Letters to Oktay: Letter Five

Dear Oktay, 

So the smile. It happened when we played out a repeat of our second meeting: me walking in, him offering to move his stuff from the desk behind his, me saying, oh you don’t need to, seriously, I’m going to sit there –pointing at my usual workspace. I’m not sure if it was bashful or sympathetic, but it reeked of home. 

Smiles don’t come easily to the faces of Turks. Normally, the initial expressions you are met with on first meeting someone here is contempt or curiosity. Lonesome then, for the British practice to express amicability in generous quantities, I confess I may have been more moved by it than was warranted. And being moved thus, I may have given John Anal more thought than was warranted over the weekend. The fantasies played out as me Mata Harrying him into spilling occupational secrets and national intelligence of the most dangerous kind. But what happens on the weekend, stays in the weekend. 

Come Tuesday I stride into the broom closet with my novel on my mind and inspiration dogging at my heels, when slap bang, John Anal instigates an exchange. It involves him offering me the desk behind his AGAIN; the desk covered with his books and papers AS ALWAYS. Needless to say I am surprised. I’d never once expressed interest in that desk. Not to mention, the space between the two seats is so narrow, who in their right mind would choose to sit ass to ass with some dude, when there’s a roomier option? Was John Anal making excuses to speak to me? Maybe. So what did I do about it? I declined the offer of course. Politely. But did I stop there? No. I went further to explain that I liked to have a shelf behind me, which came out sounding barmy since there was no chance of elaborating my Feng-Shui inspired compulsion for having my back to a solid object; nor of explaining that being a creature of habit, once I’ve taken to a place, I will prefer it always. A most excellent start to the morning. 

One hour and a series of frustrations over the lack of opening-chapter-breakthroughs later, and John Anal coming and going and coming and going way too much for a man working on a thesis, there was a second exchange. A tragicomedy of epic proportions. Instigated by yours truly. It went like this: 

“You have tea!” says I, aching at this point for a cigarette or a cuppa or both. John Anal turns around in surprise. “I’m sorry… I mean… where did you-” indicating his mug. 

“Oh I get it from upstairs,” says he, by upstairs meaning the staff room. “Because I work here.” 

“Ah!” says I. He works here –a possibility I had not considered. 

“I’m sure you could have some if you asked,” says he while I’m still processing how his new identity as a member of staff fits in with my spy theory. And then his hand catches my eye. Lo and behold: a ring. On the ring finger. So much for the sneezy, sniffly, unkempt bachelor act with threadbare t-shirt under the same jumper every frikkin’ day. 

“Oh errr. Well. I… asked when I first came here… and they said I had to go out for refreshments,” manages I, my capacity for tenses spontaneously reduced to simple past, like some damn a kindergartener. Believe me Oktay, it was so laborious driving that one, fragmented sentence to its conclusion with my mind doing a double take on that ring, and my mongrel accent grating at my own ears with every bastard word that came out. “…So errr… probably not.” I was dying inside. 

“Oh. Sorry,” says he “Actually I probably shouldn’t be drinking down here, but no one has said anything so-” A sneaky, conspiratorial smile. My memory goes hazy at this juncture. I’m sure I wasn’t even listening any more. I do recall him apologising a few times and me saying there was really no need for an apology then in my mind, kicking myself in the head repeatedly for saying it, and him saying I could maybe still try asking for tea upstairs, and me thinking I don’t fucking care about the damn tea, you fool! while actually saying, with one final chocked effort to retain dignity: “Nah I won’t push it.” 

Dignity. Pish. Scrambling for an escape, I’d already sunk into my chair by the time that final sentence came out. So John Anal heard it from behind the divider between my desk and the one behind his. He probably thinks I’m some moody psycho. 

Idiot, says I to me in my mind. Bloody. Stupid. Idiot.

Letters to Oktay: Letter Four

Dear Oktay, 

I’m trying to imagine you. But try as I may, I can't reconcile the image inspired by your name with the image inspired by your choice of reading. Oktay. A hearty, Central Asian name in the tradition of those nomadic, tribal Turks, which like the native Americans, quite fancied their nature and war references. Oktay, from the word Ok -arrow. Who could shoot his backwards and sideways and upside down on a galloping horse. All hair and beard and six foot ten. A man who eats a whole lamb in one sitting; shish-kebabs a platoon of crusaders before noon, because they looked at his woman sideways; and expresses his meaning more eloquently in grunts and growls than all your smooth talkers of our modern age. When a man like that utters a statement comprising of more than just monosyllables, then you really know he'd bring down dynasties for you. 

Why this all of a sudden? I am labouring with the labour pains of bringing into this world my protagonist. I’m trying to imagine a Turk. Nay Ottoman. Nay Armenian Ottoman –that’s it, beautiful characters are made through complexity. An Armenian Ottoman in Istanbul in the year 1921 is an epic tragedy just waiting to happen. 

So, a tall and slim build? No, let’s have average height. Built by hard labour and war feats. Gruff. With bad teeth. Which reminds me: 50 Lira says you are fat. Am I right? Of course I am. After all, you, Oktay, are a far cry from those Oktays of old. It's the standard issue frame working against you, you see. The big boned, stout build that could reach such magnificent proportions but which you simply lack the capacity for. What's happened then, is that all that Oktay potential has been stunted to collect at the gut. 

