For Füruzan

It had not been a long time since we had moved into that damp and dark house two floors below the
ground. Living in a basement is shameful but you still live. So we are living.

My dad has hurt his back because of the traffic accident which has happened to him and he have to
lie down on a wooden floor for months. As if that wasn’t enough, my new born sister never shuts up
and she takes mom’s whole time with my dad. My mom takes care all of us, swallowing hard and
throwing it in silently; in this very tiny and stifling basement.

My dad pees in a big decapitated bottle where he lay and call my name every time. My duty is
pouring the bottle of piss to the toilet, washing it and taking back to him who lying his bed in pain. He
pees a lot because he drinks water so much. I have never gone to him with his first call, I have waited
for his calls several times. I like waiting him but certainly this has a return: I knew that every time I
approached him, I would be frightened by that piercing gaze typical of my father. I guessed that, he
was angry because I was late, but these look’s reason wasn’t just that, I have been feeling. I couldn't
make sense of that light, which was intertwined with an old resentment in his eyes and now evoked
an objectionable pleasure. When I think about it now, I can see that the thought provoking my father
was my undisguised disgust and childish stare at the bottle of urine. I suppose, I unintentionally
provoked him with my fearlessly look. I rubbed up him the wrong way with my directly look. He knew
I didn't want to do that; but he succumbed to the sick dignity of being compelled to do so. He knew
how to take gracefully his revenge from my reluctance. It was always like this.

I remember that day clearly: My two months old sister was crying, on the other hand my father was
telling my mother to silence the baby. I was agonized because I needed to get my hair cut and I have
to want money from my father. This was a real issue for me. There was another issue that, I didn’t like
barbers and their barber shops at all. This man's world, full of unfamiliar scents, unfamiliar colored
liquids and vulgar jokes I did not understand, was hard, it was a new world to me. İt remainded me of
growing up in many ways. I just don’t love it. Also, having to ask my father for money for this was
really bothering me. When I was thinking and enduring in silence about all of this; I was non-stop
cursing to the poor in stature, big-ass vice principal who dicteted me for my hair cut. While I entered
the school, he grabbed my hair that spilled to my ear, pulled it up to the point where it hurt, and he
had intimidated "I won't see you like this tomorrow". To take action, I decided to wait for my mother
to put my sister to sleep and the atmosphere to calm down, and then wait for my father to pee.
When he called me to pick up the bottle, which was always dark yellow, even though he drank so
much water, filled with urine, which was bubbling like cheap wine my father sometimes brought
home, and I would bury the intense disgust that can clearly be seen on my face in normal times, by
displaying a masterful act of acting. My father who impressed of this new mood of mine, would smile
first, with a lovingly act that surprising himself and he would put it in my palm the money that I asked
for. That's my plan in general and I can't see any reason that it won't work.

But it didn’t work. At all.

My father had squinted his eyes because of the pain on his back that was hurting him all the time,
when I went his side he hadn't looked even look at me properly. Of course I couldn't ask for money.