Save the Last Bullet for God (20 page)

We were so stunned that we didn’t notice the
sudden arrival of a number of uniformed officers. Breaking the
door, they entered with shouts of “Cut the broadcast immediately!
Stop everything!” We stood still as they unplugged the device and
tried to turn it off. Then chaos ensued.

A BBM coordinator ran in, screaming, “What
do you think you’re doing?!” He grabbed Feryal by her shoulders and
began to beat her. Hıdır rushed to protect the professor from the
coordinator, but I couldn’t move and I didn’t know why. My body and
mind were suddenly overcome with exhaustion and I remained
still.

I was losing consciousness and my sense of
time and space were disappearing. Through my misty vision, I saw
Hidir and Feryal on the floor, covered in blood and about to
collapse. Before I knew it, everyone else had left and I was alone.
Had I won? I wanted to stand up, yell, and fight, but I was too far
away to succeed.

The door opened, and suddenly I noticed that
my bonds were untied, and I could move. I proceeded toward a
lighted corridor.

Elif

It was the most comfortable, peaceful, and
happiest period of my life. Istanbul was a very beautiful city, and
every moment in the city warmed and welcomed me like a good friend.
I was a young assistant at the university, making my wedding plans
while trying to finish my thesis in the department of foreign
languages. Life hadn’t showed me its challenges yet, and I was
indulging in all the excitement of youth.

I went to concerts and presentations or hung
out with my boyfriend or went with him to enjoy the nightlife with
our friends. To me, life was beautiful. I was young, my dreams were
happy, and my worries about work could be easily pushed aside. My
future was ahead of me, and I was proceeding joyfully.

Then a storm came. My boyfriend got a job
offer with a successful position after his graduation, and he went
out to “celebrate” with my girlfriend from school. Through a bit of
coincidence, I caught them. I was devastated. The man in my life
and all of our future plans were now in the rubbish bin.

Istanbul became a city of sadness. The dark
water of the Bosphorus scared me with its currents and swirls. The
city seemed as if each location was in another dimension or another
time, and these dimensions and times were all in layers. When I was
in one half of the city, the other half was always in another
land—on another continent.

But it was a city of infinite possibilities,
so I remained strong until my storm passed. I did everything I
could think of to pass the time. There was no one special in my
life, old or new, but I wasn’t exactly alone. I met up with old
friends. In the back of my mind was the cliché, “time will heal
everything.”

No matter where I was, my mind was always
with me, and when I realized I couldn’t run away from my thoughts,
I made a new friend: alcohol.

I was also introduced to quanta during that
time. I understood it, assimilated it, and beautifully adapted it
to my life. The only thing I would give to the outside was
uncertainty.

That’s when I met Oktay.

The research campus that led the world in
conducting Turkey’s experimental studies related to quantum
mechanics, and the area where it gathered all its genius people,
was known as Istiklal Street. It was known as the center of
wandering—a good street to practice the principle of uncertainty.
Istikal is also home to the Jazz Stop, the only place you can
indulge in smoking indoors until four in the morning while
listening to live music.

It was past midnight, and I had just cleared
out all my acquaintances by boring them with quantum philosophy (my
friend, alcohol, and I were having a deep talk that night). Feeling
a little too relaxed, I stumbled back onto somebody’s lap.

I offered my prince a false apology, but,
then, I took a second look and my furtive glance showed me a man of
medium height, wavy blond hair, green eyes, and a little charisma.
But still, I didn’t cut him a break.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” I
said.

He leaned forward and asked in a timid
voice, “Do you have a name?”

“None of your business,” I said.

“Pretty name, but your parents must not like
you very much; why else would they give you a name like ‘None of
your business?’” He was being absurd, but it made me take a second
look.

My second impression was mostly the same,
but this time, I realized he had more self-confidence and that his
eyes were blue. I felt a sudden spark.

…

Istanbul once again became a narrator of
beautiful tales. It told stories of two hearts blessed by love and
fate.

