Füsun's Home in Çukurcuma is the setting where Kemal’s hoped-for reunion with Füsun turns into years of regular suppers with her family. At Dalgıç Street, No. 24, he encounters both the awkward limits of their renewed closeness and the steady domestic routine that will shape his life for nearly eight years. The house matters not only as a place he visits, but as a private world whose repeated meals, television viewing, and small gestures become the substance of his memories.

Address and Return

After receiving a letter bearing the Çukurcuma address, Kemal learns that Füsun’s family can be found at Dalgıç Street, No. 24. He restrains himself from going immediately, telling himself that if he hopes to marry Füsun he must not appear too eager. On May 19, 1976, he finally sets out in the rain, telling Çetin Efendi that they are taking a children’s tricycle back to Nesibe the seamstress. He also collects the pearl earrings his father had given him and brings them along with a large bouquet of red roses.

The arrival carries the force of a reunion Kemal has imagined many times, but the actual welcome is more restrained than his expectations. Nesibe the seamstress answers the door, and Füsun’s father, Tarık Bey, waits on the landing. At first Kemal mistakes Füsun for a sister because her dark hair makes her look different from the image he has kept. When he realizes who she is, he enters expecting to embrace her; her expression and discomfort make clear that she does not want that. They shake hands instead, and she admires the roses without taking them from him. The house thus marks a return, but not an immediate restoration of their former intimacy.

A Household Organized by Repetition

Kemal’s visits settle into a precise, durable pattern. His first regular supper visit was on October 23, 1976, and his last night there with Füsun and Nesibe the seamstress was August 26, 1984. Across 2,864 days and 409 weeks, he records 1,593 suppers, an average of about four visits a week. Some weeks he appears every day; when he tries to stay away, he never lasts more than ten days. The family comes to expect him and keeps a place for him at the table, even though his reason for coming—to see Füsun—cannot be openly stated. The household’s euphemism is that he comes to sit.

The duration of these visits is also shaped by the house’s evening routine. Kemal usually arrives around seven, watches television with the family through the evening, and leaves after the national closing ceremony near midnight. By his own estimate, he spends about five hours there on an average visit, though he is sometimes present longer. The living room and dinner table become a repeated setting in which ordinary domestic activity continues around his attention to Füsun: she carries dishes between the kitchen and dining area, while her parents watch films, quizzes, news, or other programs. To Kemal, her passage across the room can seem more absorbing than the television itself.

Clocks, Television, and Public Time

A large German-made clock hangs by the door. With its wooden and glass case, pendulum, and chime, it stands as a reminder of time’s continuity and of the public world beyond the household. Yet television increasingly performs the practical work of marking the hour. At seven each evening, before the news begins, a clock appears on the screen; Füsun checks her wristwatch against it, while Tarık Bey consults one of the pocket watches he uses. Kemal watches Füsun make the adjustment and register his attention with a smile when she has the time right.

The contrast between the wall clock and the television gives the household’s routine a wider historical dimension. Wall clocks had once signaled Westernizing domestic taste and the aspiration toward modernity, but radios, wristwatches, and then television altered how people organized daily life. In the Keskin home, the older clock remains present even as the television sets the evening’s shared rhythm. Its ticking or chime can interrupt the room, and the family sometimes teases or argues over whether it should be stopped. For Kemal, the clock’s sound also enters his private hours: on nights when he wakes miserable after drinking, hearing it chime in the corridor comforts him.

Visits Under Political Restrictions

The house’s regular evenings are not outside history. In September 1980, a military coup brings martial law and a ten o’clock curfew. Kemal must leave at a quarter to ten, cutting short visits that had usually continued until around midnight. As Çetin Efendi drives him through streets emptied by the approaching curfew, Kemal experiences the shortened evening as a new deprivation: he has not had enough time with Füsun. The political restriction therefore changes not only his route home but the measure of what the household can give him.

The family’s domestic time also persists through the television programs that fill the evenings, including news and broadcasts shaped by political events. For Kemal, the national schedule and the private schedule overlap at the dinner table: the screen announces the wider world, while the people gathered around it sustain the repeated encounter he has come for. The house provides continuity, but that continuity remains vulnerable to forces beyond its rooms.

Memory and the Meaning of the Home

The recurring visit turns household objects and gestures into units of memory. Kemal associates items he has collected with particular evenings at the dinner table; later, seeing them in the Merhamet Apartments can call back not just an isolated moment but the larger experience of sitting with Füsun and her family. The house is therefore present even when he is elsewhere: its domestic details become a way of recovering the time spent there.

This attachment is part of Kemal’s larger remaking of Istanbul through memory. During an earlier effort to forget Füsun, he marks streets and places associated with her as areas to avoid. Later, while searching for her family, he wanders through poor neighborhoods of the old city, hoping that an apparition of Füsun will lead him closer to the real woman and to her surroundings. His movement through the city makes the home a destination charged with years of absence and anticipation. When he can no longer visit Füsun in Çukurcuma during her separation and divorce, he meets her in Beyoğlu cinemas instead. The change of setting underscores what the house had provided: a recurring place to see her within the rhythms of family life, even when their relationship could not be openly defined.