After an absence of twelve years I entered Istanbul like a sleepwalker. 「The earth called to him,」 they say of men who are about to die, and in my case, it was death that drew me back to the city where I』d been born and raised.
When I first returned, I thought there was only death; later, I would also enter love. Love, however, was a distant and fotten thing, like my memories of having lived iy. It was in Istanbul, twelve years ago, that I fell helplessly in love with my young cousin.
Four years after I first left Istanbul, while traveling through the endless steppes, snow-covered mountains and melancholy cities of Persia, carryiers and colleg taxes, I admitted to myself that I was slowly fetting the face of the childhood love I』d left behind. With growing panic, I tried desperately to remember her, only to realize that despite love, a face long not seen finally fades. During the sixth year I spent in the East, traveling or w as a secretary in the service of pashas, I khat the face I imagined was no lohat of my beloved. Later, in the eighth year, I fot what I』d mistakenly called to mind in the sixth, and again visualized a pletely different tenance. In this way, by the twelfth year, when I returo my city at the age of thirty-six, I ainfully aware that my beloved』s face had long since escaped me.
Many of my friends aives had died during my twelve-year exile. I visited the cemetery overlooking the Golden Horn and prayed for my mother and for the uncles who』d passed away in my absehe earthy smell of mud mingled with my memories. Someone had broken ahecher beside my mrave. For whatever reason, gazing at the broken pieces, I began to cry. Was I g for the dead or because I was, strangely, still only at the beginning of my life after all these years? Or was it because I』d e to the end of my life』s journey? A faint snow fell. Entranced by the flakes blowing here and there, I became so lost in the vagaries of my life that I didn』t notice the black dog staring at me from a dark er of the cemetery.
My tears subsided. I wiped my nose. I saw the black dog wagging its tail in friendship as I left the cemetery. Sometime later, I settled into our neighborhood, renting one of the houses where a relative on my father』s side once lived. It seems I remihe landlady of her son who』d been killed by Safavid Persian soldiers at the front and so she agreed to the house and cook for me.
I set out on long and satisfying walks through the streets as if I』d settled not in Istanbul, but temporarily in one of the Arab cities at the other end of the world. The streets had bee narrower, or so it seemed to me. Iain areas, on roads squeezed between houses leaning toward one another, I was forced to rub up against walls and doors to avoid being hit by laden packhorses. There were more wealthy people, or so it seemed to me. I saw an ornate carriage, a citadel drawn by proud horses, the likes of which couldn』t be found in Arabia or Persia. Near the 「Burnt n,」 I saw some bothersome beggars dressed in rags huddling together as the smell of offal ing from the chi-sellers market wafted over them. One of them who was blind smiled as he watched the falling snow.
Had I been told Istanbul used to be a poorer, smaller and happier city, I might not have believed it, but that』s what my heart told me. Though my beloved』s house was where it』d always been among linden and chestnut trees, others were now living there, as I learned from inqui