SELIN'S LETTERS - Kürşat BAŞAR

SELIN'S LETTERS

ONE

I cry like a small child. I draw a long, black line on the paper decorated with hundreds of colorful lines. Here, it is me! A long, black line, and it should continue so, among those colorful lines, motionless or slightly flowing away, scattering, flying away through the space indifferently, so sad like a gray line - smoke of a cigarette blew in the air, in the stable air of the room, just rising, scattered then, compressed within a little moment of intuition and deformed, then acquired a new form and deformed again, smoke of a cigarette - nevertheless, a new breath would take it all away a moment later.

I read a few lines. Without stopping. I do not understand.

It snows.

As if you would never come.

I think of you. You were undressing behind a frosted glass, I saw your opaque nakedness / what a pity / I cannot reach you.

"He will never love you!" once said Elfe, "He is a homosexual in love with himself."

Levent died.

One morning as I woke up - when the autumn was shedding slowly, quietly - with the sudden shaking of a phone.

A long time has passed. Now here, in this room where one's all life is woven with small, fortuitous signs, I cry in the heavy, depressing silence of these signs, the moments and meanings I have laid on them. Istanbul is no more that old, lovely Istanbul, where sounds of azans, calmness of the wooden houses, choppy magic of the winter seas - that green, pale silhouettes - were reflected imperceptibly on a canvas with foggy colors. The moments that a seagull approaches the sea with trembling wings and strikes the sea with screams are shaded with ugliness now - with ugly people / the dream comes to an end.

A long time has passed. It was the last days of summer when you went. One night, when it was raining mildly, we have sat down and talked. When you were waking me in the morning, I was to hold your hand, if you did approach. Then we always talked about you: your hair were fallen over your face, you were wearing my nightie, a slim, delicate girl… Your hair was grown longer, fallen on your face, you sat with Levent, with Elfe. Levent died. I wrote it like a sentence said quickly. Then the shortness, shortage of the sentences appears suddenly. Then my touching with a blue pencil on this white paper makes me surprised, it is strange, we were together only a few months ago, and together we could search a mystery with the rain falling. Come, I want to say you something, do you hear me?

I still love you so much.

TWO

The silence grows up. All day, with the irresistible beauty of a picture, a melody, a poem, I am as lonely as a seabird cross with itself.

At a point a faraway shore bends softly, that could not be seen when alive,

As calm as an oboe

In a picture on a wall, day by day fading, growing old

- could not be seen when alive, could not be seen when alive -

Suddenly a piano begins; suddenly I am jarred with a cry. Your absence, your irresistible absence - between the last leaves of a book, in a dead flower -

'a dead flower,' I say.

Yesterday, when watching the seagulls rummaging through the garbage, I gave a cigaret to a dark faced small boy. That unfortunate, malicious gamin in those old elementary school books. Elementary school books, omercik movies. But some nights they were still going with some strapping men that they don't know, did you hear about it? Now, whenever they approach me with open hands, whenever I hear the voice of an old boza-seller at night, whenever I feel the hands of men stretching out as I get off a steamer, I shed inside the tears of a child. I want to give birth to a death / an irresistible thing / and I bring it up like a memory that I will never forget. I think about dying two persons, a white gravestone, and only my name on it (or does an unborn child has a name?) one day, a ballerina getting out of a box and dancing and then again getting in the box that somebody - not yet afraid of seeing death so closely, maybe a child - has put on the ground in a short, a moment's abstraction, and those lines / you know / written in a fine, blue ink on the first page of an old, dusty book which is to be bought years after from the second-hand booksellers:

- I love you so much, forget me not.

It's evening time. I drink tea. I'm bad.

Sometimes the evening comes with dizziness, trembling. I see unusual bursts of lights here and there. Everything loses its shape slowly. At night, when I get into the darkness alone - a continuity that never changes - I see faces that I don't know, even I can't be sure about even if I have ever saw them before or not, that I thought I have forgotten, faces seen in any day, at anywhere - walking out in the streets, that I draw pictures on the steamed up window of a car - and then the movements of these faces silently and as if behind a strange fog, and I sleep affected with incomprehensible associations that I don't know the name, place and time of any usually. Following a name, I remember another one's face sometimes, then I find a far, quite far connection between them. Thus, you and Levent mix in my mind. Sometimes I doubt about the presence of a third person. In a novel not written yet, in the diaries of a woman read later on, it is understood that she knew her death years before.

