74. Tarik Bey

"Box number 74 is the mirror image of box number 47. The death of Tarik Bey, Fusun’s father, gave Kemal and Fusun a last hope for reconciliation.
I asked myself over and over again why I had such a deeply pleasant time while I was composing this box (and its sister, Box 47, “My Father’s Death”) with objects that illustrate the life, belongings, and death of Füsun’s father. Was it the opportunity to play around, years later, with familiar objects that were used for completely different purposes? Putting these things together in a box, measuring every centimeter, and making the slightest change in search of a particular harmony made me feel as if I were building a world—just as I do when I write a novel.
This concert photograph, a memento of Tarık Bey’s years teaching at the high school in Kars, was taken in the city’s majestic National Theater, a leftover from the Russian years. This is the theater where, forty-five years after this photo was taken, the poet Ka read his latest poem to a stupefied audience (as I recount in my novel Snow) and an itinerant theatrical company allied with the secret services initiated a military coup against the Islamists and Kurds. The bankruptcy and flight (in 1982) of Banker Kastelli (Cevher Özden), to whom Tarık Bey had lost his life’s savings and retirement bonus, was a blow to the Keskin family, and rocked the middle and upper classes of Istanbul too.
Tarık Bey smoked Birinci, a brand of cigarettes cheaper than the ones his daughter liked, and used Nacet razors, a popular brand at the time. A proper cabinet of curiosities must, of course, always contain one or two crocodiles or—barring that—a couple of lizards.
This old watch belonged to Tarik Bey: on one side it features Ottoman era Arab numerals, and on the other it has Roman numerals from the years of westernisation. Watching me ponder at length on how to display it, those working in the museum started to call it the East-West clock.
I would smile and say to the artists and craftsmen working with me: The East-West watch, c’est moi." (The Innocence of Objects by Orhan Pamuk)