Chapter 3 "Istanbul" I

When I was four, my six-year-old brother started school, and over the next two years, our increasingly tense, bittersweet peer relationship eased.I was relieved of our rivalry, of his greater strength than mine; I had the Pamuk's apartment and my mother's undivided attention all day long, and I was happier, enjoying the joys of solitude. I fetched my brother's adventure comics while he was in school and "read" to myself based on what I remembered he had read to me.One warm and pleasant afternoon, I was put to take a nap, but found that I was too energetic to fall asleep, so I opened an issue of "Tom Meeks", and after a while, I felt that I was called "Nose" by my mother The thing stiffened, and I was looking at a half-naked photo of "Red Fan", a string wrapped around his waist, and a smooth white cloth hanging like a flag from his groin, with a picture drawn in the center of the cloth. circle.

I had the same hard up feeling the other afternoon when I was lying in bed under the covers in my pajamas, talking to my bear cub who had been with me for a while.The strange thing is that this marvelous oddity--a delightful thing I had to hide--happened just after I had said "I'll eat you up!" to my little bear.Not that I have any deep attachment to the bear, I can create the same effect almost at will, just by saying the same threatening words again.Among the stories my mother told me, it was this line that stuck with me the most: "I'll swallow you up!" I understood that it meant not only to devour, but to annihilate.I later learned that the "geomorphs" of classical Persian literature—the hideous tail-dragging monsters associated with ghosts and ghosts, often seen in miniature paintings—were transformed into giants in the stories told in Istanbul Turkish.The image of the giant in my mind comes from the cover of the abridged edition of the classic Turkish epic "Papa Qorkut". This giant, half naked like the red fan, seems to me to be the master of the world.

My uncle bought a small projector around the same time, and during the holidays he went to the photo studio to rent short films, Chaplin, Disney, Laurel, and Hardy.He solemnly took down a portrait of my grandparents and projected the film on the white wall above the fireplace.Among the films in my uncle's permanent collection was a Disney film that he only screened twice—a brief performance just for me.The protagonist of the film is a simple, hulking, dull giant, the size of an apartment building.He chased Mickey Mouse to the bottom of the well, swept the well with one hand, pulled the well off the ground, and drank the well water like picking up a cup. When Mickey Mouse fell into his mouth, I screamed with all my might.There is a painting by Goya in the Prado, titled "Saturn Devouring His Child," in which a giant bites a human being he holds in his hand, and it still terrifies me.

One afternoon, I was threatening my bear cub as usual, but also showing him a strange kind of pity, when the door opened and I was caught by my father with my panties pulled down and my nose stiff.He closed the door a little softer than he opened it, and (even I could see it) showed some kind of respect.Before that, when he came home for lunch and took a break, he would come in and give me a kiss before going back to work.I wondered if I was doing it wrong for fun, and it was even worse than doing the wrong thing: it was at this point that the idea of ​​having fun was poisoned. My fears were confirmed after one of my parents' prolonged arguments, when my mother had left and our nurse was bathing me.She reprimanded me for being "like a dog" in a relentless tone.

I couldn't control my bodily reactions: I didn't realize they were unusual until six or seven years later when I was in junior high school. For so many years I thought I was the only one with this unholy power, and it was not uncommon to hide it away in my other world, where my fun and the evil within me could run free.I entered this world when I pretended to be someone else, somewhere else just out of sheer boredom.It was easy to escape into this world that I kept from everyone.I pretended to be in a submarine in my grandmother's living room.I just went to the cinema for the first time, to see an adaptation of Jules Verne's novel - and as I sat watching it in the dusty Palace Cinema, what terrified me the most was the silence.The frenzied and claustrophobic cinematography, the dark black-and-white interior of the submarine made it impossible to spot our home.I was too young to read the subtitles, but it wasn't hard to use my imagination to fill in the gaps. (Even if I can read the book well later, the most important thing is not to "understand", but to supplement its connotation with suitable fantasy.)

"Don't dangle your legs, you're making me dizzy," my grandmother said when I was clearly lost in my elaborate daydreams. My legs stopped shaking, but the daydreaming planes were still flying in and out of her smoke.After a while, I entered the forest with many rabbits, leaves, snakes and lions that I had previously identified in the geometric patterns on the carpet.I threw myself into comic book adventures, riding horses, setting fires, killing people.One of my eyes is always alert to the sound in the house, I will hear the elevator doors closing, and before my thoughts can return to the half-naked "Red Fan", I notice that our butler Ismail has arrived to our floor.I like to set fire to a house, to straf a burning house, to escape from a burning house through tunnels I dug with my own hands, and to slowly kill the flies that I get trapped between window panes and smoke-smelling sheer curtains ——Those who fell on the perforated plate above the electric heater are criminals who will eventually pay the price for their crimes.

