The Domestic Chronotope in Melisa Kesmez’s “Nohut Oda” Stories: Memory, Belonging, and Daily Life

Abstract

The present study analyzes Melisa Kesmez’s short story collection Nohut Oda in accordance with the notion of chronotope proposed by Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin. This study aims at demonstrating how time and space interrelationship in the work connects with the character’s memories, sense of belonging, loneliness, separation, and everyday life experience. Developed on the basis of qualitative research design, the study includes text analysis based on document review. Descriptions of the house, room, objects, door, garden, abandoned spaces, and details of the characters’ daily routine in Nohut Oda have been analyzed from the point of view of chronotope. According to the results of the analysis, the time-space relationship in Nohut Oda is characterized by the following four basic structures: the chronotope of the house and room, the chronotope of memory and objects, the chronotope of thresholds and separation, and the chronotope of daily life. It was found out that space in the work is not just a physical environment, where the actions take place, but also a meaning-creating structure, which helps to uncover the connections between the characters and the past, their desire to belong, and their loneliness. To sum up, Nohut Oda can be considered one of the strong examples of contemporary Turkish short stories, where the domestic spaces are filled with meaning due to the influence of time, memory, and emotions, and the details of daily routine become chronotopic indicators of the characters’ inner worlds.

1. Introduction

Time and space are not merely technical elements that indicate when and where events take place in literary texts. Rather, they are fundamental components that shape narrative structure, the psychological and social positioning of characters, the development of events, and the broader meaning of the literary work. Particularly in modern narratives, space extends beyond its function as a physical setting and becomes a meaningful domain through which characters’ relationships with memory, belonging, loneliness, loss, and identity can be explored. From this perspective, the analysis of time and space provides a productive means of understanding not only the events of a narrative but also the existential, emotional, and relational experiences that underlie them.

One of the most influential concepts for examining the interrelationship between time and space in literary studies is Bakhtin’s notion of the chronotope. Bakhtin (1981) conceptualizes the chronotope as an aesthetic category in which temporal and spatial relations become intrinsically interconnected within narrative. Through this relationship, time becomes perceptible in space, while space acquires meaning through the historical, social, and experiential dimensions of time. Holquist (2002) similarly emphasizes the chronotope as a key concept through which narrative organizes and makes sense of the world, while Lawson (2011) draws attention to its analytical potential for revealing the connections among event, time, space, and experience. Although Bakhtin developed the concept primarily in relation to the short story, the chronotopic approach also provides a productive framework for examining short stories and other narrative forms in which space interacts with memory, movement, waiting, separation, and transformation (Bakhtin 1981; Holquist 2002; Lawson 2011).

Melisa Kesmez’s Nohut Oda offers a particularly suitable narrative context for such an analysis. Kesmez’s fiction is closely concerned with everyday life, domestic spaces, family relationships, separation, loneliness, memory, vulnerability, and the emotional traces left by ordinary experience. In Nohut Oda, homes, rooms, household objects, gardens, abandoned spaces, departures, and those who remain behind repeatedly become sites where memory, loss, belonging, and attachment are negotiated (Kesmez 2019). Space therefore functions not simply as the location of events but as a domain in which remembering, waiting, separating, staying, settling, and searching for belonging take shape.

The domestic and transitional spaces of the collection are especially important in this respect. The home may function as a place of shelter, abandonment, loss, or memory, while the room may emerge as a more intimate and concentrated space in which loneliness, withdrawal, waiting, and self-confrontation become visible. Existing research also supports the centrality of the home in Kesmez’s narrative world. Öner Gündüz (2025), for instance, emphasizes that the home in Nohut Oda is more than a place of physical protection and functions as an important element in relation to the characters’ transformations, regrets, and future plans. This observation suggests that domestic space in the collection is closely connected with both personal experience and temporal change.

Transitional spaces such as doors, gardens, abandoned houses, and places of departure similarly reveal moments of change, separation, waiting, and confrontation. Through these spatial forms, the burden of the past, the constraints of the present, and the uncertainty of the future become intertwined. Narrative time thus takes concrete form through space, while space acquires meaning through experiences of remembering, forgetting, staying, leaving, and reestablishing connection. In this respect, the chronotope provides a useful framework for examining not simply what these spaces symbolize, but how spatial arrangements organize temporal and emotional experience (Bakhtin 1981).

For readers unfamiliar with contemporary Turkish fiction, Kesmez may be situated within a strand of recent short story writing that foregrounds the affective and spatial dimensions of everyday experience. In Nohut Oda, seemingly minor details rooms, household objects, meals, routines, departures, and encounters become the means through which broader questions of belonging, loss, intimacy, and personal transformation are articulated. This study does not claim a direct intellectual influence of Bakhtin on Kesmez. Rather, Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope is employed as the primary critical framework through which the temporal and spatial structures of Nohut Oda are interpreted (Bakhtin 1981). Bachelard’s poetics of domestic and interior space is used as a complementary perspective for understanding the relationship among space, memory, intimacy, and belonging (Bachelard 1996).

The title Nohut Oda also carries an important spatial connotation for readers unfamiliar with Turkish. It recalls the Turkish expression “nohut oda, bakla sofa,” which is used to describe a very small and confined home (Ay 2024). The title therefore evokes not merely a room but a spatial condition characterized by smallness, enclosure, and intimacy. This idiomatic dimension is relevant to the present study because the scale and organization of domestic space repeatedly shape the characters’ experiences of memory, belonging, withdrawal, and vulnerability.

Although existing studies of Nohut Oda have drawn attention to the significance of the home, domestic experience, memory, transformation, and spatial representation (Ay 2024; Öner Gündüz 2025), there remains a need for a more integrated examination of how these spatial structures interact with narrative time. In particular, the ways in which remembering, separation, waiting, belonging, and everyday life are organized through specific time-space configurations have not yet been examined within a comprehensive chronotopic framework. The present study addresses this gap by focusing not only on what domestic and transitional spaces represent, but also on how they organize temporal experience and how time becomes materially and emotionally perceptible through space.

Accordingly, the aim of this study is to examine how the relationship between time and space is constructed in Melisa Kesmez’s Nohut Oda within the framework of Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope. More specifically, the study explores how the home and the room, objects, transitional spaces, and everyday practices make visible the characters’ experiences of memory, belonging, loneliness, separation, and confrontation with the past.

In this context, the study seeks to answer the following questions:

• How do the spaces of the home and the room in Nohut Oda reflect the characters’ experiences of memory, belonging, and loneliness?
• What role do objects, everyday details, and abandoned spaces play in bringing the past into the present?
• How do threshold situations, separation, staying, and leaving acquire meaning from a chronotopic perspective?

Guided by these questions, the study examines the time-space structure of Nohut Oda through the domestic chronotope, the chronotope of memory and objects, the chronotope of threshold and separation, and the chronotope of everyday life.

The study distinguishes itself from existing research by examining Nohut Oda not only in terms of spatial representation but also through the chronotopic relationships that domestic spaces establish with time, memory, belonging, separation, and everyday life. Its contribution lies in demonstrating how the home, the room, objects, thresholds, and ordinary practices interact with narrative time and thereby structure the characters’ emotional and existential experiences.

2. Literature Review

2.1. The Chronotope as a Framework for the Relationship Between Time and Space

The concept of the chronotope provides a theoretical basis for examining the interdependence of time and space in literary narratives. Bakhtin (1981) defines the chronotope as a fundamental aesthetic category through which time becomes perceptible and spatially embodied in narrative, while space acquires meaning through historical, social, and experiential temporality. From this perspective, time and space cannot be treated as separate formal elements; rather, they function together in shaping events, characters, and the structure of narrative meaning.

Subsequent discussions of the concept have emphasized its broader interpretive potential. Holquist (2002) regards the chronotope as one of the central concepts through which narrative organizes and makes sense of the world, while Lawson (2011) highlights its usefulness in revealing the relationship among event, time, space, and experience. These approaches suggest that chronotopic analysis is valuable not simply because it identifies particular settings, but because it reveals how narrative experience is organized through the interaction of spatial and temporal structures.

