TE16 Turkish Delight

Hakan Günday - What do you want? he asked.

The letters coming out of hismouthwere spiky. Theywere looking for a place to stick. Come that place did. But it came with such softness that the needles that had shot out of him sank into it and out of sight.

- Just to walk. That’s all.

He had to raise his head to meet Needlefish’s eyes. He was tall. Very tall. But he wouldn’t stoop. The only thing about him that stooped were his eyes, sunk like foreign objects into the sockets. Normally Koma doesn’t talk to people he doesn’t know. He has no implicit esteem for those whose name he doesn’t know. Really, he has no esteem for anyone. He’s quite indifferent to that sort of thing. He didn’t reply. In the courtroom it’s said that silence is persistence. They may not have been in front of a judge, but there was still a life they kneeled to and it had taught them silence as a form of imploring. They began to walk. Needlefish was trying to match his strides to Koma’s. Clearly he was having a hard time. They didn’t speak but merely turned to ash the tobacco inside their cigarettes. The slope had given way to a rough plain. At this part of the street is a pavement so flat it’s hard to tell where it starts and ends. The kind of flatness that balances a water level. So flat you could forget the world is round.

- Do you have time? We can go sit at Ein, if you want.

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