A Strangeness in My Mind

The Twelve-Story Building

You Have a Right to the City’s Rent

REMEMBER, you swore, nothing less than sixty-two percent,” said Samiha as she saw her husband out. “Don’t let them intimidate you.”

“Why would I be intimidated by them,” said Mevlut.

“Don’t believe any of Süleyman’s nonsense either, and don’t lose your temper. Have you got the title deed?”

“I’ve got the councilman’s papers,” said Mevlut as he set off down the hill. The sky was heavy with gray clouds. They were all going to meet at Uncle Hasan’s grocery store in Duttepe to review the situation and go through one final round of negotiations. Vural Holdings, the Vurals’ big construction company, was taking advantage of a series of recent urban renewal measures to build sixteen new high-rises in the neighborhood. They’d planned a twelve-story apartment building on the site currently occupied by the one-room house Mevlut had inherited from his father, the home he’d been sharing with Samiha for the past seven years. This meant that Mevlut, like so many others, had to arrive at terms with the Vurals. But he’d been dragging things out and digging his heels in over final points, and now Korkut and Süleyman were angry at him.

Mevlut hadn’t signed the agreement yet; he continued to live with Samiha in his childhood home, even as some of the apartments soon to be built on that land had already been sold. Mevlut would go out into his garden sometimes and point at the sky overhead, marveling at the ridiculousness of those wealthy people who had paid the Vurals in advance for apartments they would one day own “up there.” But Samiha didn’t think there was anything funny about it. Mevlut was always impressed by his second wife’s realism.

A model of the planned building was on display at the Vural Holdings marketing office on Main Street, which ran between Duttepe and Kültepe. A blond woman always in high heels would talk visitors through all the different apartment options on offer and the materials to be used in the bathrooms and kitchens before pausing to mention that all south-facing units above the sixth floor would have Bosphorus views. Even the thought that the Bosphorus could be glimpsed six floors up from the garden of his forty-year-old house was enough to make Mevlut dizzy. Before his final negotiation with the Aktaş family, he went to have one last look at the model.

When news first spread in 2006 that Duttepe and Kültepe, along with many other neighborhoods in Istanbul, had been selected for a large-scale urban redevelopment initiative, and that the government was encouraging high-rise construction in the area, local residents were thrilled. Previously, the law had only allowed three- and four-story buildings on these hills. Now you could build up to twelve floors. People felt as if they were being given bundles of cash. The decision had been handed down from Ankara, but everyone knew that behind it all was Hadji Hamit Vural’s family, who had close ties to the Justice and Development Party (the AKP) and owned many acres across Duttepe and Kültepe. As a result, the governing AKP, which was already popular in the area, had gained even more votes in and around Duttepe and Kültepe. Initially, even those cynics who usually complained about everything kept quiet.

The first murmurs of protest came from the area’s tenants. When it was announced that buildings as high as twelve stories would be allowed, both local rents and the value of land rose sharply, so that people who could barely make it to the end of the month as it was (like Mevlut’s old tenant from Rize) began a gradual exodus from the hills. These long-standing tenants felt just as Mevlut had when he was obliged to leave Tarlabaşı: there was no future for them here, where tall, showy buildings would someday be home to the rich…

The new law stipulated that the site for each twelve-story building would be created by combining lots belonging to as many as sixty existing homeowners. Within a year, the municipality had designated and announced the location of these sites, which split Duttepe and Kültepe into distinct areas. Longtime neighbors, who found out overnight that they would one day be living in the same high-rise, started meeting at one another’s homes, and over tea and cigarettes, they discussed the situation, choosing from among themselves a representative (there were always plenty of aspirants to this position) who could deftly manage any necessary arrangements with the government and the contractors; and soon enough they began to have their first disagreements. At Samiha’s insistence, Mevlut attended three of these meetings. Along with the other men, he was quickly taught all about the concept of “land rent” in economics and how to apply it. Once, he put up his hand and told everyone about all that his late father had been through, how he’d toiled to build the house Mevlut now lived in. But he had trouble keeping up with their discussions about percentages and shares and found relief from that unease at night selling boza out on the solitary streets.

