SELIN'S LETTERS - Kürşat BAŞAR
SELIN'S LETTERS
ONE
I cry like a small
child. I draw a long, black line on the paper decorated with hundreds of colorful
lines. Here, it is me! A long, black line, and it should continue so, among
those colorful lines, motionless or slightly flowing away, scattering, flying
away through the space indifferently, so sad like a gray line - smoke of a cigarette
blew in the air, in the stable air of the room, just rising, scattered then,
compressed within a little moment of intuition and deformed, then acquired a
new form and deformed again, smoke of a cigarette - nevertheless, a new breath
would take it all away a moment later.
I read a few lines.
Without stopping. I do not understand.
It snows.
As if you would
never come.
I think of you.
You were undressing behind a frosted glass, I saw your opaque nakedness / what
a pity / I cannot reach you.
"He will never
love you!" once said Elfe, "He is a homosexual in love with himself."
Levent died.
One morning as
I woke up - when the autumn was shedding slowly, quietly - with the sudden shaking
of a phone.
A long time has
passed. Now here, in this room where one's all life is woven with small, fortuitous
signs, I cry in the heavy, depressing silence of these signs, the moments and
meanings I have laid on them. Istanbul is no more that old, lovely Istanbul,
where sounds of azans, calmness of the wooden houses, choppy magic of the winter
seas - that green, pale silhouettes - were reflected imperceptibly on a canvas
with foggy colors. The moments that a seagull approaches the sea with trembling
wings and strikes the sea with screams are shaded with ugliness now - with ugly
people / the dream comes to an end.
A long time has
passed. It was the last days of summer when you went. One night, when it was
raining mildly, we have sat down and talked. When you were waking me in the
morning, I was to hold your hand, if you did approach. Then we always talked
about you: your hair were fallen over your face, you were wearing my nightie,
a slim, delicate girl… Your hair was grown longer, fallen on your face, you
sat with Levent, with Elfe. Levent died. I wrote it like a sentence said quickly.
Then the shortness, shortage of the sentences appears suddenly. Then my touching
with a blue pencil on this white paper makes me surprised, it is strange, we
were together only a few months ago, and together we could search a mystery
with the rain falling. Come, I want to say you something, do you hear me?
I still love you
so much.
TWO
The silence grows
up. All day, with the irresistible beauty of a picture, a melody, a poem, I
am as lonely as a seabird cross with itself.
At a point a faraway
shore bends softly, that could not be seen when alive,
As calm as an oboe
In a picture on
a wall, day by day fading, growing old
- could not be
seen when alive, could not be seen when alive -
Suddenly a piano
begins; suddenly I am jarred with a cry. Your absence, your irresistible absence
- between the last leaves of a book, in a dead flower -
'a dead flower,'
I say.
Yesterday, when
watching the seagulls rummaging through the garbage, I gave a cigaret to a dark
faced small boy. That unfortunate, malicious gamin in those old elementary school
books. Elementary school books, omercik movies. But some nights they were still
going with some strapping men that they don't know, did you hear about it? Now,
whenever they approach me with open hands, whenever I hear the voice of an old
boza-seller at night, whenever I feel the hands of men stretching out as I get
off a steamer, I shed inside the tears of a child. I want to give birth to a
death / an irresistible thing / and I bring it up like a memory that I will
never forget. I think about dying two persons, a white gravestone, and only
my name on it (or does an unborn child has a name?) one day, a ballerina getting
out of a box and dancing and then again getting in the box that somebody - not
yet afraid of seeing death so closely, maybe a child - has put on the ground
in a short, a moment's abstraction, and those lines / you know / written in
a fine, blue ink on the first page of an old, dusty book which is to be bought
years after from the second-hand booksellers:
- I love you so
much, forget me not.
It's evening time.
I drink tea. I'm bad.
Sometimes the evening
comes with dizziness, trembling. I see unusual bursts of lights here and there.
Everything loses its shape slowly. At night, when I get into the darkness alone
- a continuity that never changes - I see faces that I don't know, even I can't
be sure about even if I have ever saw them before or not, that I thought I have
forgotten, faces seen in any day, at anywhere - walking out in the streets,
that I draw pictures on the steamed up window of a car - and then the movements
of these faces silently and as if behind a strange fog, and I sleep affected
with incomprehensible associations that I don't know the name, place and time
of any usually. Following a name, I remember another one's face sometimes, then
I find a far, quite far connection between them. Thus, you and Levent mix in
my mind. Sometimes I doubt about the presence of a third person. In a novel
not written yet, in the diaries of a woman read later on, it is understood that
she knew her death years before.
