by Hakan Günday
It didn’t take much time or effort to turn my hotel room into an isolation chamber. Meals were left on my doorstep on a tray so I didn’t have to interact with bellboys. Then I’d leave the empty plates and trays on the doorstep and pull the door shut before anyone saw me. The only problem was the housekeepers who insisted to cleaning the room. The solution I came up with was to limit the cleaning sessions to once per week and on that day, wait in the hallway until the whole thing was over.
Initially I had as much interest in turning on the TV as I had for opening the curtains. But slowly I started doing both, watching the life outside and on TV although I couldn’t touch them. Neither life could do me any harm, since they were both behind glass.
At the end of the thirteenth day I didn’t leave the room, I thought I might need books and a computer. Though my body was accustomed to being inert, my mind wasn’t. My brain had always run at a faster pace than my heart. Therefore I needed to keep it busy at all times. If I didn’t, it screamed like a child who’d discovered his mother’s corpse, and irritated me constantly. I dreamed of a life in which I could take care of everything over the phone. That was how it should be! I had to start with the pharmacy. Its number was in the small plastic bag with the boxes of morphine sulfate. I called and placed my order. However, though I introduced and described myself to him, the pharmacist hung up on me. There was nothing to be done. I knew I’d have to go outside if only for once.
I’d take care of all my business in the same day. I inserted my daily dose of morphine sulfate into my blood and the cash I’d set aside for myself in my pocket and went down to the reception. I told the woman with her name on her chest that I’d like to stay at the hotel another month.
“Sure,” she said at first before curiosity got the better of her and she tried to find out my reasons for staying at such an expensive hotel for so long. To do that, she rambled some indirect queries like every ordinary fraud. But her efforts were fruitless. For every question she asked, I replied with another. So our conversation went something along the lines of:
“Your business has been delayed, I assume?”
“Where’s the nearest bookstore?”
“Go down the main street, to the right two hundred meters away. Is this your first time in Izmir?”
“Where can I find somewhere that sells computers?”
Her chin dropping down level to her name on her chest at not being able to get anything out of me, she was obliged to check the monitor in front of her, saying, “Right, the room is available,” take the money I handed her, and bid me a good day.
As I left the hotel, I was thinking that the woman had been eyeing my clothes the whole time and that I would need new ones so as not to attract any more attention. It was going to be a long and extremely tedious shopping day … just as it turned out to be.
When I returned to my room, however, I had everything I needed. What was more, I’d be able to conduct my whole life on the phone. Most importantly, paying the money for my next order of morphine sulfate up front had convinced the pharmacist that he should never hang up on me again. I was basking in contentment at having minimized the amount of contact I’d have to have with people to go about my daily life.
“Maybe I’ll buy a house,” I’d say, closing my eyes. “I’ll have a house of my own, and I’ll shut the door and leave everyone outside!” Really though, that was a bit tricky. I’d need to be alone with too many people if I were to buy a house. “Maybe later,” I said.
“When I up the dose of the morphine sulfate a bit more. Or a bit later than that. When I have to mainline the morphine sulfate with a needle because swallowing doesn’t cut it. Or maybe a bit later than that. When my veins are too riddled with clots and become useless …”
I could go buy myself a house then. And then I could overdose and die in it! Being found dead in a hotel would be humiliating. They’d find my corpse as soon as it started to smell. Then tens of strange, insolent hands would touch my body. I had to die in such a house that no one could find any flesh on me to touch. I had to find the most remote house in the world. Like that lighthouse in the novel by Jules Verne. I needed to find the house at the edge of the world. I had to decay long before anyone realized I was dead. That’s how they ought to find me. Rotting! I ought to make them sick when they laid eyes on me! It had to be fear at first sight! At least then we’d be even …
I’d been in the hotel for seven months and lived in a state of absolute discipline. My loneliness was at the exact degree it should be. The Internet, books, and me … and maybe, also, the mirrors … All the hotel employees, including the manager, had gotten used to me. No one ever bothered me, even though my presence there remained a mystery. After all, the most important thing was that I pay for the room. I could continue to enjoy my immaculate isolation as long as I kept that up.
As rare as it was, however, I did feel the lack of people around me. I even had moments when I wondered what my life could be like if I were able to touch them or have real relationships with them. Such fear would come over me then that I’d immediately immerse myself in morphine sulfate. At least then I’d be shielded from the panic that threatened to tear me apart. Panic was a cannon covered with poison spikes! It roamed inside me, leaving everything bloody and riddled with holes. But there’d been different effects ever since I’d started shooting up the Skenan LP. I experienced memory loss, though briefly. I’d sit in bed and get my fix, then open my eyes to find myself in the bathroom. I had no idea how long I’d been or how I’d gotten there. Like a sleepwalker, I simply acted without realizing …
I didn’t like this effect. I was especially anxious that I might leave the room when I was in that state. The more anxious I was, though, the more morphine sulfate I needed. I had a sense of being in a true catch-22. I could count only on discipline to overcome the feeling. If I was going to end up in a catch-22, it had to be my own! Every one of my actions had to take place at the same time every day, and I had to be the boss. I had no tolerance for flyaway minutes. Perhaps it was a leftover habit from the dorm … a leftover habit from Azim, to be exact …
I exercised in order to tire out my body. There was a limit to what I could do inside the room. Even so I managed to bring in a treadmill from the hotel’s gym. I thought that by exhausting my body I could prevent myself from leaving the room while under the influence of morphine sulfate. Because I’d realized that locking the door wasn’t enough. Once I even opened my eyes to find myself in the hallway. When I came to, I found myself just standing there on the burgundy carpet of the hallway, a little ways down from the door to my room. Like a statue … and even worse, I was facing the elevator at the end of the hall.
