from: ceyda kafadar
title: stranger...
form: text; electronic text file

I opened my eyes to the faded autumn again and this time you are in my mind...I mean lines to be written to a man I never met had been already composed...In the dusk of a misty and foggy nice day, standing in the far corner of a bar with a cup of jasmine tea in my hand, I recognized you from your face as drawn on a piece of paper...At that moment I wanted to be a part of your life I don’t know, just like I wanted to see your dreams unknown to me...You had said ‘strangers’ somewhere, do you think a person can be a stranger if he/she knows the existence of some thing... Or how better can the most familiar person understand you than a stranger...

I don’t know what did you suffer in prison, your days in interrogation, who made you sad, who loved you, what did you say to your canvasses, how did you kiss your lovers, how many women took you to their hearts, how many women found you hostile...
whether you swear while watching a sports match, whether you yearn for your mother, whether you long for the scent of a woman, how much do you trust your friends, how do you walk on the street...
whether you like Galata district as much as I do, whether you have ever felt loneliness while walking through a crowd, whether you want to run away, whether you want to take shelter in your house and to find peace in a cup of hot tea...

Your longings, hatreds, scent, whether you know my scent, your distance from death and life, whether you long for the mountains, whether you arise with the sun, how many times you wanted to shout your love, how many times you succumbed to silence instead...
how do you see the Spring, whether you saw me or not, what did you hide in your heart, to what extent you load this burden to your paints, the distance you put between yourself and dreams very close to reality...
whether you like to watch cartoons in TV in the mornings, whether you eat after waking up at midnight, whether you enjoy pepper or stuffed pepper, whether you drink a lot and becomes drunken, whether you smoked a cigarette or not, when did you quit pacifier, whether you sweat while sleeping, whether you are one of those who talk in their sleep, place a pillow between their legs or keep on changing position all night, whether you would like to wake up lying beside me, what did you listen to, what you watch, whether you like theater, whether you are a good guy or a bad guy...

Even if the things I know are crushed under the weight of the things I do not know, you are a human as much as me, aren’t you? Apart from being different sexes, are not our strangeness hidden in a few small details... Had I known all of them, would I have known you? Can I not know you as much as I know myself? If I didn’t see that poster, if you didn’t persuade me, if I didn’t write this letter, if I didn’t touch your life we would always be strangers, but now everything has changed...Did we meet at the Bosphorus ferryboat one morning? Do you take that ferryboat? Which part of Istanbul are you living in? Maybe you are looking at the city from above the hills, like I do. Maybe you greet the new day at Taksim Square? I wonder if you know Ankara? Where do you like to spend the summer? Or do you wonder? I mean do you wonder me, others, other people you have never seen...Their dreams, sleeps, awakenings...how morose I am when I wake up, what make me happy, what make me peaceful? How sad the days go passing by...How I like soya sauce and yogurt, my pink hair, my obsession with angels, my purple room, that I cry when watching those melodramatic Turkish movies, that I even choose the movies that would make me cry, my photographs, memories, the freckles on my body, that I name them, when I quit sleeping with my teddy bear, that I can give everything to live on the bottom of the sea one day, that I’m crazy for dolphins, in which part of the world I am, in which part of life I stand, the colors of my house, how I like the trees, how I am scared of bugs, that I can play the card game ‘kanasta’ for hours if I can find a mate, what I look for, what I couldn’t find, what I owe, how quickly do the ages and years pass, how beautiful can life be if it can be freed from the captivity of the time, what I am conditioned to do, my fantasies of silk pajamas, how I chew the fat about Nuri Alço, how I dislike the people who utter sentences beginning with “these paintings that decorate my walls...”, that I consider even a few lines scrabbled on a napkin to be invaluable, what I do to prank callers...

I distinguish myself from other individuals with those things...I don’t know your separation criteria, but you are only human and I know at the end of the day you want to be loved, to be yearned for, to have peace, that you are afraid of getting forgotten, that you are worried, thrilled, that you think, you can tell, you can’t tell, and that you can be as much likeable as angry...Just like us, just like all other people being strangers to you... Happy birthday to you...