According to the new law, local landowners who wanted an apartment in one of the new high-rises first had to sell their lots to the developer. Other big Turkish concerns had tried to get involved, but Hadji Hamit Vural’s company, which boasted excellent relations not only with the government in Ankara but the neighborhood as well, naturally came out on top. So the owners of the area’s old gecekondu houses began to visit the Vural Holdings offices on Main Street to look at the model in the window, work out what they might expect of their future apartments, and negotiate with Hadji Hamit Vural’s younger son.

At most of the other high-rises that had sprung up all over Istanbul, ownership was usually split fifty-fifty between the developer and the existing homeowners. If a group of locals managed to find a competent representative and act in unison, they could sometimes raise their share to fifty-five percent, or even sixty percent in some cases. This was very rare, however, and it was much likelier that the former gecekondu neighbors would squander their collective advantage by bickering over percentages and move-in dates. Mevlut heard from Süleyman, who always reported these things with a knowing smirk, that some neighborhood representatives were taking bribes from contractors. As both Duttepe landowners and partners in Vural Holdings, Korkut and Süleyman were always up to date with the latest gossip, squabbling, and negotiations.

Most old gecekondu homes had already become proper three- or four-story buildings, and their owners could drive a hard bargain with the state and the developer, as long as they possessed an official title deed. But those like Mevlut, whose only claim to their property was a forty-year-old piece of paper from the neighborhood councilman, and whose house was only a single room (more common than not in Kültepe), were likely to back down if the contractors threatened: “The government might find a way to just take it from you, you know…”

Another contentious issue was the expense of temporary accommodation: when they demolished old gecekondu homes, contractors were obliged to pay relocation costs for the displaced until their new homes were finished. Some had supposedly signed contracts specifying temporary arrangements for two years, only to end up on the street when the contractors didn’t finish on time. Amid such rumors all over Istanbul, many local landowners decided that it was probably safer to come to an agreement with the contractors only after everyone else had already done so. Others kept procrastinating — single-handedly delaying major projects — simply out of a sense there would be more to gain by being the last to sign.

Korkut referred to them as “obstructors,” and he loathed them. To him they were dirty profiteers hindering other people’s lives and livelihoods for the sake of a better deal or more apartments than they had a right to. Mevlut had heard tales of so-called obstructors getting six — perhaps even seven — apartments in sixteen- or seventeen-story buildings while everyone else was allotted two or three. These sharp negotiators usually planned to sell off all their expensive new units as soon as they got them and move to a different city or neighborhood, as they knew it wasn’t just the government and its contractors who would be furious with them for the delays but also their own friends and neighbors desperate to move into their new homes as soon as possible. Mevlut knew that in Oktepe, Zeytinburnu, and Fikirtepe these obstructors and their neighbors had come to blows, sometimes ending in stabbings. It was also rumored that contractors were secretly instigating this kind of discord. Mevlut came to know all about this business when, during their last negotiation meeting, Korkut had said, “You’re no better than those obstructors, Mevlut!”

The Vural Holdings offices on Main Street were empty that day. Mevlut had attended many meetings here, whether organized by homeowners or the contractors. He’d sat there with Samiha looking at flashy models with oddly shaped balconies and tried to picture the small, northerly apartment that was his due. The office had photographs of other high-rises the Vurals had built in Istanbul, and some with Hadji Hamit holding a shovel forty years ago, working on some of his very first projects. It was around midday now, and even the curbsides, where prospective buyers from the city’s better neighborhoods usually parked their cars on weekends, were empty. After wasting some time window-shopping in the arcade under the Hadji Hamit Vural Mosque, Mevlut began to climb Duttepe’s twisting, narrow roads so he wouldn’t be late for the meeting at Uncle Hasan’s grocery store.

