These had been the “dreams” Nesrin had nurtured before her parents’ separation. On the day she “saw her father standing there with a suitcase in his hand”, all those dreams “collapsed at once”. He said only: “Farewell”. What followed was nothing but “a great silence and tears”.
Aysel Yalçın
Now Nesrin is sitting, in all likelihood, in the armchair by the window, the armchair her mother loved so dearly and could never bring herself to throw away, not even with its “flowers faded over the years”. She looks out toward the sea and watches the sun go down.
Nesrin was barely a year old when the armchair came into the house; in a sense, she had grown up alongside the “floral armchair”.
Her mother loved to sit in that chair on afternoon after afternoon and watch the sunset, always accompanied by a “lightly sweetened mokka on the small side table” beside her. Over the years, much of the furniture in the house was replaced, but the “pink floral armchair” never moved from its place. No one would have dared to shift it.
One day her mother had said to Nesrin: “This armchair is my very first piece of trousseau, my daughter. Take good care of it, even when I’m no longer here, will you?” Nesrin was still too young then to understand the weight of those words. She only nodded and said: “Yes”.
That moment was forgotten, until the day her mother left her forever.
When Nesrin lost her mother, she was only twenty and studying at university. Her mother had been her closest friend; on weekends they would go out together and dance until dawn. During term time they didn’t see each other often, since Nesrin studied in another city. Sometimes her mother would visit without warning. Whenever Nesrin spotted her waiting outside the building, “the whole world belonged to her”. Her friends admired the closeness between them. Many said: “I wish my mother were like yours”.
I am quite sure you are wondering now: “Does this girl have no father?”
Of course she had a father, but he had separated from her mother some years before and was living in another city. Since they did not get along, Nesrin had no contact with him. Her mother had become her “everything”; even her plans for the future were made together with her. When her mother sometimes said, “My daughter, one day there will be other people in your life and you will go your own way”, Nesrin would joke: “I’m not going anywhere without you. Whoever wants me has to take you too”. And yet as a small child she had been “Daddy’s princess”. She would stubbornly refuse to go to bed before he came home; “without his goodnight kiss she could not sleep”. Like every little girl, she had been “in love with her father”.
Until the day he left. Nesrin never truly understood why her father had abandoned not only her mother, but her.
She was in her final year of secondary school, only a few weeks before graduation. Nesrin’s dress was to be “sea blue”. She wanted to wear her hair “natural”, like her mother, she loved “simplicity”. Her father was to wear his “dark blue suit” with a “white shirt”.
These had been the “dreams” Nesrin had nurtured before her parents’ separation. On the day she “saw her father standing there with a suitcase in his hand”, all those dreams “collapsed at once”. He said only: “Farewell”. What followed was nothing but “a great silence and tears”.
Yet time, which “never stands still”, moved on even on that day. On the day of the graduation ceremony, Nesrin managed to “conceal her pain” while her mother “smiled a forced smile of happiness”. In truth she was genuinely proud of her daughter, but now loneliness had been added to her “broken heart”. She had to “stay strong”; there was “no other choice but to continue the road alone”. Her only wish was to “secure her daughter’s future”.
After the separation, her father had “begun a new life” in another city with another woman. Nesrin was resolved “never to forgive him”.
She felt that she had “not deserved to be abandoned”.
At the graduation ball, Nesrin danced with her uncle while the other girls danced with their fathers. Her uncle held her “trembling hands tightly”, and throughout the whole night they avoided meeting each other’s eyes, so as not to cry.
The summer holidays were touched with melancholy. At every step she was reminded of the time she had spent with her father. Her mother saw the state her daughter was in, but could not help her. Before university began, she persuaded Nesrin to seek “professional help”.
Just as time heals all wounds, it softened Nesrin’s pain too, “a little, at least”.
They moved to a new flat and took nothing with them except their clothes, a few kitchen things, and the floral armchair. Her mother placed the chair in front of the living room window, the small table beside it. Slowly, everything began to settle back into place. Nesrin continued her studies, and her mother worked with every ounce of her strength.
Just as they thought all their troubles were behind them, Nesrin was to live through “the bitterest day of her life”.
When she woke that morning, the house was “very quiet”. She looked for her mother in the kitchen, but she was not there. She found her in the living room, sitting in the floral armchair, her gaze turned toward the sea.
“Mama, you gave me a fright! You’re in your little corner again. Couldn’t you sleep?” said Nesrin, and walked toward her mother…