And among all my confused thoughts, again you appear in front of me; sometimes you kiss me at the door of a train, it hurts (cause, indeed, it is an irresistible thing - a train going away, far away always, with a darling in the windows), sometimes you knock on my room's window, with the same smile in your lips; sometimes when I sleep turning my back, I feel the bed shaken with hidden sobs. All these are slowly covered with a fog like that picture day by day fading, growing old on my wall. To forget you… I want to die before I forget you.

A little later I will have to eat something. Then I want to read book. Maybe this night would be long, I would play the flute for the first time.

THREE

Here, the day ends. Like a long dream, long and foggy.

With the sounds of the piano.

Outside, with a rain that could only be seen in some dark corners but heard all the time, with the sudden appearance of the voices with comprehension - lost long since - and the faces, and sad with the pain not being able to take them out of the fog, the day ends. I feel an incomprehensible shudder with the fall of the evening slowly, quietly like a black, sly dust. When I look towards the sea a little later, with a dreadful desperation I will understand that I am all alone now. And then in the sky getting dark, faraway, a fine, noble blueness will be seen, like another sky, I will see a seagull fell, you will not come. I newly understand that the hell is one's naked solitude. I turn on the lights. I turn on the music to the highest volume, meaninglessness of all creations suddenly, description of beauty and love

With instruments
With paints
With letters

However, I kill in my dreams, in a deep blue space without feeling any pain - alone - without thinking / but I will grow up this silence crying inside me - left from you - not aware of this painful stay.

FOUR

The day diminishes, with a fisherman faraway gathering his nets, with a seagull striking the sky turning red and became darker, and with the shadows got longer on the sands, with the gleams fading into the distance of the houses, the sea / the beauty of your nakedness behind a steamed up window, many years passed since destroying the sand castle. Now, whenever the sun - as I feel cold with a wind of the sea - falls on me with a small, secret glitter behind the clouds going forward, whenever I see children playing with the sand, whenever a telephone not replied rings somewhere, I feel an incurable pain. Then I let that small white drug of pains in my vessels, in the going on redness of life, and pour a hidden secretion in my brain - as if life were anything else than seeing a dream half-awaked - and then I understood the line that I have forgotten for years

An unexpected violin
The nights
The clear, white face of a girl - maybe a boy with long hair - just so staying and looking at me

Nakedness of a face, which I forgot for years / the sand castle, this is the first time death shows itself, in conscious and in the darks. Maybe these are the whispers of a mask behind a colorful window, behind the steams of a window. The views: views that are deformed, changed, renewed each second, lost, and went away.

In such times, everything gives me pain like that dreadful sleeps toward evenings ending in an unknown darkness, all realities are wiped away.

Say, I once again recognize flame of a candle, and a mask wrapped around a purple headdress, same with my face, whispering without stopping

Coffins
Candles - long yellow
Gravestones - white marble
Cold
Expositions of a mask

Then the music begins suddenly. A corridor is opened before me. Far, faraway I see a happy face. With a fine light that we saw (one morning through the opening of a curtain / a summer morning in the past) the dust flying hither and thither.

But at another time - speedily - with an incomprehensible speed coming toward me, getting older, a face, a clear, white face, and I run toward it cause it should not happen once more it should not I cannot bear it but it is as if the distance increases, everything turns into a ladder then - face of a small child - it gets older as approaches, she is a young girl now, the ladders end, I rise - is it a dream? - the young girl makes love with a man, no, it is not late yet - I approach her - she gets older and older and colors burst everywhere, the blues, the reds, flickering shapes, she gets rather old, the colors change again, a cloud.

(we had looked into ice green with the yellow blue flame of a candle)

then years pass by inside me somehow - like two green eyes -
(years ago one day toward evening)

I get a strange pleasure out of it and it is lost in the space.

Now only the scream of a woman.

Then everything turns into the troubled ending of an untimely sleep and I call out in that one second's unpeopled space.

"I no more want to be a God."

FIVE

I watch the withdrawal of the day, with the rain increasing, with a dirty seagull at the seaside, with the shudders of a dog, soaking wet, with that sounds of violin that we could never express. I pass through the rooms full with these sounds that help me not to be lost suddenly in the space, I draw pictures on the steamed up windows with tiny water drops, like a child confused with his fears - the rain falls severely. One day I had written a story with the rain. I no more write stories. I grow and grow up the hell inside me. But not with the fires not with the fires with the silences - with the pink blossoms of the ivies silence of a wall and merciless tick-tacks of a watch, tick-tack, so.

