TE16 Turkish Delight

Nazli Karabiyikoglu More than three months had passed since he came to Frankfurt. He was staying in a duplex where he was assigned to wait for the permit – and a plane ticket – that would supposedly come in a week from the Ministry. Although no interruptions had occured in his scholarship, this hold up that took months was causing him to lose enthusiasm, and distract. The city that he managed to know like the back of his hand in the first couple of days of his arrival, hadn’t prepared surprises for him, and he had ran out of shops and streets to discover. He had stopped using the alcohol and vomit smelling tram at nights, and had begun staying in his house with a tiny garden. Cute blonds, snuggled up crowd, bars made into bars out of one single room, flashing lights, none was enough to fill up the streets. Thighs swirling around poles, the sweat of the breasts dashing towards his face, they weren’t making his singularity any better. Even the women were lifeless. No traffic, no police, no threats, no bombs, getting used to the lethargy of ongoing insurance was a virus to his system. Ever since Noah stopped looking out for himself, he couldn’t get the thought that Istanbul should have been a country on its own out of his head. Independent country, exquisitely of those who knew how to live it, who sang songs to its streets, hills, woods, forests, rivers, bosphorus, ships, boats, tastes and southwester; a tiny Asia where they would live forever without the need to abandon it and search for other lands. African Europe with its maquis, ice and meandering shores.

The passions that brought him to Frankfurt were like those slender trees who endeavoured to exist amongst tall buildings

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