Beyond Exile (1)

Published in February 2026

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.

 

                                                        1

I remember like yesterday, the day Naci Zara's file dropped into my ultra-secure message box. Behind my back, a firm cushion decorated with Tibetan patterns; on the coffee table where I'd stretched out my swollen legs, the golden pits of the damsons I'd just devoured, wincing with each bite; in the other corner of the couch, our kitten Hundun[1] locked in a relentless battle with its own tail; on the radio, a voice left over from the nineties singing bù zhǐshì péngyǒu[2]; and in my belly, my son who would never be born. Outside, a fierce July rain had set about its heedless business of softening the city's concrete surfaces with blow after blow. Altruistic grandmothers and grandfathers who had sworn to fan their grandchildren, their legs suddenly infused with an elixir of youth, had fled to the scooter parks beneath the buildings, and the green garden in the middle of the housing complex — growing a little more ruined with every drop that fell from the sky — had been left to the patient vigil of the invasive African snails and the sluggish earthworms native to our city. Water droplets striking and bouncing off the metal roof of the security guards' outbuilding scattered shimmering, iridescent flashes and spilled in waves beyond the garden's borders. The two long metal rods we used for hanging laundry swung back and forth like a cradle and knocked against each other; the sky grumbled like an old woman snapping at a street vendor who had dared to drive a stake into her ground; mosquitoes, despite the suddenly soupy air, searched for new warm and humid quarters to spite it; and smoke-colored clouds struck momentary sparks in the middle of the sky, like mischievous children who can't give up firecrackers on a festival day…

What's the matter? Did you get bored already? Was my description too heavy for your impatient 21st-century mind — unaccustomed to difficulty, expecting action every ten seconds, swiping on to the next entertainment with a flick of a finger when you don't find what you hoped for? Did I exaggerate a simple rain? What could be more natural, more ordinary, and to some more contemptible and maddening than a torrential downpour in Shenzhen in July, floodwaters sweeping everything away, traffic thrown into complete chaos! But what can I do? If nature itself exaggerates without limits, if it endlessly chases brand-new follies, if even in its plainest form it can shake sluggish souls awake — is that my fault? I am responsible for recording what unfolds before my eyes, the sounds and images that pluck at my heartstrings, with an anxiety and a shiver as though I might never experience them again. How I wish your insides would tremble too. May this singular moment I have lived transcend time and place, and thousands of years from now stir a flutter in the hearts, a movement in the bodies, of people who have never even heard the name Shenzhen. May these images — roaming my consciousness like a vagrant virus — take up residence in other consciousnesses stationed on the unreachable shores of the universe and of history, and there become immortal, remain forever alive. Since my body cannot be what endures from this mortal life, let it be my consciousness that clings to life in the minds of others like a pearl clinging to its shell — speaking there always, murmuring, throwing off sparks that mingle with curses at the most unexpected moments like an axe blade striking stone, seeking out the paths of immortality, creating them, adorning what already exists, polishing it, brightening it, adding its strength to theirs. May people, as they read what I have written, feel a dampness at their heels, a cool relief across their shoulders, a faint itch on their lips, a spring-filled breeze against their bare chests. May they hear at their ears the patter of rain that would stir desire even in the most dormant of lovers. Would that be so bad? And besides, does literature have any other mission — one I should focus on, sharpen my talents for, improve myself toward, and when the time and place demand it, push against the customary boundaries, leap right over them, and turn up my nose at the conventions before which everyone stands at stiff, obedient attention? If Naci were beside me now, he would agree. Perhaps writing is something that can be done with fewer words, with less straining. I don't know. After all, I am a novice who has only just begun to write — a complete apprentice in this business! An apprentice who will never become a master, a servant with no eye on becoming a lord, a dreamer who prefers a rushing stream to a still pond. One might call it a kind of midlife crisis — the final destination to which boredom and material comfort have delivered me. Paper cutting[3], calligraphy, or group dancing in the park with my peers — none of that is for me! I'm giving this a try; perhaps after writing my first and last story my enthusiasm will wane and I'll be rid of this affliction. Until that day comes, there is no economizing on effort for me. Besides, isn't it common enough among beginners to go overboard, to wring something dry, and then smear that wrung-out mess all over themselves? It happens all the time — and splendidly so. If you didn't like it, consider this paragraph unread. And I, for my part, will not interrupt again, will not break the thread of the story for no good reason.

I had risen from where I sat, swaying like a well-fed bear cub, shut the windows and doors tight so the water pooling on the balcony wouldn't seep into the living room, and for good measure spread a few of my husband's old clothes along the threshold. Afterward, the deep silence that flooded into the apartment — the outside roar cutting off all at once and giving way to a motionless solitude — first unsettled me a little, then, to some extent, relieved me. Yes, I was alone; now, like Clark Kent stepping into a phone booth as a reporter and stepping out as Superman, or like Dr. Jekyll who by night becomes Mr. Hyde, I too could transform — I could let the spy inside me take over the housewife who was soon to become a mother. For at least two and a half hours I would not need to concern myself with anything else. The meat I had taken out of the freezer for dinner was thawing on the kitchen counter; the vegetables I had bought from the greengrocer at the entrance to the complex were being rid of their germs in soda water. My husband had three hours before he came home. Which meant I could examine the file to my heart's content, memorize every detail of my new assignment, and even look up online anything I didn't know. Half an hour before he came home, I would go into the kitchen and slip back into my identity as a warm, hardworking, beautiful, and charming wife.

Ah, my guileless husband — ah, the kindest, gentlest, most good-hearted man in the world, who doesn't harbor the slightest suspicion about what his wife does for a living... I could never blame you for seeing everyone around you as "what you see is what you get," just as you yourself are! On the contrary, there were many times I blamed myself — for not being able to be like you, for having kept a great secret from you my entire life, for having managed, despite the minor slips I made along the way, to avoid being caught by some stroke of enormous luck. And it wasn't only you who knew nothing of my second life. My family, your family, our mutual friends — everyone knew me as a smart, hardworking, enterprising woman who made small profits through modest transactions from home, who bought goods from the wholesale shops along Nanhai Boulevard and sold them to different parts of the country, who ran a small shop with the help of a young assistant. My name is Lai Zı Ran — outside, a shrewd merchant who keeps tabs on wholesale trade; at home, a capable housewife who has built a perfect life with her one and only husband.

To be frank, I was often astounded at being able to carry a second identity in my soul like a heavy guilty conscience. Many times, I told myself: climb this hill, and you'll set down your burden, spread your wings, and find your freedom — but neither did the hills to be climbed run out, nor did the weight of my load diminish. The strange thing is, sometimes on television I followed people living two entirely separate lives — men with two different families in two different cities, each unaware of the other; serial killers who raised three children on the money they made as accountants while murdering dozens of innocents; financial advisors whose real job was motorcycle repair but who collected money from people promising to make them rich; pyramid schemers who advertised Bitcoin in grand halls with glittering shows and then, a few years later, pocketed billions and vanished — I followed them for years with an envy I could barely admit even to myself. How did they feel no remorse? How did this enormous secret they carried inside them not to take over their bodies and seep outside like black vinegar through a crack? I will never know the answer to that question. Perhaps what set me apart from them was that much like a teacher, a nurse, or a soldier, I had been made to believe I was working for the welfare of my people. I was not a scheming woman cheating on her husband, a wastrel secretly gambling away his family's fortune, a wretch spending every penny he got his hands on drugs. My mission was sacred, my goal clear, my heart clean. There were times I couldn't believe that last part — but as you Turks say, even a judge's daughter has her flaws! Besides, is the past a ledger we can leaf through and erase the parts we don't like? It doesn't work that way. Every sentence you delete from earlier pages can cause all the pages that follow to go up in flames. So, I owe no one anything. From here on I can write freely — listening to every voice within me, embracing every color, without shame, without tiring — and with my whole heart believing in the dream that one day, however small the chance, Naci too will read what I have written.