Just beyond the first few houses at the foot of the hill was a flat stretch of road where there once stood a row of malodorous wooden dormitories for Hadji Hamit’s workers. As a child, Mevlut had looked in their open doors and glimpsed the sleeping forms of tired young workers entombed in their bunks within the dark and musty rooms. Over the past three years, the vacancy rate had risen as renters fled, expecting the whole neighborhood to be demolished soon anyway, and the now-derelict structures dotting the whole of Duttepe made the area look run-down and ugly. Mevlut looked at the darkening sky ahead and fretted. As he climbed the hill, he felt as if he were walking straight into the heavens.

Why hadn’t he been able to refuse when Samiha had insisted on sixty-two percent? He didn’t know how he could get the Aktaş family to agree to that. In their last round of negotiations, which took place at the clubhouse, Korkut had balked at fifty-five percent, and in frustra tion they’d agreed to adjourn and try one more time. But Mevlut hadn’t heard from Korkut and Süleyman for weeks. It all made him very anxious, but he also liked it that Korkut considered him an obstructor; it might mean he was poised to get more than anyone else in the end. Since the clubhouse meeting, however, Duttepe and Kültepe had been designated seismic hazard zones, and Mevlut — like many others in Kültepe — had begun to suspect a trick orchestrated by the Vurals. After the 1999 earthquake it had been established by law that any building found to be structurally unsound could be demolished with the consent of at least two-thirds of its owners. Now both the government and the developers were using this measure to circumvent small-property owners who stood in the way of bigger and taller apartment buildings. With the seismic hazard law invoked in Kültepe, the lot of an obstructor was even harder, and Mevlut couldn’t fathom how he was going to ask for the sixty-two percent Samiha had insisted on as he walked out the door.

It had been seven years since the wedding, and he was happy. They had become good friends. But theirs was not a friendship that revolved around all that was bright and wonderful in the world; instead, it was founded on companionable hard work, their shared struggle to overcome difficulties, and on coming to terms with the banality of everyday life. Once he got to know Samiha a bit better, Mevlut found a stubborn, decisive woman who was determined to live a good life, and he liked this side of her. But she didn’t always know where to channel this inner strength, and maybe that was why she kept trying to direct Mevlut much more than he could happily bear — often going as far as to tell him what to do outright.

Mevlut would have been quite happy to settle with the Vurals for fifty-five percent: this would have given him three apartments on the lower floors of the twelve-story building, with no Bosphorus view. Since his mother and sisters in the village formally counted as his father’s heirs, too, his share would have effectively come to something slightly less than one whole apartment. They would use the rents from Ferhat’s apartments in Çukurcuma to make up the difference over five years (though if they managed to get sixty-two percent, this could be accomplished in three years). Either way, in the end, they would own the apartment outright between them. He had spent months going over the figures with Samiha at home. Now, after forty years in Istanbul, with a place to call his own (or half his own) never so close, Mevlut didn’t want to see his hopes dashed, and so as he walked into his uncle Hasan’s grocery, with its colorful assortment of vitreous boxes, newspapers, and sundry bottles, he felt almost afraid.

His eyes took some time to adjust to the semidarkness inside the shop.

“Mevlut, you try talking to my father,” said Süleyman. “He’s driving us mad; maybe he’ll listen to you.”

Uncle Hasan was sitting at the cash desk as he’d been doing for thirty-five years. He was truly old now, but he still sat up straight. Mevlut was struck by how much his uncle resembled his father; as a child, he’d never been able to see that. He hugged his uncle and kissed his cheeks, which were covered in moles and a thin beard.

The thing Süleyman was teasing his father about as Korkut laughed was Uncle Hasan’s insistence on continuing to pack his customers’ purchases in those little baskets he made out of old newspapers (he called them pint baskets). In the 1950s and 1960s, all Istanbul grocers used to do it, but now only Uncle Hasan still spent his spare time folding up discarded newspapers brought from home or found elsewhere, and whenever his sons protested, he would only say, “It’s not hurting anyone.” Mevlut did as he always did when visiting the shop: he sat down in the chair across from his uncle and started folding newspapers, too.

