The Museum Of Innocence

8 Turkey’s First Fruit Soda

HERE I am exhibiting the newspaper advertisements, the commercials, and the bottles of strawberry, peach, orange, and sour cherry flavors of Turkey’s first domestic fruit soda, Meltem, in memory of our optimism and the happy-go-lucky spirit of the day. That evening Zaim was celebrating the launch of his new product with an extravagant party in his perfectly situated Ayaspaşa apartment which had a sweeping view of the Bosphorus. Our whole group would be together again. Sibel was happy to be among my rich friends-she enjoyed the yacht trips down the Bosphorus, the surprise birthday parties, and the nights at clubs, which would end with all of us piling into our cars to roam the streets of Istanbul-but she didn’t like Zaim. She thought he was a show-off, too much a playboy and rather “coarse;” and his party tricks-like the “surprise” belly dancer at the end of the evening or his habit of lighting girls’ cigarettes with a lighter bearing the Playboy logo-she found “banal.” Sibel was even more disapproving of his dalliances with minor actresses and models (the latter a new phenomenon in Turkey, and still viewed with suspicion), whom he knew of course he would never marry, on account of their being known to have had sex; nor could she bear his misleading the nice girls he also took out with no intention of letting a relationship develop. That is why, when I phoned her to say that I was feeling unwell and unable to attend the party, or to go out at all, I was surprised to find Sibel disappointed.

“They say the German model in the Meltem campaign is going to be there!” Sibel said.

“But I thought you felt that Zaim was a bad influence on me…”

“If you can’t even drag yourself to a Zaim party, you really must be sick. Now you have me worried. Shall I come over?”

“There’s no need. My mother and Fatma Hanım are looking after me. I should be fine by tomorrow.”

As I stretched out on my bed, fully clothed, I thought about Füsun; I decided once more to forget her, in fact never to see her again for as long as I lived.