TE23 Double Feature

52 Factory Lane (novel excerpt) Selim Özdo ğ an Translated from German by Katy Darbyshire and Ayça Türkoğlu ‘It beggars belief. While you were cleaning! Once a week the programme’s on, and you go and break the aerial on a Saturday. Couldn’t it wait until Monday? Once a week we sit here nice and cosy together and they tell us what’s going on back home, once a week. Other women fall out onto the street while they’re cleaning the windows, and my wife has to go and destroy the aerial. You must have tugged pretty hard at it, and that’s what you call cleaning, is it? You shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near electrical devices, you shouldn’t even be allowed an iron. Once a week I watch a lovely slim presenter, not like my wife who’s so fat she rips the aerial off the telly. Why don’t you try dieting?’ It’s been like this all afternoon. Gül lets him moan as much as he likes, thinking up answers that go unsaid and smiling to herself because she knows Ceyda and Ceren are playing outside out of harm’s way. But after a while she’s had enough. 207

[Learn more about Selim Özdoğan’s novel, 52 Factory Lane , on the May 15, 2022 episode of Bowery Poetry Speaks on Trafika Europe Radio, right here .]

Selim Özdo ğ an