Free Songs My Mother Never Taught Me by Selcuk Altun

wished. I did his washing with pleasure, and while choosing a sweatshirt for him I’d live through the stress of imagining Rezzan’s criticism.
    Released from his shackles, he was like a learned orator and a living encyclopedia of the social sciences. I listened with patience and respect, and my self-confidence increased every time we parted as though I had won a further diploma. He was as healthy psychologically as yours truly. I gradually decided he was less restless than any other city-dweller, including his doctor, and believed that Gürsel Ergene, the master philosopher, had seen the whole city turn into an insane asylum and had taken refuge in an obscure hospital for the good of his soul.

A
    I no longer felt like searching for Dalga street by street. Through Selçuk Altun I managed to obtain the phone numbers of two of her confidantes, Ä°dil and Serap. I felt uncomfortable at the chilly response of these one-time volleyball players, whom I remember screaming and leaping up to smash the ball. They told me about Dalga, how she left for England, then came back and stopped seeing her friends. Her mother married and moved to Toulouse and probably her grandfather was dead.
    Disappointed at my failure, but pleased I had tried, I withdrew to the house. I was reading through all the poetry books in the library and at the same time translating Eugenio Montale in the evenings. (According to my father, poetry was the highest form of literature. The pleasure of interpreting had to be experienced, for every line had its sense of balance and form.) I went to bed with the morning ezan and even with the aid of a sleeping pill found it hard to sleep. Just as my eyes were closing I would be startled by the synchronized drips from all the taps in the house. Then a pair of feet would descend from on high and, with heavy steps, survey the rooms inch by inch, eventually slipping into my bedroom. Was it my mother’s ghost? If I happened to be reading Küçük Ä°skender I’d hide the book in the commode drawer before she started to fume with anger ...
    My Atatürk-loving grandfather was found dead in his bed on the morning of 11 November. As the founder of the Turkish Republic had passed away on 10 November, my naive uncle Salvador had whispered in my ear, ‘I wish he had died the day before.’

    The first primrose setting fire to the New Year set my head spinning, and I couldn’t remember why I had come to distant Levent Market. I called the eternally lazy driver Hayrullah, and went home. Once I had taken my sedative pill, Ä°fakat handed me an envelope. The sender of the blue envelope from London was Dalga Bayley.
    Dear Arda
,
    I hear you’ve been looking for me – that gives me courage
.
    I must see you. I’m not ready to come back to Istanbul. (And I may never come back!)
    If you’re prepared to hear the worst possible scenario and you think you’ll be able to look me in the face afterwards, then please come
...
    D
    I was expecting freedom after my mother’s death but I seemed to have become the prisoner of a sinister void. ‘Is there any news that can possibly increase this boredom of mine?’ I wondered, as I jotted down Dalga’s address and phone number. I was expecting this disastrous and incomprehensible news to be an antidote to my struggle in the void.
    At the airport I hid when I saw one of my mother’s arrogant friends. I had had enough of reproaches for being still unmarried. The London flight was full of the English going home for Christmas. To avoid unnecessary conversations, I took refuge in
Goldberg Pasha
, by the writer Erje Ayden, who had remained in New York for the past forty-seven years without a passport. As the plane took off, I glanced at the beloved old city of Istanbul from high above. Apart from the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn, what I saw didn’t even have the charm of a bedouin village. I was startled to recall that, according