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4. The Day We Started to Burn
“Bastards,” he said.
It was the last day of spring and we were walking hand in
hand in the mellow light from Istanbul’s historic Galata to
Taksim. Even though we avoided the main street, we could
hear the protesters from the square. The crowd was
chanting in unison, their collective roar a foreboding. We
walked past a graceful Levantine building with
“Everyday
I’m chapulling
” sprayed on it in red paint. The evening was
mild and the last of the sun's rays were licking the tops of
the buildings, pretending peace. The sound of my heels
scared two stray kittens off the sidewalk, leaving behind a
half-eaten bowl of chicken livers. Ahead of us, boys in Messi
and Ronaldo shirts were kicking an old football around,
their screams echoing in the street.
Inside my head, the word
bastards
was also echoing. Cold,
judging, condescending. Neither of us had said anything
since. Partly out of a need to defend the bastards, but also
in an effort to fill the crack between us with words, I asked,
“Why bastards?"
A simple enough question,
why
. But he stopped abruptly
and turned to me. Behind him, a pink sign flashing:
Serotonin Café. I thought about going in and melting into
the comforting smells. But he was saying, “Why?
Why
? For