Good Morning Ester (Morning, Day 11)

Strangely enough, I woke up well this morning. It didn't feel as though I had downed so many glasses of rakı. Just as I was putting it down to the few moments I had spent sitting on the balcony and sobering up last night, I looked up at the cuckoo clock and realised it was nearly noon. Well, if you sleep till that late, of course you're going to feel good… Breakfast must have already ended in the restaurant downstairs so I called reception and ordered a cheese omelette, toast and coffee and then went into the bathroom to wash. The food arrived while I was shaving. Ihsan brought it up on a tray himself, along with the day's papers and…. What was that? A gift? A phonographic record…?

‘A gift from Reşit Bey’, he smiled. ‘A German guest forgot it in his room so we thought you should have it as you would appreciate it more than anyone.’

I thanked him and picked it up. It was Puccini's La Boheme. A love story set in Paris… The story of events in a garret, just like the story we envisaged for ourselves… A sad story, yes, harrowingly sad, but also a real love story, not one that had been cut off halfway like ours.

Ihsan placed the tray and its contents on the table and made his way out while I placed the record on the gramophone. After a few hisses and crackles, the music began. Of course I thought of you, of the grand hopes we had lost, of our younger days, of those youthful exuberances that would never be relived… When the first part of the opera ended, my appetite had vanished. Once more, I was spiralling down into my wretched misery.

I was looking for you, I was collaborating with dark, mysterious characters whom I did not know in order to find you, and yet a voice inside me was telling me that we would never meet again. If you had come to Istanbul, wouldn't you have called me? Otherwise why would someone like you even come to Istanbul? You would need a reason.