Taşkışla Building is the Technical University building where Füsun sits an examination while Kemal waits anxiously for her return. In this brief scene, the building is both a concrete destination in Kemal’s walk and a historical structure marked by Istanbul’s political past; the exam becomes another focus for the hope and uncertainty shaping his days.

Setting and Historical Traces

The morning after a sleepless night, Kemal shaves and takes a walk, choosing a route that passes Taşkışla Building. The structure is described as 115 years old. Outside the entrance, parents wait in rows for their children: some read newspapers, some talk, and others look blankly toward the sky. The ordinary gathering places the examination within a public scene of family expectation.

The building’s older history remains visible in its stone facade. Kemal sees bullet holes between the windows, remnants of the Action Army during the deposition of Sultan Abdülhamit. The marks make the building more than a neutral examination venue: a present-day wait unfolds against physical evidence of an earlier political upheaval.

Füsun’s Examination and Kemal’s Wait

Füsun is inside taking her exam, but Kemal cannot find Aunt Nesibe among the parents outside. Fixing his eyes on one of the high windows, he prays that Füsun will answer the questions and return to him joyfully when the examination is over. His attention moves from the building’s visible marks to the unseen person within it; the window gives his hope a physical focus, but no assurance.

Füsun does not come to the Merhamet Apartments that day. Kemal waits two hours beyond their usual meeting time, then leaves for a walk, trying to persuade himself she will come at the customary hour the following day. She is absent then, too, and for four more days. Taşkışla thus stands at the beginning of a prolonged wait: the examination is a specific reason for Kemal’s concern, but the empty meeting place turns that concern into a pattern of expectation and disappointment.

Place in Kemal’s Remembered Istanbul

Across the narrative, Kemal attempts to manage his attachment to Füsun by reshaping his movements through Istanbul. He imposes mental restrictions on streets and places associated with her, while other locations become charged by imagined sightings of her ghost. The Taşkışla episode presents a different kind of charged location: rather than a place he explicitly marks as forbidden, it is a stop on a walk whose significance comes from what he hopes will happen inside the building.

That distinction gives the scene its particular weight. Taşkışla’s historical traces belong to the city’s public past, while Kemal’s vigil belongs to private longing; the narrative brings the two together without making the building itself the cause of his anguish. Its windows hold his gaze for a moment, joining the examination, the prayer, and the wait in one sharply localized image.