(Every person is destined to be part of another's life.)
INTRODUCTION
All at once, it felt as though I had emerged out of a void. A void that had never existed before…I feared I had lost my consciousness. Thousands of words had gathered inside my head, and every one of them seemed as if it had been spoken directly to me. Had I known what madness felt like beforehand, I would have declared myself insane in that very moment.
What had happened to me left a great question mark in my mind. My efforts to ponder the cause and effect of my own being—and my failure to reach a conclusion—were proof of my limitations. Just then, my thoughts carried me somewhere else. I began to wonder.I wondered whether mathematics, history, geography, art—everything I knew and everything I failed to know—were still intact.
Which latitude and longitude I stood on, in which hemisphere; which city or town; my door number; the woman I loved; my fears; what I had lost; what I despised; what I wished to possess; the color of my hair; my capacity to think; my view of the world, and who I was—I began questioning all of it.Was everything where it belonged? And where was I within all this? What was the thing that made me me?Was I now in this Unreal Yet Real Time, or was I still wandering within the Totality of Times?To be certain, I quickly turned my attention to my surroundings.
The sun had reached—or perhaps passed—a position of one hundred and sixty-five degrees. Since it was past five o'clock, it was likely around that angle. After a while, my consciousness fully returned. I felt as though I had belonged to this Unreal Time I was in since eternity. Or perhaps I had arrived here from another Unreal Real Time, and I simply did not know which decision had hurled me into this one.
The air had begun to cool. Humans and animals were slowly coming outside. The stray dogs dug through the garbage, taking their share and dividing the rest among themselves. Trees were in their most magnificent state.As everyone rushed about, trying to reach somewhere, my eyes did not leave the faces around me—faces among which I searched for my Asiya.
But since when did I even know Asiya?
Even though I could not answer that question, I still slipped quietly into the crowds, hoping perhaps one of those faces would reveal my Asiya to me. And until I found her, I had no intention of giving up.
As I was losing myself in the crowd searching for my Asiya, Rıza had just left work and stood by the exit door of the building, carefully observing the passersby.
While watching, he was also tapping his right foot on the ground—slowly at first, tense and controlled. Then he began repeating the movement quickly. Since the ground beneath him was paved with stone, every tap produced a faint musical rhythm that echoed through the area. His heart, carried away by that rhythm, felt as if it might leap out of his chest any moment.
Just then, an unexpected hand touched his shoulder from behind—gently, lovingly—and withdrew immediately.
"Rıza, you're still here? You haven't left yet? Why are you waiting here?" she asked, one question after another.
Rıza stepped back and turned around. The moment he did, his whole body began to tremble. He tried to stop it, but he couldn't—like a driver who has lost control of the steering wheel. He had no idea what to say. His mind raced for an answer to the untimely question. Thankfully, he found one.
He wanted to say, "I was waiting for you," but he couldn't.
Instead:
"Well… I was going to leave, of course, but I missed the bus," he said.
Rina replied, "Good then, we can walk to the stop together. Sitting on those chairs from morning till evening has worn me out anyway."
Hearing this, Rıza simply nodded to show he agreed. But inwardly, he was shouting with joy:
"At least she'll walk with me to the bus stop. And hearing her say it herself… an indescribable happiness. A happiness that will bring pain, I know—but still worth living."
As they walked, he continued speaking to himself in silence.
Suddenly, Rıza's mind began producing new questions.
Could it be? Could she also feel something for me? Don't be ridiculous—you saw your face in the mirror this morning. Who would like someone as ugly as you? Like? What liking? People like beautiful things. I'm an ugly creature. What could she possibly like about this ugly face? Maybe God created me so others would take a lesson when they look at me—so they would be grateful for their own lives. I'm a warning sent into the world.
He kept questioning himself endlessly.
Or maybe Rina pities me? Maybe she knows I'm in love with her and doesn't want me to be hurt?
