Send him to me. I want to be found.

“So, do you want to go this way?” he asks, pointing right, to a direction we have already taken so many times – a walk along busy alleys between blocks of flats, nothing spectacular or even remotely pleasant. “Or that way, to the nature park?” he decides to offer another option – a 15 minute walk to the nature park close by (a former waste ground, now a protected area in a concrete enclosed space that  was supposed to become a lake in communist times).

We’re finally out on our daily walk, having fed and changed the baby several times today already and successfully dressed him and placed him in the carrying system. It’s a windy day, colder than the previous one, cloudy and dark. Winter is coming, as everyone so famously and predictably says these days.

“That way…” I reply sighing and I cannot help thinking about my journey this time last year, a week on my own in Turkey – Istanbul, Konya and Cappadocia. Each day was an adventure I wrote extensively on my blog about. A single woman, travelling in Turkey on her birthday, right after a bike crash that left her face badly bruised and  scars on her left hand and right knee that are still visible today.

“Turkey looks so clean and cold, hard, shiny and dangerous like the freshly polished pipe of a loaded hunting weapon being held by the big, strong hands of a psychopath with the sharp mind of a genius. Its people are still wearing golden rags of former glory, busy making ends meet and shattering distances at any costs. No one is alone here. Ever. Pain is hidden under the hijab or crushed in clenched fists, stuffed with sugar, smoked, washed down with cay or coffee and, secretly, alcohol. See, nothing separates us. We are all the same. Fear is no more than a virus we get while navigating news channels, never while traveling the world. ” I used to write during my coach ride from Konya to Cappadocia – Settling karma and travelling to Goreme.

Or my last day in Konya before returning to Bucharest, when social media was down due to political trouble and tension in the street was leaking like blood from a fresh corpse dropped in the ocean, sending its scent to hungry sharks swimming miles away:

“I picked a bad time to be a writer in Turkey. I quickly evaluate my situation: I have just upset an influential hotel owner in Goreme who used to be a cop in Istanbul and brags about owning a gun and doing cocaine, informed me he has a copy of my passport and my fingerprints, along with perfectly valid DNA samples and threatened to stage a crime for me so that I won’t be able to leave Turkey; all with a smile on his face. (Did I decide to solve all my karmic issues by the end of this year, by the way? I wonder…) Let’s go on now, that was not everything: I am a single woman traveling alone in Konya, the most religious and traditionalist city of Turkey, where almost nobody speaks English. But let’s not get paranoid, shall we? I made an unfortunate choice of European clothes. Otherwise I look Turkish enough. Though I am not sure that is so good now, either… And can say ‘hello’, ‘goodbye, ‘thank you’, ‘beautiful’ and ‘honey’. That should do. So I hide my map in my pocket, put my leather purse in my backpack and head to Rumi. This is a holiday, after all.” (My last day in Konya and Turkey goes crazy again)

praying outside mosque in konya turkey

Today my whole universe is in this two room apartment and the surrounding area where I take daily walks. My small, domestic universe is populated by only two people – two very special boys that I love. Still, the scarcity of the population around here makes every disappointment a tragedy. If this time last year every day brought new people and new adventures to write about, now breastfeeding takes up most of my time and the most breathtaking adventures are adjusting the baby in the carrying system, clipping his nails while he’s sleeping, feeding him at night while fighting sleep, backache and frustration, bathing him and watching his beautiful face all the time.

The first two weeks were like a honeymoon. Never before had I been so happy. Well, a sort of a honeymoon… Since, well… How are we to survive these first few weeks of change and adjustment without sex? My midwives were amazed at the tonus of my perineum (no tearing despite the prolonged expulsion and a very good condition right after birth and in the following days). Well, ladies, to be perfectly honest, it’s sex. Sex has contributed greatly to its good shape. It’s true Kegel exercises have been part of my life for years now. Best done, you guessed it, mostly during sex. It’s already been a week since I feel I cannot wait any longer. It’s too long…

Anger one day was soon followed by sadness the next day. No reason. Well, except for the huge changes and the domestic confinement that’s totally new and hard to bear for someone who’s saved only for plane tickets for the past two years.

“Yes, but we’re going to travel again”, says my life partner, travel companion and the father of my baby.

“Yes, eventually…”, I reply feeling more confident than it sounds.

“And breastfeeding is also temporary, it’s going to end too…” he adds more hesitantly.

