The city of Kars and the people in it—it was as if they weren’t real. Everyone wanted to die or to leave. But I had nowhere left to go. It was as if I’d been erased from history, banished from civilization. The civilized world seemed far away and I couldn’t imitate it. God wouldn’t even give me a child who might do all the things I had not done, who might release me from my misery by becoming the westernized, modern, self-possessed individual I had always dreamed of becoming.”
Existential dread
