE, HIS WHOLE
FAMILY"
Second in popularity were the ones based on human-animal
distinctions. In Galata. at Display Window Street a sign said:*'IF
YOU ARE A HUMAN BEING YOU WON T DUMP
GARBAGE, IF YOU ARE A BEAR,YOU SURE WILL.” In
the l itde I >iteh Street on the side-wall of a bank was written
in coal: “HE WHO IS FAR FROM BEING A HUMAN
WELL DUMP GARBAGE HERE" In Dolapdere, at the
entrance to an apartment building was written with chalk:
“HUMANLIKE HUMANS DO NOT DUMP
GARBAGE.1* Similar writings had covered both walls of the
ancient Assyrian church:“DON’T DUMP GARBAGE. BE A
11UMANVTHE ONE WHO DUMPS GARBAGE HERE
IS AS BASE AS GARBAGE ITSELF.,.1
In the third category, were those writings we gathered
which tried to promote consciousness of citizenship. In
Kustepe, tor instance, it was written: “HE WITH A HABIT
OF POLLUTING THE ENVIRONMENT HAS A HEAD
BUT NOT A BRAIN .'Again in the same neighbourhood, on,
a tin sign hammered on an intersection, was the sentence:
“LET US NOT LEAVE GARBAGE HERE, LET US NOT
DISRESPECT THE ENVIRONMENT" Unlike most of the

4A2
 FLAT NUMBER SEV j N

other garbage writings, this one was neatly written. In Balat,

around the old well in the middle of the bazaar, one read:
“THE ONE WHO HUMPS GARBAGE HAS NO
HONOUR. THIS PLACE BELONGS TO ALL OF US"; in
Ornekcepe, on the wall of a house that looked ready to
collapse at the slightest earthquake, was written: "THE ONE
WHO DUMPS GARBAGE HERE WOULD HAVE DONE
INJUSTICE TO HIS NEIGHBOURS:'The visitors of the
Greek Patriarchate in Pener were welcomed from alar by the
sign:“HE WHO DUMPS GARBAGE HERE WILL GROW
TO BE A MOST DESPICABLE PERSON
Quite a number of these writings were left incomplete.
Some looked worn out over time* others as if incomplete from
the start. THE ONE WHO DUMPS..." was written at all
kinds of corners in Istanbul, with the rest ot the sentence not
following. In Harbiye at Papa Roncalli Street, across the walls
of the elementary school, letters had dropped off the w riting:
“THE ONE WH DMP5 GARBAGE HRE WILL BECOM
AN AS”
Then there were also many bits of writing th.it gave
outright threats Among them, the one most often repeated
was; “HE WHO DUMPS GARBAGE HERE WILL GET
INTO BIG TROUBLE." In Fatih, the historic fountain next
to the Three Heads Mosque, was filled with garbage writings
loaded with threats: “DO NOT DUMP GARBAGE
HERE/OR ELSE YOU WILL BE DUMPED WITH
TROUBLE" Yet the worst among those containing threats
and curses was the one written on a piece of cardboard with a
felt-tip pen hanging on the wait of a busy street in the same
neighbourhood: "MAY 1 HE CHILD of HE WHO
THROWS GARBAGE HERE BREATHE HIS LAST”
In addition to the insulting, there were also many that were
wary too polite: ‘WILL YOU PLEASE DO NOT DUMP
GAIU3AGE; or‘IT IS KINDLY REQUESTED THAT YOU
DO NOT DUMP GARBAGE AT THIS SPOT.’ In the
entrance of the Kaptanpasa, an elementary school, there were

