Derin Güntekin
I woke up to a relatively cold day in mid-November. The moment I saw the weather, I knew I was in for a tough day. Just as I’d predicted, it took me an hour and a half to get to school in this weather, and it was still raining heavily. I’d already lost my concentration by the first lesson.
But I love my desk at school. It’s by the window and at the back; it’s far enough away from the teacher, so it’s a perfect retreat for me. It’s like a haven where I can daydream and write in peace. Actually, because of my failing grades, I came to school today determined to listen to the lessons… until the raindrops hitting the window took me back to that night.
Now, if anyone is reading these lines, I want to share my experiences with you, a stranger. Perhaps because I don’t want to tell the people I know, or because I’m confident no one will even want to read it, I want to write.
In case anyone reads what I write, it wouldn’t be right to begin my story without telling a little about myself.
My name is Ada. Let me say this from the outset: I don’t like my name at all. Ever since a book I read, where a novelist with the same name emphasised its dictionary meaning in my language —” a piece of land surrounded by water on four sides”— I’ve become even more dissatisfied with my name.
In this vast city called Istanbul, I’m a girl who, like many others who feel the same way, doesn’t know why I’m here, just trying to survive in the chaos of the city. My family says I take life too seriously at my age; they think I should be experiencing life instead of feeling so much at sixteen. They believe I’ll have plenty of time to consider it later! As if the word “don’t think ” means being able to stop thinking!
Whenever I hear these and such sentences, I start to think about where my own life begins and where my shared life with people living in the same time period ends.
The sadness I feel after a chaotic fight with my best friend or family is intertwined with the sadness I feel for the children I just saw on social media who were killed somewhere in the world, or the sadness I feel for the stray animals being slaughtered in the country I live in.
This situation makes me reflect on the fact that all my contemporaries and I experience the same spiritual turmoil, regardless of time, within a shared consciousness. Our shared experiences are embedded in the universe’s consciousness as records of our time, and these records are intertwined, passed down through generations, like the strands in our DNA.
All these and similar thoughts prevent me from staying present and make me feel as if I were waiting at a bus stop, only for the bus to never arrive.
I’ve more or less summed up my own state of mind for you.
That day, while I was in a similar state of mind, my father’s voice jolted me out of my reverie. This time, he firmly stated that I absolutely had to visit my grandmother today to celebrate her 80th birthday, which he’d been reminding me of since last week.
The next day after school, I took the subway and got off at the station near my grandmother’s house. I hadn’t bought any gifts, but first I stopped by the bakery she loved and bought a small, one-person cake. Then I stopped by the florist around the corner from her house and bought a bouquet of fragrant flowers. Scented flowers were especially important. My grandmother always kept fresh, fragrant flowers in her home, and when asked why, she would say, “When I close my eyes, I breathe in the scent of the land where I was born.” Then, with a sigh of apparent sadness, she would drift off into the past, if only for a short moment.
By the way, I don’t want you to misunderstand my reluctance to visit my grandmother. I actually love her very much; it’s just that the old house, old furniture, and old age are tiring me.
The moment I enter that house, I sense that the time periods we’ve lived in aren’t the same, and I can’t find her belongings in the time we’re living in. It’s as if she were living in the past with the same stubbornness as I was insistent on living in the future. Even the distances we lived in were different; the only thing we had in common was the closeness of our hearts.
The thoughts that swirled through my mind throughout the journey were brought to me by the loud chime of the doorbell. My grandmother opened the door a moment later, and as always, she kissed my neck, saying, “My island scent,” and hugged me, welcoming me in. She happily took the flowers and cake from my hands and went to the kitchen while I headed towards the living room. There, nestled among the antiques, I sat in the comfortable, cushioned armchair I’d loved to sit in as a child. Refusing to recall all the memories of this house I’d visited so often as a child, I chose instead to plan what I needed to do when I got home.
A moment later, my grandmother appeared at the living room door, carrying a large tray with two teacups, service plates, a cake in the middle, and a wide, heartfelt smile. As soon as she set the tray down, she immediately replaced the flowers in the vase at the centre of the table with the ones I’d bought on my way in. As she always did, she placed the vase back in its place at the centre of the table, gently closing her eyes and inhaling, as if to absorb the scent in every cell of her body.
Then she sat down next to me and, slowly, as if to make the already slow time even longer, served the cake and tea. As she divided the cake, I calculated how little I needed to eat over the next two days to avoid gaining weight, while she ate with gusto, as if life were a cake to be eaten with relish.
