CONTINUES

After giving this answer, she took a quick glance at Rina,

wondering how Rina would react, and saw that her lower lip was

bulging outward to mean "okay" and she didn't give a verbal response,

she kept walking, lowering her eyes to the ground. At the same time,

he continued to be deep in thought. His ego suddenly left him and

plunged into dreams. He forgets his ugliness for a moment and ends

up with Rina; but he lost himself to the dream that he would live a

happy life and that Rina would always be by his side throughout this

finite life. Stuck between the criteria of the real world, he came to the

conclusion that a person who camouflages his ugliness with his heart,

despite his ugliness, could not be from this world. He made the

decision that he would never show his feelings to Rina. He decided

that he would continue to talk to Rina before giving him the

impression of just a dear friend and not letting his thirsty love sprout

and die so much.

Riza's outward silence also discouraged Rina from making her

speak forcibly and prompted her to remain silent. He was looking left

and right, watching in detail the faces of the passers-by, usually

women. When there was a male face, Rina would immediately pull

her eyes away and look for a female face.

Hundreds of incomprehensible words rising from the crowd, after

mingling with each other and becoming a clump of meaningless

words, followed an uncertain path and disappeared. Again, different

words went through the same stages and they followed them. While

this was going on, both of them continued to walk slowly towards the

station in silence. Riza was walking absentmindedly, with the despair

of her love and the deep and gloomy mood of self-convincing, taking

a break enough to fit another man between her and Rina. He couldn't

think that Rina would look at him with the same eye he was looking at

Rina, he accepted this situation as the impossible of the impossible. It

was enough to just walk next to him and call him "Rıza".

Rina, on the other hand, was perhaps unaware that Rıza was

burning with her love and was a wanderer, she just walks by looking

around; He squints at the shop windows of the shopping malls he

passes by; when they like it, pointing with his finger: "Look, that's

good, you have to go and have a look at it." he was saying. Maybe his

purpose was to break Rıza's silence. However, Rina, who did not

receive any response from Rıza, kept silent and continued to examine

in detail the people passing by. His fellow men, who were passing by,

envied her beauty, and most of them left without taking their eyes off

her. Of course, it wasn't just her fellow men who admired her beauty;

the opposite sex could not help but stare at him. The voluptuous

impulses of the opposite sex, which were suppressed in their

subconscious, were pushing them to come to the forefront of all their

animal feelings, which they were burning with the desire to integrate.

They were passing by with mouthfuls of saliva, scrutinizing Rina from

head to toe with those eyes that could not go beyond desire and desire,

devoid of aesthetics. Of course, Rina was starting to feel

uncomfortable after all those eyes. He turned his head to the other side

to avoid the eyes that were bothering him. As soon as he turned it, his

eyes fell on Riza's face. At that moment, he began to examine the side

of Riza that appeared to him with his eyes. He continued to look at the

hollow of his left eye without taking his eyes off it. For the first time,

he was examining Rıza for another purpose. At that moment, Riza's

wrinkled skin around her eye sockets resembled the skin of a monkey,

the image emerging from the mixture of purple and red. His eyes slid

down and studied Riza's drooping lip. He realized that it stood thick

and misshapen, like a horse's lip. At that moment, he quickly took his

eye away from Rıza's face with disgust. Rina lowered her eyes to the

ground just as quickly. With a little guilt and a little shame:

"From where? Couldn't you be a little handsome?", he said to

himself. Spread some of the beauty of your heart on your face man…

Oh… Oh… Okay, looks don't matter but what do I like about you

now?

Winds of sadness began to blow on Rina's face. He felt a light

weight settle from his eyelids. His heart was beating slower than

usual. His enthusiasm was completely gone. He lifted his eyes, which

he had just lowered, upwards, and the heaviness on his eyelids began

to get heavier. With a little guilt and a little pity for Riza, he felt a thin

ache deep in his heart. "Who knows how upset he must be because he

is ugly. I wonder if he is aware that he is ugly too? Is that considered?

He is a human being after all, even a pure hearted person. Does it suit

you to think so immorally, Ms. Rina?" he said to himself.

