Istanbul: Memories and the City by Orhan Pamuk

Author:Orhan Pamuk [Pamuk, Orhan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3, pdf
ISBN: 9780307386489
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2003-12-07T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The Rich

During the mid-sixties, my mother would go to the newsagent every Sunday morning to buy a copy of Evening. Unlike our daily newspapers, it wasn’t delivered to our house, and—knowing that my mother went to the trouble of getting it for the sake of the society gossip column entitled “Have You Heard?” written anonymously under the pen name Gül-Peri (Rose Nymph)—my father never passed up an opportunity to tease her about it. His mockery gave me to understand that an interest in society gossip was a sign of personal weakness. It was to ignore that the journalists hid behind pen names to vent their resentment of the “rich” (including those with whom we socialized or wished to be classified) by making up lies about them. And even if they weren’t lies, rich people inept enough to draw the attention of a society columnist were not leading exemplary lives. These insights, however, did not stop my father from reading these columns and believing them:

• Poor Feyziye Madenci! Her Bebek house has been robbed, but no one seems to know what’s missing. Let’s see if the police manage to solve this riddle.

• Aysel Madra didn’t get to go swimming in the sea once last summer—and all because she had her tonsils taken out. This summer she’s enjoying herself on Kuruçeşme Island—although we hear she’s still a bit irritable. Let’s not ask why.

• Muazzez İpar is off to Rome! We’ve never seen this Istanbul socialite looking quite this happy. What’s cheered her up? We wonder. Could it be the dashing man at her side?

• Semiramis Sarıay used to spend her summers on Büyükada, but now she’s turned her back on us and returned to her villa in Capri. It’s soooo much closer to Paris, after all. We hear she’s going to do a few exhibitions of her art. So when’s she going to show us her statues?

• Istanbul society has been undone by the evil eye! Many illustrious personages who have made frequent appearances in this column have been falling ill and rushing into hospital for operations. The latest bad news comes to us from the Çamlıca home of the much lamented Ruşen Eşref, where Harika Gürsoy was having such a good time at a moonlit party.…

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.