I would sit in the armchair next to her bed and put my feet up on the edge of her mattress. I read until I could hear her heavy breathing. Sometimes when I stopped reading, she reached over and held my toes to let me know that she was still listening. I remember her fingers, so thin they might go right through my feet.
In the afternoon, the bedroom would be very bright and I drew the curtains shut. We would sit like this until the evening, reading or sitting in silence.
“Nunu, why don’t you go for a walk?” my mother said when she drifted out of sleep. I pretended I hadn’t heard her.
“It would make me happy if you went out a bit.”
I wouldn’t respond.
“Nunu,” she’d say, “you’re so stubborn.”
* * *
—
I had already finished reading M.’s novel myself when I read her the chapter about the old man on the balcony, looking out with his darting eyes. I can still remember the long description of the city, moving imperceptibly from the old man to the hills in front of him. It’s unlike M.’s other indulgences, when he spends pages describing trees and foods. In this passage, the old man’s eyes are just an extension of the flickering city.
When he finally jumps off, there seems to be no break in the prose.
It’s remarkable to me that a foreigner has seen this loneliness in our city. He has seen right through the hills and waters to the very heart of Istanbul. Such a loneliness it robs you of words.
My mother did not object to these passages as she had objected to M.’s description of the cypresses.
It was late afternoon, and the last bright light filled the room like mist through the already drawn curtains. I rested my feet at the edge of my mother’s bed while I read.
The old man’s darting eyes settle on the city, which holds out its arms to him in an embrace.
I wanted my mother to hear this, to tell her that the weight did not belong to us alone. That others, strangers even—those so foreign to Istanbul that they wrote about its abundant cypresses—could know something of this feeling we had guarded all our lives. That they, too, could have witnessed such loneliness.
My mother reached over and held my toes with her thin hand.
“Nunu,” she said. “Nunito.”
59.
It was on one of the first true days of spring—those days, which are a festivity in Paris, bringing everyone to café fronts—that we decided to go for a midnight picnic after M.’s class. I arrived early, and sat down on the bench across from the university entrance. I was wearing a green sleeveless dress I had recently bought, when the weather became warmer and I began noticing the crowds at cafés shedding their somber layers. I had put on this dress only once before in my room, taking pleasure in its deep color, the comfortable sweep and fall of its skirt, the way it hugged my waist. And I had been so pleased that I went downstairs to the Café du Coin so someone could see me.
“She’s back,” the young waiter said when I walked in. He winked, and brought a cup of coffee without my asking.
* * *
—
M. left the university building with the golden age author, the one who had read at the bookshop. They looked in my direction as they were walking down the steps. M. made no sign that he’d seen me. I got up from the bench. A moment later, he looked up again and this time waved enthusiastically.
When they crossed the street, he held me by the shoulders and kissed me on both cheeks, so unlike the way he usually greeted me. I had become accustomed to the abrupt wave of his hand and I thought that it had its own special meaning.
“Look at you,” he said. “What a sight of spring.”
He introduced me to the writer as his guide.
“To all things Thracian,” he said.
“It’s lucky you found a guide,” the writer said. “Do you guide tours in other landscapes, too?”
M. laughed.
After we parted with the writer, we walked down the tree-lined avenue Bosquet, dappled with light straining through the leaves. We turned onto rue Cler, where every café terrace was filled with people. All along the pavement, they stood with their drinks, wearing dresses, and pastel-colored trousers.
“What a day,” M. said. “Maybe we should sit at a café.”
I shrugged.
“I thought we were going for a picnic.”
“Of course,” he said. “If you prefer.”
It wasn’t only M.’s introduction that had upset me, but his cheerfulness as well. It made me lonely.
We continued towards the river.
“I’m so glad we’re walking,” M. said. “And not wasting this splendid day.”
It hadn’t been splendid until now, he said. That afternoon, one of his students had turned in a story about his family written with such bitterness that it had been uncomfortable to discuss in class.
I asked him why this was.
“At the heart of it, there is shame,” M. said. “But it’s hidden under so much anger. How do you teach them to tell the story as it is, when they are blind to the very feeling with which they are telling the story?”
I walked silently, looking ahead.
“Sometimes,” he said, “I wonder if I’m capable of teaching them the joy of plain, simple storytelling. The way you and I tell each other.”
I had stopped walking. I was looking down at the hem of my green dress.
“I don’t think you should try and teach anyone how to talk about their family,” I said. “It’s arrogant.”
We continued walking.
“Nurunisa,” M. said, “is something the matter?”
I shook my head. But when we reached the American Church, I told him I was not feeling too well.
“What can we do about that?” he asked.