And among all my
confused thoughts, again you appear in front of me; sometimes you kiss me at
the door of a train, it hurts (cause, indeed, it is an irresistible thing -
a train going away, far away always, with a darling in the windows), sometimes
you knock on my room's window, with the same smile in your lips; sometimes when
I sleep turning my back, I feel the bed shaken with hidden sobs. All these are
slowly covered with a fog like that picture day by day fading, growing old on
my wall. To forget you… I want to die before I forget you.
A little later
I will have to eat something. Then I want to read book. Maybe this night would
be long, I would play the flute for the first time.
THREE
Here, the day ends.
Like a long dream, long and foggy.
With the sounds
of the piano.
Outside, with a
rain that could only be seen in some dark corners but heard all the time, with
the sudden appearance of the voices with comprehension - lost long since - and
the faces, and sad with the pain not being able to take them out of the fog,
the day ends. I feel an incomprehensible shudder with the fall of the evening
slowly, quietly like a black, sly dust. When I look towards the sea a little
later, with a dreadful desperation I will understand that I am all alone now.
And then in the sky getting dark, faraway, a fine, noble blueness will be seen,
like another sky, I will see a seagull fell, you will not come. I newly understand
that the hell is one's naked solitude. I turn on the lights. I turn on the music
to the highest volume, meaninglessness of all creations suddenly, description
of beauty and love
With instruments
With paints
With letters
However, I kill
in my dreams, in a deep blue space without feeling any pain - alone - without
thinking / but I will grow up this silence crying inside me - left from you
- not aware of this painful stay.
FOUR
The day diminishes,
with a fisherman faraway gathering his nets, with a seagull striking the sky
turning red and became darker, and with the shadows got longer on the sands,
with the gleams fading into the distance of the houses, the sea / the beauty
of your nakedness behind a steamed up window, many years passed since destroying
the sand castle. Now, whenever the sun - as I feel cold with a wind of the sea
- falls on me with a small, secret glitter behind the clouds going forward,
whenever I see children playing with the sand, whenever a telephone not replied
rings somewhere, I feel an incurable pain. Then I let that small white drug
of pains in my vessels, in the going on redness of life, and pour a hidden secretion
in my brain - as if life were anything else than seeing a dream half-awaked
- and then I understood the line that I have forgotten for years
An unexpected violin
The nights
The clear, white face of a girl - maybe a boy with long hair - just so staying
and looking at me
Nakedness of a
face, which I forgot for years / the sand castle, this is the first time death
shows itself, in conscious and in the darks. Maybe these are the whispers of
a mask behind a colorful window, behind the steams of a window. The views: views
that are deformed, changed, renewed each second, lost, and went away.
In such times,
everything gives me pain like that dreadful sleeps toward evenings ending in
an unknown darkness, all realities are wiped away.
Say, I once again
recognize flame of a candle, and a mask wrapped around a purple headdress, same
with my face, whispering without stopping
Coffins
Candles - long yellow
Gravestones - white marble
Cold
Expositions of a mask
Then the music
begins suddenly. A corridor is opened before me. Far, faraway I see a happy
face. With a fine light that we saw (one morning through the opening of a curtain
/ a summer morning in the past) the dust flying hither and thither.
But at another
time - speedily - with an incomprehensible speed coming toward me, getting older,
a face, a clear, white face, and I run toward it cause it should not happen
once more it should not I cannot bear it but it is as if the distance increases,
everything turns into a ladder then - face of a small child - it gets older
as approaches, she is a young girl now, the ladders end, I rise - is it a dream?
- the young girl makes love with a man, no, it is not late yet - I approach
her - she gets older and older and colors burst everywhere, the blues, the reds,
flickering shapes, she gets rather old, the colors change again, a cloud.
(we had looked
into ice green with the yellow blue flame of a candle)
then years pass
by inside me somehow - like two green eyes -
(years ago one day toward evening)
I get a strange
pleasure out of it and it is lost in the space.
Now only the scream
of a woman.
Then everything
turns into the troubled ending of an untimely sleep and I call out in that one
second's unpeopled space.
"I no more
want to be a God."
FIVE
I watch the withdrawal
of the day, with the rain increasing, with a dirty seagull at the seaside, with
the shudders of a dog, soaking wet, with that sounds of violin that we could
never express. I pass through the rooms full with these sounds that help me
not to be lost suddenly in the space, I draw pictures on the steamed up windows
with tiny water drops, like a child confused with his fears - the rain falls
severely. One day I had written a story with the rain. I no more write stories.
I grow and grow up the hell inside me. But not with the fires not with the fires
with the silences - with the pink blossoms of the ivies silence of a wall and
merciless tick-tacks of a watch, tick-tack, so.