Although Bakhtin developed the concept primarily in relation to the short story, its analytical potential is not limited to that genre. Chronotopic analysis can also be applied to short stories and other narrative forms in which spatial arrangements interact with memory, movement, waiting, separation, and transformation. In such readings, space is no longer understood as a static background against which events occur; it becomes an active narrative structure that acquires meaning through duration, memory, repetition, and change. This broader understanding of the chronotope provides an important basis for examining the relationship between domestic space and temporal experience in contemporary short fiction.

2.2. Chronotopic Approaches in Turkish Literary Studies

Chronotopic studies in Turkish literature have similarly demonstrated that spatial elements such as the home, the road, the door, the threshold, and the living room can function as more than physical settings. These spaces may structure the emotional worlds of characters, their relationships, and their processes of change. Yıldız (2021), for example, identifies chronotopes such as the home, road, and castle as fundamental narrative structures through which abstract time becomes concrete in space. This approach is particularly relevant to the analysis of domestic and transitional spaces, where personal experience and narrative time frequently intersect.

Özdemir Riganelis (2021) likewise emphasizes that time and space cannot be examined independently in narrative, since characters, actions, and events acquire meaning within specific time-space configurations. From this perspective, the chronotope serves not merely as a descriptive category but as a structural principle through which narrative experience is organized. Yıldırım (2021) further underlines that space becomes meaningful when it holds memory and emotion, while time becomes perceptible through its spatial manifestation.

Taken together, these studies establish the value of chronotopic analysis for interpreting the relationship between spatial form and temporal experience in Turkish literature. At the same time, their emphasis remains primarily on identifying and interpreting particular chronotopes and demonstrating how space contributes to narrative meaning. This body of research therefore provides a significant theoretical and methodological foundation for the present study, while also leaving room for more focused analyses of how domestic interiors, objects, thresholds, and everyday practices interact with different forms of temporality within a single short-story collection.

2.3. Domestic Space, Memory, and Belonging in Nohut Oda

Existing discussions of Melisa Kesmez’s Nohut Oda draw attention to the centrality of domestic space, memory, belonging, and personal transformation. The collection repeatedly foregrounds homes, rooms, household objects, gardens, deserted spaces, departures, and those who remain behind. These elements are closely connected with experiences of remembering, waiting, separation, settling, and the search for belonging. Within this narrative world, space frequently becomes a medium through which emotional and relational experience is made visible.

Öner Gündüz (2025) emphasizes that the home in Nohut Oda functions as more than a place of physical shelter and may be understood as a key element in relation to the transformation of the characters, their regrets, and their orientations toward the future. This observation is important because it moves the discussion of the home beyond its material function and associates domestic space with personal change and temporal experience. Nevertheless, such an approach primarily draws attention to the thematic and symbolic significance of the home rather than systematically examining how different temporal layers are organized through domestic and transitional spaces.

The title of the collection itself also reinforces the importance of spatial scale and enclosure. Ay (2024) draws attention to the expression “nohut oda, bakla sofa,” which refers to a very small and confined home. This idiomatic dimension suggests that smallness, enclosure, and intimacy are embedded in the spatial imagination of the title itself. Such an observation contributes to understanding the significance of restricted domestic space in the collection, particularly in relation to vulnerability, withdrawal, memory, and belonging.

The existing scholarship therefore demonstrates that domestic space is an important interpretive dimension of Nohut Oda. Previous studies have shown that the home and related spatial elements are closely associated with memory, transformation, emotional experience, and belonging. However, these studies do not yet fully account for the ways in which different forms of narrative time are structured through domestic interiors, objects, thresholds, and everyday practices. In particular, the relationship between spatial preservation and memory, the movement of objects across different homes and temporal contexts, the concentration of temporal rupture at thresholds, and the gradual production of belonging through repeated domestic routines remain open to further examination.

2.4. Research Gap and the Contribution of the Present Study

The literature reviewed above demonstrates two important tendencies. First, chronotope scholarship has established that literary space acquires meaning through its interaction with time and that spaces such as the home, road, door, and threshold can organize narrative experience. Second, existing work on Nohut Oda has highlighted the importance of domestic space, memory, belonging, transformation, and the emotional meanings attached to the home. What remains comparatively underexplored is the intersection of these two lines of inquiry.

The present study addresses this gap by examining Nohut Oda through an integrated chronotopic framework that focuses on how spatial structures organize different forms of temporal experience. Rather than asking only what the home, room, object, threshold, or everyday domestic detail symbolizes, the analysis examines how these elements bring temporal layers into relation with one another. Accordingly, the home and room are considered in terms of the accumulation and enclosure of lived time; objects are examined as material forms through which personal histories move across spaces and are reconstructed in the present; thresholds are interpreted as points where spatial movement coincides with temporal rupture and transformation; and everyday domestic practices are analyzed in terms of repetition and duration through which unfamiliar spaces gradually become lived environments.

In this respect, the study extends existing scholarship on Nohut Oda by shifting the analytical emphasis from spatial representation alone to the dynamic interaction between narrative time and space. Its contribution lies in demonstrating that domestic space in Kesmez’s stories does not simply contain memory, belonging, separation, and everyday life; rather, these experiences are produced and transformed through specific configurations of time and space. The proposed chronotopic reading therefore seeks to explain not only what particular spaces mean, but how their meanings emerge through memory, duration, repetition, movement, rupture, and the coexistence of past and present.

3. Method

This study is designed as a qualitative research project aimed at examining how the relationship between time and space is established in Melisa Kesmez’s short story collection Nohut Oda within the framework of Bakhtin’s concept of chronotope. Qualitative research is an interpretive form of research which enables a researcher to gain insight into social, cultural, and artistic phenomena from the inside out (Cresswell 2007; Merriam 2009). Such a research form becomes an appropriate basis for a study intended to analyze different levels of meaning, the narrative construction, the relationships between people, places, and times, and the symbolism within literary works. In this respect, the interpretive form of research will be utilized to investigate how concepts like the house, the room, things, threshold, everyday life, and memory get their meanings within the whole of time and place in “Nohut Oda”.

It was decided that the research would have a qualitative text analysis design based on document review. Document analysis is a qualitative data collection and analysis technique, which consists of a systematic process of examining and interpreting the documents that relate to the subject of the research (Bowen 2009). The document for analysis for this research is the book “Nohut Oda” by Melisa Kesmez. This book is believed to serve the research purpose in that it offers a narrative world where concepts such as house, room, objects, daily life, memory, belonging, and loneliness are entangled in time and space in Turkish short stories.

For this research, the source of data comprises the stories included in the book Nohut Oda (Kesmez 2019). All stories within the book were investigated, and the relation of time, place, characters, and incidents within the stories was analyzed from the viewpoint of chronotopia in an integrated way. Direct quotations are included in the Findings part of this research, and in order to facilitate a textual evidence trail, not only the page number but also the title of the respective story was provided. In the context of this research, home, room, garden, door, objects, abandoned spaces, incidents of stay and depart, wait, past in the present, and incidents of daily life have been determined as the main units of analysis. These units were analyzed in the context of the chronotope notion of Bakhtin (1981), which concerns the materialization of time within space and the gaining of historical, emotional, and memorial aspects by the space from the perspective of narrative characters.

As part of the data gathering stage, the stories within Nohut Oda underwent a series of careful readings based on the goals of the study. In the first round of reading, the general thematic configuration of the text, the characters, the space, and time within the text were determined. In the second round, references to house, room, objects, threshold, life, and memory were highlighted; in the third round, the manner through which the above-mentioned elements interact with time and emotions of the characters within the story was examined. During this process, textual markers that will be used as bases for the chronotopic analysis were gathered and categorized. Thus, the time-space unity in the text was addressed not merely as information about the place and time in which events occur, but as a fundamental structure that constructs the narrative’s meaning.

