CHAPTER ONE
WHERE Will I SPEND THE NİGHT?
The wind was blowing harder now.
He could not see the tip of his own nose, yet he could imagine how red it must have become beneath the ruthless bite of the cold. The wind began at his cheeks and traveled toward his ears, brushing his skin as though in mockery. But what kind of touch was this? A touch should carry warmth. This one carried knives. The air was so sharp that even its caress felt forged from ice.
The more he thought about the cold, the deeper it seemed to enter him. Or perhaps it was not the cold that intensified, but the awareness of it. Yet how could he not think of it? The cold was everywhere. It pressed against his bones, slipped beneath his clothes, insisted on its presence. He might have tried to ignore it—but the cold had no intention of ignoring him.
He did not want to fall into that spiral of thought again. Reflection, when left unchecked, could become a whirlpool. It pulled him inward without warning, circling the same questions until motion itself felt impossible. No. Better to move. Movement meant resistance.
But move where?
What does a man do in the middle of a vast mountain forest?
He stood within nature's domain—though whether it was an embrace or a trial remained uncertain. Would nature shelter him? Or would it test him? That would not be decided by hope. It would be decided by endurance.
For a moment, Beyoğlu returned to him. Pera. The soft winds drifting toward Galata. Those breezes had once felt playful, almost affectionate. Now he stood beneath winds that attacked without mercy. Before he could rebuild the image of those streets in his mind, another violent gust erased it.
His hands throbbed. The cold had settled into them, dull and persistent. It was not snowing, yet the air felt heavier than snowfall. Perhaps it truly was worse. Or perhaps hardship, once stripped of comfort, magnifies itself.
Still, he had been fortunate.
At least he had found this abandoned ruin.
Otherwise—what would he have done?
Without hesitation, he stepped inside.
There was little to fear, he reasoned. In winter, snakes and other creatures withdrew into silence. If there was one mercy the season offered, it was stillness.
And yet the question returned.
Why was he not in Beyoğlu now, wrapped in some fragile story of love? Why was he here instead, on a mountainside, negotiating with cold and darkness?
Then again—was love there anything more than performance?
Had people not built invisible walls around themselves? Had they not perfected the art of appearing close while remaining untouched?
At least here there were no artificial friendships. No rehearsed tenderness. No polished sincerity.
Perhaps that was why he had come.
He had chosen this. No one had forced him. He had turned away from the city's rigid systems and quiet suffocations. He had chosen the mountain over neon. Silence over noise.
Here there were no painted faces.
No cosmetic smiles.
Here, nature stood without disguise.
The ruin must once have belonged to a powerful man. He imagined documents signed, money exchanged, authority exercised. Now the door had rotted from the bottom upward. The handle clung weakly to splintered wood. Even if it closed, the broken windows invited the wind inside.
Time had negotiated nothing.
Time had taken everything.
He pressed his hand into his pocket and felt the lighters. They were still there. Good. He wondered whether the villa had a fireplace. In films, such houses always did. But films never showed damp wood or broken glass.
He searched the rooms.
Splintered furniture.
Empty bottles.
Torn mattresses.
Even a discarded diaper in the corner.
No kind of neglect was absent here.
Finally, he found a room with rusted bed frames and—there—a fireplace.
But no door.Of course.
He placed his worn black school bag carefully on the least filthy section of floor. Poverty had followed him even into solitude. He began clearing spider webs with a stick, then gathered half-rotted boards from another room and stacked them near the hearth. He broke them with his foot. The wood was weaker than it appeared.
Hope returned—not dramatically, but cautiously.
He filled the fireplace with dry leaves and knelt before it.
"Come on," he murmured. "Rise."
The lighter sparked. The leaves smoked. A thick, bitter odor filled the room. His eyes burned. He coughed. The dampness resisted flame as though clinging to its own existence.
Just burn.
He stumbled outside for air. Ironically, fresh air was abundant here. Cold was even more abundant.
When he returned, the fire had begun to hold.
Not fiercely.
Not triumphantly.
But stubbornly.
He watched it. Fire consumed and created at once. It destroyed wood, yet produced warmth. It erased form, yet gave light. Perhaps illumination always required something to be sacrificed.
He extended his hands. Pain came first—the sting of blood returning to numb fingers. Warmth followed slowly. Comfort, he realized, is rarely gentle after deprivation.
Outside, the wind continued.
He imagined the city again. Neon lights. Music escaping doorways. Faces illuminated by phone screens. Conversations mistaken for connection.
He did not hate the city.
He simply no longer believed in its promises.
It offered proximity yet deepened isolation. It celebrated speed yet drained direction. It multiplied noise yet reduced meaning.
Out here, the terms were honest.
If you were careless, you suffered.
If you were unprepared, you paid.
If you were weak, you endured the consequence.
There was integrity in that.
He leaned against the stone wall. It returned the cold faithfully to his back. The ruin was not protection. It was delay.
Once, someone had called this place "mine."
Now it belonged to time.
Wealth had not purchased permanence. Authority had not secured memory.
And he wondered—had he been chasing ownership too?
Not of land.
Of narrative.
Of identity.
Was this journey escape? Or another form of control?
The fire cracked sharply. A spark leapt outward and died.
Everything required breath.
Fire required oxygen.
The body required air.
The mind required meaning.
Without meaning, suffocation began long before death.
What had brought him here was not adventure alone. It was a quieter suffocation—the kind that gathers beneath routine.
Wake.
Work.
Consume.
Scroll.
Sleep.
A life functioning efficiently while slowly emptying itself.
He feared becoming competent rather than alive.
The mountain demanded presence. Cold sharpened awareness. Hunger clarified thought. Darkness stripped distraction.
Here, he was reduced to essentials:
Warmth.
Shelter.
Breath.
Nothing more.
Stripped of performance.
Stripped of illusion.
Just a human body negotiating with weather.
The reduction unsettled him.
But it also clarified him.
He approached the broken window. Beyond it—nothing. No headlights. No distant glow. Only darkness.
He felt small.
Not symbolically.
Physically small.
Humility here was not virtue. It was fact.
He returned to the fire and sat down slowly. The flames were steady now.
Perhaps he had not come to conquer solitude.
Perhaps he had come to measure himself against something that could not be impressed.
The fire rose slightly.
He extended his hands once more and whispered:
"Stay alive."
He was no longer certain whether he was speaking to the fire—
or to himself.