Fuaye
NOW, YEARS later, and after a long search, I am exhibiting here an illustrated menu, an advertisement, a matchbook, and a napkin from Fuaye, one of the European-style (imitation French) restaurants most loved by the tiny circle of wealthy people who lived in neighborhoods like Beyo?lu, ?i?li, and Ni?anta?? (were we to affect the snide tone of gossip columnists, we might call such folk "society"). Because they wished to give their customers a subtler illusion of being in a European city, they shied away from pompous Western names like the Ambassador, the Majestic, or the Royal, preferring others like Kulis (backstage), Merdiven (stairway), and Fuaye (lobby), names that reminded one of being on the edge of Europe, in Istanbul. The next generation of nouveaux riches would prefer gaudy restaurants that offered the same food their grandmothers cooked, combining tradition and ostentation with names such as Hanedan (dynasty), Hünkar (sovereign), Pasha, Vezir (vizier), and Sultan—and under the pressure of their pretensions Fuaye sank into oblivion.
Over dinner at Fuaye on the evening of the day I had bought the handbag, I asked Sibel, "Wouldn't it be better if from now on we met in that flat my mother has in the Merhamet Apartments? It looks out over such a pretty garden."
"Are you expecting some delay in moving to our own house once we've married?" she asked.
"No, darling, I meant nothing of the sort."
"I don't want any more skulking about in secret apartments as if I were your mistress."
"You're right."
"Where did this idea come from, to meet in that apartment?"
"Never mind," I said. I looked at the cheerful crowd around me as I brought out the handbag, still hidden in its plastic bag.
"What's this?" asked Sibel, sensing a present.
"A surprise! Open and see."
"Is it really?" As she opened the plastic bag and saw the handbag, the childish joy on her face gave way first to a quizzical look, and then to a disappointment that she tried to hide.
"Do you remember?" I ventured. "When I was walking you home last night, you saw it in the window of that shop and admired it."
"Oh, yes. How thoughtful of you."
"I'm glad you like it. It will look so elegant on you at our engagement party."
"I hate to say it, but the handbag I'm taking to our engagement party was chosen a long time ago," said Sibel. "Oh, don't look so downcast! It was so thoughtful of you, to go to all the effort of buying this lovely present for me…. All right then, just so you don't think I'm being unkind to you, I could never put this handbag on my arm at our engagement party, because this handbag is a fake!"
"What?"
"This is not a genuine Jenny Colon, my dear Kemal. It is an imitation."
"How can you tell?"
"Just by looking at it, dear. See the way the label is stitched to the leather? Now look at the stitching on this real Jenny Colon I bought in Paris. It's not for nothing that it's an exclusive brand in France and all over the world. For one thing, she would never use such cheap thread."
There was a moment, as I looked at the genuine stitching, when I asked myself why my future bride was taking such a triumphal tone. Sibel was the daughter of a retired ambassador who'd long ago sold off the last of his pasha grandfather's land and was now penniless; technically this made her the daughter of a civil servant, and this status sometimes caused her to feel uneasy and insecure. Whenever her anxieties overtook her, she would talk about her paternal grandmother, who had played the piano, or about her paternal grandfather, who had fought in the War of Independence, or she'd tell me how close her maternal grandfather had been to Sultan Abdülhamit; but her timidity moved me, and I loved her all the more for it. With the expansion of the textiles and exports trade during the early 1970s, and the consequent tripling of Istanbul's population, the price of land had skyrocketed throughout the city and most particularly in neighborhoods like ours. Although, carried on this wave, my father's fortune had grown extravagantly over the past decade, increasing fivefold, our surname (Basmac?, "cloth printer") left no doubt that we owed our wealth to three generations of cloth manufacture. It made me uneasy to be troubled by the "fake" handbag despite three generations of cumulative progress.
When she saw my spirits sink, Sibel caressed my hand. "How much did you pay for the bag?"
"Fifteen hundred lira," I said. "If you don't want it, I can exchange it tomorrow."
"Don't exchange it, darling, ask for your money back, because they really cheated you."
"The owner of the shop is ?enay Han?m, and we're distantly related!" I said, raising my eyebrows in dismay.
Sibel took back the bag, whose interiors I had been quietly exploring. "You're so knowledgeable, darling, so clever and cultured," she said, with a tender smile, "but you have absolutely no idea how easily women can trick you."
