Based on Real Contradictions (Ch. 3)

Chapter 3: Ayşe

(Chapter 2 may be found here)

EARLIER, BACK IN THE HOUSE – Onur, annoyed at the absence of his beer of choice, was drinking some wheat beer he absolutely hated, but at least it wasn’t one of those awful IPAs, as he looked around Beren’s house, trying to get a sense of it.

The decorations were diverse, from abstract depictions of female nudes to African masks. The books, found on almost every surface not covered in drinks, were mostly in English and German. He wondered who Beren’s roommates were, and if they were Turkish people among the party-goers, or “foreigners” who had taken the night off to enjoy their non-Turkish social circles.

In fact, Onur hated parties like this. He hated them even more than he hated rakı geceleri, both of which he believed to be thoroughly bourgeois. But he was not above enjoying free alcohol and getting the chance to chat with a girl. He had been less lucky lately, which was probably his fault. You see, lately…

And there she was. The brown colour of her big eyes visible even in profile, with a long, sloping nose, there she was: the girl he had to talk to.

Her headscarf made her easy to pick out of the crowd even from across the room at this alcohol-drenched gathering. He ambled towards her knowing that, even as she walked into the next room, he would still be able to find her.

For her part, Ayşe knew that she was being watched. Not because she had taken any notice of Onur whatsoever, but she could feel someone’s eyes on her from some angle. When she had first arrived at the party, she knew that many people would stare at her, but this was different. She walked into the next room, not sure if she was trying to evade or trap the eyes, and their owner.

She had chosen the quiet, mostly empty little dining room she walked into because it contained one of two people at the party she knew, other than Beren. The kitchen being so overcrowded made her feel even more lonely, because she was afraid to speak to anyone there.

“Hey Barış,” she said to the bald young man staring out the window at the street, his hands clasped on the window sill as if he might fall if he let go.

“Ayşe, please, I’m going to throw up.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I drank too much. Nolur Ayşe, benim için dua et.”

“Sen kendin et. Why do you do this to yourself?”

Barış turned around and looked her in the eye, as if begging for mercy. “To escape the yalan dünya,” he said, hoping to find some common ground with his religious friend. “Oh, hi Onur.”

“Hey, Barış. Who’s your friend?”

“This is Ayşe,” explained Barış, “she’s HEUUULGHHHHHHHH!”

Barış began to vomit onto the floor. Terrified, Ayşe and Onur, with varying speed and competency, attempted to drag him into the toilet to finish expelling the poison.

 

THE FRONT STEPS – After Barış had been saved from himself, Onur offered Ayşe a cigarette, which she accepted. The front steps were empty by then, with all the other would-be smokers likely inside poisoning themselves with alcohol instead.

Onur, visibly drunk, attempted to lean towards Ayşe without touching her. Despite his alcohol-inflected voice, she found his presence soothing and was willing to open up to him.

“Hatay, eh?” Onur asked, after learning her origins. “I thought you were all Alawites down there.”

Ayşe was trying to read his intentions, how much he really wanted to get to know her, and how much this was an obligatory set of questions he needed to ask a girl before he took advantage of her.

“No, there are Sunni Arabs too.”

“No, sure, I just, thought, you know, I mean… not in Hatay. Or I thought. You know. Only in Mardin or something.”

“I see what you mean, but no I’m from Hatay. And I’m… I mean my family is Sunni. I don’t believe the same things the Diyanet believes.”

Onur laughed, the laugh of an atheist trying not to offend a believer. “Ben de inanmıyorum ya.”

“Where is your family from?” asked Ayşe, wondering if men’s egos meant that asking about them encouraged their sexual dominance, or if drawing attention away from herself might distract him, or put him on the defensive.

Onur indeed felt put on the spot by being asked to talk about his own background: “Kayseri, but, really we’re Circassian.”

 

THE PREVIOUS SUMMER, KAYSERİ – Onur sat alone with his mother at the sofra, eating sucuklu yumurta and lost in thought. He was suspicious that his mother was so completely dressed so early in the morning. Ordinarily she would be wearing her nightgown. Instead, not only was she fully dressed in a pantsuit, but she was wearing her loose headscarf indoors, which she did not always wear even to go out.

“Onur, can you pass the helva?” asked his mother, seemingly innocently. Onur refused to look at her as he passed her the helva. She was up to something for sure.

She took a dainty bite of the helva with a small fork. She washed it down with dark, sugarless tea. Turning to her son, she looked him up and down, concerned.

“Is everything all right, Onur?”

Onur looked up at her, suspicious and annoyed. “Yes, Anne. Everything’s fine.”