First, I passed through the security stages: three separate passwords, facial recognition, and a fingerprint. If I pressed so much as one wrong key while entering these passwords, the system would lock me out for two hours. If I repeated a similar mistake on a second attempt, I would find myself standing before the Head of Intelligence for Shenzhen Province, giving account of myself. Fortunately, I am not a clumsy person — and besides, if I were, why would they have given me this job? I am careful, curious, and skeptical. The first thing I look for when I enter a room is where the exits are. When walking down a street I know by heart where the cameras are, where the dead ends are, where the pedestrian roads closed to vehicles are. When speaking with people I look into their eyes and proceeding from what they cannot say rather than what they do, I examine their souls with the thoroughness of a scholar studying a historic Tang Dynasty scroll retrieved from the archives. As skilled as I am at cooking, I am equally skilled at tracking. I can follow a target for hours without getting bored. So much so that sometimes, when I go out shopping with my husband or a close friend and am not following anyone, I acutely feel its discomfort. I break into a sweat all over, my mind goes foggy, and like a castaway in the middle of a boundless ocean who doesn't know which way to swim, I wait for a sign to come to me from the sky. After all, following someone is easy — you don't use your mind, you make no decisions, you are caught in no dilemmas. The only difference between you and a guided missile is that your purpose is not to destroy the target but to track it, to obtain whatever information you need, and to ensure the target remains alive. The lies I tell are so consistent, so convincing, that to keep them from getting mixed up with reality I occasionally send myself notes, reminding myself which story I constructed and for what purpose. The journal I keep is in fact a coded record of which lie I told to whom and on what date. My greatest fear as a spy is being treated like one by someone else. Ours is a profession that self-destructs when named by anyone. In one corner of our minds we carry our second identity, those secrets we hide from everyone. And at the same time, with a childlike eagerness, we forever keep alive in the most fragile corners of our minds the indulgence of wishing: "If only I could tell the people around me that I'm a spy, just to see them struck dumb, to hear a long, slow ohhhh, to see their mouths fall open." The fact that even those closest to us don't know we are walking vessels of secrets grieves us like spoiled children of wealthy families who are not allowed to show off their expensive new toys to their friends, and at moments and places where it is entirely inappropriate, it stirs the calm underground lakes in the depths of our souls into turbulence.

One way or another, we were human in the end — flesh and bone and impatience and weakness and loyalty and betrayal and even, when the occasion arose, gossip; each of us the born and bred child of a father and mother. How often I had longed to say it — on one of those winter nights when I held my husband tightly, tracing slow circles on his chest with my free thumb, my warm tongue settled in the orbit of his earlobe: "I'm going to tell you a secret, but you mustn't get angry and you mustn't tell anyone, all right? It stays between us until we die." In the early years I had even scripted his possible replies and written out a few scenarios in my head.

— I'm going to tell you a secret, but you mustn't get angry and you mustn't tell anyone, all right? It stays between us until we die.

— I'm very sleepy, please tell me in the morning.

— Oh, you can never be told anything worthwhile... I'm going to sleep.

— Don't forget, I'll ask you in the morning.

— Already forgotten!

Or:

— I'm going to tell you a secret, but you mustn't get angry and you mustn't tell anyone, all right? It stays between us until we die.

— Wait, don't tell me, let me guess. You're actually not a young woman. You've gone under the knife seven times and turned out like this thanks to a ton of successful plastic surgery...

— Don't make me laugh, I've eaten too much watermelon, I'll wet myself!

— So I'm right?

Or:

— I'm going to tell you a secret, but you mustn't get angry and you mustn't tell anyone, all right? It stays between us until we die.

— Let me go first, but no getting angry. Promise?

— What? You have a secret too?

— Of course I do

— Do you promise?

— Well, I promise! What else can I say!

— I have a mistress and she's five months pregnant...

— You animal. What kind of joke is that?

— If it's a girl we'll name her Zı Ran... Ha ha ha... Ouch! Stop pinching my arm!

This is what becomes of you when you carry a great secret inside you like a bitter poison for years — something this pickled comes out. When I was alone I always talked not to myself but to my secret. On sleepless nights lying on my back watching the play of light on the ceiling; at train stations, annoyed at the people who had pushed through the crowd to grab my place in line yet me finding it pointless to argue; in parks, spotting strangers who resembled you and falling into step behind them just for the fun of it; in the evenings walking the uneven pavements of foggy streets on your trail; and most of all when I saw you on the side of the road, dead drunk, retching into the bushes — you could never learn not to mix wine and beer! — watching helplessly from a distance, unable to slip quietly up behind you, unable to take out my hands from my warm pockets and rub them across your back, unable to lean close to your ear and say "It's over now, it's all out, all of it"...

And here is your file in front of me. Your great-grandfather emigrated from Sivas to Giresun at the beginning of the twentieth century; your official place of registration is Görele but you yourself are Istanbul born and bred. You studied mathematics at a good university, I see you speak fluent English. You are about to start teaching at one of Shenzhen's most prestigious high schools. Well, well, well! If only that were all. You also write. Essays, poems, stories, and so on. So you belong to the sort who knows how to keep things hidden, and you claim to be able to see the world through others' eyes as well. Our work is both very easy and very hard, I'd say. The investigation conducted on you could not arrive at a satisfactorily clear answer to the question of whether you are a nationalist, conservative, democrat, socialist, or anarchist. They could not fully determine what you believe in and what you oppose, whether you harbor negative views about our country and would work to spread them, or which side you consider to be in the right regarding the TTXT[4]. You have the potential to poison the impressionable minds of our young high school students, and there is also the possibility that you might use your position as a cover to pursue other ends. For these reasons, every step you take must be monitored; all your correspondence and conversations must be reviewed via the spyware installed on your phone; and on occasions when you set your phone down somewhere and go off, it must be recorded through physical surveillance who you meet, who you befriend, and who you quarrel with and over what. In previous assignments I had tailed a businessman from Siirt, a retired officer from Erzurum, a journalist from Kayseri, and most recently an actor whose father was from Yozgat and whose mother was German. With the exception of this last one, all of them were monotonous jobs, remote from excitement or depth — jobs I had nearly gotten myself caught on purpose just to have done with them. Their only interesting quality was that, taken together, they formed an intriguing pattern. It was as if with each assignment I was moving a little further west, drifting a little further from China. On the day your file came into my hands, that was the question I asked myself most. Would my next assignment be a sunflower merchant from Edirne? It was not to be — if there had been a next assignment perhaps I would have had the chance to test the prediction I had made and ultimately accept or reject my hypothesis, but you became my last assignment. A mission nearly 18 years long — as deep as oceans, as high as the Himalayas, as hot as the inside of a volcano, and as achingly drawn-out as the unrelenting toothache of a winter night.