Descriptive analysis and interpretive text analysis were used together in the analysis of the data. In descriptive analysis, the data are organized according to a predetermined theoretical framework and themes, and then interpreted within the context of these themes (Yıldırım and Şimşek [1999] 2018). In this study, the categories of analysis were determined in accordance with Bakhtin’s chronotope approach and the theoretical framework outlined in the introduction. Accordingly, the analysis was conducted across four main categories: the chronotope of home and room, the chronotope of memory and objects, the chronotope of threshold and separation, and the chronotope of everyday life. Studies on chronotope in the relevant literature served as a guide in determining these categories. The identification of various chronotopes such as the city, the road, the home, the threshold, the door, the window, the balcony, the chest cupboard-drawer, and the museum in Yıldız’s (2021) study demonstrates that every literary text can be examined through specific chronotopic categories in accordance with its own thematic structure. As Özdemir (2021) also notes, while the fundamental chronotopes identified by Bakhtin provide an important framework for analyzing the time-space relationship in literary texts, each work may contain unique chronotopic structures within its own narrative world. For this reason, treating the details of the home, room, objects, threshold, and daily life in Nohut Oda as separate categories of analysis aims to reveal the chronotopic structures arising from the text’s own time-space fabric. Özdemir Riganelis’s (2021) assessment that chronotopes can contain smaller time-spaces within themselves is also considered significant in that it demonstrates how details in Nohut Oda, such as the house, the room, objects, the door, the hallway, the kitchen, the table, and everyday items, can assume chronotopic functions.

The conceptual basis of the study is the chronotope theory of Bakhtin. For Bakhtin (1981), the chronotope is a fundamental category of literary text in which time and space are interwoven and constitute the meaning of the story. Recent scholarship has emphasized that the chronotope also possesses an ontological dimension, insofar as it gives form to historically embodied modes of human existence and consciousness (Darenskiy 2026). This perspective is particularly relevant to Nohut Oda, where domestic spaces and everyday objects do not merely organize narrative action but materialize the characters’ experiences of belonging, memory, loss, and withdrawal. The theory of chronotope provides a useful perspective to analyze the place of characters in the narration, the sequence of events, and the perspective of the text. As Holquist (2002) points out, Bakhtin’s theory of chronotope reveals the connection between time, space, and subject in the fictional world of the text. For Lawson (2011), on the contrary, chronotope is a practical means to analyze historical, social, and experiential aspects of space in narratives. Thus, in the case under discussion, the concept of chronotope was employed to explain the interconnection of domestic spaces, things, thresholds, and everyday spaces in the “Nohut Oda” stories with the experience of characters’ past, belongings, and loneliness.

Credibility in qualitative research is enhanced by the clarity in the description of the research process, systematic data analysis, and data-based interpretation (Lincoln and Guba 1985). Accordingly, the analysis process was conducted in stages; the theoretical rationale for identifying each theme was explained, and care was taken to ensure that the interpretations presented in the findings section were directly linked to the text. To strengthen the consistency of the interpretations, the identified chronotopic indicators were reexamined in light of the research objective and theoretical framework; the relationship of each quotation to the relevant category was evaluated by considering its context within the text. Furthermore, to strengthen the study’s theoretical coherence, Bakhtin’s concept of chronotope has been linked in a complementary manner to Bachelard’s approach to the poetics of the home and interior spaces. Bachelard’s approach to the home and interior spaces contributes to the interpretation of elements such as the home, the room, and objects in Nohut Oda in conjunction with experiences of memory, belonging, and the inner world.

In conclusion, this study examines Nohut Oda as a narrative universe that reveals the relationship between domestic spaces and time, memory, and belonging in contemporary Turkish short stories. The study’s methodology is based on document analysis and chronotopic text analysis within a qualitative research framework. Accordingly, Bakhtin’s concept of chronotope served as the foundation for the data analysis process; the time-space relationships in the text were evaluated within the framework of the categories of home and room, memory and objects, threshold and separation, and daily life. The chronotopic analysis categories used in the analysis process are presented in Table 1.

Table 1. Chronotopic Analysis Categories in the “Nohut Oda” Stories.

Chronotopic Category	Theoretical Basis	Key Indicators in the Text	Narrative Function	Focus of Interpretation
The Chronotope of the Home and the Room	Bakhtin’s approach to the unity of time and space; Bachelard’s poetics of the home and interior space (Bakhtin 1981; Bachelard 1996).	Home, room, interior, enclosed spaces, personal living spaces.	It brings to light the characters’ experiences of belonging, loneliness, withdrawal, and feeling trapped.	A house and a room are not merely physical spaces; they are chronotopic spaces where the characters’ inner sense of time, their connection to the past, and their emotional vulnerability take tangible form.
The Chronotope of Memory and Objects	The concretization of time through space and objects (Bakhtin 1981; Holquist 2002).	Objects, everyday items, abandoned spaces, details that trigger memories.	It establishes how the past is carried into the present and how the characters recall their memories.	Objects cease to be merely decorative elements; they become signs that bear the traces of the past, evoke memories, and reveal the characters’ feelings of loss and belonging.
The Chronotope of Thresholds and Separation	The way the chronotope makes the characters’ moments of transformation, decision, and transition visible (Bakhtin 1981; Lawson 2011).	Door, garden, leaving home, leaving behind, staying or leaving, returning or not being able to return.	It represents the characters’ processes of separation, confrontation, waiting, and transformation.	“Thresholds” reveal the existential tension between the characters’ inability to break free from the past and their inability to move on to a new life.
The Chronotope of Everyday Life	How chronotope reveals the narrative’s way of constructing and making sense of the world (Holquist 2002).	Food, tea, a table, a garden, a cat, flowers, casual conversations, little everyday moments.	It reveals the emotional depth of ordinary moments and the ways in which the characters cling to life.	Everyday details do more than just create a realistic atmosphere; they become meaningful vehicles for the characters’ relationships with their past, family, sense of belonging, and loneliness.

Note: The categories listed in the table were developed based on Bakhtin’s concept of chronotope and taking into account the motifs of home, room, objects, threshold, and everyday life that feature prominently in the “Nohut Oda” stories.

In accordance with the analytical categories presented in Table 1, it was determined that the relationship between time and space in the stories of Nohut Oda centers around four fundamental chronotopic structures. In Section 4, these structures are examined under the headings of the “home and room chronotope,” the “memory and object chronotope,” the “threshold and separation chronotope,” and the “everyday life chronotope,” respectively.

This study is limited to Melisa Kesmez’s short story collection titled Nohut Oda. The author’s other works have been excluded from this study; the analysis is confined solely to the relationship between time and space in the stories featured in Nohut Oda. Furthermore, since the study is based on Bakhtin’s concept of chronotope, it does not examine all thematic and formal elements in the text; rather, it focuses specifically on the structures that form the time-space unity within the contexts of home, room, objects, thresholds, memory, belonging, and daily life. This limitation allows for an in-depth analysis within the study, guided by a specific theoretical focus.

4. Findings

In this section, Melisa Kesmez’s short story collection Nohut Oda has been analyzed in light of Bakhtin’s concept of chronotope. The analysis revealed that the relationship between time and space in the work centers on four fundamental categories: the home and room chronotope, the memory and objects chronotope, the threshold and separation chronotope, and the everyday life chronotope. This categorization proves that in “Nohut Oda,” space is not only a physical place in which actions take place, but a structural element that is loaded with meanings of past experiences, sense of belonging, loneliness, loss, waiting, and attachment of the characters. In this regard, the intangible idea of time in the work gets a spatial dimension, whereas space becomes chronotopic by intertwining with the emotional experiences of the characters.

4.1. The Chronotope of the Home and the Room: Space Between Belonging and Confinement

The key chronotopic space in the stories of Nohut Oda becomes the house and the room where the inner world of the characters of the narrative unfolds. In the stories, the house is not just a shelter or a place of residence for people; it is a time-space plane in which past events, family relations, disruptions, loss, and belonging develop. According to the theory of chronotope by Mikhail Bakhtin, time and space in their union become the constitutive element that determines the identity of the narrator (Bakhtin 1981). In relation to Nohut Oda, the house in these texts acquires meaning beyond the material environment of the characters and symbolizes the sense of continuity from the past into the present that they have.

