Dear
Oktay,
I
can think of a number of reasons why a person would embark on a day trip to
Istanbul by plane, but for you, I cannot bring myself to settle for any
scenario that is commonplace. I refer to your boarding pass tabs, which were
also in your book. They are both dated February 13 with no indication of year,
but it's probably safe to assume they're contemporaneous with the electricity
bill.
Here's
a question: did you deliberately reserve seat 10B on your way out and 10A on
your way back, or was that pure coincidence? My imagination takes to the
former, and I see you now as the type that always checks in online before a
flight and is particular about airplane seating. Perhaps you're an obsessive
compulsive special agent, nay, hitman, whose day job involves taking out
foreign attachés and shady businessmen and corrupt politicians (by night you're
an interpretive dance instructor). You are quick and methodical; a quiet
genius; the best cold-blooded killer money can buy.
Actually
scrap that, I see you more as a lady-killer with the sensibility of an
unwhittled log. You couldn't give a rats ass about where you sit on a plane.
It's your PA who's obsessive compulsive. Your damn PA! She's also enamoured
with you and wishes you'd notice the extra mile she goes to ensure your
comfort. Little does she know that more than half of those 'business' trips
she's organising are in fact for your secret rendezvous with various fake
blonds with loose morals. But your philandering days are numbered, Oktay. In
less than a year you will contract a horrific, venereal disease, which will
force you to spend the rest of your days indoors for fear of being stoned to
death by children. Your PA will mort herself. Your wife will leave you for a
man named Bigus Dickus. And 'twill be a fitting end for the boorish, Turkish
male that you are.
...
...
My
dearest Oktay, you cannot possibly know the treacherous terrain of ever
shifting sand hills, monstrous red winds and the spontaneous fluctuation of
extreme temperatures that is a woman's innards. Poets of old have likened woman
to the sea. Not so. A woman is more like a dune desert. I know that I am more
right.
The
morning of the day I found your book, it had been especially difficult to get
out of bed, Oktay. But get out I did. And as I said before, it was snowing out;
and in the car it was hyperborean; and my hands on the steering wheel were
frozen; and on the radio a Turkish folk singer put his sadness into words that
rang truer than everything I'd ever known in this tapering life. Such was the
brittle state of my woman's innards on the day I discovered your book. And the
moment I found those boarding pass tabs between its pages, I felt an instant
and curious affinity towards you.
Don't
get excited, Oktay. This isn't me making a pass. Perhaps I felt that way
because I too use my boarding pass tabs as bookmarks when I travel, and often
forget them (sometimes on purpose) inside once I'm finished reading.
Laughable,
isn't it? How simple we are. How eager to empathise, familiarise, share with
others. How desirous of meaningful connection. Do you think it's so because we
are all, in actual fact, so utterly and irrevocably alone? I asked myself this
question a lot this weekend past, and all of today. And as I asked and asked
(in the way you do when u already know the answer but can't bring yourself to
accept it), my pensive feet took me to Melankoli Sahaf on my way home. Ismet
welcomed me with a victorious smirk of a point well made (something immaterial
about the cellist at the Baroque concert I attended Friday night and he
Thursday). I sifted through the molehill some more till he was finished with
his gloating and then asked him the
question.
“Ismet,”
says I, “what do you think?” The place was quieter than usual. We were in
between playlists, and even Dolma, who'd calmed down a bit, was snoozing under
the overgrown bonsai. Ismet was making himself instant coffee (I'd politely
declined) and stopped to consider me at length, until it began to feel like he
was gazing through me. Then he blinked and returned to stirring in his mug with
marked wistfulness. It left a lump of something cold and indigestible in the
place between my gut and my stomach. And the grave slurp with which he
punctuated his response grated further on my nerves. How does a man, who takes such pride in having such refined tastes,
drink that instant muck and be satisfied. I thought. I don't understand
people sometimes, Oktay. I really don't.
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