Divorce Turkish Style
Read Divorce Turkish Style Online
Authors: Esmahan Aykol
Esmahan Aykol was born in 1970 in Edirne, Turkey. She lives in Istanbul and Berlin. During her law studies she was a journalist for a number of Turkish publications and radio stations. After a stint as a bartender she turned to fiction writing.
Divorce Turkish Style
is the third of the Kati Hirschel series. The first two are
Hotel Bosphorus
and
Baksheesh
, also published by Bitter Lemon Press.
Also available from Bitter Lemon Press by Esmahan Aykol:
Hotel Bosphorus
Baksheesh
BITTER LEMON PRESS
First published in the United Kingdom in 2015 by
Bitter Lemon Press, 47 Wilmington Square, London
WC
1
X
2
ET
First published in Turkish as
Åüpheli Bir Ãlüm
by Merkez Kitaplar, Istanbul, 2007
Bitter Lemon Press gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of the Arts Council of England and of the TEDA Project of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Turkey
© Esmahan Aykol/Merkez Kitaplar, 2007
English translation © Ruth Whitehouse, 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission of the publisher.
The moral rights of the author and the translator have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988.
All the characters and events described in this novel are imaginary and any similarity with real people or events is purely coincidental.
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
eBook ISBN 978-1-908524-584
Typeset by Tetragon, London
Contents
DIVORCE
TURKISH STYLE
Istanbul had become a dangerous place, especially in and around Ä°stiklal Street. I only had to mention that I was going out to the bank and Fofo would start fussing over me and wishing me luck. Not only that, he'd recently started rising early to prepare me wonderful breakfasts, saying how young and beautiful I looked, and embracing me before I set out as if we were seeing each other for the last time. But he was right. Anything could happen. There was a constant danger of disappearing down one of the many holes in the pavement that the council had opened up, or of being pushed under one of the huge trucks that sped along our street, despite its being officially closed to traffic.
In my attempts to stay alive, I'd taken to wearing cargo pants and comfortable shoes. I'd also stopped carrying a bag over my shoulder because it slowed me down, so now the roomy pockets of my cargo pants were filled with all sorts of items, including my mobile. Despite the initial embarrassment at venturing out in trainers, I soon found them to be invaluable for comfort and safety.
Actually, I'd made considerable progress. When the council started replacing the paving stones the previous year, I was barely capable of remaining upright when picking my way through the squelchy mud. Who'd have thought it now possible for me to jump over a two-metre pothole and land safely the other side? My previous limitations now seemed amusing. However, it was difficult to believe that Ä°stiklal Street was really meant to
be a traffic-free area for pedestrians to stroll about in comfort, because it was constantly filled with machinery, diggers, trucks and winches. Suitable attire, reliable reflexes, strong muscles and alertness â and bad enough manners to elbow other pedestrians out of the way â were essential.
It was incredible but true that the paving stones were being replaced for the second time in a year. Fofo told me that roads in Spain were constantly being dug up because it enabled successive governments to create newly rich contractors who were then beholden to them. Turkey seemed to be going the same way, judging by the number of men who had abandoned public transport and were now driving their wives around in shiny new Range Rovers.
Since moving to Kuledibi, I'd started going to the bank in Ä°stiklal Street once a week on Fridays, and that was more than enough. I'm not as young as I was, and one's calamity avoidance coefficient inevitably reduces over time.
That Friday, I went into Åimdi Café in Asmalımescit Street after visiting the bank and, as I sipped a Turkish coffee, quietly congratulated myself on having negotiated the toughest part of the journey. Provided I managed to make my way past the Swedish Consulate and down the slope in front of the German High School without mishap, I knew that I'd be safe and sound with Pelin and Fofo within five or six minutes.
Any readers who remember how Fofo had infuriated me by going off with his lover might wonder why I keep mentioning his name. Well, the affair was soon over and, after a few days in a cheap and nasty hotel, Fofo finally plucked up the courage to ask if he could come back to live at my place. Naturally, soft as I am, I couldn't bear to see him living like that, and gave in.
