by Loren Edizel
Sometimes, in the middle of the night I get out of bed and stand in the living room looking out the window. I see the street covered in darkness, the silhouettes of maple and birch trees, sleeping cars, nothing moving anywhere and I think of you. I think you must be getting ready to go to work on the other side of the world, having your gevrek with tulum cheese and your small glass of tea. I imagine you raising your arms to brush your hair, turning your face this way and that after putting your cream, and being ever so quiet while you move about your house in your slippers, all alone. You don’t even turn on the radio. How can you stand such quietude? I can’t even stand it in the middle of the night, when I’m awake and everyone else is sleeping. I think you would have handled this move I made so much better. I need to feel connected at all times. I need to be seen, noticed, acknowledged. Here no one pays attention. Bus drivers won’t stop anywhere for you because you flirt with them or beg them. They see you running madly to catch the bus and still don’t stop. Speaking of buses not stopping—I was walking to the bus stop and saw it coming. I didn’t bother rushing, but a balding, chubby man in his navy suit and tie, holding a briefcase in one hand and a coffee in the other decided to run for it. He turned red and sweaty, with his coffee cup lifted up in the air for the driver to see him and stop. And as he was nearing the stop, his pants just fell off and he was in his white boxers, with the trousers around his ankles and his briefcase and coffee in his hands! Poor man, he didn’t know what to do first; pull the trousers up or get on the bus. And everyone on the bus was laughing, so was I. I felt bad for him, but it was so hilarious, like a Chaplin movie. I wish I had a camera to send you this picture.
So this is my life these days, my dear Mehtap. I look forward to your letter. Please write soon.
Love,
Nuray
P.S. I had to hide your letter because you made a reference to waking up together. You know how it is, being married I don’t want Ekrem to get the wrong sort of idea. I feel bad telling you this, because I want you to write these things to me and I don’t ever want you to stop. But if you do talk about the past in ways that can be misconstrued, just want to tell you I will have to destroy it. Hope you won’t be mad at me for this. I love you, always.
May 12, 1981
Dearest Nuray,
I apologize for taking so many months to write you back. I had to renovate my cumba, water started leaking from the roof after the rains, and there was plenty of that this spring. And you know, the only place where I sit down to write is in my cumba. My mind gets blocked in my bedroom or at the kitchen table. I’m a creature of habit, as you already know too well.
Work has been keeping me busy, as well. We’re doing very well, exporting zippers all around the world. Patron hardly ever comes to the office, nowadays. Not that he spent much time there before either, but much less now. I’m still sending flowers to his wife, his mistress Gönül, and all the others on their birthdays. At his age, how he finds energy for all that activity is beyond my comprehension.
I was saddened to read about the difficulties you have in your apartment. The small and shabby kitchen, the cockroaches, etc. I hope you can move to a better place soon.
How is Mehtap doing? She is such a smart girl. I’m sure she will do very well and impress all her teachers very soon.
You’re asking me when I will visit. My dear friend, you can’t imagine how much I want to be there and see you all, but plane tickets to Canada are expensive, and with the renovations I had to do, I think I will have to wait till next year to come see you.
Do you remember in the old days when we lived together, you used to blow dry my hair with a funny plastic cap after putting rollers on my head? Guess what? I found it. You must have forgotten to take it with you when you moved out, and I found it in a box with all sorts of unrelated things, photo albums, etc. I didn’t know whether I should laugh or cry, looking at it. So many memories came back just looking at that old thing. Our vacation in Istanbul, for example. How I wish I could rewind my life and be there again. Have champagne in Moda…. We couldn’t stop laughing, we were so drunk, remember?
My pottery classes are going very well and if I could be sure that it would arrive safely to you and in one piece I would send you a vase I have named after you. It is asymmetrical, as if it were about to collapse to one side. I did it on purpose so it would be a bit shapeless. I have glazed it with pastels, and handpainted tulips on it—they’re kind of leaky and imprecise with blues, lilacs, pinks, and yellows interlaced with fine green stems and brownish curly leaves, you know, the way leaves look when they are about to dry and curl inwards and get crunchy at the edges? Like that. The effect of those dying leaves I think is what makes the vase so special, for me. I wish you could see it. My teacher seems to think I’m talented. She’s pushing me to take the classes more seriously. I have been thinking about changing your old bedroom into a studio. I can put vinyl covers on the floor. It is spacious enough. And I can take my pottery to my teacher so she can bake them for me in her kiln. This way, I can work in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep and it gives me something to do on weekends. I will send you a picture of your vase as soon as I get a camera. I think I should start saving to buy one.
Well, this is it for me. Take good care my dearest friend.
Love,
Mehtap
P.S. Your story about the man running for the bus was very funny. I read that part a couple of times and it made me laugh out loud.
August 18, 1981
My dear Mehtap,
I have not been ignoring you. I have written you at least two dozen letters since I got yours, and they all ended up crumpled at the bottom of the bin. I couldn’t bring myself to send them to you. But I feel better these days, so I’m hoping this one will make its way to you.
