Melih’s Story
Cengiz continued:
It was two years ago. I was bogged down on one of the worst days of my betting habit – or gambling addiction, to put it more accurately – and facing the risk of being dismissed from my job. I got a call from Melih. We were pretty familiar with each other and occasionally met at some old school friends’ events, meals or the like. He had also visited me in my office a few times before. We weren’t close friends, of course, like you and me, but got along. He invited me to a café.
It was a beautiful spring day, but I was so depressed that beautiful days gave me the extra pain of feeling that I was missing something outside. I just thought that everybody except me was so happy and living their lives in the best manner they could. Melih invited me to a cafeteria in the Çukurambar district. It was a café for snobby children of influential people and I always envy those who patronize these places. As I entered the café, I saw he was sitting on the terrace. Although the sun was struggling to break through the clouds after a cold winter, there were not many people on the terrace. Only a few tables were occupied.
Melih was wearing a smart suit over a flower-patterned shirt. He was semi-bald and resembled a middle-aged Italian male model – apart from his slightly protruding ears. Anyway, by no means did he look like a typical Turkish civil servant, and I felt overwhelmed by his appearance in my unironed clothes. He acted so sincerely… asking questions about my job, my family and my daily life… At one point, he paused and stopped talking. We were both drinking tea. He finished up his own and ordered another glass from the waiter and emphasized that the next one should be darker. He held his car key in one hand, occasionally hitting the table with it. After pulling a package of cigarettes from his pocket, he asked me if I wanted one.
“No, I don’t smoke,” I replied.
“That’s good!” he said after inhaling a deep breath of smoke. “You know it’s a bad habit, you’re lucky not to have such an addiction,” he continued, looking me directly in the eyes. I could see his slyly smiling face through the cigarette smoke. “Can you make a living on your salary? I know in the first years in your department, the pay is not good. Right?”
“Well,” I said, “it suffices for an unmarried man like me.”
“Really! Come on Cengiz! An unmarried man needs more money than a married one.” While saying this, he was staring at a table ahead of us. Two ladies were sitting there and they were obviously attractive. “A spouse needs less money than a girlfriend,” he added with a smile.
His dark tea was served. He removed the spoon from the glass, took a sip of the tea and returned to the subject of our high school years.
“We both studied at a primitive high school. Okay, friendship was nice. But, the premises were so old and useless, weren’t they? I still remember the cold winter morning when we were studying under blankets. There was nothing around. The city was kilometers away and you needed to go to the nearest village by bus. Why did they build a high school in such a challenging place? What craziness! It looked like an orthodox monastery. Why put classes of pupils in there? I would definitely not send my future kid to a place like that. Maybe our parents just kicked our asses to that hell. Shall I tell you a story of mine, do you have a minute?” he asked.
I checked the hour on my phone and said, “Sure, I’ll be happy to listen.” I was wondering about the point he wished to come to at the end as well as the purpose of the meeting on the terrace.
(…to be continued…)
Transadaptation Volume 4 – Material Dissent
January: A Blinding Light and Then, All Darkness – Jonay Quintero Hernández (Spain)
February: The Opportunist – Lauren Voaden (United Kingdom)
March: A Stranger in my City – Alejandra Baccino (Uruguay)
April: A South African Soundtrack – Sarah-Leah Pimentel (South Africa)
May: Full Circle – Ina Maria Vogel (Germany)
June: La Lluvia en Bogotá – Adriana Uribe (Columbia)
July: Freedom – Krisztina Janosi (Hungary)
August: A Bus Ride – Svetlana Molchanova (Russia)
September: Transcendence – Armine Asryan (Nane Sevunts) (Armenia)
October: Motherhood – Marilin Guerrero Casas (Cuba)
November: Nine Days – Gennady Bondarenko (Ukraine)
December: Open – Seyit Ali Dastan (Turkey)
Background – Context
Transadaptation Volume 3: Evanescent – Young Adulthood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2022)
Transadaptation Volume 2: Conceived – Childhood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2021)
Transadaptation Volume 1: In the Middle – Prelude to a Contemporary Transadaptation, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2020)
Peripatetic Alterity: A Philosophical Treatise on the Spectrum of Being – Romantics and Pragmatists by Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)
La Syncrétion of Polarization and Extremes Transposée, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)
The Codex of Uncertainty Transposed, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2018)
L’anthologie of Global Instability Transpuesta, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2017)
From Wahnsinnig to the Loony Bin: German and Russian Stories Transposed to Modern-day America, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2013)
Emblems and stories on the international community
Perception by country – Transposing emblems, articles, short stories and reports from around the world
Credits
1. Left column (top to bottom): Ankara, Turkey – Kizilay – Ozges Temur (Shutterstock), Ankara, Turkey – The historical quarter – Sun_Shine (Shutterstock), 2. Middle column (top to bottom): Ankara, Turkey – From the 50th Year Park – Çağlar Oskay (Unsplash), Ankara, Turkey – Art meets architecture – Merve Selcuk Simsek (unsplash), Ankara, Turkey – Kizilaz neighborhood – Fabrizio (Shutterstock), 3. Right column (top to bottom): Ankara, Turkey – Kizilay square – Fatir (Shutterstock), Ankara, Turkey – Hamamönü neighborhood – Fabrizio (Shutterstock)
Source: The Codex of Uncertainty Transposed