The Turnaround

Cheers rose up from the small crowd. All in black t-shirts and jeans, six men were sitting in a café right next to the barbershop. They watched the groom walk. 

“Ooo, Mr Groom!” 

“Hey! Handsome guy!”

Soon, one of the cheers evolved into a full sentence: “Look how handsome you are!”

“Sure I am!” The groom approved. His entire being smelled orange cologne. And his harsh blue suit was in perfect tune with his freshly trimmed goatee.

“You know, you still have time!”

Finally, a complex sentence! There were “only three hours” before the wedding, though.

“You can still bail out!”

The groom raised his head up and opened his mouth wide. All thirty-two of his teeth were bright white, making the perfect contrast with his skin. He swung his left arm behind his ear, and bid this hilarious crowd his farewell. 

His pace sped up exponentially. He couldn’t wait to hop into his car anymore: His waxed leather shoes weren’t made for these crooked cobblestone pavements, and the August sun was obviously envious of his shining, august suit. 

His magenta Renault banger was, on the other hand, in perfect tune with his goatee. He fondled it gently while looking at the sticker on the rear window: “We’re Getting Married!”

“Sure I am!” He mumbled.

In the rear end below the window, another sticker lay above the plate: “Atakan (heart symbol) Derya”. Atakan smiled.

The route was as simple as it could get. All he had to do was to keep pulling and pushing the shift knob while continuously switching his right foot between the gas and brake. Thanks to these movements, he would go a bit more straight ahead, then take the first exit at the turnaround. That exit was the way home, second was the city centre, and the third was, supposedly, the road to Istanbul.

Go home. Your friends from the neighbourhood will be waiting for you in their cars. Hook their cars behind yours, and go back. Now, take the second exit, and go to Derya’s house. Her family won’t let you get in and get her out just yet. They will tell you that the door is -somehow- broken. You’ll have to pass a hundred bucks under the door, so it can go un-broken again. Pass the bill, get the girl, hook even more cars behind, and go back. Take the first exit again. Your final destination will be where you started; the neighbourhood.

The weddings here start on the road, go on in the neighbourhood, outflow to the road before ending up in the neighbourhood again. So it’s road, hood, road, hood. Extensively simple; no room for complexity: Shift knob, gas, brake, first, second, first.

Three things were extremely important, yet somehow weren’t in this equation: 

First was the clutch. Atakan put his left foot on the clutch as he started the engine. 

Second was the air-conditioning. Or rather, the lack of it. Atakan twirled the window winder in his left: No wind coming yet. All he had to do was to start moving. 

He checked the availability of the road through the rear-view.

This handsome groom’s sweaty forehead was caught in his glimpse in the mirror. He knew his hair looked much better when they were up in the air like this, but he’d rather keep them down on his forehead in the days when he wasn’t a groom.

Actually, he’d rather be a groom every day. 

All in all, being a groom made him pretty. 

However, it was also pretty troublesome. 

Somehow, everything was breaking apart:

“My beautiful brother, this key doesn’t turn!” Said the mechanic in the morning. He twirled the key halfway to his right in the air. Atakan watched the tip of the key turn. It was a perfect demonstration; the key really couldn’t start the imaginary engine.

- Aren’t you the mechanic? Fix it, then.

- Ha ha! My funny brother… Fixing the engine is my job, fixing the key is yours!

Apparently, a hundred bucks would fix the key. Atakan reached for his right pocket.

- Allah, allaah…

- What happened?

- The scissor… It doesn’t cut.

Atakan smiled above the blue cloth covering his upper body. Another hundred bucks in his right hand under the cover was waiting to be given to this barber.

What was yet to be broken was: Derya’s door, the handles of her trousseau chest, the knife that is supposed to cut the wedding cake, and all the instruments of the wedding band… They all would un-break with what he had in his right pocket, except for the zurna: The zurna player was going to kneel down in front of him. Holding his zurna up, he wouldn’t be able to say that it was broken, for he’d still be holding the end of the zurna in his mouth. Atakan would have to pour a glass of raki in its other end to make it work again.

Dentist’s scaler was the only thing that worked trouble-free. It wasn’t usual for a groom to visit a dentist anyway. Atakan, on the other hand, wanted to be genuinely pretty.

Many people said that the real problem of being a groom lay in its expenses rather than its troublesome nature. Atakan didn’t buy it. Just in a month, he earned what he’d used to earn in a year: Whenever they went to a wedding or a feast to perform, tips were raining in buckets. Everybody in the neighbourhood knew that the singer of this band was going to get married soon. 

“Marriage has its charm.” So the saying went. 

Atakan never believed that, but his father had decided to prove it to him for the last month: He’d given him enough money to cover all the expenses for his marriage. This poor zurna player had no idea about the money flow his son had been enjoying lately from singing. He’d never sung after all.

Whatever was -and was going to be- broken that day had been -and would be- fixed with the money his father had spared. Atakan was way above the water with three grands in his left pocket. He had tipped twice as of then, but his left pocket still remained untouched. “Third is the charm.” So another saying went.

Third was the car radio. He turned it on as he moved. The wind was blowing now.

“Turkey is looking for its idol! Applications are still going on… Can you dance? … Can you sing? … What is your passionate talent? … Will you be… Turkey’s next idol?”

Atakan stopped at the turnaround. Then he took the third exit.

“Sure I will!” He mumbled.