FLOODS OF THE DAY "Gun Selleri," Kirlangicsiz Gecti Yaz (1990). Istanbul: Cem Yayinevi, pp. 61-64.

Author: Feyza Hepcilingirler Translator(s): Suat Karantay Genre: short story/fairy tale

-- I sold my camera last summer, he said. It was getting expensive, what with the cost of film development and other things. I had taken photog­raphs of you, do you remember? Upstairs, here, in the garden, with Siret Hanim, alone...
Was it last summer, or more recently, when was it?
-- When did you say? Recently?
-- Recently? Recently what?
-- The photographs, I mean. I know of some very old photographs.
I don't mention the net stockings and the roses.
-- That's what I was also talking about...
I understood. Is there any reason left for figuring out when those pho­tographs were taken? Almost a lifetime has passed since. The one who captures the instant, Ihsan Bey -- jumping from the armchairs to the couc­hes, running, rearranging things, chasing and capturing... Dissolute, wild, rowdy Ihsan Bey -- can he be this man who is now trying to re-live the joy of his past days as a photographer? With a noble, considerate, polite exp­ression he looks at this person he photographed so often in his youthful days. Indeed, as he himself said, there were so many pictures taken in the garden, here, upstairs -- I used to think that he was taking photographs of my legs rather than of me. I was afraid. Of  an unnamed evil. In a refined manner Ihsan Bey used to pull my skirt above my knees, not touching my legs. (Did I think, at the time, that this was what refined manners ought to be?) Black net stockings, a handful, very soft, a ball of silk. I had a blue woolen dress, with a very wide collar, for the first time covering part of my knees, and, again for the first time, with darts in the bodice.
Net stockings came to Turkey much later than Ihsan Bey had me wear them, and they became an inseparable part of women's legs. However, Ihsan Bey was not obsessed with bare legs. What was it then? Later, in this same house, I had seen legs in net stockings, looking more naked than bare legs, in some magazines. So many magazines! Newspapers, books, too: but most of all magazines. On the bedside table over there was an old-fashioned radio. At that time Siret Hanim never spilled any water when she filled a glass; decanters were elegantly made. And Siret Hanim had beauti­ful legs, long and full. In high-heeled slippers they looked even more stri­king -- but she never got to wear net stockings. On a small, low, three-legged table were piled issues of another magazine, together with those ot­hers. Where is that table now? And Siret Hanim^'s high-heeled slippers? What slippers am I talking about? She never wore slippers; in the house she walked around in high-heeled shoes; she considered wearing slippers low-class; whenever visitors took off their shoes at the door she would act as if she were insulted. Except for her very special guests, she used to re­ceive her visitors here. On the small, low tables were lace covers with tass­les that touched the floor. Once when I saw some cheap nylon covers on them I was terrified. (Was it because I thought it was the beginning of a downfall?) It was the doings of Mehves, who favored any sort of novelty. Mehves, Siret Hanim's daughter, was a young girl at the time. She's been married for a long time now and has children as tall as herself. Whenever I came here I would find her sitting in a corner of the couch embroidering. On a frame. With one hand underneath and one on top, she embroidered birds, flowers, men with guitars serenading their sweethearts. Sometimes she would teach me how to dance: "So that you won't be embarrassed some day." I feel like "a poor girl being raised as a princess" -- God knows under the influence of which film! I cannot tell this to anybody but I love learning to dance like a princess.
When I reached for Siret Hanim's doorbell (old fashioned, bow-shaped -- the kind that you don't press but turn) I knew what I was searching for. Rather than these two old people, it was my childhood which ought to be lying somewhere around here. That's why I feel an uneasiness mixed with fear. I want to run away: What if I don't find it? How many years has it been since I last came here? The approaching footsteps take a long time. I am about to ask the old, hunchbacked woman who opens the door if Siret Hanim is in: She used to live here. But she recognizes me as soon as she sees me. "Oh, my precious one..." she says. "My precious one... Ihsan Bey, come and see who is here.^" It doesn^'t sound odd to me that Siret Hanim addresses her husband as Ihsan Bey. Not in the least.
-- You look fine, I say. How nice it is... To age  together.
-- Yes, we have aged, haven't we? says Siret Hanim.
Ihsan Bey finds his wife's question very childish, and with a condes­cending smile, makes me excuse her: "Don't pay any attention to what she says." Still, I proceed:
-- No. That's not what I meant. Your togetherness is so wonderful! To grow old together and keep on loving one another -- that I find beautiful.
They smile like guilty children.

