When I first arrived in Istanbul, nearly ten years ago, I found a room for rent in Kadıköy. It was on a narrow street just off Bahariye Street and close to the Bull Statue. Very conveniently located, and it was only 400 lira a month, a bargain even then.
So I contacted the guy, who was named Gökhan, and we arranged to meet at the Bull one humid August evening. Gökhan was young, long-haired, wearing a Guns n Roses t-shirt. Said he’d just finished his studies at Sabancı University.
We walked the short distance to the apartment. It was on the first floor, and the place was nice: A pleasant living room, with windows looking out onto the street, and there were two bedrooms. A small white cat, scarcely more than a kitten, was lounging in the window.
“That’s Axl,” Gökhan said, introducing me to the cat. “He’s really easy to take care of. Just give him some food, change the litter box once a week.” The cat looked at me with blank, black eyes, lost interest and went back to looking out at the street.
My room was small but I didn’t mind, not for the price I was paying.
We settled the details pretty quickly – I handed over the cash, and Gökhan handed over the keys, one for the apartment and one for the outside door. That evening, we celebrated with a few pints of Bomonti at a local bar just down the street. Turns out Gökhan’s father lived in Kazakhstan, had some “mining interests” there, and he was going there for a few weeks for a visit, so the place would be all mine.
Great!, I thought. After all, I’ve never been much for roommates, and the thought of having this little apartment in Kadıköy all to myself, even for a few weeks, was extremely seductive. There was the cat Axl to look after, but that wasn’t a big deal. Cats don’t need much care.
“Ha! Just watch the parties, dude!” Gökhan joked. He’d spent six months at a college in the States, so his mannerisms and attitudes were very American.
“I won’t be here when you get here tomorrow,” he continued. “So I’ll just leave the keys with the owner here. Don’t worry! Burak’s a cool guy. I’m a regular here.”
The next evening, when I arrived with my things, I went to the bar. Burak, this tattooed Alevi dude, nodded and handed me the keys. I went to the apartment and let myself in. As I said, it was a pleasant little place, fully furnished, with a large comfortable sofa, coffee table, Turkish rug and a widescreen TV. The cat Axl brushed past, wanting food, so I went to the kitchen and filled her bowl with some Pro Plan. Then I set up my laptop, connected it with the TV. Wonderful! I could come home from teaching in the evenings, with a few beers, and have relaxing nights watching movies.
Which is what I was doing that first evening, when about 8 o’clock, the door chimed. I went to the window and looked outside. A young man and woman were standing there, waiting expectantly.
“Is Gökhan there?” the young man asked.
“He’s in Kazakhstan,” I answered.
“Oh, that’s right.” The couple conversed together in Turkish, and then the man switched back to English.
“Do you mind if we come in for a second?” They looked OK enough, not sketchy or anything. Figuring they might be close friends of Gökhan, and that I might be seeing more of them in the future, I thought it behooved me to not be an asshole.
So I went out and let them in. Inside the apartment, they immediately plunked down on the sofa, in a way that suggested they were very familiar with the place. They introduced themselves as Enes and Hülya. They’d apparently known Gökhan in college.
“Maybe Gökhan told you about us,” Enes said. He was tall, very fresh-faced.
“No, actually.”
“Well, we kind of have this deal,” Enes went on. “He sort of lets us use his room once a week, if you know what I mean.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
“I mean, we don’t really have anywhere else,” Enes offered, by way of explanation. “We both live with our parents, so …”
“O-kay.” Yes, it was all very strange. But remember I’d just arrived in Istanbul, so I was still very unsure of myself and the city. I mean, I was born at night, but not last night. Still … maybe this was some kind of weird cultural norm.
“Hold on,” I said. Excusing myself, I went to the kitchen and called Gökhan. “Yeah?” he answered. I explained the situation, that there were two people in the flat wanting the “use the room.”
“Oh, right!” Gökhan said. “You mean, Enes and Hülya? Right. Yeah, I forgot to mention that. We have this little arrangement. On Thursdays, I let them use my room for a couple hours. It’s OK, bro. They’re harmless. You don’t have to, like, entertain them or anything. They know the score. Just let them use the room, and they won’t disturb you. If they do, you let me know!”
Ringing off, I returned to the living room. The couple had risen from the sofa, and were looking at me with polite, expectant smiles.
“Well, go ahead,” I said.
“Thank you!” they nodded and quickly disappeared into Gökhan’s bedroom, shutting the door.
