ROSETTA_MAGAZINE_201303

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dosage to this weak body.
Don’t take it personally, we are living
through days in which anyone and everyone
can get sacked. Still, I overcame those hard
days and found a new job. I earn less than
before but I feel content.
I also have some good news, I quit
smoking. I know that you will now say, “I
wish you hadn’t started at all” but I think
we have come to an agreement about
forgetting the first period, my dear father.
It will sound funny if I say “Pray that I don’t
smoke from now on” because you will say:
“What do I know about prayer son, keep a
tight rein on your willpower, don’t smoke
this shit.” I am only telling you this to ease
you, there is a smoking ban in all indoor
areas in almost the entire world, and this
makes it easy for me.
However, it’s surely not all a bed of roses.
Father, I cannot sleep.
I cannot sleep properly since you died. I
am sick and tired of you coming to my bed
every night, I am sick of sleeping side by
side with you. Never mind that you sleep
next to me, my dear father, I wish you didn’t
look right into my eyes constantly. No
matter which side I turn to I see the whites
of your eyes and then get scared. I am tired
of falling down a cliff every time I close my
eyes to escape your gaze. What’s worse is
that I cannot escape your voice no matter
what I do, you talk constantly… Perhaps we
cannot even call that talking, that wailing
will drive me insane someday. I don’t know
what I did to deserve this. I got angry that
you didn’t teach me that people are so bad,
I grumbled that you didn’t test me enough
on social studies, I swore but believe me
whatever I said I said because of my love
for you, ‘in brief’ I said it because I am
like you, ‘in summary’ I said it all in your
tongue. I beg of you, please do not do this
to me, father!
Please keep quiet; please don’t look at me
anymore!
Perhaps you think like they do, you know
those who say you are not dead and
that you live through me. This romantic
approach might at first seem attractive
but it has no reciprocity, my dear father.
Don’t be carried away by the memorised
thoughts of those poor souls. I don’t know
when a dead person comprehends they are
dead but please behave a bit braver in this
matter. If you cannot do anything at all, just
do what I do! Did you ask what I do? You
know how I understand the world through
writing… Well, that is why every time I open
my notebook in front of me I write down the
truth in massive big letters:
MY FAThER DIED!
Father, be brave enough to admit this to
yourself.
You remember, you called marriage the
greatest false pretence and kept nagging at
me asking me when I would get married…
You remember, you didn’t like soldiers,
you thought of their ‘defence’ baloney as
two-faced and you went as far as to tell
me if I didn’t conscript as soon as possible
you’d inform me to the authorities… You
remember, while drinking you used to tell
me that I should pack a bag and go to the
other end of the world if it was going to
make me happy and you remember, you
used to pressurise me to buy a house even
with a mortgage so I could make a home?
You remember, you weren’t at all scared of
death before that sickness inflicted your
body and when in the hospital you held
my wrist with some unexpected power
somehow gathered from your weakened
body and said, “Son, I’m dying, save me!”
as if you wanted to leave your pangs of
remorse as inheritance.
And, you remember, with your every dying
cell my words scattered a little more…
And, you remember, I wanted to bite every
hand extending to me for consolation and
comfort like a rabid dog…
And, you remember, after every time I
lied to you that you would survive and
live, I couldn’t hold my tears like your
incontinence…
And, you remember, I couldn’t save you…
I wish you’d realise and get out of my
nights, father…
Believe me when I say I didn’t want to
be so ruthless… I would have wanted to
be carried away by a standpoint which
transfers reality to superstition with the
litany that you are not dead but I cannot,
father. Let’s sit crooked but talk straight
– in fact, let me put it like this, let’s peel
the fictionary paint from the wall of reality
– you’re dead big time. You always wanted
the truth, so there you go… the naked
truth. They did that thing you didn’t want
at all, to you too. They tied your jaw and
put a knife on your rib cage. Your shoes
in front of the door were taken by a man
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who came to disinfect the trees in the
neighbourhood. He was the same man
who caused the cherry tree you loved to
dry up a few years ago because he sprayed
too much disinfectant on it. The tree you
loved enough to say, “This is also one of my
children.” Upon seeing the shoes she got
for you as a birthday present on another
man’s feet, your granddaughter shuddered.
Put it this way, if death has a merit, you
paid your dues in full.
Now I will take a deep breath because I
have been a coward in even this matter…
Oh father, I am sorry once again, what am
I blabbering on about, you couldn’t even
take a proper breath when you were alive
because of your charred lungs… How could
you now? Anyway, now you’ll get mad at
me but I feared the strength of this death.
It was a foul-mouthed death that was
enough to be one in the eye for those who
sprinkled their voices with a dust of peaceunderstanding-hope
and said “may light
follow him” and those who approached with
puppy-eyes and said “he is not actually
dead; he is watching us from above.”
As if it wasn’t enough that you died in all
the languages I know you also died in all
the religions I rejected. Your neighbours
who ate spoonfuls of your halvah hung
different books by your bedside! Your
co-operative friends who begged for
money and fortunes, health and love of
different Gods between the walls plastered
with the same trowel, who threw their
cigarette butts which will kill them of
the same cancer into the garden of the
house which you once struggled to pay the
instalments for and caused you to wrestle
with haemorrhoids the size of my thumb.