Only a little is
left I say to myself. Only a little is left. For a moment, it is as if somebody
I forgot inside me grows up. I am as if somebody never exhausted. One to born
again as dies. Then the evening cools, suddenly cools. At night, when I wrap
myself in my soft quilt, I feel compassion for myself - when I embrace to myself
- then I really understand this endless punishment.
I ask to all my
reflections: Who is it?
The evident reality of one?
I undress without stopping, and watch myself.
Or is it someone cursed itself?
Then everything
appears with a new desperation. When I dress up, am I a new Selin? With a new
desperation, a new person? And I understand a thing then a new thing: none of
the mirrors do know me. They see themselves only when they look at me. Suddenly
I remember the sentence Elfe said to me in a quiet voice, ashamed, and with
a love never ended - I know now, I have spent all loves:
"He will never
love you. He is a homosexual in love with himself!"
SIX
Here is the place
hopes come to an end. You. Wish you were here, wish we would not remain silent,
a new thing at moments everything comes to an end - I understand it now new
is what one meets the first time - a new thing in that days the waves calm down
and quiet in a summer sea / I want it so much…
Here a new summer:
an uproar
A calmness
Maybe not: a long stemmed rose in the basket of a street seller
Maybe - pink bud -, opening its windows - a timid and sweet mansion
Maybe not: falling down of a child and make his naked, delicate knee bleed.
Sounds getting closer
Only these?
Maybe a cry - never heard such a summer image?
You.
You are not present
any more, you are forgotten. Sometimes, when a little stone at the bottom of
a wall shone with the sun, when I look at the picture I drew on the wall of
my room, when I read hundreds of pages from a book not understanding anything
- these are all the hesitations of eye - you are forgotten. You are that Martinican
girl with short hair. Martinican girl from the island of volcanoes (separations).
Without getting bored any time, I listen to her sad waiting in a jazz record.
Then that false line of a sad poem:
"I'm well,
well."
Besides don't forget:
summer is a short, silent death. You taught it to me.
Here, the place
death begins.
- what I saw in
my inevitable encounter with a mirror was this.
SEVEN
'Now, the greatest
of the mental pains is that for the ones lost, it is so great that it is alone
greater than all other pains.'
Maybe, you really
will not come. All these lies - that is you, cause you are dead, Levent was
your name - maybe really come to an end. As for death, I suppose it is for a
while hesitation, and then continuation of this loneliness - loneliness of one
preordained to be one's own god. Love was a magic voyage, a voyage to be made
only once, a voyage that has no return. And all the subsequent loves were nothing
but the remembrance of this first excitement, a struggle to live it once more.
Now I remember it indistinctly. All springs stay vivid with the remembrance
of those days, and life is the sad sediment of that beautiful days…
I no more water
the flowers, no more wind the clock, that big clock on the wall. One day I did
not call out an old friend after a long time, we did not have anything to speak,
there were not any yet, then this happened again, then again and again… I have
written in my diary, "It is the first time that I saw a friendship end
so quickly and unexpectedly. Life, for the first time frightens me."
I don't love you
any more as well. You should have died with a meaningless death, and now you
are being decayed somewhere, I can't love you any more, you are an ugly, cold
corpse. Therefore, yesterday I took that old, African doll of my mother out
of her untouched chest, then I hollowed her eyes, poured red paints in her eyeholes,
and then I cried, cried. I closed down the curtains, the lights. I put that
craziness of Davis, bitehes brew, in the record player, then I opened the volume
to the maximum, and took the quilt out of the wardrobe, and made love with the
doll - she was no more seeing me, no more looking at me with her expressive
eyes - trumpet sounds till morning…
EIGHT
Many a long time
have passed. As for me, I don't turn the sandglass any more, it is emptied,
and ended. Now I am at the end of a long way. Where this magic voyage has ended,
leaving many good times, leaving very nice people behind - I lost one at each
hesitation, I did not know what was there at the end of the way, the thing that
was important was to be together all the time, to walk together to the end,
but they did not come / you did not come, we separated without saying a farewell
- the way that I came finished. Now if I look behind again it is narrow, indistinct
figures ones seen and then lost will appear. But I will not turn back, if I
do, they will be lost.
I know Istanbul
is a mournful city.
You too Istanbul,
the mournful city, come to an end.