Of course, during those 18 years you were not my only assignment. The whole Provincial Intelligence Directorate was hardly going to pay my salary just to have me follow one person. I had other targets too. I filed reports on a Turkmen horse trader for three years; I tracked an Uzbek businessman, who had run off with his Chinese mistress and built a new life in Singapore, for two. I gathered information from schools about young people from Türkiye who had come to Shenzhen to study, and when the occasion arose I spoke with their teachers, the directors of the dormitories where they stayed, and the friends they spent time with. I also had targets who were Azerbaijani, Cypriot, Kazakh. All of that happened — but none of these were interesting enough people to write two words about; they had no secrets, no ember burning inside them, what you saw was what you got. I could tell at a glance what they were after. When I thought about them or prepared reports on them, I was no different from the ticket inspectors on trains — relentlessly objective, stiffened to rigidity by a sense of duty, upright and unbending: a Lai Zı Ran who never leans. But you — your difference, I think, began here. Far from feeling guilt over my inability to be objective about you, I was glad that I would behave with partiality toward you. You were the one good student that an otherwise universally disliked teacher cherishes and keeps close at all times. Showing you favoritism, granting you special treatment, clearing the thorns from your path when the occasion arose and smoothing things over for you — all of this gave me pleasure, made me happy in the way of feeling one step closer to the purpose of my existence.

Ah, Naci — when I first came to know you, you were 28 years old. Just as you told that advertising girl you met at the bar, you were at the most perfect age. Seeing as you couldn't be 6 or 496! That day I thought to myself: what absurdly clumsy ways this man has of flirting. That they worked was a separate mystery — for someone like me, a woman of the old world who, even if others had come between, eventually married to her high school sweetheart. You, I had seen for the first time in the flesh right there were making plans to cycle to Beijing.  I was sitting in the corner behind the door, drinking a lemon soda, while you sat at the bar with your Canadian friend — that baby-faced boy who'd turned to traditional Chinese medicine because his hair was falling out— You had jet-black, thick, curly hair. On your clean-shaven face was written the innocence and cheerfulness of a university student. You were five years younger than me. With your grin, your movements, your restless body, you were barely distinguishable from a middle schooler who finished his homework and thrown himself onto the basketball court. The distance of three or four chairs between us kept filling and emptying. When the music fell silent, I could hear every word you spoke; the rest of the time I read your lips — lips so thin I still cannot understand how they manage to function. Your fingers moved across the map like a commander preparing for conquest, and you were saying exciting things to your friend beside you like "If we go together, we can stay in twin-bed hotel rooms and keep costs down." You had finished your fifth beer and were about to order your sixth when that girl appeared at your side, her eyes fixed on the crooked little map the two of you had sketched on a napkin. Her excuse too was to refresh her beer, but her real intention was plain. "See me, speak to me, hunt me, so that I may be hard-won prey and you may be proud of yourself," said the body of a woman starved for attention, in a language that required little interpretation. I, meanwhile, was offering prayers in my heart to gods I didn't believe in — please keep him away from that woman, please don't let him fall into this trap. But my prayers didn't hold; most likely because there were no gods to hear my prayers, or because there were some, but they didn't find me sincere enough. Though in the end I got what I wanted. You had lunch with the girl twice, and gone to the cinema with her once. The lunch dates were one thing, but what on earth was that ridiculous film! I already know from the movement signals from your phone that you were out cold by the fourteenth minute and woke at the final scene. Given that I know this, your would-be sweetheart, who had consumed an enormous bag of popcorn all on her own, had surely figured it out too. And afterward you never met again. You were a little sad — not about the girl not replying to your messages but about having become so attached to a relationship that was doomed from the start. For days you wrote brief self-criticisms in your notebook along the lines of "Why am I like this, why can't I resist sweet poisons," blaming yourself for weakness of will and spiraling into small bouts of despair. I had known all along it would end this way, which is why I had thrashed about silently where I stood. Fortunately, this parting didn't shake you too deeply. Though at that time I didn't yet know that the things that would truly shake you were not the endings of shallow relationships like this. In matters of the heart as in so many others, there were mountains of difference between us. Not differences to be overcome, but differences to be understood. It would have been unfair to expect someone like me — an old-world soul who, if not the first flower in the garden then the second, plucked it and pinned it to her hair and thereafter closed her eyes to all other plant life — to understand you at a glance. But I did not give up, don't worry. I neither gave up nor grew tired nor complained. I kept struggling on, in the middle of a desert where the sand dunes were forever shifting, trying to find my bearings and reach, however late, the oasis that would cool my insides...

And still it came to nothing, Naci. Nothing but mirages awaited me in the endless curves of the long thin line you left behind. While I crawled along those curves on my knees, my belly, my elbows, I called out your name in delirium, I made your union my obsession. In the rough caverns of my womanhood, I made room even for your shadow — but you could never cross that wide threshold inside. Into the narrow passages of my mind, where no one else could fit, you managed to squeeze your childlike frame — yet you could not take a single step toward the body that shattered like glass each night and gathered itself back together with glue each morning. On the wet pavements softened by moonlight I always saw your silhouette — but on those same pavements, rough as tree bark, you never once saw me, never noticed I was there; you never shared with me even once the bashful smile you handed out freely to those small, slight girls at the school where you worked, girls whose names you never bothered to learn despite years of working on the same floor. It was just like the mother of my unborn child — of my son, lost a few weeks before birth — never being able to see his face, not even once. The tide that ebbed and flowed between us was just like that. I was close to you; you were far even from yourself. I was a world buzzing with life; you were a desolate, pitch-dark moon. I was the expectant mother gazing at a belly round as a pot and dreaming rose-colored dreams; you were the blessed arrival, heralded. Yes — I had waited for him too, for months; I had dreamed of the day he would look at me and smile; I had longed with every cell in my body for the moment he would call me "mother." Neither he could look at my face, nor could you. Neither he could love me, nor could you. What remained of him was a companion I carry with me always — a child of seven who never grows older, whose plump cheeks flush red as a tomato in the cold, whose eyes shine bright. What remained of you was a derelict city, a cold planet, and a terrifying desert night crawling with scorpions and snakes. You were both lame young rabbits left on the far bank of the Yangtze River. While following you I ran downstream along the river, pushing aside with the back of my hand the brambles and brush that rose up before me full of hope and longing, paying no heed to the thorns that tore my skin and drew blood, sometimes marveling at how close you both were to me, sometimes taking heart as the riverbed narrowed — but in the end I could not change the wretched fate of my adventure, which ended in the East China Sea. And do you know what hurt most, Naci, my dear teacher? On sleepless nights, the silky face of that seven year old merging with the stubble on your face; his eyes appearing in your face, your lips appearing in his; my mind leaving me entirely; and all that confusion ending with me finding myself standing at three in the morning, elbows resting on the cold iron of the balcony railing, weeping in silence...

---

[1] Chaos, Muddled Confusion. In Chinese mythology, it is known as “being of primordial chaos, known for his six feet, four wings, and featureless face.”

[2] You are so much more to me than just a friend.

[3] Jiǎnzhǐ is the traditional Chinese art of paper cutting. It involves cutting intricate designs from paper, often using scissors or a blade, and is typically used for decoration during festivals and celebrations, such as the Lunar New Year or weddings.

[4] Tibet, Taiwan, Xinjiang, Tiananmen

The Second chapter can be read here: Yer Üstünden Notlar: Beyond Exile (2) 

The Ball of Wisdom

The gymnasium was a great, dark lung, inhaling the chirping songs of the children in the daytime and exhaling the silence of solitude at night. Behzat had come here for the clarity of the projectile motion, the clean arc of a free throw, the immutable satisfaction of a ball passing through a net, and solving some skirmishes in his life, if not all. Instead, he found this velvety obscurity hanging in the air. The janitor, a sullen and elusive man named Ercüment, was unreachable; his little basement office, behind the furnace room, was locked, and the phone rang into a void that seemed to swallow the sound whole.