I have completed my English program and just started the French. Ekrem says he’s proud of me for learning so fast. I can get by in stores and on the street. I watch a lot of TV. I think here everyone does. Then they talk about it. Back home we had a small black and white TV but the antenna never worked. So, we hardly ever watched anything. Here we have a colour TV and there are about a dozen stations. You can watch TV for 24 hours at a time if you wanted to. So I watch all the “sitcoms”—this means comedy shows. When the actors make jokes, you hear people laughing but you don’t see them. It’s the weirdest thing. Maybe they’re not sure it’s funny enough and encourage you to laugh, this way. Or they think people are too stupid to recognize a funny thing. I find I never laugh when I’m supposed to, and when I do, there is no background laughter. Also, you can’t watch anything in peace, because when you least expect it commercials cut in and they are loud and go on forever. Ekrem says I should go out more, stop watching TV. You’re not really living if you’re watching other people pretend to be living interesting and funny lives. You’re being a zombie. He scolds me a little; he never used to…. I made a new friend. Her name is Yelena. She told me she works as a stripper at night. Her husband owns the strip joint, apparently. She told me she jogs every day to stay in shape. Maybe I will join her. She lives in my neighbourhood.
I bought a jar of tahan at the grocery store, came back home and wept looking at it. How absurd it sounds! But that jar for a moment contained all I cannot have, can never have again, you know, the morning smell of the sea from my balcony, seaweeds and salty wetness, the sounds of the street down below with the tahan-pekmez vendor passing by singing, the small cup of Turkish coffee, that aroma, your house with the stairs, the Churchill-faced woman who lowered her basket down for the vegetable vendor. Remember, we would stare in awe at the cigarette glued to her lips and how she could have an entire conversation with it stuck there, smoking away, and us sitting in our nightgowns in that cumba of your house having toast and tahan some lazy morning…. Oh God, everything familiar, everything I have ever known until now and will never ever experience again. Who would have thought a jar of taha
n could do this to a person? I kissed the cold jar and pressed it to my stomach and sobbed and sobbed and called your name.
I understand about your expenses, and you’re right about how expensive it is to travel all the way here. If I could, I would have returned for the summer, a couple of months, and spent it with you. I would have taken Mehtap with me too and the three of us would have had a lovely time. Perhaps next year.
If you want to call me sometime, remember we have a seven-hour difference. When you wake up at six a.m., it’s one p.m. for me. I’m done with school by that time and I should be home. Call me. I will try to call you as well. I know you have to get ready for work, so I won’t keep you on the phone long. To hear your voice would do me a world of good.
I have changed so much. I think you may like me better nowadays. I’m done with singing and splashing in the bathtub, and I don’t wear those high heels that hurt my feet. I also can’t fit into my clothes so I wear loose sweaters so as not to attract attention to my widening hips. It’s funny you found the hair dryer and the bag attached to it after all those years. Does it still work? I’ve lost a lot of hair and what is left hangs in large limp curls; even they seem depressed. I wonder if it is due to my age—you know, I mean my inability to find happiness here. Maybe we’re too old to make such a change in our lives. But then I look at Mehtap and I see how easily she has made friends and how she talks incessantly with them on the phone. It’s remarkable how happy she seems. As for Ekrem, he’s always been the stoic type. He won’t complain about anything. He goes to work everyday and recently decided to take some night courses at a college nearby, to learn how to be an electrician. He’s got it into his head that he has to reinvent himself because no one cares that he was some big shot in a Turkish company. It is all too far away and I suppose to them it could all be lies. When I ask him if he regrets leaving home he says, “I’m doing everything I can not to live with regrets and I wish you’d do the same.” It must be hard for his pride to be working in an assembly line at his age after running a successful business most of his life. I asked him why he wasn’t going to university to become an electrical engineer. He said it would take too long taking one course at a time at night. Then he turned around and asked me if I have considered looking for a part-time job as a sales person, in a grocery store, wherever. I don’t know where to begin. He says, just go downtown and look for Help Wanted signs and walk in.
I guess I’ll be doing that tomorrow. Pray that I find something. If I do, it may help everything else.
I wish you could send me the crooked vase you made for me, or at least a picture of it. I remember the doll you dressed up as a school girl for Mehtap. It was unbelievably beautiful. If you change my room to a studio, it means you’ll be spending a lot of time there, where I used to sleep. The thought of it makes me happy.
I’ve got to prepare supper soon, so I have to stop writing.
I miss you and send you a big hug.
Nuray
September 9, 1981
Dearest,
The holiday of liberation, today. I’m home and I can hear distant sounds of the military drums of the great parade. It’s a sunny day here and warm. I’m glad to have some rest. Aydın invited me to his summer house in Çeşme again, second time this season, but spending time with his glacial wife once a year is more than enough for me. I know he invites me so he can have company. His daughters are overseas, and nowadays it’s just him and his wife, and I suppose he can’t stand her operatic moments. I love him dearly, but lately I find it very difficult to do things that don’t please me for his sake. I have become selfish and unsociable I suppose. I’d rather sit here in my studio and play with clay. The happiness I derive from it is a strange one and not without frustration. If someone had told me that I would want to spend time doing something that leaves my fingernails, hair, and every crevice of my face filled with mud, I would have found it unbelievable. I never would have thought I would love the feel of mud under my fingers, the delight of shaping something soft and viscous with my hands, the spinning wheel, the pleasure of finding new forms and making objects that are not really very useful. I have changed Nuray. I have let go … I can’t find the right words to describe this transformation to you.
