İstiklal Avenue is a central passage through Kemal Basmacı’s remembered Istanbul, where the city’s streets and shop windows frame a pivotal meeting with Füsun. Its cool shade, familiar storefronts, and nearby cinemas make it more than a backdrop: it is a route through which Kemal’s anticipation and memory take visible form.

Setting and remembered character

On the sunny afternoon of April 9, 1984, Kemal Basmacı arrived early in Taksim and sought the shade of İstiklal Avenue. The avenue’s shop windows, cinema entrances, and dusty, damp-smelling passages recalled places he had visited with his mother as a child. The crowds moving through the district—to eat, see a film, or shop—seemed to embody the promise of an ordinary, happy future that intensified his own excitement.

The contrast between sunny Taksim and the avenue’s habitual shadow gives Kemal’s walk a distinct atmosphere. Rather than hurry directly to his appointment, he took refuge in the familiar streetscape, allowing childhood memories and the expectation of seeing Füsun to mingle as he moved through Beyoğlu.

The walk toward Tünel

Kemal searched in Vakko, Beymen, and other shops for a present for Füsun, but could not settle on one. He then walked all the way to Tünel to work off his nervous energy. Half an hour before their appointed meeting, he saw Füsun in front of Mısırlı Apartments, looking into a shop window. She wore a white spring dress with large bright polka dots and glamorous sunglasses; Kemal also noticed that she was wearing his father’s earrings.

The encounter begins through looking rather than conversation: Füsun has not yet noticed Kemal, while he takes in her reflection and appearance before approaching her. His awkward opening and her greeting mark the shift from an imagined reunion to an actual meeting. The avenue and its continuation toward Tünel thus hold the approach to a long-awaited conversation in the small details of walking, shopping, and watching.

Shop windows and shared walks

After meeting, Kemal and Füsun walked together in silence for a time. He occasionally looked into shop windows, but his attention was on Füsun’s reflection in the glass rather than on the merchandise. The crowds also noticed her, including women, whose attention she enjoyed. The street’s windows become a surface for both observation and reflected presence: Kemal follows her image while they move through the public gaze of Beyoğlu.

This attention to windows and walking belongs to a wider pattern in Kemal’s experience of Istanbul. After Füsun disappeared, he had tried to keep away from streets and places associated with her, imposing restrictions on his movements to avoid painful memories. Elsewhere in the city, the possibility of seeing her ghostly double drew him back into crowded places, which gradually became signs of her absence and presence. The 1984 walk on İstiklal Avenue differs from those imagined sightings: here Füsun is physically beside him, and the reflected image accompanies a real shared encounter.

Cinemas and the avenue’s narrative role

Beyoğlu’s cinemas extend the importance of this district in Kemal and Füsun’s renewed courtship. They met in Galatasaray, considered the posters, chose a theater, and entered cool, dim auditoriums to sit together and hold hands. In summer, some theaters offered double or triple features; the long screenings and intervals gave them time to watch films and quietly exchange news. These cinema visits made the district a setting for repeated, sheltered time together, distinct from the public walk and shop-window encounter on the avenue.

İstiklal Avenue’s significance lies in this movement between the city’s public bustle and the intimacy Kemal seeks within it. Its remembered shade and childhood passages steady him before the meeting; its shop windows turn his gaze toward Füsun; and the nearby cinemas provide a recurring place for their closeness. The avenue is therefore both a particular urban route and part of the novel’s larger transformation of Istanbul into a landscape organized by memory, anticipation, and love.