Tarık Bey’s death is both a family bereavement and a turning point in Kemal Basmacı’s relationship with Füsun. When Kemal arrives at the Keskin home in Çukurcuma neighborhood on March 9, 1984, he learns that Tarık has died of a heart attack. The news draws him into Füsun’s grief: they embrace, and, for the first time in nine years, lie together in closeness. Yet Tarık’s absence also unsettles the household’s carefully maintained routines. He had been the person most able to act as if he did not see the bond between them; without him, the performance of ordinary family life becomes harder to sustain.

The Circumstances of Tarık Bey’s Death

Tarık’s death comes two months after Füsun passes her driving test. That evening, Kemal is dropped off at the house at suppertime and notices that every window and curtain is open and that lights are burning on both floors. The unusual brightness contrasts with Aunt Nesibe’s habitual vigilance about wasting electricity: when a bedroom light was left on, she would send Füsun upstairs to switch it off. Expecting a quarrel between Füsun and Feridun, Kemal goes upstairs, but finds no supper laid out. The television is on; two neighbors sit before it, uncertain what to do. Efe the electrician tells him that Tarık has died.

The cause lies in a financial crisis that had already shaped Tarık’s later years. He had invested money with Kastelli, a banker whose business relied in part on advertising featuring actors known to Kemal. After the banker went bankrupt and fled the country, Tarık joined an association formed by people who had lost money to such bankers. Its members hoped to find a legal way to recover the savings of retirees and clerks, but their meetings often dissolved into arguments. Some victims threw rocks at banks or assaulted clerks; after attacks and looting, Tarık had distanced himself from the group. During the summer when Füsun and Kemal were occupied with driving lessons and swimming, however, he began attending again. On the day he died, a development at the association particularly angered him. He went home complaining of chest pains, and a doctor who arrived hours later confirmed that he had died of a heart attack.

Grief and the Reunion

Kemal’s instinct is to run to Füsun’s room, the small bedroom he had longed for years to enter. She is doubled over on the bed, crying. When she sees him, she straightens; he sits beside her, and they immediately throw their arms around each other. Füsun rests her head against his neck and chest, weeping so convulsively that her body shakes. Kemal strokes and gently combs her hair with his fingers. Each time he returns his hand to her roots, her sobbing rises again. Grief passes between them in touch and bodily response before either can make it orderly in words.

As he holds Füsun, Kemal recalls his own father’s death. He had loved his father, but their relationship had also contained tension and a kind of rivalry. Füsun, by contrast, had loved Tarık deeply and without reserve. Kemal understands her tears as grief not only for her father but also for the state of the world and the course of life. He comforts her with promises that everything will be fine and that they will be happy. Her answer is that she wants nothing anymore. Her despair is not resolved by his optimism, even as the embrace gives him an overwhelming sense of happiness.

Aunt Nesibe comes into the room and asks how she can live without Tarık; sitting on the bed, she begins to cry as well. Kemal stays overnight. He moves between the upstairs room, where Füsun continues to grieve, and the downstairs gathering of visitors, where he serves tea, empties ashtrays, and offers pastries. Tarık’s body lies in the next room while neighbors and acquaintances sit in silence, drinking tea, smoking, and watching television. Against this setting of public mourning, Füsun and Kemal lie side by side, locked in an embrace—their first such closeness in nine years. Kemal is at once grieving and filled with a will to live and a sense of the new life that might await him; the happiness makes him feel ashamed.

Funeral and Family Tensions

Füsun is especially distressed that she was not home when her father died. She and Aunt Nesibe had gone to a house in Moda, where Nesibe was finishing an urgent sewing job. Although Kemal had helped support the family, Nesibe still took paid sewing work in other people’s homes, and Füsun sometimes accompanied her. On the day Tarık died, he may have lain waiting for his wife and daughter. The missed final hours deepen Füsun’s sorrow and sharpen the loss surrounding the family.

Before the funeral, Kemal visits his mother in Nişantaşı and tells her about Tarık. She expresses genuine sympathy for Nesibe, but refuses to attend the funeral. At first she gives practical objections: there had been no newspaper announcement, and she questions why the service is not at Teşvikiye Mosque. When Kemal presses her, she reveals the reason beneath those excuses: she believes that if she attends, he will marry Füsun. She knows that Füsun is already married and that such a marriage would break Nesibe’s heart; she also warns that others would judge the match harshly. Her refusal makes explicit that Kemal’s attachment is no longer a private secret from his family, even if the future she fears remains uncertain.

Two hours later, mourners disperse after prayers at Firuza Mosque. Women, including Ceyda and Şenay Hanım, embrace Nesibe, though they are few. Kemal stands beside Feridun, whose flashy sunglasses mark him among the mourners. In the evenings that follow, Kemal returns to the house, but the atmosphere has changed. Tarık had been particularly skilled at acting as if he did not notice what passed between Kemal and Füsun. With him gone, the family can no longer fall back as easily on the comfortable, half-rehearsed routines of their eight years of shared dinners. His death therefore changes more than the household’s membership: it removes the person who helped make its unspoken arrangement seem natural.