Only a little is left I say to myself. Only a little is left. For a moment, it is as if somebody I forgot inside me grows up. I am as if somebody never exhausted. One to born again as dies. Then the evening cools, suddenly cools. At night, when I wrap myself in my soft quilt, I feel compassion for myself - when I embrace to myself - then I really understand this endless punishment.

I ask to all my reflections: Who is it?
The evident reality of one?
I undress without stopping, and watch myself.
Or is it someone cursed itself?

Then everything appears with a new desperation. When I dress up, am I a new Selin? With a new desperation, a new person? And I understand a thing then a new thing: none of the mirrors do know me. They see themselves only when they look at me. Suddenly I remember the sentence Elfe said to me in a quiet voice, ashamed, and with a love never ended - I know now, I have spent all loves:

"He will never love you. He is a homosexual in love with himself!"

SIX

Here is the place hopes come to an end. You. Wish you were here, wish we would not remain silent, a new thing at moments everything comes to an end - I understand it now new is what one meets the first time - a new thing in that days the waves calm down and quiet in a summer sea / I want it so much…

Here a new summer: an uproar
A calmness
Maybe not: a long stemmed rose in the basket of a street seller
Maybe - pink bud -, opening its windows - a timid and sweet mansion
Maybe not: falling down of a child and make his naked, delicate knee bleed.
Sounds getting closer
Only these?
Maybe a cry - never heard such a summer image?
You.

You are not present any more, you are forgotten. Sometimes, when a little stone at the bottom of a wall shone with the sun, when I look at the picture I drew on the wall of my room, when I read hundreds of pages from a book not understanding anything - these are all the hesitations of eye - you are forgotten. You are that Martinican girl with short hair. Martinican girl from the island of volcanoes (separations). Without getting bored any time, I listen to her sad waiting in a jazz record. Then that false line of a sad poem:

"I'm well, well."

Besides don't forget: summer is a short, silent death. You taught it to me.

Here, the place death begins.

- what I saw in my inevitable encounter with a mirror was this.

SEVEN

'Now, the greatest of the mental pains is that for the ones lost, it is so great that it is alone greater than all other pains.'

Maybe, you really will not come. All these lies - that is you, cause you are dead, Levent was your name - maybe really come to an end. As for death, I suppose it is for a while hesitation, and then continuation of this loneliness - loneliness of one preordained to be one's own god. Love was a magic voyage, a voyage to be made only once, a voyage that has no return. And all the subsequent loves were nothing but the remembrance of this first excitement, a struggle to live it once more. Now I remember it indistinctly. All springs stay vivid with the remembrance of those days, and life is the sad sediment of that beautiful days…

I no more water the flowers, no more wind the clock, that big clock on the wall. One day I did not call out an old friend after a long time, we did not have anything to speak, there were not any yet, then this happened again, then again and again… I have written in my diary, "It is the first time that I saw a friendship end so quickly and unexpectedly. Life, for the first time frightens me."

I don't love you any more as well. You should have died with a meaningless death, and now you are being decayed somewhere, I can't love you any more, you are an ugly, cold corpse. Therefore, yesterday I took that old, African doll of my mother out of her untouched chest, then I hollowed her eyes, poured red paints in her eyeholes, and then I cried, cried. I closed down the curtains, the lights. I put that craziness of Davis, bitehes brew, in the record player, then I opened the volume to the maximum, and took the quilt out of the wardrobe, and made love with the doll - she was no more seeing me, no more looking at me with her expressive eyes - trumpet sounds till morning…

EIGHT

Many a long time have passed. As for me, I don't turn the sandglass any more, it is emptied, and ended. Now I am at the end of a long way. Where this magic voyage has ended, leaving many good times, leaving very nice people behind - I lost one at each hesitation, I did not know what was there at the end of the way, the thing that was important was to be together all the time, to walk together to the end, but they did not come / you did not come, we separated without saying a farewell - the way that I came finished. Now if I look behind again it is narrow, indistinct figures ones seen and then lost will appear. But I will not turn back, if I do, they will be lost.

I know Istanbul is a mournful city.

You too Istanbul, the mournful city, come to an end.