He should have left, so he did the right thing once and all. The quarrel with Esra spread on his skin like a fine, irritating dust. Her voice, tight with a practical despair he could never emulate: “The tuition, Behzat. It’s due tomorrow. My father has offered. It’s simple.” And his own, choked with a principle that felt, even to him, like a kind of absolute misery: “We are not taking a loan from your father. Never did in the past, not now, and not in the future… The bank will call about the credit application next week. Can we not just wait?” But waiting, to Esra, was a luxury she could not afford. The child must be paid for. She grinned as if she knew a lot more than Behzat did, the past transactions, hidden accounts…

Dark? Yes, Esra's eyes were even darker when she fiercely fought. This is why he did not leave the equally dark gym. He needed a distraction, something to keep his mind occupied. He had the ball, a familiar orange planet in his hands, like a wobbly jellyfish filling his sweaty palms. A high, triangle-shaped window and the full moon provided the only light, a weak, ecclesiastical silver that pooled on the hardwood floor, making of the court a ghost of a court, the free-throw line a faint chalky smudge, the backboard a darker slab of darkness. The hoop was an invisible idea, a circular absence he had to believe in, a Platonic rationalism. If not the perfect circle, this was the resemblance of that idealized circle, the one that lives in the world of ideas, same as the way he was the resemblance of a perfect marriage, a perfect husband, a perfect father… Until tonight.

The first shot was a betrayal. It left his fingers with the memory of a thousand practiced motions, but sailed wide, a clumsy satellite missing its orbit entirely, thudding dully against the padded wall. The sound was obscene in the quiet. And the miss conjured another failure: their wedding day. A borrowed car from her brother, a sleek, mocking thing that smelled of someone else’s cigars. A petty, hot argument over a scratch on the door, a scratch that was there before, or was it? The memory was a poorly developed photograph. He saw the guests later, leaving the dance hall, like the red lanterns carried away into the summer night, winking out one by one like dying stars, leaving him and Esra alone in a sudden, terrifying expanse of matrimony.

He retrieved the ball. The second shot was a thought made leather. As he released it, the image came unbidden: his uncle’s grave. A plain, grey stone in a town he had not visited in fifteen years. He had sent money to his grandfather for it, a guilt-offering mailed in a plain envelope. The uncle had lived alone, died alone, a man of extremist political affiliations whom the family discussed in hushed, dismissive tones. Behzat had wanted to visit him, once, but the pressure of their collective judgment—Why would you? He's troubled, Behzat. It's none of your business—had held him fast, an insect pinned in amber. The ball, this time, whispered against the rim. A tremor. A nearness. It did not go in, but the universe had acknowledged his aim.

The third shot was a ritual. He bounced the ball, once, twice, syncing its rhythm to the drum in his chest. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. In the dark, he felt acutely alive, a heartbeat propelling a sphere toward an unseen truth. He was describing an elephant in a dark room, each touch, each shot, a revelation of a part—a leg, a trunk, the curve of a tusk. He was getting closer. The ball left his hands. It struck the iron hook with a clean, metallic clang and sprang back to him, a perfect, obedient return. He caught it, a shock of pure relief coursing through him. Order.

The fourth shot was rage. It flew from him, worse than the first, a wild thing hurled into the darkness behind the backboard. “Damn it!” The curse exploded in the sacred silence. “All because of her. Why couldn’t she wait? A week. Just a week.” The shame was a hot flush. Borrowing from the wife's father! It was an ancient, humiliating transaction, a subtraction of his own stature. He was the provider who could not provide, the mathematician whose sums never added up to security.

He slowly walked to the errant planet. He began to bounce it again, a steady, penitent rhythm. And then, a deepening. A cloud, a soft, black felt, slid over the moon. The silver pool vanished. The world was extinguished. He was standing at the free-throw line in a pitch-black universe, holding a ball, aiming at nothing. He stared into the abyss where the hoop had to be, where the laws of physics insisted it still was. He saw nothing.

In that nothingness, his daughter’s face appeared. Not as she was now, but younger, confused over a simple equation, her brow furrowed not in concentration but in a kind of sorrow or shame. She doesn’t enjoy math. Why? What did I do wrong? And an answer, not his own, echoed in the vault of his skull: Nothing. Your child is not your child. You borrowed her from the future.” The words hung there. He did not question them. In the absolute dark, all statements were truths. He raised the ball, a gesture of faith. He did not aim; he simply released it toward the void, a surrender. It left his hands.

And then, a sound. A sound so soft, so perfect, it was almost not a sound at all but the ghost of one: a swift, clean swish. The net, sucking the ball through its hoop. A hole in the universe is accepting its offering. He stood frozen. Had he? It was impossible to know. The darkness revealed nothing. It could have been a trick of the air, an auditory hallucination born of desire. There was no proof. There would never be proof. He remembered his math classes where he was the master of truth. “Every theorem we mention in this class must be proven or must not be used at all…” A slow smile touched his lips in the blackness. “The wisdom of uncertainty,” he told the empty gym.

He waited. The cloud passed. The moon, that bright, nonchalant ball, returned. He found the ball and continued playing. "If darkness was the problem, inside the ball was even darker, so what?..." he whispered to himself, as if he needed to be convinced. For an hour or so, he played. Until the darkness ceased to be an opponent and became his only friend. Until his muscles ached with an honest fatigue. Until he realized that the basketball didn't have any intention of saving his marriage!  Until he missed Esra with a sharp, almost metaphysical yearning. Until he was profoundly, simply, crazily thirsty. Then he went home.

The Coats

The gate of the Sheldon Cooper High School was not made of iron, but a kind of sentient boundary. For Naci Zara, crossing its bleached-white gravel threshold each morning at 7:28 a.m. was a ritual of meticulous divestment. He did not simply walk through it; he was processed by it, a slow and deliberate shedding of selves, like a man carefully hanging his many coats on a series of invisible hooks in the air.

He left home as Naci, husband to Emel, father to a seven-year-old girl with sticky fingers, sparkly beads around her wrist, and a laugh like sudden, loud thunder. He had kissed them both, had smelled the warm, buttery scent of toast on Emel's cheek, had felt the small, fierce weight of his daughter’s arms around his neck. This Naci, the man of the house, the man of a certain tender history, he left just there, at the gatepost. The ghost of his domestic self would wait patiently all day, a loyal dog, to be collected again at 4:45 p.m.

Parking his car under the usual banyan tree, a few steps onto the campus proper, on the asphalt path that cut through the militantly green lawn, he paused. Here, he shed his non-conformist political views. The carefully reasoned, quietly furious opinions he held on the morning’s news, the letters to the editor he composed in his mind during his commute—all of it was gently exhaled into the crisp air. The campus did not tolerate such messy, partisan colors. They bled into the perfect, abstract whiteness of the mathematical truth he was there to serve. They were variables for which this environment had no use. He felt them slip from his shoulders, a weightless, ideological cloak he would not need until he stepped back onto public pavement.

The main building swallowed him. The corridor was a long, polished throat of linoleum and lockers, smelling of lemon disinfectant and adolescent ennui. Here, walking with a measured pace that was neither hurried nor slow, he performed the most delicate operation. He unspooled his philosophical vexations. The dark, beautiful, and deeply controversial thoughts that visited him in the silent watches of the night—on the absurdity of consciousness, the elegant cruelty of natural selection, universe as a set of Markov chains, the godless, spinning rock they all clung to—these he carefully wound into a tight, invisible skein and placed on the window ledge near the fire extinguisher. They were too sharp, too potentially corrosive for the young minds he was approaching. A student might be cut on them. They were not part of the curriculum. His mind, now, was a clean, well-lit room, empty but for the furniture of instruction.

