24
24 is a good number.
It’s my cue to stepping in between these squares on the screen, like desks in a classroom, where everyone is digging little tunnels and wondering what will appear on the other side.
Maybe like anyone else I started being myself when I found my first love, when something happened that connected me to the other side.
I knew how Istanbul smelled in the early seventies: smoke of black coal coming out of every house, dirty head-ache clouds of exhaust coming from huge, round, old American cars or, even worse, the public busses. I saved the smell of buttery, cooked rice, always ready in the kitchen and of seawater overlapped by a heavy, dark and shiny liquid, flowing in from packed ferries, which endlessly go back and forth on the Bosporus between the densely populated shores.
That was me, that was anybody there.
I remember the smell of humid soil and leafs, still green but fading to all colors I like to wear today, the cold air from dark lakes, sweet rosin smell from fir trees. All that was blowing into my face while sticking my head out of the back window of our car, which was perpetually fueled by my parents’ exhaust of Ernte 23 cigarettes when driving from Turkey to Germany.
So, that was me, that was my family.
We were leaving summer and entering autumn, not like now, but like a time warp. I was storing the Bosporus smell in the back of my brain, widely opening my lungs for the new joy, offered by all these trees standing together in what was my first new home, the Black Forest in southern Germany.
Every day – even if I was suffering from one of these child diseases like chickenpox or mumps – I would forget about time and spend hours there, walking through the brotherhood of my new friends. And every day my mother must have called me in a bit earlier since winter was coming closer, until the time when I started counting the days.
And when the 24th was about to arrive, my parents would get one of these trees into our living room even though we come from somewhat of a muslim culture. This tree was one of my smelling friends from this side of my life, complementing me to what I was. I wouldn’t lie that I was very happy about my Fischer Technik present underneath the tree, however, it didn’t take long to understand that this tree, which came in disguise, was actually not my tree. It was a friendly simulation of Christmas, a caring gift from my parents to make my brother and me fade more smoothly into the other side.
Today, I’m still grateful for their empathy although I know that I had already found my first love. It smelled fantastic, and only I knew why.
Hello, I’m number 24.
My parents, my elder brother and me in front of our house in the Black Forest.