Here turns off the lights I never look at the night never it is as if the darkness increases more and more there are so many things so many things I remember the old good things the old old nice slight movements the heart resentments the rains the friendships the nights the times toward evening I can't tell so many things everything pass by quickly. Only sounds are left in my mind ringing. Sounds are fast like images I don't move any I don't dash fast I know they will be scattered if I touch it the last gift of god this last beautiful moment of my destiny will end. Everything occurred so, cause I am afraid now. Everything has come to an end but so fast all of a sudden when I did not expect it now I am glad. With the moving sound of a trumpet this time I catch the ending moment, I let myself to another magic voyage. As for the lights on one day in this room after all untimelinesses one day I wrote you this there on the table. But why for you are not present?

NINE

I will live eternally cause
I am the death.

FROM CEM'S DIARY

Now the days have turned to be dreams as well. The light is diminished now, it turns into a dim, misty, motionless brightness. There was one thing: A love, a pain, like the sale of a wall clock been loved once, something lost suddenly. What was it? Among a crowd, is it the going out, becoming meaningless of behaviors, a feeling of distress by a coincidence impossible to be known beforehand and been laughed at? Is it an emptiness appearing in an afternoon with closed curtains with a woman unknown when lust leaves its place to a feeling of being lost, the shock of a feeling of childhood being visible incompletely a later time like a short brightness, or the decrease of hope of a day in which we looking out from the windows, steeping tea, arranging everything in order, an order of beauty while waiting for somebody that ends with loneliness toward evening?

Something has diminished, something has died, the pencil has risen, the breath has waited, we could not hear the tick-tack of clock for a while. This is a dream. Within the indefiniteness, lost reality, it is an illusion followed continuously by the eye. Something occurs, the time hesitates, everything takes trembling, distrustful forms. But sensation is quite clear: This is the death, this is the end. If we were not so late, if we put some more woods in the embers of the fire dying down, if the stirring rising inside us could be free - what is the use of it now - if we turned our faces not inside ourselves but to each other, it would not be so. I listen to a madrigal - madrigals of an arrow stuck into a heart carved on to a tree, madrigals of a cloth doll with pins stuck into. I love one, I love you. -

Selin has said, "I loved somebody this summer, but he was not beside me." Nobody could have touched his love. Now we are far away from each other. Two old women have taken the garden chairs, covered the old table with a wax cloth. I saw what could not be seen. One of us extinguished the cigarette, the fire scattered by breaking, crushed with a crackle, one more song has ended; remains of food left in the plates, tea cups left here and there, cigarette butts accumulated in the ashtray; a feeling of diminishing, scattering covered everywhere, sound grew faint, nothing to say remained at the end of the night. (Why I could not kiss you at a new year's day?) but I saw what could not be seen. Death suddenly flared up and went out. Waved at the bottom like moss, stroke on my face like a slap, stayed on us like a smoke intensified.

Now pain grows up inside me, my breath is strained; I grow up. I am a small child but a terrible pain - pain of the one that will not come back - accumulates in my heart like a black, sticky sediment, I hear something. One day I have heard a sound, like a woman making infinite the wildness and beauty of winter, let her hair in the wind, in the beach I remember. It was a rustle in the dried grass, wild flowers. A feeling of movement, fright that I could never know, entered in my life and immediately went away, stayed only the reminiscence in that lonely beach.

It was such a thing.

"We walk following the death," I say. It is as if a dream, as if all of us were dead, we pass through the heavy and dark day, our steps so slow, there is such a pain inside us, as if years pass away - you go faraway I watch you disappear slowly in the dark lane but I will not say come - we walk among the trees. As death is taken away in a shapeless box wooden and on rather heavy hands we are the extension of it. All is up to here, all of us are here but not Lale. She is not here with her flowery name, with her flowery face. Is this an other ceremony of burial? They open the box Lale's face Levent's face death's face all of us here, we are like a broken up photograph.