Normally, I’d be really put off by the situation. But it was my first night in the flat, so the surroundings still felt new and strange. I just popped open a bottle of Efes, turned on the laptop and binge-watched some “Breaking Bad.” The cat Axl, sitting up at his favorite spot on the window, didn’t seem to care either.
Sometime around 9 o’clock, the couple emerged from the room, their faces looking sex-flushed and happy.
“Can you give this to Gökhan?” Enes asked. He handed me a 50-lira note. “See you!” they said, as they left.
Without saying anything, I put the money on the coffee table, and went back to watching “Breaking Bad.” Well, I thought, that must be the arrangement. I looked up the word on Google Translate: “Anlaşma: deal, or understanding.” Yeah, that’s it.
The next morning, I went to the school. I taught most of the day. That evening, I walked up Bahariye Street and was just enjoying the overripe, late-summer air. Lots of people were out walking. Two guys were standing at the door of the apartment.
“Are you –?” they asked me, mentioning my name.
Turns out they were also Gökhan’s friends. Introduced themselves as Deniz and Hakan. Other than the fact that all of Gökhan’s friends seemed to speak English, I was beginning to find it odd that they all seemed to flock to his place. Must be a popular guy, I thought.
They seemed to be waiting for me to let them in. So I opened the door and they followed. With the previous evening’s happenings fresh in mind, I wondered what sort of business these two guys had with my absentee flatmate.
“We have an arrangement with Gökhan,” Deniz said. Of course they did. I wondered if they were gay, but they quickly disabused me of that notion. No, they needed the room for another purpose apparently, for I noticed as we entered the apartment, Deniz was taking a pipe out of his jeans pocket.
Now, this made me a lot more nervous than before. I did not know anything about Turkish law, but I was fairly certain that drugs were not legal.
I put in a call to Gökhan, expressing a bit more urgency this time.
“Dude, relax!” Gökhan said. “It’s really nothing to worry about. The neighbors don’t give a shit. They’re all about ninety years old anyway. Deniz and Hakan, they come on Fridays. And they only stay long enough to smoke their dope and then they’re gone. Twenty minutes, half hour tops.”
Like the previous evening’s guests, both Denis and Hakan just offered conspiratory smiles after I rang off. “Cool,” they said, and disappeared into the room. For the next half hour, as the unmistakable odor of marijuana began to drift in from the bedroom, I had paranoid visions of sudden, loud rapping at the door. Big policemen with flashlights and clubs, shoving me against the wall, asking all kinds of questions in Turkish. Me in a Turkish prison.
Then they came out, looking stoned and happy, and just like the romantic couple the night before, handed me a 50-lira note, and left.
OK, so these friends of Gökhan were using the apartment for their secret rendezvous, and were giving him money. I thought about it, and realized that this was probably how Gökhan was paying his share of the rent. After all, the guy didn’t appear to have a job, not if he could just up and leave for Kazakhstan whenever…
You’d think that at that point I would just pack my things and go, right? I mean, that should have been a deal-breaker, having your apartment used as a sort of house of ill repute. It’s not the usual room-mate predicament, like, say, not washing the dishes or something.
But the truth is I didn’t care that much – in the beginning. I was single, and mostly preoccupied with my own concerns. I wasn’t at the flat all that much myself. Being new to the city, I usually was gone on the weekends, off exploring Taksim, or the historical places in Eminönü and Fatih. And it wasn’t my apartment: I was just a tenant myself. I guess I figured, for 400 a month, I could tolerate these discreet, casual visitors a couple days a week. Just pop a beer, and turn up the TV a little. Sort of like being a concierge at some backstreet hotel.
Over the next few weeks, I worked a lot at the school, getting used to the new routine. In the evenings, sometimes I’d have drinks at one of the bars in Kadıköy with some of the other teachers. On those nights I knew the guests were coming, I was home but I didn’t make a point of hurrying home – hell, they weren’t on my schedule. I figured that if they rang the bell and I wasn’t there, it was up to them to either wait or come back later.
By early Fall, I’d begun to settle into my new life. I liked Istanbul, the hustle and büstle of the markets, the proximity of history and empires, its shifting colors and tones and moods. Chatting with my new students, I began to feel more familiar with Turkish people. They knew something about my living arrangements. They said that it was quite common in Istanbul – subletting apartments, I mean. Many people rented out rooms, especially to yabancılar like me to supplement their incomes. It made economic sense. The government was trying to crack down on such practices, mostly because of tax issues. Anyway, like all big cities, it was not easy in Istanbul. So I began to accept the arrangements as something like normal. Life in the big city, etc.
There was still no sign of my roommate. He texted now and again, said he was “doing some shit” for his father.
