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She wished she could go back and tell everyone that the dead did not die instantly, that they could, in fact, continue to reflect on things, including their own demise. People would be scared if they learned this, she reckoned. She certainly would have been when she was alive.
they assumed that you automatically became a wife or a husband the moment you said, ‘I do!’ But the truth was, it took years to learn how to be married.
The possibility of an immediate and wholesale decimation of civilization was not half as frightening as the simple realization that our individual passing had no impact on the order of things, and life would go on just the same with or without us. Now that, she had always thought, was terrifying.
Just because you think it’s safe here, it doesn’t mean this is the right place for you, her heart countered. Sometimes where you feel most safe is where you least belong.
Tight-lipped, the old woman accepted her payment. In her experience, getting through life as unscathed as possible depended to a large extent on two fundamental principles: knowing the right time to arrive and knowing the right time to leave.
sunflowers in fields, tilting their necks longingly towards a shifting sun, like lovers who knew they would never be loved the way they wished. Leila was fascinated by these images. Some of
They respected him the way cruel and powerful people have been respected since the dawn of time – with abundant fear, and not a speck of love.
Once they secretly cut the rope that kept the animal fastened to the shed. But the ram did not break loose as they had planned. After
meandering here and there in search of fresh grass, it returned to the same spot, finding the familiarity of captivity more reassuring than the strange call of freedom.
Watching the women from the hallway, Leila was momentarily transfixed, searching in their movements and interactions for clues as to her own future. She was convinced, back then, that when she grew up she would be like them. A toddler hanging on her leg, a baby in her arms, a husband to obey, a house to keep shipshape – this would be her life. Mother had told her that when she was born, the midwife had thrown her umbilical cord on the school roof so that she would become a teacher, but Baba was not keen for that to happen.
Not any more. A while ago, he had met a sheikh who had explained to him that it was better for women to stay at home and to cover themselves on the rare occasions they needed to go out. Nobody wanted to buy tomatoes that had been touched, squeezed and sullied by other customers. Better if all the tomatoes in
the market were carefully packaged and preserved. Same with women, the sheikh said. The hijab was their package, the armour that protected them fr...
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Little did she yet understand that the end of childhood comes not when a child’s body changes with puberty, but when her mind is finally able to see her
life through the eyes of an outsider.
she realized that things were not always what they seemed. Just as the sour could hide beneath the sweet, or vice versa, within every sane mind there was a trace of insanity, and within the depths of madness glimmered a seed of lucidity.
How could the same shape that separated and trapped one human being become a symbol of ultimate freedom and sheer bliss for someone else?
Her mother had once told her that childhood was a big, blue wave that lifted you up, carried you forth and, just when you thought it would last forever, vanished from sight. You could neither run after it nor bring it back.
The world is no longer the same for the one who has fallen in love, the one who is at its
very centre; it can only spin faster from now on.
Upstairs in her room she looked at her face in the cracked mirror. In the reflection she thought she saw, for a fleeting moment, her past self. The girl she had been back in Van stared at her with wide-open eyes, an orange hula hoop in her hand. Slowly, compassionately, she smiled at that girl, finally making peace with her.
The day was scented with the perfume of the Judas trees, imbuing everything with fresh hope and renewed courage. But now that she felt buoyant, as if she finally belonged somewhere, and now that she had allowed herself this rare moment of lightness, Leila was seized by that familiar wariness, the need to be guarded.
It needed to be: Know yourself and know an arsehole when you see one. Knowledge of self and knowledge of arseholes had to go hand in hand. Still,
flirting with the barman in Karavan. Pomegranate
juice, lime juice, vodka, crushed mint, cardamom seeds and a generous splash of whisky.
A word misunderstood could be an excuse for bloodshed. Istanbul made killing easy, and dying even easier.
Perhaps a person’s thoughts survived longer than his heart, his dreams longer than his pancreas, his wishes longer than his gall-bladder … If that were true, shouldn’t human beings be considered semi-alive as long as the memories that shaped them were still rippling, still part of this world? Though he might not know the answers, not yet, he valued the quest for them. He would never tell this to anyone, because they wouldn’t understand, but he took
Funerals are for the living, that’s for sure. It’s important to organize a decent burial. Otherwise you can never heal inside, don’t you think?
‘Grief is a swallow,’ he said. ‘One day you wake up and you think it’s gone, but it’s only migrated to some other place, warming its feathers. Sooner or later, it will return and perch in your heart again.’
Nostalgia Nalan believed there were two kinds of families in this world: relatives formed the blood family; and friends, the water family.
Istanbul was an illusion. A magician’s trick gone wrong. Istanbul was a dream that existed solely in the minds of hashish eaters. In truth, there was no Istanbul. There were multiple Istanbuls – struggling, competing, clashing, each perceiving that, in the end, only one could survive.
Imperial Istanbul versus plebeian Istanbul; global Istanbul versus parochial Istanbul; cosmopolitan Istanbul versus philistine Istanbul; heretical Istanbul versus pious Istanbul; macho Istanbul versus a feminine Istanbul that adopted Aphrodite – goddess of desire and also of strife – as its symbol and protector
People always told her to fight depression. But I have
a feeling that as soon as we see something as our enemy we make it stronger. Like a boomerang. You hurl it away, it comes back and hits you with equal force. Maybe what you need is to befriend your depression.’
Even children knew this was not true. Rules were sometimes rules. At other times, depending on the circumstances, they were empty words, absurd phrases or jokes without a punchline. Rules were sieves with holes so large that all sorts of things could pass through; rules were sticks of chewing gum that had long lost their taste but could not be spat out; rules in this country, and across the entire Middle East, were anything but rules.
the Cemetery of the Companionless. Afghans, Syrians, Iraqis, Somalis, Eritreans, Sudanese, Nigerians, Libyans, Iranians, Pakistanis – they were buried so far from where they were born, laid to rest haphazardly wherever space was available. Around them, on all sides, were Turkish citizens who, though neither asylum seekers nor undocumented migrants,
It pained her that the same lift could just as easily take others all the way down. The teachings that warmed her heart and brought her close to all humanity, regardless of creed, colour or nationality, could be interpreted in such a way that they divided, confused and separated human beings, sowing seeds of enmity and bloodshed.
If she were summoned by God one day, and had a chance to sit in His presence, she would love to ask Him just one simple question: ‘Why did you allow Yourself to be so widely misunderstood, my beautiful and merciful God?’
During her long, arduous transition from the outward appearance of a man to the woman inside that she already was, it had been her hands that had frustrated her the most. Ears and hands, they were the hardest parts to change, her surgeon had explained.
Jameelah began to sing a lullaby in her mother tongue, her voice as clear and penetrating as an African sky. Listening to her, Nalan, Sabotage and Zaynab122 all felt the warmth of the song without having to understand a single word. There was something strangely comforting in the way different cultures had arrived at similar customs and melodies, and in how, all around the world, people were being rocked in the arms of loved ones in their moments of distress.
It seemed to him that he had always been too late for everything. He had to stop hiding, pretending, separating his life into compartments, and find a way to bring his many realities together. He should introduce his friends to his family and his family to his friends, and if his family did not accept his
Nalan thought that one of the endless tragedies of human history was that pessimists were better at surviving than optimists, which meant that, logically speaking, humanity carried the genes of people who did not believe in humanity.
