I always feel happy. Do you know, why? Because, I expect nothing from anyone. Expectations always cause a hurt. Life is short. Therefore, love life. Be happy and continue to smile. Live only for yourself and; – Listen before you talk, – Think before you write, – Earn before you spend, – forgive before you pray, – feel before you hurt someone, – Love before you hate, – Try before you give up, – Live before you die. Such is life. Feel it, live it and like it.
Category Archives: Reflections
Steven Paul Jobs (1955-2011)
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
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Anaïs Nin (1903-1977), with thanks to “The Underground Poet’s Society, Inc.”
We write to taste life twice.
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Autobiographical Fiction, “Butrus” – Part 1
“Please don’t be mad at me. I don’t mean to bother you. And please know, I am very sorry, if I do. You see, I am an avid reader. Apparently, you are also one. When I saw you from the end of the hallway over there, looking immersed in your book atop that radiator piece –”
I started laughing. (It was more a giggle first.) All along, thinking I should frown upon his blunt approach to me. The minute he began to describe my strange seating choice, however, I couldn’t help but look up and laugh, almost out loud, feeling relieved he didn’t look anything like a serial killer or a Don Juan. Tall–above the top of my head, for sure, even though my radiator seat gave me extra inches and I wasn’t practicing the correct posture my mom always instructed me with. Anyway: tall. Slender, shapely body in a sporty outfit, slanting eyes of dark brown hues behind clear, stylish glasses. Light brown, mid-length hair–as straight as leak, as we phrase hair, lacking body in Turkish (at times, with jealousy for the no-show of those typical dense curls). I must have looked real strange, even comical, perched on the rather narrow marble sill the builders tended to put back then on top of public radiators in order to diffuse the heat beyond the point of burning someone who may accidently touch the open bars (in homes, each household was responsible for such mobile installments–a welcome addition to keep the teapot, a most essential household item for Turkish families, warm enough in any room for those early morning, afternoon and evening tea rituals). My giggle must have given him the relief he seemed to have needed–he was rather tense until my first laugh echoed in the high ceiling of the hallway opposite of the one he said he saw me from:
“May I please join you? Unless you are studying for an exam –,” he asked.
“Do have a seat. But please be careful. What you will be sitting on is, after all, a rare collection item.”
Now, we were both laughing–hard. His eyes almost disappeared into a thin line what I thought to be quite adorable. Faint laugh lines appeared below and on the corners of his lower eyelids. How both of his lips curled upward when the first laugh came to him gave me a sensation somewhere inside my body I could not locate. I knew, though, I had not yet felt that way before. The sound he made with his whole-body laugh was the first example for me for an attractive laughing style some people were talking about. I ended up sharing my radiator with him as well as what was to be the first of countless long conversations between us for the next most unforgettable four years to come:
“No, this is not a course book,” I blurted, fearing he may disappear fast right before my eyes–the way he had appeared, if I responded any slower, “with the library still under construction, whenever I find a quiet corner between classes, I read as much as I can from my favorite novels.”
“I am sorry to take away from your quiet time. I really am. But, I must also be frank: even if you’d ask me to leave, I can’t and won’t. Unless, of course, you decide to call the campus police on me. Come to think of it, even then, I won’t leave.”
I gave him a look what must have seemed to him like a gigantic question mark.
“You see, I didn’t actually see you from the hallway over there. At least, not for the first time today. I noticed you on the first day of the semester. It was a rather cold October day. You were dressed almost all in black: high-neck black top, black-belted black pants with a beige long cardigan on top – “
Now, I was worried. Alright, no Don Juan or a serial killer maybe, but what about a stalker? He was describing details about my appearance I myself no longer remembered. Without noticing my distracted moment, he went on:
“You were wearing a thick cord necklace with a large image of the sun in gold color, black medium-high heel boots and you had your hair down, just like today. You didn’t see me. I was behind you on the first day of registration. Waiting in line to the right of you, with students who didn’t request any advising. You were together with a woman. She was in the middle of a discussion with a counselor. Your attention was fixed on them. So, I didn’t talk to you then.”