I said I wanted to go home.
I had an urge to be reckless. To cause damage in one sweep.
But I was also trying to stop myself and shake off this feeling before it overcame me.
“Of course,” M. said. “I’ll walk you to the metro.”
As we changed course and continued walking, I decided that if he said something else, anything at all, I would tell him that I wasn’t feeling that bad after all, and that I would still like to have our picnic.
I pleaded with him silently until we reached the metro.
“I hope you feel better,” M. said, and waved.
60.
So much falls through the cracks when I try to tell it. So much insignificant detail. There are many little things that don’t have a place in a story.
My mother used to wear glasses with blue and green dots. She had these glasses for as long as I can remember and they never lost their bright color. When she put them on, I can’t say why, it made me happy. Those bright colors framing my mother’s eyes and my mother’s determination—to read something, to write something, to find a way to be cheerful. She could set everything aside and give her attention to a single task when she wore her glasses.
“Let’s see now,” she would say, putting on her glasses when I brought her my homework, or my school skirt with a loose button.
In moments like this I wondered whether my mother wasn’t just going about her life, whether I had only imagined that there was something darker hovering over her. I wonder whether I could have told a different story of my mother all along, about the ordinary course of a life, with its ordinary list of sadness and joy.
61.
I’m trying to say that I’ve tried to tell a story about her many times. But none have resembled my mother.
62.
We met again at the Luxembourg metro, we walked around the gardens. We sat down for lunch, we went to our bench. I doubt that change comes sweeping in a single moment. I think it is always there, waiting for the right time to make itself known.
Still, if I had to tr
ace our path back to some specific time, mark it as different from others who came before and after, I would remember the festive day when I wore that green sleeveless dress, when M. seemed like a stranger and we stepped out of our world. It must be around this time that I stopped writing to him, except practically, to set a time to meet. But even this, I cannot say for certain. M. still wrote to me in his particular way, repeating my name.
“Nurunisa, Nur-u-nisa, Nur. Nisa.”
One time he wrote, “Silent one with her head down.”
And another time, “Nurunisa across the river: Have you dropped our invisible thread?”
I had made up my mind that once he asked me directly why I was upset, I would tell him a true story, something simple and direct. This was the condition I had set and I waited impatiently for him to understand, to want to know and admit he cared. I don’t even know what I would have told him if he asked. But the question itself would have assured me that M. was the person I thought I knew.
After a while, though, M. stopped writing to me.
63.
At first, the silence was heavy, as if I could hear M. acknowledging it across the city. Later, it grew lighter. M. slipped into another silence, entirely his own. With time, it became commonplace and we were no different than two strangers on a street.
I was relieved, and then saddened. Later, I was angry that M. would give up so easily. I told myself that our friendship had ended once M. had collected enough material for his book and no longer needed me.
That’s one way of telling it. I know there are others.
64.
I remember this story my grandmother told, without embellishments from me, as improbable as it seems: My grandfather had drawn the plan of the house in Aldere on the square pack of his Bafra cigarettes, and divided the square into quarters. He had given the plan, just as it was on the cigarette pack, to the workers at the factory to build. Whenever she compared herself to Europeans, my grandmother would say, sighing deeply, that her life was worth no more than a pack of cigarettes.
65.
In the end, Istanbul welcomed me back with open arms.
I returned from Paris to Atatürk Airport and stepped outside to the familiar smell of cigarette smoke.
I took a taxi and gave the driver the aunts’ address in Kanlıca. I had forgotten about the traffic. For an hour, we moved inch by inch on the highway.
The radio was announcing the trial of three journalists whose names were not familiar to me. I could neither think of conspiracies nor deeper connections that might help me read a larger meaning into this event. The driver made a clucking sound and shook his head from side to side, switching to another channel, and I didn’t know whom he disapproved of with this gesture.
All along the road were turns leading to housing projects with foreign names—City Verde, City Soleil, Flora Plaza. In banners suspended from buildings, there were photographs of spacious, tree-lined streets and modern buildings without a trace of life. I felt as if I had walked into a trap. I had returned to a place that had nothing to do with me.
But after a while, the highway narrowed. There was a quickening, a coming to life, a descent into something I could not put my finger on. My surroundings looked familiar, even though I could still not say what road we were merging onto. Finally, the strait appeared ahead, and I saw the bridge. I had not expected to see it at that moment, that sparkling water, the hills below, and the fortress slithering magnificently up and along the curving banks. That blue-green of the Bosphorus, whose color I have never seen elsewhere. The city spread its wings, falling steeply and stretching wide, welcoming me with its giant arms.
