Guest: Melek Şen
Title of The Work: Post: Recipient Empty (2nd Letter)
Original Title: Posta: Alıcı Boş (2’nci Mektup)
Genre: Letter Novel
The sun hadn’t risen yet, and it was my custom to wake up in the dead of night. I was so burnt that I drank the water on the bedside table in one gulp. I heard somewhere that water has the ability to clear the mind and prevent headaches. I am telling you this in case it is useful for you too.
I finished my previous letter in a hurry, I’m not sure where exactly I left off, so I decided to write two copies, I’ll send one to you and keep the other for myself, isn’t that a great idea?
I took my notebook made of straw paper, I lay down on my bed, I thought a lot about where to start and where to write. Past to present? From today to the past? It will be a bit cliché, but I would like to start from the past, because you can understand my current state more easily.
I was born in Tarlabaşı, the old beauty and the new ugliness of Istanbul. We lived on the top floor of a five-storey apartment building. It had large windows and high ceilings. All the rooms were yellow, that’s why I never liked the colour yellow. The stairs of the apartment building were curved like in palaces, the upper parts were wooden, and there were very beautiful carvings in certain places, the symbol of which I cannot remember exactly. When I was looking up from below, it was as if I was rising from the ground to the sky, it had a marvellous view. We lived in this house until the formation of my personality was completed, that is, until I was 7. I remember that Freud said that personality and moral development is largely completed in the first 6 years and that there are no significant developments afterwards. Now I think; do we become the whole of what we saw, heard and felt as a child when we grow up? Perhaps, when the time comes, we take off the cloak that works for us at that moment from our saddlebags and continue on our way.
What was I saying, the house I lived in, my family. I had a nuclear family of three. My grandmother, my mum and me. My grandmother used to wake me up in the morning with a kiss, I can still feel it if I touch her cheek. She was quite old, toned, sweet-tongued, my precious one. She was my playmate who told my fairy tales and expanded my imagination. Sometimes I would be a disobedient child, I would encourage my little body and run to the beginning of the street. I remember I loved the crowd of people there. Watching the ladies and gentlemen running around was like a game. There was a flower passage on the right side of the street, Uncle Mehmet’s toy stall, I used to buy toys from there for every holiday and for my new birthday. Beyoğlu chocolate from the market next to the passage, bagels from the stall on the street… While I was on the edge of a street dreaming of these places I loved, my grandmother would find me, give me a sweet brush, and then buy me chocolate again. As you can see, the beginning of my childhood is full of memories that I can call beautiful and that I miss.
Now I am in a place far away from loving and being loved. I have a rope in my hand, while I need to untie it, I continue to make it a deadlock. I continue to be a prisoner in my own body and I am pulling on my soul. While a person must first be good to himself, while I hold my other hand today and lift it up, tomorrow I can slap that hand hard. How much I wish I could be carefree and insensitive in this world. What I experienced, what I saw around me, what I heard on the street pulled me into a whirlpool. It would be more accurate to say that I was swallowed up. I am a prisoner of bondage.
Dear ladies and gentlemen,
That’s all I can tell you for now. Goodbye.
