carriage, to shatter its little glass-flask container, and to vanish into the vast and formless aether. But the small night-lamp had no such courage. It simply concocted a fable for itself; it believed in that fable and wanted to be the master of life. In turn, it was consumed by death, just like a stream that filled the first hole it chanced upon after diverging from the main source, where it would become the victim of all types of delusions, principal among them the desire to be itself. Nothing was as natural as humanity’s torment! It paid for existence, its genuine existence, through consciousness. But humanity didn’t leave it at that; next to this great, unchanging imperative, it created brand-new fates over and over again. Because it lived, it created various and sundry deaths. These deaths were always only the products of the anxiety of existence. For true death wasn’t torment but deliverance: I’m letting go of it all, leaving it all behind to unite with eternity. I’ve become that enormous pearl itself, glimmering where consciousness ceases; not just a single mote; rather, I’m the entire entity.At the frontiers of consciousness, where no illumination casts a shadow, I’m an enormous white lotus shining from within, burning brightly. But no, not at all, instead Mümtaz thought: I think therefore I am, cogito ergo sum. I perceive therefore I am. I struggle therefore I am. I suffer, therefore I am! I’m wretched, I am. I’m a fool, I am, I am, I am!
VII
Jumping frantically and involuntarily from one disordered thought to the next, he arrived in Eminönü. Now, if he could just board one of these ferries and set out on the Bosphorus. He hadn’t slept at his own house for a month. His house appeared in his mind’s eye; it was located in the interior of Emirgân, with an enclosed garden recalling the courtyards of old medrese s, and a balcony from where the entire Bosphorus seascape, from Kandilli to Beykoz on the Asian shore, could be seen. The garden, filling with the sounds of bees and insects in the sunlight, contained a few fruit trees, a walnut tree, a chestnut tree before the door, and along the borders, a variety of flowers whose names escaped him; the door opened onto a glassed corridor that had once been a larder. This area led to a stone-paved anteroom that stayed cool in the summers and contained a large low table, a small liquor cabinet, and a large divan. The stairs were broad. Sometimes he and Nuran would recline there on two cushions. But she much preferred the upstairs, the large balcony, and the hall from where the view extended clear to Beykoz. He tried to distance himself from those days, days to which it was impossible to return. This wasn’t the time to think about it. İhsan lay bedridden; the disease within him, that nondescript bolus, had now assumed its full-fledged form.
İhsan spoke through the language and torment of his affliction. It extended its countless tentacles like an octopus, latching on to everything. The illness was inside and outside him. Until Mümtaz was again at his side, this situation would persist. Until he took İhsan’s hands into his palms, asked “How are you feeling, brother?” until their eyes met, only then would the situation change, allowing him to pass back into Nuran’s time. There the world of separation began; the world of one who found everything estranging, who felt himself to be in eternal exile and whose spine shuddered from loneliness, the world of a man without a woman. A world made up of a host of heartrending absences. For a long time now, he had lived in interconnected rooms, passing from one to the next.
The one to whom it was impossible to return had no intention of leaving him alone: She now appeared before him in the figure of two young ladies. They stood before him, one all tulle and folds in a printed silk dress whose reds were dominant, and the other flustered and panting in a low-cut yellow dress whose single ornamental
VII
Jumping frantically and involuntarily from one disordered thought to the next, he arrived in Eminönü. Now, if he could just board one of these ferries and set out on the Bosphorus. He hadn’t slept at his own house for a month. His house appeared in his mind’s eye; it was located in the interior of Emirgân, with an enclosed garden recalling the courtyards of old medrese s, and a balcony from where the entire Bosphorus seascape, from Kandilli to Beykoz on the Asian shore, could be seen. The garden, filling with the sounds of bees and insects in the sunlight, contained a few fruit trees, a walnut tree, a chestnut tree before the door, and along the borders, a variety of flowers whose names escaped him; the door opened onto a glassed corridor that had once been a larder. This area led to a stone-paved anteroom that stayed cool in the summers and contained a large low table, a small liquor cabinet, and a large divan. The stairs were broad. Sometimes he and Nuran would recline there on two cushions. But she much preferred the upstairs, the large balcony, and the hall from where the view extended clear to Beykoz. He tried to distance himself from those days, days to which it was impossible to return. This wasn’t the time to think about it. İhsan lay bedridden; the disease within him, that nondescript bolus, had now assumed its full-fledged form.
İhsan spoke through the language and torment of his affliction. It extended its countless tentacles like an octopus, latching on to everything. The illness was inside and outside him. Until Mümtaz was again at his side, this situation would persist. Until he took İhsan’s hands into his palms, asked “How are you feeling, brother?” until their eyes met, only then would the situation change, allowing him to pass back into Nuran’s time. There the world of separation began; the world of one who found everything estranging, who felt himself to be in eternal exile and whose spine shuddered from loneliness, the world of a man without a woman. A world made up of a host of heartrending absences. For a long time now, he had lived in interconnected rooms, passing from one to the next.
The one to whom it was impossible to return had no intention of leaving him alone: She now appeared before him in the figure of two young ladies. They stood before him, one all tulle and folds in a printed silk dress whose reds were dominant, and the other flustered and panting in a low-cut yellow dress whose single ornamental
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