April 9, 1984

April 9, 1984, was the date Kemal and Füsun arranged to meet at the İnci Patisserie in Beyoğlu for a serious conversation. After years in which Kemal’s regular visits to Füsun’s home had depended on silences, gestures, and carefully indirect exchanges, the appointment shifted the relationship toward a meeting between the two of them alone.

The Appointment and Its Context

The meeting was arranged after Kemal spoke with Nesibe, who told him that Füsun wanted to talk about what had gone unsaid. They agreed to meet three days later, at two in the afternoon, at the İnci Patisserie. The appointment came during a much longer rhythm of visits: from October 23, 1976, to August 26, 1984, Kemal went to Füsun’s home for supper 1,593 times over 409 weeks. April 9 thus fell within the final months of a period that had lasted seven years and ten months, when their connection had been sustained through repeated domestic evenings rather than private meetings.

The Day in Beyoğlu

On Monday, April 9, Kemal was too excited to sleep and too impatient to wait through the morning. He asked Çetin to take him to Taksim early, then walked through the shaded İstiklal Avenue, past shop windows and cinema entrances that recalled childhood outings with his mother. The crowds and familiar streets seemed to him to carry the promise of a happy future. He searched for a present for Füsun in Vakko, Beymen, and other shops, but could not settle on one; instead, he walked as far as Tünel.

Half an hour before the appointed time, Kemal saw Füsun outside the Mısırlı Apartments, looking into a shop window. She wore a spring dress patterned with large, bright polka dots on white, and glamorous sunglasses. Before she noticed him, he recognized that she was wearing his father’s earrings. Their encounter began with Kemal’s awkward remark about the coincidence of meeting there, turning the carefully anticipated appointment into a chance encounter on the street before they reached the patisserie.

A Change in How They Speak

At the patisserie, Füsun resisted letting Kemal’s conversation with her mother stand in for the conversation she wanted with him. She told him that he had already spoken to Nesibe and that it was now time for the two of them to speak directly. The insistence mattered: their relationship had long been shaped by a reason for Kemal’s visits that could not be openly named, and by a household routine that made his presence seem like ordinary sitting together.

Kemal leaned forward to light Füsun’s cigarette and whispered that he loved her, that their bad days were over, and that happiness awaited them despite the time they had lost. Füsun answered that she felt the same, but spoke cautiously and remained tense. The meeting therefore brought a declaration of mutual feeling without resolving everything between them: Kemal read the strain in her manner as evidence of powerful feelings she was trying to contain, while the direct conversation she had demanded was only beginning.

Private Time and the Years of Visits

The date’s significance rests partly on its contrast with the temporal structure of the preceding years. At the Keskin home, a large German wall clock stood near the door as a reminder of the outside world and its continuous, official time. The family’s practical clock, however, was television: each evening the screen displayed a clock before TRT’s seven o’clock news, and Füsun adjusted her wristwatch to it. Kemal remembered watching her calibrate it at supper, then exchanging a warm look with her when she had the time right.

Across 1,593 visits, Kemal typically arrived around seven and stayed until the television’s closing ceremony soon after midnight, averaging about five hours each time. The repetition did not make the evenings interchangeable. Silence, conversation, television, and ordinary movements around the table accumulated into a private measure of time, one Kemal later associated with individual household objects and remembered moments. The 1980 military coup and its ten o’clock curfew interrupted that routine, forcing him to leave before his longing felt satisfied. Against this prolonged pattern of visits, the scheduled meeting on April 9 offered a distinct kind of time: an afternoon set aside for Füsun and Kemal to speak plainly, even as her cautious response left their future unsettled.