Finally, he reached the door to Room 217. On its pale green surface, a poster declared, “The only way to learn mathematics is to do mathematics!” He placed his hand on the cold metal handle. This was the final relinquishment. Here, he left his personal morality. His private convictions on friendship, loyalty, betrayal, love—the complex, often irrational algebra of human connection—had no place inside. He was not here to be a friend, a confessor, or a moral guide. He was here to demonstrate proof. To be fair was to be consistent. To be kind was to be clear. Emotion was an irrational number in the clean, rational equation of the classroom.

He opened the door.

The man who entered was not Naci. He was a mechanism of exquisite specificity.

He placed his worn leather satchel on the desk with a soft thud that silenced the room’s low hum. His eyes, pale and cool behind his spectacles, scanned the rows of faces. They were not children, not individuals with names and histories that might snag on his attention; they were a cohort, a set of thirty units awaiting data input.

“Open your homework to page 274,” he said, his voice a calibrated instrument, devoid of tremolo or vibrato. “Problem number twelve. A common point of error.”

The next ten minutes were a flawless execution of code. Homework check. Three students were queried. Their answers were parsed, their errors traced back to a single misapplied axiom, a faulty transposition. He did not chide. He identified the bug in the logic. He was a diagnostician. p implies q does not always guarantee q implies p. A common mistake done by the high schoolers. Right Jessica, we talked about this a few times in the last two months. A flicker of a smile, a pre-programmed social cue to indicate approbation without warmth.

Fifteen minutes for new material. He turned to the board. “Today, we ascend to a higher plane of abstraction. We leave the comfortable, familiar line of real numbers and enter the plane. We welcome the complex number.”

His chalk, a brittle white wand, began to dance. It defined the imaginary unit, *i*, the square root of -1. “A necessary fiction,” he stated, “a logical phantom that makes a larger, more beautiful system possible.” Ohh, life, a ghost from the window ledge in the corridor whispered in the deep recesses of his machinery, isn’t it more complex? Don’t we all require our fictions, our irrational bits, to become whole? Neither real numbers are truly real, nor the imaginary numbers can be imagined. Everything is misnamed, the swamp of political correctness sucks him into an oblivious terrain of mud... He stared at the ceiling, the mischievous thoughts were instantly quarantined and deleted. They were not in the lesson plan.

He wrote the general form: a + bi. “The real part,” he said, tapping a. “The imaginary part,” tapping bi. “Together, they form a complex whole. A coordinate. A point.” He plotted them, these strange hybrids, on the complex plane he drew with two swift, perfect lines. His voice was a calm, steady drone, explaining conjugation, addition, multiplication. He was a guide in a strange new country, pointing out the sights without ever betraying a sense of their wonder.

The final twenty-five minutes. Group work. This was a subroutine designed to foster collaboration, a directive from the administration. There were 19 students in the class, a classy prime number, ten plus nine or ten square minus nine square. He thought “either one group of 19 students or 19 groups of one student.” He almost grinned but restrained his urges, not in the plan, not in the plan. He partitioned the class into four groups of four and one group of three. He distributed a worksheet. “You will solve these. One member from each group will present a solution to a different problem.”

The classroom erupted into a low chatter. Mr. Zara did not sit. He paced the perimeter, a silent orbital satellite. He monitored progress. He listened for conceptual errors. His interventions were minimal, precise. “Check your sign in step three.” “Remember the multiplicative property.” He was processing their efforts, running a silent diagnostic on their understanding.

One by one, they came to the board. A boy with nervous hands solved the first problem. A girl with a determined set to her jaw conquered the second. Mr. Zara watched, his head tilted slightly. He was not assessing them; he was assessing the output. The solutions were either correct or incorrect. He offered a “Precisely” or a “Re-examine your distribution” with utter impartiality. There was no pride, no frustration, only validation or error-correction.

The bell rang, a sharp, electric shock that severed the room’s focus.

“The problems on page 281, numbers one through twenty-three, odd only,” he announced to the rustling of closing books and zipping bags. “Show all work.”

They flowed past him, a river of youth and noise and complication, spilling back into the world of friendships and politics and moral dilemmas. He stood by his desk, the empty shell of Mr. Zara, the lesson plan completed, the objectives met.

Then four more classes repeated the same way, he entered the room, delivered his plan and started breathing after each session.

When the last student of the last class had vanished, he turned and left the room. The process began in reverse. At the classroom door, he collected the waiting shard of his morality. In the corridor, he retrieved the spool of his dark, beautiful philosophy from the window ledge. On the asphalt path, he drew a deep breath and took up the mantle of his political convictions, feeling their familiar weight and texture. And finally, at the gate, he stepped back into the skin of Naci, husband and father. The ghost by the gatepost merged with him, infusing his limbs with a sudden, human fatigue and a faint, anticipatory warmth.

He walked to his car, a man once more, the intricate and often contradictory sum of all his parts. The complex number made whole again, if only until tomorrow.

THE HAPPIEST TEACHER ON EARTH

Every morning, he stopped under the banyan tree before the school gates and drew the cloak around him. It had no sheen, no swirling theatrics; from a distance, it looked like a drab raincoat—something a mischievous uncle might wear to a funeral. But once it was on, he vanished, as neat as a coin dropped into a magician’s fist. He walked the corridors this way, brushing past bulletin boards with their half-detached staples, the wilted posters promising spirit and teamwork. He floated down the stairs like a rumor. In the cafeteria, he slipped unnoticed between the clatter of trays, the smell of oil too long reheated, and the official smiles of administrators rehearsing the day’s slogans. Pilfering a few pieces of pastry under his cloak, he entered the lift and stood in the corner like a dried mushroom—shrunk, inconspicuous, not to be felt by anyone.

It was not fear that drove him under the cloak, but practicality. If they saw him, they would remember. The summonses would follow: the subcommittee on extracurriculars, the emergency task force on vertical alignment, and strategic roundtables with a mission but no vision. All so solemn, all so hollow. Minutes were taken and distributed as though they were scripture - no one reads them, but everyone knows they are important! Meetings for the sake of meetings, to solve the problems that did not exist before the meeting, to justify the big words “collaboration”, “cooperation”, “measurable”, “success” … He had sat through enough to know that the most urgent conclusions usually collapsed under the weight of their own vagueness. So, he chose absence, a small vanishing act, his one rebellion against the screws and bolts of the education factory.

At the classroom door, he shed the cloak and folded it into his bag. The students looked up, their chatter thinning into a hush that was alive, not dutiful. Here he was visible again, and happily so. He asked a question; hands rose, some like arrows, others half-afraid, half-hopeful. A wrong answer gave him the chance to discuss persistence. A halting attempt let him speak of kindness, which he always slipped in as though it were another principle of mathematics. They leaned toward him, not in reverence—thank God—but in the bright impatience of desiring to know more.

Time inside the classroom was its own animal: brisk, tender, fully alert. He could pause for silence, let it grow, watch them searching. An equation was solved, and suddenly the room tilted toward understanding, the way sunlight shifts across a desk in midafternoon. He almost laughed sometimes at the thought of explaining this to a committee —what box would they tick for joy? for the glimmer of a moral compass? The very notion of turning it into a “learning outcome” seemed like a private joke he shared with himself. Here, though, nothing was wasted. Not a question, not a mistake, not even the nervous laugh of a student caught unprepared. He saw in them the one kind of record worth keeping: the steady, imperfect progress of minds and hearts.

