Distant relations - Orhan Pamuk

“Nesibe didn’t even inform her husband—she just lied about her daughter’s age and entered her in that beauty contest,” my mother said, fuming at the thought. “Thank God, she didn’t win, so they were spared that public disgrace. If the school authorities had got wind of it, they would have expelled the girl. . . . She must have finished lycée by now. I don’t expect that she’ll be doing any further studies, but I’m not up to date, since they don’t come to visit on holidays anymore. . . . Can there be anyone in this country who doesn’t know what kind of girl, what kind of woman, enters a beauty contest? How did she behave with you?”

This was my mother’s way of suggesting that Füsun had begun to sleep with men. I’d heard the same from my Nisantasi playboy friends when Füsun appeared in a photograph with the other finalists in the newspaper Milliyet, but as I’d found the whole thing embarrassing I tried to show no interest. After we both fell silent, my mother wagged her finger at me ominously and said, “Be careful! You’re about to become engaged to a very special, very charming, very lovely girl! Why don’t you show me this purse you’ve bought her. Mümtaz!”—she was calling my father—“Look! Kemal’s bought Sibel a purse!”