Remembering
Seyit Ali Dastan
“Did you forget the day you promised not to leave me?” she asked in tears.
“Me?” I replied abruptly. “Besides, I’m not leaving you. It’s you talking about divorce after each quarrel between us. I never wished it. It’s your choice. I’m just packing. If you come with me, you are very much welcome. Your ticket has already been bought. And you still have time to get ready for the trip.”
It was the day I had booked a flight to Toronto, Canada, and we were having another fight at our apartment in Istanbul. While I was hastily packing my clothes in the suitcase, she was sitting on the bed, her knees pulled up to her belly, wearing a black nightshirt. I was avoiding eye contact but still saw how swollen her eyes were from endless crying. She was yelling at me, accusing me of being the coldest person in the world, a selfish monster who did not care about her. I was trying not to answer her and just pretending to worry about my clothes. I knew my emotionless attitude was making her angrier. I did not intend to do so. But any emotional faltering on my part would give her courage to play on my sensual weakness, and I could be encaged one more time. And I knew, as I put my clothes in the suitcase without hesitation, she was becoming more and more surprised. To show my determination, I had printed out the flight tickets – for both of us – and put them on the bedside table.
Then I finished filling the suitcase and closed it. When I had fastened the zipper, she stopped crying, leaned forward on her arms, and asked in a soft and trembling tone of voice:
“Won’t you?”
I sighed and sat on the bed. Now there were three on it: my wife, my suitcase and me.
“Honey,” I said affectionately, “I’m not leaving you. You know it. That’s why I bought tickets for both of us. I planned everything. We will start a new life in Canada. I already found a job at a university. Believe me, that will be a new start for our relationship as well. It will refresh everything! Please, we have already discussed it a million times. Just trust me and come.”
After seeing my determination again, she shouted at an even higher pitch:
“I won’t, I won’t, I won’t!”
Then I stood up, watched my angry wife and gazed at the calm suitcase on the bed. I thought that I would never sleep on that bed again and took the suitcase, extended its handle, and started to pull it through the corridor to the apartment door. When I reached it, I thought that I had forgotten my passport.
“Do you know where my passport is?” I asked unemotionally and without showing any affection. I spoke without any term of endearment only when I was angry with her. She knew it and yelled from the bedroom:
“I’m not the guardian of your stuff!”
“No problem!” I replied and went back with the suitcase. I checked all the wardrobes and drawers one by one. It was not there. She looked at my baffled concern. Then she said:
“You, stupid! Did you check your pocket? You already put it in there.”
“Oh, I’m a bit mixed up. Just confused by the trip.” – I kept hiding my eyes from her and left the bedroom again.
I put my passport into my suitcase and started to pull it again. Its handle looked like a hand to me now. I was holding the hand of my suitcase. When I looked down the corridor, I could see the bedroom door half open. I wanted to see her again but did not want her to see me. Yet she was out of sight.
She called from the bedroom in a reasonable manner:
“Do you think you can go alone? By yourself? Remain whole throughout your entire trip? You look like a little boy in need of parental attention. I am sure when you are at the airport, you will forget or lose something at check-in.”
I leaned on the door and kept listening without responding. She was teasing me and threatening: “Anyway, when you spoil your journey or just ruin you plans or realize that Canada is not the perfect place to live, please do not dare to come back here, to my home. You know, from now on, this is my apartment.”
“Come on, I am 36 years old and I had a life before you. I survived pretty well.”
After a minute of silence, I continued:
“I am not sure everything will be fine in Canada. But it is worth trying. Compared to my life in Turkey, there is not much left to lose. Besides, it’s a good place to live. I got a good offer from the university. And if we go together…”
“We? You still say ‘we’? Stop making plans for us. There is no ‘we’ anymore. You and me. We will join the army of ‘former couples’.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
“Why? Is there any hope to reconcile?”
“Come on, there is discord in all marriages.”
“Don’t make me laugh. This is not discord; this is a fight!” Then she added emphatically: “Especially considering that you are leaving me…”
I stopped responding to her. She also stopped squabbling. Silence spread over the apartment. I can hear her occasionally sniffling. Then, for the first time, I thought about what would happen alone in Canada. I might miss her for a few months. I might imagine her with me at my new home. These imagined images of her may accompany me during this period: She may have dinner with me. We may go to McDonald’s and order the filet-fish menu together. She may wipe the table in the restaurant with a wet towel before we sit down. Then we may talk about our day and the people around us loudly in Turkish, confident that the other patrons do not know our language. But after a few months, her image would fade. She would occasionally come to my table, sleep with me, and have a chat with me. As the days go by, I would meet new people and no longer feel the pain of loneliness. Then she emails the cold divorce documents, asking me to sign and send them back. Would we really break up after all?
While I was thinking all these things, I heard her crying again. Then she suddenly yelled:
“You will find a French chick there! Who knows, you may have already arranged one?”
“I am not going to the French part,” I replied in the stupidest manner.
“Really, oh great. I’m fine now. Then you’ll find a chubby British slut! Go ahead!”
