The below text continues my ongoing exchange with Oleg from . If you haven’t subscribed to his Substack already, please do!! Whether or not you’ve read anything by Bıçakçı, or find yourself interested in Turkish literature at all, I think the themes I evoke here are pretty universal. Please don’t hesitate to say “hi” and share your thoughts on friendship — male, age-gap, or otherwise — in the comments!
With love,
A
Sevgili Oleg,
There’s a chapter in The Mosquito Bite Author toward the end, where Cemil answers a call from his good friend Ilhan. Ilhan has been cheating on his wife with a young woman 16 years his junior named Ceren and is anxious about the “movie script’s worth of lies” he’s told to cover the affair.
“Is it worth going through all of this deceit just to suck a young girl’s blood?” he asks.
And Cemil responds with a non-sensical bit of advice involving the chemical composition of seawater as it relates to human blood.1
Vampire metaphors aside, I found the exchange between the two friends endearing. Cemil, as he admits during a guys’ camping trip on the shore of the South Aegean a few weeks later, also finds himself yearning “to fall in love” with… well, he seems indifferent as to with whom. The young woman he’s been eyeing, a girl dating his young friend Berkan who brings to mind “a plump fruit,” proves self-absorbed and dull as a rock, save for a life-hack she shares on eating tomatoes to mask the smell of egg. He doesn’t envy a life of deceit, but he does long for something that will imbue his life with meaning. If not the publication of his novel, then at least a sexual reawakening.
He’s the everyman waiting for what his wife Nazlı might classify as “a miracle” before he eventually has to “confront the laws of physics.”
I see the parallels you drew between Cemil’s male friendships and those at the center of a movie based on a different novel by Bıçakçı, Our Grand Despair. In the latter, a male friendship is brought closer (or disrupted?) by the presence of a beautiful young woman named Nihal, with whom the two men, Ender and Cetin, have to share an apartment! Both of them fall in love and there’s a subtle competition as to who will earn her affection (in whom does Nihal confide her secrets? Who does she miss most on vacation?)
And yet, both men find themselves in the same boat when Nihal lands an age-appropriate college boyfriend and places both Ender and Cetin firmly in the friend zone. There’s tension and competition when hopes are high, and commiseration when illusions are dashed.
(Who were we to think we really stood a chance, anyway??)
From a woman’s perspective, Nihal’s relationship to her two protective “uncles” reminds me a bit of another friendship depicted by the (also Turkish!) author Ayşegül Savaş in her novel Walking on the Ceiling. Her protagonist meets a famous writer, M., in Paris, whose descriptions of Istanbul have always moved her, and they share a series of meandering walks over the course of her time abroad. We sometimes think of these age-gap relationships as exploitative but when it’s within the bounds of platonic and consensual, I’d argue quite the contrary — that they're a kind of poetry uniquely suited to help a young woman come into her own.2
(Take, for instance, the scene of Nihal in the cafe in “Our Grand Despair”, where she becomes unexpectedly opinionated and Ender finds himself taken aback.)
So what can Bıçakçı et al. teach us about male friendship — or even, perhaps, friendship writ large? My takeaway is we too often overlook the significance of the playfulness that defines it. Maybe it’s not grandiose moments that make life worth living, really, but those more subtle and understated glimpses of connection. Not “pub day” so much as that night you stayed up till sunrise talking poetry and drinking wine. Not a phone call about anything urgent or dramatic, but an unexpected interruption from an old friend waxing poetic about heartbreak when you were in the middle of doing laundry and trying to figure out what caused the stink in your fridge (old pickles?!)
As cliché as it sounds, I think what Bıçakçı might be saying is that life's meaning and joy is mostly gleaned from understated simplicity.3
Whatever the case, Turkish literature, for this still-somewhat-naive-and-enamored American reader, seems to be confirming what I’ve always hoped is true: that even the most masculine of men have a touch of poetry in their hearts.
Very curious to know your thoughts. As a man yourself, you undoubtedly have more entertaining insight into the male psyche than I. :)
Until next time,
Alicia
“‘I don’t know,’ Cemil said. ‘I really don’t know. Somewhere I read that human blood has about the same chemical composition as seawater. Blood is our reminder that all life originated in the ocean. So of course a girl’s blood has a similar effect!’ There was a pause. ‘What do you mean?’ Ilhan asked. There was another pause, then Ilhan said ‘I guess I understand.’ See you tonight they said and hung up.”
“Some days, it’s difficult to believe that this friendship really existed — with its particular logic, its detachment from the world. What I remember has the texture of a dream, an invention, a strange and weightless suspension, like walking on the ceiling.” - Ayşegül Savaş
“‘At school today they taught us why cakes rise, Cemil!’ she said. Then, sounding like a teacher, he asked himself ‘why do cakes rise’? Cemil repeated the question a few times, like he was thinking about it, ‘Well it must be because of the moon’s gravity, isn’t it? Just like the ocean. It’s the same for cakes, because of the tides, they puff up.’ On the other side of the line there was an exasperated groan. Then came a deafening scream: ‘Baking powder!’”
That was beautiful! Will be rewatching it soon:)
I think what you're describing about friendship applies to life more broadly. Meaning, the goal isn't to be happy -- a fleeting emotion -- but rather content.
I'm happy when I go to a sporting event with a lifelong friend. But I'm content, fulfilled, while hanging out afterwards, talking and laughing.