There was something that I forgot. A died leaf has fell down in the garden swayed like the shadow of a dancer, the first great waves hit the quay, the rain dripped and then stopped on the windows, the white rose faded, days became a dream as well. I can go out of this old room of summer and go to wide roads, to streets right beside the sea shining with the brightness of the sun on the gray surfaces. With the sea breezes, with men and shadows, becoming none of them among them, not carrying a cross on my back my name not carved on it, I may walk and go away. Now I have to leave this place where I am mentioned with my name. Everything must start again. But life does not let me, while the sun shines through the red roses, conifers, while the spring calls out through the open window with the coolness of a garden - here with the melody of a flute, with the songs of birds, with the barking of a forgotten dog - a new thing slightly moves, waiting to take one more step / but waiting. The old women once more stand up from the place they sat, I am once more there in a summer afternoon, while Selin plays the flute on the quay under the soft touches of the sun, with the wind blowing, and continuing an endless loneliness and looking at the sea, I suppose time does not pass in these moments of ecstasy. Tea will begin to boil a little soon, everyone will approach to the cool, tranquil evening from the calm afternoon not being worried, not being feared, sounds will be heard again, but these are words not forced, they will fall into the calm wind, scattered, seen again, repeated, heard one after one and become meaningful. Light will flicker in the liquid darkness in the porcelain cup, form bright areas, great and small areas become visible one after another, we will see them united, extended, widened, or disappeared altogether. We will look at some tea leaves in the cups and wait, we may wait cause we are very lonely, here in the terrace, at a shady corner, our movements so harmonious, so soft, while sipping our tea, we are so lonely. And I will think about so different persons, as if years, distances will disappear, and I will miss all faces once been loved, I will be lost in this dream, and dream that they enter from the door, smile, come into my room and narrate the long times at once.

To Lale

Days are shortened. Now the sky is covered with dark clouds at the sunsets, faraway, in the places where clouds are dispersed a dark blue brightness falls. I remember you as I see Istanbul. Is it possible not to see Istanbul? I reserve a page in my diary for you as well, knowing that there is not anything to write in such a moment. When I think about how all these things occurred in such a short time I understood that the years have passed in fact, if one of us did not open that magic box we would not grow old suddenly.

You choose a death, go to an unreturned place, leave something behind but - pain or sorrow - covers everything slowly. I listen to some songs for you, I want to cry. You will never ask, "why did our childhood games become so horrible?"

A reminiscence.

"But this is the winter sun," I say. On the pavements, wide roads, old, black stone buildings, an ugly children's park - one swing, the second one broken - the people whom I consider their loneliness, fears with great curiosity, who close by one more step with no effect, always passing at a distance that obstructs their knowing me, their creating similar patterns on the pavements that I watch for years, who can say that I do not know them? - on a mosque far away, on the sea lets its rays, it shakes, wakes. They are brightened silently, a cold dampness flies away slowly over them. But this brightness is to be fade away quickly, gray white thread stacks - smoke rising from the tea kettles boiling on green stoves, from a cigarette at the end of a silver cigarette holder, from the chimneys of small white houses (at a far away fairy land) / and from the steamers - will cover the sky, and the sea will be darkened, I already hear the seagulls turning from above to down here and screaming.

Here begins the preparations, school days come to an end. There is only I who remember the spring that came too late, and the winter. Now the calmness comes to an end, happiness begins, they write in their desks, draw hearts, an arrow penetrates the heart - is love something like this? - wears a clean dress, her hair is combed, they decide on where they are to meet, as they go out from there a little later - following a farewell ceremony inevitably become laughable - what they are to do. A wave of happiness, excitement covers everywhere. However, time has gone away through our hands, days of childhood ended, this is not the day that freedom begins but that the shelter is destroyed.

In front of a window I read that book once more, I do not have any friend to meet again.

A blue embroidered paper turned over, I saw the face of a girl. I saw Selin.

"There is a girl," said my mother. "There is something that I do not know, it is not evident, a pain, then you go away."

We take our coffees and go out to the balcony. I look at the sea going away, the shores got foggy, and misted over.

"Forget this fortunes, I am not well these days."

But the cards closed quickly, left on the table in utter disorder, the thing to be said once more was not said.

"Why is it impossible to change a thing that could be known beforehand, mummy?"

"Why don't you go immediately? Better to go away than living there alone. It is too early to forget things happened, but if you begin a new life everything would change, you would suffer pain if you stay here."

When we were children as we stood in the terrace we were used to feel this breeze, this smell - what else remained from that beautiful city - all day I would stay in the shadow there next to the dog kennels, the old, broken piano, and in the boathouse as well, where old furniture were put.

"Do you want to say something, mummy?"

"What could I say? You are not able to abandon. If you feel alone one day, if you have nobody to go, come here. I know I am your mother but if such a moment comes I wish loneliness frightens you.

As I pass through the garden that became unkempt, alienated day by day, where thorns, couch grasses have covered all around, ivies climbed to the pipes, woods and crazily grew up, I remember what Elfe has said: "As I stay alone, become sad, in that moments as everything seems to have no solutions, I think of somewhere, somebody living the same things. This, with no evident reasons, makes me feel relieved."

Why did we choose so wrong persons to love?