Rina was in conflict within herself, the ego and the superego.

"Moral corruption starts from within the person. And not succumbing

to it is the resistance of internal reasoning." Rina was showing me that

I wasn't wrong when I said that. Just as the worm inside an apple

spreads well into the apple, spoils its internal structure and rots, the

rottenness within it begins to manifest itself, so an evil penetrating

into the human being slowly begins to push him out of his human

values. Here, Rina was unwittingly trying to prevent the wolf inside

herself from growing up and alienating her from human values. In his

own way, he was fighting an internal battle with himself, considering

his secret about Rıza as a moral problem. Rıza, on the other hand, was

unaware of this, continuing to swim in deep thoughts as always. By

that time they had arrived at the station. With the snoring of the car,

Rıza realized his existence while getting on the minibus. He couldn't

even tell which bus Rina was getting on. He walked over and sat

down in the empty seat next to Rina. Ten or fifteen minutes later,

when he saw that the minibus was approaching the nearest stop to his

house, he got up to get off. That line stopped; While the driver was

waiting for Rıza to get off, Rıza said "see you soon" to Rina, who was

sitting next to him, out of the corner of his eye, and got off the bus

quickly.

For some reason he felt like he was sitting next to Rina on a

grenade with the pin pulled out. This made Rina look like a stranger

next to him. The thought that he had made such an impression

bothered her and upset her.

Her mother had prepared dinner and was waiting for her when

she went home, down through the old and crumbling buildings.

It was one thing that Rıza entered silently and that his mother

found Rıza in front of him. Startled, her mother placed her hand on

her chest cavity and pressed it. Swallowing:

My son, a human makes a sound. God bless you. I

was almost dying of fear.

Rıza, who had severed all ties with the outside world, went to the

kitchen in an exhausted state and sat on the chair that was standing

there. Without paying any attention to what her mother said, not even

regretting that she was the one who scared her so much, she casually

said, "I didn't know how to scare you so much, Mom," and without

letting her mother say another word, she got up from the chair and

went to the bathroom, exhausted and weary. He turned on the faucet

and splashed the water in his palm on his face. He was shaking his

head quickly from side to side every time the water in his palm hit his

face. After doing that a couple of times, he looked at himself in the

mirror above the sink. For a while, she couldn't help examining all her

facial features. He began to look for the reason why Rina was able to

love him. While he thought that it would not be possible for him to be

ugly by nature, he said, "I definitely have a beautiful side that he can

love me," and continued to examine his face. He looked carefully into

his eyes, which were reflected in the mirror with that glare, as if in

two deeply dug pits, glowing with the effect of love. At that moment,

he compared his own eye sockets with the eye sockets of all his

fellows, whom he knew as handsome. He realized that it was not

equivalent to the measure he had set himself. Or he concluded that he

did not have normal or abnormal eye sockets like his peers. He

immediately rolled his eyes and examined his protruding jawbone in

the mirror this time. Then he stood staring at the shapeless and ugly

posture of his drooping lip. He looked at these organs that belonged to

him with hostility and was discontented. Thinking that he had no

choice but to admit that he was trying in vain and that he was ugly, he

desperately took his eyes from the mirror and shook his head; He

tucked it between his shoulders and hung his head down. After

waiting for a while, there was no trace of his eyes smiling with love.

At that moment, a sadness was added to his eyes. Frowning, he quietly

walked into the kitchen next to his mother and sat down in the chair

again. He turned his eyes out of the kitchen window. He silently stared

outside.

A cool air was coming in from the open kitchen window. The

coolness of snow that does not rise from the peaks of the majestic

mountains, the rustle of lush trees and the scent of flowers; the

chirping of birds and the sounds of frogs were coming in from the

kitchen window along with the restless air.

"Come on son, come to the living room, I will set the table.

You're hungry now too."

Pointing to the tiny table in front of him:

"Let's woo this, mom. No solo, no need."

"Is it here? Which one of us would fit on this tiny table, son?

Your father can come too. Get mad at me later."

"Is my father coming, mother? When did he come for dinner so

he can come today too. Let's eat this too."

