TE16 Turkish Delight

Nalan Barbarosoğlu It only went on because the few passengers on the postal train weren’t as picky and actually liked my stories. And sometimes – not always of course – I even gave the hard-to-read third copies to them for free, to make the poor folks happy, or so I had convinced myself. I returned to the lounge and gave the sandwich to the guest Jew with the fedora. He truly was a kind man, he gave half of the loaf back tome, with all the sausage thatwas in it. Turned out hedidn’t eat meat. Which was surprising but I tried not to show that. I immediately noticed that I didn’t know if the young Jew ate meat or not. How blind we are to the things happening right beside us… We took our time eating, only then I sensed my hunger. I poured a glass of water from the boys’ carboy, so the guest could take his pills. Afterwards, I escorted him to the shed where my girlfriend used to stay. The kerosene lamp had dried off, so I took some candles from my shed. The sheets of the shed were clean, I had washed them along with mine the other week. Although she left without saying a word – and she had left for sure – I still felt that I was responsible for her. There was some brown and some onion skin paper on the table, I left some of my most used, smallest pencils. I was assuming that this Jewwas also awriter, since hewas friends with the young writer. Oh god, why hadn’t I asked him what he did for a living?! I was guilty of an increasing number of things…

The guest Jew took off his coat and put it on the bed with his

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