Of course she pities you. What else could it be? Do you expect her to love you, you ugly thing?
He walked clumsily without caring where he stepped. His feet slipped into the small pits in the pavement, making him stumble, but he regained his balance each time.
Sometimes, when his thoughts hurt him too much, he sped up and walked ahead of Rina, only to slow down again after her repeated warnings: "Don't walk so fast."
Repeating this over and over made him unbearable for Rina, who seemed tired of giving him commands like a drill sergeant training new recruits.
After a while, Rıza's unusual silence and distracted state made Rina think he was mentally drifting away from the present, troubled by problems she couldn't yet name.
"What's wrong, Rıza? Why are you so quiet? And you don't look well either. You haven't said a single word since we started walking. And you keep rushing ahead and leaving me behind. If I didn't call after you, you'd walk off and forget me. Why are you so absentminded? Is something bothering you?"
Rıza shook his head. "No, nothing. I'm fine. There's no problem."
Then he went right back into his internal conversation:
Oh, there's a problem all right. The problem is me. My ugliness. Is there a bigger problem than that? You are a gift sent to humanity—but not to monsters like me.
Soon after, Rina asked another question, snapping him out of his thoughts.
"Then what is it, Rıza?"
"I'm fine, just tired from working so much today, that's all," he said.
After giving this answer, he glanced at Rina to see her reaction. Seeing that she only pushed out her lower lip to signal an unspoken "okay," he dropped his eyes to the ground and continued walking, sinking back into his thoughts.
His mind drifted away into a dream. For a moment, he forgot his ugliness and imagined a finite but happy life with Rina—a life where she remained by his side.
But returning to the criteria of the real world, he concluded that someone who could overlook his ugliness, someone whose heart was pure enough to conceal it, couldn't possibly exist. And after carefully weighing everything in his mind, he reached a decision:
He would never reveal his feelings to Rina. He would act only as a dear friend—he would let his thirsting love neither bloom nor die completely, and he would continue speaking to her just as before.
Rıza's outward silence eventually made Rina stop trying to force conversation out of him, and she too fell quiet. She looked around, observing the faces of the people passing by—especially the women. Whenever her eyes met a man's face, she quickly turned away and resumed her search for female faces.
The hundreds of indistinct words rising from the crowd blended together into a meaningless mass, drifted off in unknown directions, and vanished. New words followed the same cycle, appearing and disappearing in the same way. All the while, the two of them continued walking silently toward the bus stop.
Convinced of the hopelessness of his love, Rıza walked with a gloomy, heavy spirit, keeping just enough distance between himself and Rina for another person to walk between them. He couldn't imagine her looking at him the way he looked at her. He saw such a thing as beyond impossible.
Just hearing her say his name—"Rıza"—was enough for him.
Rina, unaware that Rıza's heart burned with love for her, walked while casually glancing around. Her eyes wandered to shop windows; when she liked something, she pointed and said, "Look, this one is nice, we should check it out."
Maybe she was trying to break his silence. But when Rıza still didn't respond, she fell quiet again and resumed observing the people passing by.
Women who passed her often stared in admiration at her beauty. And men—whose suppressed, desire-driven instincts pulled them toward her—couldn't help but stare either. Their eyes, driven by primal urges and lacking any sense of aesthetics, ran over her body from head to toe like hungry animals, leaving behind metaphorical trails of drool.
Naturally, Rina began to feel uncomfortable under all those eyes. To escape them, she turned her head away—and immediately her gaze fell upon Rıza's face. She began examining the visible side of his face. Her eyes lingered on the hollow under his left eye. She studied it closely—perhaps for the first time with a different intention.
The wrinkled skin around his eye socket, with its blend of purple and red, reminded her of a monkey's skin. Her gaze slid lower to his drooping lip. It struck her as thick and shapeless, almost like a horse's lip.
A wave of disgust made her look away abruptly. She lowered her eyes to the ground with guilt and embarrassment.
