The road trip to Europe

The road trip to Europe is the turning point at which Kemal Basmacı’s long, solitary longing for Füsun gives way to an openly shared journey. They leave Istanbul on August 27, 1984, accompanied by Aunt Nesibe and Çetin Efendi, with Paris as their destination. The trip does not begin with the grand escape Kemal once imagined: it starts amid family farewells, traffic, suitcases, and familiar roads. Its emotional change is quieter and more decisive. For the first time, the future he has rehearsed in memory is something he and Füsun can travel toward together.

Preparation and the End of Waiting

Kemal’s departure follows years in which the city itself had become difficult to inhabit. While separated from Füsun, he tried to forbid himself from visiting the Merhamet Apartments or touching things that recalled her. He eventually made a mental map of Istanbul’s restricted streets, marking such places as the Şanzelize Boutique, the Merhamet Apartments, and Kuyulu Bostan Street as zones to avoid. Even streets he could still cross became snares of recollection. In another phase of his search, he drove through old neighborhoods such as Vefa, Zeyrek, Fatih, and Kocamustafapaşa, hoping that the ghosts of Füsun he imagined seeing might lead him to her. The European journey reverses that pattern: instead of circling Istanbul in pursuit of an absent woman, Kemal leaves the city beside Füsun herself.

The trip was prepared as a family journey rather than a private honeymoon. Kemal arranged visas for Füsun and documentation for taking the car abroad; her passport gathered colorful visas for the countries on the route to Paris. His mother urged them to marry before traveling and questioned why Aunt Nesibe and Çetin Efendi needed to come along. Kemal insisted that he depended on Çetin to drive, and promised that Aunt Nesibe would help his mother find a wedding dress. In Paris, he had reserved three rooms at the Hôtel du Nord: one for himself, one for Çetin Efendi, and one for Füsun and Aunt Nesibe. The arrangement preserved the group’s family structure even as Kemal privately anticipated a more intimate future with Füsun.

Leaving Istanbul

At a quarter past twelve on August 27, Çetin parked outside the house in Çukurcuma, ready to drive west. The date fell exactly nine years and four months after Kemal and Füsun had first met at the Şanzelize Boutique. Kemal notices the coincidence but does not dwell on it; his attention is fixed on getting away. His mother’s tears and advice, traffic, and the slow loading of the luggage all delay the departure. He appears petulant as neighbors wave and children gather around the car, yet inwardly feels proud. As they drive down toward Tophane, Füsun waves to Ali returning from football practice, and Kemal imagines that the two of them will soon have a child like him.

Crossing the Galata Bridge, they open the windows and breathe in Istanbul’s familiar mixture of sea, moss, pigeon droppings, coal smoke, car exhaust, and linden blossoms. Füsun and Aunt Nesibe sit in the back; Kemal rides in front with Çetin, as he had in his dreams. Through Aksaray and past the city walls, the car passes poor neighborhoods and jolts over cobblestones and potholes. Kemal repeatedly turns to give Füsun a contented smile. The route carries them through the very urban landscape in which his earlier longing had taken shape, but now the city is no longer only a map of absences.

Beyond Bakırköy, Kemal recognizes Turgay Bey’s textile mill, which he had visited nine years earlier and associated with jealousy. He finds that the old sting has faded. Once the car crosses Istanbul’s limits, the suffering of his love seems to contract into a brief, happy story. The change in scale has a cost as well as a sweetness: because the story now seems to have a happy ending, there is less to say, and the travelers grow quiet. Aunt Nesibe, lively at first and admiring whatever appears beyond the window, eventually falls asleep by Büyükçekmece Bridge.

The Journey’s Small Rituals

The first long pause comes at the Çatalca exit, where Çetin stops to fill the tank. Füsun and her mother get out and buy local fol cheese from an old woman selling beside the road. They take the cheese to a nearby teahouse, order tea and simits, and make a roadside meal. Kemal wonders whether the European tour will last months rather than weeks if they continue at this pace, but he does not complain. Sitting across from Füsun and watching her, he feels a familiar sweetness in his chest and stomach, like the excitement of adolescence or the beginning of a summer romance. This is no longer the corrosive pain of love frustrated by separation: it is the impatience of a lover whose affection is returned.

The road also makes the travelers vulnerable to darkness. At 7:40, the setting sun shines in their eyes before dropping behind the sunflower fields. After Çetin turns on the headlights, Aunt Nesibe objects to driving in the dark. On the two-lane road, trucks approach without dimming their lights. The journey’s pace is shaped not only by Kemal’s hopes but by the ordinary limits of travel: a meal, a fuel stop, fading light, and the need to find somewhere safe to stop for the night.

The First Night at the Grand Semiramis

Just past Babaeski, Kemal sees the blinking purple neon sign of the Grand Semiramis Hotel and asks Çetin to slow down. They turn in near a Türk Petrol station, where a dog barks at the car. At the hotel, Kemal’s heart begins to race: after nine years of longing, he believes his dream is about to come true. The hotel is a clean, modest, three-story establishment, despite its grand name. A retired army officer at the desk gives them three rooms, repeating the separate arrangement Kemal had made for the Paris stay: one for Füsun and Aunt Nesibe, one for Çetin Efendi, and one for himself.

The separation is immediately difficult. Alone in his room, Kemal lies on the bed and looks at the ceiling, wondering whether enduring the journey while sleeping next door to Füsun might be harder than the nine years he has already waited. Later, when Füsun enters the small dining room, he sees her dressed with care for the surprise he has prepared: she wears the perfume Le Soleil Noir that he gave her years earlier, and her lipstick matches her red dress. Around them sit tired families, including workers returning from Germany, while curious children and fathers turn to look. The scene brings Kemal’s private romantic expectation into an ordinary public hotel. The road trip has begun, but the first night already holds its central tension: the lovers are together and the feeling is mutual, while the journey’s promised intimacy remains constrained by the family and travel arrangements around them.