He gave me such a sweet smile that I stopped thinking I may have a stalker right before me. How could those eyes, that diction, those refined mannerisms belong to someone who had issues those personalities do? No way! He behaved as balanced as I knew myself to be.
“I came with my mom that day,” I replied. “I still wasn’t sure what area of study I was going to enroll in. She was getting a crash course for both of us on several possibilities from one of the advisors on site.”
“Do you have a major yet?”
“Education. And you?”
“Sociology,” he blurted with enthusiasm, “with a possible second major in Philosophy.”
“I wish I could also study Philosophy but my parents think –”
What my parents, family members or neighbors would have thought of Butrus didn’t enter my mind for years. If a person could, indeed, be too happy, he made me into one. In every which way I knew how to be. The world was surely a magnificent place to live in with him.
“Hello, my rose, hello! Right on time, true? Oh, how I love our nightly routine!
To hear your voice once more before our day ends. Let me tell you something to smile about: the waiters at the Café are making strange eyes at me right now, while I am looking at them through the phone booth’s window, behind the ancient old ivy’s strategically thick curve. I can guess what they must be thinking: ‘Wasn’t this guy here just this evening, until closing time, sitting with his gorgeous girlfriend at their usual table? What’s he doing, still sticking around after hours?’
“Oh, so you hear them tell each other I am gorgeous, is that so?”
“Well, you ARE! I still can’t believe you are my girlfriend, Huban,” he almost shouted, “please, tell me one more time. For the night.”
“Hello, hello, announcement incoming: Butrus and I are boyfriend-girlfriend. Put that on record so that no one will ever forget it, okay?”
“Okay, Okay, I won’t ask you anymore. Until tomorrow. One more thing, though, before we say goodbye for the night: the guys at the Café must also be talking behind our backs, wondering what kind of a boyfriend and girlfriend team we are, not even holding hands –“
“Butrus, you know –“
“I know, I know. I am sorry for bringing it up like this. Could we, please, talk about it sometime, though?”
“You know how I am, how I was brought up. So, please –“
“Alright, alright,” he interrupted me, “I am being unfair to you. I’ll stop talking about us in that way.”
(Thank you for visiting. Please come back for the next parts. I hope you won’t be disappointed.)
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Autobiographical Fiction, “Huban” – Part 3
Another picture: goodbye Afyon, welcome Sinop! Goodbye black and white photographs, hello color! My aunt (my father’s only sister, who could have used some physical features of her oldest brother) still underneath her head and shoulder cover as in the Afyon photograph, was looking up with eyes half-closed. She was sitting next to my mom who had my newborn brother in her arms. Several photos later, though, my aunt’s hair was in full sight, her face was a canvas for color-rich make-up and she was clad in a notably fabric-shy dress. Sinop, however, was a tiny town! “How come my aunt shed her head-and shoulder cover?” I asked my father the minute I got a chance.
“Well, Huban, the Turkish sea towns have always been different in many aspects. Afyon is what it is: a place right in the heart of the rugged Anatolian land. If my family had lived in southern Turkey, or at the Aegean coast, they would have dressed like those in Sinop. That’s how populations adopted to the different landscapes of our country. But in all honesty, I must tell you how I always coveted to be like the Sinopians: very comfortable with their way of life and what their women and men wear. Afyon was never accepting to any variety in clothing for women. So, when your aunt came to live with us, she didn’t know anything beyond what was there in Afyon to see and to do; she hadn’t seen anything beyond her birthplace. Unlike me. I lived and worked in Istanbul. You know that. I changed quite a lot after my life in the big city. Especially, after meeting your mom, long before we were married, during our long waiting period. Living with your mom changed your aunt also. She opened up. By the way, did you know your mom made her that summer dress?”
“Why?”
“She wanted my sister to keep up with the times.”
“I had no idea she could do that!”