453
T H f FLEA PALACE

two signs back to back, one written for the students inside and
the other addressing the passers-by outside: “PLEASE LX>
NOT THROW GARBAGE INTO OUR SCHOOL
GAR HEN FROM THE OUTSIDE “There was a similar sign
on the wooden boards surrounding the construction at the
entrance to Asmahmestit, this tune half-Turkish, half-English:
DUMPING GARBAGE IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED,
PLEASE!" Once again, at Good Fortune Street:"WHOEVER
LOVES GOD SHOULD NOT DUMP GARBAGE HERE
IT IS KINDLY REQUESTED"
Among the garbage writings, ‘prohibited* was the most
frequent word. On the walls surrounding the Walladnan
Palace, engraved with big letters, was: "IT IS VERY
PROHIBITED TO THROW GARBAGE" Likewise, on the
side wall of a famous tailor in Harbiye, the writing was short
and ro the point: “GARBAGE HERE FORBIDDEN " The
word absolutely* was just as widespread. On the humungous
wall of the SSK Okmeydam Education Hospital Polyclinics,
highly visible from down the street was: "DUMPING
GARBAGE IS ABSOLUTELY PROHIBITED!" and a few
steps away from it: "TO DUMP GARBAGE DEBRIS
FORBIDDEN UNCONDITIONALLY."
There was almost never a name given under any of the
writing. They remained absolutely anonymous. Still, now and
then we bumped into some exceptions. In those situations
where the need to invest the writings with sonic sort of
authority was crystal clear, the name of the head of the
neighbourhood wras encountered the most. On the
Mesnevihane Street it was written: "IT IS REQUESTED
THAT NO GARBAGE BE DUMPED, OTHERWISE A
FINE WILL BE APPLIED!/THE NEIGHBOURHOOD
HEAD." Municipalities also got involved m the busmess:"THE
MUNICIPALITY WILL UNDERTAKE PENALTY
PROCEDURES CONCERNING THOSE DUMPING
GARBAGE HERE" Sometimes the inhabitants of the
neighbourhood owned up to the writing, as seen in Zeyrek:

434
 FLAT NUMBER Sl.VEN

“MAY GOD BRING MISFORTUNE ON THOSE

WHO PARK OR DUMP THEIR GARBAGE
HERE/NEIGHBOURHOOD RESIDENTS”
Writings concerning religion and faith came next. Around
the remains of the palace rebuilt by the Moldavian Prince
Dmitri Cantenur during 1688-1710, it was written: “FOR
ALLAH'S SAKE DO NOT THROW' GARBAGE HERE”
Like the Private Fener Greek High School, the surroundings
of various mosques too were filled with similar writings. At
Kagithane Smoky Street was a computer print-out: “THOSE
WHO HAVE RELIGION AND FAITH WILL KNOW
BETTER THAN THROWING GARBAGE HERE,” and a
hundred metres down: “MAY THOSE WHO DUMP
GARBAGE BE ETERNALLY PARALYZED.” On one of
the side streets opening up to the Kadikdy Square was: “GOD
WILL POUR CALAMITY ON THOSE WHO DUMP
THEIR GARBAGE HERE" In Fatih, at a garden wall
swMthcd with political campaign posters it said:“PLEASE DO
REFRAIN FROM THROWING GARBAGE HERE.
THEY CURSE YOU.” In the same borough, an old cemetery
squeezed between two apartment buildings had also had its
share of garbage writings. The from of an apanmem building
facing the cemetery wras painted from one end to the other in
capital letters: “FOR ALL AITS SAKE L>Q NOT DUMP
GARBAGE*”Then in Cihangir, on a historic, dry fountain we
chanced upon some writing, looking awesomely familiar:
“THERE LIES A SACRED SAINT AT THIS SPOT, DO
NOT DUMP GARBAGE;*
The smell of Istanbul reached the writings everywhere: at an
unexpected arc, on a secluded hill where gemes congregated,
in an ancient cistern, oil the long lost remnants of a mansion;
in dead end streets* flea markets and bazaars: on the facades ot
stylish apartment buildings* dmgy headquarters or hospitals
with an appearance so awful it made you sick: in cold looking
schools and at shrines the names of which were not even
included in God's maps...in each and every spot where the

43S
THE FLEA PALACE

aged and the recent intertwined there was garbage writing

scattered all around...
It did not take Ethel long to get bored. Before I knew it, she
drifted away from both the garbage project and me. In her
warehouse of lovers wherein each lover remained as just
another unfinished project, 1 too became an unfinished
project.