Ihsan Bey makes me sit on a couch with curved arms and no back in the guest room upstairs where Siret Hanim allows no one to enter. But where is Siret Hanim? Perhaps downstairs, perhaps in the garden, or maybe she's not home, I don't know. Ihsan Bey picks up my leg as though it were an independent part of my body, bends it, puts it in a certain position, doesn't like its location, picks it up again -- I'm scared that he'll keep on holding it forever. With my right leg stretched straight, he lifts the other leg over and crosses my ankles -- no, this won't do either. My left leg is in his hand. He pushes it backwards and presses my foot against the couch at knee-level This looks fine. He pulls the leg forward a little and widens the angle between the knees. Now he'll check things through the viewfinder. If it’s OK, we're ready. Years later a man will pick up this same leg from where Ihsan Bey has placed it, as if picking up a crystal pointer inlaid with silver (impossible, can crystal be inlaid with silver?) (but it was possible, and as if it were a pointer that will show mountains, desertions, liberations, infatu­ations on a world map) he will take it to his lips. Then he will gently ca­ress the pointer with his fingers.
"Let's pick out a name for you," says Ihsan Bey. Let's call you Dilsad -- a name of Persian origin, meaning "happy, contented." I can't say no. I can't ask who Dilsad is. My name is pretty, what's wrong with it, this I dare not ask. And I don't, as yet, know that I would like my name to be Gunseli -- a modern Turkish name that literally means "flood of the day."
-- I used to call you Dilsad, do you remember? asks Ihsan Bey.
I do. Siret Hanim does, too, nodding her head knowingly. Siret Hanim knows who the real Dilsad is. I don't, and I don't want to find out any more.
I also remember him looking intently at my face as though he was se­arching for something under my skin. His straightening my eyebrows with one finger, lowering a lock of hair over one eye, then placing a rose betwe­en my lips. Where are those photographs? Where? I remember them all being taken; but I haven't seen a single one of them.
Ihsan Bey still thinks I'm a little girl he can photograph. I feel his looks, the looks of a photographer (old and still amateurish) on my face. I wish he wouldn't see my wrinkles, the sadness that pervades my face like a second skin.
-- You look fine, says Ihsan Bey. You look very beautiful.
At that same instant another voice says, "You are very beautiful. I haven't told you this, have I?" Had he? I don't  remember.
Ihsan Bey used to have a motorbike. He used to take his camera and go up into the mountains. He would take photographs of slopes, gulfs, mo­untains, seaside mansions, bays, sunsets, of pine and olive trees, pathways, of straw baskets hanging from olive branches, children running after their donkeys, of women picking olives with half gloves that left their fingers bare. He would then come and photograph me, posing with a rose between my lips and a coquettish look on my face. He no longer has a motorbike. He is too old to ride a motorbike. He no longer gives me a rose to hold between my lips, nor teaches me how to look at the camera.
-- Let's go out into the garden, he says. It's filled with sunshine.
I know that he means "light." He is obsessed with light, with sunshine, not with the garden. Let's go up into the mountains. Photograph me in the mountains so that those moments won't be lost. Take me and place me on the lap of a man with eyes full of light. Make my hair look longer, scat­ter it in the wind; but do not allow my hair to darken those eyes full of light.
-- I have to go now, I say. But if you wish...
-- There's no reason for us to stay in the garden, says one of them. But which one?

I had come here to find my childhood. I needed to do that. And I did find so much! I stayed too long though. I had called on them just to see how they were doing. As I straighten my wrinkled skirt, I remember once again my first dress with the darts in the bodice. We had taken the material to the dressmaker who lived in a house on the corner and the woman had said, "She needs to have darts put in the bodice." She and mother had looked at one another and smiled. I had blushed. Actually there is nothing to feel embarrassed about a girl's breasts growing. Now I know, but at the time I didn't. I am amazed at how much I know now, only now. At the time I also didn't know that Ihsan Bey would grow too old to ride a motorbike and that he wouldn't be able to take pictures despite this bright sunshine; and also that the man with the eyes full of light would take his eyes and light out of my life and leave. Now I know. And, enough is eno­ugh, no more photographs.

Other work(s) in this website: TROKSALILA short story/fairy tale BEFORE DEATH AND BIRTH short story/fairy tale