Master of Puppets: Seeds of Fate

By Nam?k GÜLSÜN

"Master of Puppets" is a modern day legend. It is an adventure presenting a colourful exhibition of emotions, challenges, hardships and simple miracles of life with a little sprinkle of magic dust, we call fiction. You will witness magnetic characters and join them in this unbelievably believable journey through wisdom, friendship and love. In the end it is simply about being human and trying to be a better version of a human being. Master of Puppets- Seed of Fate, is the first episode of this epic journey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Feb 14, 2012
• ISBN: 9781467881708

Nam?k GÜLSÜN

Namik Gulsun is a professional, working in the City of London. He has been writing short stories for a decade, before he started to work on the “Master of Puppets”. This is his debut novel which he completed in six years. Though his fascination for languages and cultures takes him to different parts of the world frequently; he lives in London and enjoys the amazing atmosphere of this truly fantastic city.

Book preview

Contents

Preface

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

In the loving memory of my brother

Faruk Gulsun

XXVIII VI MMXI

Preface

W h at is a story? To me, it is an ‘alternative reality’. And this is your invitation to it… !

Since the streamline of images showed up in the corridors of my mind; I was charged with the duty of creating this alternative reality, using words instead of bricks and emotions instead of cement. For six years, I witnessed my mind instructing my fingers to translate that streamline of images into words as if affected by hypergraphia and put them in order to form sentences, like putting bricks together to create a colourful yet simple, enigmatic yet familiar structure.

What you will find inside is neither a wonderland with a promise of crazy entertainment nor a deep intellectual experience. Just an amazing journey through romance, wisdom, friendship, hope and above all ‘Love’. A journey which will remind you the simple things that really matter. The things which were in your life, long before the smart phone applications and will be there long after they are gone. Because these are the things which define us, in other words identify what it means to be a human being…

The moment you turn this page, you will step into this alternative reality. Now, take a break from all your daily routine and loosen your connections to your daily lives. For once, leave your gadgets, prejudices, high expectations and desires to be entertained before you enter and get ready to just Feel..!.

N.G

I

Scream

40194.jpg

My hands,

My eyes,

My mind,

My heart,

MY SON . . .

40197.jpg

I t was true… Heat had a slowing effect on the pulse of life. On a hot summer’s day when everything was hotter, slower and lazier, only the kids and bees moved with an endless energy, until the bees got what they needed and the kids got tired. The picture that day was not d ifferent. Three kids were on the wooden pier by the lake, tired from plunging in the water, (God knows for how many times) , shouting and laughing, they were now all lying on wooden pier in silence, their bodies dry but hair still wet. All in little shorts and nothing else, sporting long hair, being one of the most significant signs of free times of the summer holiday. The blonde one, the tall and thin one and the one with black hair and light brown eyes…Kids, summer, freedom; the triangle was set perfectly. The moment everybody had at least once in their lives . The one which they remembered with a sad smile when they are all grown up and wondering where all the joy had gone? The paradox was; the more we understood what joy and happiness was and how it can be reached, the more it became unreachable. The kids who had absolutely no idea about things to do to be happy list, were the happiest. Growing up was one long journey of learning social behaviour patterns (like it or not, fit in or not, even be capable or not); during which we forgot the basics gradually through an invisible process. One at a time… Maybe Oscar Wilde was right and Nothing that is worth knowing, can be taught  . . . .!

Now the man with black hair and light brown eyes was standing in the loo in front of the wash stand and pouring water to his face. He had a cream suit and a white shirt. His red tie was loosen. He was looking at the mirror with oblivious eyes… He leaned forward with his hands on the sides of the wash basin. Whenever uneasiness wandered in his soul, his mind always used to escape to that happy memory from his childhood. He pushed his hair back with his hand and slightly adjusted his tie. Just at that exact moment the vibration of his mobile phone pulled him off from the dark hole inside his heart that was full of emotional demons. The message was from his sister. His eyes were fixated on the screen of the cell phone for a short while. Then he closed the cover of the phone with one hand and with fast steps he headed in the corridor to rush his way out.

In a few minutes he was in his car. As he drove, he glanced at the buildings around the road, with uninterested looks just to distract himself from the primary thought in his mind. He has never got used to them, never loved. A few years ago, they had moved to this neighbourhood just because she wanted to… It would be good for the kids she said. It is neat, well planned with social activities and most importantly, secure…. She was right as always. He could not say no to her even though she was not right anyway.

He was in his brand new black Audi, heading home with a big disturbance growing inside him. This was the worst kind of disturbance, fed and supported by everything and anything. His cream colour suit felt like ten kilos. The seat belt was as if squeezing him tightened by an invisible force on his body. He loosened his tie but it was no use. He felt like it was choking him no matter how much he loosened. The weather was already hot and he was about to break a sweat, but the first drop had not yet showed up. Even the electrifying stress of generating the sweat on his skin was adding to the tension and disturbance inside his body…

I hope everything is fine… he thought, trying to stop the disturbance from leading to a worry. He took a deep breath. The traffic was moving slow because of frequent traffic lights. His eyes wandered again on the New Estates which looked even more silent and boring under the hot July sun. These New Estates consisted of high apartment blocks painted in different colours and simply designed gardens. These residential settings had become popular from the second half of the nineties. Their residents were mostly the white collar business people (the new social class of the new century, le bourgeois professionnel) working in the business centres of metal and glass high rise buildings; the towers of money…!!