Before the age of forty-five, whenever I was floating in a beautiful half-dream, I entertained myself by imagining myself killing people.My apologies go out to my loved ones — some really close ones, like my brother — and the many politicians, literary figures, businessmen, and mostly fictional characters who are on my list of victims.There is another sin I often commit: I will be very fond of a cat, but I will beat it in despair, and after laughing out of despair, I will be ashamed of it and give this poor cat Cats love more.One afternoon twenty-five years later, as I was serving in the military at the time, I watched a whole company of people gossiping or smoking in the welfare house after lunch, looked at these 750 almost identical servicemen, and imagined They were separated.As I stared at their bloody esophagus through the blue smoke of the welfare agency, a fellow soldier said, "Stop shaking your legs, boy, I'm tired. Enough is enough."

The only person who seemed to know anything about my private fantasy world was my father. I thought about my bear, and when I got angry I pulled out its only eye, and it was getting thinner as I pulled out more and more stuffing from its chest cavity.Or I'll think of the finger-sized football player who kicks his legs with the push of a button on his head - this is my third football player since the first two broke when I got emotional twice, and now this One was broken by me too, don't know if my injured soccer player is dying in his hideout.Or indulge in horrific fantasies, and imagine our maid Hanim saying she saw Ermine on the next roof--with the exact same intonation she used when she was talking about God.At these times, I would suddenly hear my father

Say, "What's going on in your little head? Tell me, and I'll give you twenty-five kulu." I wasn't sure if I should tell him the whole thing or amend it a little bit, or just tell a lie, so I fell silent.After a while, he'd laugh and say, "It's too late now—you should have told me right away." Did my father live in another world too? Years later, I found out that my strange game was what I called a "daydream".So my father's questions always caused me to panic.As usual, eager to escape my racing thoughts, I dodged his question and put it behind me.

Keeping the secret of the second world makes me move freely.As I sat across from my grandmother, a beam of light pierced the curtain—like a searchlight on a ship passing through the Bosphorus at night—and just by staring straight at the beam and blinking, I could make myself see a fleet of red spaceships Float by.Then I can call up the same fleet whenever I like, and go back to the real world, like when someone leaves the room and turns off the lights behind him (as in the real world throughout my childhood, people kept reminding me Turning off lights). If I fantasize about swapping places with Orhan in another house, if I yearn for another life beyond the museum rooms and walkways and rugs (how I hate those rugs) and those around me who love math and crossword puzzles Positivist men, if I feel that this dark, cluttered house confines me, rejecting anything that has anything to do with spirituality, love, art, literature, or even mythology (although my family later denies it), if I Sometimes I take refuge in another world, and it's not because I'm unhappy.That was far from the case, especially when I was four to six years old, I was a smart and obedient little kid, feeling the love from everyone I met, being kissed and hugged and getting Goodies that no good boy can resist: apples from the fruit shop (“wash to eat,” my mother would tell me), raisins from the man in the coffee shop (for me to eat after lunch), The sweets my aunt gave me when I ran into them on the street (“say thank you”).

If I have reason to complain, it is because I cannot see through walls; when I look out of a window, I hate not being able to see the house next door, the street below, but a narrow strip of sky; The smelly butcher's shop (I don't remember the stench of it, only when I got out into the cool street), too low to see the butcher with his knives (each as big as a leg) on ​​a wooden Chopping meat on a cutting board annoys me; I hate not being able to inspect the counter, the table top, or the inside of the ice cream cooler.When there was a small traffic accident on the street and a policeman on horseback was attracted, some adult would stand in front of me and I would miss most of the process.At the football games that my father took me to watch when I was young, whenever our team was in danger, every row of people sitting in front of us would stand up and block my view from the decisive goal.But to be honest, my eyes were never on the ball, but on the cheese bread, cheese toast, and foil-wrapped chocolates my father prepared for my brother and me.Worst of all is leaving the pitch and finding yourself trapped in a mass of legs pushing towards the exit - a dark, airless forest of wrinkled trousers and muddy shoes.Apart from beautiful ladies like my mother, I can't say I love adults in Istanbul, I'd rather think They are generally ugly, hairy and vulgar.They're too rude, too bulky, and too practical.Perhaps they had had a glimpse of another secret world, but they seemed to have lost the ability to marvel, to forget how to dream, a deformity which seemed to me to be the same as the growths on their knuckles and necks, in their nostrils and in their ears. The disgusting hair is exactly the same.So while I was content with their genial smiles and even gifts, accepting their constant kisses meant enduring the friction of their mustaches, the smell of perfume, and the smell of smoke.I see men as some kind of low, vulgar race, and I'm glad they're mostly safe out there on the street.