I miss you more than I can ever say. Tear this letter up after you read it, if you wish. I cannot be chained to pleasantries when my feelings surge and sear me the way they do. A volcano wants to erupt within me when I think about you. Perhaps this pottery business has something to do with all that wants to pour out of my heart. All the love I couldn’t give you, all the sorrow I cannot shed in tears, the heights my soul yearns to soar toward and cannot, it is all stored here in my crooked and sad-looking vases. Hearing your voice the other day, so faint and filled with echoes, yet so real and so you, broke me entirely. I wanted to touch your face and neck and kiss your lips. I am tired of hiding everything all the time. I’m tired of calling you dear friend when I want to shout that you’re the love of my life and your departure has turned my existence into a desert.
When am I going to see you again? You know our currency is so devalued now that a loaf of bread costs a hundred times more than it used to. Salaries are the same, but prices are a hundred fold. I barely make ends meet, and wonder how the poor survive nowadays. It is a very sad state of affairs. I think I could retire if I wanted to, but it’s financially impossible. I would be destitute if I did. All this to say, whatever I have managed to put aside in the hopes of coming to visit you is not going to be enough now. There are banks that give very high interest rates and I am of two minds: putting my money there, or exchanging it to American dollars so that it will not devaluate further.
How are things with you nowadays? Have you found a job? Perhaps it will be easier for you to come here for a visit now. I hope you’re all in good health. Please be patient and courageous. Remember that you will inspire your daughter to live a courageous life if you do so yourself. And that is the most important thing, isn’t it? You’ve made this move for her sake, and you must continue this mission as well as you can. You are not alone. Ekrem is there to support you and your daughter is there to inspire you through the sadder days.
Be well darling, and remember that I love you deeply, and always shall.
Yours,
Mehtap
June 5, 1983
Dear Mehtap,
We will finally see each other. I keep looking at my ticket over and over. In four weeks, my plane will leave from Montreal, stop in Amsterdam and then Istanbul, and then Izmir. How lovely it will be, after so many years.
Do you need anything from here? I plan to bring jars of instant coffee. Is it still hard to find nowadays? What else do you need, want? Please send me your list quickly so I have enough time to shop for it. What size do you wear nowadays? I can get you Levis jeans. Anyway, Mehtap and Ekrem will stay here. Mehtap prefers to go to a summer camp while I’m away. Her classmates are going too and she thinks it will be more fun for her. Ekrem is staying in case Mehtap needs something, so he can be there for her. I feel a little guilty taking this trip by myself, but it will be wonderful, won’t it?
I will keep this letter short. Don’t forget to write me your list as soon as possible.
See you soon.
Love,
Nuray
September 3, 1983
Dear Nuray,
I still can’t believe you couldn’t come. Who breaks their legs crossing the street? I’m so sorry darling. Hope you’re on the mend, now. Both legs! Are you in a lot of pain? Are you able to ambulate with crutches at all? When Ekrem called to say you’d had an accident, I panicked. We always imagine the worst. If it is any consolation, it could have been worse, you could have been hit by a bus and died. God forbid. Now you take good care of yourself and listen to what the doctor says and do it exactly.
Were you able to get your ticket reimbursed? Can you use it at a later date? I hope it wasn
’t a complete loss; I can imagine how expensive it was. Do you want me to tell your cousin, or anyone else who may have been waiting for you as well?
The weather is still warm here. I’m taking some time off work in a couple of days to go to Marmaris, for a week’s vacation. It is not so busy anymore and warm enough for swimming. I desperately need to get away from the city and my work routine. I’m tired of it all.
I’ll give you a call soon. We’ve been writing each other less these days, I suppose because we call each other more. It’s extremely expensive, I know; but I need to hear your voice and be reassured that you’re all right, especially nowadays.
I love you.
Mehtap
January 21, 1984
My dearest friend,
In one of your letters you said that to call me your dear friend was to hide the true nature of your feelings. I have thought long and deep about that recently and I disagree. The word friend contains precisely the depth you assign to love in your life. It is surely a word of great relativity; if you have no one to love deeply, then the limit’s right there. Doesn’t Mevlana call the beloved Friend? When I call you my dearest friend, it means you’re the closest being to my soul, the one whose presence in the world gives my senses joy and inspiration. The love of my child is in another category completely. If I have to choose between you and my child, I will always choose my child because she needs me, because my instincts lead me to protect her, because she has sprung from my body where I have carried her and fed her with my blood. Then there is you. Perhaps I’m not letting myself imagine the possibility that I could ever leave her to come to your side. Perhaps that is an unmentionable-unimaginable. You see, I have thought about all this at length and may write a long letter (to bore you to sleep, get ready!) today because I’m in bed and have nowhere to go.