These were the couples of the 21st century with one (or none) child, who were spending 10 hours of their days in the artificial premises called office where they surrendered their freedom voluntarily to the system, only to live in prisons without bars and suppressing all kind of natural human instinct, behaviour and contact; working 5 days of the week for the sake of 2 days of the weekend (which meant they spent 72% of their lives for the remaining 28%).

New Estates were usually located half an hour to one hour distance to city centre. The planning was simple and always the same… A number of ten-storey buildings put together and surrounded by a wall. Then according to the luxury levels, different type of gardens and landscapes were applied including from one or two trees to their own personal woods. Most of them had walking paths, open basketball and tennis courts, spaces for residents to socialise, gyms and mostly a shared pool in the middle of the estate. And finally with an addition of two security guards at the entrance, a standard New Estate was completed.

They were pretty sure that the city administration could never provide them the living environment they wanted, because it had more important problems on its plate like, the natural gas lines, traffic, rubbish collection roads, parks, social activities, all sorts of regulations… And list was going on… So when the white collars decided to come together with the ones like themselves; to create individual living spaces separated from others; the city did not object to this. Instead it welcomed the idea, as all left to it was to provide the main services and not to worry about the housing at all. As a conclusion in a very short period of time, hundreds of these New Estates, sprung everywhere with names like " . . . city", " . . . . residences", " . . . . towers".

This was an exact win win for everyone. Some of the suburbs were handling fine but some of them were absolutely a bunch of buildings with different colours, sizes, and shapes. It was an ugly picture when you saw it from a distance. So when the New Estates rush began, everybody wished they had started earlier before the shanty settlements ever happened. Because once the building stock was created, it was very difficult—if not impossible—to get rid of it. It required a lot of money, convincing, contribution from the existing residences and huge conversion applications. So the city council tried to support these white collars settlement as much as it can.

In the evening there was nearly nobody outside in open areas or social spaces because the white collars spent all day, most of the time even extra hours, to deserve to live in this New Estates and did not have any energy for any activity after the work. All they could do was to prepare the fast ready-to-cook food; or to order from the closest restaurant (even faster food) and eat fast and watch the TV shows until they felt like sleeping. As for the mornings it was always a few housewives taking care of the kids in the parks and chatting in social areas.

The New Estates were designed as modern, secure, tidy, functional living environments for active, healthy therefore happy people of the new century but they were homes to people who always delayed any of physical activities and got immobile every day.

The most luxurious of these, were the New Estates made of specially designed detached villas instead of building blocks. They had higher standard social facilities, each villa having its own pool and much better planned open spaces and landscape. These were for the real rich people. The residents were not white collar workers but owners of medium to large size private companies, industrial plants, holdings. The riches of all their times. The walls surrounding these New Estates were much thicker and higher. And as always, the thicker the walls, the more mysterious the life of residents were, in the eyes of the people outside the wall. But in fact the thicker the walls, the lonelier the life was for the people inside the walls… .

These New Estates were lonely islands, home to alone or lonely residents, lonely neighbours in lonely blocks… They did not carry any specifics or reflect any personal features of residents. Therefore, however different they were designed or projected; they all seemed and felt the same. Dead units, at which you looked for hours but could not see anything.

These reflections reminded him of a thought which had been wandering in his mind silently for quite a time now. They had to move from this neighbourhood!. They needed more space and a small house of their own with a backyard for kids and a garage with a little workshop for him. He was determined, he was going to convince her. Maybe not tomorrow but soon, very soon…!

His sister’s message started with Come home but went on with no need to worry… No need to worry? They were calling him home, so it must have been the time. Maybe there was something wrong… If that was the case, how could he not worry? Even the thought of this was automatically applying pressure on his foot on the gas pedal. And the Audi he was driving, was impatient like a black stallion making fearsome noises ready to run wild like a storm.

Whatever he said to himself and smiled thinking the reason of his journey to home now. Suddenly his cell phone rang. It was his sister. She had to spell the beans finally. But she was talking in a state of panic, clumsily trying to hide her fear on the other side of the line. It was time. It was earlier than they expected… He hung up without saying anything. All the disturbance he felt inside was gone now. It disappeared as he pushed his feet on the gas and the car roared. Nothing mattered now. The world and all its matters were gone.

There was one thing in his mind; getting home. As he stepped on the gas, all the torque and power of the car were released from the metal prisons they were locked in. He moved fast and agile in the streets, ignoring the traffic and its rules. And the surroundings were just a bunch of lines passing by the car. His eyes were fixed straight forward with an eager look in his eyes.

He was in front of their house in less than two minutes. He stopped, jamming his brakes on, quickly took off his seat belt and stepped out of the car. But he could only take two steps in front of the car before he froze. The scene in front of his eyes felt like slow motion. In front of the building was an old type ambulance and a crowd of people watching two paramedics put her on to the back side of the ambulance on a stretcher. First his sister saw him and ran to him with tears in her eyes… .

The car keys slipped from his fingers and fell to the ground. He was frozen like a statue. Only one word was freed from his lips like a silent whisper;

‘Defne… .!!!!’

T he ambulance was passing by the buildings, all its lights and sirens on. The experience of the ambulance driver was the only reason they did not crash into any car or pedestrians or even the buildings or trees around as they were moving madly.