The double nature of this chronotopic space is reflected in the story “My Mother’s Tent,” in the image of the crack in the wall of the house. The crack is not only a destruction of the integrity of the house, but it is also the embodiment of the breach in the family memory, belonging, and its connection with the past:

“In the hallway, on the wall between the bathroom door and my parents’ bedroom door, near the ceiling, there was a crack that appeared as a thin line one we would never have noticed if not for my mother’s eagle eyes that had sucked us in like a black hole, leaving behind a gray void. What remained was not a wreck it wasn’t an object you could dust off, put back in its place, or repair. Like a wounded animal flung to the side of the highway, we had no choice but to walk right past it. Even holding a funeral would have been pointless. We wouldn’t even say goodbye. Period. That’s all.”

(Kesmez 2019, p. 47)

In this passage, the home ceases to be a safe and cohesive space of belonging and becomes a symbol of loss and irreversibility. The crack that appears on the wall in the hallway between the bathroom door and the parents’ bedroom is not merely a structural defect; it is a chronotopic sign that disrupts family memory, the domestic order, and the connection to the past. Speaking about the crack as a “black hole” makes evident the destructiveness of the space and its ability to attract and leave behind a “gray void.” As a consequence, the house is no longer an object that could be repaired or rebuilt, but it becomes a place of loss where even a goodbye can’t be said. Such a situation shows that in Nohut Oda, the chronotope of the home involves not only the feeling of belonging but the experience of destruction as well. According to Bachelard, the home is one of the most fundamental spaces where an individual’s experiences of memory, imagination, and the inner world are concentrated (Bachelard 1996). In Kesmez’s stories as well, the home functions as a structure that reveals the characters’ inner wounds, their connection to the past, and their fragility within everyday life.

The room, meanwhile, stands out as a narrower, more personal, and more concentrated form of the domestic chronotope. The image of the “room,” which also appears in the book’s title, points to the text’s spatial sensitivity and introspective narrative structure. The room can be viewed as a space where the characters’ experiences of loneliness, waiting, withdrawal, and self-confrontation are intensified. This space reveals the limited relationship the narrators establish with the outside world and their withdrawal into their own inner worlds. In this sense, the room is not only a material interior but also a chronotopic space where the memory of the character, along with his/her fragility and entrapment, is incarnated. The room becomes chronotopic because it gathers different temporal layers within a restricted interior: memories of the past, the experience of waiting in the present, and the character’s uncertain relation to the future coexist within the same enclosed space.

The theme of isolation in Nohut Oda, however, should not be understood solely in terms of loneliness, separation, or confinement. Domestic withdrawal also carries a protective dimension. In this respect, Kesmez’s use of Bachelard’s epigraph, “Life’s first effort is to form shells,” provides an important interpretive key to the collection. The room and the home may thus be understood as shell-like spaces: they separate the individual from the external world, but at the same time create an interior in which memory, identity, and emotional continuity can be preserved. Such spaces are therefore ambivalent. They may intensify loneliness and enclosure, yet they may also function as refuges that allow the characters to protect themselves from loss, instability, and the pressures of the outside world. From this perspective, the “Nohut Oda” itself can be read as a protective shell, a small and enclosed space whose boundaries signify both separation and shelter. The importance of scale also distinguishes Kesmez’s domestic chronotope from other well-known chronotopic configurations. In Kesmez, however, the small room performs a different narrative function: rather than being primarily associated with guilt and moral torment, it becomes a space in which memory, belonging, vulnerability, withdrawal, and protection are concentrated. In this sense, the room’s smallness is not merely architectural but affective, since its restricted scale intensifies the characters’ relationship with the past and with themselves. This concentrated domestic spatiality also differs from the more expansive spatial organization foregrounded in Yaşar Kemal’s İnce Memed, where geographical space plays an active role in shaping characters, social relations, and the course of the narrative (Uysal 2016). In this context, Selim’s room in the story titled “One Last Cup of Tea” is revealed as a space of memory in which the past is kept alive through objects, light, music, and space organization. Moreover, the entrance of the narrator into the room several years later through its threshold is also an example of how a chronotopic space enables one to meet the past:

“A faint, orange light is seeping from Selim’s room at the end of the dark hallway. I walk toward the light. As I get closer, I begin to hear the faint sound of music. When I reach the door, I hesitate for a moment; then, taking a deep breath, I gently push the slightly ajar door open and step into his room for the first time in years. The lava lamp by the bedside illuminates the room. Strange shadows dance across the walls. Then I recognize the Scorpions. “Still Loving You” is playing. I stand in the doorway and look around. The orange glow inside envelops me like a time capsule. It feels as if I’ve stepped through a door into another world. Books spill over from the shelves that cover the walls from floor to ceiling; those that don’t fit have piled up in towers here and there. The desk is still in its old spot. Its surface is covered with papers, notebooks, stacks of books, and a pile of empty mugs. I’d forgotten he had a record player. I realize the music is coming from it. Right next to it, in the wooden boxes, I notice dozens of records; it’s clear from their arrangement that they have their own order.”

(Kesmez 2019, p. 42)

In this passage, the room is established as an intense space of memory where the past is preserved and which the narrator revisits years later. The fact that one enters Selim’s room by passing through the darkness of the hallway, through a half-open door, and after a moment of hesitation shows that the room functions less as an ordinary interior space and more as a threshold opening onto the past. The illumination from the lava lamp, the shadows on the wall, the music, the desk, the books, the empty glasses, the record player, and the records preserve the presence of Selim in the room even without him being there. The use of the term “time capsule” by the narrator to describe the room implies that time does not move linearly but instead that the past gets compressed into the present via objects and other elements. In this regard, Selim’s room is a powerful example of a room-chronotope that embodies the functions of memory, loss, and emotional encounter. What gives this room its chronotopic force is the temporal distance between the narrator’s earlier experience of the space and the act of returning to it years later. The room has remained materially preserved while the narrator has moved forward in time, and this contrast enables the past to reenter the present through spatial recognition. Remembering is therefore not presented as an abstract mental act; it is triggered by the preserved arrangement of objects, light, music, and furniture. The unchanged domestic interior becomes the medium through which temporal distance is both maintained and momentarily overcome, allowing past and present to coexist within the same spatial encounter.

In the story “One Last Cup of Tea,” Selim’s room takes on meaning not only as a space of memory where the past is preserved but also as a personal space of resistance and freedom established against the oppressive atmosphere of the house. The narrator describes the room’s special location, separated from the rest of the house by a door, with the following words:

“In this private room, separated by a single door from her mother’s house a house she had taken over from top to bottom, claiming ownership of everything and suffocating everyone with her attention I realize for the first time that I had defied her despotic rule, hidden behind the mask of maternal affection, for years. Even though he was tied to her by the umbilical cord, here he had stubbornly established an independent kingdom. Even though he never uttered a word, he was actually shouting at the top of his lungs simply by protecting this place. I realize that he cherished these books, these records, this ridiculous youth bedroom set, and everything else, preserving them exactly as they were and that in doing so, he was actually safeguarding something else. This is Selim’s childhood. The only place where he feels at home. As the Scorpions’ guitar solos drown out the clock in the hallway and the clamor of all the world’s ineptitude, I notice that the gloomy, suffocating feeling that has taken over the rest of the house has diminished here in a way I never expected. A feeling arises within me as if I’ve stepped out onto the balcony. It’s an old feeling familiar, well-meaning, hospitable, affectionate. It reminds me of what it is about Selim that captivates me. It reminds me of what it was that, one day in this overwhelmingly crowded world, suddenly drew me toward him for no apparent reason.”

