| . | Three Candles
We were walking to the bus stop, as has been our routine every morning for over a year or so. It was cold and drizzly. The air we breathed was coming out of our mouths like a big cloud of steam and moving ahead of us creating a light fog through which we were walking. He walked fast, I was trying to keep up with him in my high heel boots. "You aren't cold are you?" he asked. "No," I said. He was wearing a duffel coat and a hat. His moustache shone with freezing water particles from the humid air and that gave him a look of a character in a Jack London story. I looked at him. He looked at me. "We like tough weather, don't we?" he said seeking for a confirmation. "Yes," I said. "We winter people have steeled faces, we don't feel cold as much as others do!" It was one of the things we shared: our winter birthdays. He somehow made it a point of brag. "It makes a difference," he said, "the month you are born in shapes up who you are. If you are a winter child that hardens you from the very beginning." "I'm sure it does," I said. He smiled. I smiled back at him. I put my arm into his. We passed by the newsstand, I glanced at the headlines of the morning papers. They were still outraged with the assassination of the eminent journalist. We all were. "Terrible," I said. He knew what I was talking about. "They don't want this country to progress," he said, "they can't stand our abundance of resources and potential to develop." 'They' were our internal and external enemies. He would say that all the time. To him, we were surrounded by 'them', and it was our duty to distinguish them. In fact, it was one of my duties to fight against them. "Ignorance, too," he said, "ignorance is what makes these people commit those inhuman crimes." Terror was rising, journalists, students, politicians, people on the street fell victims to the bombs placed at public places. Where was this country going? "Things will get better when everybody does his or her share. Never despair, there are good people in the world as well, and they are in the majority but the harmful ones make a lot of noise." ¨We had become closer to one another during my boarding school years, especially during my junior year. I was already eighteen, and he was taking me seriously. I felt myself all matured up and much older than I was. I was ready to finish school and go out to fight with all the injustices of the world. He would visit me at school on the weekends. We would talk about everything, politics, history, daily events, and mostly philosophy in the visitors' parlor. Usually, there would be nobody there, just the two of us. He would bring me some small treats and food, mostly my favorite snacks. It was a weekly ritual for me to expect that call from the operator telling me that I had a visitor. I would run down the stairs from my dormitory room, run through the long and dark hallways that would make me feel as if I was running away from a ghost in a haunted house, and then would come to that big Hall with a shiny marble floor that looked like an entrance to a far-eastern temple. He would stand there waiting for me, in his suit and tie, always looking his best. I would run into his arms. I would hold his hand and take him to the parlor if the weather was not good. When it was sunny we would take a walk to the plateau where the most enchanting view of the world would lay its dazzling beauty right in front of us, the Bosphorus, as we looked from Europe to Asia. Then, we would talk as we walked like Aristotelian peripatetics. He had answers to all my questions. When we stayed inside, he would do most of the talking, I would listen to him as if he was one of my professors, lecturing on an important course topic, about life basically. He had such a clear mind. He would make it sound so interesting with all the history and humor sprinkled wittily among his words that I would not know how fast time went by. He would never stay longer than an hour. "Well, back to your studies, make the best use of your time here, read, and study and think." Life was full of challenges and we were here on earth to meet them. "Harder the battle sweeter the victory is," he would say, "and know thyself. Once you know who you are and what you can do go for it if it is for a good cause. And do not forget, accumulate as much knowledge as you can till you are twenty-five, you won't be found credible if you start preaching others earlier than that." ¨ Those seven years had gone by full of happiness and tears. Many things changed both in this country and in our lives. Due to the violence on the streets and at the universities I was not at school any more. I had a well-paying job at an international company. As for him, he somehow felt sick one night and got hospitalized. When his health deteriorated he did not take himself seriously, he thought it was not a big deal of concern. His stay in the hospital gave no sign of recovery for weeks. Suddenly, one day he opened his eyes and said he felt great and wanted to check out. So he did. I visited him frequently and thought about what would happen if I lost him. Nothing was the same any longer. The only thing that remained to be the same was our morning chats. Seven years of close companionship, seven years of understanding one another despite some tiffs and small ups and downs from time to time. That year, the magic year in my life -- and maybe that was why I was feeling more and more comfortable and confident next to him lately --I had just turned twenty-five. We were almost at the bus stop; our destinations were in two different directions; he would go southbound and I up north. He would take a bus and I would take a taxi. He wouldn't take a taxi, he'd rather take a bus like most people did, public life should be shared with the public, and otherwise you would feel lonely in this world. I waited with him till the bus came; "I can't imagine how such a decent man is killed that brutally, he was a little over fifty." I said going back to the assassination of the journalist. "You're right, he was fifty-one, at the peak of his career, just a year younger than me. Life is full of unexpected twists and turns," he said, " try to do all you can while you can, the good things though, the kinds of things that will not hurt others, and that you won't regret." The bus came, I wished him a productive day at work, that was part of our ritual too. He joined in the line of people who were taking the same bus, he looked back at me and I waved at him, the bus took off, first slowly then moving faster. I stood there for a second or two before I hailed a cab. I was thinking about the walk and our talk. I remembered our hour-long conversations back at the yellow parlor in the Marble Hall. I never said I loved him. He never said he loved me either. But I knew very well that he loved me and I loved him dearly, he was my hero and I was his light. The only thing I did not know then was that this was our last morning together. ¨ The routine of the office went on till after lunch. When the phone rang I was ready for another one of those calls where I had to say "the computer print-outs are not ready due to the system failure." But the person on the other end of the line was giving me directions to a state hospital checking my name and his, which he said he was reading from his phone book as the person to call in case of emergency. I found myself on the street hailing a cab. I was not ready for anything bad, "Oh, please God please, no bomb attacks, no accidents, please!" I was trying to keep my hopes high. I rushed through the doors, I found a nurse, I gave her my name and his, I looked at her deep in the eye and asked, "where's he?" She looked at me and then lowered her eyes, without saying anything she led me to a room and opened the door and stood right outside holding it open for me. There he was, lying on a stretcher, in his plaid shirt, his hand with the watch on his chest, eyes closed, looking like he was in a deep sleep. He was in a deep sleep, for he never woke up again. His heart played him a trick and stopped with no advance warning just as he was getting ready for lunch, he was found by one of his colleagues at a sleeping position at his desk. Every February 7th, I light three candles: one for him, one for all those good people who died before him, and one as my promise to him to keep on his light. This year the ritual has slightly changed: I'll light a candle for all other good people who died before him; my daughter will light a candle for the grandfather she never got to see, and my son (*) will light a candle --the light he wanted us to carry on. Yasemin Alptekin Oğuzertem
(*) His name is Ishik7 February 2000 - Ankara |