The residents of the New Estates showed very little attention to this noisy, crazy moving vehicle for just a moment and then their interest was driven to their daily activities. Though they knew that an ambulance with all sirens on and driven like this, would most probably mean a matter of life and death inside, they did not mind what was going on in the ambulance. It was a strange exhibit of oblivion. The impact of the ambulance lasted a bit longer only for the kids who ran after the ambulance mimicking it with their arms open and making the sound of the sirens.

Inside the ambulance the screams were suppressing the loud repeating voice of the sirens. These screams belonged to the pregnant woman lying on the stretcher and every scream was like a needle stinging to the heart of the man in cream suit sitting next to her. The man was trying to keep calm and with her hand in his two hands looking at her with eyes doing their best not to look worried. He was trying to soothe her with his eyes.

Defne, his dear wife was in labour. Her pains were at the last stage. She was experiencing the oldest biological cycle of human life which did not stop once it has started. Her body was greatly weakened by labour and pain signals were wandering in all her nervous system. She was feeling all of them in her deepest cells. As approved by her frequent screams, it was exactly the pain time for her.

The nurse in the ambulance was checking Defne’s contractions, while holding on to something trying to not to fall. Her eyes were fixed on the woman and preparing for her first midwife role in the ambulance if this little guy decided to come early.

Defne’s body was shaking in pain and sweat. The doctors had told her it would be difficult. Looking at her with their most frightening faces, they had tried to dissuade her. It was because of a problem in her blood count. She had two kids and both deliveries had been difficult, the risk factor growing more in each. If she tried it for the third time… Finally her own doctor told her what everybody just could not feel the courage to say. Considering all your medical history and… your… condition… 75% chance that you may not survive the labour… !!!!!

Maybe he was right, maybe all of them were right. But there was something none of them knew, something which changed the whole balance of the things. They did not know, how much, how much, the man sitting next to her now and helplessly holding her hand in his hands, wanted, in fact dreamed for a son. If they knew and loved him the half the amount she loved him they would take their chances no matter what too.!!

Yusuf . . . Her one and only love, her husband, her lover, her best friend… How carefully hid the longing for a son. They had two daughters one twelve and the other five years old and he loved them both more than anything in life.

Not even once he had mentioned a son, shown an open display or ever brought it up. There was nothing like "For once, only for one time . . ." for him. This was the first thing that Defne learned about him and later on became one of her favourite character traits of his. He was a like sword every inch equally and deadly sharp.

But Defne knew it… When the girls were not around and he was playing football with neighbours’ kids, sometimes while they were talking in the balcony and drinking tea when he whiffed away the smoke of his cigarette, his eyes fixed in the horizon… So she did not mind at all when they said it would be difficult or fatal. She loved this tall dark man sitting silently next to her now so much that nothing else mattered…! She started this journey with a big smile in her heart.

The days were like years to her, until the day they were able to learn the sex of the baby. And that day It’s a boy said the doctor simply without knowing what kind of miraculous news he was giving to her. They would love the baby anyway. It was their baby. But it was a boy… !! She never forget the glitter in Yusuf’s eyes when she gave the news to him. He hugged her tightly and kissed her forehead, fondling her hair, looking deep into her eyes. That was it… ! Even though this was one of the best news he got in his life, if not the most important, he did not show any exaggerated emotional expression. He passed it over with a quick joke. But Defne heard the scream of ecstatic happiness in his heart when she lay her head on his shoulder and hugged him.

Actually from the first day she looked at the pregnancy test stick and saw the (+) sign, something deep inside whispered to her that it was a boy. After that, as the days passed and her belly became bigger and bigger, every now and then when she put her hand on her pregnant belly she could not help but whisper "my dear son" while her hand was moving sideways like combing the hair of a little boy.

But now she was paying dearly for her decision she bravely and voluntarily took. While she was in excruciating pain, she could see in Yusuf’s eyes the pain he had inside but he was still trying to keep calm to support her. Yet Defne could see inside of him, his soul. He was scared to his very cell, he could barely stop his hands from shaking. He was wearing the suit she liked most and had picked for him herself. As always he was just by her side with his all being without saying a word her hand in his hands.

They were a couple who did not need to cry out their love to each other. From the first day of their relation, the first excitements, sparks, hesitations, wonderings and emotional eruptions of a great love threw them to the state of the eternal harmony of bodies and souls coming together, mating and becoming ‘One’. They were the ‘One’ for each other so they lived their lives as ‘One’, in peace.

Yusuf was working long hours and providing for his family. And this was an unspoken form of "I love you". As for Defne, she quit her job after she gave birth to their second daughter and devoted her life to the girls and him. She used to take care of their every need and keep the family happy. That was another simple form of I love you.

Every evening when Yusuf returned from work, he knew his other half was waiting for him with a warm smile on her face. In the business dinners (mostly obligatory, boring, getting drunk kinds) which he very rarely attended, while all others forced the limits of the food and the drinks and made plans of the next place they will go after there, he only drank one or two glasses and made his way home. Being still sober and on his feet when he was back home was another form of ‘I love you’, which Defne answered with, ‘I will not sleep and I’ll wait for you and make your coffee’.

They were really each other’s other half. They were the pebbles that completed each other. Their connection was simple and magnificent, like all the other miracles of the universe whichwe did not understand but knew that they make perfect sense.