(Kesmez 2019, p. 43)

In this case, the room of Selim is represented as an interior free space that separates from the overall oppression reigning in the house through the door. Unlike the presence of his mother that fully occupies the house and “leaves no room for anyone to breathe,” the room becomes an enclosed interior that represents Selim’s inner opposition. Books, records and youth bedroom suite are not just items of the past; they are memory items that keep alive Selim’s childhood, his personal boundaries, and the only place in which he feels at home. In this way, the room becomes a particular chronotope where the main character keeps his existence separate from the suffocating and gloomy atmosphere reigning in other parts of the house. The fact that the narrator felt as if “he had stepped out onto the balcony” in this room shows that despite being a closed interior space, the room gives him an opportunity to breathe, to remember, and to establish emotional connection. In this way, the room of Selim may be regarded as a room-chronotope that includes functions of belonging, childhood memory, personal strength and emotional shelter.

Likewise, in the short story “My Sister Handan” the room is created as a space of memory that protects childhood from changes in the external world:

“Handan had kept everything hidden. While the world was changing and transforming without a moment’s respiteas glaciers melted, volcanoes erupted, forests burned, and hurricanes raged, leveling cities in this room under the same sun, not a leaf had stirred for years, the yellow slippers under my childhood bed, the flowered curtains, the red woolen cardigan with a Thessaloniki knit pattern a gift from Aunt Birsen hanging behind the door, and even the pink panther with one eye missing, sitting cross-legged on the chair everything had been preserved exactly as it was. Apparently, she no longer set foot anywhere except the kitchen.”

(Kesmez 2019, p. 95)

For instance, the room assumes importance as an interior space wherein time comes to a standstill before the constantly changing flow of the outer world, and childhood memories along with other past experiences get kept intact. The yellow slippers, flowered curtains, a red woolen vest, and the pink panther with one missing eye do not merely belong to the child’s life; rather, these objects are part of his memory and are the signifiers of the child’s link with his past in the present. Despite the fact that the outer world undergoes constant change, the room has managed to separate itself from time in order to freeze a childhood moment since “not a leaf has stirred for years” in the room. In this respect, the room protected by Handan is one of the striking examples in Nohut Oda wherein the chronotope of the room assumes the role of memory, belonging, entrapment, and holding on to the past.

The other chronotope of the home and the room revolves around the bond among family members created by objects. In Kesmez’s tales, the objects in a house are not just tools used to make sense of the environment but also symbols that indicate family ties and the fear of being separated from each other. The tale “My Mother’s Tent” describes household objects as intangible ties that hold family members together in the same house. Everyday objects such as tables, chairs, beds, hallways, towels, coat racks, and washing machines are not merely parts of the domestic order; they also emerge as chronotopic indicators that convey familial closeness, forced togetherness, and the fear of separation:

“Presumably, someone had this in mind when designing home furniture; it was meant to prevent the nuclear family which is prone to falling ill if left exposed to a draft from falling apart, and to keep each member from breaking away and drifting farther and farther apart in the void of space. A table, for example, always came with at least two chairs. The same goes for a two-seater sofa. And especially a double bed. What was the essence of this terrible idea, if not to force a person to spend a lifetime sleeping alongside a man or woman they’d pass by on the street without a second glance? How could two people sleeping under the same blanket every night even dare to think about breaking apart, let alone actually do so? It was as if the things we owned were what held our family together under the same roof: our four-person dining table with just one unused chair, the hallways connecting our rooms, the towel we used to dry each other’s faces, the coat rack that kept our coats within hugging distance, the washing machine that kept churning our laundry in each other’s dirty water…”

(Kesmez 2019, p. 49)

In this case, household objects become invisible ties that keep family members together in the same spatial configuration. Such utilitarian objects as a table, a chair, a double bed, a corridor, a towel, a coat rack, and a washing machine are chronotopic signs that create continuity, proximity, and the inevitability of family connections. The perception of objects as the main elements that “bind the family together under the same roof” shows that the house goes beyond the function of just a material shelter and becomes a narrative space in which family ties, conflicts, and a sense of inescapability are created. Therefore, in the short story Nohut Oda, the combination of the house and the room becomes a strong interior chronotope of belonging and imprisonment.

4.2. Memory and the Chronotope of Objects: Bringing the Past into the Present Through Objects

One of the key insights revealed in Nohut Oda is that the objects become chronotopic in nature, creating connections between the past and the present. The objects stop functioning as mere decorative items that decorate the setting but become symbolic in relation to what the characters have lost, how they remember things, their longing, and the connections that they develop with the past. Unlike the home and room chronotope, which emphasizes the accumulation of lived time within a relatively stable interior, the chronotope of memory and objects foregrounds the mobility of temporal traces across spaces. Objects move between homes, owners, and relational contexts, carrying fragments of previous lives into new spatial arrangements and thereby transforming as well as preserving memory. The story titled “The Leftovers” provides an excellent example of how memory is implanted into the space through the objects. The house, in this context, is not just a physical space that can become habitable but also a fragmented space of memories consisting of:

“You’ve turned the house into a patchwork quilt with all the odds and ends you’ve collected here and there, and you don’t even realize it,” she says with a laugh. When she says that, I think of my home which I was finally able to turn into a livable place by moving things in bit by bit over the course of nearly a year. The glass coffee table, a remnant of a life that moved to Milan. The bookshelf left behind by eyes that flew off to Sydney. The rugs that couldn’t be taken to London; the liqueur set placed in my lap with the words, “These belonged to my grandmother keep them”; a typewriter that belonged to an uncle she’d never met; a dwarf rubber tree in a clumpy pot…”

(Kesmez 2019, p. 12)

This fragmented memory structure becomes more evident in the section where the narrator describes how, in the same story, he has furnished his own home with items taken from various other homes. In this scene, the objects are not merely items that make the home livable; they function as chronotopic indicators that carry the lives, partings, and habits of their former owners into the present:

“It was exactly as he said. I had indeed pieced together my own from the pillows, quilts, raki glasses, and chairs of all sorts of homes. May God bless my impulsive mind, which grabbed his jacket and walked out after a painful breakup leaving me standing there proud yet completely exposed for a while. But over time, I managed to set up a place to shelter myself with items salvaged, one by one, from the homes of acquaintances that had gradually fallen apart. Each piece of furniture arrived with its own special story, coming together under the same roof in my memory. The furniture I’d arranged side by side in my one-bedroom, one-living-room apartment had, until just a few months ago, called various homes in Istanbul their own; they’d accompanied their former owners in those homes under entirely different orders, been intertwined with entirely different lives, and become intimately familiar with entirely different customs and habits, and as a result, each had aged and worn down to the extent and in the direction dictated by its own story. I wasn’t quite sure if this made me feel less lonely or more so. My feelings varied depending on the night and also depending on the song playing at that moment…”

(Kesmez 2019, p. 13)

In this passage, the narrator’s act of creating her own home with the pillow, quilt, glass, and chair from “that house” demonstrates how the space transforms into a layered structure where different pasts converge. The fact that each object arrives with its “own story” reveals that objects gain meaning not only through their utilitarian value but also through the weight of time, relationships, and memories they carry. While these objects provide the narrator with a space to protect themselves, they also bring traces of other lives into the space. The object functions chronotopically because it carries a previous life into the present, allowing different temporal layers to coexist materially within the same space. Among these recurring objects, the cup occupies a particularly significant position in the collection. Its function is not limited to the story “One Last Cup of Tea”; it also appears as an object through which dispersed moments, relationships, and places are brought into contact. In “Those Left Behind,” the cup may be read as a condensed chronotopic object that links geographically and temporally distant experiences within a single material form (Kesmez 2019, p. 11). In this sense, the cup does more than preserve memory: it compresses distance and duration, allowing past and present, here and elsewhere, to coexist within the same narrative object. Such a reading is consistent with Bakhtin’s understanding of the chronotope as the interrelation of time and space in narrative (Bakhtin 1981) and with Bachelard’s emphasis on intimate objects and spaces as repositories of lived experience and memory (Bachelard 1996). Without invoking a literal scientific model, this function may be described metaphorically as a kind of narrative passage through space and time. Read in this way, the cup becomes one of the collection’s most concentrated examples of how ordinary objects can carry emotional time across spatial discontinuities.