Süleyman told his father that the neighborhood was changing, and customers wouldn’t want to come to a minimart with only dirty old newspapers in which to take home their groceries.

“Then let them stop coming,” said Uncle Hasan. “This isn’t a minimart anyway, it’s a grocery store.” He turned to Mevlut and winked.

Süleyman insisted that what his father was doing was pointless — profligate, in fact: plastic bags were much cheaper by the kilo than salvaged newspaper. Still worried about their inevitable discussion over the percentages, Mevlut was happy to see their argument drag on: this spontaneous division within the Aktaş camp could only help. When Uncle Hasan said, “Money isn’t all that matters in life, son!” Mevlut supported him, adding that just because there was money in something, that didn’t necessarily make it a good thing.

“Come on, Dad, Mevlut’s still trying to sell boza,” said Süleyman. “You can’t do business thinking like that.”

“Mevlut is more respectful of his uncle than you are,” said Uncle Hasan. “Look, he’s folding newspapers and making himself useful, unlike you two.”

“We’ll see about respect when he tells us what he’s decided. So, Mevlut? What do you say?” said Korkut

Mevlut panicked, but everyone was diverted when a boy walked into the shop and said, “Some bread, Uncle Hasan.” Now well over eighty, the old grocer took a loaf out of the wooden bread cupboard and placed it on the counter. The ten-year-old kid was dissatisfied; this loaf wasn’t crispy enough. “You shouldn’t touch unless you’re buying,” said Uncle Hasan and went over to the cupboard to pick out one with a harder crust.

Meanwhile Mevlut went outside. He’d had an idea. In his pocket was a mobile phone Samiha had bought him six months ago. He carried it only so Samiha could call her husband; Mevlut himself never used it. Now, he was going to call his wife to tell her that sixty-two percent was too much, and they had to go lower, otherwise it wouldn’t end well.

But Samiha didn’t pick up. It began to rain, and Mevlut saw that the boy had finally gotten his bread and left the store, so he went back inside, sat across from Uncle Hasan, and resumed folding newspapers just as meticulously as before. Süleyman and Korkut were giving their father a withering account of all the obstructors who’d caused them trouble at the last minute after everything had been agreed, the schemers who’d changed their minds and demanded a new negotiation, and the scoundrels who’d secretly solicited bribes from the contractors in exchange for persuading their neighbors to sign an agreement. Mevlut knew that they would start talking about him the same way as soon as he left. He noticed with some surprise the questions Uncle Hasan was asking his sons, which suggested he must have been following all these negotiations and the various construction contracts very closely, still trying to tell his sons what to do from his base at the grocery store. Until then, Mevlut had always imagined that Uncle Hasan had no idea what went on beyond those four walls (where he spent long hours not so much for profit as for personal enjoyment).

A face on one of the newspapers he was folding up caught Mevlut’s eye. The headline next to it said MASTER CALLIGRAPHER DIES. He realized with a pang that the Holy Guide had passed away, and his heart quivered with sadness. Under another photograph, this of the Holy Guide in his youth, the caption read: “The works of our last great calligrapher are displayed in museums across Europe.” Mevlut had last visited the lodge six months ago. Swarmed by his legions of admirers, the man was out of reach, and it had been impossible to hear let alone understand anything he said. In the past ten years, the streets all around the house in Çarşamba had filled up with votaries of many different sects, all wearing robes of one color or another. It was the same traditional religious garb that people wore in Iran and Saudi Arabia. These people’s political Islamism had begun to unnerve Mevlut, and eventually he stopped going there altogether. Now, he regretted not having seen the Holy Guide one last time before he died. Mevlut hid behind the newspaper he was holding and thought about the Guide.

“You can fold newspapers with my father some other time, Mevlut,” said Korkut. “Let’s get this deal worked out, as we agreed. We’ve got other things to do. Everyone’s saying, ‘Why hasn’t your cousin signed yet?’ Haven’t we given you and Samiha everything you’ve asked for?”

