Guest: Zeynep Şen
Title of The Work: Boredom Livelihood
Original Title: Sıkıntı Geçimi
Genre: Story
I’m running up and down the streets. I think the wanted ads in shop windows have been banned and removed. Everyone is working, yet we are all unemployed. How do these people keep up with the vacancies?
My running steps get tired and turn into backward steps. I want to buy two loaves of bread and live for a week. Of course, I don’t reflect these thoughts to the baker. He says, “Bon appetit”. Bon appetit! Bon appetit to you, brother. You are living on the minimum wage, rolling along. Chocolate wafers for the kids at the beginning of the month, Sunday money for the wife and 70 raki for yourself. Bon appetit to you, torture for me. And tormenting the young people sitting at the table across from me in the café the other day who had never eaten kumpir before. It’s a potato! It’s a potato!
I stop my thoughts as I take the cigarette pack out of my pocket. I take a cigarette from the pack and replace it with a few thoughts. I need to time the cigarette well. I should smoke until I get home, not wait until I finish in front of the apartment building. That way the thoughts I keep inside get on the cigarettes in the pack and all the nicotine is ruined. However, when I finish the cigarette and enter the house, I wave the pack on the table and the thoughts break and fly away. You won’t believe it, but it really happens, try it if you want. (Those who try it for the first time should not try it at home, just in case.)
Don’t worry while I’m babbling like this, the cigarettes run out before I get home.
As soon as I turn the door lock, the mischievous tabby starts meowing in front of the door. He is hungry or he misses me. I hope you missed me, kitty, because you can eat two pieces of bread with me. I pet his head and pick him up.
I want to sit in front of the TV and look at it. Sometimes I want to watch the uncles who look funny, the aunties who look chubby. They look more human on TV. I go through the news channels, the moment I find someone who says that young people don’t like jobs, I want to listen to him or her, or I want to know if there is any news about the missing job advertisements, who the perpetrator is, who the unknowns are.
The TV screen is full of ants, and the area around the TV is full of ants.
The cat is lucky to get bread. The cat gets bread, I’m lucky. I get two loaves of bread. I’m happy.
