The Silences of the Time

The sky had begun to darken. Evening slowly spread over the streets.

Children playing in the street, women who had put food on the stove and stepped out into the neighborhood, young men returning from the factory… All of them quietly dispersed toward their homes with the call to prayer. Corners, avenues, windows… Silence greeted the city after the call.

One by one, the lights in the houses began to turn on. The streets of Arifiye breathed with a dim yellow glow. But what did it matter?

The sky had darkened, the lights had turned on, rain had fallen or a storm had broken… He no longer cared. In a corner of this house, he lived a solitary, inward life—woven from loneliness and sealed by silence.

He moved to the loneliest corner of the balcony. For the first time in a long while, it was this quiet. This alone with himself. Once, sounds had lived inside his mind; now they passed by only from outside. Suddenly, he startled at the sound of a door slamming in the wind. His gaze shifted to the fluttering wings of birds—birds turning as if eager to be noticed. In that moment, he went back to his childhood. He sank deeply into the view, wishing to stop time there. Perhaps to remain within that moment…

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. If anyone touched his anger, his resentment, his regrets, he would have cried. But no one touched him. He had not even noticed how alone he had become.

The intimate sound of the santur wrapped around his silence. He also had paper and a pen. Could someone with a pen ever truly be alone? He did not know…

For him, knowing no longer held any meaning. He had long grown weary of being the sum of everything that had happened to him. Time now simply passed. He stood up and turned toward the mirror hanging on the wall. He stared long and hard at the face in the mirror. It was a face he had not seen in a long time. First, a faint smile appeared on his lips; it vanished soon after, replaced by dull, empty eyes. Who knew what he was thinking?

Once, he had intended to become a teacher. He would have touched the hearts of dozens of children. With compassion, he would have tended to children with bleeding knees; in classrooms adorned with flags, he would have nurtured the nation’s hopes. Years later, perhaps, a voice on the street would call out, “Do you remember me, teacher?”—and he would recall the past.

Or he might have followed the trail of music. He would have added a melody to the santur pieces he listened to. People would have found peace in his melodies, and the songs flowing from his soul would have evoked countless memories. People would have paused in his poetry. In one line, lives would have unfolded; in one word, hope would have blossomed. And he too would have blossomed…

The pen would have freed him from loneliness. His relationship with the notebook would have been with silence…

In the mirror, where his dull gaze had reflected, now were aged eyes. Each drop tracing his face seemed to know where it was going. A collared dove settled on the balcony ledge, scattering the resentful gaze trapped in the mirror. And once again, it reminded him of his solitude.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He reached for the notebook beside him, took the pen in his hand, and carefully wrote two words on the page:

“Tomorrow exists.”