Music by My Bedside. Kürsat Basar

drank tea, made small talk, and even played card games.

      I know it sounds like a strange way of life for a young woman in her early twenties.

      But this was how our days passed. No one did anything substantial, and no one thought about it.

      Some of the women expected their husbands to be assigned to a foreign country, and some of them had just come back from abroad. We shared memories, our experiences in other lands, and the new and interesting things we had encountered. Most of all, however, we discussed how underdeveloped our country was. As soon as the gossip about one subject was finished, chitchat about another began.

      “I know you’re bored to death, but please put up with it and be patient just a little longer,” Turgut often said, thinking I was blasé. “Soon the new assignments will be discussed.” He just couldn’t understand why I was not bored with the luncheons I had to attend with people much older than myself, the receptions and parties in the evenings, and with having to live in one room in a hotel.

      Someone who didn’t even know me very well would definitely know that I wouldn’t stay at that hotel for more than three days in a row.

      My mother attributed it to the fact that I had “finally settled down,” but my brother insisting on mocking me by saying, “Let’s wait and see. There’s something more to it than we know.”

      Ayla had still not got used to my being a married woman, and when she invited me out in the evenings, she usually forgot about Turgut. If the three of us went out together, she sulked and got bored. Once Turgut said, “That friend of yours seems to resent our marriage.”

      I had never liked going around in a group. I don’t like family visits either. Since Turgut was aware of this, he did not insist. He let me meet Ayla and my mother on my own, and to please him in return, I attended some receptions with him, though not often.

      Each time I met Fuat, I played the same game. He was unaware of it, of course. I used to try to guess the hidden meaning of the things he told me, his smile, or his jokes.

      Then I would laugh at myself. It was obvious that he wasn’t interested in me. He joked with everyone. He flirted with all women. He paid compliments to all the ladies.

      Sometimes I heard him say to another woman, “What a nice outfit you have, it surely becomes to you. My eyes were dazzled as soon as you came in.”

      Later, when he asked me a simple question, he wouldn’t understand why I gave him such a short and sharp answer.

      Fool!

      Once he did not come for three days in a row.

      I knew he was in the city.

      When he came on the fourth day, I didn’t go down for lunch, saying that I was ill.

      This was the game I played—a childish game that he wasn’t aware of.

      It really was childish.

      Then something happened.

      On the day when I feigned illness and didn’t join the group for lunch, Fuat returned to the hotel in the afternoon. He was alone.

      I was in the tearoom, in full make-up, sipping tea and reading a book.

      It was evident that I wasn’t ill.

      I didn’t know what to do when I saw him all of a sudden in front of me.

      It was not his habit to come to the hotel in the afternoon.

      “Good for you. You recovered quite fast,” he said smiling. “I thought of paying a visit to our little patient.”

      He sat down and made himself comfortable. I blushed and mumbled something.

      He ordered a coffee and lit a cigarette, remaining silent while staring into my eyes. His gaze seemed to pass right through me. His thoughts were probably wandering. His legs were crossed, and he kept swinging one of his feet up and down.

      He picked up my book and said, “Do you like Hüseyin Rahmi?”

      “Yes,” I replied. “I read his books especially when I’m depressed. He makes me laugh. I laugh, and at the same time, I feel sad.”

      “You feel sad? Why?”

      “So many years have passed since he wrote these books but not much has changed, has it?”

      “Life doesn’t change that easily,” Fuat replied. “But maybe this proves the craft of a writer.”

      “Yes,” I said. “In this book, he ridicules columnists and journalists in such a way that I almost fainted with laughter!”

      “Why don’t you lend it to me so that I can have a good time too. I need to read such a book these days.”

      “You know what,” I said, “when he died, they found many gloves and hats in his home, which he had knitted himself. He used to worry about what would happen to his cats after he died.”

      “Novelists are strange people,” he said. “If they weren’t, they wouldn’t try to create new worlds to escape to.

      “Don’t say that too loud and anger the novelists. What kind of novels do you like?”

      Fuat thought for a while, and then replied, “I guess I like those that resemble an attic.”

      “An attic?”

      “Yes,” he continued. “In complete disarray and full of things scattered everywhere. Like a magical attic. When you read, you lose yourself in it. In all the stuff there, you find some things that suit you. Eventually, you realize that disorder and confusion are in fact complete and in accord.”

      He drew on his cigarette. “Aren’t our lives like that, too?”

      “I don’t know,” I said, “perhaps you’re right.”

      I was limp and helpless, trembling out of nervousness. All the waiters were looking at us. I tried not to talk much, but at the same time talked incessantly. Every word I said rang sharply in my ears as soon as it was out of my mouth, as if I had said something stupid, and to make up for it, I said something else again.

      Finally, he finished his coffee, extinguished his cigarette, leaned a little forward in his chair, put my book on his lap, and whispered, “Young lady, I knew you weren’t ill.”

      Immediately I relaxed. He hadn’t been so close to me since the day we had danced. Unable to look into his eyes from such a short distance, I looked at the floor.

      “Have you come all the way here just to tell me that?”

      He stood up, and as he left, said, “No. I came here to see you.”

      There was nothing odd in what he said, but I froze, as if he had just told me the greatest secret ever.

      He left as quickly as he had come.

      Things did not end there.

      After that day, Fuat often came to the hotel in the afternoon, and if he saw me there, he sat with me. We chatted about this and that and drank tea. Although neither of us voiced it, we had a secret deal that these meetings were to take place at hours when no one else would be there but the two of us. We never agreed on a time to get together, and neither of us knew whether the other would be waiting. Still, we managed to meet.

      What did we talk about? Mostly books and films rather than daily events. Sometimes he told me about his childhood and his school years. I had the habit of reading foreign newspapers and magazines. He was interested in what they contained and often asked me to save articles that attracted my attention. This became my special concern. Two scientists in Cambridge had discovered the secret code of human beings. They claimed that each one of us had a unique inner written formula. No one had the same code. After deciphering these codes one day, it would be possible to find cures for all diseases