TE23 Double Feature

Selim Özdo ğan

52 Factory Lane

fine. I love your food, you know that, but I’ve eaten.’ ‘I’m sure you can find room for a little something.’ ‘Come on,’ says Fuat, putting a hand on Serter’s shoulder, ‘come on, I’ve got to check on the chickens. There’s no need for us to stay to watch the women clean up.’ ‘I’ll get you your jacket, it’s cold out,’ Gül says, putting the plate back and making for the hallway. ‘Leave it,’ Fuat says, ‘I don’t need it right now.’ He accompanies Serter out the back door, which leads into a corridor housing the toilet and the washing machine. When ten minutes have passed and Fuat still hasn’t come back, Gül murmurs: ‘He’ll catch cold.’ ‘He put my jacket on,’ says Ceyda. ‘Stop peering through the window like that,’ Gül says. ‘There’s nothing to see.’ A further twenty minutes later, Fuat is back in the kitchen. Gesine said her goodbyes and 228

left a while ago, and now Gül is drying up and the girls are sitting in the living room watching TV. ‘Why did you drag him outside in such a hurry?’ Gül asks. ‘Good God!’ Fuat replies. ‘What is it you’ve got running through your mind? That I’ve got debts again? Gambling debts are debts of honour – I’ve got nothing to hide. You’re almost as suspicious as he is. Can’t even trust your own husband. Why did you drag him outside in such a hurry? Because his teapot’s so cracked, there’s no mending it. He’s stark raving bonkers. There were three young women in here. Who knows what unsavoury things he’d start saying, what kinds of gestures he’d pull? – the sort that don’t belong in a civilized household. He’s a bachelor, after all. I was thinking of our daughters: that’s why I dragged him outside. You never know with these mad types, and he is mad, completely. Who knows who he got it from? – he can’t have come up with these ideas on his own. That we ought to fear the Germans, that they’re no better than any other regime. The German secret service killed those terrorists in prison, he says. They were all Nazis at one time anyway, the Germans – racism’s in their blood. They’ll butcher us like those lefties, 229