TE16 Turkish Delight

The Adventures of Misfit Defne Kman: Earth held up to social media mockery. He had left his own house with its luxuriant fruit garden in one of the most desirable parts of Istanbul, two steps from the Sea of Marmara, close enough to the Princes’ Islands to touch them, to come to this little doily-draped room in a block of flats in Çorum overlooking nothing but other buildings... And what was the real reason he had abandoned his belovedparents-in-lawNineUmayandDedeKorkut, hisbeautiful Istanbulite wife and children, his treasured two-thousand-book private library, and his precious job at Istanbul University’s Faculty of Literature, to come here? Either he was escaping from something, or he had fallen terribly in love. There could be no other explanation. Sipping her tea while her father pondered how to begin, Defne found herself staring at the handsome face of the Blessed Ali embroidered on a long hand-woven carpet. As far as she could recall her father being Alevi had never been an issue in the family; Umay and Korkut Bayülgen had respected Ali as they did all revered people; they’d visited Alevi houses of worship with their son-in-law and taken their grandchildren along with them. “This is beautiful work, it must be handmade. I’ve never seen such high-quality workmanship. I’d love to get one to take back to Istanbul.” “Take it, my dear girl, it’s yours!” said Akın Kaman, smiling happily. “We’ll get another one made. Gülistan’s cousins weave them, they export them to Germany.”

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