“She could and did. However, she wouldn’t even put it on at first. Then, a couple of days later she wanted to try it on, only in her room and only to show your mom. After a while, she wore it all the time!”
“What about your parents, Dad, and your brothers? Weren’t they mad about how different she began to look?”
“Oh yes, they were all upset to get such pictures of your aunt. But you see, as the only college graduate in my family, everyone always respected me very much, in what I did and was doing. In any situation, for that matter. So, they let your mom and me be; and let your aunt dress and live like the Sinopians. You know your grandmother and all her female cousins were wearing skimpy bathing suits whenever they went on a boat ride with boys? Not only your mother but her grandmother before her as well? And this, not only as children but also as teens and beyond? The locals have a saying: Sinop is the best place in Turkey for a woman to live in peace and full safety. I am happy and proud my only sister was also able to learn modernity from us and this town.”
Since the subject had just come to my mom’s sewing skills–one among her numerous other talents-my father said: “In summer, when you have no classes, you should learn how to saw, to knit, to cook and to bake from your mom. Like your mom.” A proper upbringing must also mean to have sawing, knitting, cooking and baking abilities, I had concluded back then and wondered what my father’s advice was for my brother. Didn’t Tamo deserve a proper upbringing?
My brother…With his birth weight of close to ten pounds, his simply beautiful, unwrinkled and white face, cute little nose –almost a duplicate of my mom’s, fully developed body –unlike my premature one, and gorgeously bald head (yes, baldness in babies was a must attraction back then, I was told many times), I was no contest for this darling creature who arrived here three years ahead of me. At some point in my early years–but only after I had safely grown out of my ugly, hideous, hairy and skinny birth-shell, had my father confessed how my mother first greeted me in an almost muted utterance: “Oh, my unfortunate girl!”
I always concluded her reaction was about the obvious difference between Tamo’s beauty and my intense ugliness. My father, though, would not say much on this matter. Every time the subject of my birth came up, he was overcome with sadness for his wife and for his mother-in-law whom he had dearly loved and respected. I, too, was overcome by sadness: my grandmother–only 48 years old–was at her deathbed with ovarian cancer at the onset of my mom’s pregnancy with me. There had been too many records of deaths by this type of cancer on my mother’s side. Still, she could not have ever imagined her own mother as a victim to this disease. She could not talk with us about those days without stopping in the middle of her first sentence, not being able to collect herself to go on beyond. She must have been traumatized by severe sadness, fearing her mother’s fate would also be mine–or her own, as it turned out to be. This morbid sentence had struck her three female cousins around the same age as my grandmother. I would have to eventually encounter the tremendous loss of my mother–she must have concluded, an ordeal she herself was facing when she was supposed to feel elated for expecting a new life. In the way she must have felt while she was pregnant with my brother.
Ach, Tamo…
My brother’s favorite pass-time activity was to make fun of me about the type of novels I read (not very different than what I later found out to be our mother’s all-time favorite–pre-dating my birth). It didn’t matter to him whether my choices were translations of the world classics, or the work of our own classical literary greats. Sometimes he would almost scold me, announcing my disappointment would be of tragic dimensions if I kept dreaming up life’s realities under the influence of those “ridiculous stories,” as he called them again and again to my face.
I am no longer in contact with my brother and haven’t been for a long while. If I had been, I would have told him in what striking ways my life events mirrored and continue to mirror those “ridiculous stories” he persistently frowned upon. Moreover, I would have let him in on one most vital fact about me, one for which his most imaginative moment won’t suffice. What a surreal extent our mother’s affection for and sorrow over the fate of the protagonist in her most favorite novel did and continue to intertwine with his sister’s–the life of his one and only sibling…
(Only this essay stops here. As for Huban’s tale, it will continue.)
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Democritus (ca. 460 B.C.-ca. 370 B.C.)
It is better to destroy one’s own errors than those of others.
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Diogenes of Sinope (412-323 B.C.)
I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.
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hülyaswritings 