But only I have believed that everything could be rejected for the sake of a friendship. "You will suffer like me," once said Levent. "Being so soft, stopping a moment of anger immediately with tenderness, wishing everything to be meaningful with a sincere sensitiveness, with a feeling of gentleness is nothing but choosing death." This is a sad day.

"I can't bear friendships to come to an end thus slowly, words, though could be said, though could be passed over lightly with a few words or maybe with a small joke during a bright talk not considered to have so much meaning, not to be said, always such intrinsic lives, their turning into bitter / fogged images of lies," says Levent. "So why don't you say?" says Nevit, "we are old friends." "You prefer ridicules of others to a friendship," says Levent, "don't say anything, I know, you go to pubs with them, swearwords do not befit to your lips, you suffer as you don't know to approach women as they do it. Is this the thing what is important?" (In the same desk the first time our elbows touch each other at night as we wanted to sleep in the same bed in the dormitory…) "We are yet grown up, you exaggerate. Do not become an enemy of me as I don't love you as you wish it," says Nevit. In this last talk I am the silence.

"At least I want you to know that I love you so much, that now, even at this moment as I am dying whom I miss is you not Nevit who exhausted me with the union of love with hatred. I would not die if you were here. But I do not suffer pain, cause it has been a long time that I believed death is liberation. Do you remember what I said to you in that so lovely day." (Last piece of writing that left to us from him).

We caress some daisies as feeling the time pass by with a staring, with the delicate sorrow created by temporary, why for lacking moments of happiness, with a song remembered in an old life. "Should I board a ship one day, I will want to go faraway."

I remember.

You are not present any more - like Lale and Levent who went to the country of endless waiting but you live, your name is Selin - I sit on a pallet and draw your picture, your transparent and calm face, your long neck.

A summer evening you open your door to me the first time, you smile.

A summer evening (later) we separate without saying anything.

It begins to rain, but lights in groups, in places touching the sea, striking the sea could be seen through the pink clouds tearing the gray blue sky faraway… birds pass by, they seem darker. It will be evening in a little while, rain and soil, trees and the sea will become darker, some persons will pass through the street - from that cobblestoned street - I will look at them. Your light will be always on. I will see your light through the flowers in the garden, but I will not whistle, I will not call, I will not obstruct your forgetting me, your losing me as soon as you find another one. I give my hand to all, we said we are friends, and then began my loneliness.

As Nevit was going away with a train only I was with him. "But still give them my regards," he said. In the known rains of the last days of summer, as we look at the flow of rain to the sea continuously, as we go out wearing our raincoats, boats, maybe in the former days, as we were children considered indifferent wandering in the wide streets enlightened with the sun, as the sun was warming in an afternoon with the odd sorrow of fishermen, old houses, narrow roads, as we stare into space and watch a bird fly away quietly, what was the thing that an unknown magic covered us and wanted to tell, do you know?

As Selin sat down with her dress in flowers, there, on the cushions, as we, two of us make breakfast one afternoon, as I saw an old smile of Selin one day in somebody else's house, as the small child was forgotten all alone in a winter afternoon, and cried in all secrecy, as those birds, which we don't know their names, began to go faraway - some people pass before the window, not worried by the ending of the day slowly - as one says to himself that everything has ended, let a piano play so calm, I am in a bright bathroom, let me stay within the quilt that I covered myself up to the head one winter night, at the beginning of a dark dream so as not to turn back again. As I think that I will leave even the smell of the cigarette I smoke, please let me go, let me do not wait for you startled with every noise, opening my doors for other rings though knowing that you will not come back again. Cause in a dream, sometimes you say, "it's good that you came," when you see me. But do not say, even in a dream do not say this.

Ash and copper.

In all dawns, that is what I say to a darling to be lost in all dawns, and not to be seen again, but been loved alone like all real loves! These are the words that I have kept in my heart for years like a magic gift but not lost their magic, that I say to this beautiful city composed of the legendary scattering of the sea, another alone love endless and will never end, especially in the misty, magical autumn mornings as sun rises slowly and silently and its rays touch the sea: Ash and copper. Other name of this city. Then I leave the sound of the sea, the launch of a hand carved boat slowly, the bells, a blacksmith's first strike of hammer, the weak faced children, the cries of seagulls, an embroidered head scarf, and the afternoon shadows of the mosques together with this tale to you. Maybe one day, in a dream day should we meet again, let these be a present to you from me for your beauty and magic words.