And then the day was done. He slipped the cloak back over his shoulders before stepping into the corridor again. Invisible once more, he moved past the lockers, the stairwell, the cafeteria with its after-lunch silence. Yet something in him glowed so brightly, so freely, that he felt almost visible — joy radiating through the seams of the fabric. He walked out of the gates quietly, the hidden man who had, for a few hours, been seen exactly as he wished.

----

Liang Pi Yiyememek

Yiyemediğim liang pi. Fotoğraf internetten. 

 Öğlene doğru çıktım evden. Amacım yürüyerek parkın altındaki küçük lokantaya gidip liang pi yemekti. Sıcakta yenilecek en güzel yemeklerden birisidir; hafif acı, soğuk, süngerimsi tofu parçaları zahmetsizce akıp gidiyor boğazdan, salatalık, maydanoz ve kırmızı lahanalar ekşiliği arttırıyor. Sıcak demedim, nem demedim, neredeyse 3 km yürüdüm. Hedefe ulaşmamla en son bir ay önce ziyaret ettiğim lokantanın çehre değiştirdiğini fark etmem bir oldu. Tüm menü değişmiş, deniz ürünleri çorbası satan sıradan bir mekâna dönüşmüş. İçeriye bile girmedim o hayal kırıklığıyla. Sola sapıp yol boyunca yemek satan ufak lokantalara baktım. Kolay değil tabii etsiz bir yemek bulmak. Nihayet baozı satan bir yer buldum. İki tane tofulu-lahanalı baozı aldım. Sabah kahvaltısı da yemediğim için acıkmıştım. Baozılardan birisini hemen oracıkta indirdim mideme. Parka doğru yürüyordum ki Liang pi’ye benzeyen bir resim gördüm bir dükkânın önünde. Sordum, değilmiş. İçinde et var mı dedim, yok dedi. Tamam bana bir tane ver dedim. Dükkânın önündeki sadece anaokulu çocuklarının rahatlıkla oturabileceği büyüklükte bir sandalyeye ve sehpaya kuruldum. Kadın yemeğin adını söyledi ama aklımda kalmadı. Gerçi benim için fark etmez. Ben liang pi niyetine yedim. 10 Yuan’dı fiyatı. Rengi kırmızı değildi, içinde lahana yoktu ama onun dışında pek farklı değildi. Bir de su içtim yanında. Diğer baozıyı da yedim bu arada. Artık karnım doymuştu. Parka gittim, Tanpınar’ın mektuplarını okumaya devam ettim. “Fransızca ağzımda ikinci kelimede şişiyor, büyüyor. Suat İsmail’in kocaman eli, heceleri ağzımın içinde buluyor, ayırıyor. Sarhoş olunca daha rahat konuşuyorum.” demiş üstat Fransa’dan Adalet Cimcoz’a yazdığı bir mektupta. “Dünyada iki hasretim vardı. Biri Paris, diğeri güzel kadın. Burada ikisini de kaybettim.” diye de eklemiş daha sonra bizim müzmin huzursuz muharrirciğimiz.  Bir ara uykum geldi, yaşlı bir çiftin ayıplayan bakışlarına aldırmadan uzandım, hafiften sızdım suyun yanı başında. Uyanınca eve dönmeye karar verdim. Zaten belim ağrıyor, daha beter olmayayım durduk yerde. Dönüş yolunda tatil sonrası yapılan basmakalıp diyaloglardan birisini kurguladım kafamın içinde:

-          Nasıldı tatilin?

-          Istırap içinde!

-          Nasıl yani, bir yerlere gitmedin mi?

-          Yok, Shenzhen’da kaldım. Evin civarında uzun yürüyüşler ve balkonda uzun okumalar dışında bir şey yapmadım. Bir de klimalı odada öğleden sonra uykuları var.

-          Eeee, ne güzel işte! Neden ıstırap içinde diyorsun?

-          Yazamadığım için. Yazamadığım her gün, o günün boşa harcandığına dair bir suçluluk duygusunu getiriyor beraberinde. Ve bu duygu başka tüm zevklerin, eğlencelerin tadını kaçırıyor. Kendisine tevdi edilen asıl görevi yerine getiremeyip başkalarına yardım ederek onların teveccühünü kazanan memurun hissedeceği türden bir duygu. Kazılması gereken tünel dururken sahilde kumdan kaleler yapmak.   

-          Anlamadım, hem tevdi ne demek Alla’şkına?

-          …

-          Ben Osaka’daydım üç geceliğine. Çok güzeldi. Bambaşka bir dünya, sen de gitmelisin.

-          … 

Miskin Tanpınar

 Yine o boşluk, Tanpınar’ın mektuplarını okuyorum bu aralar. Hep kendinden şikâyetçi, kendisini hep miskin, başarısız ve değersiz görüyor. Benim bir sanatçıda olmazsa olmaz dediğim suçluluk, eksiklik ve borçluluk duyguları. Bazen kitabı bir kenara bırakıp “Ne kadar da birbirimize benziyoruz?” diyorum. Sonra da “Hadi oradan sünepe, haddini bil!” diye çemkiriyorum kendime. Tanpınar sefaletin dibini yaşamış, acıyı yaşamış, büyük değişimleri görmüş geçirmiş, içinde yaşadığı toplumla birlikte büyümüş, utanmış, yolunu yitirmiş; bunları kelimelere dökmüş zamanı gelince, kitaplar yazmış. Değerleri çok sonraları anlaşılsa da yazmış, yayımlamış, güzel dostluklar kurmuş, az çok bir itibar edinmiş edebiyat dünyasında. “Yemek olacağım yerde sofrada kaşık filan gibi bir şey oldum” sitemini ediyor bir de Ahmet Kutsi’ye yazdığı mektupların birinde. Ben o sofranın kurulduğu odaya bile alınmadım. Keyfim yerinde, altım kuru, karnım tok... Satıhta kaldım desem abartmış olurum, yüzünü Avrupa’ya dönmüş bir millete Asya’dan bağırdım. Sesimi duyuramadım.

Tanpınar'ın Mektupları, Zeynep Kerman, s 39

                                             

A MANIFESTO FOR THE RUNNERS AND WRITERS OF THE 21ST CENTURY*

   

A Runner's Manifesto: On Writing and Running

1. On Freedom.
Break your chains and claim your freedom. To run, to write—these are acts of liberation. They are the joyous rebellion of loosening the bolts that fasten us to a rigid world. To begin, you must first leave your devices behind; those clever cages that wrap the consciousness in a spiderweb of connection. We shed them for two reasons: first, for the physical weight that hinders your motion, and second, for the mental noise that severs you from your own soul. When you run, when you write, you move not with the world, but against it—against your demons, against the watching eyes that await their approval.

2. On Preparation.
Come ready. Let your gear be a ritual: shorts, shoes, a light shirt, trusty socks, and a bottle of water. Prepare your body and honor your intention; if you plan to run beneath the evening sky, do not exhaust the day’s strength. The world is full of sirens calling you away from yourself, offering excuses draped in allure. But you know the truth: the cure lies in solitude. It is only in the rhythm of your own stride that you will remember the sublime truth: you are not a drop in the ocean, but the entire ocean, contained in a single drop.**

3. On the Goal.
When you arrive at the track or sit before the blank page, set your distance. Twenty laps. Five kilometers. One thousand words. Do not be haunted by time or speed—they are phantoms to the beginner. Your only task is to reach your mark without surrender. You may slow to a walk, you may quicken your pace, but you must not stop. You must keep moving, however slowly, until the goal is met. This is the covenant.

