Aysegul Savas on Smugness and Creativity

Mete and Defne value hospitality, warmth, and flexible personal boundaries, and they assume these traits already exist in themselves. Their self-image of community and closeness does not fully match reality. The narrative follows events mainly through Defne and Mete’s perspective, with a gradual emphasis on Defne’s viewpoint that reveals growing misalignment. Aleksi, a visitor to Istanbul, experiences the city through childhood memories rather than the current gentrified reality. He befriends asylum seekers, and his presence makes Defne and Mete feel judged, whether intentionally or through the insecurities he triggers. Defne can recognize the certainties shaping Aleksi’s worldview and the distance those certainties create.

"In California, they'd been great friends with Aleksi. What did they find in him that reminded them of their Turkish friends? His hospitality, his warmth. His lack of rigid personal boundaries-he is up for cooking together every day, staying up discussing abstract concepts. The assumption is that Mete and Defne are already hospitable and warm. But we discover that perhaps this isn't exactly the case-it's an image they have of themselves, just like the image of community they hold on to but cannot quite realize."

"The story is told in the third person, but we see events almost entirely from Defne and Mete's perspective, never Aleksi's. As the story unfolds, though, it becomes evident that this is more Defne's point of view than Mete's. The idea that there can be any kind of misalignment between them, though, disturbs her. How deliberate was this gradual shift? It seemed natural that I should start from a joint perspective-the couple's world view is so similar, their bond so assured."

"It seemed natural that I should start from a joint perspective-the couple's world view is so similar, their bond so assured. I also knew that the meeting with Aleksi would disrupt something, and it quickly became clear that the best way to show this disruption would be through the story's own structure, which is why I started to single out Defne's perspective. I was worried, however, that this shift would signal that she was solely to blame for the end of the friendship."

"Aleksi, though a visitor to Istanbul, is experiencing a city Defne and Mete recall from childhood, it seems, not the rapidly gentrifying version of the city they now live in. He's also made friends with a group of asylum seekers. Do Defne and Mete feel judged by him or does he make them judge themselves? Aleksi certainly makes Defne and Mete feel judged, and I think he does so deliberately. But this is also because Defne and Mete have insecurities about the way they live, about the restricti"

Read at The New Yorker