4
'What are you going to do with so many photographs**
frowned the Blue Mistress, discontentedly scanning my flat,
which increasingly resembled a depot more than a house.
‘What purpose will they serve?’
"I do not accumulate them to serve a purpose*
‘Why on earth are you doing this?' she insisted
1 do not have the impression of doing anything, I guess in
the last analysis* all my actions are determined more by not
doing than by my doing; lack of action rather than action, I
cannot help searching: when 1 search, I find, what 1 find I
collect, what I collect l accumulate and what 1 accumulate 1
cannot bear to throw away.
‘What is going to happen next?’ asked the Blue Mistress
adamantly.

437
»
NEXT...
WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN NEXT?" asked my
cellmate adamantly.
'There is no next. The guy just accumulates garbage
writings that will never be of any use to him,'
"Nonsense!' said my cellmate. 1 wasn't offended. After all,
that is the coarsest way ever invented of saying 'You have a
fanciful mind!'and he might be right,Whenever I get anxious
and mess up what I have to say, am scared of people’s stares and
pretend not to be so, introduce myself to strangers and feign
ignorance about how estranged I am from myself, feel hurt bv
the past and find it hard to admit the future won’t be any better
or fail to come to terms with either where or who I am; at am #

one ot these all too frequently recurring moments, I know I

don't make much sense, but nonsense is just as far removed
from deception as truth Deception turns truth inside out. As
for nonsense, it solders deception and truth to each other so
much so as to make them indistinguishable.Though this might
seem complicated, it's actually very simple. So simple that it
can be expressed b\ a single line

[ ruth is a horizontal line Be it a hotel corridor, hospital ward,

rehabilitation centre or train compartment; all are horizontal.
In such places, all your neighbours are lined up next to you on
a horizontal plan e, for a fleeting moment. You can not grow

44]
THE Ft E A PALACE

root* At these places , Honzontahty is the haven of evanescence.

I too have been living on a horizontal line for sixty-six days -
in the seventh of the ten cells lined tip next to each other here.
Lies are a vertical line. An apartment building, for instance,
erected with dais on top of one another with two layers of
cemeteries underneath and seven planes of skies above. Here
you can spread roots and grow branches as you please.'Vertically
is the shelter of permanence, a tribute to immorality.

Bonbon PaJace is an apartment building constructed on an

area of cemeteries. A vertical line that ascends floor by floor It
is my he* For I am narrating these stones not from a flat there,
but from the prison.
When on the 1st of May a group of revolutionaries
impatiently decided to break through the police barricade, !
_ a

was among them. W hen we were all detained and thrust in a

police bus ! chanced to sit beside a ginger-haired, flap-eared,
funny-faced man w ho did not at all show his age. I am grateful
to him as that day on that bus* seeing the fear in his widely
opened eyes enabled me to forget my own. While we were
taken to the police headquarters, he kept w hining, whimpering
and wailing that he had no interest in politics, that all he did in
life was to fumigate bugs. That nun was telling rhe truth. He
was indeed a bug himigator and had probably1 never hated his
job as much as he had done then. His name was not Injustice;
that 1 made up myself. 1 he name is not entirely bogus, however,
for he looked like someone who had seen plenty of injustice m
life; besides, his surname is true. He svas released the same day
anyhow.They released him, but arrested me.