From the perspective of Bakhtin’s chronotope approach, the objects and spatial details in the narrative are important indicators that mediate the concretization of time (Bakhtin 1981). In the story “My Sister Handan,” the mother’s absence is made concrete through the bedroom, the empty closet, and the clothes. In this scene, objects become a fundamental indicator of memory that renders the abstract sense of grief visible:

“Walking through the door of my mother’s bedroom and seeing, on one side, the empty closet with all its doors wide open, and on the other, her dresses, blouses, cardigans, and shirts piled high on the bed, had stirred the place inside us that had been aching silently for days, tearing something open there and spilling everything out. Those clothes, displaced by the knowledge that they would never be worn again, became the first tangible thing to stir our numb souls, numbed by the boundlessness of what we had lost. Thanks to this insidious upheaval, we were finally able to feel something real. Our pain had descended to earth, and the void we’d been spinning within for several days had been named: My mother was gone, and she wouldn’t be coming back. This shared feeling finally pulled us out of the nooks where we’d been hiding separately and forced us into contact. We had no choice but to join forces and rebel for the sake of the same cause: My mother’s clothes would remain in this house. That was it.”

(Kesmez 2019, p. 84)

In this passage, the absence of the mother becomes tangible, not through the abstract feeling of loss, but through the bedroom, the empty closet, and the misplaced clothes. The “clothes that will never be worn again” become the symbol of the irreversible loss, whereas the opened doors of the closet and clothes placed on the bed become an object of loss that turns the house into a vessel of grief. The fact that in the short story’s narrative “they become capable of feeling something real” proves that the numbness of emotions can be overcome only by confronting objects. In this respect, the given excerpt proves that in Nohut Oda objects are not just tools for evoking the past; these are chronotopic objects that make possible the physical, emotional, and spatial experience of the loss. In Nohut Oda as well, the past is usually not revealed through narration of events, but rather through household objects, rooms, gardens, doors, and even spatial details. Time becomes tangible and turns into a spatial experience.

Yıldız (2021), drawing on Bachelard, notes that small spaces such as drawers, cabinets, and chests do not merely house old objects; rather, the relationship these objects form with their owners makes them vessels of inner life and memory. In the stories, an object, a room, a garden, or a specific corner of a house brings a feeling or relationship the character experienced in the past into the present, demonstrating that memory operates not in a linear fashion, but in a fragmented and associative manner.

In this context, memory in Nohut Oda emerges not as a static record of the individual past, but as a dynamic process constantly reconstructed through spaces and objects. As Şahin (2025) notes, space functions not merely as a physical area but as a memory space that encompasses lived experiences, memories, emotions, and thoughts.

Bachelard’s approach to interior spaces also aligns with this finding. According to Bachelard (1996), the home and interior spaces are not merely places where individuals reside; they are existential spaces where forms of remembrance, imagination, and the interpretation of one’s inner world converge. For this reason, the chronotope of memory and objects in Nohut Oda demonstrates that the past is not merely a remembered period of time but a living narrative structure that is reexperienced through objects, spaces, and everyday details.

4.3. The Chronotope of Threshold and Separation: Experiences of Staying, Leaving, and Irreversibility

The analysis reveals that in Nohut Oda, the concepts of threshold, separation, staying, and leaving are among the narrative’s key chronotopic turning points. In the stories, characters are often caught between the desire to stay in a place and the need to leave it. This situation is not merely a matter of physical relocation; it also signifies an emotional, familial, and existential transition. In this study, a distinction is made between physical threshold spaces and existential moments of transition. Doors, airports, routes, and abandoned homes function as concrete sites of passage, whereas separation, irreversibility, and transformation refer to the temporal and emotional consequences of crossing or leaving these spaces. A threshold is therefore treated as chronotopic only when spatial movement coincides with a significant reorganization of narrative time and the character’s relation to past, present, or future. Doors, abandoned homes, belongings left behind, and places one returns to or cannot return to can be viewed as threshold spaces that reveal moments of rupture and confrontation in the characters’ lives. The threshold functions as a chronotope because it spatializes a temporal break: before and after, staying and leaving, continuity and rupture are concentrated at the same spatial point. In the story “Those Left Behind,” the experience of thresholds and separation becomes visible through closing homes, emptying living rooms, and belongings left behind. The narrator’s witnessing the closing of different homes presents separation not merely as a personal loss, but as a chronotopic process experienced through spaces and objects:

“Over the past few years, I had sat in the bare living rooms of so many homes without furniture or curtains refraining from saying, ‘Tonight is the last night,’ and instead taking care to talk about topics that cooled the heart, as I witnessed the closing of so many homes, I couldn’t recall how many times I’d walked out through doors with picture frames, cushions, houseplants, and all sorts of kitchenware squeezed under my arm at the last moment. Each time, I’d board the subway with a lampshade or a rolledup rug in my lap, try to squeeze into a crowded minibus with a folding chair, or catch the last ferry with a wall clock tucked under my arm. I had become no different from an ant, rolling every useful thing it found here and there back to its nest. In the end, since for some time now people had been constantly deciding to leave this place though for some, it was more a matter of fleeing than leaving my life had turned into a mechanism for seeing friends off.”

(Kesmez 2019, p. 14)

In this passage, the narrator’s witnessing the closure of various homes demonstrates that separation is not merely an individual emotion, but a chronotopic process experienced through spaces. Furnitureless, curtainless, and bare living rooms represent the final state of homes that will no longer be lived in; meanwhile, picture frames, cushions, houseplants, and kitchenware taken from these homes are carried into the narrator’s life as tangible traces of the lives left behind. Actions such as stepping out the door, boarding the subway, trying to squeeze onto a minibus, or catching the last ferry transcend their status as mere details of daily commuting and become indicators of experiences of separation, relocation, and disconnection. The narrator’s comparison of herself to “an ant carrying belongings to its nest” reveals her struggle to hold on in the face of dispersion and her effort to establish a new living space for herself. In this regard, the passage serves as a powerful example of a threshold and a chronotope of separation that centers the experience of leaving, staying, seeing others off, and bearing the burden of those left behind.

The threshold chronotope is a narrative technique that denotes the passage of individuals from one state to another, decisive moments, uncertainties, and transformation. According to Sezgin (2026), the threshold chronotope is not only a physical area of transition but an existential space where crises, decisions, downfalls, re-awakenings, and transformative moments take place. This theory provides the opportunity to interpret doors, abandoned houses, airports, moments of moving, and left things as not only spatial elements but as threshold spaces where the feeling of separation, alienation, conflict of staying and moving away, and irreversibility increase. Furthermore, according to Yıldız (2021), based on Bakhtin, threshold chronotope is the place of separation, crises, turning point, and decisive moments; transitional spaces such as corridors and stairs can be regarded as areas of change that have an impact on the individual’s life. Thus, Bakhtin’s theory of chronotope enables the understanding of both the role of the moments of transition in the plot and how the character’s attitude towards time and space changes (Bakhtin 1981). In such a context, in Nohut Oda, the threshold tends to be presented as a conflict between a failure to escape from the past and a failure to transition into a new life. In the short story “Those Left Behind”, the threshold moment occurs in the concrete form of saying goodbye to the loved one at the airport and going back home alone the same way. The airport in this case serves as a chronotopic threshold, where the separation from someone else, loss, and dissolution of a shared habitat take place:

Now that you’ve reached an age where you find it hard to love new people an age when you’re less picky and perhaps braver, and after you’ve managed to find a way to love someone deeply after dropping that person off at the airport, stepping out of the doors of that massive machine of separation and walking back along the same paths you’d traveled together just a few hours earlier, this time alone with empty hands, your heart was crumbling like dry bread. Yes, a genuine human presence was being subtracted from the world. This was a huge thing. But those who, back in the day, had repeatedly disrupted the homes strung together like pearls those who boarded those planes time and again were more than just friends, siblings, or children. Not immediately, but over time, you came to understand that what you’d lost was a life a life adjacent to your own, a neighboring life story. When they left, you lost the place where your lives had grown toward one another like wild plants for years, intertwining you lost your personal story within that shared space, that is, the “you” that existed alongside them. You lost the tables where you used to sit across from one another, for example. You were losing the things you’d tell only him. The possibility of inviting him over for breakfast one morning. The clothes you’d borrow from him and keep forgetting to return until you were finally forced to the ones he’d declared “yours.” The chance to knock on his door in the middle of the night to talk about an issue that had been gnawing at you for days, and the decisions you’d make in a certain direction guided by his wisdom. The right to tease, get angry at, give the cold shoulder to, play a prank on, or argue with someone you’ve known for a hundred years all with a clear conscience. You were losing the sense that someone would say “chickpeas” before you could even say “chickpea.” As they uprooted their roots that had entwined with yours, they were uprooting you as well. That’s what it meant to be flowers in the same garden.”