“I didn’t mean…”
“You didn’t …, what?” she shouted again. I could hear her murmuring, “Go to hell! I hope you freeze to death on a mountain over there, and nobody finds your poor body!”
She was always harsh and relentless when she got truly angry. I intervened to appease her again:
“Listen!” But it was a futile attempt as a bottle crashed on the wall just next to me and exploded. She had thrown the perfume bottle but missed. I could see her in the black nightgown, standing at the edge of the door to the bedroom. It was now like a horror movie scene as we are at the opposite ends of the corridor, and the mascara turned her cheeks black as well. I suddenly realized that it was the perfume I bought her last year from a duty-free shop at a discount price of €49. She had rarely used it. The almost full bottle of liquid had spilled over the corridor and onto my suitcase. An intense scent of flowers spread through the corridor in this horror-movie scene.
“You will injure your foot,” I said and started to pick up the broken pieces of the bottle.
“Stop pretending that you care about me. I am sure you are now calculating how much you spent on it and how much has been wasted.”
I did not reply and went to the kitchen to put the pieces in the bin. I got back to the door and held the handle of my suitcase again. It was now smelling like my wife who was still standing at the other end of the corridor.
Taking advantage of her excessive behavior, I opened the apartment door. As I opened the door, the automatic light in the building hallway went on abruptly. I pulled the suitcase outside the apartment and tried to find my shoes. When I found them and put them outside, she called to me in a trembling voice again:
“Will you really leave your country? Your beloved country? I know you love Turkey. I know you no longer love me, but you still love the motherland.” She stopped and then stressed: “Your homeland.” Her voice trembled even more: “Your nation…”
I sighed and waited for a moment, deliberately shifted my gaze away from her.
“Sila,” I said her name directly in a cool manner. “I no longer have a nation. I feel like I belong to the entire world, all of humanity.”
She laughed sarcastically:
“If only the world knew it. Wherever you go, you are a ‘Turk’. You can’t escape it. Everybody will call you the Turkish guy. What do you think you can do? change your race?”
“No. I’m fine being a Turk. This is not about that. I am just saying that I don’t have particular concern for Turkey and its people. Yes, I want the best for the Turkish people but just like I do for others as well.”
“Believe me, you will be at best a ‘foreigner’, if not humiliated for being a Barbarian.”
“That is why I’m going to Canada. It is not Europe divided by arrogant nations. And if we have a baby…”. I stopped and restarted my sentence: “If we were to have a baby – which we have not done for five years because the spirit has not moved you – then, she would have chance to grow up in a country whose flag is made of a leaf.”
That was the first time I had incited her in this dispute. I realized that she was finally managing to make me angry. But I did not want that. If it was really the last meeting between us, it should be less painful. So I pulled on my shoes and walked outside the apartment. Now I was in the building hallway. I pushed the elevator button, but I did not close the door to the apartment. She did not come to the door to say goodbye, to keep fighting with me, or to see me for the last time.
Suddenly, the light went off as the sensor did not perceive movement. I shifted to make the hallway light up again. I held the handle of my suitcase and watched the elevator rise, with the flashing numbers showing the floor: 1, 2, 3, 4, … It was like a reverse countdown coming to take me from this apartment and terminate my life here. While the elevator was coming, I thought about what she was doing right now. Was she still waiting at the end of the corridor like a movie character? Or had she moved to the bed and continued crying? I could not hear her due to the elevator’s whirring.
Finally, the elevator came. I didn’t open its door. I moved closer to the apartment to hear what she was doing. I heard sniffling, probably in the bedroom. I looked at the elevator. Suddenly the hall lights went off again, but the elevator’s light was still illuminating the landing. After a while, it also went out. Only some pale light from the apartment’s half-open door illuminated the area. Suddenly, the elevator moved again. Somebody had pushed for it. 8, 7, 6, 5… I moved to trigger the sensor again. Each time the sensor light went on and off, a thud echoed through the space. I waited for the guy who had called the elevator. When it was no longer occupied, I pushed the button again. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. It came to our apartment and stopped.
Then, I heard the afternoon call to prayer, the adhan, from the mosques. I thought about how I really liked the adhan sounds. I started to listen to it. The call was reaching me circuitously, not very clearly, because of where I was. I inadvertently moved closer to the apartment’s door again to listen. Why was I liking it? Was it due to my religious upbringing or just the nostalgia accompanying it? It just reminded me of the days when I skipped classes in middle school. I wandered around the streets of İzmir, my hometown, and mainly the Kemeralti Bazaar. I really liked getting lost in the winding alleys and narrow streets of the bazaar while passing through elegant and stylish shops. I can still feel the scents of seafood restaurants, spices, Turkish kahve and raw clothes. Then I remembered my favorite activity of buying a Maraş ice cream, which is very “Turkish,” relishing the chillness under the Mediterranean sun. I thought that Maraş was much better than Italian kind sold around the world. After finishing the ice cream, I went to drink water from the shadirvan of the Ottoman-era mosques spread around the bazaar. I would also enter the mosques, not necessarily to pray, but to rest, cool down, and enjoy the peace next to the massive columns. Then, I would go to the kordon, the seaside park between the city and the sea, where I watched the unrivaled blue of the Mediterranean. While I was thinking that the blue of no other sea in the world can produce the impact the Mediterranean does, the elevator moved again. Oh, what was I doing at that place? I had totally forgotten that I was actually waiting for the elevator to go down.
