Kemal buys the Jenny Colon handbag and meets Füsun

Kemal buys the Jenny Colon handbag and meets Füsun at the Şanzelize Boutique in the spring of 1975, in an encounter whose outwardly ordinary errand becomes the decisive beginning of his attachment to her. He arrives intending to buy a gift for his fiancée, Sibel, but leaves unsettled by the young shop assistant he had not recognized: Füsun, his distant cousin, who had recognized him immediately. His attempt to dismiss the encounter cannot undo its force, and the boutique later becomes one of the places he forbids himself to visit as he struggles with longing.

The Gift and the Engagement

The encounter grew out of preparations for Kemal and Sibel’s formal engagement. On April 27, 1975, as they walked along Valikonağı Avenue after supper at Fuaye Restaurant, Sibel spotted a Jenny Colon handbag in a shop window. Their engagement party was planned for mid-June so that Sibel’s friend Nurcihan could attend from France. Sibel had arranged for Silky İsmet to make her dress, and she and Kemal’s mother had discussed sewing pearls onto it. The engagement was expected to be lavish, in keeping with Sibel’s father’s wish that his only daughter’s celebration rival a wedding.

The next day, Kemal returned to the shop to purchase the handbag. He reflects that he had never been one of the polished playboys who readily bought women presents, though he may have wished to be one. The boutique belonged to a particular Istanbul world: affluent, Westernized housewives stocked shops with goods brought from Paris and Milan in luggage, alongside copies of dresses from imported magazines such as Elle and Vogue. In that setting, the handbag was both a planned engagement gift and the occasion for an encounter Kemal had not anticipated.

Recognition in the Boutique

At about half past twelve, Kemal entered the small, cool, dark shop from the bright spring sun. A bronze camel bell sounded at the door; its two notes would remain associated with the moment for him. He asked for the cream-colored handbag displayed in the window, and Füsun went to retrieve it. She slipped off a yellow high-heeled pump to reach the mannequin, then showed him the bag’s pockets and secret compartment, taking out the card marked Jenny Colon with a grave, almost intimate attentiveness.

Only then did Kemal greet her as a grown-up he thought she might not recognize. Füsun answered that she had recognized him immediately, but had decided not to disturb him when she saw that he had not recognized her. Her explanation exposes the unevenness of the encounter: Kemal is startled into awareness, while Füsun has already understood who is before her. The silence that follows leaves him unable to act naturally, unsettled by her beauty, her short skirt, or something he cannot identify.

The handbag cost 1,500 lira, a sum equivalent at the time to six months’ pay for a junior civil servant. Füsun offered to ask the proprietor, Şenay Hanım, about a special price, but she was away at lunch. Kemal said the price did not matter and counted out the money. Füsun wrapped the bag with care, though her inexperience showed, and placed it in a plastic shopping bag. As she handed it to him, he admired her arms and quick, elegant gestures. He asked her to give his respects to Aunt Nesibe and her father, but could not remember Tarık Bey’s name in time.

An Attempt to Leave the Moment Behind

Outside, Kemal was pleased with the purchase and told himself that he loved Sibel and would forget both the shop and Füsun. That resolution sits beside the intensity of the encounter: while Füsun wrapped the bag, Kemal imagined his ghost embracing and kissing her, then immediately dismissed the daydream as absurd and insisted that she was not exceptionally beautiful. The contradiction makes the purchase more than a simple gift-buying errand. He exits with the bag for Sibel, but the encounter has already divided his attention between the life he is preparing to enter and the cousin he has just rediscovered.

The boutique’s importance extends beyond this first meeting. Much later, Kemal recalls that Şenay Hanım gave him the shop sign that had hung on the door, along with other objects connected to Füsun, without questioning his intense interest in the long-closed establishment. Her readiness led him to understand that unusual details of his story had circulated more widely than he had assumed. The shop thus persisted not only as the location of the encounter but also as a material remnant through which its history could be recovered.

The City Rewritten by Longing

As Kemal tried to resume ordinary life, he imposed restrictions on himself: he forbade himself to visit the Merhamet Apartments, wait for Füsun, or touch objects that reminded him of her. Because he kept finding ways around these prohibitions, he devised a mental map of Nişantaşı and marked certain streets and places as forbidden. The Şanzelize Boutique, near the crossing of Teşvikiye Avenue and Valikonağı Avenue, became one of the red-marked zones, alongside the Merhamet Apartments and other places associated with his memories. He marked other streets as areas to enter only in absolute necessity, without having drunk, and at a gallop; still others required caution because lingering could intensify his suffering.

Avoidance did not make the city neutral. Kemal began seeing imagined versions of Füsun in crowded public places, recognized that these apparitions were not real, and nevertheless sought out locations where they might appear. He added such places to his mental map until Istanbul became a galaxy of signs recalling her. Later, while searching neighborhoods including Vefa, Zeyrek, Fatih, and Kocamustafapaşa, he found that even streets marked by poverty and political threats could seem enchanted when he believed Füsun might be nearby. The path from the boutique encounter to this altered geography shows how a moment he first tried to dismiss became a lasting pattern of memory, avoidance, and pursuit.

A Later Contrast

After Kemal and Füsun reunited, their meetings in Beyoğlu cinemas offered a striking contrast to the first visit to the boutique. There, they selected films together, sat in the dim theaters, and held hands in secluded seats, as though they had all the time in the world. In one summer screening, Füsun’s hand landed expectantly on Kemal’s lap, and his hand closed around hers. The quiet intimacy of these later encounters reverses the boutique’s first silence: what began with Kemal unable to act naturally becomes a shared, if still precarious, closeness. The handbag meeting remains the point from which that long emotional and spatial history unfolds.