(Kesmez 2019, p. 17)

In this passage, separation is not limited to one person leaving for another place; it also signifies an upheaval in the living space, relational memory, and daily existence of the person left behind. Although the airport symbolizes the place where departure becomes real, the narrator’s journey back through the same routes, but this time alone, exposes the temporal and spatial impacts of separation. The object of loss in this context cannot be only the loved one, but the whole experience created by spending time, having meals, conversing, and living together with him/her. In this sense, separation gains more than just an emotional aspect and turns into a chronotopic phenomenon based on space, memories, and relations. The expression of “flowers from the same garden” (Kesmez 2019, p. 17) also implies that their lives have taken shape in a way that is highly connected, and the departure of one turns out to be the uprooting of another one too.

The themes of separation and abandonment in the book are also significant in terms of how they transform the meaning of space. The relationship between those who leave and those who remain entails not only an interpersonal rupture but also causes the house, the room, and the objects to take on a new temporal significance in terms of character. When a person leaves, even though the space retains its physical presence, it becomes a vessel for absence, waiting, and incompleteness. In this regard, in Nohut Oda, separation is narrated through the traces that time leaves behind in space; the states of staying and leaving, in turn, become the fundamental chronotopic experiences that shape the characters’ inner worlds.

4.4. The Chronotope of Daily Life: The Emotional Depth of Ordinary Time

In Nohut Oda, the details of everyday life are seen to serve a chronotopic function. The stories highlight not so much major events as small moments, domestic activities, ordinary conversations, meals, tea, the table, the garden, the cat, flowers, and similar details. Despite the seeming naturalness of these items, they serve as meaningful symbols of the characters’ relationships to their past, to family, loneliness, and to a feeling of belonging. As stated by Olpak Koç (2020) in her study of chronotopes in the stories of Sait Faik, the setting serves as a chronotope that allows us to see the lives of regular people and the way they perceive the world. The chronotopical approach is important as it allows us to see that the details of the short story Nohut Oda, like tea, table, kitchen, garden, cat, flowers, and regular conversations, are not just used to create a realistic picture, but they turn into chronotopic markers showing the characters’ relationship to the past, belonging, loneliness, and their attachment to life. Unlike the domestic chronotope, which focuses on the spatial enclosure of lived experience, and the chronotope of objects, which foregrounds the movement of memory through material things, the chronotope of everyday life is defined by repetition and duration. Ordinary practices become chronotopic when their recurrence gradually transforms an unfamiliar space into a lived environment. In the story “Those Left Behind” the chronotope of everyday life emerges through the process of turning a new home into an inhabitable place through regular activities like the kitchen, tea, and table. In this scene, the house is not merely a physical space where the characters have settled; it also takes on meaning as a space–time realm where their efforts to establish a sense of belonging, to find a foothold, and to be able to say, “I’m here now,” are embodied:

“She certainly hadn’t set that place up just to tear it down one day. On the very day she moved in, she’d arranged her glasses side by side in the kitchen cabinets as if she were going to stay there for a lifetime. Each time, we’d recall the ways to turn those barren homes into living spaces right from the very first day. Because you had to make that place your own as soon as possible turn it into a place that breathed with you, a place that smelled of you. This was one of the rules of our endless search for a home. Even as you were unpacking the boxes, you began to fill the void between yourself and the space, weaving your web like a spider, from wall to wall, from room to room. I knew someone who, the moment the boxes were unloaded from the truck, would set up the kitchen without touching a single other surface and brew the house’s first cup of tea, viewing this as a ritual to consecrate the space. I also knew someone else who, like a shaman gathering his tribe around a fire the week after moving in, would set up a large table and believed that eating and drinking together was a way to instantly breathe life into a space or, more accurately, to instantly bring a space to life. You needed such inventions to claim a home as your own as soon as possible. Even if the wise, far seeing eyes of time whispered other prophecies, you would plug your ears and tell yourself, “I’m here now. From now on, I’m here.”

(Kesmez 2019, p. 15)

In this passage, everyday life appears not as the sum of mundane repetitions, but as a foundational practice that brings a space to life and makes it personal. Setting up the kitchen, brewing the first cup of tea in the house, and gathering around a large table transform an empty space into an emotional living space. Repeated domestic practices such as brewing tea, arranging the kitchen, and gathering around the table transform chronological time into lived duration, through which an unfamiliar space gradually becomes a place of belonging. In this way, the daily routines become the means by which the characters find themselves and make their mark on the space. The phrase “I’m here now” not only conveys the idea of getting settled in a new place but also refers to the emotional attachment created towards the space and the wish to root oneself in the space. In this case, the daily life in Nohut Oda becomes a chronotope that creates a deeper emotional level out of normal time.

In the story of “My Sister Handan,” tea, silence, and stillness in the house become a much more concentrated and enclosed chronotope of daily life. In this particular case, the noise of the teapot, steam rising from the teacup, silence outside, and the clock ticking in the hallway become an emotional time-space in which time and space become intertwined:

“He put the kettle on, then came and sat across from me. We sat there like that for a while without saying a word. There wasn’t a sound outside. The breeze had completely died down. The teapot was gently bubbling behind us; the thin steam rising from the spout enveloped us, along with everything around us, in a suffocating circle, leaving us alone in a desolation far removed from the world. The lines of time, along with the space itself, had faded; we were now in a reality that offered no bridge to anywhere else. I remembered this solitude. The clock in the hallway struck two. A dog barked in the distance. “What have you been doing all these years inside this house?” I asked. “Didn’t you look for any of them by your side?”

(Kesmez 2019, p. 101)

In the case of this passage, what appears to be an ordinary activity of drinking tea is transformed into a closed spatiotemporal world that carries with it the silence, solitude, and heaviness of the past that lies between these siblings. The line, “The lines of time had also faded along with the space” (Kesmez 2019, p. 101), clearly shows the spatiotemporal nature of the passage. In this context, the sounds of the teapot boiling, the steam arising from the teacup, the silence outside, and the ticking of the clock in the hall all contribute to creating a narrative atmosphere through which these mundane aspects of daily life become part of the chronotope. Thus, in relation to this passage, it is evident that in Nohut Oda, everyday life does not become a backdrop; instead, it becomes a fundamental chronotope carrying elements of loneliness, remembering, confronting, and temporal compression.

The chronotope of everyday life allows for the flow of time within the narratives in a slow, quiet, and emotional way. The key moments of the lives of the characters frequently do not appear because of some dramatic happenings; rather, they arise from small and ordinary events. It can be seen that in Kesmez’s story, the everyday acquires emotional significance and becomes a means that expresses the internal world of the characters. As stated by Holquist, the chronotope is one of the basic notions that reflect the way the world is viewed and organized in the narrative (Holquist 2002). In other words, the chronotopic construction of the everyday in Nohut Oda allows seeing how the characters perceive the world through small spatial and temporal elements.

Structuring daily life in this way also allows for the simultaneous presence of joy and sorrow in the text. While the characters carry the burden of the past, a sense of abandonment, or family rifts, they also cling to small moments, simple joys, and fleeting feelings of peace. For this reason, the chronotope of daily life in Nohut Oda encompasses not only feelings of confinement and loneliness but also the desire to cling to life. Consequently, the everyday space and time in the book can be regarded as one of the fundamental narrative domains that reveal the characters’ fragile yet resilient existence.