To your further detriment, Oktay, you have no talent for facial topiary. Being clean shaven exposes your round, moon mug as a perfect target for bitch slaps. But you don't see any of this, do you? Nay, raised by a doting, moron who probably bore you to flaunt you, you suffer from a severe case of self-importance. The word deluded, doesn't cut it. You literally see Brad Pitt when you look in the mirror, and you haven't even the sense to see a more contemporary heart-throb. What's more, you pride yourself on your modern sensibilities, which require that your wife works to supplement the domestic budget, while also housekeeping, rearing children, and looking fabulous simultaneously. But I ask you, Oktay, what need does a woman have for such a man, if she can indeed accomplish all of that on her own? 

I diverge. So let us assume all of this to be true. Neil Gaiman's 'Graveyard Book.' What gives? I'm not always right, I must admit, though most of the time I think I am. It's the crazy. See a woman who is loved has the benefit of a man to drive crazy. But a woman who is single, only has herself to drive crazy. This isn't a bad thing. On good days it's an absolute rave in my mind, I promise you. But I can see that it might get tiring for others when I get carried away. In any case, Neil Gaiman means: a) You wear black and have, or have had at some point in your life, an asymmetrical haircut. b) You were bullied as a child and sought consolation in the heroics of misfits and freaks, which in turn nurtured a love of nerd culture. c) In a wasted effort to improve your English through reading, you picked out Neil Gaiman from the young readers section of the bookshop at the airport. Option ‘c’ I think. Fat and predictable is what you are. I’m bored of talking about you. So bored I’d rather stare at the blank screen of my opening chapter. 

On a more positive note: John Anal gave us a smile today. I think it might have been the best thing I saw in over a month.

Letters to Oktay: Letter Three

Dear Oktay,

Why do I come here? Holed up in this freezing broom-closet of a reading room, with John Anal sniffling at his desk beneath the window. Flying into a sneezing fit every half hour or so, with me having to stifle my Bless Yous because John Anal is likely to take offence. I contemplated giving him a packet of tissues. Thanks to no change and an expectant beggar-aunty outside the dentist’s last Thursday when I had my upper-right wisdom tooth gouged out, I had more packets of tissue than I knew what to do with. Then I thought better of it. Again, John Anal would definitely take offence. 

John is anal because the second time we met he got into such a fluster fit trying to gather his things, spread out across two desks –his and the one behind him. When I tried to tell him, in English, there was no need, I’d take the desk behind the one behind him, he said nothing. Just went ahead tidying like he didn’t understand my meaning. So when it happened that I had to speak to him again, I was momentarily at a loss for words with his impatient ‘yes?’ look pinned on my person after the initial ‘excuse me.’ So “Errr,” says I “do you speak English?” “Yes” says he, like his race invented the English language, and with such a stink-eye and so many daggers in that stink-eye. “Do you know where the staff go at this time? There’s no one at the front desk.” I needed a copy. But did his answer, in that most British of British accents matter at all? The man looked like he despised the essence from whence my mould was made. So it was decided. There’d be no goodmornings for John Anal, no bless yous, no packets of tissue. He could sneeze out his nasal cavity for all I cared.

To answer my own question, on this dark day for a writer with disorganised research coming out of her ears and little self-worth: I come here, to the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara (BIAA) to read about the British Mandate years in Istanbul and pour over giant books on the architecture of Ottoman houses. I also come here to write to you about the novel I’m meant to be writing, because every day that passes with me having spent hours staring at a blank screen, is another brick in the ever-rising wall of failure that casts its looming shadow over my inhibited scribblings, arms crossed, booming: ‘No pressure. No pressure at all.’ So I write. To you. Something. Anything to get the words out. And when I pause to stretch I cast my gaze on the back of John Anal’s skinny neck and stifle my sympathy. Doubtless the man’s a spy. What else would a Brit be doing here, in brain-dead Ankara of all places, in this political climate? He receives post at the library, don’t you know. A package came for him the other day, and “John” says the librarian. “Efendim?” says John, and the rest of the exchange takes place in fluent Turkish.

Definitely a spy. Ordinary Brits after all are so bad at second languages. I know this because I still bear the trauma of Begginer’s Japanese from my University years, when I was still bright-eyed and stupid. For four terms, an entire classroom of nerdy Japanophiles couldn’t articulate one Watashiwa Sumisu desu. Dochira desu ka? without sounding like retards. It’s a matter of palate you see. White people are unaccustomed to engaging the back the mouth. But John Anal! Oh he spoke to that Aras Kargo delivery guy with enough mouth capacity to articulate the crudest Japanese insults in a gruff, jaw-full of ultra-masculine Yakuza-speak. Albeit, he’s a little soft of voice. Still timid among the Turks maybe. I don’t blame him.

Letters to Oktay: Letter Two

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. 