4. On Focus.
Guard your attention. Offer a brief greeting if you wish, but preserve the sanctity of your endeavor. Let your mind remain fixed on the motion, even as it wanders through distant memories, unsolved problems, or simple joys. This is a moving meditation.

5. On Rhythm.
If you run ten laps, walk two, and run eight more, you have run ten laps. You have still traveled twenty, but you have run ten. Running is the continuous thread, not the sum of fragments. The essence is to find your rhythm—that perfect, personal pace where breath and body are in harmony. You are the sole commander of your speed. If you are breathless, slow down. If you are too comfortable, fly faster. Sprinting for mere seconds only to stop is not running. True progress is slow, steady, and unbroken. Remember: great achievements, like writing a novel or running a marathon, are akin to digging a well with a needle. Persistence is the power.

6. On Why We Are Here.
This is the Creative Writing and Running Club because these twin arts demand the same virtues: self-discipline to begin, stamina to endure, and a focused mind to see the journey through. We are not here to craft only better runners, but to forge achievers—not quitters. Those who quit easily never glimpse the vista. This is training for the spirit. It does not promise you will always win, but it vows to teach you this: you will never again abandon a task before it is complete and done well.

7. On the Unity of Self.
We run not for the body alone, but for the mind. We reject the old lie that they are separate. The mind is the invisible part of the body; the body, the visible part of the mind. If you do not feel clearer after running, it may be that your creases are deep. Running is an iron—it can smooth the wrinkles of the day, but it cannot mend a tear in the soul. 

8. On Listening to Your Body.
You are a warrior, but not a martyr. If nausea, dizziness, or pain speaks, you must listen. Stop. Drink water. Rest. In our Shenzhen climate, dehydration and heat are serious foes. Honor your goal, but do not injure yourself in its pursuit. A moment of preparation—a glass of water, a visit to the restroom—is an act of wisdom.

9. On Respect and Solitude.
Run with respect for others. Hold your lane. Pass with grace and without disturbance. Do not push, nor pull, nor cut another’s path. Remember: this is a conversation between you and the universe. Do not let others occupy your mind, and do not occupy their lane.

10. On Victory.
When you are done, go home. Wash away the effort. Drink deeply. Rest. Be with those you love, in person, not through a screen. Push no further. Let sleep come early and deep. The next morning, you will awaken not just refreshed, but transformed. You will be happy. And why? Because on Friday, you reached your goal. That simple act places you among the rare 5% who do, rather than the multitude that only talks, complains, and dreams. You are a doer. A finisher. You have the heart of a lion, not the whisper of a mouse.

One day, when you are ready, you will run a marathon. You will feel the weight of a medal on your neck, and you will look back on these words. You will smile, with a touch of nostalgia, and you will understand.

Until that day, run on, write on. Be proud.

October 1st, 2024, Shenzhen

---

** A concept echoed by the 13th-century Sufi poet, Rumi, reminding us of the universe within.

* A little piece of writing to motivate my students (club members) and to ensure they will come to our Friday afternoon runs, they will run (not walk or stand still) and complete their goals. 

Kişisel Kütüphane

Pek sevgili yeğenlerim,

Malumunuz bu yılki doğum günlerinizde hepinize birer kitap hediye ettim. Büyük bir olasılıkla bundan sonraki doğum günlerinizde de kitap hediye edeceğim sizlere. Yazar ve öğretmen bir amcanız olduğu için bir nebze şanssız sayabilirsiniz kendinizi. Belki de şanslı olanlardansınızdır. Bunu zaman gösterecek, hem de çooook uzun bir zaman... Ayrıca, diğer ihtiyaçlarınızı zaten harçlıklarınızdan biriktirdiğiniz paralarla karşılıyorsunuzdur. Yani, iki-üç ay kullandıktan sonra sıkılıp bir tarafa koyacağınız ıvır zıvır şeyleri istediğiniz zaman alıyorsunuzdur. Ama kitaplar gelip geçici hevesler değildirler. Onlar hep vardırlar, dedelerden ve ninelerden kalma yadigâr hediyeler gibi her daim bizimle kalırlar. Bu yüzden kitaplardan oluşan bir hisarın yegane muhafızı olmanız yolunda şimdiden atacağınız küçük adımlar istikbalinizin ışıltılı yolunda ciddi ve sağlam bir yatırım olacaktır. Nihayetinde hepiniz -en küçüğünüz 15 yaşında- kendi kütüphanenizi kurma yaşına erdiniz. Uzun ve çetrefilli bir yolculuğun ilk adımlarını atıyorsunuz, belki de ilk birkaç adımı çoktan attınız bile. O meşhur toz ve gaz bulutu küreye benzer bir şekle büründü ama her an, bilinmeyen bir kaynaktan beslenen meşum bir rüzgârın etkisiyle bambaşka şekillere dönüşebilir. Dikkatli, özverili ve titiz olmak lazım. Çünkü hâlâ yolun başındasınız; heyecanlı, hırslı ve meraklısınız. Bu heyecan, hırs ve merak ömür boyu en büyük yarenleriniz olacaktır. Bu yüzden ben onları zaten cepte hazır sayıyorum. Gelelim kendine ait bir kütüphanenin bizim için ne anlama geldiğine.

Kendinize ait birkaç rafınız olsun demek istiyorum, bu raflarda sadece sizin dokunabileceğiniz ya da sizin izninizle hayatınızdaki özel insanların dokunabileceği her birinin hususi bir hikâyesi olan kitaplarınız olsun. Bir insanın kendi kütüphanesi onun kişisel gelişiminde, toplumun içinde kendisine bir yer açmasında ve uçsuz bucaksız dünya sahnesinde varoluşunu kanıtlamasında önemli bir rol oynar. Size ait bir kaç raf deyip geçmemek lazım, orada sizi siz yapan eserlere yer verirsiniz sadece. Hani bir laf vardır, bana arkadaşını söyle sana kim olduğunu söyleyeyim. Bu lafın bir muadili kişisel kütüphaneler için de söylenebilir. Bana kütüphaneni göster, sana kim olduğunu söyleyeyim. Okuduğunuz ve dokunulmaz hale getirdiğiniz bu eserler sizin karakteriniz, kişiliğiniz ve duygusal zekânız hakkında pek çok önemli bilgiyi saklar yıpranmış sayfalarında. Onları büyük bir iştahla yine ve yeniden okursunuz, daha önce okuyup da farklı paradigmaların yardımıyla anladığınız yerleri şimdi bir de yeni edindiğiniz deneyimlerin ışığıyla değerlendirirsiniz. Yepyeni ışıklar yanar zihninizin puslu karanlığında. Öyle ki bu kitaplar defalarca okunmalarına rağmen her seferinde ilk defa okunuyormuş duygusu hissettirir okumanın müptelası olmuş insanlara. Bu yüzden kişisel kütüphanenizin ayrılmaz bir parçası haline gelirler. Bir arkadaşınız, çok ısrar edip de bu kitaplardan birisini ödünç aldığında dişiniz çekilmiş gibi bir ağrı saplanır teninize. İkide bir gözünüz kitaplıktaki o boşluğa takılır, tıpkı dilin istemsizce çekilen dişten kalan boşluğa girmesi gibi. Saplanır kalır o kaygan kuytuluğa, kitap geriye gelene kadar da huzur vermez size bu eksiklik duygusu. Uzun yolculuklara çıkarken, sırf yeni bir kitabın riskini almamak için, daha önce defalarca okumuş olsanız bile, bu raflardan bir kitap seçip çantanıza atarsınız. Artık yalnız değilsinizdir, tanıdığınız, iyi bildiğiniz, sevdiğiniz bir dostunuz vardır yanınızdaki koltukta.