In the first moment of emptiness when my grandmother didn’t speak, I said, “I have a lot of classes, I have to go,” as if running to the front door. When I turned around, my grandmother wasn’t there; I wanted to leave that place as quickly as possible, that house where time passed so slowly that I felt as if staying any longer would wear me out. After what seemed like two minutes, my grandmother came to me and took my face in her hands. It was as if, by doing so, she was slowing down the time period I was living in to her own, trying to keep us in the exact moment. Her eyes had a different expression than usual; happiness and sadness were looking at me simultaneously. While stroking my hair with one hand, she pulled an envelope from her pocket with the other, placing it between my palms, along with a small box beside it. Her hands were in my palms, and her hands were on mine.
Those moments felt so long for some reason! Had time really slowed down?
Then, as if letting go of a lover’s hand, she reluctantly let go of mine. I might be interpreting the details more emotionally as I write, but that’s precisely how I felt; she looked me in the eye, as if she were saying goodbye to life along with me, and kissed me on the cheek, saying, “These are your trusts now.” Before she could even kiss me on the other cheek, I haphazardly shoved the things she’d given me into the front pocket of my bag and hurried off toward the fast-paced life I needed to catch up on.
Today marks ten days since I last saw my grandmother, and I learned she had been admitted to intensive care last night. I ran straight to my room, locked the door, and lay down on my bed. For minutes, I thought of my grandmother, the endless games of hide-and-seek we played in that old house; most of all, I remembered the scent of flowers. “Yes, now I knew that from this day on, every flower in my life would smell of my grandmother.”
Suddenly, I remembered the things she’d given me the last day I’d seen her, things that had been with me in the front compartment of my bag ever since. I hurried to grab my bag from the floor in front of the door and went back to bed. The box and envelope I’d taken from the bag were now in my hands, just as they had been the last time I’d seen them, but with one thing missing: the hands that had been clasped around my palms were gone.
For some reason, I chose to open the envelope first, not the box. Inside was a yellowed, black-and-white photograph. The girl in the photo was standing by the sea, wearing a halter dress. She hadn’t posed; the shot felt more like a moment captured. It was as if someone she’d fallen in love with had taken her picture, unexpectedly. Why did I think that? It was because I saw love in that look.
Her light hair waving in the wind, her smile captivating despite the earrings shining in her ears —it was a photograph of a moment only a lover could capture.
Then my hand reached for the box; when I opened the tiny jewellery box, what I saw wasn’t just an old pair of earrings, hanging like a time traveller. They were my grandmother’s earrings, the ones she’d said, “I’ll never take them off my ears until I say goodbye.” That’s when I realised the truth: That day I last saw her, she’d said goodbye to me at the door of her house, my face in her hands, and now I was wiping away the tears streaming down my other cheek, the ones I hadn’t offered her that day.
Where am I?! With that question, I opened my eyes. I know I’m actually asleep, but I’m standing in the middle of a room in an unfamiliar place. Even though I insist on closing my eyes, when I open them, instead of waking up in my bed, I’m still standing in the same place, in the same position. I’m conscious, but not as I should be, or as I think I should be. I’m feeling all my senses, my heart is beating like crazy, but I can’t wake up!
After a while, “as if testament to our species’ ability to adapt to any situation,” my heartbeat begins to slow. I feel the coolness of the bare ground beneath my feet. My presence in the environment becomes increasingly vivid; however, I cannot see my body with my eyes, only feel it with all my senses.
I’m in the middle of a white room; my consciousness is picking out some familiar objects, along with the walls and curtains, without me even knowing where I recognise them from. I can hear crickets chirping outside. The windows are open, the sheer curtains are swaying gently, and the summer heat is seeping into my bones. And yet, hadn’t I just woken up to a rainy winter day this morning?
Reflexively, I turn toward the front door; the fragrant floral scents, accompanied by the warm breeze, fill me, reminding me of the flowers at my grandmother’s house. At that moment, a flash of association stops me, makes me look back, and I realise that some of the objects are from my grandmother’s house. My mind is completely confused: either this dream is injecting familiar objects into my mind, or my consciousness, which I never believed existed within my body but was part of the collective consciousness of all time, is playing a very unusual game on me.
Throughout all this, I never fail to be amazed at our multilayered ability to think, even if I’m dreaming.
Then, in this place, I knew without knowing it —like a sleepwalker —I first passed a flower-filled garden and found myself in a narrow street. I feel the warm stones beneath my bare feet. I fly unseen, like a spirit searching for its body, through narrow streets that my legs seem to know only too well, without knowing where I’m going.