“Of course it will… In about two years or so…”, I answer trying unsuccessfully to make it sound light and funny. Don’t get me wrong, I do love it and would not give it up, it’s just that it seems to take up so much time and on such long term…

“We’re here for you”, he continues, holding my shoulders and planting warm kisses on my face. “And look how cute he is, really”, he adds pointing his head at the baby, still naked and all wet from the bath, wrapped up in towels and cuddled in my arms, sucking on my right nipple.

And he’s right. But that only seems to add to the sadness at this point. Caressing his soft thigh, I’m thinking he was inside me, he grew from such a small cell, my body fed him, my flesh made his. And here he is now, so grown in my arms. And he’ll continue to grow and will gradually become independent and start his own life, away from us. And he’ll outlive us. And I love him so much. And yet I still don’t really know him very well. He’s so wonderful, so luminous, so perfect. How will I ever be able to let go?

“Over 85% of women go through some form of postpartum emotional imbalance”, my notes from the Lamaze course remind me. I’m lucky I have this rational part that’s always awake and alert (well, it did make labor longer, but in general it tends to keep me safe).  I do a quick self evaluation and decide it’s not depression, but a mild case of baby blues. All normal. Just relax, I tell myself and the lump in my throat gets heavier. I go through my essential oil basket and find something that should help and then I also find a homeopathic remedy that seems to fit the symptoms. I’m pulling myself out.

Still, before going to bed I browse through my T-shirt stash and find the one I got in Thailand, at the Royal Chapel of the Emerald Buddha in Bangkok. A very ugly white T-shirt with a colorful print of the royal palace. Last year in February. I am standing in line to visit the chapel, surrounded by a loud crowd of Chinese tourists pointing their cameras everywhere and stretching out their selfie sticks to take one more photo of their faces projected over the whole world cut to pieces.

One of the security guards, wearing military clothes and waving his gun left and right, comes to me barking some order in Thai. Since I don’t understand a word, he uses firm gestures and a wave of his gun to get me out of the line. I am wearing a sleeveless shirt and my huge blue shawl wrapped around my shoulders doesn’t fool the guard’s vigilance. It’s over 40 degrees Celsius. This is how I end up with the ugly T-shirt from the gift shop in the palace garden. It’s the only choice. I pay for it, turn my back to the crowd, facing a dirty wall behind the counter, take off my sleeveless shirt and put on the ugly new Thailand T-shirt. I find it disturbing that it doesn’t match my trousers at all, but end up wearing it inside one of the most amazing places I’ve ever visited. I leave my sandals by the door, in the big pile of shoes resting there, covered in sweat and dust, and wonder if I’m going to still find them there when I get out, but decide it’s worth walking barefoot the rest of the journey to Cambodia if necessary.

royal chapel of the emerald buddha bangkok thailand

The feeling is overwhelming and once I get in front of the emerald statue covered in golden raiment, my knees bend of their own accord and my eyes close. I don’t know how long I spend kneeling on the cold marble floor, surrounded by the loud crowd, before stepping outside into the heat of the sun again. So tonight I’m going to bed wearing this ugly white T-shirt which the emerald Buddha saw me wearing that day in Bangkok. So yes, I do miss being on the road.

PS The title of this post is from a ‘dialogue’ I had with Shams at his tomb in Konya – The day I leave Konya Shams does some magic.

PPS At the end of my post about my home birth – 35th birthday journey of initiation: the story of my home birth – you can find a list of links to all my posts about my last year’s birthday journey in Turkey.

The day I leave Konya Shams does some magic

I wake up moaning from a dream I forget as soon as I open my eyes and jump out of bed, grab my tablet and do my online check in and proceed with packing. Then breakfast. There’s this guy I saw yesterday too. Tall, firm, dark hair, beard. Something tells me he might be a journalist. When I get to the cheese section with my plate, he comes and stands close behind my back. Just like yesterday. Yesterday I turned smiling and made room for him to come next to me so he can fill up his plate, only to be refused and shown by a quick hand gesture to carry on. So today I don’t bother and just attend to my plate, feeling his presence in the room and his invisible touch on the back of my neck, under my hair being held up by two bobby pins with round shaped blue and black gems at the end.

