Two o’clock

Two o’clock is the hour Kemal fixes for a meeting with Füsun at the Merhamet Apartments, and then keeps after she does not come. What begins as a proposed reunion after her examination becomes a daily ritual that carries his hope through weeks of absence. The appointment gives his waiting a precise shape: a time to anticipate, a room to enter, and, day after day, an absence to confront.

An appointment made

At a dance, Kemal tells Füsun that their love had begun at an unfortunate time and that he intends to put matters right. He urges her not to spend the evening worrying about their relationship because her examination the next day should come first. When she asks what will happen, he proposes that they meet at two o’clock at the Merhamet Apartments after she finishes. There, he says, he can explain his plans without rushing; if he cannot win her trust, she need never see him again.

Füsun asks him to tell her immediately, saying she will come to him. Kemal, in his drunkenness, imagines that she will appear the next afternoon, that their lovemaking will resume as before, and that they will remain together for the rest of his life. His resolve to do whatever it takes grows out of this imagined future. The appointment is therefore both a practical promise to talk and the anchor for a much larger hope of renewed intimacy.

The hour without Füsun

Füsun does not come to the Merhamet Apartments after her examination. Kemal waits two hours past their usual meeting time, then leaves and tries to persuade himself she will come the next day. She does not appear the following day, or for the four days after that. The agreed hour changes from a date into a test of whether his expectation can survive each new disappointment.

Kemal continues to go every day at the customary hour, resolving not to arrive earlier than five minutes before two because getting there too soon worsens his pain. In the apartment, the opening ten or fifteen minutes bring a brief lift of anticipation. He watches the street, checks the rust on the lamppost outside, tidies the room, and listens for footsteps. High heels may sound like Füsun’s, but they pass without stopping; the familiar closing of the building door belongs to someone else. Small signs that could announce her arrival instead repeat the discovery that she has not come.

Waiting measured in minutes

The routine makes time tangible. Kemal has the apartment clock, matchsticks, and matchbooks displayed as evidence of how he endured the first slow minutes of each wait. He paces, looks through the windows, and listens to the clocks ticking, fixing his attention on seconds and minutes to divert himself from the pain. As two approaches, the conviction that Füsun will arrive rises involuntarily, only to give way to the recognition that he may be deceiving himself. The hour promises reunion while prolonging the possibility that it will never happen.

Kemal keeps returning until the middle of July. Although the pain of wondering whether Füsun might come sometimes seems less intense, he recognizes that this is not recovery: he is becoming better at diverting himself with objects that carry memories of their happiness. During the two hours he spends in the apartment, he lies in bed with objects such as a nutcracker or a watch with a ballerina, whose strap retains Füsun’s scent. He strokes them against his face, forehead, and neck, trying to draw comfort from their remembered connection to her. The objects occupy the time that had belonged to their meetings, including the hours in which they would have awakened after making love.

A repeated appointment, not an ending

The appointment persists beyond its original promise because Kemal continues to attend even as the expectation of Füsun’s return repeatedly fails. He sometimes tells himself he is growing used to her absence, but understands that his agony is not diminishing; he is going partly to preserve the habit and the hope of seeing her. Two o’clock thus marks both the shape of his devotion and its cost: a regular hour cannot restore the relationship, but it lets him rehearse its possible return. The daily visits turn waiting into a private schedule, while the clocks and keepsakes give material form to a love that is present in memory and absent from the room.