This is the last day of the Istanbul days. End of the sad autumn, rain seas, morning fog. One more thing - a silent resentment among drags, excitements, and calmness - in the thin branches of the trees shaken with this silent wind, in the dead leaves that rain still accumulates in unspoiled drops, in the going away of two old women after tidying up two garden armchairs (there is not the wildness, redness of the bower roses, thorns, poisonous greens, in the calmness of the flute sound giving a feeling of going away one more thing is lost, scattered like a fog over the other, old moments - but hiding what it wants, hiding in every circumstance - and closed, and waiting for another thing to start again. Days have flowed through my hands, the seasons were divided with snow, rain, sun, but I stayed so, I stayed here, I did not touch anything to change, I felt the passage of time, the sad passage. Now the sun shines, a moment of happiness rises, with loneliness - with a bitter reminiscence reason of which have been forgotten - embraces, and goes out. Cause whatever happens, and wherever and however we meet, we can only give pain to each other.

"Maybe, as one cannot remember the most important moments of his life entirely like those old pictures exposing all borders clearly, my efforts for the work of writing this story has become unsuccessful for so many times. But so as to realize the will of that old, dear friend who is now faraway, whom I don't know anything about the life of this friend, and whom I have perhaps lost eternally, I try it once more."

Or

Nevit wrote as

Summer has passed with an irregularity as happen so for years, with the endless boredoms of afternoons, looking at countless images that we consider their existence as a symbol, a remembrance for our lives, with again and again abstract thoughts, with a search for new ways - if any could be found - for a new life style so as to get rid of the deep traces of the past. Then when I returned, in a bus departed midnight from that holiday town painted in orange and green, not sleeping any, and looking at the houses lined up at the side of the road which were left back one by one, to a light window growing distant, to the signs of silence, abandonment - telephone poles, dogs - in some small towns we sometimes passed through, in a undefined ecstasy caused by lack of sleep, I found the box that Elfe left. There was a letter among the old notebooks, photographs, small notes, and papers that we all wrote something.

"Maybe, since I cannot succeed in arranging the life alone by myself, I want it from you. Just as I could not complete the countryside image by bringing together those odd seemed cardboard pieces when I was a child… whenever I have to bring details together, an odd, soft emptiness grows up slowly - when remembering something: it could be a sound, an image, a smell or a word but no, that great white sphere is so hard so cold. In places white loses it strength and spots, shadows, many holes are opened, images in a continuous movement around me, occasionally some hands, upside down faces, heads with one eye (shapes of death) an image that I know its meaning once but forgotten now, then another one are seemed to unite but all are not different from an old, abraded stage curtain, dull and lifeless, cause you know, as you want to hold the hand of a friend, the edge of a detail, that curtain is raised suddenly, and I cannot hold that hand, that detail. Therefore I send you all these. Letters of Selin in complete disarray and without dates, Cem's diary-like writings - cause I could not understand which was real and which was fiction, I cannot understand - your yellow pages which you tried to narrate the nightmare-like days that we lived, everything written and things came to me from others, those that I wrote but did not send, photographs, record covers (you would listen maybe), photographs and countless details.

You could not imagine what confused things one feels sitting before a great many written papers, not knowing even what were some of them, traces of the past. But I could not succeed neither reading them once more, nor burning, getting rid of them. Now after deciding to put them all in a box and send you, I am relieved. Like the days we saw their names in bold letters in obituaries, as I write on an envelope the address of your house where I did not come for a long time, and your name, I feel that I cannot solve the mystical relation between the people and the words, that I am afraid of it. I do not know why but I thought no one other than you, could not imagine everything occurred.

In the room where you will read this letter, the music plays continuously, you are at your desk, I can see you, you get a sip from your tea, imagine again and again lives by yourself, voice of a street seller outside, footsteps of a child running down from the stairs break the calmness of an afternoon: Sounds of the exhausting world that befits you, which are ready to kill you.

I know you are there with yourself, far from any ugliness, the meaning you attributed to ugliness has long since turned into the faces of people evident in my life, to small movements, I have long since turned back, chose life. That child face of the past is in an unknown state, emptiness accumulates in my heart like a mixed ball of glass wool, it burns, everything is so dirty that…

No, I do not want to talk about myself. I send my past to you, which was locked inside an old box for a long time in a mass of papers and go to cold and dark city. To the north. Even though we would not meet again, maybe one day I would see your writings, which you do not want to share with others, in a book. I wanted ours to be among these stories. I know it is not an ordinary thing ordering a story from an author but like the old days I want the bad things narrated by you, would you do it?

