Kemal’s inability to leave the Keskin household

Kemal’s inability to leave the Keskin household is a recurring state in which an ordinary social departure becomes an ordeal of stalled intention. During years of visiting the family to remain near Füsun, Kemal can sit for hours after supper and television, knowing he should go yet unable to rise. The delay makes his longing visible as conduct: not a single dramatic declaration, but a repeated struggle between the wish to stay and the shame of staying too long.

The Moment of Departure

Kemal identifies the most revealing part of his affliction not as the shame and indecision he feels before a visit, but as the inertia that overtakes him once he is already inside the house. The crisis begins near the end of the nightly broadcast, which finishes between half past eleven and midnight. The screen’s images of the flag, Atatürk’s mausoleum, and the army give way to blurry dots. The family watches the blank-looking screen a little longer, as though another program might appear, until Tarık Bey asks Füsun to turn the television off or she does so herself.

That small act marks the point at which Kemal believes he ought to leave. He worries that remaining will make everyone uncomfortable, but cannot tell whether the worry is justified. Having heard the family criticize guests who leave as soon as a broadcast ends, he tells himself that his delay is simply good manners. Yet he knows they understand that the television is not the real reason for his visits: he comes to be near Füsun. A pretext such as a program about history may help him arrange an evening, but it also creates an expectation that he will depart when the program is over. Once the set is switched off, he sits on, unable to make his legs obey.

Kemal describes himself motionless at the table or on the L-shaped divan, perspiration gathering on his brow as the clock ticks. He repeatedly urges himself that he is standing up, but the resolve produces no movement. The clock makes the delay measurable while his encounter with Füsun unsettles his sense of time: after thinking that another twenty minutes have passed, he looks at his watch and discovers that forty have gone by. Even then, recognizing the hour does not make him leave. His shame grows along with the delay, until it becomes too heavy to bear.

Excuses That Keep Him Seated

The paralysis is sustained by small, plausible openings for staying. When Kemal announces that he must go, Tarık Bey or Aunt Nesibe sincerely asks him to remain because everyone is sitting together so comfortably. Füsun may answer with an enchanting, mysterious smile that leaves him more confused. Someone may begin a new story or raise a fresh subject, making an immediate departure seem rude to Kemal. He then grants himself another twenty minutes, only for the conversation and Füsun’s presence to carry him beyond the limit he had set.

He also searches for excuses that will postpone the discomfort of leaving, treating a little more time in the house as temporary relief from the burden of departure. If Tarık Bey pours another glass of rakı, courtesy seems to require Kemal to join him. These reasons are distinct but work together: hospitality supplies permission, conversation supplies a reason, and Kemal’s own inventiveness turns both into delay. He presents the process as baffling, just as he cannot fully explain the love that has afflicted him, even while he can enumerate the circumstances that make his apparent loss of will recur.

Feridun and the Double Bind

The timing becomes more complicated when Feridun is away with his film friends. Kemal sometimes tries to organize his departure around Feridun’s return, but over the eight years of his visits he cannot decide whether it is better to leave just before or just after that moment. In the first months, meeting Feridun’s eyes when he entered made Kemal feel so bad that, back in Nişantaşı, he needed at least three more glasses of rakı to sleep. Leaving immediately when Feridun arrived, however, would look like dislike of him—and, more dangerously, might disclose that Kemal had come for Füsun.

So Kemal often remains at least half an hour after Feridun returns, accepting the increased inhibition and shame rather than risk exposing his purpose. Leaving well before the return would avoid that encounter, but would mean leaving the Keskin house early, which he cannot bring himself to do. His alternatives therefore close in on him: he has difficulty leaving late and difficulty leaving early. On some nights, waiting also gives him an opportunity to talk with Feridun about the screenplay. Kemal tries to raise the process for getting a film cleared by the board of censors, but the attempt ends in icy silence at the table, offering no easy social route out of his predicament.

Social Custom and Narrative Meaning

Kemal places this private ritual within the conventions governing relations between men and women. He argues that in a more candid Western society, where the sexes did not inhabit separate social realms, visits four or five times a week would eventually make it plain that he was coming to see Füsun. Her husband would have reason to become jealous and could stop the visits; Kemal’s access would therefore be less frequent, and his love could not take the same form. In his account, the customs that might appear restrictive also permit the repeated proximity on which his attachment depends.

The inability to leave is thus both personal and social. Kemal experiences it as shameful weakness, but its repetition is enabled by invitations to stay, shared television, table conversation, and rules of propriety that let his visits continue without openly naming their purpose. The broadcast’s end gives the scene a nightly boundary; the clock records its failure; Füsun’s presence makes that failure desirable. By dwelling on the mechanics of standing up, waiting, and inventing another reason to remain, Kemal presents longing as an accumulation of ordinary delays rather than a single decisive act.