altogether new. It was in this condition that I left the hospital and the sleepy nurse.
I arrived at the New Light Hotel just as the summons to morning prayer was being called, and I asked the night clerk for the best room in the house. I masturbated looking at an old Hürriyet I found in a dusty closet in the room. It was a color print supplement of the Sunday edition in which the proprietress of a NiÅantaÅı restaurant in Istanbul had exposed parts of her anatomy for the camera, as well as both her neutered cats and all the furniture she had ordered from Milan. I fell asleep.
The town called Åirinyer where I stayed almost sixty hours, thirty-three of which were spent sleeping at the New Light Hotel, was as charming a place as its given name. 1. The barbershop: on the counter sits a stick of OP brand shaving soap in an aluminum wrap. 2. Youth Reading Room: they shuffle kings of hearts and spades made of paper pulp, watching the Atatürk statue on the square where distracted old men hang out, watching the passing tractors and my slightly limping person, as well as the TV, which runs constantly, keeping an eye out for women, soccer players, murders, soaps, and kissing scenes. 3. At the tobacconistâs with the Marlboro sign: besides cigarettes, it has old cassettes of karate and soft porno films, National Lottery and Sport Toto tickets, pulp novels, rat poison, and a calendar on the wall with a smiling beauty who reminds me of my Janan. 4. The restaurant: beans, meatballs; edible. 5. Post Office: I phone home. Mother cannot comprehend, cries. Åirinyer Coffeehouse: I sat down and once more began reading with pleasure the short news item in Hürriyet that I had been carrying on me about the happy traffic accident ( TWELVE DEAD !) which I had by now memorized, when a man in his mid-thirties or early forties who seemed to be a cross between a hired killer and an undercover cop approached me from behind like a shadow; and having read for me the brand name of the watch he pulled out of his pocket (Zenith), he versified:
If wine excuses love in a mad poem,
Does not death fit the same theorem?
Drunk on the wine of hazard
You are thirsty like a buzzard.
He did not wait for my response but went out of the café, leaving behind him a dense smell of OP brand shaving soap.
On my walks that always took me impatiently to the bus depot, I wondered why every nice little town must have its own merry little madman. Our friend with the penchant for wine and rhyme was present in neither of the two taverns in town where I had begun to feel the aforementioned intoxicating thirst as deeply as my thoughts of love for you, Janan. Somnolent drivers, fatigued buses, unshaven cabin attendants! Take me to that unknown realm where I want to go! Take me to deathâs door, unconscious and my forehead bleeding, so I may become someone else! That was my state of mind when I left the town called Åirinyer on the long back row of a dilapidated Maigrus bus, with a couple of stitches on my body and a dead manâs fat wallet in my pocket.
Night! A long, very long and windy night. Dark villages and even darker sheepfolds, immortal trees, sorry service stations, empty restaurants, silent mountains, and anxious rabbits went past the dark mirror of my window. At times I would study a distant light flickering beneath the stars, and contemplating the sort of life I imagined being led moment to moment under that light, I would find a place in it for Janan and myself; and when the bus sped away from the flickering light, I wished I were under that roof instead of sitting in my uncontrollably vibrating seat. My eyes would sometimes regard the passengers on buses that we encountered at service stations, rest stops, crossroads where trees respectfully wait on each other, or on narrow bridges, and I would imagine that I saw Janan sitting among them; and totally taken over by my imagination, I would fantasize catching up with the other
I arrived at the New Light Hotel just as the summons to morning prayer was being called, and I asked the night clerk for the best room in the house. I masturbated looking at an old Hürriyet I found in a dusty closet in the room. It was a color print supplement of the Sunday edition in which the proprietress of a NiÅantaÅı restaurant in Istanbul had exposed parts of her anatomy for the camera, as well as both her neutered cats and all the furniture she had ordered from Milan. I fell asleep.
The town called Åirinyer where I stayed almost sixty hours, thirty-three of which were spent sleeping at the New Light Hotel, was as charming a place as its given name. 1. The barbershop: on the counter sits a stick of OP brand shaving soap in an aluminum wrap. 2. Youth Reading Room: they shuffle kings of hearts and spades made of paper pulp, watching the Atatürk statue on the square where distracted old men hang out, watching the passing tractors and my slightly limping person, as well as the TV, which runs constantly, keeping an eye out for women, soccer players, murders, soaps, and kissing scenes. 3. At the tobacconistâs with the Marlboro sign: besides cigarettes, it has old cassettes of karate and soft porno films, National Lottery and Sport Toto tickets, pulp novels, rat poison, and a calendar on the wall with a smiling beauty who reminds me of my Janan. 4. The restaurant: beans, meatballs; edible. 5. Post Office: I phone home. Mother cannot comprehend, cries. Åirinyer Coffeehouse: I sat down and once more began reading with pleasure the short news item in Hürriyet that I had been carrying on me about the happy traffic accident ( TWELVE DEAD !) which I had by now memorized, when a man in his mid-thirties or early forties who seemed to be a cross between a hired killer and an undercover cop approached me from behind like a shadow; and having read for me the brand name of the watch he pulled out of his pocket (Zenith), he versified:
If wine excuses love in a mad poem,
Does not death fit the same theorem?
Drunk on the wine of hazard
You are thirsty like a buzzard.
He did not wait for my response but went out of the café, leaving behind him a dense smell of OP brand shaving soap.
On my walks that always took me impatiently to the bus depot, I wondered why every nice little town must have its own merry little madman. Our friend with the penchant for wine and rhyme was present in neither of the two taverns in town where I had begun to feel the aforementioned intoxicating thirst as deeply as my thoughts of love for you, Janan. Somnolent drivers, fatigued buses, unshaven cabin attendants! Take me to that unknown realm where I want to go! Take me to deathâs door, unconscious and my forehead bleeding, so I may become someone else! That was my state of mind when I left the town called Åirinyer on the long back row of a dilapidated Maigrus bus, with a couple of stitches on my body and a dead manâs fat wallet in my pocket.
Night! A long, very long and windy night. Dark villages and even darker sheepfolds, immortal trees, sorry service stations, empty restaurants, silent mountains, and anxious rabbits went past the dark mirror of my window. At times I would study a distant light flickering beneath the stars, and contemplating the sort of life I imagined being led moment to moment under that light, I would find a place in it for Janan and myself; and when the bus sped away from the flickering light, I wished I were under that roof instead of sitting in my uncontrollably vibrating seat. My eyes would sometimes regard the passengers on buses that we encountered at service stations, rest stops, crossroads where trees respectfully wait on each other, or on narrow bridges, and I would imagine that I saw Janan sitting among them; and totally taken over by my imagination, I would fantasize catching up with the other
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