TE23 Double Feature

Selim Özdo ğan

52 Factory Lane

tomorrow, I’ll go to the office and complain. They can’t keep on treating me badly; everyone overlooking me and me always holding my tongue like a good girl. Something has to change one day. First thing tomorrow morning. That evening she sits at home crocheting a blanket, going over what Işık said. The years flow by like water. She remembers the big water they channelled through the orchards of the summer houses in the heat, the stream where her father lost his watch, the water pump where she threw a stone that hit her sister in the eye. Back then, the years flowed like water too. Perhaps they flow faster now, that much may be true, but something else has changed too. Back then, the water was free. It had power and strength; they had to steer it or pump it out at the well, but the water flowed and sought its own path. These days, they’re all in houses where the water is trapped in the pipes and has no strength of its own. And just like the water, the people are trapped: trapped in this life between work, money, spending, more work, more spending, the factory, the house, the garden, the car, holidays and the children. 220

Though Timur would spend all day at the forge, you could go and see him there, sit and talk and scratch his legs, drink tea. Ceyda and Ceren sometimes come to meet Gül from the factory, but they only know the gate; they’ve never set foot inside. And you couldn’t drink tea and talk in there anyway. How often had Gül sat by her father at the forge and watched the blacksmith working, hearing the hiss when the sweat dripped off his chin onto the glowing-hot iron? Now she spends eight hours a day combing wool, never knowing what will be made out of it. She sees the factory walls for longer than her daughters’ faces. But she’s not the only one – everyone sees the walls of the factories and offices and shops for longer than they see their husbands and wives and children; everyone lives in a world in which they’re trapped like water in the pipes. If even water can’t run free, how can people be free here? Gül pauses for a moment and looks up from her crocheting. She feels herself turning hot, as if someone could have read her thoughts. What kind of thoughts did I get caught up in there? If anyone knew, they’d laugh. 221