Yusuf was crazy about her… From the moment he had seen her, his priority in life was set. Forever… !! He always wanted her next to him in all weddings, ceremonies, celebrations, parties. He did not care about any sitting plans, orders, rule or formalities. At first he applied this personal rule silently, unimposing, without a fuzz or a loud manifesto; which afterwards became a rule everybody who knew them recognised and appreciated. It was impossible for him to be at the same place with her yet stand in a distance he could not see or touch her. He stood like a sharp sword, not only the look on his face but also every inch of his body shone with calm confidence.

Then between the notes of a song, when everybody is dancing laughing or enjoying the cheer, excitement or romance, or at the end of a lyric or a simple joke, spontaneously he would reach and fondle her hair falling in front of her face, his fingers gently moving them behind her ears. The smile on his face when he did that was the most fantastic expression of I love you for Defne. It was silent, gentle, warm, romantic, true, simple, and most importantly, very genuine! So to her it had more impact than the most florid serenade.

She always sat or stood next to him, held his arm or his hand. This was her reply to his extraordinary affection to her. She would rest her head on his shoulder by the end of the night if they are tired or feeling dizzy before the evening is over. This was not different when they were alone. Especially in the summer nights when kids slept, they drank tea in the balcony talking about trivial things and their conversations were frequently interrupted with kisses. They looked into the depths of each other’s sparkling eyes in the darkness of the night. To them, their touches and little kisses were the best love poem in action. During the fourteen years of their love dance, this silent language replaced the words leaving lots of creative intimate forms of personal communication they had developed.

It was ‘love at first sight’ for Defne. They were in a wedding party. He was sitting at a table in front of the stage in the middle. It was all young bachelor friends of the groom. He was taller than the guys at the table. He was wearing an old-style black suit made from polyester-cotton mixed material which was popular in sixties. He had a skinny black tie and white shirt. There was a rectangular shaped white handkerchief in his little jacket pocket. His straight thick black hair was gelled and combed to his left side. He looked as if he had come out the movie Casablanca. It was summer. Maybe he had just come from summer holiday because he had a lovely tan on his face. Especially his deep brown eyes created the same effect on everybody who looked at them.

A feeling of drunkenness exactly like divers experienced as they dove deeper. The longer you looked, the deeper you went and felt more and more drunk and dizzy.

All the other young men were all over the place flirting and if they succeeded, dancing with the girls. They were young, they were energetic and obeying their nature; they could not keep away from young girls. Especially with music, drinks, dance, pretty girls and party environment, they were right in the middle of a hormone eruption. He however, was opting for conversations with the guys at the table, making jokes and drinking.

At the single girls table, all the girls were talking about him. After hearing so much, Defne wanted to check him out too. She joined a couple of girls who rushed to the dance floor giggling and started to dance on their way to the floor. Once they were there, they started to move with the popular songs. She moved with the ryhthm of the music, trying to fetch an angle she could see him. And when she saw him… She could not get her eyes from him. The world stood still for a second. Then everything was in slow motion, music, people in the dance floor, people in the room, all of them except him.

But the real miracle happened when he smiled. While pushing his straight black hair falling in front of his face to the back of his head and smiled, his eyes sparkled. His face was so warm and lovely, with every little part contributing to his charismatic look. His brown eyes were shining like honey under the hot summer sun. She was looking at simply the most beautiful thing she had seen in her entire life. Was it possible, for a smile to be that beautiful? Simply wonderful… !! She could only move with her friends literally pulling her from the dancing floor to their table.

Even now in the parts of her mind which were not invaded by pain, she was thinking the beauty of those brown eyes. Yet now they were full of fear and hopelessness; not the way she was used to seeing them, full of love… It was the second time she saw him like that. Once, when their little daughter was ill, a sharp look like this had come and settled in his eyes and had not left until the girl got better.

She wanted to reach out to his face, touch his cheeks and tell him Do not worry baby, that was my choice, because of a very beautiful reason—because I love you—and making you happy is worth it, everything will be all right. But she could not speak. While her body was fighting with all sorts of pain she did not even know that existed, her mind only allowed a little conscious crumb to imagine it. She could not lift a finger, let alone talk to him and tell this.

And even she could say it. He would not respond to emotional contact. He would feel uncomfortable, ashamed, he would change the topic, or get into routine dialogues, like asking the nurse, if the serum was correctly connected, how long would it take to the hospital, was ER ready for them etc.; which would be useless apart from hiding the look in his eyes… He was never good at receiving emotional stimuli in any shape or form. And his failure to express his emotions created false impressions about him in the people who did not know him.

But Defne knew it. After 14 years spent together, ‘she could understand the thought in his mind from the look in his eyes’. She held his hands with the last power left in her system and was only able to smile weakly. Her face was wet with sweat and her smile lasted only one second.

