thousands of people been inspired, all at the same moment, to place the same wooden sailboat on their radios, their radiators, in the rear window of their cars, in their rooms, on their desks, and on their workbenches? How else would you explain the phenomenon of moms and dads, kids and old folks, all goaded with some inexplicable desire to acquire and tack up on their walls and doors the poster of the waif with European features and a huge tear dripping out of his eye? This nation, these people … they’re really … really … “Strange,” I said, completing his sentence. It was my task now, not Aladdin’s, to find words like “incomprehensible,” or even “terrifying.” For a while we fell silent.
Later, I figured out that Aladdin and his customers had a bond through which to communicate the words he himself couldn’t nail down, say, for the little celluloid geese that nodded, or for the old-fashioned chocolates that were shaped like bottles and contained sour-cherry liquor as well as a sour cherry, or else the place in Istanbul you could get the cheapest wood strips for your kite. He favored equally both the little girl who came in with her grandma for one of those chiming hoops and the pimply youth who attempted, retiring to a dark corner of the store, to make rapid love to the nude in the French magazine he snatched when no one was looking. He also loved the bank teller with spectacles on her nose who bought in the evening the novel revealing the lives of the Rich and the Famous in Hollywood, and having digested it overnight, wanted to return it in the morning, saying, “It turns out I already had it in my collection”; and he loved the old guy who put in a special request to have the poster of the girl reading the Koran wrapped in plain newsprint. Even so, his was a conditional love. He could sympathize somewhat with the mother-daughter team who spread out the pattern sheets in fashion magazines all over the store in an effort to cut their material right then and there, and even with the boys who got their toy tanks into battle only to get them broken in fistfights even before they got out of the store. On the other hand, he got a feeling that signs were being sent him from a world that he neither knew nor understood when people asked him for pencil flashlights or for key chains with plastic skulls. What mystery prompted the man who came into the store on a snowy winter day and insisted on buying a “Summer Scape” instead of the “Winter Scape” being used for student home projects? Just as he was about to close shop one night, two shady individuals had come in and fondled the dolls with the movable arms (which came in all sizes and with their own ready-made wardrobes), holding them carefully, tenderly, and skillfully like doctors holding live babies; then watching the pink creatures open and close their eyes as if enchanted, they’d had Aladdin wrap up a doll for them along with a bottle of rakı before they disappeared into the dark night, giving Aladdin the willies. After many such incidents, Aladdin had dreams of the dolls he sold in boxes and plastic bags, hallucinating that after the store was closed at night, the dolls started to open and close their eyes very slowly while their hair grew and grew. Perhaps he was about to ask me what it all meant, but suddenly he let himself fall into the same abject and brooding silence that comes over our countrymen when they feel they’ve talked too much, occupied the world too much with their own troubles. Certain that it wouldn’t be disturbed too soon now, we kept the silence together.
Some time later, as Aladdin left wearing an apologetic look, he said it was all up to me now, and he was sure I’d do my best. Someday I might just do my best and write something good about those dolls and our dreams.
Chapter Five
PERFECTLY CHILDISH
People separate for a reason. They tell you their reason. They give you a chance to reply. They do not run away like
Later, I figured out that Aladdin and his customers had a bond through which to communicate the words he himself couldn’t nail down, say, for the little celluloid geese that nodded, or for the old-fashioned chocolates that were shaped like bottles and contained sour-cherry liquor as well as a sour cherry, or else the place in Istanbul you could get the cheapest wood strips for your kite. He favored equally both the little girl who came in with her grandma for one of those chiming hoops and the pimply youth who attempted, retiring to a dark corner of the store, to make rapid love to the nude in the French magazine he snatched when no one was looking. He also loved the bank teller with spectacles on her nose who bought in the evening the novel revealing the lives of the Rich and the Famous in Hollywood, and having digested it overnight, wanted to return it in the morning, saying, “It turns out I already had it in my collection”; and he loved the old guy who put in a special request to have the poster of the girl reading the Koran wrapped in plain newsprint. Even so, his was a conditional love. He could sympathize somewhat with the mother-daughter team who spread out the pattern sheets in fashion magazines all over the store in an effort to cut their material right then and there, and even with the boys who got their toy tanks into battle only to get them broken in fistfights even before they got out of the store. On the other hand, he got a feeling that signs were being sent him from a world that he neither knew nor understood when people asked him for pencil flashlights or for key chains with plastic skulls. What mystery prompted the man who came into the store on a snowy winter day and insisted on buying a “Summer Scape” instead of the “Winter Scape” being used for student home projects? Just as he was about to close shop one night, two shady individuals had come in and fondled the dolls with the movable arms (which came in all sizes and with their own ready-made wardrobes), holding them carefully, tenderly, and skillfully like doctors holding live babies; then watching the pink creatures open and close their eyes as if enchanted, they’d had Aladdin wrap up a doll for them along with a bottle of rakı before they disappeared into the dark night, giving Aladdin the willies. After many such incidents, Aladdin had dreams of the dolls he sold in boxes and plastic bags, hallucinating that after the store was closed at night, the dolls started to open and close their eyes very slowly while their hair grew and grew. Perhaps he was about to ask me what it all meant, but suddenly he let himself fall into the same abject and brooding silence that comes over our countrymen when they feel they’ve talked too much, occupied the world too much with their own troubles. Certain that it wouldn’t be disturbed too soon now, we kept the silence together.
Some time later, as Aladdin left wearing an apologetic look, he said it was all up to me now, and he was sure I’d do my best. Someday I might just do my best and write something good about those dolls and our dreams.
Chapter Five
PERFECTLY CHILDISH
People separate for a reason. They tell you their reason. They give you a chance to reply. They do not run away like
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