A GARDEN

You live in a city for years. You get pretty tired of that city. You think you’ve seen and
recognized every part of the city. Yet, there are still people, streets, buildings that we cannot
see well even though we pass by many times a day. Suddenly, you’ll raise your head and
realise some buildings was carrying such human-sized sculpture on its back.
I was late for home one night, actually I didn’t want to go home, I slept in a hotel near
Beyoğlu, drunk and tired of my life. I turned out the light and opened the window before
going to sleep. I wanted to smoke in front of the window. It was a warm fall night, there was a
silence in the room with the smell of leaves. There was a garden in front of me. I could see the
garden from the lights leaking from the windows. I could hear several big trees waving, leaves
coming towards me and running away from me in harmony. I was standing upright in front of
the window looking at the top of the huge trees. This wasn’t my first time watching the stars.
The stars that seemed to be interspersed with the tops of the trees looked different.
People have released their consolations, divinities, loves, fortunes to the stars. That evening,
standing up in front of the window and watching the sky, I was pouring out my feelings. Can
a person think without a mind? I was. Feelings were leaving and going to the stars, as if they
were not the enthusiasm of the mind, but different, completely different things from the mind.
If ı need to explain what I heard, it wasn’t feelings like joy or grief. They were something
else. My hands are cold as if they were wet from a rain that fell from my feelings. My hands
want to hold another hands, my mind wants reason. A chocolate bar, a champagne, an
outdated wafer tasted on my lips.
On a May night a thin Istanbul minaret, a country cafe, was lined up. If I had someone with
me, I would probably cry with happiness. I was lonely, abandoned, unemployed, a vagrant.
Now I could smell the August afternoons, evenings, the blue sea, watermelon smells of the
past. However, before I entered here, I was disgusted with everything, even a little suicidal
thought crossed my mind.
In the distance there was a red light decaying among the leaves. I was slipping from this light
into a darkness as pleasant as the darkness of a star, from this darkness into the smell of a star.
I was not alone now with this light. One by one many things had come back. I had built my
own world, I was ready to enjoy the pleasure -or the pain- of a world together, I was feeling
children's excitement about new dresses on the morning of the holidays.
I sat down on the windowsill and looked at the sky again. I chose one of the stars. It was in a
color game from blue to orange, from orange to blue. I know, there is neither a garden nor
trees in front of me… I am drunk, and insomnia, fatigue, misfortune make me dream awake.
Maybe I don’t see you too star!
I threw my cigarette out the window. I undressed, turned off the light, went to bed. I quickly
slept. I woke up very early in the morning. As soon as I opened my eyes beautiful and
neglected grove caught my eye from the opposite window and I was surprised. In front of me,
there was a garden with big trees, quiet little roads rustling, leaves of different trees of
different colors, from red, rotten to yellow, green, dark light green, even white, an apocalypse
of dry leaves, in the light silence of the morning. Awesome garden! A beautiful grove. There
was no more wind. The garden, in the heart of silence, that both upset and opened a person's
heart, gave you the feeling that you were going as far away as you could, to the seaside, or to
a school for girls napping in the morning.
I must have always looked ahead because when I looked to my right, I saw a church. Million
of leaves swing slightly on its door. They were circling around the axis and climbing the three
or four-foot stairs of the church. Next to the church, the windows of its lower floors were
iron-winged, a blunt building in a fog, rising into a cardboard surface. Now I suddenly
thought that this view would be erased from my sight, that these dreams would go out like
candles that go out when they blow out, or that a terrific wind would come out and add fog to
the garden in front of you, take the trees, leaves, church, castle with you and run away
quickly.
In a just moment this wind came out but my thoughts didn’t happen. The garden and the
buildings stopped. The trees swayed. The fog began to go away on its own. The garden was
now surrounded by a yellow gilded sunlight that had found its way here and there. My
cigaratte was running out of the window, a step away dust was integrating into golden circles,
as if caught in a solar storm. The leaves of the garden were coming towards me, they were
piling on top of each other while telling me how they climb from under my window. Beyond,
at the end of the little quiet roads, leaves of another color, a metallic hue that ran away, with
another sound of beating bottles were running and rolling. Everything was like little yellow-
headed dwarves. The garden was full of such creatures. Then the birds filled the trees. They
also had their holidays. I felt like I was hearing a frog's voice. However, in this season, frogs
are in their sleep at the bottom of the water, immersed in the rotten green stone-cut serenity of
the pools that will no longer be called blue. They were numb in the sickness of the May, the
June, under the willows.
But there were crows. I heard crows with a muffled voice that reminded a person of flat,
snowy plains pecking at high branches, fighting, and then shouting and calling. They were
composing the cries of cornless fields, a famine anthem. Suddenly, I heard a tram bell. So,
beyond this strange garden, there were the roads of Istanbul, people that I knew and saw every
day. Maybe this was the first tram. The woolen hood covering the ears of the sleeper, the
ticket taker, the sleeping idiot, the ticket taker, the hardworking people of the first tram car, I
thought I saw a child, I shrugged. It was like the candles went out; the garden was standing in
front of me but it walked away. That's when I realized that I am in Beyoğlu, at the “……”
hotel. And this garden is the garden of the British Legation.
Aleyna Tuğçe SÜMER