this was a point in her favour. âI hate people who work too hard,â I added.
âEven though youâre German?â asked Pelin.
Â
We worked out a division of labour. It wasnât fair, but it was a division of labour of sorts. Pelin would open up the shop three days a week, thus allowing me to sleep until noon on those days. Having worked in a bookshop before, she quickly adapted to the job. Her comings and goings were observed reproachfully by çaycı Recai, who couldnât bear the fact that he knew nothing about her.
Fofo is my friend, so I donât like saying this, but Pelin worked at least five times harder than Fofo. When it was
her turn to open up the shop, it happened exactly on time. She would dust the books, tidy up, put flowers on the table, and there would always be fresh tea and coffee, providing she wasnât feeling depressed. She came right up to my German standards⦠Her only fault was that she didnât like thrillers. But I thought weâd overcome that in time. It didnât really bother me.
Pelin said she liked books and working in a bookshop, even if she didnât like thrillers, but she often hinted that she wanted more pay. Turks from good families donât talk openly about their financial aspirations, they just drop hints.
âLetâs see, who knows what might happen?â I said, adopting her hinting technique.
I was thinking that, if Fofo didnât return within three months, I would sell my car so that I could employ Pelin. However, my dear friend Lale saved me from that financial problem. The moment she met Pelin, she started to tell her all about me and how, despite spending my first seven and last thirteen years in Istanbul, which is twenty years and almost half my life, I had still not shed the damaging effects of my awful German peasant background. She said I was a typically stingy German. I never turned on a light at home unless it was necessary; I didnât even fit halogen bulbs because of the expense, and only shame prevented me from spending my evenings in candlelight like other Germans. Once Lale started, she didnât know when to stop; she went on and on, saying that to save money I refused to take taxis, served used teabags to my guests, tried to get people to pay for their own meals in restaurants, and so forth. I canât let that one pass without comment. Whenever people pay separately, Turks call it âdoing it the German
wayâ. They give me sidelong glances, then look at each other and snigger as if I single-handedly created the âGermanâ way of paying bills.
Anyway, Lale spilled everything about me. I kept quiet because I didnât want to have to defend those intolerable Germans. And of course, it went in my favour, as you might expect. Pelin now thinks I am an oppressed migrant and feels more sympathy for me. I feel confident that if someone offered her three times her current salary, she wouldnât want to leave me.
2
It was May when Petra called for the second time.
The magical Istanbul spring was about to turn abruptly into summer. I would have liked Petra to see Istanbul in spring: to drink tea under the shade of ancient pine trees in the gardens of magnificent Ottoman palaces, to walk along mimosa-scented streets, to shiver in the dampness of the Byzantine underground reservoirs, to light a candle in one of the churches as the muezzin chants the call to prayer, to stretch out in the warm spring sunshine on grass damp with early morning dew looking at the Hippodrome and the Sultan Ahmet fountain, to eat artichokes prepared in olive oil at Hacı Halil Restaurantâ¦
âTheyâve only just got the filming permit,â Petra was saying. Turkish bureaucracy, like German bureaucracy, is famous for its cumbersome paperwork, so I wasnât at all surprised by this delay. The filming had been planned to start at the end of April, but now could not start until the beginning of