6. Fusun's Tears

“Apparently this bag is not a genuine Jenny Colon,” I whispered. “It seems that it’s a fake.”
“What?” said Füsun.
“I don’t really understand these things,” I said helplessly.
“Nothing like that ever happens here!” she said in a harsh voice. “Do you want your money back right now?”
“Yes!” I blurted out.
She looked deeply pained. Dear God, I thought, why hadn’t I just disposed of this bag and told Sibel I’d gotten the money back? “Look, this has nothing to do with you or Şenay Hanım. We Turks, praise God, manage to make imitations of every European fashion,” I said, struggling to smile.
As determined as she sounded, I sensed that Füsun could not do what she was supposed to do; there was something strange in the intensely embarrassing moment. She was looking at the till as if someone had put a spell on it, as if it were possessed by demons, so that she couldn’t bring herself to touch it. When I saw her face redden and crinkle up, her eyes welling with tears, I panicked and drew two steps closer."
(...)
"On my way back home, I saw a yellow jug I felt compelled to go inside and buy it. Unlike any other object acquired so casually, this yellow jug drew no comment from anyone during the twenty years it sat on the table where my mother and father, and later, my mother and I, ate our meals. Every time I touched the handle of that jug, I would remember those days when I first felt the misery that was to turn me in on myself, leaving my mother to watch me in silence at supper, her eyes filled half with sadness, half with reproach." (The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk)