Published in February 2026
Previous chapter: Yer Üstünden Notlar: Beyond Exile (5)
The characters, institutions, and events in this novel are entirely fictional. They bear no relation to real persons, institutions, or events. Any similarities that may appear to exist are the result of coincidence.
6
Ah, that day — the day that makes my
heart sizzle like meat on a grill whenever I remember it; that fickle day on
which I shuttled back and forth between light and dark, between hope and
despair, between courage and fear, on which even the weather was confused —
opening up one moment, raining the next, smiling then sulking. That ill-fated
day on which I didn't know where to place you in my life, on which I clasped
you to my chest one moment in great love and flung you from the balcony the
next in hatred. While you waited at the airport in excitement for your turn at
the queue, there was a woman nine people behind you — I wonder if you remember?
I was wearing a light blue dress with white flower embroidery, puffed at the
shoulders, short-sleeved, long-skirted. There was light makeup on my face — a
little cream and blush to erase the traces of sleepless nights, a faint sakura
pink on my pale lips. Unexaggerated, simple, misty spring blues covering the
yellows of autumn inside me. As if to represent the opposite of the tangled
pathways in my head, my hair was long, soft, and straight that day, and at the
border where my forehead ended and my hairline began there was a burgundy
headband, its sides filled with star patterns, its top with gilded hearts. A
sweet butterfly childhood placed over the sulking middle-age syndrome. At one
point our eyes even met — I must have caught myself off guard, because
squinting and puffing out my cheeks I smiled at you like a mother meeting her
thirteen-year-old son at the school gate. You too lifted your head from the
phone in your hand and looked in my direction with blank eyes. You weren't sure
whether I had smiled at you or whether the person I was smiling at was you. You
half-focused on a point behind me — the rain outside, or the long-legged Air
France flight attendants walking behind me at that moment? — but the hook of
your mind had caught on me. Who was this woman? Why had she smiled at you? Had
you perhaps seen her somewhere before? At the supermarket? At a restaurant? On
the metro? At Insomnia, where you used to go often? Her face didn't seem
entirely unfamiliar! No, no — you were seeing this face for the first time. She
looked a few years older than you, perhaps the same age. She must have confused
you with someone. But no — you too had noticed that there was something
belonging to you in those eyes; you too had understood that this contained a
long-running captivity hidden inside a momentary mistake. There was
helplessness in that gaze, a search for hope, the loneliness of a message in a
bottle thrown into the sea. You had noticed this but there was nothing you
could do. You couldn't come over and say hello. Your wife beside you, your
child, two months of summer holiday ahead of you, your mother in the country
you were heading to, your sister, your nephews and nieces, your friends... If
anyone was to be blamed it should be this woman — appearing before you like a
genie sprung from a lamp and muddling your head. We women are always like this.
We muddle men's heads — it's no wonder we have been the symbol of chaos since
ancient times. Our yes is never a full yes, our no never a full no. We wait for
the man before us to draw out the no inside our yes and the yes inside our no.
And when our tongues are tied, we appear just like this — at our most alluring
— like a princess taking revenge on the prince who rejected her, troubling
clear water purely for the mischief of it.
You're right, Naci Bey. What can I do
— perhaps you haven't been able to tell from what I've written up to now, but I
am human too. Made of flesh and blood and bone just like you, and in fact more
of flesh and blood and bone than you. I couldn't bear the reality of not seeing
you for two months. I thought I'd give you a proper send-off — if I couldn't
pour a bucket of water after you left[1],
I could at least shed a few tears. Joining a queue was not in the plan, nor was
capturing your gaze, but what could I do — I couldn't help myself. It happened
in a moment of weakness. What meaning would memories have without regrets,
isn't that so? For more than ten years you have been my sun by day and my star
by night. And I — in your eyes — am nothing but a pale-faced moon appearing in
the sky on a bright clear day. An unnecessary thief of light, an idler who has
lost her way and her direction, a sand dune surrounded by thousands who
resemble her... For a single moment I was defeated by my weakness and smiled at
you. And at that moment I felt the barbed wire you had woven around yourself
begin to crush you, to squeeze your soul like a steel vice and tear it apart.
Those were eyes saying give me your hand and pull me out of this swamp. Eyes
saying this is not me, what I am living is not life. Unfortunately, I am not as
free as you are when it comes to floundering in the swamps I enter and sinking
ever deeper, my highly esteemed Naci Bey. The moment I realized the foolishness
of what I had done and the moment I disappeared were one and the same. Had I
been exposed, never mind losing my job — I could have gone to prison.
Understand then the magnitude of the risks I took for you; even if you don't
respect them, appreciate them, or agree with them — understand. Wrap me up and
place me at the bottom of the deepest chest in your house, like a sacred amulet
whose power is drawn from the faith in the heart of the master who breathed
life into it...
Disappearing from the view was not
too difficult. I went up to the upper floor where the dining halls were and sat
somewhere from which I could see you without difficulty. From there I watched
your bright face and the body whose lines had softened after marriage to my
heart's content. Inside, I uttered stock phrases left over from Çalıkuşu[2]
— "Safe travels, Naci Bey. Don't forget us, send a letter now and
then..." Outside, tears I couldn't hold back — like Adile Naşit's[3]
eyes filling as she says "Ah, my poor child!" — trembling hands, legs
going hollow. When had these legs last shaken like this? I think it was in my
final year of high school, when I gave a speech at a ceremony explaining the
meaning and significance of the day. The whole school — two thousand five
hundred students and two hundred teachers — had fallen silent and were
listening to me. Not just my legs but my arms and hands had gone hollow that
day too. A similar situation now. An inner voice asking "What is happening
to me like this?" — your voice answering "What hasn't happened? A lot
of water has flowed under the bridge. You have grown up, become an adult woman,
but not once in your life have you truly been in love." An inner voice
saying "Can't you not go?" — your voice answering, "I can't —
I'll be back in two months, you know. Love is getting old together, not a
sudden feeling; it is a construction that always demands effort, it is setting
off on the same road but not always looking in the same direction. You know all
of this, dear." "Dear?" — my inner voice. "Ha ha! You could
at least not have taken that sluggish creature with you." Your answer that
doesn't come... Silence; a sharp pain like a paper cut on my fingertips that
won't quickly die down; a burning like nettles rubbed on my calves. For the
first time you are going away for this long, this far. You are in safe hands —
my heart is a little at ease. When I say safe — that woman, known as your wife
— who knows, perhaps she too will read these lines one day! I hope she doesn't
— what does she read anyway? She's supposed to be a literature teacher as well!
I read more than she does. If I took her classes, I'd have her shamed within
two days! — let her not go thinking she's something. Every woman struts about
like a boss when she's around you anyway. Let her not puff herself up
unnecessarily as though she's taming a Bengal tiger while she keeps a Van cat[4]
at home. You are in safe hands because that woman won't give you an inch of
anything in life. Wherever you go she'll follow; she'll have a say in
everything; she'll play the new bride, she'll hold forth on every subject as
though she knows what she's talking about. No — I will not utter a single word
of praise for her. Because she doesn't deserve it. No different from a cat. If
she licks your hand, she's doing it so you'll wet your hand and clean her head
with it. She married you for convenience, and you married her for convenience —
but in the long run the scales have always tipped toward her side. So much so
that even in the matter of lovelessness she has almost doubled you. That is —
her lovelessness toward you is considerably greater than your lovelessness
toward her, and this situation bothers me greatly. Fortunately, thanks to the
spyware loaded on your phone, I will continue to hear your voice and read the messages
you send here and there. I don't think you'll write much in your journal, but
I'll check that occasionally too. With you, one never knows — sometimes you
produce your finest work at the most unexpected moments. As you put it:
"An artist must be caught working — inspiration being that shy
fairy."
And there — you took the passports
from the woman at the desk. I too came downstairs, to give you a proper
send-off. You look like a typical family man — three passports in one hand,
your boarding passes hanging from between the pages like tongues stuck out at
me, a small suitcase pulled with your index finger, your orange backpack
hanging from your right shoulder, the child playing a game on his iPad beside
you, your wife reading the history of Türkiye on her phone and asking you
questions every so often. "It turns out that the day the Second
Constitution was proclaimed was also the day Kang Youwei set foot in Istanbul.
The man complained in his diaries about why we Chinese couldn't do the same.
Did you know this?" "Of course I know, dear. I even know that during
that trip a son was born to Kang, who was in his fifties, by his seventeen-year-old
Cantonese wife who accompanied him." You are walking toward the exit;
first Xiao Ma and Wang Chenxi pass through passport control, then last of all
you receive your stamp, and without turning to wave at me even once, you pass
through the door. I wait until your silhouette behind the frosted glass has
disappeared entirely, among the happy faces seeing off their loved ones. I wave
my hand, held at the level of my hip, secretly in your direction...
Coming out of the airport, I decide to
take the metro home. I think that if I mingle with people I can steal a little
of their visible hopes, put them in my own bag, and pull my mind together. And
that is what happens. In each face a separate world — the patient and steadfast
gazes of mothers with children, the heavy bags in fathers' tired arms, the
well-earned contentment of grandmothers and grandfathers savoring a love that
requires no effort, the children's endlessly cheerful cries... I force myself
to bring my school years before my eyes. My student years spent in two
different cities of Türkiye. Learning Turkish at TÖMER[5]
language courses in Ankara, then entering Boğaziçi University's Department of
Turkish Language and Literature through the quota opened to foreign students,
after passing a simple exam. Two years in Ankara, five years in Istanbul. A
thesis titled Matriarchal Longing and Rebellion in the Works of Sevgi Soysal[6],
and graduation. A full seven years I had spent in Türkiye, accumulating a pile
of knowledge I had learned without knowing what use it would be, without
caring. The dozens of books I had read. When we were in Ankara, because we went
everywhere together as a group of Chinese students, people called us the swans of
Kuğulu Park. Because every weekend we went there with friends. To those who
said this, we would reply, "And you are the youth of Gençlik Park" — as
if we were making some terribly witty response. Thinking of it now — how
absurd, childish, and naive those words sound. When you've just learned the
language, you can't catch these nuances, of course! By the time I moved to
Istanbul, I was speaking Turkish fluently. I could read Ömer Seyfettin, Sait
Faik, and even Orhan Pamuk in the originals. I had even sat beside the driver
in a dolmuş[7]
and collected the fares a few times. Istanbul had come to me like medicine
after Ankara. Its history, culture, and people were different, of course — but
what I was most fond of was the Bosphorus. Most of all — the cormorants that
dove into the azure waters and emerged a few meters further on; the seagulls
that decorated the city's sky like birthday party ceiling decorations; the
penniless lovers walking arm in arm along the shore; the tired but self-assured
rumbling of the ferries; the inexhaustible optimism of the simit sellers who
worked rain or shine; the soft faces, steam-kneaded, of the retired uncles who
sold tea in paper cups; the act of pulling a warm sip of cinnamon sahlep while
swallowing in one gulp a lokma sweet wounded by a toothpick[8]...
If left to myself with nothing to do I could have sat from morning to evening
on the benches along the Emirgan shore. How could anyone turn their back on
that sea, those waves, that view through which history flows before one's eyes
moment by moment, curtain after curtain? On cool days I would walk along the
shore from Bebek to Yeniköy, then cross by rowboat to Beykoz. I had an
insatiable hunger for learning, an inexhaustible energy, an endless hope in
those days.
Ah Beykoz — how many memories I have
with you. You were the place in Istanbul that was most my own. The place where
my voice came out loudest, where you gave me the chance to be myself, where I
never tired of being breathless on your steep inclines, where I cracked
sunflower seeds and gossiped over warm tea with the old women sitting in front
of their gecekondu[9]
houses, where my heart filled with uncanny feelings as I walked past the
abandoned factories of Paşabahçe, where I greeted the craftsmen smoking outside
the glass workshops on the verge of closing and asked them for directions,
where I smilingly refused the would-be mothers-in-law who grabbed my arm at
every opportunity and said "Let me have you for my son, be my
daughter-in-law, oh how sweet you are!" where I lost myself watching the
children playing football on the dirt pitch in Çukurçayır — the most beautiful
district of Istanbul, treated like a stepchild despite being within Istanbul...
I had a boyfriend in those days too — Serkan, two years older than me, studying
engineering. The beautiful days when we climbed the Beykoz hillsides hand in
hand, arm in arm, pushing and pulling each other along, our cheeks turning red,
pink, purple, our loose clothes billowing like flags in the ever-strengthening
wind, our voices becoming inaudible from the roaring, yet our hearts somehow
finding a way to synchronize, when there was no room for anything but love to
pitch its tent in my head... Whether we managed to be a couple, I'm not sure —
let me say we tried. We had struggled, spent quite a lot of time and effort
trying to lock our bodies together, and like novice pastry apprentices who,
meaning to roll the dough thin, accidentally punch holes in it to the left and
right, we too had opened irreparable wounds in each other's souls through
ill-timed words and the expectation spears our families had planted in us.
Neither of us had experience in these matters — he lacked the patience needed
to understand a woman; I lacked the wisdom to overlook men's impatience. At the
end of a relationship lasting about two years, we both realized we had entered a
dead end and gave each other up. I had gone out with other boys before him, but
the person I had gone furthest with, grown most attached to, put most of myself
into, and from whom the most pieces had been torn when we parted was Serkan.
Nothing made me as happy as my small hands disappearing inside his large ones.
When he wrapped his woolen scarf around my neck — I still smell his cheap
cigarettes when I put a scarf around my neck — when he threw his thick arm over
my shoulder and tapped out a melody with his fingers, when he brought his
breath close to mine and fixed his dark eyes on my eyes and smiled, when he
touched his bristle-sharp stubble to my skin and kissed my neck — and most of
all, when he made no sound as I leaned my head on his shoulder watching the
sunset and let sweet tears fall without minding the shiver inside me — I
rejoiced like an explorer who has found the greatest treasure on earth... Like
all passionate loves unencumbered by reason and anxiety about the future, ours
too went flying off the road and rolled into the ditch at the first bend it
entered. Serkan left for America the moment he graduated. I never heard from
him again. He didn't write, didn't call, didn't send a word through mutual
friends. Two years after him, I too graduated. I left Türkiye like a hapless
little boat chugging off toward the open sea, quietly, calmly, with waves whose
touch resembled a fish's kiss.
Then of course the return to China,
beginning the most boring job in the world as a secretary at a small company,
the search for a suitable husband under pressure from my mother and father,
hopelessness, loneliness, shame, and as a result of all these — Turkish novels,
poems, and stories that I read just to feel different, Yeşilçam[10]
films that I watched over and over... Then my luck suddenly turned. First, my
meeting with a handsome plainclothes officer who found me because I knew
Turkish — if he hadn't been married, I could have killed two birds with one
stone! Confidentiality conditions, intensive training, lies told to the family,
a new job, a new life, a new identity. Close surveillance of Turks living in
the country and monthly reporting. A well-paid, low-load, enormously
responsible job. Just right for me! And one day, at one of the dinners
organized by the alumni association, I ran into my high school sweetheart,
learning that he too was single, that he too was floundering in a tangle of
relationships whose disastrous endings were predictable from the start, under
pressure from his parents. We had found each other like two wretches fallen
into the sea, one blind and one with a crippled arm, and from that point on we
couldn't let go. I became his eyes, he became my arms. Do I need to tell the
rest? You know the rest. Everyone knows...
My daydreams had brought me to this
point when I arrived at Futian station. It had long been time to return to
reality. When I entered Exit C toward my home, I noticed the escalator wasn't
working. I swore in Turkish. After all, no one understands. I have lived here
and used this metro station for more than ten years — this was the first time I
had seen this escalator not working. I got mildly irritated, but immediately
told myself there was nothing to be done and huffed and puffed my way up the
steps. The heat and humidity receive me like prison wardens. Come, they say,
come — we are where you left us. Where are you? With the airport, the metro,
you forgot Shenzhen's merciless weather. Just past the exit there was
construction work. The ground had turned muddy from the rain. I turned to the
left side of the road so nothing would splash on me and made my way along the
wall. Passing in front of the Electricity Distribution Authority building, a
sewage smell that made the bones of my nose ache nearly knocked me unconscious.
This smell happens after every single rain without exception — in other cities, after rain the streets, parks, and gardens smell of earth, of grass; here
apparently, the only thing that overflows is the drainage system. Why don't they
do something about it? Am I the only one bothered by this heavy stench? Does it
suit a beautiful and well-ordered city like Shenzhen? When I entered the
complex where my home is, I took a deep breath with the relief of having left
the smell behind — but in vain. The hills I had climbed had soaked me through
completely; my back was sticky, beads gathering on my forehead trickling down
from my temples. How hot it was — if June is like this, what will we do in
July, in August! A heavy stagnant water smell coming from the puddles on the
ground; the choking humidity of the garden steaming like a temple filled with
incense; two pieces of black dog excrement left in the middle of the walkway by
one of the irresponsible dog-owner neighbors... Oh honestly — when will these
people learn to take responsibility for everything their dogs do? Everything
means everything! Not just the food that goes down the dog's throat but also
what comes out of its backside is your responsibility. I am shaking my head as
I pass the two black spots when the child of four or five on a tricycle coming
quickly from the opposite direction loses their balance and falls. I run to the
child and pick them up. The child's grandmother comes over shouting and
hollering, gives the little one two pretend slaps on the backside, and doesn't
offer me the slightest word of thanks. With the teeth she has recently had done
— which look not as though they belong to her but have been borrowed from her
thirty-year-old daughter, which look as if they'll fly out of her mouth if she
relaxes — she virtually growls at me. She even looks at me with irritated eyes
as if the child fell because of me. This crone is about to snap at me too! I continue
my way in utter amazement. My spirits are low — why do these grandmothers treat
everyone outside their own family as an enemy? When I don't have a child with
me, do I not deserve respect? What is their problem? What do these
brain-deficient cuckoos think of themselves — those whose only achievement in
life is having had children, and who on that basis alone walk around puffed up
like scientists who have split the atom? Did I ask not to become a mother? Did
I choose this path? Do you think this is a personal preference? Ha???
Just at that moment a crunch comes
from under my foot. "Dammit," I say. I swear ten times more colorfully
than the oaths I uttered at the top of the non-working escalator. Under my foot
a large, crushed snail, bubbles rising from a sticky amalgam of slime and
shell, the first traces of death on the transparent surface scattering the
sun's rays. I wipe the bottom of my open-toed shoes thoroughly on the grass.
What were you doing in the middle of the walkway, snail — there's so much
grass, so many trees in the garden. Drag your slime, stick yourself to wherever
you like! You can climb thirty-story buildings if you want. The fault is mine
though — I wasn't looking where I was going. My mind was on that quarrelsome
grandmother who can't manage her own grandchild but offloads her own
carelessness onto everyone else. I think to myself — if I could just get home
without anything else bad happening to me, sit down in front of the blowing air
conditioner and let out a deep sigh of relief — but where do I have that kind
of luck. Bad events are like sneezes — once they start, they don't easily stop.
Just as I am about to enter the building, I spot an injured bird a few meters
beyond the bushes. It looks as though it's dying — barely hanging on to its
last moments. Even the fact that it's breathing is barely visible. I crouch and
look; picking it up with a large leaf I place it somewhere high enough that the
cats can't reach it. If it's going to die, let it die in peace at least — let
it not be torn to pieces by the complex's cats.
A strange feeling comes over me. An
unrelenting rumbling in my stomach, heat flushing through me everywhere, a
dizziness as though I've stood up suddenly makes my legs tangle, my stomach
churning like the inside of a dormant volcano about to erupt.
Fortunately, there is no trouble with
the elevator. I go up to the twenty-third floor and open the door to my
apartment. Hundun greets me, heedless of his limping back leg, rolls over on
the floor, waits for me to stroke his belly — but I am quite exhausted from the
heat and from what I've experienced in the last fifteen minutes. I turn on the
air conditioning and collapse into the corner of the sofa like a sack of
potatoes. I breathe deeply and slowly. Each time the cold air from the air
conditioner hits my forehead, face, and shoulders, the soul that was about to
leave my body returns; I come back to life, my veins fill with blood. At that
moment, Hundun comes to me again, rubbing his head and neck against my legs.
Since he can't jump up onto the sofa I grasp him with my hands and lay him
full-length beside me. I stroke and massage his belly, his chin, his forehead,
his front paws properly. His soft fur does good to my touch-starved soul. The
blood that just filled my veins begins to flow — rushing, gleaming,
shimmering... I feel as if I am under one of the waterfalls we come across
climbing Wutongshan. I pull off the headband and fling it onto the coffee table
like a queen resigning from her duties at court. At that moment a white
envelope catches my eye. This wasn't here this morning — did my husband leave
it? Is it work-related? Did he stop by the house while I was out? If he came
for laundry or something! He might have forgotten it too! I open it and look
inside. A pile of documents, a long list of items. Photocopies of documents
relating to property. When I read the heading on the top sheet, I am shaken as
if struck by lightning. DIVORCE PETITION it says in large letters. Before I can
even think who is divorcing whom, the rumbling inside me returns this time with
a far more violent force. The pressure is unbearable. Holding my mouth with my
hand, bent double, I run to the bathroom — my foot catches but I don't fall —
not my luck! — I stick my head into the toilet and retch and heave until
everything in my stomach is out. Hundun meows at the bathroom door, the poor
creature worried, probably thinking something might happen to his housemate and
he'll be left without food and water! At that moment you come to my mind — you
and your little family. There must be twenty-five minutes until takeoff. You
will have fastened your seatbelts; the flight attendants will be walking up and
down the cabin wiggling their neat little backside, saying please turn off your
devices, fasten your seatbelts, keep your window shades open, bring your seats
to the upright position. Your eyes are on the book in your hand — Laughter
in the Dark, Nabokov — one hand on the edge of the page, the other somehow
on my back. You lean in and stroke my back with all your tenderness. I feel the
movement of your fingers on the clasps of my bra. You move your hand downward
in one direction along my neck. "It's over now, it's all out, all of
it," you say. I open my eyes. I straighten up and stand before the sink —
my terrible face in the mirror, my exhausted eyes, the vile taste filling my
throat. Looking at the yellowish stomach contents slowly trickling down from
the corners of my mouth, I say: "Bon Voyage, Professeur Naci. Bonne
chance!"
[1] A Turkish tradition, remaining
residents of the house pour a bucket of water right after a beloved person
leaves home for a long journey.
[2] Çalıkuşu - "The
Wren," the beloved 1922 novel by Reşat Nuri Güntekin, one of the most
widely read Turkish novels of the twentieth century. The narrator is gently
mocking her own sentimentality by comparing her inner monologue to the novel's
famously melodramatic romantic language.
[3] Adile Naşit (1930–1987) — a beloved Turkish actress and comedian,
famous for her warm and expressive face, particularly her emotional eyes. A
deeply recognizable cultural reference for Turkish readers.
[5] TÖMER — the Turkish Language Teaching and Research
Center, part of Ankara University, which offers Turkish language courses to
foreign students and professionals.
[6] Sevgi Soysal (1936–1976) — one of Türkiye's most important
feminist writers, known for her politically engaged and boldly female-centered
fiction.
[7] Dolmuş — a shared minibus or taxi that runs on a fixed route
in Turkish cities, traditional to Istanbul's street life.
[8] Simit is a circular bread coated with sesame seeds, lokma is a Turkish fried dough sweet, typically soaked in syrup and served at
street stalls; sahlep is a warm Turkish winter drink made from orchid
flour, traditionally spiced with cinnamon.
[9] Gecekondu, literally
"built overnight," the Turkish term for informal or squatter housing,
typically found on the outskirts of cities.
[10] Yeşilçam — literally "Green Pine," the name of the street in Istanbul that historically housed Türkiye's film industry, used as a blanket term for classic Turkish cinema, particularly the melodramas of the 1960s and 70s.
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