But it was enough to ease the sharp look on Yusuf’s face for a moment, his eyes softened and he smiled back to her. He squeezed her hand. That moment when her body gave up struggling to keep conscious, the last thing she felt was his love holding her hands and the last thing she saw before she closed her eyes was the beautiful smile of the man whom she loved more than anything in this life… A light feeling of happiness spread into her soul…

Y usuf was in front of the emergency surgery room. As if it was not a birth but a serious surgical operation, two nurses and one doctor were inside for one hour. They needed extra blood during the operation and thanks God it was not a rare blood type so they easily found three units. They obviously did not let him to enter the emergency operation room. He was sitting outside the room, his head in his hands. Sitting there like that, his knees pressed together and his head down, he looked smaller than he was. Pain, worry, fear was eviscerating inside of the man, leaving a bag of bones and skin. That tall, dark, well-built man looked like an over grown kid on the chair.

One ominous thought was preying on his mind. Did she know? Of course she knew… ! He never said a word bu she just knew. And she got pregnant by taking all the risks, just to give him a ‘son’. He must have given a clue. Yes he wanted a son. He was crazy even with the idea. With a great desire without a reason… He loved his daughters more than life itself. It was only a dream of a son inside his soul which he tried to keep below the surface at all times, like a deep secret desire burning him inside.

"My son . . ." he had imagined a million times in his heart; dreaming the things they will do together; his first steps, first words, first time he bleeds his knees falling his bike, things he will teach him, stories he will tell him, of course see him chasing girls, watching him grow up as an honest, eager young man. These imaginations were his only consolation. He had thought about these but had never voiced them.

Defne must have recognised this. No matter how careful he was, it was impossible for her to not to see this. So when she found that out, she put her plan into life without him realising. Today seeing her like that in the ambulance was the hardest thing Yusuf ever faced in his life. Every scream of hers was a whiplash on his back…

But had he revealed how he felt or had he done anything to comfort her for that matter? Hell no… He had just sat there mute next to her. He had not even shed a tear, or opened his mouth to say something to ease her pain… He had not said"The tiniest pain in your eyes is a knife to my heart„ or What have you done baby? Would I change you to all the dreams of the world? For all the fourteen years whenever their eyes met; he would stop for a second and no matter what she did, made her stop, too, just to tell her You are the apple of my eye but he had not said it in the ambulance. He had not even said her Darling, if anything happens to you the light in my eyes will leave me and I will not want to see anything else in the world, I will not find anything worthy to look at if you are not in it. Forget about everything; he had not simply said Do not worry, everything will be all right. Not a single word, nothing… !!!

Maybe she thought that he had lost his ways in the corridors of love. Usually what we got from love was transformed as time passed and we got to see the most enigmatic human feeling in various angles… Yes the flow of love in the veins, dragging man into all kind of madness was extraordinary, unique, unspeakable… But somehow by time, it was turning into a mundane feeling, we barely notice anymore. Most of us hung on to ‘anniversaries’ or days like St. Valentine’s Day to remember the feeling. Hence the common belief ‘time kills love’.

In fact time was not the executioner of love but a good companion. Yet in order seeing it required having the ‘extraordinary version’ of that ‘extraordinary feeling’. If you were very lucky—almost chosen—to experience it, you naturally knew. But more likely, if you were only lucky enough to meet one of those people who experienced it, people who were granted the secrets of the dance between love and time, all of them will tell you the same thing with a smile in their face. They will say, the problem was—and still is—to confuse Love, that extraordinary feeling, with its manipulative yet very powerful cousin, Passion. And the ones that confuse love with passion, are like travellers who stayed in the first inn on their way because they drink and dance and have so much fun.

Passion was the first inn on the long journey of Love. If you were stuck at the first inn because you have too much fun there—and certainly, passion would take you over the clouds-, you would not be aware of the other inns on the way and the experiences they present. You would never even know they exist, because you had been drunk in the first inn. It was a matter of choice and an easy one, to choose the guaranteed extreme joy over unknown experience. But one day the joy in the first inn eventually came to an end and even if it had not, the journey was sentenced to be one dimensional.

Then they were on the road again—this time tired and worn—but not able to understand what they found at the next inn, they mostly tried to go back to the first one, usually getting lost. They were lost because they had lost the purpose of the journey. On the other hand real lovers were devoted to the journey. Yes they had fun in the pleasure inn but next day they kept on moving to explore more… Love was an adventurous journey and full of experiences and opportunities. A journey lasting a lifetime in the guidance of time… !

Besides time was such a fair master that it closed the doors to paranoias, worries and fears of novice lovers one by one and opened new doors in front of them to the most amazing journey of all times; getting to know a person special to your heart. These were the doors opening to simple, pure, genuine and therefore extraordinary Love; full of little miraculous surprises which we did not even think they existed or even possible . . .

For example for Yusuf one of those experiences was, the impossibility to understand the amount of the love in the woman he held in his arms when Defne told the sex of the baby to him in an ecstasy… She had gone to learn the gender of the baby on the fourth month. He was never going to forget that day. When she was back home, she gave the news with a shine in her eyes. He did not see her that happy; ever. The happiness of a person because of just the possibility of making someone happy with something she did was beyond belief. To witness this spontaneous, pure, unplanned, uncalculated, selfless and lovely act, was simply unbelievable for him… !

‘It is a boy…’ she had said after easing her arms, hugging him and looking into his eyes with love…

All Yusuf could do, was to appreciate this with a thankful and loving look and hugging her tighter. Nothing, no feeling, no impulse, no joy could beat what he had felt at that precise moment.

‘You know I would also be happy, if it was a baby girl… ‘he said and added;

‘One piece from me, one piece from you, nothing can beat it in value… !’

