Divorce Turkish Style Read Online Free Page B

of designer shopping bags or being pursued by the paparazzi. The world is full of Paris Hiltons, but Tamaşa Hanım strikes me as different.”
    â€œSo what happened? Did Tamaşa Hanım sever relations with her son because of his marriage?” I asked.
    â€œNo, I don’t think so. But she didn’t talk to the press again. Perhaps the prenuptial agreement put her mind at ease. Or maybe she realized that the couple were truly in love and that she would never make Cem change his mind. Anyway, for whatever reason, she made that one statement and then said nothing more. If you ask me, given that they were about to divorce, I think she’d probably been manipulating her son. As you know, mothers and sons—”
    â€œDon’t I just!” I said. “Especially Turkish mothers and sons.”
    One of the reasons I’d settled in Istanbul was that my lover’s mother couldn’t accept her son being abroad with a “foreigner”. To her dying day, the poor woman did her best to prise us apart, and then pegged out before seeing us separate.
    â€œWhat did Sani Hanım do? I mean at the office in Tünel,” I asked.
    â€œPeople with loads of money never know what to do with themselves,” said Murat sullenly, possibly out of jealousy. “Cem was into extreme sports like bungee jumping, skateboarding, mountaineering and so on. I think Sani tried to keep up with him. You know, ‘anything you can do, I can do better’.”
    â€œYou mean she organized extreme sports tours? In her office at Tünel?”
    â€œTours? No, no! Sani organized trips for people interested in environmental issues. She set up an environmental association called GreTur to fight against pollution in Thrace.”
    â€œInteresting. Did they have any success?”
    â€œYou heard what happened to the Ergene Basin, didn’t you?”
    â€œOf course,” I said. “Leather workshops and factories were set up there without proper clean-up facilities, causing an unbearable stench and the destruction of first-class agricultural land.”
    â€œWell, at least Sani achieved something,” said Murat. “A few years ago, hardly anyone could have placed the Ergene Basin on the map.”

2
    As soon as we left Murat’s office, I called the shop to see if Pelin was there. She said a group of Spaniards had just been in and bought up our entire stock of Spanish crime fiction.
    â€œHey, Fofo! You missed a group of Spanish tourists at the shop,” I said.
    Fofo loved having opportunities to chat to his compatriots.
    â€œNever mind Spanish tourists. What do you think about Sani?” he said.
    â€œWhat can I say? It’s interesting. As an industrial engineer with an American PhD, she could have had a marvellous career, yet—”
    â€œHaving married into the Ankaralıgil family, she probably didn’t want to work for a rival company, but at the same time didn’t want to work under her husband.”
    â€œVery likely,” I said, my attention more on the rumblings of my empty stomach than Sani Ankaralıgil.
    â€œWhat do you say to calling in at her office?”
    â€œLet’s eat something on the way,” I said.
    â€œIt’ll only take two minutes. Two more minutes of hunger won’t harm you,” persisted Fofo.
    â€œOkay, but let’s avoid the main road and go by the backstreets.”
    â€œDo you really think the backstreets are any better? At least on the main road there’s room to escape if a truck comes along. Come on, let’s go!” said my dear friend, tugging at the sleeve of my cashmere sweater.
    *
    The Tünel Business Centre was like a labyrinth. We lost our way twice in its dark corridors before finding the GreTur office.
    â€œI wonder what GreTur means?”
    â€œProbably an abbreviation of Green Turkey or something.”
    â€œAren’t you the smart one?” remarked Fofo.
    Was he