“We don’t want to stay in Hadji Hamit’s dormitories after they knock our house down.”

“Fine. We’ll put a clause in the contract that says you’ll get one thousand two hundred and fifty liras a month for three years. You can go live wherever you want.”

This was a lot of money. Feeling encouraged, Mevlut just came out with it: “We also want a share of sixty-two percent.”

“Sixty-two percent? Where’s this coming from?” (Mevlut would have dearly liked to say, It’s Samiha, she won’t take no for an answer!) “Last time we spoke, we told you fifty-five is impossible!”

“This is what we feel is appropriate,” said Mevlut, surprising even himself with his own assertiveness.

“That’s not going to happen,” said Korkut. “We have our own honor to think about, too. We won’t let you rip us off in broad daylight. Shame on you! I hope you realize what you’re doing. See what kind of man our Mevlut has turned out to be, Father?”

“Calm down, son,” said Uncle Hasan. “Mevlut is a sensible fellow.”

“Then he’ll take fifty percent, and we’ll close this deal right here. If Mevlut doesn’t sign the contract, everyone will be talking about how the Aktaş family haven’t even got their own cousin to agree yet. You know how they meet at each other’s houses every night to scheme. Now our crafty Mr. Mevlut is using that to blackmail us. Is this your final decision, Mevlut?”

“It’s my final decision!” said Mevlut.

“Right. Let’s go, Süleyman.”

“Wait,” said Süleyman. “Mevlut, think about this for a minute: now that the neighborhood is officially an earthquake zone, a contractor who has two-thirds of the property owners on his side won’t make excuses for anyone. They’ll just kick people out of their houses. They’ll only give you as much for your land as it says on the title deed or as you’ve declared to the tax office. You don’t even have a title deed. You just have the councilman’s paper. Now I’m sure you know that if you look at the bottom of that piece of paper — the one you tried to give me that night you got drunk while writing love letters to Rayiha — you’ll see my father’s name under your father’s. If this ends up in the courts, ten years from now you won’t even get half of what we’re offering you today. So think about that.”

“That’s no way to talk to people, son,” said Uncle Hasan.

“My answer is the same,” said Mevlut.

“Let’s go, Süleyman,” said Korkut. They stormed out of the grocery store, the younger brother following the older off into the rain.

“They may be in their fifties, but my boys are still as hot-blooded as ever,” said Uncle Hasan. “But this kind of arguing isn’t right. They’ll be back soon. Maybe then you can ask for a little less…”

Mevlut couldn’t find it in him to say, I will. He would have been ready to settle for fifty-five percent had Korkut and Süleyman been nicer about it. Samiha was insisting on sixty-two percent out of sheer obstinacy. Even the thought of a ten-year court battle that left him empty-handed was enough to make him sick. He looked back down at the old newspaper in his hand.

The news of the Holy Guide’s death had been published four months ago. Mevlut read the short piece one more time. The paper didn’t even mention the lodge or his role as leader of a sect, even though these things had been as important in his life as being a master calligrapher.

What should he do now? If he were to leave, it would only make things worse, and harder for him to come back later to settle on a figure. Maybe that was what Korkut wanted: in court, they would argue “Our father’s name is on the councilman’s paper and he has a claim to the land, too” (making sure, of course, to ignore how they’d seized the land in Duttepe for themselves all those years ago and sold off the other plot in Kültepe) and finally leave Mevlut with nothing. He didn’t know how he would tell Samiha what had happened; he sat quietly and kept folding newspapers. Women who wanted rice, soap, and cookies, and children who wanted chewing gum and chocolates were coming and going.

