Many and Many a Year Ago by Selcuk Altun Page B

than a kindly benefactor to Haluk: he treated him like his own son. He coached him for two hours every weekend in fencing.
    â€œIn my opinion Haluk was the most handsome guy around, yet he had little interest in the girls who chased after him. We all thought his newfound interest in Nazım Hikmet in our last year at school was a passing fad. In those days—1950s Turkey—just quoting from a Hikmet poem could make you a traitor to your country.
    â€œWe were together again in the Political Science department at Ankara University. I wanted to become a district official. By that time I’d awoken from the dream that Nabi Tabur would allow me to marry Nalan after I finished school. Vlad wanted Haluk to become a diplomat; and Halit planned to work with his father, a hazelnut grower, after getting a degree in finance. We lived together in a gray apartment in Cebeci—the doors, the windows, even the courtyard was gray. There was nothing by Nazım Hikmet that Haluk hadn’t read, and he’d started in on a few other banned left-wing books as well. At the bottom of his dresser drawers you could find a Stalin poster or two. Of course we didn’t abandon our leader in his new enthusiasm. We pretended to be interested in the books he brought home, and I managed to familiarize myself with those Hikmet poems that were like three-dimensional paintings. Haluk’s mother passed away during our first year. The next year the police arrested us and kept us in over night because of those illegal publications. We were expelled from school even though the case never went to trial, and this, I think, shattered Haluk’s dreams.
    â€œBack at the farm, I didn’t meet with the reception I’d hoped for. Nabi Tabur and my father thought my friend had victimized me. They decided I should do my military service and then come back to work at Tabur’s flour factory. Haluk came to Mahmudiye in May 1956; Vlad had thrown him out of the house when he learned why he’d been expelled. Haluk decided to run off to Moscow but wanted first to say goodbye and to apologize to my family for what had happened. My father was touched by this gesture and invited him to stay with us. That invitation was to be a turning point in the lives of many people.
    â€œNalan and Haluk fell in love at first sight. The Tartar beauty easily vanquished Haluk’s notion of love being a bourgeois fantasy. I took a perverse pleasure in assisting their exchange of love letters and observing their love play on the riverbank. When her sneaky brother caught them together, I hid Haluk at a friend’s place in Mesudiye. They wouldn’t let Nalan out of the house after that. The family was on at her to marry a pharmacist, so the lovers decided to elope. Haluk asked Count Nadolsky for money but he never got a reply. So the lovers pooled their pocket money to try to make their way to Halit’s. How Nalan jumped from a second-floor window to meet Haluk … it’s a long story. Anyway, they went off to Tirebolu while I caught the first bus to Ä°zmir to go live with my sister. Halit and I parted without a chance to say goodbye properly. It’s been fifty-odd years now and I’ve had no news of any of them …
    â€œThe passion between Nalan and Haluk was too cinematic to last. Once they got through the money they’d borrowed from Halit, Haluk probably joined up with his comrades; and Nalan was, no doubt, taken back into the bosom of her family after a tearful apology.
    â€œPerhaps I can show you my permanent collection, Lieutenant? Let me explain why you won’t see any nudes or horses in it …”
    But I didn’t let him finish. I didn’t need to see his collection. I’d seen enough of the self-pitying expressions on the pieces I’d studied while he talked.
*
    I ducked into the first Internet café I found and was annoyed to find there were no free terminals. I commandeered a computer from