When the elevator went back to the ground floor, the adhan was over. The light went off again, so I shifted. The elevator was moving through floors, and I waited a little for it to stop. Anyway, I was not in a rush. My suitcase and I can wait and let the other people in the building finish their business. I crouched down to get a bit of rest. When I was in the army, our sergeant let us crouch after too many exercises. I started to think about my compulsory military service which I completed 8 years ago. We were marching in columns and repeating the words of our sergeant: “I SACRIFICE MY LIFE TO THE MOTHERLAND!” or “EVERY TURK IS BORN AS A SOLDIER.” We said these phrases thousands of times under the summer sun while stomping our boots. The idea was to synchronize the rhythm of our march and cries. If you were an army commander, this was meaningful because you see the troops as a single unit under your command. But if you didn’t believe in the usefulness of your mission, then it turned out to be torture. But, wasn’t our oath in primary school making the same statement, which ends with “LET MY EXISTENCE BE A GIFT TO TURKISH EXISTENCE.” Had I not been saying the same slogan every morning since I was 6 years old? Was it because of this fact that I was borne a soldier? Is that why I had wanted to become a local governor, which I saw as the best means to serve my country? I regretted how useless my idealism was. I wished to run a bookstore. I thought about the words of an old relative of mine, a retired teacher who served all over Turkey. When I passed the exams and became a local governor, I had the love and passion to serve my country and said “Don’t forget, Akın, the more you work for your country, the more you are betrayed. You will get more enemies and fewer friends. Your enemies shall be made of iron, but friends are flimsy. If you are powerful, you will see crowds behind you; but when you stumble, they will throw you under the bus in a minute. No benevolence is left without punishment. Do not love your country and serve it if you do not accept this fact in advance.” I challenged what he said and claimed that the Turkish nation is grateful and truehearted. “Listen”, he said, “It is not about being a Turk, it is about mankind’s fickle heart, which is the same throughout time and independent of geography.”
The light went off as my relative’s words rang in my ears. I walked in the hall to trigger it. The elevator was on the ground floor. I pushed the button again. The reverse countdown started: 1, 2, 3, 4 … and 8, our floor. The elevator was waiting for us, me and my suitcase. From now on, the apartment on the 8th floor of this old Istanbul building would no longer belong to me and my wife, just to her. I did not move for a while. Just waited a moment close to our apartment. Then, the light switched off again. I kept standing. Light sneaking through the front door and the elevator’s cabin light were disrupting the darkness. Then the cabin light went off. I got closer to the apartment. I was so slow that the building’s sensor did not perceive me. I tried to hear Sıla. But nothing was heard. I could only make out the white noise of the city. I extended my arm and tightly shut the door.
Now I was immersed in darkness on the landing. It was cool just like the mosques I visited in İzmir years ago. I caught a whiff of the moisture typical of all closed areas in Istanbul. I could still see the digital number of the elevator, which was “8,” in red lights. But its light did not suffice to illuminate the area. I felt a thrilling sense of detachment from the atmosphere I physically belong to. While I was ensconced in this feeling, our apartment door opened. My wife stood in the doorway. As she pulled the door, the hall’s light turned on with that thud, and eventually our eyes met. She said sadly and also in a maternal tone:
“How can you go? You’re afraid of darkness more than I am!”
I stopped for a while and could not take my eyes off her as before. I no longer had the emotional strength and replied:
“I remember the day I promised not to leave you. We were traveling by subway. It was late at night. Maybe the last one. We took the subway from the Taksim Square station to Levent. We were coming from the cinema, tired, and holding the same metal bar. I was hugging you, and you put your head on my chest. Then you asked me to promise not to leave you. I promised. Then you looked me directly in the eyes and said, ‘Do not leave me, even if one day I do bad things to you, I try to leave you, I threaten to leave you, or I just leave you’. I smiled and said, ‘I promise not to leave you even you jump from the Bosporus bridge!’ You, then, put yourself into my arms with a great sense of peace, such that it was transfused into my body.”
I walked away from her to the elevator and held its door so that nobody could call it again. I continued as the door of the elevator was half-open:
“You know what? Each cloth in this suitcase and every other piece in it has relevance for you. Well before anything else, we bought the suitcase as a set together. You have the smaller one. So, they preserve the link between us. I have left it with you. Feel free to give anything belonging to me to charity.”
When I entered the elevator and left my wife, she called after me:
“Your passport!”
I had put it on the bureau after finding it in my pocket before. As I had already pushed “0,” the elevator would go down if I left it. I kept the door open with one foot, taking the passport and muttering: “The travel fuss…” I raised it and said “Thanks.”
I got in. The elevator descended. I was looking at the numbers from inside now and thinking that she was also doing the same: watching the countdown: 8, 7, 6, 5…