Uncle Hasan still kept accounts for some of his customers who paid at the end of the month. His eyesight wasn’t very good, though, so he told them to write down for themselves what they’d bought. He asked Mevlut to check whether the customer who’d just walked out had written down the correct amount. When he realized that his sons weren’t going to come back to smooth things over, he tried to comfort Mevlut: “Your father and I, we were such close brothers, such good friends,” he said. “We fenced off the land in Kültepe and Duttepe together, we built our houses together with our own hands. We told the neighborhood councilman to put both our names down on the papers so that we would never grow apart. In those days, your father and I would sell yogurt together, we’d eat together, we’d go to Friday prayers together, we’d sit in the park smoking cigarettes together…Have you got the councilman’s document, my boy?”

Mevlut placed the wrinkled, spongy forty-year-old piece of paper on the counter.

“We ended up growing apart anyway. Why? Because he didn’t bring your mother and your sisters over to Istanbul from the village. You both worked your hearts out, you and your father, God rest his soul. You deserve those apartments more than anyone else does. Your sisters didn’t come to Istanbul to work. The right thing would be for you to have all three of the apartments the contractor is giving you. I have a few spares of those old forms. The councilman was my friend, and I have his seal, too. I’ve been keeping it safe for thirty-five years. I say let’s tear this old thing up. Let’s make a new one ourselves. We’ll put your name on it, and stamp it all off. That way you and Samiha will get a whole apartment outright.”

Mevlut realized that this meant increasing his own share at the expense of his mother and sisters in the village, so he said, “No.”

“Don’t be so quick to decide. You’re the one who’s been breaking his back here in Istanbul. You have a right to the city’s rent.”

The phone in his pocket rang, and Mevlut went outside in the rain. “I saw you called, what’s the matter?” said Samiha. “It’s not going well,” said Mevlut. “Don’t let them bully you,” said Samiha.

Mevlut hung up, feeling exasperated, and went back into the shop. “I’m leaving, Uncle Hasan!” he said.

“Up to you, son,” said Uncle Hasan as he folded newspapers. “Whatever happens, the Lord’s purpose shall always prevail.”

Mevlut would have much preferred it if his uncle had said, Stay a while longer, the boys will cool off eventually. He grew irritated at the old man, and at Samiha for having driven him to this. He was also angry at Korkut and Süleyman and at the Vurals, too, but most of all he was annoyed with himself. If he’d told Uncle Hasan yes just now, he’d have finally been able to get the home he deserved. As it was, he wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

As he walked in the rain along the winding asphalt road (formerly a muddy dirt road), past the Food Stop Mart (which used to be a junk dealer’s), and down the steps (which weren’t there before) to the big road back to Kültepe, Mevlut thought of Rayiha, as he did so many times each day. He’d started dreaming about her more often, too. These were painful, difficult dreams. There would always be overflowing rivers, fires, and darkness between them. All of these shadowy things would then turn into a kind of wild jungle, just like the ugly apartment blocks he could see now, rising to his right. Mevlut would realize that there were dogs roaming among the trees in this jungle, but Rayiha’s grave was there, too, and as he pushed through his fear of dogs and toward her, he would suddenly realize with a jolt of pleasure that his beloved was, in fact, behind him, watching him, and he would wake up happy but also strangely distressed.

Had Rayiha been the one waiting for him at home, she would have found the right words to soothe his worries. But when Samiha put her mind to something, that was all she ever saw, and this only made Mevlut more anxious. By now he felt like himself only when he was out at night selling boza.

The gardens of some empty homes were planted with signs that said PROPERTY OF VURAL HOLDINGS. The slopes along the main road that climbed up to Kültepe had been empty when Mevlut had first moved to Istanbul. His father used to send Mevlut here to collect scrap paper, wood, and dried twigs for the stove. Nowadays the road was flanked on either side by hideous gecekondu homes, six or seven stories high. They had once been two or three floors at most. But over the years, the owners had added so many illegal floors (burdening the already weak foundations) it would no longer have been economical to knock them all down and replace them with new high-rises. The owners had nothing to gain from the new law permitting twelve-story construction, and the contractors didn’t even try to negotiate with them. Korkut had once told Mevlut that these horrible buildings, with each additional floor different from the one below, gave a bad impression of Duttepe and Kültepe, lowering the value of the new apartments to be built and ruining the image of the neighborhood; the only hope was for the next big earthquake to destroy them all.

