Kemal and Füsun’s Rupture and Loss of Contact

Kemal and Füsun’s rupture and loss of contact turns an expected meeting into a prolonged absence, then transforms their relationship into years of visits with her family. Füsun’s disappearance from the Merhamet Apartments leaves Kemal waiting and searching for explanations; when he finds her family, he learns that she has left both her job and the city with her father. Their contact later resumes at the Keskin family table, where frequent suppers offer proximity without restoring the earlier private relationship.

The missed meetings and the explanation

After Füsun’s examination, Kemal waits at the Merhamet Apartments at their accustomed time, but she does not come. He stays two hours beyond the usual hour, then returns on successive days, hoping the absence is temporary. His waiting becomes a daily routine: he tries not to arrive before five minutes to two, listens for footsteps, and mistakes passing high heels for Füsun. The repeated expectation and disappointment make the empty apartment a measure of the break rather than a place where the two continue to meet.

Kemal continues these visits until the middle of July. He tells himself that the pain is easing, but recognizes that it is not; he has instead become more practiced at distracting himself with objects associated with their shared happiness. A nutcracker or a watch with a ballerina on its face can hold his attention as he lies in bed, and he uses the watch’s strap, which carries Füsun’s scent, to comfort himself. The objects do not resolve the absence. They let him approach remembered moments while remaining alone, and he keeps returning to the apartment partly to preserve the habit and the possibility that she might appear.

When Kemal finally runs to the Keskin family’s home on Kuyulu Bostan Street, his hope changes quickly to apprehension as he nears the door. Nesibe the seamstress answers. Before she explains Füsun’s departure, Kemal notices the canary that had once been at the Şanzelize Boutique and a thirty-centimeter wooden ruler he had given Füsun for geometry lessons. Recognizing that Nesibe now uses it for sewing, he takes it with him. The ruler becomes an early object in his collection: a possession from Füsun’s world that can summon a memory of her, though it cannot bring her back.

Nesibe tells Kemal that Füsun’s examination went badly: she left in tears before finishing, and the family did not even learn her results. She says Füsun was so upset that she gave up her job, and that her father had taken her far away. Nesibe also blames Kemal’s lessons for harming Füsun and connects the distress to the engagement party, while acknowledging that responsibility was not his alone. The account is presented as the explanation Nesibe gives him; the narrator later recognizes that she had gone to the kitchen to prepare an answer. Her words establish the immediate fact of separation but leave its full causes uncertain.

From absence to regular suppers

The loss of contact does not remain permanent. Kemal’s first supper visit to Çukurcuma was on October 23, 1976, eleven days after Nesibe had offered an open-ended welcome. His last supper with Füsun and Nesibe there was on August 26, 1984. Across 2,864 intervening days, he records 1,593 visits in 409 weeks—an average of about four visits a week, though the pattern varied. Some weeks he saw the family daily; during others, indignation led him to stay away. Even then, he never went more than ten days without seeing Füsun, because a longer interval brought back the misery of the earlier separation.

The family came to expect Kemal, kept a place for him at the table, and no longer needed to issue a formal invitation. That welcome did not make his position uncomplicated. He worried that another visit would impose on them, but also feared that staying away might offend the family or cost him an evening with Füsun. Since he could not openly explain that seeing her was his reason for coming, they settled on the less exposed description of his visits as sitting with them. The changed arrangement allows continued contact, but makes it familial and public rather than a return to their private meetings.

A household measured by other clocks

During the years of visits, the Keskin home’s routines give the renewed contact a distinctive rhythm. A German-made wall clock, with a wooden and glass case, pendulum, and chime, stands by the door as a reminder of continuity and the outside world. Yet television has largely taken over the practical work of keeping time. At seven each evening, before the news on Turkey’s only television station begins, an enormous clock appears on the screen. Füsun checks her wristwatch against it, as her father checks one of his pocket watches. Kemal watches her make the adjustment and takes pleasure in the exchange of smiles when she has the time right.

Television also shapes the duration of Kemal’s visits. He usually arrives around seven and leaves soon after the nightly closing ceremony, near midnight; by his own reckoning, the average visit lasts about five hours. Because he is ashamed of how long he stays, he tries to tell himself he has gone home earlier. In September 1980, the military coup and the ten o’clock curfew force him to leave at a quarter to ten. The imposed deadline cuts short the time he has with Füsun, turning the national schedule into a recurring interruption of the private routine he has built around seeing her.

Repetition, silence, and the changed relationship

The suppers do not consist of uninterrupted conversation. Sometimes the family sits in silence; a car rattling down the hill or rain against the windows briefly draws everyone’s attention. Nesibe may leave a cigarette burning while lighting another in the kitchen, or rise to put more coal in the stove. Kemal discreetly watches Füsun’s hand, considers bringing her a bracelet instead of a hair clip, or finds his attention wandering from a film to memories of his own schooldays. These ordinary, recurring actions make the household both a setting for his attachment and a life shared on terms that he cannot openly redefine.

The rupture therefore has two different outcomes. Füsun’s absence first turns Kemal’s daily wait into a practice of solitude, in which remembered objects substitute for direct contact. The later suppers restore a dependable presence—1,593 encounters over nearly eight years—but preserve distance, since the family table and its routines constrain what can be said and done. The clock, television, meals, and curfew mark time in the household, while Kemal measures the years by how often he can return to Füsun’s company. His return is real, but it does not erase the break that made those visits necessary.