Mercifully, we approach Yenikapı. On the pier I see men with hands like ropes. They look like they could grab a ship by one end and haul it in with their bare hands. Their job is a matter of life and death, and so they are animated yet earnest, running to attend the scene like surgeons, readying the pier for docking in the nick of time. I move quickly, dragging my friend away from the boring guy and onto the pier. Having extricated ourselves, we take to the streets.
Silently and swiftly, we make our way to the tiny bar beneath the railway, cramming ourselves into an already packed sardine can. We turn into two dirty beards, gawking at an erotic flick on a twenty-inch TV screen, lined up on high stools underneath fluorescent lights. Even though it is filthy and flickering, holding on for dear life, it’s still too bright for a place this obscene, I think. It is on to announce to the outside world that in here, everything’s all right.
A man eating rice pilaf with chickpeas from a street vendor, probably taking in a quick dinner before he heads home for the night, is glad that everything’s all right; he takes a peek inside the bar as he shovels down his final spoonful of pilaf, and relaxes upon seeing that the other members of his sex are not up to anything new. They’re just like he left them, right where they belong. Rakı is still the belle de jour. He wipes his greasy hands on his pants and disappears, leaving behind a cloud of cigarette smoke. Now you see him, now you don’t...
Inside the bar, the volume of the conversation is low. Eyes are squinted. The TV murmurs on. Droopy lips and gaping mouths stare at the small screen, where a couple is shown in compromising positions, until a train passes overhead, sending a quake through the bar and prompting the viewers to regain their tight-lipped composure.
My friend and I leave the bar. We go our separate ways, postponing a stroll by the water to another time. As I walk alone on the cracked sidewalks, I feel a desire to find a woman, to make the night bearable, to pour my heart out in the filthiest hotel room in the world. I see a figure standing next to the road. Someone whose back is turned to me, someone with long hair. Even the way I walk becomes more erect. I check my pocket to make sure I have enough cash on me. I croak out a hello with all the courage I can muster. When the figure turns around, my knees almost give out. It doesn’t have a face, but a deep, dark void, with pitch black eyes, eyes that are beastly — not human. What I had mistaken for hair is a black pelt enveloping its body from head to toe. I am scared shitless. It approaches, floating, feetless. A chilly vapor precedes it. And a muffled scream. Then a sobbing sigh. I lower my head, covering my face with my hands. I quickly turn away and start to run.
Without quite understanding what I have just seen, as if not yet feeling the pain of dismemberment, I slow to a walk. I’m stunned. I know it is following me, I can feel the cold vapors on my sweating back. I speed up again. I want to leave it behind, I want it to disappear. I want to be left alone with the snack shops and their garishly colorful signs, with that dark, wilted guy selling sunglasses on the corner.
Suddenly I get my wish; I look behind me and it’s no longer there. Relieved, I continue along my way. I greet the guy selling glasses, and then pick up some sunflower seeds at the snack store, savoring the normalcy of a cliché exchange with the greasy-bearded guy at the counter. I try to reassure myself that everything’s all right. But still, I can’t shake that feeling.
Pounding the sidewalk, I start to get the shivers. There’s something strange going on. It’s like certain things are out of place on the street. Like certain things are missing. Like everybody’s so distracted by details they fail to notice that the huge building at the plaza has been removed, and because they can’t see it, I’m afraid of noticing it too. It feels weird, and creepy. I look around and notice that there don’t seem to be many women. I take a second look and realize that there are in fact no women. But I was just here yesterday and there were plenty of women; hailing cabs, returning from weddings with their husbands, sitting with their boyfriends in hamburger joints, whispering gossip and laughing boisterously. Girls revealing tattoos to one another, replicating vapid Hollywood banter, cursing their fathers. Of course, not all of them were lookers, but at least they were there, where they were supposed to be. I glance up at the apartment buildings, but there isn’t a single woman dangling a basket to the downstairs grocer. Could this whole thing be a curse? I prefer to blame the rakı. But I’m just not convinced.
The more I walk, the drier my lips get. I pass a crowd waiting for the bus. The crowd reeks, almost of death, and I turn the other way to avoid the smell. A huge, frowning eyebrow of hairy bodies. Just yesterday, this place was totally different. How can this be? I’m searching for a woman who’s looking to go somewhere. With me, without me, it doesn’t matter anymore. I’m growing tired, starting to feel strangled. It’s like the oxygen’s being sucked out of the air.
I want to go home, to run into some girl, any girl, from my neighborhood. With a tram full of guys, I go up to Beyazıt Plaza. The Istanbul University dorms are up here. There must be some female students around. Some of them must be out getting a bite to eat, cramming with friends at a café, preparing for the next day’s exam.
Walking along the plaza, my disappointment only grows. There isn’t a single female student. It’s like I’m on a film set. Like this is Candid Camera, and somebody somewhere is watching me and laughing his ass off. But this is too much. Nobody deserves this. I continue along my way, like a radar beam, beneath the harsh lights of shops selling meatballs, grilled sandwiches, and döner. I swiftly pass the hole in the wall that sells tripe soup — slim chance of seeing a woman in there — and try to find the girl who works in the next shop, selling colorful jewelry and posters of landscapes. She looks you in the face when she talks, makes you happy you’re alive. Every time I stop by her shop, I do my best to charm her. My speech becomes more refined, my laughter takes on a different tone. Not because I expect anything from her. But because she gives me the energy to make it through the rest of the day.
But when I reach the shop, what I find hits me with the force of a fist to the face. The girl has been replaced by a beady-eyed brute who’s clearly let the place go to seed. He’s removed all those bright pictures of Istanbul, which the girl had taken such great pains to display, and carelessly stacked them behind his chair, turning the charming little store into an ugly warehouse. Disgusted, I turn and leave, the memory of the bead girl trailing after me, morphing into a hundred other men unable to forget her smile, suffocating their longing in cigarette smoke.
I’m looking for a woman, any woman. I couldn’t care less about sex. I just want to pass a woman on the street. Sevim Teyze’s café comes to mind. I think of going there, to chat with Sevim Teyze, to relax and have some tasty pastries and coffee. But what I really need is to hear the sound of her sweet, soothing voice.
Drenched in sweat, I reach what should be Sevim Teyze’s café. I don’t recognize a thing, and it sends a chill down my spine. I look at the flower pot next to the door, there in its rightful place, but it has a wad of phlegm in it. And two cigarette butts. Some guy with sausage-shaped fingers is manning the counter. As I walk through the door, I wish with all my might that everything would snap back to normal then and there. But it doesn’t. I approach Sausage Fingers, in fear.