Kemal’s jealousy of Feridun

Kemal’s jealousy of Feridun is a recurring strain in outings shared with Füsun and her husband. It is not simply Feridun’s presence that troubles Kemal: gestures of marital ease—sitting close, leaning together, or holding hands—make the couple’s relationship newly visible to him. The cinemas turn that private distress into a repeated public test. Kemal tries to look elsewhere or act unconcerned, but keeps returning his attention to the pair beside him.

The Couple in Public

At one outdoor film screening, Feridun makes himself conspicuous by criticizing the movie, announcing what is about to happen, and arguing with audience members who ask him to be quiet. He compares the performance unfavorably with Türkan’s, and his loud commentary turns the screening into an occasion for conflict. Füsun nestles close to her husband, apparently thinking the commotion is upsetting him. For Kemal, the surrounding argument matters less than that gesture of comfort: Feridun’s behavior is irritating, but Füsun’s closeness to him is what burns in Kemal’s awareness.

The return journeys offer no lasting relief. Füsun may join the conversation or doze in the backseat; either way, she rests her head on Feridun’s shoulder or belly, or puts her arms around him. Çetin drives slowly and carefully while Kemal attends to the night outside the car, its darkness and passing surroundings. That attention provides a contrast, not an escape. When Kemal senses the newlyweds leaning together in a cinema, as at Incirli Cinema in Bakırköy, his mood darkens at once. A shared outing can therefore divide into two experiences: the journey, when he can direct his attention outward, and the film, when closeness between Füsun and Feridun occupies him.

Watching and Pretending Not to Watch

Kemal sometimes keeps silent, like the grieving hero of Caught in the Crossfire, and sometimes turns his jealousy into a performance of indifference. He acts as though he has not noticed the couple whispering and giggling, pretends to be absorbed in the movie, and laughs at moments he considers unfunny. At other times he sniggers as if he has spotted an inconsistency that others missed, adopting the posture of an intellectual embarrassed to be watching a Turkish film. The show of critical distance conceals how closely he is attending to Füsun and Feridun.

The jealousy also makes Kemal interpret Füsun’s gestures as deliberate provocations. He sometimes imagines that she leans on Feridun to make him jealous and frames their interaction as a contest in which each is trying to make the other suffer. He recognizes that this cynical mood is not one he likes, yet recognition does not stop the suspicion. His account also distinguishes between gestures that might appear similar: Feridun rarely puts an arm around Füsun during an emotionally charged moment in a film, and that alone does not make Kemal uncomfortable. When Füsun rests her head lightly on Feridun’s shoulder, however, Kemal feels crushed, calls her heartless in his thoughts, and becomes angry. His response turns on her action and on the meaning he assigns to it, rather than on a consistent objection to physical closeness between the married couple.

The Hand Beneath the Pullover

At the end of August, with the weather turning cool and rainy and the first storks passing over Istanbul, Kemal joins the family at the summer venue of Yumurcak Cinema, a garden inside Beşiktaş Market known as the Hunchback’s Place. The film is I Loved a Penniless Girl. As Füsun and Feridun sit together, she has draped a pullover over her lap; Kemal suspects that they are holding hands beneath it. He does not settle the question and move on. Instead, after persuading himself that he has put the possibility out of his mind, he crosses his legs and lights a cigarette to look again.

The concealment intensifies the scene for him: the suspected gesture is hidden from view, so Kemal’s attention fixes on whether it is happening at all. He knows that Füsun and Feridun are married, share a bed, and have many other opportunities to touch. That knowledge does not reassure him. It sharpens his question about why they would choose to hold hands in front of him. The scene thus concentrates the pattern of his jealousy: ordinary affection becomes charged because Kemal is present to witness it, while his repeated attempts to dismiss the thought give way to another check.

A Repeated Pattern of Attention

Across these outings, Kemal’s jealousy moves between observation, imagined intention, concealment, and renewed scrutiny. He notices a head resting on a shoulder, a whispered exchange, or a possible hand beneath a pullover; he sometimes treats those signs as evidence that Füsun means to hurt him, then tries to perform absorption in the film. That performance never holds. The next gesture draws him back to the couple and renews his distress.

The pattern gives Feridun’s ordinary place as Füsun’s husband a particular force in Kemal’s account. The conflict is not resolved in the scenes described: Kemal continues to accompany them, to watch their interactions, and to alternate between looking away and checking again. The cinema, where attention is ostensibly directed toward the screen, becomes the setting in which he repeatedly measures his own exclusion against the couple’s visible intimacy.