Here turns off
the lights I never look at the night never it is as if the darkness increases
more and more there are so many things so many things I remember the old good
things the old old nice slight movements the heart resentments the rains the
friendships the nights the times toward evening I can't tell so many things
everything pass by quickly. Only sounds are left in my mind ringing. Sounds
are fast like images I don't move any I don't dash fast I know they will be
scattered if I touch it the last gift of god this last beautiful moment of my
destiny will end. Everything occurred so, cause I am afraid now. Everything
has come to an end but so fast all of a sudden when I did not expect it now
I am glad. With the moving sound of a trumpet this time I catch the ending moment,
I let myself to another magic voyage. As for the lights on one day in this room
after all untimelinesses one day I wrote you this there on the table. But why
for you are not present?
NINE
I will live eternally
cause
I am the death.
FROM CEM'S DIARY
Now the days have
turned to be dreams as well. The light is diminished now, it turns into a dim,
misty, motionless brightness. There was one thing: A love, a pain, like the
sale of a wall clock been loved once, something lost suddenly. What was it?
Among a crowd, is it the going out, becoming meaningless of behaviors, a feeling
of distress by a coincidence impossible to be known beforehand and been laughed
at? Is it an emptiness appearing in an afternoon with closed curtains with a
woman unknown when lust leaves its place to a feeling of being lost, the shock
of a feeling of childhood being visible incompletely a later time like a short
brightness, or the decrease of hope of a day in which we looking out from the
windows, steeping tea, arranging everything in order, an order of beauty while
waiting for somebody that ends with loneliness toward evening?
Something has diminished,
something has died, the pencil has risen, the breath has waited, we could not
hear the tick-tack of clock for a while. This is a dream. Within the indefiniteness,
lost reality, it is an illusion followed continuously by the eye. Something
occurs, the time hesitates, everything takes trembling, distrustful forms. But
sensation is quite clear: This is the death, this is the end. If we were not
so late, if we put some more woods in the embers of the fire dying down, if
the stirring rising inside us could be free - what is the use of it now - if
we turned our faces not inside ourselves but to each other, it would not be
so. I listen to a madrigal - madrigals of an arrow stuck into a heart carved
on to a tree, madrigals of a cloth doll with pins stuck into. I love one, I
love you. -
Selin has said,
"I loved somebody this summer, but he was not beside me." Nobody could
have touched his love. Now we are far away from each other. Two old women have
taken the garden chairs, covered the old table with a wax cloth. I saw what
could not be seen. One of us extinguished the cigarette, the fire scattered
by breaking, crushed with a crackle, one more song has ended; remains of food
left in the plates, tea cups left here and there, cigarette butts accumulated
in the ashtray; a feeling of diminishing, scattering covered everywhere, sound
grew faint, nothing to say remained at the end of the night. (Why I could not
kiss you at a new year's day?) but I saw what could not be seen. Death suddenly
flared up and went out. Waved at the bottom like moss, stroke on my face like
a slap, stayed on us like a smoke intensified.
Now pain grows
up inside me, my breath is strained; I grow up. I am a small child but a terrible
pain - pain of the one that will not come back - accumulates in my heart like
a black, sticky sediment, I hear something. One day I have heard a sound, like
a woman making infinite the wildness and beauty of winter, let her hair in the
wind, in the beach I remember. It was a rustle in the dried grass, wild flowers.
A feeling of movement, fright that I could never know, entered in my life and
immediately went away, stayed only the reminiscence in that lonely beach.
It was such a thing.
"We walk following
the death," I say. It is as if a dream, as if all of us were dead, we pass
through the heavy and dark day, our steps so slow, there is such a pain inside
us, as if years pass away - you go faraway I watch you disappear slowly in the
dark lane but I will not say come - we walk among the trees. As death is taken
away in a shapeless box wooden and on rather heavy hands we are the extension
of it. All is up to here, all of us are here but not Lale. She is not here with
her flowery name, with her flowery face. Is this an other ceremony of burial?
They open the box Lale's face Levent's face death's face all of us here, we
are like a broken up photograph.
There was something
that I forgot. A died leaf has fell down in the garden swayed like the shadow
of a dancer, the first great waves hit the quay, the rain dripped and then stopped
on the windows, the white rose faded, days became a dream as well. I can go
out of this old room of summer and go to wide roads, to streets right beside
the sea shining with the brightness of the sun on the gray surfaces. With the
sea breezes, with men and shadows, becoming none of them among them, not carrying
a cross on my back my name not carved on it, I may walk and go away. Now I have
to leave this place where I am mentioned with my name. Everything must start
again. But life does not let me, while the sun shines through the red roses,
conifers, while the spring calls out through the open window with the coolness
of a garden - here with the melody of a flute, with the songs of birds, with
the barking of a forgotten dog - a new thing slightly moves, waiting to take
one more step / but waiting. The old women once more stand up from the place
they sat, I am once more there in a summer afternoon, while Selin plays the
flute on the quay under the soft touches of the sun, with the wind blowing,
and continuing an endless loneliness and looking at the sea, I suppose time
does not pass in these moments of ecstasy. Tea will begin to boil a little soon,
everyone will approach to the cool, tranquil evening from the calm afternoon
not being worried, not being feared, sounds will be heard again, but these are
words not forced, they will fall into the calm wind, scattered, seen again,
repeated, heard one after one and become meaningful. Light will flicker in the
liquid darkness in the porcelain cup, form bright areas, great and small areas
become visible one after another, we will see them united, extended, widened,
or disappeared altogether. We will look at some tea leaves in the cups and wait,
we may wait cause we are very lonely, here in the terrace, at a shady corner,
our movements so harmonious, so soft, while sipping our tea, we are so lonely.