They had both laughed at the rhyme and hugged. It was the exchange of emotional words which are not poetic at all but meant the world to each other…

Now he was sitting in front of the emergency surgery room and was praying for her silently. She had done all these for him. She had risked her life for him. Not even making a big deal out of it, silently on herself alone. And she was fighting death inside. His eyes dampened. Two tears dropped from his eyes on his face which he was holding in his hands. With the tears falling, he let go his hands and slowly shook his head with disbelief.

He leaned back on the the chair, holding his head back, trying to push his tears back to where they come from with an attempt to defy the gravity. A reflex gesture to stop the tears and the pain. It was a helpless attempt as his conscious told him, but his heart told it was worth trying…

The tears flew on his face regardless. He accepted the defeat already. All he could do, was to put his palms together between his knees, his eyes fixed on the ceiling, to repeat the very same thing again and again; "Please God, spare her . . .".

Then a sudden wave of anger grew inside him. He wiped his tears off with the back of his hand. A frown came over his face. ‘Now?’. Had he decided to show his feelings now? Why had he not revealed them to the woman whom he loved more than anything, whose life was hung with a tiny cotton string, when they were in the ambulance? Had he said it to her enough? God knows how much she kept for herself… The man she faced death for, being incapable of showing his feelings! Of course she knew, she was fully aware of his love for her, but did she really know how much?

He had never told her about that wedding day when he had seen her for the first time; how stunned he had been and how much he had wished to be able to watch her like that forever. But he could not look at her directly; he had to hide from people so that they would not make something out of it and mock him. How he had looked at her with transient glances, putting the pieces he had seen each time together in his mind. And their first meeting in that coffee shop in the morning was not a coincidence… After asking around about her for many mornings, he had watched her from a distance, enjoyed watching her every move like a fairy…

How precisely he had memorised the curves of her beautiful neck, long straight honey-colour hair, the details of her beautiful face, eyes, lips, dimples before they even met. That first time they had gone to see a movie, in a scary moment when she had reached and held his hand, how scared he got, fearing his hand would catch fire and light the theatre. How much he adored her long hair falling in front of her face. And how much she sparkled, when she slightly bowed her head, hiding her face a little more on purpose—probably aware of how irresistable she looked—and smiled. How much her lips and her dimples looked like precious gems behind a mystic transparent curtain… How her face shone with innocence; turning into a beautiful, attractive, magnetic yet fragile source of light…

That beautiful spring morning, she was wearing her yellow flowered spring dress for the picnic. The sun was warming their faces when at the same time a cool breeze fondled their faces. The lively spirit made up of all good feelings and emotions, the signs of renovation filling the early spring morning air, almost tangible… She was sitting on the other side of the wooden picnic table, her long hair flying free with the breeze, her flowered spring dress, light hair, white fair face were making her a piece of art. She was as nice, as beautiful, as lively and as pure as the nature itself.

He had reached and held her hands over the picnic table. They had smiled at each other and the moment he had held her face between his hands, he knew it was the time. He had moved next to the table and knelt on one knee and first took the tiara—which she made from camomiles for fun a minute ago—and placed it on her hair and the ring he had made from the stems of camomiles as she watched, on her finger and asked Will you…?. She had not even let him to complete his sentence, said Yes…! and held his hands. He remembered the moment he had stood up; after smiling for a moment, their eyes fixed on each other, they had hugged and started to turn. Without knowing the reason. Like millions of couples before them, they had turned and turned and turned, smiling and laughing. What was the link between happiness and spinning?

Did it not always happen like that? Maybe the spinning of the world was not fast enough for the lovers on their happiest moments. They wanted more, more and some more… Locating themselves in the centre, they wanted their physical environment to be in harmony with their emotional eruptions, so they started to turn and turn and turn… Until everything turned into a bunch of circular lines around them… The absolute vanishing of every object and being, transformed into lines, leaving them as the only beings in the center. In a way, it was the creation of a little universe with them in the nucleus. But as usual, this little universe spinning around them, filled with their laughters, had not last long and the interference of the spin speed of the world had ended with them lying on the ground…

Facing the sky, laughing like kids, they had tried to catch up with the speed of the world. And after that he had reached and kissed his other half, played with her hair. There was freshness, renovation, LOVE in the air. They had come to this picnic area as a couple on that spring day, but they were leaving the place as "ONE".

He leaned back again, held his head high and took a deep breath, his eyes fixed on the white ceiling. How often had he told her recently that he loved her, he wondered. He really forced himself to remember the times he actually said, as if he had to find the exact number…! Though he knew they did not to hear that in words and their most special and exclusive language told always way more than words could do…

Then reality sank in. He realised the pointlessness of the harsh interrogation of himself. Of course she knew from the bottom of her heart how much, how different, how in his own passionate and "I do not care about a single thing or being in the world but you, way he loved her. So where was this emotional self-torture coming from?

The answer of the question in his mind was in his shaking hands… He was scared to his very soul… scared to lose her. The most precious thing he had was about to slip from his hands and would never come back… !

At that moment the emergency surgery room’s door opened and a nurse showed up with a baby she held in a blue sheet. A little red thing, trying to move its head, legs and arms aimlessly. He immediately stood up and walked towards the nurse as if flying. And there he was…

His eyes widened with disbelief of the new life in flesh and blood in front of his eyes. Having witnessed this scene many times, the nurse looked at him smiling and said ‘Congratulations’.