****
One evening in early October, I got home from work and there were two older men waiting outside. Something about them put me on alert. “Are you living here?” one of them asked. “Where is Gökhan?”
I wondered if these guys were the owners of the apartment, or perhaps even the poliçe. A shudder ran up my spine. Stammering, I just told them that Gökhan was in Kazakhstan. “Do you know when he’s coming back?” they asked.
Actually, I’d begun to wonder that myself. It had been more than “a few weeks,” by then. Nobody had been by to collect the rent, and so I figured perhaps these men were here about that. Nervously, I protested my ignorance of the situation. It was an easy role to play – that of the naive, dumb yabancı – because I was telling the truth, mostly.
The two men sized me up, chatted quietly together in Turkish for a few minutes. “OK,” they said, seeming to dismiss me. “We come back.” I watched them as they walked off down the street.
As soon as they left, I called Gökhan and told him about the two men. “Oh, they’re nobody!” Gökhan assured me. “Probably friends of the landlord, just checking up on the place. The landlord knows you’re living there, by the way.”
“What should I do if they come back?”
“Don’t let them in, dude. It’s none of their business! Seriously, I wouldn’t worry about it.”
But I did worry about it, despite Gökhan’s reassurances. And I resented him being away and leaving me to handle all these things that were really not my problems.
“And what about the rent?” I asked.
“We’ll take care of that when I get back. I’ve already told the landlord.”
Then a couple of nights later, I got a text message from Gökhan. “Dude! Some shit has come up. Bad news. You’re gonna have to move out. Seriously, I would highly recommend not being there in the morning!”
There was almost something sinister, frightening, in the message: What did he mean by, “highly recommend not being there in the morning?” Who was going to show up? The landlord? Police? Gangsters?
I tried calling Gökhan but got no answer. What was I going to do? It was clear I needed to leave, but on such short notice, where was I to go?
I went to the bedroom and packed my things – just two bags really. Thank God I have always traveled light. I went back to the living room and sat on the sofa, thinking about what I was going to do. I tried calling Gökhan a couple more times but still there was no answer. On the sofa, the cat Axl seemed to sense something in the air, for he was looking at me with these wide feline eyes and twitching its nose.
“I don’t know, cat,” I said. “Looks like you’re on your own! Til tomorrow anyway.”
The money I’d collected from Gökhan’s “anlaşma” was still sitting on the table – about 750 lira. I stared at the money for a long time. It was really tempting to just stick it in my pocket. But karma, that bitch, was somewhere out there in the night, possibly even waiting right outside the door, ready to pounce on me as I left the apartment.
So I just left the money on the coffee table, along with the keys to the apartment. After filling the cat Axl’s bowl with some extra food, I grabbed my bags and left. Outside, it was dark, and I felt that paranoia returning, expecting somebody to call my name or seize me. But nobody did. I walked down to the Bull, then down the long road to the iskele. The bright lights of the city shone over the Bosphorus.
I walked down busy Rihtim Caddesi, remembering the hotel where I’d stayed upon my arrival in the city a few months before. It was a little run-down, but at least it was cheap. The guy working the night desk seemed to recognize me, and said yes, there was a room available.
The next day at the school, one of the other teachers heard about my situation and said she had a room available at her apartment in Çiçekçi. It was small, she said, but there for the long-term if I wanted. I accepted it, and moved in that very night.
Sometime later, I happened to be in Kadıköy, so out of curiosity, I wandered over to have a look at the old apartment one evening. There was a FOR RENT sign in the window. Glancing in the window, the same furniture was still there, but the place appeared to completely deserted. The money I’d left on the coffee table was gone.
I wondered what had happened to Gökhan – did he come back from Kazakhstan, or was he still there? I don’t know, for I never heard from him ever again. Sometimes I wonder what happened to those curious friends of his, Enes and Hülya, Deniz and Hakan. Oh well. Istanbul is a big city. I’m sure they found another “anlaşma.”
****
Down the street, I passed some cats lounging in the shadows. A flicker of recognition seemed to light from one of them. It rushed forward and brushed my leg. It was the cat Axl. What was I to do? My new flatmates already had a cat, a jealous creature that would tolerate no such new arrangements. So I went to a local shop, bought some cat food and went back and put some on the ground.
All the cats, including Axl, scurried hungrily forward.
“That’s all I can do, Axl. Hope you find something better.”
I left hurriedly, leaving the cats to fight over their dinner.
James Tressler is the author of several short story collections on Istanbul, including the recently published, “Strait Fiction.” He resides in Üsküdar with his wife Özge and cat Ginger.