442
 NEXT

Ever vincc 1 time here, 1 have not spent j single day without
thinking of Injustice Pureturk. Its .ill because of these bugs. I
happen to be a radical with a deep fear of insects Unfortunately
there are too many of them here, especially cockroaches 1 hear
them in the toilets, air vents and even the dents and crevices in
the walls. They keep scurrying around and encouraged by
darkness, incessantly multiply,,,but 1 can assure you that the
louse is the very worst,..
No doubt, in order to observe all of these creatures better,
you should come visit me and spend some time here. If you
have no time, however, you ought to be content with my
version of the story. Yet I too, ultimately speak only in my own
voice. Not that I'll foist my own views onto what transpires
but I might, here and there, solder the horizontal line of truth
to the vertical line of deception in order to escape the
wearisome humdrum reality of where 1 am anchored right
now. After all, l am bored stiff here. If someone brought me the
good news that my life would be less dreary tomorrow, I might
feel less bored today. Yet I know only too well that tomorrow
will be just the same and so will the succeeding days.
Nevertheless, I should not give you the impression with my
fondness of circles that it is only my life that persistently
repeats itself. In the final instance, the vertical is just as faithful
to its recurrence as the horizontal Comrarv to what many
presume, that which is called 'Eternal Recurrence' is germane
less to circles than to lines and linear arrangements,
I cooked up this story basically to overcome my bug phobia.
Dreaming of a surreptitiously garbage-collecting old widow in
some vertical world helped me to survive better the horizontal
line here of cells next to one another. Still, 1 cannot be
regarded as having entirely lied. If anything, l can be accused
of merging the truth with lies. Of returning to the beginning
rather than reaching a decisive end.
As tor me, I will not be staying in this prison too long The
sentence thev deemed fit for me is one vear and two months.
it #

Sixty-six days of that sentence are already over. Of these sixty-

*4$
THE FLEA PALACE

vix days,! passed the first week by getting used to my place and
tearing the bugs, and passed the rest trying to target my fear by
way of making up the story you read. Now chat the circle of
the greyish tin lid of garbage has stopped turning, 1 frankly' do
not knou how I am going to spend the remaining three
hundred and sixty days here.
However, as soon as l am released, the very first thing l want
to do is pay a visit to Injustice Pureturk, The first bug
hinugator in Turkey taken into custody for being a
revolutionary. Life is absurd, at its core lies nonsense* and if you
ask me. Fortuna must be long fed up with tackling the possible
answers to the impossible question; "What will happen to
whom when?’

444
GLOSSARY

Ashurt A turkish desert made of fruits* nuts and rice

Azmel The angel of death

BiUjiya hauhjs A common stone inscription meaning,'God

is strength, all else is folly;

Birkmz A fictivc character that symbolises the over-

westernised dandy

Barek A smiled pastry or pie containing spinach or

feta cheese

Bulgur Cracked wheat

Chibouk Cigarette holder

Cintanam An Ottoman ornamental design

*

Dede This word has two meanings in Turkish;

grandfather and a senior religious person,
usually in a larikat

Halm A traditional Turkish sweet made from nuts

and honey
t

Hidretlez Turkish festival symbolizing spring and new-

life, during which women write down their
wishes on paper and tie them to red roses

} iizma Decorative nose stud

Hauris The virgins in heaven

Jttmi/jinn An [slunk term meaning invisible spirit,
mentioned in the Koran and believed bv
Muslims to inhabit the earth, influencing
mankind by appearing in the form of
humam or animals

Kader Fortune

Katzenjamma Loud none from various sources; from the

German word, meaning anxiety or jitters
following intoxication

Lodes The Unions wind in Istanbul that blows in

trom the sea and is said to cause dizziness

Mezes A variety of small dishes served instead of a

/

main course

Ney A reed flute played especially in

Mawlawi music

Oleaster One of several shrubs of the genus Elae^tms

with yellow flowers followed bv olive-like
* ■

fruits containing a powers’ dust

Rah Turkish spirit of aniseed flavour

Smut A pastry baked m the shape of a circle with

a hole in the centre

lankat Mystical sisterhoods, brotherhoods of

Muslims that were historically separate from
the mainstream
*

Zlttthl A shrill Turkish pipe used to accompany

drums
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By Luiris i omlc and tragic, <h I jVn Puldcr (* an outstandingly

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Bonbon Palace was once a stately apartment block in Istanbi

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Theirs (i womanizing, hnrd-di inking academic With a

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Yi-'her the ruhbiH-h at Bonbon Palace is stolen, a mysterious
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’Picaresque’ Csi^rdun
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