Once, during the first few days of our
relationship, Oktay took off my glasses and said, “You’re more
beautiful like this; you’ve been unfair to yourself all this time.”
So after that, no glasses. My vision was a little fuzzy at first,
but then it improved.

Oktay was my fabulous new disease, and his
initial side effect was memory loss. I forgot all that was old and
bad. It was a fairy tale, and we were flying rapidly on its wings.
Oktay promised a magnificent wedding and a honeymoon on the Monte
Negro coast. Love was everywhere.

We moved to Tuzla, at the edge of Istanbul,
because it was close to the hospital where Oktay worked. We bought
a house with a sea view in a building among pine trees. The scenery
captivated us for hours. Most evenings we simply lit our candles,
turned off the lights, watched the scenery, and held each other. We
would sometimes stay like this until sunrise. We were always
together.

Although a bit late in my academic career, I
transferred to a university near where we lived. After a busy day,
I would run home to Oktay. Sometimes I would even make up an excuse
to escape from work early. He was also working at an intense pace,
but once we were home, we were ourselves again. We were happy, and
each day was a feast.

From our house, we watched the turn of the
seasons, and years quickly passed. Oktay recently knocked into
middle age, was working in an ordinary private hospital, and was
living an ordinary life. He was smart and intellectual but not very
social. But I liked that he spent all his time with me at home.
Like most other people, he enjoyed watching football, and he never
got tired of watching sports or sports-news programs on TV. He
always had an opinion on Fenerbahce. He didn’t think there was a
need to add to our life. He was satisfied having dinner with
relatives or going to the cinema with me. I sometimes watched him
as he wrote MR reports online, read a book, or browsed the comics,
and he made me read the jokes that he liked the most.

Eventually, he grew interested in more
mysterious subjects, such as the symmetry of the universe, time
travel, evolution, the lost continents of Mu and Atlantis,
astrological divinations, life in outer space, ancient
civilizations, and particularly the secret code in the Holy Qur’an.
When he found a book on one of these topics, he got completely
absorbed in it, and, if he saw a related documentary, he was glued
to the screen. Our house suddenly overflowed with books, CDs, and
DVDs. As time went on, the time that Oktay set aside for such
pursuits began to increase.

Our conversations became shallow, empty
small talk, but I still believed love was there. During his
manic-depressive fluctuations, he lived as if by himself. He was
either closed off or outwardly rejoicing, but the rest of the time,
he was still my Oktay.

As the house continued to overflow with
books, our conversations and his statements became shallower. His
love for me hadn’t decreased, but it seemed hidden behind his poor
expressive style. As he went through his mood swings, he would
sometimes turn in upon himself and at other times overflow with
emotion. But he was still my Oktay.

That was only the beginning. I began finding
Oktay staring out the window for hours or talking to himself about
worms eating a book. He began to struggle as things at work started
to go wrong. I noticed a few warning signs that he ignored. I
thought the best idea would be for him to take an unpaid holiday
and avoid the damage that his carelessness might cause. He was a
radiologist, and the reports he wrote could affect the lives of his
patients. Once he agreed and got the holiday, he was free to make
more time for himself.

I admired his determination as he tried to
arrange texts with Arabic letters, dots, and lines. It gave me some
peace and, since I was in my own battle with my thesis supervisors,
peace was essential for me.

As Oktay secluded himself in his room, I saw
that those tiny cubes had begun to form into a giant sculpture
comprised of tiny, transparent cubes forming large and small layers
of squares. Oktay told me about the beauty and magnificence of his
masterpiece, how the planes were squared in the process of
production. (I had no idea what he was talking about.) He called it
a puzzle and talked about things like disjointed letters and cubes.
After each big discovery, he would run out of his study, hugging
and sometimes kissing me and telling me with great excitement about
his splendid achievements. He was like a kid: cute, but always
hungry for understanding and love.