And I will think about so different persons, as if years, distances will disappear,
and I will miss all faces once been loved, I will be lost in this dream, and
dream that they enter from the door, smile, come into my room and narrate the
long times at once.
To Lale
Days are shortened.
Now the sky is covered with dark clouds at the sunsets, faraway, in the places
where clouds are dispersed a dark blue brightness falls. I remember you as I
see Istanbul. Is it possible not to see Istanbul? I reserve a page in my diary
for you as well, knowing that there is not anything to write in such a moment.
When I think about how all these things occurred in such a short time I understood
that the years have passed in fact, if one of us did not open that magic box
we would not grow old suddenly.
You choose a death,
go to an unreturned place, leave something behind but - pain or sorrow - covers
everything slowly. I listen to some songs for you, I want to cry. You will never
ask, "why did our childhood games become so horrible?"
A reminiscence.
"But this
is the winter sun," I say. On the pavements, wide roads, old, black stone
buildings, an ugly children's park - one swing, the second one broken - the
people whom I consider their loneliness, fears with great curiosity, who close
by one more step with no effect, always passing at a distance that obstructs
their knowing me, their creating similar patterns on the pavements that I watch
for years, who can say that I do not know them? - on a mosque far away, on the
sea lets its rays, it shakes, wakes. They are brightened silently, a cold dampness
flies away slowly over them. But this brightness is to be fade away quickly,
gray white thread stacks - smoke rising from the tea kettles boiling on green
stoves, from a cigarette at the end of a silver cigarette holder, from the chimneys
of small white houses (at a far away fairy land) / and from the steamers - will
cover the sky, and the sea will be darkened, I already hear the seagulls turning
from above to down here and screaming.
Here begins the
preparations, school days come to an end. There is only I who remember the spring
that came too late, and the winter. Now the calmness comes to an end, happiness
begins, they write in their desks, draw hearts, an arrow penetrates the heart
- is love something like this? - wears a clean dress, her hair is combed, they
decide on where they are to meet, as they go out from there a little later -
following a farewell ceremony inevitably become laughable - what they are to
do. A wave of happiness, excitement covers everywhere. However, time has gone
away through our hands, days of childhood ended, this is not the day that freedom
begins but that the shelter is destroyed.
In front of a window
I read that book once more, I do not have any friend to meet again.
A blue embroidered
paper turned over, I saw the face of a girl. I saw Selin.
"There is
a girl," said my mother. "There is something that I do not know, it
is not evident, a pain, then you go away."
We take our coffees
and go out to the balcony. I look at the sea going away, the shores got foggy,
and misted over.
"Forget this
fortunes, I am not well these days."
But the cards closed
quickly, left on the table in utter disorder, the thing to be said once more
was not said.
"Why is it
impossible to change a thing that could be known beforehand, mummy?"
"Why don't
you go immediately? Better to go away than living there alone. It is too early
to forget things happened, but if you begin a new life everything would change,
you would suffer pain if you stay here."
When we were children
as we stood in the terrace we were used to feel this breeze, this smell - what
else remained from that beautiful city - all day I would stay in the shadow
there next to the dog kennels, the old, broken piano, and in the boathouse as
well, where old furniture were put.
"Do you want
to say something, mummy?"
"What could
I say? You are not able to abandon. If you feel alone one day, if you have nobody
to go, come here. I know I am your mother but if such a moment comes I wish
loneliness frightens you.
As I pass through
the garden that became unkempt, alienated day by day, where thorns, couch grasses
have covered all around, ivies climbed to the pipes, woods and crazily grew
up, I remember what Elfe has said: "As I stay alone, become sad, in that
moments as everything seems to have no solutions, I think of somewhere, somebody
living the same things. This, with no evident reasons, makes me feel relieved."
Why did we choose
so wrong persons to love?
