Ayşegül Savaş on Friendship and Friction

This week’s story, “Marseille,” takes place in the city of the title, where three friends are gathering for a short break. What drew you to Marseille as the setting?

In response to a similar question you asked some years ago—about a story set in Rome—I remember saying that it was fun to write about arguments in beautiful settings. Here, again, I think I am drawn to the idea of a reunion in a charming place, and how that charm can suddenly tip. Marseille’s position on the sea was also intriguing: the city is both very dense and very open.

The friends—Amina, Lisa, and Alba—met when they studied together in England. Amina now has a one-year-old, and this is the first time she’s seen Lisa and Alba since the birth of her daughter. Does she feel like the same person she was when she last saw them, or like someone completely different?

Probably both. On the one hand, she thinks that her friends don’t understand how her life has transformed; on the other, she is surprised by how quickly she can revert to her old self. There is also the fact that she feels a little weary—of being out all night, of the idea of backpacking around Europe, of downing glasses of pastis—even if she simultaneously does not want to miss out on anything.

The friends are in Marseille for just a couple of days. Do their plans—and outfits—merit a longer trip?

Haha! Yes, they’ve packed more clothes than they will have a chance to wear. I think this is because they want to be prepared for any occasion that might present itself. Even if they were on a longer trip, they would feel the same anxiety.

Once they’re together, they fall back into their old dynamic. Amina thinks about how she had some college friends with whom she could be serious, but with Alba and Lisa the most important thing was to enjoy life. Alba, whose last relationship has recently ended, always drew the most overt male attention when they were students, and in Marseille they joke about whether a waiter might be her new amoureux. Do the friends find it comfortable to return to their old roles, or is there any tension between them?

I think that there is always some tension in friendships—not necessarily detrimental, but enough friction to keep things interesting. In this case, there is Alba’s magnetic allure and the other two’s steady relationships. The women have reasons to envy one another, but I think that these reasons have actually kept their friendship intact. They supply excitement and purpose to the reunions.

After talking to the waiter, they change their plans for the day and take a boat to visit a place he has suggested. Later, they plan to meet up with him for a nightcap after they’ve had dinner. How much does he disrupt the tenor of their trip? Does he have the capacity to make it more fun—or upend it?

The expectation that they will see the waiter again gives energy and purpose to their day; they are animated by the idea of a possible fling. But they really don’t know anything about the waiter. Whatever excitement they’ve conjured is the work of their own imaginations. Similarly, it is through their own imaginations, their interpretation of the waiter’s message, that the trip feels upended, at least emotionally.

All three women end up thinking about their age, and whether they could now be seen as “aunties” by a younger man. How disconcerting is this for each of them? Is it something that they can each move on from, or does it mark the start of a new stage of life?

It’s the first time they are confronted with the fact of entering a new era, and it startles them. I had a similar feeling writing the story: at first, I thought it was going to be about the friends growing apart, about envy, or motherhood—and I was startled when all these issues gave way to aging. What I thought would be a story of friendship falling apart was actually about the friends coming together with a new understanding that their youth has (mostly) passed. But I hope that they do move away from this rigid perception of themselves; that it isn’t as stark as it seems at the end of the story. Or at least that they realize—as Amina does in some instances during the trip—that they’re no longer so attached to that earlier stage of life.

“Marseille” appears in your new collection of stories, “Long Distance,” which comes out in July. (The title story was published in the magazine, in 2022.) When you were putting the collection together, were you struck by any particular concerns or themes that ran through the stories as a whole?

I was surprised by all the different cities! It made it clear to me that one of my preoccupations as a writer is people in foreign places. I’m obviously interested in experiences of estrangement and adaptation, but also in a more mundane—touristic—experience of going somewhere new, just like in this story, and how such a trip may reveal dormant anxieties. It has to do with the foolishness of being a tourist, I suppose.

And I realized that I often write about friendships. Even though friendships are very important to my own life, I would still place marriage, or parents, or children at the center of my preoccupations. Then why do I write so much about friends? Should I not be tackling those “essential” relationships first? I think the answer has as much to do with the constraints of the short-story form as it does with an inability to take on subjects that are as large as life itself. I have no distance from them, and it is only from afar that one can see the shape of a story. ♦