Silent House by Orhan Pamuk

Author:Orhan Pamuk
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3, pdf
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 1983-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

20

Hasan Feels the Pressure of Peers

After dinner, when my father went off to the casino to sell his tickets, I left the house, too, without saying anything to my mother. When I got to the coffeehouse everyone was already there, including two new guys. Mustafa was explaining things to them. I sat down without drawing attention to myself and listened: So, said Mustafa, two superpowers, America and the Soviets, want to divide up the world, and that Jew Marx lies when he says that what makes the world go round is what he called the class struggle, it’s nationalism and the most extreme nationalists are the Russians and the Europeans. Then he told them that the center of the world was the Middle East and the key to the Middle East was Turkey. It was the superpowers, he explained, that had started the argument over “Are you first a Muslim or a Turk?” using their agents to divide us. These agents are all around, they’ve infiltrated everywhere, he said, and unfortunately, they might even be among us. There was a nervous quiet for a little while, after which Mustafa told them how we used to be united and that unity terrified them to the point of throwing up blood, those treacherous, slanderous, imperialist Europeans, with their tales of

“Plants don’t grow where the Turk has passed.” I felt I could almost hear those hoof beats that made the Christians shudder on cold winter nights, but all of a sudden I got really annoyed, because one of those new fools who had just joined us piped up: “Okay, brother, but if we find oil, too, will we be like the Arabs and get rich and develop?”

As if everything’s about money, everything’s material! We are not fighting for money here, we are fighting for our spiritual salvation. Mustafa didn’t lose his patience, he explained it all over again, but I didn’t listen, I know these things, I’m not new anymore. I noticed a newspaper lying there, so I took it and started reading it, the want ads, too. Then Mustafa told them to come back when it was late. They gave him a salute to show that they had learned the need for absolute obedience and they left.

“Are you going out to write on the walls tonight?” I asked.

“We did them last night, where the hell were you?”

“I was at home,” I said. “I was studying.”

“You were studying?” said Serdar. “Or you were peeping in windows?”

He gave me a dirty smile. I don’t pay attention to anything he says, but I worried Mustafa might take him seriously.

“I caught this guy down at the beach front this morning,” said Serdar. “He was eyeing some girl. Some rich kid, he’s in love with her. He stole her comb, too.”

“He stole it?”

“Look, Serdar,” I said. “Don’t call me a thief, or you’ll be sorry.”

“Fine, so I suppose that girl gave you the comb?”

“Yes,” I said. “Of course she did.”

“Why should a girl like that give you her comb?”

“You wouldn’t understand such things.

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