I resume my seat next to the window. This time the room is full and some women wearing scarves wrapped around their heads are also here, still outnumbered by men. The TV is on again and everyone is watching the news, so I decide to crawl out of my autism and join them. Nothing to be worried about: arrests being made, police officers beating up people, protests, street explosions, a blast in an apartment building, speeches, riot police marching. I have no idea where all this is happening and I am not sure I even want to know. Wherever it is, it’s too close.

“Postane?” I ask my fat bearded receptionist when I finish breakfast. “I want to post some cards…”

“There, but is closed today. I think… But I can help you. Monday.” he says , looking directly behind my eyes somehow.

“Tesekkur, evet. I go and check now and if it is closed I will leave them with you. Tamam?”

“Tamam”, he replies and we say our goodbyes and, as I get out into the street, an old man speaks Turkish to me, so I know I have become a Konyan. At least partly. This, too, is one of my homes now.

I get to the post office and find my receptionist was right, so it will be the second time in Turkey that I leave my postcards to be sent by a receptionist after I am already back in Romania. I still have time before my flight, but I decide to go back to the hotel and write. Then I see this natural shop on the left and go in. I let out a sigh of pleasure as a smile warms up my face when I get in and dip myself in the mixed smell of spices and herbs and oils. Did you know that the Turkish word for ‘mixed’ is ‘karma’, by the way?

It’s sunny and quiet as I come out of the shop and the thought of visiting Shams again starts challenging my decision to go to the hotel. But we said or goodbyes, I tell myself. It is good to respect that. Yes, but you don’t know if in this lifetime you can ever come back here again. So now you are here. You have time. Go. And so I go. And as I’m walking to the mosque, I realize it’s my third time here this week and I’ve always come from the right side and went away on the left side, surrounding the mosque every time.

shams park                     shams mosque

In front of the mosque, just like yesterday, some boys are running and laughing around the ablution fountain, scaring the pigeons away. I take off my shoes and get in without covering my head again. I remember when I am already in front of the tomb. The atmosphere seems more peaceful today and I have a stronger and more stable sense of the energy here, bathing in rose perfume.

You have come again.

I have.

You are already whole.

I am.

What is it that you seek?

My love, send him to me. I want my equal. My partner. If he is already close, wake him up, remind him of who he is. Send him to me. I want to be found.

mevlana museum

I walk slowly and calmly back to my hotel, finish packing and then carry my suitcase down the stairs to the reception. The ‘journalist’ comes in right as the receptionist hands me back my credit card. We smile to each other and he hesitates for a moment before getting into the elevator. I ask the receptionist to call me a taxi for the airport in thirty minutes and then sit in the red armchair facing the elevator, planning to take out my tablet and work on my writing. The ‘journalist’ comes down a minute later and, when he sees me, he says something in Turkish.

“Sorry?” I reply.

From here on, it all happens very fast and I just remember he asks me if I want to have tea with him somewhere and I say yes, but I only have thirty minutes before I should head to the airport. I think we also talk about where each of us is from at this point, but I am not sure anymore.

“What if I take you?” he offers and I do have a brief moment of hesitation before my right hand reaches out to him and I introduce myself. In something like a fraction of a second, the following inner dialogue takes place:

“You are completely nuts! You are absolutely not getting into a car with a stranger again in this place!” my mind says.

“Have it your way. Anyway, you know exactly how it’s going to be: you’ll say no, of course, because it’s the sensible thing to say, and then spend the entire taxi ride to the airport wanting to go back to the hotel and, after that, both flights designing plans to jump off the airplane and, of course, the next few months (at least!) wondering what could’ve happened and trying your best to forget you were so stupid and said no.” My heart doesn’t explain all this actually, but gives me a homeopathic dose of the feeling projected over the whole film shown in fast forward motion. Less than a fraction of a second.

“Hmm… OK!” I am actually shocked and, at the same time, happy at the sound of my own voice. He happily picks up my backpack, says something in Turkish to the hotel staff, who are all gathered around a table in the restaurant, watching the whole scene with great interest and some of them even envy, and then we both get out.

“You haven’t learnt anything. ” my mind insists hopelessly as I get into the front seat and he apologizes for the mess.

“No, I haven’t, thank God. Now just shut up.” I reply.

“Let’s see, where can we have tea…”, he says trying to focus.

“In Turkey? Everywhere.”

“In Konya… You know, when I saw you yesterday I wanted to ask if you want to have tea with me, but I… It’s hard… I didn’t.”

I say nothing.

“You look Greek.” he continues.

“Do I? Everyone here says I look Turkish.”