As soon as Rıza said this, the vague excitement reflected in the

woman's face in her eyes faded in that moment. It was as if a strong

wind had just blew through the window and swept away the joy from

his face. The sadness that she had been hiding for years, perhaps not

telling anyone, slowly spread over her face with her blood pressure.

"Okay son, whatever you want," he said, and fell silent.

Every object that he took from the counter and put on the table

was grieving with him, he was suffering from the inside. Her grief

permeated everything. The plates he left on the table; The spoons he

had lined up were all confused. No more spoons or plates. They had

become subjects and became the woman's trouble spot. They were all

together in pain for the decisions that the woman had previously made

in an Unreal Real Time. They were living, but they did not give up

quarreling because they could not find the happiness they wanted

together.

It was also very difficult for her to find happiness now that she

did not belong to the Real Time Without Reality she was in. He

belonged to another Real Time Without Real, and he had made his

own decision towards Real Time Without Real Time in which he was.

As such, her husband also belonged to a different Unreal Real Time.

Had they both made their decisions for their own time, both of their

lives might have been different. Neither her husband would spend the

whole day in coffee houses, nor would the woman's shoulders slump

from unhappiness.

When she saw Rıza staring absently out of the open window, the

woman became even more dejected.

"Come on, son, your food is getting cold."

He quietly came to the table and sat down. Rıza left the sadness

he had collected outside on the way home, in the middle of the dinner

table. He took a spoon from his own sadness and a little from his

mother's sadness and continued to eat until he reached the point of

saturation. His mother, on the other hand, would not take a single bite

that had a knot in her throat and put it in her mouth. He had declared

war on his grief, his eyes staring out of the open window. As if it

wasn't enough that he was waging war on his grief, he was also taking

his anger out on the leaves of the trees outside, gritting his teeth. Then

she saw the tree as her husband and got even more angry. Maybe she

wanted to put her grief, sadness and pain aside and complete the

happiness that was missing from her son's happiness. He quickly

turned his head to his son and with that turn his grief; his war on his

grief; At that moment she forgot the tree she saw as her husband.

"I'll tell you what, son. There is the daughter of Nafise sitting on

top of us. Very ladylike. Smart... She's very beautiful, you should

see... What do you say, son, should I call Nafise's mouth? Besides,

you now have the power to work, you also have a civil service. They

won't say no to you. Have a talk, get a deal. A little bigger than you,

but okay. His father did not put little pressure on him at the time.

Although he still does it now... The girl can't even stick her head out.

Withered like a flower, poor man. If you love her, she will bloom in

time, my son, I know I am a woman. A woman is like a star in the

sky; as it shines, it illuminates and gives light. That girl becomes your

light in life, illuminates your path. Huh, what do you say, son?"

Rıza suddenly moved her body, which was frozen and motionless

like a rock, on the chair in front of the window and listened to what

her mother said. At the same time, she was getting Rina into what her

mother had said and what her real happiness felt like. Only Rina could

give him light. He alone could illuminate his surroundings. Everyone

else was normal and ordinary. To reach the semantic dimension of his

future life, he had only shaped it with Rina and had that template

firmly in his head. He had come to terms with himself that a life

without him would be tasteless, saltless, and meaningless. Thus,

although her mother had praised anyone of the opposite sex with

words of praise, praised her and even attributed perfection to her, it

meant nothing to Riza. He only believed in Rina's dream in his head,

and it was possible that Riza had an emotional gap in adolescence and

later, and it turned out that she transferred all of her feelings from all

those periods to adulthood. So the result of all those emotional voids

that persisted was intensifying his emotional attachment to Rina. This

obsession both hurt him and made Rina even more indispensable.

Indispensability was as dangerous and irresistible as climbing

steep rocks and falling down for Rıza. But even though he knew this,

he chose indispensability.

He seemed to be listening to his mother; but Rıza's mind was

blown away. His mother said over and over, "How about I talk to my

son Nafise? Shall I say we suit your daughter?" he was asking. When

her mother repeated these questions a couple of times, Riza took her

distracted eyes from the floor and turned them out of the window. In a

muffled and low voice:

"No. Mom, I don't want. Don't do anything like that."