5. General Assessment of the Chronotopic Structure

The results show that the relationship of time and space in Nohut Oda is an essential component of the story. In the short story, the home, the room, the objects, the entrance, and the spaces of everyday life are not only the physical settings where the characters live but also the semantic base on which the characters’ relationships with the past, belonging, loss, family, and loneliness are built. Nohut Oda can therefore be viewed as one of the best examples of the domestic chronotope in modern Turkish short stories.

In these stories, time ceases to be seen as linear and external to manifest itself as a structure that builds up in space, creates traces on things, and can be reconstructed via the characters’ modes of memory. In addition, space ceases to function as a passive background of events and turns into a narrative agent that represents the inner world of the characters, their relationship with the past, and attempts to find a place in the world. The example given proves the theory suggested by Bakhtin of the mutual construction of time and space in literary texts (Bakhtin 1981).

In the short story Nohut Oda, the chronotope creates an intricate layer of narration that is not confined to one space or time axis. The house and the room symbolize the desire for belonging and entrapment experienced by the characters, whereas objects serve as memory markers through which the past becomes a part of the present. Doors, travel, airports, and abandoned houses represent the borders of separation, rupture, and irreversibility. The daily activities, such as making tea, preparing the table, arranging the kitchen, and protecting the objects in the room, make routine events more meaningful.

With respect to this approach, space in Kesmez’s short stories is no longer just a static element that provides a background to action but becomes a dynamic feature of narration in which time, memory, loss, and longing for home become incarnated. The house and the room reflect the conflict between one’s feeling of being at home and imprisonment, while the presence of various objects and household utensils reflects how memories are transposed into the present. Doorways and situations of parting reflect the existential dilemma of staying and going, and everyday details disclose the emotional significance of ordinary time. Thus, Nohut Oda can be regarded as a collection of short stories that allows a holistic analysis of the issue of home, memory, belonging, and everydayness from the chronotopic standpoint.

6. Conclusions

Nohut Oda, a collection of short stories by Melisa Kesmez, was studied in this paper using the concept of chronotope as proposed by Bakhtin. In the course of this analysis, the relation between time and space in the short stories was scrutinized with respect to its connection with the memories, belonging, loneliness, separation, and life of the characters. The study results show that in Nohut Oda, space is not only a physical context or decoration but also an important part of the narrative structure through which the relations of the characters with the past, their internal splits, contradictions of remaining and leaving, and search for belongingness are rendered. In this context, the collection may be viewed as an important illustration of how domestic spaces become meaningful in Turkish short stories along with time and memory.

One of the results obtained during the study is that, in Nohut Oda, the space of the house and the room are chronotopic spaces. In Bakhtin’s chronotope theory, time and space do not exist as two separate elements but as interrelated structures that co-create the meaning of the narrative (Bakhtin 1981). In this case, according to Kesmez’s stories, the house is not only the place where one lives or finds shelter but also the space where the accumulation of the past takes place, relations between family members are shaped, and the sense of loss and lack appears. At the same time, the room, being a condensed chronotope of the house, presents the feelings of loneliness, expectation, retreat, and confrontation with oneself. This result corresponds with Bachelard’s theory of the house and interior space. In accordance with Bachelard (1996), the house is not only the place where one physically lives but also the most important realm of existence where one’s dreams and memories are realized. In Nohut Oda, the house and the room are the structures that include the inner time of the characters, let the past penetrate into the present moment, and create the emotional context of the story.

From the perspective of the results obtained in this research, the chronotopic pattern of Nohut Oda is created not based on the events of historical importance and significant spatial transformations, but based on the subtle and unnoticed details of the everyday world. In the stories by Kesmez, the house, the room, objects, doors, passages, table, tea, and other things are not just the elements that provide the realistic background to the story; they are also the means of establishing the relationship between the characters and the past, loss, belonging, and solitude. In this context, Nohut Oda proves that the theory of chronotope can be successfully examined not only using the wide time-space structures, such as travels, meetings, or historical changes, but also using the narrow spaces of the domestic environment. Accordingly, in the stories by Kesmez, time is not so much seen as a linear process, but as an emotional experience accumulated in space, passed by objects, recreated in rituals, and intensifying during the periods of separation.

Another finding of the study is that possessions and everyday objects serve as fundamental elements in constructing the chronotope of memory. In the book, objects, abandoned or left-behind spaces, household items, and small details of daily life make the characters’ connection to the past visible. This reveals that time in the stories operates not as an external, linear flow, but as an emotional continuity that leaves its mark on space and objects. Bakhtin’s concept of chronotope provides a functional theoretical framework for analyzing such texts, as it explains how time is concretized through space in narrative (Bakhtin 1981; Holquist 2002). In Nohut Oda, the past is transported to the present not through direct chronological narration, but through objects, rooms, the house, the garden, doors, and everyday details. Consequently, the work creates a narrative universe in which memory is constructed through spatial and object-based signifiers.

The chronotope of thresholds and parting also holds a defining place in the world of meaning in Nohut Oda. Situations such as staying, leaving, abandoning, leaving behind, and returning or being unable to return appear in the stories not merely as parts of the plot, but also as experiences that define the characters’ existential positions. Elements such as the door, the garden, leaving home, leaving a place behind, or encountering an abandoned place again represent pivotal moments in the characters’ lives that function as thresholds. As Lawson (2011) emphasizes, chronotope is a powerful analytical tool that reveals the relationship between time, space, and experience in a narrative. In this context, the situations of thresholds and parting in Nohut Oda can be interpreted as tense time–space domains where the characters simultaneously experience the past and the present, belonging and separation, and the desire to stay versus the necessity to leave.

Yet another significant conclusion from the research is that the dimension of chronotope is added to the descriptions of everyday life in the stories. Everyday details like minor incidents, encounters, the household, and such aspects of daily life as food, tea, tables, things, cats, flowers, and gardens are highlighted in Kesmez’s story. It should be noted, though, that these elements are not employed simply to add an element of realism to the story but rather become important symbols that allow the discovery of the inner world of the characters. From this perspective, in Nohut Oda, everyday time functions as a time of emotion and memory that deepens within the ordinary. As Holquist (2002) notes, the chronotope is one of the fundamental structures that reveal how a narrative constructs and makes sense of the world. In Kesmez’s stories, the chronotope of everyday life also demonstrates that the characters make sense of the world through small spatial details and ordinary moments in time.

These results are in line with the overall theory generated by the chronotope re-search conducted within the field of Turkish literature. Chronotopic readings reveal that space in the literary works is not only the setting in which the events occur but also something that is connected to the identity, memory, transformation, and so-cio-cultural positioning of the characters. The chronotopic reading of Yıldız (2021) in the context of the novel also emphasizes that the interaction between time-space and narrative characters is among the key elements that contribute to the meaningful depth of a literary text. It is in this sense that this research on Nohut Oda indicates that the notion of chronotope can be used as an effective theoretical tool in the analysis of short stories and contemporary Turkish short stories.

Overall, in Nohut Oda, the house, the room, objects, the threshold, and the spaces of everyday existence become important narrative elements in which time, memory, and emotions materialize. The house and the room expose the conflict between belonging and confinement; objects and the everyday items embody the burden of the past in the present; thresholds and the moments of parting expose the emotional uncertainty about going and staying; and the spaces of everyday life expose the emotional intensity of ordinary time. This is why Nohut Oda may be considered one of the important instances of the domestic chronotope in contemporary Turkish short fiction. In this case, the space does not become a passive component of the outside world but rather becomes a living narrative element that carries the inner time of the characters, their memories, and their search for belonging.

This paper analyzes Nohut Oda in the context of the chronotope concept that explains how the connection between time and space creates meaning in modern Turkish short stories. Nevertheless, this study is restricted to the analysis of Nohut Oda in terms of the chronotope concept. Therefore, the findings should not be generalized to Melisa Kesmez’s entire body of short stories; rather, they should be considered an important starting point for understanding the relationship between space, memory, and belonging in the author’s narratives. Furthermore, in future studies, Kesmez’s other short story collections or different texts in contemporary Turkish short fiction that center on domestic spaces could be examined comparatively within the framework of the concept of chronotope.