A hack writer who works as a proofreader at the newspaper, imitates Divan literature, and is an enemy of new literary movements. He tries to hide his lack of literary talent by nitpicking errors in Arabic-Persian linguistic rules and seeks to satisfy his own sense of inferiority by belittling his rivals. He harbors a sickly envy toward anyone successful, especially Ahmet Cemil. He is completely degenerate not only in his literary life but also in his family life; he abandons his loving wife and young son in poverty, squandering his days in third-rate taverns on gambling and alcohol. He is a picture of disaster with both a rotten art and a rotting soul.
Since his youth, he has been someone who tries to pass off as a poet by going down to the Bosphorus to mash up a few couplets by finding rhymes. Because of his incompetence, he could never reach a large audience, and for ten years he has dragged along in the press only as a corrector and a filterer of informant articles. The complexes that erupted within him after the innovators wiped him out have rotted him even further.
He is a man with bright black eyes, deep-cut thick beards, and has long passed his thirties or has worn out quickly due to alcohol. Because of the dissolute life he leads, his appearance is neglected; he carries himself not with a bowed neck, but with an impudent posture. When drunk, he turns into a wreck with all the sparkle gone from his eyes.
Ali Şekip
A person whose exam he is ashamed to take but with whom he scuffles in the same office.
Ahmet Cemil
His relentless enemy for whose art he feels great anger and jealousy.
Eşi ve Nedim
His family who awaits bread and whom he avoids with hatred.