Leyla and Mecnun

Leyla and Mecnun is invoked as an old-legend ideal of love, one Berrin uses to distinguish love from sexual intimacy. The phrase becomes a small but revealing test of Kemal’s attention: he can repeat its central idea, yet his mind has remained with Füsun.

The Ideal of Love

At dinner, Berrin rejects the assumption that love depends on sexual access. In response to Kemal’s argument about Mehmet and the women who would not let him approach them, she insists that a person need not sleep with someone to be in love. She names the legendary pair as her example: “The sex is not what matters. Love is Leyla and Mecnun.” Her appeal shifts the discussion away from physical intimacy and toward an ideal expressed through an old love story.

A Test of Kemal’s Attention

When Berrin asks Kemal to repeat what she has just said, he gives the idea back in his own words: “You said, ‘Love has to be the way it is in the old legends. Like Leyla and Mecnun.’” Berrin recognizes that he has not really been listening. Her half smile carries concern, and she looks to Sibel to see whether she has noticed Kemal’s condition; Sibel, meanwhile, is talking with Mehmet and Nurcihan.

The Phrase and Füsun’s Absence

The exchange leads into the narrator’s disclosure that Kemal has not been able to put Füsun out of his mind. Although she is seated at the back, her presence occupies his thoughts throughout the conversation: he wonders how she is and what she might be thinking. He has been concealing this preoccupation from himself as well as from his readers. In that context, Kemal’s accurate recollection of Berrin’s words does not signify sustained attention to her argument; it marks the contrast between the ideal of love being discussed and the private longing that has captured his attention.