“I thought Turkish at first, you heard I spoke Turkish to you at first.”

And we talk about our professions, the political context, our living situations, family relations, anxiety, my birthday, my bike fall, my travels, my writing and why I came to Konya and I don’t remember everything and we decide going directly to the airport is a better idea than finding a place in the city because once we are there we can be more relaxed and just enjoy our cay.

“So are you going to write about me?” he asks.

“I think I already have, to be perfectly honest”, I reply and check my draft, which I already started earlier this morning, and find it’s right in the first paragraph.

“I will read it later”, he says.

Our interaction is pleasant and whole, natural and honest, lacking the usual aggressive courting heavily infused with sexual tension I have got used to in most of my interactions with Turkish men. Moreover, it is not seduction that has brought us together. So I finally start feeling I am being treated like a person, not a mere walking sex opportunity.

“So why are you traveling alone?”

“Why not?”

“Oh, right. I would be afraid to go alone even to Bulgaria. And you come here alone. It is not safe here. People get drunk and have knives and there are fights after dark. I have this pepper spray with me, look.”

“Well, I am not usually afraid. Now it was a bit stressful, it’s true.” I reply.

“How old are you?”

“34. How about you?”

“What do you think?”

“The same. Or maybe 35?” I reply.

“I am 34. I was born in…

“1982” we both say at the same time.

“When?” I ask.

“The sixth month… June.”

“What day?” I continue driven by my insatiable curiosity. “20? Something with 2, right?”

“12”, he says and he doesn’t seem to freak out.

We get to the airport in a short while and he takes my luggage out of his car and then I give him my mobile check-in printed by the receptionist and he goes in and asks what time I should come for boarding. He comes back triumphantly and tells me we have two hours. So he puts my luggage back in his car and we drive to a nearby place. It is a nice restaurant and we are both here for the first time. We sit at a table for two next to the window and he asks:

“How is your stomach?”

I mean to say fat, but I just say it is ok and, when the waiter comes to take his order, I can’t help noticing that the waiter looks so much like Hamodi, my good Syrian friend in Istanbul, so I smile to him perhaps with a little bit too much attention, but really I feel like hugging him.

And I also can’t help noticing that we are both sitting at a table for two next to the window, facing each other, just as we were yesterday morning at the hotel, only this time we are finally at the same table. And I remember how this morning I regretted having put my coat and purse on the seat in front of me and thought I might have invited him to share the table and eat together, since the restaurant was full and the only free table he could find was right next to the huge TV screen. But I figured I was leaving today anyway and women don’t usually do that here. Not because they can’t, but because they don’t need to. Men around here still seem to have balls. And I want that. Not needing to make up for someone else’s lack of balls. Plus, I thought there is no point in forcing things and I reminded myself (as I always do) that life always finds a way.

The waiter brings cay, water and the same traditional desert I had last night with Merve. I get up and go to wash my hands and I simply notice, I just notice how I leave my purse with my phone and wallet with passport and everything on the chair in front of him. When I return, we enjoy everything together and talk.

He asks if I have eaten some traditional Konyan food and tell him I am a vegetarian. He asks why.

“Well, long story”, I reply.

“Long story and you think I wouldn’t understand”, he says reading my mind.

“I will show you a poem from Mevlana to Shems, so that he doesn’t leave him”, he says out of the blue and picks up his phone and types something. When he points the screen at me, a video starts playing. “But it’s in Turkish”, he adds. We watch a few seconds of it and then he gets the idea to find the poem in English so that I can read it.

He hands me his phone again and I barely get to read the first two or three lines and I feel something is changing dramatically in the atmosphere. I look up and ask if he is OK. I feel a sort of agitation and very ample movement, like spinning. In the beginning it feels like the tension preceding an earthquake, but then the movement is much more erratic, not only vertical and horizontal, but more chaotic on account of what I perceive as fear of letting go, of losing control. He is clearly affected by something and is struggling to keep it all together. I remain calm and ask the question again. He answers in Turkish, gets up in a rush, spilling the water glasses on the table and over his phone, a few drops landing on my trousers.

The waiter comes and accompanies him to the exit. Before getting out, he looks back at me and makes a reassuring gesture with his hand, telling me to relax, stay there and wait. And I remain calm, wipe the water off his phone with a tissue and continue reading the beautiful poem, wondering if I can find it in my book as my mind makes the connection between these lines, in which Rumi’s asking Shams not to leave him, and my complaints about his absence as I was visiting his tomb.

