Like a Dog in Outer Space

Like a Dog in Outer Space is an image for Kemal’s loneliness after Füsun disappears: when the office empties, he fears being left alone as utterly as a dog sent into space by the Soviets. The comparison gives shape to a crisis that cannot be solved by ordinary company. Although he calls Sibel to the office, his fiancée, he cannot tell her that he wants refuge from loneliness rather than a return to their former relationship. He falls asleep beside her and dreams of Füsun, making the episode a compact portrait of how completely his attention remains elsewhere.

The Image and Its Scene

The phrase is the heading of a chapter in which Kemal’s grief has become difficult to conceal, even from employees at Satsat. His fear of an empty office is not simply a wish for company: he is afraid that solitude will intensify the sense of abandonment already produced by Füsun’s absence. The distant, isolating image of the space-bound dog enlarges that private fear into a condition of being cut off from the world.

Sibel arrives expecting that their earlier intimacy may resume. Kemal instead seeks the reassurance of her presence, without managing to explain what he needs. Their closeness briefly calms him; when he wakes, he has dreamed of Füsun, and the two dress in silence. The scene makes the contrast plain: Sibel can offer immediate comfort, but she cannot displace the person around whom Kemal’s longing is organized.

A City Recast as a Map of Absence

The chapter’s image belongs to a larger effort to manage longing by reorganizing daily life. Kemal forbids himself to visit the Merhamet Apartments, wait for Füsun, or handle objects that recall her. Earlier restrictions had proved easy to evade, so he devises a stricter mental map of Istanbul, turning places associated with their relationship into areas he must avoid.

On his altered Nişantaşı map, the Şanzelize Boutique, the Merhamet Apartments, the police station, and the corner where Alaaddin had his shop are marked red and declared off limits. Kuyulu Bostan Street, where Füsun’s family lived, is also barred. Orange streets may be crossed only in absolute necessity, while sober, and at a gallop in under a minute; even his home and Teşvikiye Mosque fall into this category. Yellow streets remain dangerous in a different way, because familiar routes can set off recollections. The map includes not only the roads between home, work, and the apartments, but also places from childhood and from the time he watched Füsun from afar. His self-imposed geography treats memory as a hazard that can be approached, crossed, or escaped only under strict conditions.

Ghosts and the Search Through Istanbul

Avoidance cannot keep Füsun out of Kemal’s sight. He imagines seeing her in crowded places: at the Palace Cinema, near the Dolmabahçe Clock Tower, in Beşiktaş Market, and at a window in Gümüşsuyu. These apparitions offer brief consolation, but he recognizes that they are products of his imagination. Even so, he begins frequenting places where they might recur, adding them to his mental map until Istanbul becomes a network of signs pointing back to her.

His wandering also becomes a search for the real Füsun and her family. When he believes he sees her ghost in the old neighborhoods of Vefa, Zeyrek, Fatih, and Kocamustafapaşa, he concentrates his efforts around the Golden Horn. A false sighting does not send him away; instead, he persuades himself that Füsun may be nearby and continues through the neighborhood. The city’s streets and coffeehouses acquire an enchantment for him because they seem to bring him closer to her world. The metaphor’s isolation therefore has a spatial counterpart: Kemal is alone, yet compelled to move through a city made intimate by absence.

From Solitary Routes to Shared Rooms

The later scenes in Beyoğlu offer a contrast to this earlier wandering. Kemal and Füsun meet in Galatasaray, choose films from the theater posters, and sit together in the cool, dim cinemas. Their hands find one another in the dark; between features, they exchange news in whispers. These meetings do not erase the earlier map of longing, but they change what the city can hold. Places once organized around imagined sightings and avoidance can again contain shared time, while the space-dog image remains a measure of the loneliness that preceded their renewed closeness.