But only I have
believed that everything could be rejected for the sake of a friendship. "You
will suffer like me," once said Levent. "Being so soft, stopping a
moment of anger immediately with tenderness, wishing everything to be meaningful
with a sincere sensitiveness, with a feeling of gentleness is nothing but choosing
death." This is a sad day.
"I can't bear
friendships to come to an end thus slowly, words, though could be said, though
could be passed over lightly with a few words or maybe with a small joke during
a bright talk not considered to have so much meaning, not to be said, always
such intrinsic lives, their turning into bitter / fogged images of lies,"
says Levent. "So why don't you say?" says Nevit, "we are old
friends." "You prefer ridicules of others to a friendship," says
Levent, "don't say anything, I know, you go to pubs with them, swearwords
do not befit to your lips, you suffer as you don't know to approach women as
they do it. Is this the thing what is important?" (In the same desk the
first time our elbows touch each other at night as we wanted to sleep in the
same bed in the dormitory…) "We are yet grown up, you exaggerate. Do not
become an enemy of me as I don't love you as you wish it," says Nevit.
In this last talk I am the silence.
"At least
I want you to know that I love you so much, that now, even at this moment as
I am dying whom I miss is you not Nevit who exhausted me with the union of love
with hatred. I would not die if you were here. But I do not suffer pain, cause
it has been a long time that I believed death is liberation. Do you remember
what I said to you in that so lovely day." (Last piece of writing that
left to us from him).
We caress some
daisies as feeling the time pass by with a staring, with the delicate sorrow
created by temporary, why for lacking moments of happiness, with a song remembered
in an old life. "Should I board a ship one day, I will want to go faraway."
I remember.
You are not present
any more - like Lale and Levent who went to the country of endless waiting but
you live, your name is Selin - I sit on a pallet and draw your picture, your
transparent and calm face, your long neck.
A summer evening
you open your door to me the first time, you smile.
A summer evening
(later) we separate without saying anything.
It begins to rain,
but lights in groups, in places touching the sea, striking the sea could be
seen through the pink clouds tearing the gray blue sky faraway… birds pass by,
they seem darker. It will be evening in a little while, rain and soil, trees
and the sea will become darker, some persons will pass through the street -
from that cobblestoned street - I will look at them. Your light will be always
on. I will see your light through the flowers in the garden, but I will not
whistle, I will not call, I will not obstruct your forgetting me, your losing
me as soon as you find another one. I give my hand to all, we said we are friends,
and then began my loneliness.
As Nevit was going
away with a train only I was with him. "But still give them my regards,"
he said. In the known rains of the last days of summer, as we look at the flow
of rain to the sea continuously, as we go out wearing our raincoats, boats,
maybe in the former days, as we were children considered indifferent wandering
in the wide streets enlightened with the sun, as the sun was warming in an afternoon
with the odd sorrow of fishermen, old houses, narrow roads, as we stare into
space and watch a bird fly away quietly, what was the thing that an unknown
magic covered us and wanted to tell, do you know?
As Selin sat down
with her dress in flowers, there, on the cushions, as we, two of us make breakfast
one afternoon, as I saw an old smile of Selin one day in somebody else's house,
as the small child was forgotten all alone in a winter afternoon, and cried
in all secrecy, as those birds, which we don't know their names, began to go
faraway - some people pass before the window, not worried by the ending of the
day slowly - as one says to himself that everything has ended, let a piano play
so calm, I am in a bright bathroom, let me stay within the quilt that I covered
myself up to the head one winter night, at the beginning of a dark dream so
as not to turn back again. As I think that I will leave even the smell of the
cigarette I smoke, please let me go, let me do not wait for you startled with
every noise, opening my doors for other rings though knowing that you will not
come back again. Cause in a dream, sometimes you say, "it's good that you
came," when you see me. But do not say, even in a dream do not say this.
Ash and copper.
In all dawns, that
is what I say to a darling to be lost in all dawns, and not to be seen again,
but been loved alone like all real loves! These are the words that I have kept
in my heart for years like a magic gift but not lost their magic, that I say
to this beautiful city composed of the legendary scattering of the sea, another
alone love endless and will never end, especially in the misty, magical autumn
mornings as sun rises slowly and silently and its rays touch the sea: Ash and
copper. Other name of this city. Then I leave the sound of the sea, the launch
of a hand carved boat slowly, the bells, a blacksmith's first strike of hammer,
the weak faced children, the cries of seagulls, an embroidered head scarf, and
the afternoon shadows of the mosques together with this tale to you. Maybe one
day, in a dream day should we meet again, let these be a present to you from
me for your beauty and magic words.