Who knows what I’d do if I went out on the street? I didn’t even want to dwell on it. I hadn’t gone outside in months and didn’t intend to for several more. I’d just hurry to an ATM near the hotel to withdraw cash and back. But that didn’t count as going outside, since I never met anyone’s eyes or touched anyone.
Something was brewing in me, however, and it apparently had to wait for me to sync with the morphine sulfate before it could dart out. I’m not sure who was keeping watch over whom. All I could tell was that both sides lay in wait. At least I did. I ran on the treadmill for hours so I could control the dark side that wanted to take my body outside among the people. Until I collapsed … Aside from that, my life was perfect! Or I was just imagining it, as usual.
In my ninth month at the hotel, I decided I would no longer resist the intoxicating effects of morphine sulfate. I took a great leap and started taking walks in the morning. Going down to the shore, I weaved my way through the people. It really was a great enough leap to make me weak in the knees. I had to put up with people bumping into me as they passed by or saying, “Good morning!” In truth I intended these excursions to prevent me from doing something worse while on morphine sulfate. There was no limit to the things I might do in that state. I might even solicit a prostitute and find myself having sex with her.
Anything could happen! So if I possessed even the smallest spark in the way of getting well, I had to be the one to turn it into a forest fire, not the person I was under the influence of morphine sulfate.
I started lightly experimenting with this. I’d go sit in a café and eavesdrop on the conversation at the next table. Next-table conversations were completely harmless. I wasn’t being spoken to or addressed, but I was somehow involved in the communication. I was trying to reintroduce myself to people …
A while later, I figured out what types of conversations took place at which café or bar and started scheduling my daily tours to correspond. For instance, I’d go to one place to listen to middle-aged women, another place to listen to girls my own age, and yet another place if I wanted to listen to men of all ages talking about those girls. Eavesdropping on next-table conversations was really like gazing at the fireplace. It was one of the safest types of socializing because there was no responsibility. It was like those times I’d get out of my seat and stand over the waste basket in the corner of my class in grade school to sharpen my pencil. I felt invisible as the whole class went on right next to me. Unfortunately you couldn’t sharpen a pencil forever. Likewise the conversations didn’t last either …
Then I took a further leap and joined an Internet chat room to communicate with people, no matter that it was only writing. That, however, was a total disappointment. I knew as soon as I’d joined that I was fooling myself. I could converse to death over the Internet on any and every subject imaginable, but this wouldn’t help me utter even as much as my name in real life. So I realized that the Internet wasn’t really all that different from morphine sulfate. It was like reading the minds of the completely unfamiliar people I passed by in the street. And that wasn’t what I needed. There was enough noise in my head as it was …
Aside from this I also joined guided tours a few times. I followed the rambling guides through ancient ruins and on hikes. Soon I also gave up on that, however, because someone would always try to talk to me on snack breaks and I’d clam up. When anyone turned to me and asked me something, I’d feel dizzy, my heart would constrict. I’d forget everything I knew and stammer, turning into a complete imbecile. I was starting to believe that my people allergy was biological rather than psychological. Because whenever I was near them, my neck itched, my face burned, my palms sweated, and my temples throbbed with pain …
I recalled the words of the young psychiatrist at the hospital in Gölbaşı whose diagnosis Emre and the others hadn’t taken seriously: “A subtype of trauma-related social anxiety disorder …” He had been right. In light of my more recent situation, at least, the correct diagnosis for me was this: social phobia or anxiety or worry or whatever the hell it was! I’d been able to pass Emre’s test of reconciling me with vitality, even if only through self-deception. It was time to become ordinary. To perform the social endeavors ordinary people undertake in their ordinary lives without even thinking about it … yet no matter how hard I tried to convince myself, I never felt safe among people and could never believe them. I thought they would surely harm me and close in on me on all sides and suffocate me. I was afraid they would bury me inside themselves. I was afraid of being crushed under their emotions and thoughts, of the weight of their bodies breaking my bones. I was threatened by their constantly moving lips, their restless hands, and their teeth that flickered in and out of sight. Those thirteen days and five hours of hell had ruined me. My sickness was too severe for any amount of recovery to help! At least that’s how I felt. No matter how much progress I made, I was sure I’d never have any real relationship with anyone.