Ben öyle yaparım. Karasu’nun “Göçmüş Kediler Bahçesi”si, Tanpınar’ın “Huzur”u, Nabokov’un “Konuş, Bellek”i, Tolstoy’un “Anna Karenina”sı, Durrell’ın “Justine”i, Bowles’ın “Sheltering Sky”ı, Alice Munro’nun “Bazı Kadınlar”ı, Sait Faik’in “Semaver”i, Montaigne’in “Denemeler”i ve benzeri eserler benim kitaplığımın demirbaşlarıdır. Uzun bir seyahate çıkarken çantama bunlardan birisini atarım, kadim bir dost ile eski(meyen) anılara dalmak gibidir bu kitapları mükerreren okumak benim için. Her bir karakterin, her bir olayın, her bir cümlenin hayatımda unutulmayan bir yeri vardır. Bu kitapları kimseye ödünç vermem, arada elime alır sayfalarını çevirir, orta bir yerden okumaya başlarım. Bir çeşit ilham kaynağıdır bu sayfalar aynı zamanda. Unutulayazan düşünceleri ve duyguları, tırpanın samanları havaya savurması gibi ortaya çıkarır, tembel bilincimi o hayati konularda tekrar düşünmeye zorlar ya da taze yaşanmış deneyimlerin ışığında yeni yorumlara yelken açmama vesile olur. Bu yüzden ayrı bir öneme sahiptir kendinize ait bir kütüphaneyi şimdiden inşa etmeye başlamanız. Ben yılda bir kitap hediye ederim size ama siz benim verdiklerimin çağrıştırdıklarıyla yolunuza devam edersiniz. Aynı yazarın başka bir kitabını ya da o kitapta adı geçen bir kitabı satın alır ve sadece size ait olacak bir okuma serüvenini başlatırsınız. Zincirleme bir reaksiyon gibidir bu. Bir kitap ancak başka kitapları okumanıza vesile oluyorsa yararlı olmuştur. Münbit bir toprak parçası gibi sürekli üretmeli, çarkları durmaksızın çalıştırmalı, kendisinden sonra gelecek olanlara yol açmalıdır. Dolayısıyla, kişisel kütüphanenizi kurarken bu ilkeyi aklınızdan çıkarmayın. İlginizi çeken kitapları alıp okuyun, kalenizin surlarına yeni taşlar ekleyin ve duvarları yükseltin. Mutlaka içlerinden beğenmedikleriniz de çıkacaktır. Olsun, doğal ve doğru olan da budur. 

İyi okur seçici okurdur, bu seçicilik doğuştan değil, yıllar süren bir tecrübenin sonucu olarak gelişir, rafine olur, billurlaşır. Bir çeşit mikro-evrimle elenenler elenir, üstte kalanlarla yolunuza devam edersiniz. Yavaş yavaş ne tür metinleri beğendiğinizi, ne tür metinleri okumakta zorlandığınızı ya da okumaktan haz almadığınızı anlayacaksınızdır. Bazı konularda kendinizi geliştirecek, bazı konularda da geliştirmek istemediğiniz için güdük kalacaksınız. Nihayetinde, on yıllar sürecek bir serüvenden bahsediyorum. Okul bitince bir kenara atılacak bir hobiden değil, hayat boyu zihninizi ve yüreğinizi diri tutacak bir alışkanlıktan, sizi içinde yaşadığınız toplumda sıradışı yapacak, etrafınızdakilerden yüzlerce adım ileride tutacak bir özellikten, bir zihin açıklığından, bir olgunluk göstergesinden... İşte tam olarak da bu yüzden kendi kütüphanenizi inşa etmeniz ve ona sadık kalmanız hayati bir önem arz etmektedir. Okuyan, okuduğunu anlayan ve eleştiren, okuduklarından yola çıkarak içinde yaşadığı evreni ve toplumu her saniye zihninde yeniden inşa eden, anlamlandıran ve yorumlayan bir dimağ olmak 21. yüzyılda başarılı olmak için en gerekli teçhizattan birisi olacaktır. Nitelikli metinleri okuyamayanlar harc-ı alem olmuş basitliklerin peşinden gitmeye ve hayatları boyunca sürünün pasif bir üyesi olarak yaşamaya mahkûmdurlar. Bu nedenle de nitelikli edebiyatın en temel unusurunu tanımak, kavramak ve hayat boyu seçtiğimiz kitaplara bu kriterleri uygulamamız olmazsa olmaz bir koşuldur.

İster Latin Edebiyatı’nın büyücü gerçekçiliğine hayran kalın, ister Kuzey Avrupa’nın soğuk ve acımasız korku hikâyelerine... İyi edebiyatın ilkeleri az çok aynıdır, binlerce yıldır değişmemiştir. Güncel olayların kısır döngüsüne odaklanmaz nitelikli metinler, basmakalıp cümlelerden uzak durur, kelimeleri dikkatli kullanır ve en doğru yerde en uygun boşluğa yerleştirir, tirübünlere değil de geleceğe, yani sonsuzluğa hitap eder, insanın makus kaderini -zaaflarını, faniliğini, cehaletini, iradesizliğini...- deştikçe deşer. Bugün üzerinden yüzyıllar geçmesine rağmen neden Baki’yi, Shakespeare’i, Cervantes’i, Montaigne’i hâlâ okuyoruz? Çünkü bu yazarlar insanın değişmeyen yanlarına odaklanmışlardır. Hırsına, hevesine, acısına, kibrine, sevincine, huzuruna, korkusuna tutmuşlardır merceklerinin odak noktasını. Ve insan yüzyıllardır, hatta bin yıllardır aynı değişmeyen hataların ve sevapların bir ürünü olarak, tıpkı binlerce yıl önce yazılmış olan Gılgameş Destanı’nda ya da İlyada’da olduğu gibi bitmeyen hedeflerin ve arzuların kurbanı olmaktan kurtaramamıştır kendisini. Üzerimizdeki elbiseleri değiştiririz ama içimizde doğup batan kızgın güneşi asla değiştiremeyiz. O güneş bizim özümüzdür ve yeryüzünde yaşamış ve yaşayan tüm insanları çelik zincirlerle birbirine bağlar. Bu yüzden, eğer iyi bir okur olma yolunda taviz vermezseniz, nitelikli edebiyat bir süre sonra sizin raflarınızı bulacak ve sizi kış geceleri sıcak tutan kalın yorganlarınız gibi sarıp sarmalayacaktır. Bunu unutmayın, kendinize kurduğunuz o minik krallıkta güzel, doğru ve hakikat yıldızları, yani sanatın değişmeyen üç ilkesi her daim parlayacaktır.

Edebiyat yolunda bahtınız açık, gönlünüz zengin, zihniniz hep aç olsun... Unutmayın, nitelikli edebiyat okunmaz, sadece ve sadece “tekrar okunur”. Ve yine unutmayın iyi bir okurun en temel göstergesi okurken yanında bir sözlük bulundurmasıdır.

Kişisel kütüphaneniz şimdiden hayırlı uğurlu olsun. 

Amcanız Ali Rıza Arıcan – 4 Ağustos 2024 – Maltepe, İstanbul 

 

Haşiye: Bu mektubu da en az iki kere okuyun. İlk okumada kaçırdığınız yerler mutlaka olmuştur...