Ever since the quake in 1999, Mevlut — like all residents of Istanbul — would sometimes catch himself thinking about “the big one,” the one the experts said was imminent and would destroy the whole city. In those moments, he would realize that this city where he’d spent forty years of his life, where he’d passed through thousands and thousands of doors, getting to know the insides of people’s homes, was no less an ephemeral thing than the life he’d lived there and the memories he’d made. The new tall buildings that were replacing his generation’s gecekondu homes would also disappear one day, along with all the people who lived inside them. He would sometimes have a vision of the day when all the people and all the buildings were to vanish, and he would feel then as if it wasn’t really worth doing anything at all, that he might as well give up any expectations he may have had of life.

Throughout the happy years of his marriage to Rayiha, though, he’d always thought that Istanbul would never change, that all his hard work out on the streets would gain him a place of his own someday, and that he would learn to adapt to the city. All this had happened, to an extent. But ten million other people had joined him in Istanbul over the past forty years, latching on as he had to anything they could find, and the city had emerged transformed. Istanbul’s population had been only three million when Mevlut had first arrived; now, they said there were thirteen million people living there.

Raindrops were dripping down the back of his neck. Mevlut, who was fifty-two years old, looked for a place to shelter and let his heart rate slow down. He didn’t have any specific worries about his heart, but he was smoking too much lately. Over on the right he saw a clearing that had often been used for weddings and circumcision parties and for the Derya Cinema’s summer screenings; now they’d turned it into a football field with artificial turf surrounded by a wire fence. Mevlut had organized football tournaments there for the migrants’ association. Under the dripping eaves of their office building, he lit a cigarette and watched the rain falling onto the plastic grass.

His life was still passing by in a crescendo of anxieties. Mevlut had reached the age at which he would have liked to put his feet up, but he didn’t feel secure enough to do so. The deficiency and inadequacy he’d felt in his heart when he’d first moved to the city had intensified after Rayiha’s death, and especially over the past five years. What would Samiha say? All he wanted was a house where he could spend the rest of his days in comfort, a place where he knew no one would ever be able to kick him out. Samiha should try to console him about his failure to get that, but Mevlut knew that as soon as he got home and broke the news to her, he would probably end up consoling her instead. He decided to tell her only the good news from the negotiation. That, at least, should be how he introduced the subject.

Kültepe’s inadequate sewage system couldn’t absorb all the water coursing down the neighborhood’s steep slopes. Mevlut realized that Main Street must be flooded when he heard the sounds of cars honking in the resulting traffic jam.

By the time he got home, he was soaking wet. The way Samiha was looking at him made him nervous, so he went a little overboard: “Everything’s fine,” he said. “They’re going to give us one thousand two hundred fifty liras every month so we can live wherever we want.”

“I know it’s all fallen through, Mevlut. Why are you lying to me?” said Samiha.

Vediha had called Samiha on her mobile phone and told her that Korkut was both deeply wounded and furious, that it was all over now, that they were cutting all ties with Mevlut.

“What did you say? Did you tell her how you made me swear on my way out that I wouldn’t take any lower than sixty-two percent?”

“Are you regretting it now?” said Samiha, raising a single, contemptuous eyebrow. “Do you think Süleyman and Korkut would have been nicer to you if you’d just given in to them?”

“I’ve been giving in to them all my life,” said Mevlut. Samiha’s silence spurred him on. “If I stand up to them now, I might lose the apartment. Do you want that kind of responsibility? Call your sister back, smooth things over, tell her they scared me, and I’m sorry for what I said.”

“I will not do that.”

“Then I’ll call Vediha myself,” said Mevlut, but he didn’t take his phone out of his pocket. He felt as if he were on his own. He knew he couldn’t make any major decisions that day without Samiha’s support. He changed out of his wet clothes, looking out at the view just as he used to do as a child when he did his homework. Right next to the old orange building of Atatürk Boys’ Secondary School, in the courtyard where Mevlut had always loved running around and where they’d had gym class, there was a new building so big that he could hardly recognize his old school anymore.

