Family 1956 Chevrolet

The family 1956 Chevrolet is both a means of getting through Istanbul and a recurring private space in which Kemal’s relationship with Füsun changes. It transports him through streets made dangerous by political violence and curfew, but later carries him and Füsun alone together for driving lessons. The same car that once required caution and concealment becomes the setting for renewed closeness, with its stalled engine and closed interior intensifying the emotional charge of their time together.

Journeys Through Danger

As violence spreads through the city, the Chevrolet is driven by Çetin Efendi on the trips between the Keskin home and Kemal’s home in Nişantaşı. In 1978, bombs, armed clashes, and rival factions make the streets around Çukurcuma, Tophane, and Cihangir unsafe. Çetin Efendi is often caught in the crossfire and cannot be sure where to park or which coffeehouse is safe to wait at. Even so, he refuses Kemal’s suggestion that Kemal go to the Keskin home alone. The car’s journeys thus depend on Çetin Efendi’s vigilance as well as on the route: as they pass walls covered with posters, notices, and slogans, the two men exchange fearful looks in the mirror.

The car also figures in the uneasy crossing of curfew restrictions. Four months after the coup, Kemal and Çetin Efendi are driving home from the Keskin home when soldiers stop them on Sıraselviler Avenue, fifteen minutes before curfew. Kemal is stretched out on the backseat and has his papers in order, so at first he believes he has nothing to fear. But the soldier examining his identity card notices the quince grater beside him, making Kemal nervous. The object is incriminating not because it is forbidden, but because Kemal has secretly taken it from the Keskin home. Its presence turns an ordinary ride into a moment of exposure: the car protects and transports him, yet its backseat also reveals the private act he had hoped to keep concealed.

A separate late-night journey shows the risks carried by the car and its driver after curfew. Following an exchange of looks with Füsun at the Keskin home, Kemal leaves at ten past eleven, believing that she will ultimately choose him and that they will marry. Çetin Efendi drives him to the house in Nişantaşı, then leaves the Chevrolet in a garage on Nigâr the Poetess Street and walks home through the backstreets to avoid detection. Kemal’s happiness makes him forget the danger they have both incurred. The car’s role in the episode extends beyond the ride: once it is parked, Çetin Efendi still has to find his way home on foot under curfew.

The Car as a Confined Meeting Place

Eight years after the earlier period of intimacy between Kemal and Füsun, the Chevrolet becomes the setting for their first outings alone together. On April 15, Kemal picks Füsun up near Firuzağa Mosque for her first driving lesson. She has asked him not to collect her outside the Keskin home, choosing a corner higher up the hill, away from the neighborhood’s curious eyes. Their secrecy shapes the encounter from its beginning: they are together in public, but the meeting is arranged to avoid notice.

Füsun wears the same white dress printed with orange roses and green leaves to each lesson. The dress becomes associated with the effort and tension of driving: by the end of a session it is damp with perspiration. Three years later, Kemal will find it in her chest of drawers and instinctively smell its sleeves and front, using the garment to recall the lessons. The Chevrolet and the dress therefore become linked in memory. One held their encounters; the other remained a tangible reminder of them after the lessons had ended.

The car makes the lessons physically awkward and emotionally charged. Füsun has memorized the traffic regulations and can steer, but struggles with the clutch. When she lets it out too quickly, the engine stalls; she may panic and press the accelerator or brakes instead. Kemal watches her frustration and perspiration, and fears that each mistake is putting not only her license but their future happiness at risk. His attention to her is inseparable from the task at hand: he leans over to demonstrate how to change gears, and his hand brushes hers, her arm, or her thigh. In Kemal’s recollection, the shared space of the car brings their souls together before any further physical union there.

The stalled engine repeatedly interrupts the lesson and changes the atmosphere inside the car. After it shudders to a stop, the surrounding park seems profoundly quiet; Kemal and Füsun listen to an insect beginning its flight and register the wonder of being alive on a spring day in Istanbul. The mechanical failure, which frustrates Füsun’s attempt to learn, also suspends the lesson and leaves the pair alone with the silence. The Chevrolet’s enclosure thus becomes a place where practical instruction, embarrassment, desire, and stillness repeatedly meet.

Lessons, Tea, and Recollection

A lesson lasts at most two hours, though Kemal experiences it as seemingly endless. When they finish, the pair often fall into silence, their established response to the emotional undercurrents of being alone together. Kemal suggests driving to Emirgân for tea; Füsun agrees quietly. They follow the Bosphorus road, park beside the sea, and sip tea in the car. After the intensity of the lesson, the short drive and shared pause offer a modest continuation of their time together. Füsun may remain silent or speak about driving, while Kemal experiences the outing with overwhelming happiness.

The car’s meaning is therefore made through recurrence rather than through a single dramatic journey. It first carries Kemal under the protection of Çetin Efendi through dangerous streets, then contains the secret object he has taken from the Keskin home, and later gives him a private setting for lessons and tea with Füsun. Even its mechanical stalling becomes part of this pattern: a driving failure that prolongs their shared silence, and a remembered detail that later attaches intimacy to the Chevrolet itself.

Narrative Significance

The Chevrolet joins movement through the city to moments when Kemal’s life seems suspended. In the political episodes, movement means negotiating streets, checkpoints, and curfew; in the lessons, the car’s inability to move smoothly becomes an occasion for closeness. It also holds together present experience and later recollection. Kemal remembers Füsun’s recurring dress and the sensation of the lessons years afterward, turning the car’s ordinary function into part of the material record of their relationship.

The vehicle does not resolve the obstacles surrounding the couple. Their meetings remain discreet, their time together measured, and the lessons marked by hesitation and silence. Instead, the Chevrolet provides a temporary, enclosed setting in which those constraints can be felt directly. Its journeys and pauses preserve the contrast at the heart of Kemal’s memories: the city outside grows dangerous, while the car offers fleeting intervals of protection, solitude, and happiness beside Füsun.