When he returns, he has washed his face and it’s wet and he keeps apologizing.

“It is first time, never happened to me before, I don’t know what this is, maybe tension, I don’t know, I have anxiety. I am sorry.”

“Have some water”, I advise him smiling calmly. I want to squeeze his hand and help him get down on the ground again, but at this point I don’t. I am just witnessing. And I have no doubt that nothing is wrong.

“Let’s go”, he says, “when I stay here my head is spinning again.”

“OK. Let’s get out of here, the air will be good. You are OK.”

“Daniela, I am so sorry. I am sorry. Daniela… Daniela… Where is my car?”

“It is in the back, let’s go this way.”

“It never happened before.”

“You haven’t met me before”, I reply and make him laugh so now he is more relaxed.

” Where is the car?” he asks again.

 “Where is my head?” I reply.

“Where are we? Who am I?” he continues and we laugh.

Having exchanged contact information, he now drops me off at the airport, complaining about my heavy suitcase as he is carrying it inside.

“Sorry, it’s not a Turkish guy”, I tell him so we laugh again.

konya airport

As I continue working on my blog post after the security check, I lean back in the chair at the boarding gate and rejoice in the silent and relaxed atmosphere of the Konyan airport.

konyan airport

The guy at the security check even insisted I should keep my water bottle. All my previous tension is history now and the atmosphere has either cleared or I cannot be bothered by its heaviness anymore. When I get in my seat on the plane, I start feeling the same rose smell as in the Mevlana museum and Shams’ mosque. Suddenly, I hear a girl at my back say in a British accent:

“It is your destiny, you can’t escape it.”

The weather is perfect and taking off makes me a bit high, as it always does, and I enjoy it like an addict taking a dose of his drug. On board service soon starts and everyone is relaxed, no one talks loudly, we smile to one another and I take pictures of the sky. It looks like a snow covered field, making me dream up plans about this winter.

flying above the cluds

“Istanbul”, I turn and say it to the big girl on my right as we have come down through the thick layer of cotton above the city. And I purposely stress the ‘a’ and add some air around it before I allow the other sounds of the name to slip out on the water slide my tongue curves into.

img_11321

“Istanbul”, she repeats returning my smile.

“Guzel”, I add, this time stressing the ‘e’ like licking a lolly pop.

“Cok guzel”, she corrects me, her face lit up by an even warmer smile.

At passport control in Istanbul, with a big smile on my face and the rose perfume still in my nose, I get to this desk where a guy with a purple right eye checks my passport. And I think it is just too funny a coincidence and can’t help laughing and pointing to my purple right eye.

“Merhaba! We both have a purple right eye, look!” I say and close mine so he can have a better look.

He listens and takes out his pistol from his waist to show me how he got it, explaining everything in Turkish. Then I tell him about the bike crash, but I am not sure he gets it.

” Daniela… Daniela… Daniela… I am not handsome, Daniela…” he adds, composing the beginning lines of his first elegy.

We wish each other the best, like two brothers in arms and then I catch a glimpse of the most beautiful red sunset before it takes me almost one hour to walk through the entrails of the huge airport from the quiet domestic arrivals to the busy international departures, where I struggle to find a WiFi  connection.

red sunset

             attaturk airport international departures

The first time I hear someone speaking Romanian I think “Oh, how nice, they are going to Romania!” I feel I am not and it takes me a moment to realize I actually am. It feels as if I were just passing through, that it’s not really my destination. I feel I am on this long journey, going somewhere very far away. Such a strange and strong feeling…

plane view of istanbul by night

The plane takes off in Istanbul and I am looking down at the beautiful lights and taking photos, thinking that we all get this impulse to arrest moments, as if simply living them is never enough. We cannot just look at the beautiful lights and enjoy the feelings they awaken, but need to make them our own, to possess an image of them, frozen, stopped in time. A moment that is so fleeting and so artificial in its death caught on camera. We arrest impressions of time passing in an attempt to create permanency. Only that never really happens, everything keeps flowing all the time. Whirling.

 And I keep repeating I my head “the Istanbul of my dreams, the Istanbul of my dreams” and I remember my friend Hamodi calling me earlier today, before checking out of the hotel, reassuring me everything will be all right by telling me that I will always be safe in Turkey even if there was a war because “everyone loves you here and you have a friendship with the dangerous things”.