Maybe, as one cannot remember the most important moments of his life entirely like those old pictures exposing all borders clearly, my efforts for the work of writing this story has become unsuccessful for so many times. But so as to realize the will of that old, dear friend who is now faraway, whom I don't know anything about the life of this friend, and whom I have perhaps lost eternally, I try it once more.

I know a work of art would always be shortcoming wherever it starts, shortcoming like our lives. Besides, here, in this story a starting point would not be find out from these disordered pages, photographs, memoirs, it cannot be narrated in whole starting from any place. It can be started from a period of time, and then would be turned back - this is illusive as well - it may go ahead the present moment - cause I imagine it. I arrange the structure of the story by setting the watch right beside my typewriter. I, for a long time, know that it is impossible to spend the time on the round white dial, this odd contradiction.

Whenever I think about them, they do not sit here again, just opposite to me with their bright faces, they do not join again in the countless games that we have found, and laugh, but, I do not know why but, they appear in my conscious always with their sad faces scattered in the square of a film of a burial ceremony. My loneliness which Elfe regarded as positive, as peculiar to brave people, has turned into a madness for a long time. Everything is composed of illusions now, I cannot control anything, I cannot name anything catching between the old lines, circles in my conscious, determining immediately - as if playing with the objective of a camera and sharpening a live face, a movement before getting them out of life in the shape of a square, a rectangle. I know the different faces of the feelings of people, the things that surround us, which we believe they would have no value if we were not present (it is true, cause meaning is the name of a mistake created by our ill conscious), the mystical perceptions, sounds and darkness always indicating an odd incomprehensibility. That thing which I call as the feelings of people breaks with the beats the lines (like our feeling annoyance just when we say that we are so happy), those old rules, old borders are broken into pieces before new ones come to their place. But, a person is not as plural as to share his life and himself again with himself. How could me or anyone else survive alone against the life, the world, that sphere of space borders of which have been drawn in degrees? In a place worth living it is as if I unwillingly continue my life which is injured eternally with deaths, separateness, breaking off, in a town, in a seaside town surrounded with the mountains, with the irresistible extravagance of the time, with the sudden stuck into of the distances into the conscious, out of designs, colors, searches for styles developed within years with passion, though does not fit with all different, looked for, and missed, the reality appears like the light of that orange dazzling for the first time with its broadness of a person's life, short and spent as it begins, and I think of suicide. My faint-heartedness, my inclination to cry as I think about suicide, obstructs me. When I think of death, I say that I have no place in anybody's life. I know it is not important, loneliness is something related to life, there is nothing beyond life, it is not like as in that folk play hitting to hands clasped firmly, and not being able to pass through, but I cannot do it, that image: the ugliness of the pieces of cottons to be put into parts of my body obstruct me to get those bottles of sleeping pills at the head side of my bed. I sometimes read those papers I have written everyday when we were living together till that winter day Ali and Elfe got out of here and went away.

In these summer days when

The sea-sides, ice-creams, noise of the children

Happiness are forgotten, sun became quite evident, and warmed up people, loves, relations

Previously in the spring, in the smell of lilacs which are exhausted for us

When sounds, faces and everything get a new reality

In the cold, white winter days when people put on snow

In the previous season when we were poured into dirty yellow with the rain

- time passes by without any stop, though hours stop for us, though seasons change for as like an ordinary thing in our daily, hard lives, speedily, it is as if we cannot catch it any time, we cannot enter into it, a life continuing out of us does not want us that we are pushed everyday a little more outside, a little more to our selves -

when one of us opens out the closed curtains, from night to morning as life wears on a new face

in all these renewals, changes, if there is a magical thing: we do not speak. That is the most evident characteristic of our existence, our reality.

I look at Elfe. She - without saying - pretends ignorance that something has changed for long, that loves, friendships, evenings that we call each other with an unstopping excitement have came to an end, now they have become so transparent like a dream day to be remembered with incomprehensible heart resentments, tears, now with a calm pain we are to forget all these with a sigh for a moment at the end of daily works.

"I am not as optimist now as I were in the return to the past. Many a time passed. The small signs of my getting older are evident now with headaches, and my resistance to sleeping. I want to write a story as going by a train, many a life styles left back, and got older, but I cannot. I know this as well, this story is to be put aside one day like a photograph of an old day that is looked afterwards and put aside."

No, I do not have to explain something.

Kürşat BAŞAR