Aysal
How many times can a door be slammed in a person's face?
Mine has slammed hundreds of times.
How does a smile fade from leagues away?
Mine faded.
Now, while struggling even to breathe under the heavy burden of reality, I had surrendered to fate where the chains pinned me down. In the fog that settled in my mind after Uncle Jenan left the room, I wanted to remember a single memory of Tarık. No. This couldn't be true. He couldn't be a killer. He couldn't want me. All of it was a goddamn "no!" No. The word "No" escaped my lips like a whisper. While the area under my eyes grew damp with tears trickling from my lashes, the doctor continued to stare at his computer in the distance. Occasionally, he paced the room like a ghost.
I began to walk on that thin line between the sharpness and the coldness of a scalpel. My wet eyes soon gave way to violent sobbing. My cries remained knotted in my throat. Uncle Jenan had always been like a good older brother to me. He had protected me from the coldness of Tarık's family, the absence of my own, and every hardship my illness forced upon me. From the first day I arrived at their home, I had seen him as my own uncle.
He was one of the people I trusted most in my life.
But now, he had stood before me with the other face of reality, telling me that Tarık was a murderer. He was saying those jet-black eyes glowing with brutality in that video belonged to Tarık—to my husband. I continued to shake with sobs. I just lay there, unable to even move my hand to wipe my tears. So that's what he meant when he said, "You killed Tarık." What... what had I done? Was I the one who turned Tarık into this?
"Don't cry," a voice echoed through the haze reflecting off the walls.
The doctor came to my side. "A person cannot choose their family."
I felt the salty taste of a tear sliding down to the corner of my mouth.
"Leave me alone..." I said, squeezing my eyelids shut. "Leave me, please. I'm sick of this damn place! I'm sick of it." At that moment, as I continued to sob, I felt a sharp sting at the bridge of my nose. I had to squeeze lifetimes of pain into a single moment. "Tarık," I murmured. "He can't be a killer. But Uncle Jenan wouldn't lie... he doesn't lie. I wish he were a liar. But he isn't."
I didn't know why I was telling all of this to the doctor. "I thought I was just clinging to his existence," I said, while every inch of me felt like it was burning. "It turns out... what I was clinging to was nothing but my burning self, my void, my reflection."
The doctor let out a deep breath and sat back at the computer.
His fingers moved vibrantly across the keyboard.
He most likely wasn't listening to me.
"I'm sick of this life!" I writhed. "I'm sick of this life. I'm so tired. Tired of not knowing who is who. These absurd connections. Not knowing why I came here."
"You chose it yourself," the doctor said simply, his voice soft.
"I didn't choose this," I tried to defend myself. "I didn't choose this. Fate chose it for me."
I looked at the doctor through blurred eyes. "Please, take these chains off. I just want to wipe my tears. Just..." My voice was as slippery as foggy glass. "Please..." I murmured. "Please."
"I can't," the doctor said, looking at me as if he understood.
Yet, I knew he didn't understand a single bit.
"This is horrible," I continued to cry. My breath wasn't enough. My strength was depleted. "Maybe I should have committed suicide. Maybe I should have never existed in this world. I should have never hoped." I remembered the moment I entered this place as a last hope. My smile was now a grand, unreachable dream overflowing from a frame left over from my childhood. "If I go to heaven," I said; "If I go to heaven, I will only wish not to suffer for a single moment."
The doctor's fingers paused on the keyboard. "Is that all you would ask from the Great God?"
I turned my head.
"You don't understand me at all. You don't understand why someone who cannot see dreams of seeing the ceiling, why they settle for that dream. Because you never learned how to ask for the bare minimum."
The expression on the doctor's face turned serious. "Do you want it?"
When was the last time I had asked God for the least, the most sufficient thing?
"For exactly ten years," I spoke, almost torturing the words.
He opened the drawer of the computer desk and took something out.
Since I couldn't see what he pulled out, I looked there with furrowed brows.
"When they brought you here..." He paused; he hadn't turned around yet. I was dying to see what he held in his hand. I waited, taking only calm breaths. Every cell in my body was burning with the spark of curiosity.
"You had this in your hand."
Dangling from between his fingers was a silver letter 'A' hanging on a chain.
I read the letter again: Alem.
I remembered the voice whispering in my ear before the electroshock, and the necklace I had pulled with my hand and trapped in my palm.
Sis's words rang in my head. Alem. Sis's half-brother.
He... was working for the Mechanism.