"Why boy, why don't you want it?"

"Mom… I don't want… I can't do it with someone I don't love.

Something like murder happens, mom. How can one marry someone

without loving? This is bullshit! How can he touch your hair. How can

he endure it for years?"

"So what, son, do you think we married your father out of love?

(She thought to him as a mandebur.) Look, we have passed thirty and

forty years happily together, thank goodness."

"Obviously… You see my father's face only after you open the

bedroom door and turn on the lamp, Mom! The man bleached his hair

on coffee shop tables rather than at home. It was happiness… What

happiness, what happiness are you talking about? And I can't, I can't

do such a thing. It never happens with someone I don't like."

His mother was saying, "Okay son, do as you wish," and

lowering her eyes to the ground with the same sadness.

She took the sadness in her mother's eyes and turned her face to

the mountain tops in the slightly darkened air. Even though it was

mid-June, the snow still lay like a wedding dress on the mountain

peaks. Their silhouettes fell on Rıza's fingertips. In reality, their

appearance was close enough to reach out to him and yet so far away.

Just like Rina. Rina was just that close to him.

Riza got up from where she was sitting and went to the balcony.

He put his hand on the balcony railings and watched the sadness that

descended on Kars in the evening. The cool air from the peaks of the

Allahuekber Mountains hit his face, then swept past him indifferently.

The scent of flowers and grassland flowed into his nose and then into

his lungs with each breath he exhaled. The sounds of frogs mixed with

the sounds of cars, followed by the barking of stray dogs. The Digor

road, which was examined and extended as one went, was a reminder

of his loneliness.

His mother opened the balcony door halfway and stuck her head

between the balcony door:

"My son, Melih has come. He's waiting at the door. Will you

look?"

Rıza would say, "Okay mom, I'm coming," and close the door on

top of all those silhouettes and go to Melih.

Although he told Melih that he did not want to go out, Melih did

not give up on his insistence. Finally, Rıza gave up and took his coat

from the hanger behind the door and went out with Melih. Not

knowing where Melih would take him, without asking him, he just

walked in the line of Melih, and wherever Melih went, he followed

him in the same direction and at the same level.

They were entering Faik Bey Street, and then turning right and

entering the first cafeteria in front of them. The cafeteria was full of

people. The dim lights of the cafeteria gave a feeling of being in a

Casino at first.

Melih looked around, examining the seated ones one by one.

Mostly, young girls caught his attention more. He was running his

fingers through his gelled hair, pressing it upwards to keep it straight.

While making this move, he also continued to seek his prey with full

attention like a wild lion. At the time, a young waitress was working

in an environment where she didn't feel like she belonged, probably to

avoid the burden of her expenses because she was a student. Each step

he took sent a message to all his brain functions as if it were torture.

He was writhing in pain as a result of these messages. He no longer

felt insensitive to the same messages that came at the end of each

torture, and they were accepted. Then, with the indestructibility of

what he accepted, it was clear from his vacant gaze that most of the

knowledge he had learned had collapsed and disappeared. He was

complaining about the inconsistency of theory and practice, learning

and accepting the dysfunctionality of all the theories he learned while

living at that moment. He was approaching Rıza and Melih, smashing

his last theory into pieces in his head.

"Sir, welcome."

Melih took his eyes from the girls sitting at the tables and turned

to the waiter.

"It's nice to see you, but I guess you don't have a lot of room."

At that moment, the waiter quickly scanned the inside of the cafe

and saw that there was activity at one of the back tables.

"Sir, you wait a little. One of the back tables will be empty in a

little while. I'll get you there," he said, moving to that side of the table

he had said immediately. Even though the people at the table would

not get up, they would get up and leave after realizing that the waiter

was treating them as if they were going to get up. After they left, Rıza

and Melih were running down the table without letting the waiter take

the empty table.

Some of the young girls who were there also noticed Melih, a few

of them were looking at Melih with catching eyes. As if they were

competing with each other, they kept their eyes on Melih. Melih had

given up his previous insistence and began to see the girls, who could...