TE16 Turkish Delight

Let Me Out Here, Please Sırhupi raised her head and looked directly into her eyes. In that gaze Mukaddes glimpsed a blaze of familiarity for the first time. “What on earth do you mean, what ails you, Muko?” asked the beloved voice. Muko…her moniker from their childhood. Come to think of it, she used to call her Surpig back. The knife turned, going deeper into her innards. Everything she had kept numbed within her for all the years of silence leading up to her coming here, all of it surrendered to the mere mention of Muko. She wanted to burst into tears but checked herself. Letting her tears surge and knowing she would find consolation was a thing of the past. A beautiful time of tales told in the past tense. “How can you forgive me, Surpig,” she heard her own voice say. Despite herself, a tear trickled down and dripped onto her hand. “Will you ever forgive me?” Silence…wretched silence. Sırhupi has always been honest. She isn’t one to say, “What is there to forgive?” She deigns to cover up nothing. “This isn’t about forgiveness,” she said finally, in a broken voice. “It’s just that I was crushed.” “I know,” whispered Mukaddes. “I know, my dear sister, that I let you down when you most needed me. But if you were crushed once, I was crushed before you tenfold. That’s why I could never come to you all this time.” She reached for her friend’s hand. “Is there nothing I could do to make it up to you, Surpig?”

Sırhupi looked at her hands. “You took off,” she said. “Your son

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