Yusuf could not move. For a moment he moved his hand slowly, trying to reach out to touch him but he seemed so little, so fragile, so unreal… His son! In real, in front of his eyes, alive. They had wiped off most of the blood but still there were stains on his chest. And seeing these stains, reminded him his fear which was interrupted by a presence of a miracle of life for a moment. Nurse sensed the coming question and not wanting to face it, made her way out of the room.

‘Excuse me, we need to take this little guy to a sterile environment. This little warrior just came out of a serious battle’ she said quickly and left before Yusuf could say anything.

As she left with fast steps, the doctor came out with a tired face, pulling of his surgery mask. Yusuf could only stare at him. As he walked slowly towards him, Yusuf understood… Actually the second he saw him, he knew. Like many others who faced the bad news before it is spoken. The news that would turn their life into a nightmare, the news that caught them hopeless, helpless, unprepared… But the doctor had to say what he had to say and Yusuf had to hear it. The cards were dealt. The stage and the roles were set. The doctor looked at him with a very sad face of a man who had just lost a huge battle:

‘I am so sorry. We could not save your wife…’

Yusuf did not hear the words after that. They all faded in the air. He saw the doctor’s lips moving but the sound waves disappeared before they hit his ears. Though the doctor hated the script, this was the role he was cast:

‘We have done everything we could… She had a 10% chance… The internal bleeding was too much… we could save the baby but… ‘He seemed like a sad actor playing an awful part, but he had to and the part finished with the heaviest and simplest closure.

‘My condolences…’

This was the worst part of being a doctor. While in most of other business lines when someone has lost a battle on a particular day at work, only their wealth, salaries or well-being was negatively affected; when doctors lost the battle, usually it meant somebody else’s (somebody they did not know at all until that day) life was affected, maybe lost or permanently changed for the worse conditions. And when they won the battle, there were no celebrations or office parties or champagne… In fact they could be facing another challenge right away. The only motivation was, changing lives for positive when they won and the happiness on the faces of loved ones waiting outside…

So the doctor walking to the changing room was no different. He had to take this out of his system as fast as possible. Because he had to be ready when he was called for the next battle.

However this one was lost… The scene was over. It was time for him to leave the stage his head low, leaving Yusuf there in the state of relentless grief, reduced to a complete inaction…

Yusuf stood there for a moment, looking at the door of surgery room. He had heard it. By now he knew it but until he saw, it would not be true.

He moved… Scared to hell, every step hurting his heart but he walked to the surgery room anyway… Like a sad puppet, soulless, involuntarily because the mysterious code of life was telling him to do so…

When he entered the room, another nurse was cleaning some of the surgery tools and removing used medical materials around. He saw her lying on the surgery desk. There were different coloured cables attached to electronic medical equipment and serums. Her mouth was still open with two tubes still in it. Her body was covered with a green surgery sheet. He could see everything clearly as he came closer to her. And now he was standing next to her dead body. There was blood on all equipments and even upper part of her body but the stomach part was especially bloody as he could see the stains on sheet. It really looked like they had a serious battle.

Usually they would not allow visitors enter the surgery room but when the nurse saw the deeply saddened look on the face of this tall dark man, facing his dead wife, she did not remind him of the rule and even thought that it would be disrespectful to be in the room when he was desperate for a last moment with his wife alone. She just made her way out pretty silently. Yusuf did not even notice her.

Yusuf fondled Defne’s face with his shapely long fingers, carefully. He took the tubes off her mouth and touched her face. He cleaned the sweat and blood stains from her face and finally took the bonnet from her hair. His eyes wandered on her body. He did not touch the connection cables, electrolytes on her chest and other equipments. He did not even dare think about touching the sheet.

He could not handle what he might see under the sheet. Then looking at her face, he let himself go… While he was touching her face with his fingertips, the tears were falling from his eyes like thin rivers. He was silently crying his heart out. The words left his lips without any target ears.

‘What have you done?!! What have you done to yourself baby? Did it hurt a lot? Did you face the most unbearable pains with fortitude?—Tears were flowing from his eyes and the words were cut with pain in his heart—Or were you calm as always even at the darkest moment of your life? Did you smile to the face of the angel of death? If so, how could he do his job? How come the sparks in your eyes not blinded him? Or did you help him do what he has to do?’

‘Even now you are so beautiful… ! You know it… . don’t you? I did not have a single day or night or the time in between that I was not deeply in love with you or did not pray to God for the gift of YOU in my life. I did not say it a lot but… You already knew that, didn’t you? Since the moment I saw you, I loved you more than anything in my life!

‘I am sure God took you to a better place. Wherever you are my love, just wait for me… When my time comes… like I found you when I turned my head one day as such an unexpected brilliant gift from God, as fresh as life falling to water, earth, air in spring; just like that… You will see me smiling you by your side’.