Samiha picked up her ringing phone and said, “We’re here,” before hanging up. She looked at Mevlut. “Vediha’s on her way. She said you’re not to go anywhere and just wait here.”

Samiha was sure that Vediha was coming to say, Mevlut made a mistake, he should ask for a little less; she urged her husband not to back down.

“Vediha is a good person. She wouldn’t suggest anything that is unfair to us,” said Mevlut.

“I wouldn’t trust her so much,” said Samiha. “She’ll defend Süleyman over you. Hasn’t she always?”

Was this a barbed reference to the letters? If so, it was the first time in their seven years together that Mevlut had heard Samiha make a bitter remark on the matter. They listened to the rain in silence.

There was a thunderous knock at the door. It was Vediha, who walked in complaining that she was “completely soaked,” though she was carrying an enormous purple umbrella and, actually, only her feet were wet. Samiha went to get her sister fresh socks and a pair of slippers, and Vediha placed a piece of paper on the table.

“Mevlut, just sign and let’s get this over with. You’ve asked for more than you are owed, you don’t know what I had to do to calm everyone down…”

Mevlut had seen others with the same boilerplate contract, and he wasn’t sure where to look: when he saw that it said sixty-two percent, he was delighted, but he held his emotions in check. “I won’t sign it if it’s not my right,” he said.

“Oh, Mevlut, haven’t you learned, rights don’t matter in the city, only profits,” said Vediha, smiling. “Give it ten years and what you’ve earned will become yours by rights. Now sign. You’re getting everything you asked for, so don’t complain.”

“No signing until we’ve read it,” said Samiha, but when she saw Mevlut pointing at the sixty-two percent, she, too, was relieved. “What happened?” she asked her sister.

Mevlut picked up the pen and signed the contract. Vediha used her mobile phone to tell Korkut. Once that was done, she gave Samiha the box of stuffed pastries she’d brought, and as they drank the tea Samiha had prepared and waited for the rain to stop, she told them the whole story, savoring every moment of her account: Korkut and Süleyman had been furious with Mevlut. In spite of Vediha’s pleading, it did look like the dispute might end up in court, with Mevlut losing everything, but then the elderly Hadji Hamit Vural caught wind of what was happening, and he called Korkut up.

“Hadji Hamit’s dream is to build a much taller building, a big tower in Duttepe near our old house,” said Vediha. “So he told Korkut, ‘Give your cousin whatever he wants.’ He won’t enter into any agreements for that tower until he’s done with these twelve-story blocks.”

“Let’s hope there’s no catch,” said Samiha.

Later, Samiha showed the contract to a lawyer, who confirmed that there were no tricks. They moved into an apartment near Mevlut’s clubhouse in Mecidiyeköy. But Mevlut’s mind was still on the home they’d left behind in Kültepe. He went to check on his empty house a few times and to see whether any tramps or burglars had broken in, but there was nothing there to steal. He’d sold everything of any value, from the doorknobs to the kitchen sink.

Toward the end of that summer, Vural Holdings’ earthmovers began to demolish houses in Kültepe, and every day Mevlut went down to watch. On the first day of the demolitions, there was a progovernment rally attended by journalists and solemnly addressed by the mayor. But in the hot summer days that followed, none of the people who saw their homes disappear in a cloud of dust applauded as they had done at that inaugural ceremony (not even the people who’d gotten the best deals from Vural Holdings). Mevlut saw people cry, laugh, look away, or start fights as their houses were knocked down. When the time came for his own one-room house, Mevlut felt his heart breaking. He observed his whole childhood, the food he’d eaten, the homework he’d done, the way things had smelled, the sound of his father grunting in his sleep, hundreds of thousands of memories all smashed to pieces in a single swipe of the bulldozer shovel.