Letters to Oktay: Letter One

Dear Oktay,

TL 77.20. Sound familiar? It's the amount you paid for electricity for the month of February, back in 2011. It's hard to imagine what a person is like based on their monthly energy usage six years ago. TL 77.20 is pretty standard really. Not too frugal, nor excessive. I wonder if you know about vampire energy. It's the power consumed by household electronic devices when they're switched off but still plugged in. If you didn't know, now you do. And the question is, will you start unplugging your TV and whatnot before bed every night, to knock a couple of digits off your next bill? If a couple of digits don't matter to you, would you do it for the environment? Maybe you'd start with good intents, but maybe after a few nights of the ritual, you'd get lazy and fail to see out the month... Now that would tell me something about the type of person you are. Which is interesting isn't it? Knowledge. Are we defined by what we do with the knowledge we acquire? 

Here's another thought. Perhaps if you knew about vampire energy back in 2011, you would have acted on it, but now you couldn't give a shit. I can relate to that I think. I too have grown more disenchanted in recent years. I wish I could offer some measure of consolation in these bleak times. But consolation is a thing I'm no good at. Escapism -now there's a solution. It's also how I happened upon your electricity bill, and some further mementos of you besides, pressed between the pages of my recent purchase from Melenkoli Sahaf -that secondhand bookshop off Cinnah Caddesi. 

I wonder if you frequent the place often, or if the occasion you stopped by to drop off this unwanted book, was your one and only visit. I wonder if you've met the owner's cat, Dolma. She's got Multiple Sclerosis, so she can't stand up right or walk to save any one of her lives. Instead, she rolls about like those tire-twister toy cars that can get out of every corner. The day I bought your book, Dolma was in heat, and kept yowling something awful above Ismet's (the owner) carefully curated playlist of classical music. Yowling and rolling and toppling all over the place. She gives me anxiety, that cat. I worry about her toppling into one of the electric heaters Ismet's got on the floor. I told this to him. He just lit a second cigarette and looked at me, apparently untroubled by the possibility. 

I went back to my molehill of foreign language books, piled up against the bit of bare-brick wall between two shelves. Ismet doesn't believe in order when it comes to his books, so I was excavating: removing the top layer of commercial fiction, teen romance and 70s erotica, to get to the good stuff in the center. Pachelbel’s canon in D turned into Bach’s Suiten fur Violoncello and eventually Ismet lit his third cigarette. Outside it was snowing, and if the world was going on, it was going on somewhere far away from where I was sat, on the floor at the foot of the molehill, surrounded by book towers of my own making.  Every so often, Dolma on her ceaseless rounds of the tiny shop, stumbled into me, then picked herself up again and rolled on. The towers grew. The snow fell. Bach became Ravel's Bolero, slowly building up to its epic crescendo. Then suddenly, about twelve minutes into the track, there it was.

In hindsight, your unwanted book was not the most exciting second hand book purchase I've ever made. But when you've set aside enough copies of Twilight and Fifty Shades, you appreciate the little things.

Ode to Bleeding Knees

Ode to bleeding knees.
Annecim, I fell,
for the tales of men,
With nothing to tell,
Of heart or humanity,
Of the power of trust.
Of mythical heroes,
That long bit the dust.
So they sought consolation
And made-believe.
And in making
Came to deceive,
The loveless and weak,
With naught to invest
But their fullest faith
In the cruelest jests.
These happy endings
We have fine tuned,
Have cost us the capacity
For simple gratitude.
Emptiness becomes me,
My tides have turned.
I have loved in vain.
And I have learned,
From knees raw and bloody,
From a breast that's still bare,
That man invents such fancies,
Because he lives in despair.

There are worse things in life

The Very First Last Word

"...It's like raising the Dead"

Without proof, you said, you could not believe.
Without faith, you tucked tail and fled from the man who'd convinced me to leap.
This is madness without glamour.
A silent obliteration without the drama.
This is abandonment, leaving no pride nor dignity in it's wake.
I stand before you, a 12 year-old again.
I stand before you, who could very well be my father -call the perpetrator by any other name.
I stand though I've lost:
Me;
You;
Any hope of an alternative universe.
And yet, I've come to this final meeting with a hapless naivety. Perhaps just to show you how still your fingers can tame my tempests to a hush.
How a broken heart can beat steady though clumsily, like the pathetic hobble of a lame man.
How the colourblind is dazzled by a brief instance of dreamy haze.
How the dead-inside raises her head to accept again, and so willingly, one more killer-blow.
From you I part with a farewell gift: here is your proof that miracles can happen, and oh with what profound cruelty.
Goodnight, Anata.

Good morning, and rise Lazarus.
Rise and speak, but not of love or courage.
I've been promised the end of the world. Speak. Let it be (,) what we live for now.

A Historic Injustice

This is Sűleyman the Magnificent. Pray, see what a dashing you blade he was. Gaze awefully upon his striking features, his piercing eyes and that epic, Alexander-esque nose. Lo and behold the dignity with which his moustache sits atop his upper lip. How he carries the weight of his immense turban, with grace, bearing and modesty on such a slender neck...just as he carries the weight of the empire upon his youthful shoulders.

And this is the ugly woman who stole his heart and ruined his life. WTF?