Okay, I admit that describing myself as soft is a bit of an exaggeration. However, I don't consider myself a bad person. After
all, it didn't even occur to me to fire Pelin when Fofo returned and threw himself so eagerly into working at the shop. I made her promise to complete her university course that year, and indeed trusted her to do it. There had been the usual explosion of summer visitors to Turkey, and I suspected that Pelin had ideas about training as a tour guide in order to prey on this influx of rich tourists. She needed telling that the gains to be made in Turkish tourism were small and that being a tour guide was a risky business. However, I wasn't the person to do that. It wasn't my business to wreck a young girl's dreams.
My business was selling crime fiction. With my shop in Kuledibi, I became, and indeed still am, the first and only specialist seller of crime fiction in Istanbul. I'm always being asked what made me think of doing this, but what could be more natural than selling a product I love? And I adore reading crime fiction.
Readers who have followed my progress through life will know that, after considerable difficulties, I'd succeeded in buying a bargain-price apartment close to the shop. Having raised a few loans to have the place refurbished, I'd now moved in. Thanks to Atakan, my friend Candan's cousin, the work was completed sooner and more cheaply than expected, which of course was a lovely surprise. I now took great pleasure in recommending Atakan to everyone. After all, he'd handed the keys back to me on the agreed date as promised, making me ashamed of my assertions that the construction industry was rotten to the core and totally untrustworthy. I didn't normally make such generalizations, but I'd had a few bad experiences with contractors and architects. Atakan reminded me that there are good and bad guys in every situation. That's how the world is.
However, one generalization that I considered to be true was summed up in that depressing film
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
. That men like blondes is beyond dispute. Take my friend Lale.
She went blonde and found herself a new lover even before her first retouch! Was that coincidence? And, would you believe it, the guy was none other than Erol, the bearded man living on the top floor of my new apartment block. Actually, he no longer had a beard because Lale didn't like it, and he certainly looked better without it. He and Lale had been together for over a year.
And me? I was still without a partner, as I had been for ages. I'd been thinking of going blonde too, because I felt that my appearance didn't conform to the Turkish perception of a German woman. However, I decided instead to spread the word that Germany was not a nation of blonds. Research apparently shows that only fifty-one per cent of German women and fifty-four per cent of German men are blond.
When I reached the shop, Pelin hadn't yet arrived and Fofo was in a flap.
“Where were you?” he cried.
Fofo's habit of watching third-rate TV series had taught him that Turkish was a language to be spoken with a succession of screams accompanied by exaggerated gestures and facial expressions.
“I thought something had happened to you!” he yelled.
“Stop shouting, for goodness' sake! My head's already pounding from the roadworks in Ä°stiklal Street,” I said.
“Look at this,” said Fofo, pressing a folded newspaper into my hands.
You may remember that I wasn't in the habit of reading newspapers. I preferred to read a good detective story rather than waste my time reading press rubbish. However, this piece of news, or at least the headshot of the smiling blonde, immediately caught my attention. It was as if she'd been created to support
my theory about the allure of golden-haired females. She was utterly and unbelievably beautiful. What's more, I recognized her from somewhere. Her face was the sort that, once seen, was unforgettable. I wondered if I'd seen her at one of the crowded clubs full of cigarette smoke and noisy music that Fofo dragged me to on Saturday nights.
“Where do I know that face from?” I asked.
“Take a good look. Don't you recognize the place?” said Fofo.
“Stop winding me up and tell me.”
“It's the little restaurant we go to for lunch.”
“But her hair⦠that woman isn't blonde,” I said, sitting down in the rocking chair, my eyes still glued to the photo.
“No, she used to be brunette.”
“So she's had it dyed.”
“Dyed to this year's colour.”
Since our decision to eat more healthily, we'd been lunching at a restaurant in the Tünel area, where we'd even shared a table with this woman a few times owing to lack of space. Whenever I'd seen her, she was picking at a minute salad. I glanced at the newspaper article and saw that she was Sani Ankaralıgil, aged thirty-two.
Sani Ankaralıgil had married into the renowned Ankaralıgil family, one of Turkey's richest. Six months previously, she'd left her husband, and subsequently applied for a divorce. She'd been found dead around noon the previous day at her luxury villa in PaÅabahçe, where she lived alone. Sani Ankaralıgil had apparently died as the result of a tragic accident. The police had taken a statement from her grief-stricken husband Cem Ankaralıgil, who had last spoken to her the previous week.