As a young boy, I used to say, “When I grow up, I’m going to be all by myself!” Well, here I was, all by myself! But now I was trapped by my loneliness. I’d merely wanted an isolation pocket I could go in and out of whenever I wished. So I could get away from Ahad and the immigrants … an isolation pocket with a door … but now there was no such door. All those corpses had walled off the entrance, leaving me alone with my breathing. Inasmuch as my body had departed the reservoir in Kandalı, I was still gazing at the walls of that dark cell. The reservoir followed me everywhere like the imaginary moat that once surrounded me. That was the reason my loneliness was a snare. I’d been hunted down by life and waited for the hunter to come collect me. Just like morphine sulfate, loneliness also came in doses and that was where I lived … but the human inside me, the survivor against all odds, searched for a way to go among his own, that is, other people. But I resembled a haystack on the inside, and the chances of a needle finding a way out of there were very slim. So my days were either drenched in a waterfall of morphine sulfate or found me drenched in sweat on the treadmill.
Aside from that, I read. I only read. I read about the world, the people, and the time that I was missing out on. There was nothing else I could do. Perhaps I could also kill myself, but I left myself no time for that. I always nodded off before I could hang myself.
I lived in that hotel for ten months. Due to the speed at which I was depleting my money, however, I was compelled to move. Not to an apartment, but to another hotel … it was named the Ship. That’s why I picked it. In memory of Dordor and Harmin … One of its two stars had been scratched into the wall of the elevator, probably with a key.
I spent at first months, and then years, on that Ship. In the beginning I became even more reclusive, never mind getting better. I became so introverted I turned into a whirlpool. I started to suck myself into a vortex and everything got mixed up. My past resurfaced, and it was more horrifying than it had been in the reservoir. Because it was invisible! It was only aural. It resembled Ahad’s voice. It was muffled as though it was coming up through the earth. My only resort was to emerge from my whirlpool to scream, “Enough!” and add:
“You are not my past! My past isn’t anything like this! I’ll tell you what my past is! Listen to me good because this is the last time I’ll tell it! And whatever it is I choose to tell, I’ll believe in from this moment on!”
Where I should begin was evident:
“If my father hadn’t been a killer, I wouldn’t have been born …”
When I finally finished the story and was silent, I was no longer a whirlpool but a calm expanse of water. Then I picked up living from where I’d left off …
My single-serving life, as usual, was a disciplinary sentence. I did every single thing with a precision to the millimeter that I perfected over time. I knew how much dirt I would get under my nails due to which activities throughout the day, how many times I would consequently need to scrub them with the nailbrush until they were completely clean, the number of words I could memorize in one reading, and how long I could stand on one foot, left and right respectively. I knew how many people’s birth and death dates I could reel off and how many Renaissance artists I could name while doing sit-ups without my back or heels touching the floor.
My memory was a code of conduct for discipline, and I was discipline itself. After all, there was nothing to keep me busy except myself. So years passed by in the service of upgrading myself as if I were a piece of technology. In a laboratory I’d laid the bricks to surround me, since after all the only information I needed to produce me was myself, but of course it always fell short at one point. Naturally it was the fact that I’d never had a chance to test the final product, myself.
Needless to say, my attempts at quality control didn’t count, as my sickness would start smothering my consciousness as soon as I went out among people. I couldn’t repeat something with someone else present even though I was perfectly capable of it on my own. My potential capabilities, which blossomed in a controlled test environment, chemically reacted with the carbon dioxide expelled by random strangers and were rendered nonfunctional.
As stupid as I was when surrounded by human flesh, I was that much more intelligent when on my own. A mortal when everyone else on the streets was god, I was the god of gods between the walls I shut myself up in … Really it was all a matter o
f putting in the hours. I had the time to be the god of gods, was all. Others, however, were subjected to all the side effects of living together and put the majority of their resources into it. But they didn’t even know it and thought they were supposed to live together. And now I also wanted to believe.
Whenever I went out, however, I’d hit the wire mesh called reality and start to shake. I talked to myself constantly and couldn’t stop. I sat on a bench and talked about whatever I felt like. People glanced at me and walked away, unsettled. I tried to shut up but couldn’t.
Then it occurred to me to write. “If I write, I might stop talking!” I thought. I started going down to the shore with a notebook and pen. I tried to write everything that went through my mind in the book to keep from talking. But after a while I found myself writing letters to the people around me. In truth they weren’t letters but cries for help. Similar to my cries when I was beneath those corpses … I may not have been able to touch these people or talk to them, but I tried to make some sort of sound in writing at least.
An old man would sit next to me on the bench and I’d write in the book:
Hello … my name is Gaza.
But no one could hear what I was writing. Then I wrote in capital letters. Letters that shouted! But they were still inaudible! The old man got up and left, and a young woman sat in his place. I turned a page in my book and tried again:
Hello … my name is Gaza.
My first three years in the Ship passed by like this, as I could do nothing but improve myself and look for ways to escape from my prison of loneliness. I made hundreds of plans for escape and used them all. I was caught every time, but I never gave up. It was hard to escape from a prison guarded by one’s own self! But sooner or later I’d make it.