It’s as if I’m invisible; I practically exist without my body. All my senses are much stronger than usual; the only thing missing is my body, but the strange thing is, I don’t feel like I exist without it.
Finally, I arrive at a boundless beach. At first, I’m captivated by the beauty of the landscape; the pristine white sand beneath my bare feet evokes warm, familiar sensations within me, as if touching a longed-for skin. Suddenly, I sink to the ground, my knees weakening, as the scent of the sea envelops me like a warm breath. I’m reminded of my grandmother smelling flowers; like her, I inhale the sea’s scent relentlessly.
Then, for the first time, I can see my hands and body, not just feel them; my hands are in my lap, and I’m holding something tightly between them. It’s as if these hands aren’t mine anymore; I’m wearing a light blue dress with straps, and in that moment, I realise this body isn’t mine. I carry the consciousness of that young girl living this moment within her body, and, strangely, I can perceive it through my own consciousness. I’m not afraid; although I’m shocked, I remain calm, and I choose to gently surrender myself to all the sensations of the body I’m in. Acceptance of the unknown replaces my anxiety; I live in the moment.
I let myself explore, as if slowly comprehending a movie I’d entered halfway through and started watching. The first memory my consciousness, now merged with my new body, possesses is of my first day on this beach with the man I love.
I’m wearing the same dress I saw in the photo my grandmother gave me; my long, brown hair, loose, waves like gold, shimmering in the bright sun. I feel my feet soaking in the sea. My lover opens the jewellery box I’d held between my hands before falling asleep and hands it to me; now, two magnificent, sparkling stones dazzle me with the sun’s reflection. I joyfully slip the earrings into my ears and, telling my lover, “As long as I love you, that is, as long as I live,” I wrap my arms around his neck.
Then we take a long walk on the beach, lost in our youthful fantasies. Suddenly, my lover takes a picture of me with his camera, which he never leaves without, and says, “I’ve locked you in time; now you’ll stay in love with me forever. ” And indeed, that’s precisely what happens.
Suddenly, time seems to slip beneath my feet; at first, I think I’ve woken up. Yet, I’m on the same beach, in the same place, but this time, in a different time. I’m wearing an old black dress; in my hands, I hold the photo my lover took and gave me the day he gifted her earrings. But this time, the joy that burned with love inside me is replaced by an indescribable grief. I burst into tears; before I can deliver the photo, without ever reading the inscription I’d written on the back, without ever knowing it, the love of my life is gone…
“Niko is leaving; my one and only love, my memories, my very existence, board that ship and head off to an unknown war.”
Before I can even get up from my seat, I cry for what feels like hours, days, years, for a man I’ve never met. All the pain, love, and grief of the body I’m in is now inside me. When I calm down a bit, I turn the back of the photo in my hand and read the inscription:
“I won’t take off my earrings until you return, my love. Then, when our Ada becomes a young woman, we will entrust her with the memory of our love.”
Now, with complete clarity, I open my eyes in my own bed. Suddenly, I jump up, turn over the photograph on the bed, and see the text I read in my dream, years old and worn.
As I read the text, I realised, “I knew what I was experiencing couldn’t be a dream,” and quickly got dressed. Despite the weather I’d just experienced, I rushed out into the cold, rainy street. I caught the first taxi I could find and headed straight for the hospital.
Now I’m looking at you, Grandma, through the window in front of the intensive care unit. But this time, I’m looking at you the way you’re looking at me; I’m talking to you, lost in the fluctuating breath of the machine you’re connected to, realising that life is fleeting, that time is nothing but an illusion.
I know now how you hold on to your memories. I know now what the few items you managed to bring back from that beautiful island meant to you. I feel the most profound regret of not being able to tell my grandfather that you were carrying the baby with that photograph.
As you always say: “Life is partly about the regrets we feel for what we didn’t understand at the time.”
Maybe I had a dream, perhaps I witnessed an ancestral moment from humanity’s collective consciousness; it doesn’t matter what it was or how it happened anymore. I’m here, in this moment, and I love you so much. Don’t worry, your earrings are now in my ears; they’ll continue to shine, despite life.
Sadly, Niko never returned from that war; his body was never found. My grandmother, however, was exiled from her beloved island with my father in her womb, and sadly, she never saw either her beloved Niko or her island again.
But she always kept her promise: She entrusted the earrings she wore until her death, not to the child she was carrying, but to me, the first girl born in a generation, and, just as in my childhood, she went into hiding until the day I found her.
Last word: I now love my name, Grandma…