The New Life Read Online Free PDF

me.”
    She smiled and joined the students crowding into Room 201. For a moment I had an impulse to follow her and sit in. Looking in the classroom’s wide windows from the hallway, I saw them both at a desk they had found to sit at together among the other students all dressed alike in khakis, faded clothes, and blue jeans. They were waiting for class without talking when Janan pushed her light brown hair gently behind her ears, making another piece of my heart dissolve. Contrary to how love is portrayed in the movies, I felt more miserable than just miserable following my feet wherever they took me.
    What did she think of me? What color are the walls in her home? What did she and her father talk about? Was their bathroom sparkling clean? Did she have siblings? What did she have for breakfast? Were they lovers? In that case, why did she kiss me?
    The tiny classroom where she kissed me was free. I retreated in there like a defeated army which was nonetheless staunchly expecting new battles. My footsteps echoing in the empty classroom, my miserable, reprehensible hands opening a pack of cigarettes, the smell of chalk, the white light made of ice—I pressed my forehead against the windowpane. Was this the new life I beheld myself in at the threshold of this morning? I was exhausted by all that had taken place in my mind, but still, the rational student of engineering in me was busy in one corner doing his calculations: I was in no condition to go to my own class, so I’d wait for theirs to end in two hours. Two hours!
    My forehead was pressed against the cold windowpane, I don’t know for how long, but I was full of self-pity; I liked wallowing in self-pity; I thought tears were about to well in my eyes when snowflakes began drifting on light gusts of wind. Beyond the steep street that leads to Dolmabahçe, I could see the plane and chestnut trees. How still they were! Trees did not know they were trees, I reflected. Blackbirds took wing out of the snowy branches. I watched them with admiration.
    I watched the snowflakes, which fell in gentle flurries, lingering indecisively at some point in pursuit of their fellow flakes, unable to make up their minds, when a light wind bore down and whisked them away. And at times a single flake swayed in the air for a moment and stood still, then acting as if it had changed its mind, it turned around and began to rise slowly up toward the sky. I observed many a snowflake revert to the sky before it could land in the mud, the park, on the pavement or the trees. Did anyone know this? Had anyone noticed?
    Had anyone ever noticed that the acute point of the triangle which was formed at the intersection and which seemed to be part of the park pointed to the Tower of Leander? Had anyone noticed the pine trees which, under the influence of the east wind all these years, had leaned over the sidewalk in perfect symmetry, forming an octagon over the minibus stop? Watching the man with a pink plastic bag in his hand stand on the sidewalk, I wondered if anyone had realized that half the population of Istanbul goes around carrying plastic bags. Utterly unaware of your identity, I wondered if anyone had seen your footprints, Angel, in the tracks left by starving dogs and ragpickers in the snow and ash that cover dead city parks? Was this how I was to witness the new world, revealed to me like a secret in the book I bought at the sidewalk stall two days ago?
    It was my heart and not my eyes that first became aware of Janan’s shape in the graying light and the deepening snow on the same sidewalk. She was wearing a purple coat; my heart must have impressed the coat upon itself without my knowledge. Beside her was Mehmet, wearing a gray jacket and walking in the snow like an evil spirit that leaves no tracks. I had an impulse to run after them.
    They stopped to talk at the same spot where the bookstall had been two days ago. Janan’s hurt and withdrawn stance, accompanied by their