I recognized her from some place, but where? “Who’s that lady, Daddy?” “That’s our sultan, my child.” “Our sultan? But I thought it was the Ottomans who had sultans?” My father burst out laughing. “The sultan of the Turkish cinema, my girl,” he explained. “Türkan Soray.” There was a man with the sultan. I recognized him as the funny gym teacher from ‘Hababam Sinifi’; Zügürt Aga, a rural migrant to the big city who struggles to survive by selling tomatoes; Muhsin Bey who tries to turn ‘Arabesk’ singer Ali Nazik into a star.
In other words, the inimitable actor Sener Sen. The cavalcade of celebrities was never ending: Fatma Girik, Hümeyra, Ugur Yücel and many others. I was just about to ask my father what all these famous people were doing here when he explained that they had come to receive awards. But more important than any award for me at that moment was grabbing some of the red candies that were being distributed...