The summer was gone and it was turning to
autumn. Because of school, my income wasn’t enough, and Oktay
started to spend our savings. But, the warning bells still hadn’t
rung for me yet.

What Oktay had been doing made him happy,
and it was worth anything to see him hopping around his work,
smiling and happy. But he also began to spend more time in front of
the computer, and with his books. I remember him repeatedly
mentioning the ‘Cauchy integral formula.’

One evening, when I returned from another
long day at work, he ran happily out of his room and excitedly
hugged me. He took my hands, sat opposite me, and started to tell
me everything he had learned and discovered. Though I didn’t
understand what he was saying, he insisted that I should believe
him. I couldn’t do what he wanted. I couldn’t believe him. By then,
I had started to realize something was wrong, and I tried to calm
him down by taking control. I tried to turn him back, to remind him
of himself.

He reacted by getting cross with me and
locked himself in his room. As the days passed, I began to get
scared. I talked about the situation to his brother, Turgay, who
was also a doctor. Turgay was the middle child and the black sheep
of the family, so strange behavior was expected of him, but even he
had never done anything like this. Turgay advised me that if any
new incident occurred, I should call him. I didn’t want to think
about further possibilities because I loved Oktay, but I had to
accept that something might be wrong.

Oktay had now cut off all contact with me
and turned into a flatmate whom I hardly saw. He would lock himself
in his room constantly. Ironically, during this period, the house
wasn’t messy at all. However, despite the tidiness, the tension and
unrest made me long for the old mess.

After a long time passed with him in
isolation, he opened the door of his room, walked toward me slowly,
sat beside me, and began doing what he hadn’t done for a long time:
talking to me. He explained that he was going to write a book and
share everything he’d found with everyone. He was persuasive, calm,
and consistent. I started to hope that I might have been wrong in
thinking he was mad. Was he the same Oktay again? Was he back?

We held each other again, and then we talked
for the first time in a very long while. We talked about our
relationship. He agreed to be a responsible person, and I added
that his behavior had to support that change.

Oktay’s return to me and to life itself
calmed both of us down and wrapped us up in peace. Lighting some
candles, we surrendered ourselves to the dark room, the luminous
pool, and the sea view. I held on to him tightly, desperately
relieved that I hadn’t lost him.

As far as it seemed, Oktay was back to me,
to his home, and to the world. Although he talked about how
difficult it was to write a book, he was calmer, at least, and more
focused on his work. But in time, the gears shifted again. Now he
was in turbo mode. Oktay began to show distress that he hadn’t
begun writing his book. He had a story he wanted to tell people,
and he could tell this story to himself beautifully. In his
opinion, he had made an incredible discovery—but he didn’t know
exactly how to turn it into a book.

The house began to fall apart again, and he
began to talk even less. He was again subject to my questions,
which he left unanswered, and, hence, to my scolding. More and
more, I considered getting him professional help. I was afraid
there might have been something that I missed and that the trend
toward deterioration might have returned. But as Oktay was spending
hours in front of the computer and still seemed okay, I occupied
myself with my own academic work and neglected the question. I knew
the answer might be devastating.

Sometimes, he spent days in front of a
half-written page, and sometimes, he wrote nonstop for hours. His
effort was admirable. When the opportunity presented itself, he
insistently made me read what he had written, and if I didn’t read
it, he would stand over me and read it to me loudly. He asked me
whether he was clearly expressing what he wanted or if I had any
suggestions. When I looked at the text, it was only pages full of
the letters
aaaaaa, bbbbb,
ccccc
…meaningless words, hundreds of pages that told
of nothing but were written nonetheless. I began to try to avoid
him, but he would stand right in front of my door and go on
insisting that I read it.

God! He was out of control! He started
acting more frantic and I began to feel the presence of a mental
illness. When I questioned whether I would be able to accept it, I
consoled myself by remembering how much I loved him. Nothing could
stop my love for him. No matter how crazy he was, he was mine.