This is the last
day of the Istanbul days. End of the sad autumn, rain seas, morning fog. One
more thing - a silent resentment among drags, excitements, and calmness - in
the thin branches of the trees shaken with this silent wind, in the dead leaves
that rain still accumulates in unspoiled drops, in the going away of two old
women after tidying up two garden armchairs (there is not the wildness, redness
of the bower roses, thorns, poisonous greens, in the calmness of the flute sound
giving a feeling of going away one more thing is lost, scattered like a fog
over the other, old moments - but hiding what it wants, hiding in every circumstance
- and closed, and waiting for another thing to start again. Days have flowed
through my hands, the seasons were divided with snow, rain, sun, but I stayed
so, I stayed here, I did not touch anything to change, I felt the passage of
time, the sad passage. Now the sun shines, a moment of happiness rises, with
loneliness - with a bitter reminiscence reason of which have been forgotten
- embraces, and goes out. Cause whatever happens, and wherever and however we
meet, we can only give pain to each other.
"Maybe, as
one cannot remember the most important moments of his life entirely like those
old pictures exposing all borders clearly, my efforts for the work of writing
this story has become unsuccessful for so many times. But so as to realize the
will of that old, dear friend who is now faraway, whom I don't know anything
about the life of this friend, and whom I have perhaps lost eternally, I try
it once more."
Or
Nevit wrote as
Summer has passed
with an irregularity as happen so for years, with the endless boredoms of afternoons,
looking at countless images that we consider their existence as a symbol, a
remembrance for our lives, with again and again abstract thoughts, with a search
for new ways - if any could be found - for a new life style so as to get rid
of the deep traces of the past. Then when I returned, in a bus departed midnight
from that holiday town painted in orange and green, not sleeping any, and looking
at the houses lined up at the side of the road which were left back one by one,
to a light window growing distant, to the signs of silence, abandonment - telephone
poles, dogs - in some small towns we sometimes passed through, in a undefined
ecstasy caused by lack of sleep, I found the box that Elfe left. There was a
letter among the old notebooks, photographs, small notes, and papers that we
all wrote something.
"Maybe, since
I cannot succeed in arranging the life alone by myself, I want it from you.
Just as I could not complete the countryside image by bringing together those
odd seemed cardboard pieces when I was a child… whenever I have to bring details
together, an odd, soft emptiness grows up slowly - when remembering something:
it could be a sound, an image, a smell or a word but no, that great white sphere
is so hard so cold. In places white loses it strength and spots, shadows, many
holes are opened, images in a continuous movement around me, occasionally some
hands, upside down faces, heads with one eye (shapes of death) an image that
I know its meaning once but forgotten now, then another one are seemed to unite
but all are not different from an old, abraded stage curtain, dull and lifeless,
cause you know, as you want to hold the hand of a friend, the edge of a detail,
that curtain is raised suddenly, and I cannot hold that hand, that detail. Therefore
I send you all these. Letters of Selin in complete disarray and without dates,
Cem's diary-like writings - cause I could not understand which was real and
which was fiction, I cannot understand - your yellow pages which you tried to
narrate the nightmare-like days that we lived, everything written and things
came to me from others, those that I wrote but did not send, photographs, record
covers (you would listen maybe), photographs and countless details.
You could not imagine
what confused things one feels sitting before a great many written papers, not
knowing even what were some of them, traces of the past. But I could not succeed
neither reading them once more, nor burning, getting rid of them. Now after
deciding to put them all in a box and send you, I am relieved. Like the days
we saw their names in bold letters in obituaries, as I write on an envelope
the address of your house where I did not come for a long time, and your name,
I feel that I cannot solve the mystical relation between the people and the
words, that I am afraid of it. I do not know why but I thought no one other
than you, could not imagine everything occurred.
In the room where
you will read this letter, the music plays continuously, you are at your desk,
I can see you, you get a sip from your tea, imagine again and again lives by
yourself, voice of a street seller outside, footsteps of a child running down
from the stairs break the calmness of an afternoon: Sounds of the exhausting
world that befits you, which are ready to kill you.
I know you are
there with yourself, far from any ugliness, the meaning you attributed to ugliness
has long since turned into the faces of people evident in my life, to small
movements, I have long since turned back, chose life. That child face of the
past is in an unknown state, emptiness accumulates in my heart like a mixed
ball of glass wool, it burns, everything is so dirty that…
No, I do not want
to talk about myself. I send my past to you, which was locked inside an old
box for a long time in a mass of papers and go to cold and dark city. To the
north. Even though we would not meet again, maybe one day I would see your writings,
which you do not want to share with others, in a book. I wanted ours to be among
these stories. I know it is not an ordinary thing ordering a story from an author
but like the old days I want the bad things narrated by you, would you do it?