And in its embrace it told me something, like the complaint of a child who allows herself a single moment of indulgence. I heard it clearly.
When my mother told me a story from her past, I would wonder why that version of herself didn’t match the person I knew in life. I accepted that so much had happened before me. And I was always aware of that threshold between the two times.
In my mother’s stories, there was always this same silent accusation that I heard when I arrived in Istanbul.
Look what happened to me.
66.
Soon after I returned to Istanbul from Paris, I received an e-mail from my university roommate, Molly. After graduation, Molly had lived for a while with her parents before moving to Edinburgh.
“It’s not the Galápagos,” she wrote. “But that’s alright.”
She told me that she wouldn’t mind leading a mediocre life, leave nothing behind and disturb nothing; simply live and be content.
I had been in touch with Molly around the time of my mother’s illness and immediately following her death. Afterwards, Molly wrote periodically to ask how I was doing, but I was unable to recall the person I had been around her and I felt it would be strange to write back with facts about my life, without a hint of how she’d known me at university.
“My sad and brave Nunu,” Molly wrote to me. “I don’t know what to say. I remember how close you were. I have never known a relationship like yours.”
She went on to list the things she remembered about me and my mother. “All your magical landscapes,” she said, remembering our Sunday walks, our fish restaurant, the small town by the forest where, she said in a version unknown to me, my mother and I went fishing with my mother’s old friend.
She added that she had always regarded my bond with my mother with admiration. Even though she had never met her, she felt that she had gotten to know her through my stories. She said that my remarkable mother had taught her something about living fully. She often thought about our relationship, and had even strived to achieve something similar with her own parents. She’d wanted to offer them friendship as I did to my mother.
I shut the computer, quickly, as if I had seen something indecent.
* * *
—
I did not write to Molly again for a long time, even though she continued to send me news of her life. Then, I got the note from her when I returned to Istanbul, though she seemed completely unaware that I had only recently come back. She said she was writing to see how I was doing, that she was worried about me. I had been on her mind more and more and she hoped that I was alright, with everything that was happening.
Her concern confused me at first. Enough time had passed since my mother’s funeral and Molly knew nothing of my life since then. I didn’t know what she assumed, whether she interpreted my long silence in some particular way. I wrote back to tell her I was doing well. I had moved to Paris after the funeral and had just returned to Istanbul.
Molly’s response took me by surprise. She was following the events in Istanbul and she imagined what I must be going through, with the city I loved so much coming apart before my eyes. Was I worried? What was my life like?
I was relieved. Of course, Molly would be thinking about Istanbul, and would be worried about my life here, at the brink of uncertainty. These days, there is little room for any other discussion. And it’s comforting to give myself up to this change. There is a comfort in insignificance, in the certainty that my own worries will all vanish without a trace.
The troubles of this city surpass us all.
67.
One day, shortly before I left Paris, I asked the waiter at Café du Coin whether he always made a point of bringing me a different type of coffee than what I had ordered.
“Of course,” he said. “To check if you’re paying attention.”
When I was leaving, I saw him smoking outside and asked for a cigarette. The following day, after he ended his shift, he came and sat with me while I finished my coffee.
A few days later we went to see a movie close to Place de la République. The streets were full of people my age, smoking all along the pavements, sitting at run-down bars. It was beautiful in a different way from the neighborhoods M. and I walked repeatedly. Our walks, the
stories I told M., our shared vocabulary suddenly seemed far away and irrelevant.
The movie was about a painter and his model who were separated during the First World War. They found each other again, through a series of improbable events, many years later. By then they were both very old, though they acknowledged that time could do nothing to sever their bond. They remembered every detail of the past. The painter recalled the red dress his model wore on their walks along the river and in the final scene, the old woman who was once a great beauty sat in a park wearing a red dress.
The waiter, Vincent, told me afterwards that he found the story very touching. After all those years, the woman was no longer beautiful, he said, and the painter didn’t even mind. This was simply remarkable, Vincent said.
I didn’t contradict him, nor did I say that I didn’t think the weight of the film resided in the woman’s vanished beauty, as I might have told M. It felt good to simply hear his opinion and let it go.
We went to a bar in Oberkampf and sat outside on stools. Once again, I had the feeling that another city had passed me by all this time.
Vincent asked me what I wanted to drink and I told him he could pick. He came back with a tall glass, striped with many colors and with a straw inside, and for some reason the sight of this made me laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Vincent said and I couldn’t stop laughing at the striped glass—the cheerful drink like children’s stationery.
When I finished my drink, he took the colored straw and tied it around his wrist like a bracelet. I stared at his hands, the jutting veins and muscles. Such a sight, like he was about to break through his own skin.
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