"Why? Why couldn't you be just a little handsome?" she whispered to herself.
"Why not spread some of the beauty of your heart onto your face…? Ugh… Fine, appearance isn't everything, but what part of you am I supposed to fall for now?"
A wind of sadness swept across Rina's face. She felt a heaviness on her eyelids. Her heartbeat slowed. The excitement she once felt vanished completely.
Lifting her eyes again, the heaviness increased. A sharp, delicate ache formed deep in her heart—part guilt, part pity.
"Who knows how much he suffers because of his ugliness? I wonder… does he know he's ugly?
Is it right to think this way? He's a human being after all—a kindhearted one at that.
How can I think such immoral thoughts? Shame on you, Miss Rina."
Inside her, the ego and the superego were at war.
"Moral decay begins within a person. Resisting it is the strength shown in one's inner judgment."
Rina proved me right.
Just as a worm hidden inside an apple slowly spreads, corrupting it from within until the decay eventually reveals itself outwardly—so too does a small evil inside a person push them away from human values as it grows. And Rina, perhaps unknowingly, was trying to stop the worm inside her from growing. She judged her thoughts about Rıza as a moral failing and waged an internal battle against herself.
Meanwhile, Rıza—unaware of any of this—kept drifting through his deep thoughts.
By then, they had reached the bus stop. The rumble of the approaching minibus snapped Rıza back into existence. He didn't even realize when Rina had boarded. He quickly followed and sat beside her.
Ten or fifteen minutes later, when the minibus approached the stop closest to his home, he stood up to get off. The bus had already stopped; the driver was waiting. Rıza glanced sideways at Rina and, with a timid, nervous voice, said "See you," before stepping off quickly.
For some reason, sitting beside Rina felt like sitting on a live grenade with its pin pulled. This made him feel like a stranger next to her.
Thinking that he had left such an impression upset him deeply.
In low spirits, he walked through old, crumbling buildings and finally reached home, where his mother had prepared dinner and was waiting for him.
When Rıza entered silently, his mother turned and saw him at that exact moment. Startled, she pressed her hand to her chest.
"… Son, couldn't you make a sound? You nearly scared me to death!"
Completely detached from the outside world, Rıza dragged himself into the kitchen and sat on a chair.
Ignoring his mother's words—and without even feeling guilty for frightening her—he muttered, "I didn't know I'd scare you that much, Mom," and stood up before she could say anything else. Exhausted, he walked to the bathroom.
He opened the tap, filled his palms with water, and splashed it onto his face. With each splash, he shook his head from side to side. After repeating this a couple of times, he stared at his reflection in the mirror above the sink. He examined every feature of his face, unable to stop himself.
He tried to figure out why Rina could love him—if she ever would.
He couldn't accept that he was created ugly.
"There must be something beautiful about me," he thought, and kept examining his face.
He looked closely into his eyes—those two deep hollows filled with a brightness fueled by love, a brightness that reflected onto the mirror.
He compared his eye sockets with those of the handsome men he knew and found his own lacking according to his personal standard.
Then he lowered his gaze and studied the protruding jawbone in the mirror.
He then kept staring at the shapeless, ugly droop of his lip. He looked at these parts of himself with hostility, feeling only displeasure. Realizing it was pointless to struggle, that he had no choice but to accept his own ugliness, he finally pulled his eyes away from the mirror in despair. His head sank down, wedged between his shoulders. He stayed like that for a while. The trace of laughter — the one that love had once placed in his eyes — had completely vanished. A quiet sorrow had settled into them instead.
Frowning, he slowly walked back to the kitchen and sat on the chair once more. His eyes drifted to the window, where he silently watched the outside world.
A melancholy breeze drifted in through the open kitchen window. The lingering chill from the mighty mountain peaks, the rustle of lush green trees, the scent of fresh flowers, the chirping of birds, and the croaking of frogs all entered the kitchen carried by that mournful wind.