Kemal and Füsun Get Engaged at the Büyük Semiramis Hotel

The engagement at the Grand Semiramis Hotel marks the point at which Kemal Basmacı and Füsun’s renewed relationship becomes a formal promise of marriage. On their European road trip, after nine years of longing and a long period of separation, they stop near Babaeski; at dinner, Kemal produces rings bought a week earlier at the Covered Bazaar, and Çetin Efendi officiates. The ceremony is modest and improvised, but the sleepy guests’ applause gives the couple’s private hope a public witness.

Background: From Separation to Shared Plans

Before this journey, Kemal had tried to force himself to forget Füsun. He prohibited himself from going to the Merhamet Apartments, waiting for her, or touching the objects that reminded him of her. When such rules proved easy to evade, he made a mental map of Istanbul’s forbidden places: the Şanzelize Boutique, the apartments, Kuyulu Bostan Street, and other locations connected to Füsun. The map turned ordinary routes into hazards of recollection, an attempt to regulate through space a longing that had not ended.

That effort to avoid her gave way to a different, equally consuming relation to the city. Kemal began seeing Füsun’s ghost in crowded places and marking those locations on his mental map; Istanbul became a network of signs that recalled her. In the poor neighborhoods of the old city, he searched for her family and lingered even after an apparition proved false, finding himself drawn to the streets and people around him. His recollection of those searches would later include an unexpected happiness, but at the time the sightings offered only brief consolation within an ongoing absence.

The road trip follows a gradual return to intimacy rather than an abrupt reunion. After Füsun set conditions for their renewed relationship, Kemal arranged for a lawyer to represent her in the straightforward, mutually agreed divorce from Feridun. Though he could no longer visit her in Çukurcuma, he and Füsun met every other day in Beyoğlu to see films. In the cool, dim cinemas, they sat together at the back and held hands; during intermissions they exchanged news in whispers without touching. Those small, repeated meetings made physical closeness possible again while the practical arrangements for a new life proceeded.

The Stop at Babaeski

The drive toward the hotel is marked by ordinary interruptions that contrast with Kemal’s heightened expectation. At the Çatalca exit, Füsun and Nesibe the seamstress get out of the car to buy local fol cheese from an elderly roadside seller, then eat it with tea and simits at a nearby teahouse. Kemal watches Füsun across the table and recognizes in himself a sweet, adolescent ache, different from the corrosive pain of love that cannot be returned. The unhurried meal makes him wonder whether the journey will take months rather than weeks; he does not mind the delay.

Later, trucks approach with their headlights undimmed, and, just past Babaeski, Kemal notices the blinking purple sign of the Grand Semiramis Hotel. The hotel’s location and modest appearance do not lessen the significance he assigns to the stop: after nine years of longing, he believes his dreams may come true there. Çetin Efendi arranges three rooms, one for Füsun and her mother, one for himself, and one for Kemal. Alone in his room next door, Kemal finds the prospect of sleeping apart from Füsun almost harder to bear than the years he has waited.

Füsun’s entrance into the small dining room seems to Kemal to belong to a grander setting than the plain hotel can offer. She wears a red dress and Le Soleil Noir, a perfume Kemal had given her years before; the tired families dining nearby turn to look. Nesibe the seamstress advises her not to wear the dress every night on the road, and looks to Kemal to support her. He cannot answer. His silence reflects both his wish to see Füsun in the dress again and his nervousness that happiness, now seemingly near, might still be lost. Füsun avoids his gaze and smokes awkwardly.

The Improvised Engagement

As Kemal and Füsun look over the plain menu, approved by the Babaeski Council, a long silence settles between them. Kemal experiences it as a moment in which the preceding nine years might be reviewed without being spoken aloud. When the waiter arrives, he orders a large bottle of Yeni Rakı and suggests that Çetin Efendi join them in a toast. Çetin Efendi points out that they have forgotten to make one; Kemal then turns the toast into a small ceremony and asks him to officiate.

Kemal produces the engagement rings he bought a week earlier at the Covered Bazaar. Çetin Efendi welcomes the occasion as the proper step before marriage and asks the couple for their hands. Füsun offers hers with an excited smile. His warning that there can be no turning back makes the act sound both decisive and reassuring; he also predicts that the couple will be happy. He slips the rings onto their hands without delay.

The ceremony is witnessed not by family or a formal gathering but by the French couple and several sleepy hotel guests, who clap. Füsun looks at the ring with the pleasure of someone choosing jewelry at a shop. When Kemal asks whether it fits, she says that it does and makes no effort to hide her satisfaction. The small exchange gives the scene its answer: after years in which Kemal’s desire was bound up with absence, evasion, and imagined encounters, Füsun now accepts a visible sign of their shared intention.

Significance and Limits of the Promise

The engagement transforms the road trip’s emotional direction. Earlier, Kemal tried to manage grief by banning streets and objects associated with Füsun; now he carries rings chosen in advance and creates a ritual that places their future before other people. The shift is not from longing to certainty without friction. At the hotel, both the long silence and their anxiety remain legible, and the rooms set aside for them are still separate. Yet the rings and the guests’ applause make the commitment more than a private hope.

The setting preserves the scene’s modest scale. A hotel near Babaeski, a council-approved menu, a bottle of rakı, and a handful of onlookers replace the elaborate public occasion that a formal engagement might suggest. That informality does not make the promise trivial: Çetin Efendi’s brief officiating connects engagement to the marriage the couple intends, while Füsun’s offered hand and pleased response show her active participation. The event is a turning point because it converts their renewed closeness into an acknowledged step toward marriage, without pretending that nine years of absence or the anxieties surrounding their future have simply vanished.