Returning to her own plate, Onur’s mother began sawing herself impossibly small bites of the börek with her butter knife. Onur watched her and joylessly shovelled a big bite of bread covered in egg and sucuk into his mouth.

“I only ask because,” began Onur’s mother, without looking up from her task, “last night you seemed fine. Did you not sleep well?”

Onur sighed an exaggerated sight and put down his food. “I’m sorry, Anne. It’s just that I got an e-mail from my advisor saying he’s noticed a sharp decline in the quality and quantity of my work since last semester.”

Onur’s mother looked over, concerned. “Is it because you spend so much time on politics?”

“Anne!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

They continued to eat in silence for some time.

“You know Uncle Salih?”

“Babamın asker arkadaşı olan mı?”

“Yes, you know his daughter, Emel?”

“ANNE!”

He knew she was up to something, and there it was. Why had he even come back for the summer? It was just going to be this every day: ‘When are you getting married?’, ‘Have you met this Circassian girl, that Circassian girl?’

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” his mother exclaimed. “I didn’t mean any harm!”

Onur picked up his bread plain and began biting off big mouthfuls without egg or sucuk or even salt. It didn’t matter if he added anything anymore, it all turned to ash in his mouth.

The doorbell rang.

“Oh!” said his mother, excitedly. “I wonder who that could be!”

Onur threw his bread onto his plate and laid back in his chair, watching in slow motion as his mother practically ran to the door and opened it.

“Oh, hello Emel! What a lovely surprise to have you drop by!”

Onur leapt up from his chair. “Anne, what is this? I’ve had enough of this! Leave this fantasy behind, I don’t want to hear about any more Circassian girls! Hello, Emel, sorry about this.”

“It’s fine,” said Emel, who stood with Uncle Salih behind her like a prisoner being led from her cell to a hearing committee.

Onur stormed towards the study. “I mean it, Anne! No more Circassian girls!”

Flinging the study door open wide, he looked in horror at a small circle of relatives, cousins and uncles and aunts, gathered around a table, as if a war council. They stared back at him, emotionless. On the wall hung a bulletin board, displaying his picture, connected to five or six girls pictures by coloured string. Next to each picture was pinned a small body of text he couldn’t make out. At the bottom, in large letters, was the label for this conspiratorial plot: “Circassian brides.”

 

THE FRONT STEPS – Onur finished his tale of horror and woe to a genuinely transfixed Ayşe, who nodded knowingly as she spoke: “Of course, I know exactly what that’s like. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to study abroad.”

“Yes,” said Onur, turning to look Ayşe in the eyes. “We all have so many pressures we have to face, back in the country. So many rules that are imposed on us, by family, by the neighbourhood, by society… That’s why it’s good to be living so far away from all of that. Anywhere but Turkey, away from their dictates, we can be free.”

Onur leaned closer to Ayşe as he spoke these words. “Free from ridicule, free from imposition, free from judgement…”

Ayşe, interpreting Onur’s drunken lean as nothing more than a temporary loss of balance, responded as normal: “It’s true, I feel so much freer since I came here. Nobody can gossip about me to my family. They can’t judge me anymore.”

Onur leaned closer still, closing his eyes, raising his hand in anticipation of placing it beneath the folds of her headscarf: “Yes, nobody will judge what you do here. I certainly won’t judge you.”

Ayşe suddenly became aware of what was going on, but before she could react, a screaming woman’s voice pierced the night air: “ONUR! GET BACK IN HERE!”

Oya came bolting out the door and pulled Onur up onto his feet. “Onur, Fırat’s doing it again! Come on!”

Oya turned on her heels and sprinted back into the house. Onur sighed at his defeat.

“I’m sorry, I have to go. Can I get your number?”

Ayşe looked confused. She wasn’t sure if she was angry at him, or disappointed. At any rate, she was relieved she didn’t have to decide that after he had imposed himself on her.

“My… my number?”

Onur glanced distracted at the door, knowing that duty called. “Yeah, your number. I want to stay in touch. We could meet up and talk some more.”

“You could add me on Facebook?”

“Face kullanmıyorum. Baksana bi…”

Onur produced a business card from his tattered wallet and handed it to her. “Here’s my card. E-mail me, text me, call me, stop by my house in a few hours, I won’t be sleeping until quite late. Please, I’m really interested in talking more.”

He bolted through the front door to go and save his friend, leaving Ayşe alone on the front steps. Barış emerged moments later, his usually pale face looking paler still for the vomiting. He extended a cigarette to her, and she accepted.

As Ayşe lit her cigarette, Barış caught sight of the business card in her hand. “What’s that?” he asked, with genuine curiosity.

“Nothing,” she replied, tossing the card aside and allowing it to blow down the street, into the night.

“Chapter 4: the Wreckage”