He leaned and kissed her forehead. Her body was still warm. He looked at her with love. Touched her cheeks and hair one last time and pulled the green sheet up to her head slowly. He turned looked at her one last time before he left the room slowly. He knew now it was not her any more… She had left that flesh, lying there under that green sheet…

The kids were with Yusuf’s sister. She had wanted to come but Yusuf had not let her. Someone had to look after the children. Also he did not know what might happen and now he knew he was right. Last thing he needed now was more sad people lost in an uncontrollable pain. After he left the emergency room, he walked outside but he could not stand longer and sat down on the first seat in the hospital garden. He took a deep breath and tried to keep himself together. Now a different life was waiting them. He had just lost the person he loved the most but she had left something very valuable to him. How could you explain the feeling of losing someone you love that much? Maybe the feeling of falling to an endless hole and hopelessly looking at the ray of light which is getting lesser and lesser every minute . . . Still hoping a hand will reach out and hold you from falling and that hand never shows up . . . .!!

Next day he was standing in front of her grave. There was no tombstone or marble grave base. He had his black suit on. He was alone after the religious ceremony by the grave. He had accepted condolences and seen everybody leave one by one. The kids were crying all the time. His elder daughter knew what was going on but the little one was not aware of anything yet, crying most probably because everybody was doing so. For now, they had told her that her mother went to see angels, so she did not think it was a bad thing…

Yusuf was torn between his conscious ‘which was telling him that the biological organism was not his wife anymore and her being had left this piece of flesh to decay’ and his heart ‘still feeling a kind of connection to that body lying under the soil’ in front of him. His soul was hurting and missing her from the first second. He whispered his dilemma to himself:

‘I know this is not you any more and you left this body. Your soul is with God now. From now on you will be with me in my dreams, in my mind, in my heart, in my thoughts and in every bit of me… God inscribed our fate together in this world and he can do so in the afterlife. I will pray for this with all my soul baby… Just to be with you again… ‘.

He kneeled and held a handful of soil on the grave and then let it go over the grave, watching the soil grains slowly fall with the breeze…

He looked at the grave one last time and left. After a few steps he turned and said:

‘It is a very healthy, beautiful boy. I thought you might want to know…’

T hey left the hard task of consoling the kids to his sister Elif, the lovely aunt of the kids. At first his elder daughter Eda cried all the time as if she could not simply stop it and then turned silent after some day. She had taken after her mother a lot. Both beauty and character wise. And now she was showing great deal of determination not one would expect from her age. She had the natural ability and will to save her pain to herself and not to publicise it. The younger daughter Lara just cried and asked for her mum from time to time when she felt her absence. Elif was trying to take care of both girls. They had different needs. Eda needed just a silent, loving accompany, whereas Lara needed constant attention, including telling stories about her mother and angels and how happy she watches over her…

Life was going on. Yusuf applied for an unpaid leave for two months after the funeral. He devoted himself to his pain for forty days… This was the tradition Forty Days . . . At the end of forty days of mourning, the friends and loved ones gathered at one place—usually at the house where the deceased used to live—and a ceremony was held.

It was accustomed to read some special poetry called Mevlid, dedicated to the prophet Muhammed. The ceremony was also named after this poetry and called Mevlid. The aim was to praise the prophet and God. To ask for intercession of the prophet and pray for God’s mercy upon the soul of deceased. On the same day, poor were given charities. This ceremony marked the end of mourning period and was a reminder to go back to life and move on. It was a spiritual farewell to the dead, with prayers and good deeds…

How did they know? Who had calculated it as forty days? Yusuf did not know, but it worked. It was happening naturally and after forty days, mourning was turning into sad memories. It was defining the period of the pain of all pains, the mourning for a loss so deep that it left everyone incapable of moving. Life was going on and the pain shrank without us knowing it, changing forms… It never disappeared totally but at the same time it did not cover every cell of the body as it did at the beginning. Instead, it got smaller and smaller, concentrated, occupying a tiny space but heavier as always. At the end, it was locked in a section of the heart forever like a heavy lead bullet. Releasing an ache every time it was visited.

Though we always thought, we will never smile again and repeat it to ourselves again and again like a thought we want to believe but cannot, eventually smiles was catching us off guard and finding their ways to the lips for the simplest reasons. The eyes was shining again and love filled our hearts. Love, that unpredictable energy was conquering us without asking for our permission, sometimes clearly into our face, sometimes in most unexpected times and most unexpected forms…

Yusuf tried to keep away from the kids as much as possible when he was undergoing this tunnel of agonising pain. He saw them one or two hours in the evenings and tucked them in to their bed to sleep, kissing and fondling their hair. Elif took care of their daily activities. She had come to his brother’s rescue like an angel. She was aware, that she could not replace the children’s mother but she tried really hard to give them the love they needed in that sensitive period.

This not only helped girls to pass through that period with the least damage possible, but also left Yusuf as much space as he needed for his recovery.

But the road of recovery was hard and the tunnel of pain he passed, after losing the most loved one was very dark. He was going to places they went together, smoking in the balcony—this time alone—his eyes fixed in the dark night, every now and then checking her seat on the other side of the table with the corner of his eye, touching and fondling her side of the bed at sleepless nights.

One day he was looking inside the drawers and touching things she had used. Her make-up and jewellery items were in the first drawer, her dresses and nightgowns in the second and t-shirts all folded neatly in the third one. They all still smelled like her, touching them was like feeling her.

He found a box under the t-shirts by coincidence, which he had seen for the first time. He was puzzled at first but when he saw what was inside he could not believe his eyes. These were their love letters. During the time they were dating, they used to write each other real letters with pen and paper and send it via post. An act of communication which was about to turn into a lost tradition. They had done this for a special connection even when they were in the same city.