Maybe, as one cannot
remember the most important moments of his life entirely like those old pictures
exposing all borders clearly, my efforts for the work of writing this story
has become unsuccessful for so many times. But so as to realize the will of
that old, dear friend who is now faraway, whom I don't know anything about the
life of this friend, and whom I have perhaps lost eternally, I try it once more.
I know a work of
art would always be shortcoming wherever it starts, shortcoming like our lives.
Besides, here, in this story a starting point would not be find out from these
disordered pages, photographs, memoirs, it cannot be narrated in whole starting
from any place. It can be started from a period of time, and then would be turned
back - this is illusive as well - it may go ahead the present moment - cause
I imagine it. I arrange the structure of the story by setting the watch right
beside my typewriter. I, for a long time, know that it is impossible to spend
the time on the round white dial, this odd contradiction.
Whenever I think
about them, they do not sit here again, just opposite to me with their bright
faces, they do not join again in the countless games that we have found, and
laugh, but, I do not know why but, they appear in my conscious always with their
sad faces scattered in the square of a film of a burial ceremony. My loneliness
which Elfe regarded as positive, as peculiar to brave people, has turned into
a madness for a long time. Everything is composed of illusions now, I cannot
control anything, I cannot name anything catching between the old lines, circles
in my conscious, determining immediately - as if playing with the objective
of a camera and sharpening a live face, a movement before getting them out of
life in the shape of a square, a rectangle. I know the different faces of the
feelings of people, the things that surround us, which we believe they would
have no value if we were not present (it is true, cause meaning is the name
of a mistake created by our ill conscious), the mystical perceptions, sounds
and darkness always indicating an odd incomprehensibility. That thing which
I call as the feelings of people breaks with the beats the lines (like our feeling
annoyance just when we say that we are so happy), those old rules, old borders
are broken into pieces before new ones come to their place. But, a person is
not as plural as to share his life and himself again with himself. How could
me or anyone else survive alone against the life, the world, that sphere of
space borders of which have been drawn in degrees? In a place worth living it
is as if I unwillingly continue my life which is injured eternally with deaths,
separateness, breaking off, in a town, in a seaside town surrounded with the
mountains, with the irresistible extravagance of the time, with the sudden stuck
into of the distances into the conscious, out of designs, colors, searches for
styles developed within years with passion, though does not fit with all different,
looked for, and missed, the reality appears like the light of that orange dazzling
for the first time with its broadness of a person's life, short and spent as
it begins, and I think of suicide. My faint-heartedness, my inclination to cry
as I think about suicide, obstructs me. When I think of death, I say that I
have no place in anybody's life. I know it is not important, loneliness is something
related to life, there is nothing beyond life, it is not like as in that folk
play hitting to hands clasped firmly, and not being able to pass through, but
I cannot do it, that image: the ugliness of the pieces of cottons to be put
into parts of my body obstruct me to get those bottles of sleeping pills at
the head side of my bed. I sometimes read those papers I have written everyday
when we were living together till that winter day Ali and Elfe got out of here
and went away.
In these summer
days when
The sea-sides,
ice-creams, noise of the children
Happiness are forgotten,
sun became quite evident, and warmed up people, loves, relations
Previously in the
spring, in the smell of lilacs which are exhausted for us
When sounds, faces
and everything get a new reality
In the cold, white
winter days when people put on snow
In the previous
season when we were poured into dirty yellow with the rain
- time passes by
without any stop, though hours stop for us, though seasons change for as like
an ordinary thing in our daily, hard lives, speedily, it is as if we cannot
catch it any time, we cannot enter into it, a life continuing out of us does
not want us that we are pushed everyday a little more outside, a little more
to our selves -
when one of us
opens out the closed curtains, from night to morning as life wears on a new
face
in all these renewals,
changes, if there is a magical thing: we do not speak. That is the most evident
characteristic of our existence, our reality.
I look at Elfe.
She - without saying - pretends ignorance that something has changed for long,
that loves, friendships, evenings that we call each other with an unstopping
excitement have came to an end, now they have become so transparent like a dream
day to be remembered with incomprehensible heart resentments, tears, now with
a calm pain we are to forget all these with a sigh for a moment at the end of
daily works.
"I am not
as optimist now as I were in the return to the past. Many a time passed. The
small signs of my getting older are evident now with headaches, and my resistance
to sleeping. I want to write a story as going by a train, many a life styles
left back, and got older, but I cannot. I know this as well, this story is to
be put aside one day like a photograph of an old day that is looked afterwards
and put aside."
No, I do not have
to explain something.
Kürşat BAŞAR