Music by
My Bedside
Kürşat Başar
Translated by Çiğdem Aksoy Fromm
Contents
Music by My Bedside
Notes
About the Authors
Copyright
Other Works in Dalkey Archive Press’s Turkish Literature Series
I can’t sleep without music by my bedside.
Ever since I was a kid.
An old love song is always playing on that little music box, stirring up unforgettable images of days long past.
Memory’s so strange!
Without warning, images come to life, their colors grow palpable, pulling you into the realm of the past, as if you were stuck in a broken time machine. The images and their dates jumble together. You can’t tell which scent pairs with which memory. Perhaps you know instinctively which of them is precious; and sometimes, while the intricate mechanism of recollection is whirling you around, the images flow by, gliding across the windowpanes of a speeding train. Suddenly, a single memory glitters, catching your eye for a moment, and at that very instant you yearn, more than you’ve ever yearned for anything, to return to that image, to that one and only feeling, which has gone unnoticed.
Some people don’t have a home.
I’ve spent my life moving from place to place—in ephemeral homes, hotel rooms, guesthouses, and on the road. I can no longer recall all those places, in countless corners of the world.
They say recapturing the past is pleasing. No, not at all.
Though they may compel us to smile at first, memories fade away when we reach for them, and regardless of our actions, they plunge us into sorrow.
I have never been attached to my belongings. Nor do I care to collect mementos.
Most often, I refrain from engraving mental pictures in my mind. Yet, all is in vain! Have not all those images stowed away for a lifetime hunted me down until this very day?
Since my childhood, I have always wondered about the recording mechanism of the human mind. Images, colors, faces, scenery, photographs, houses, roads, clothes, scents, sounds, and feelings all register in my memory with unfathomable speed. So the next time you chance upon something or someone—a spitting image—you remember . . .
Time after time, I stroll through the sophisticated, ever-growing, gargantuan archives of my mind and lose myself in a myriad of swirling concentric circles. Wishing to catch and recall a particular memory, an emotion, or a moment bygone, I find myself engulfed in an utterly different time and place. I wonder how I happen to find myself by the seaside, inhaling the scents of an unexpected spring just as I was listening to the half-destroyed records of a conversation that took place in the rooms of my childhood.
Nowadays, space travel is possible. However, setting off on a journey in time is only possible if our destination is the unknown cities of our memory, traveling through our inner selves.
Space travel . . .
Even in the recent past, these two words were still evocative of the mysterious world of tales.
For us ordinary people, unimaginable secrets concealed themselves beyond the borders of our world. New worlds of our infinite imagination. Strange creatures that would suddenly appear before us in some unknown corner of the universe. Trepidation. Exhilaration.
The dreams of the unknown.
That unequaled feeling of having demolished your own borders to dive into the obscurity of a boundless universe.
Who could know what there was to find? What would happen when the first human set foot on the surface of the moon? Did the creatures who watched us—and probably visited our world secretly—live in an adjacent universe?
Would it be enough to traverse the borders of the Earth to discover the mystery of life?
We waited anxiously.
Then they went there. Flaring rockets were sent into the darkness of outer space one after another. Then, one day, we saw them walk on the ashen surface of the moon, jumping up and down on the craters like children. We saw it all. Was it not incredible? Honestly. Something we had heard of only in fairy tales, comic books or films had come true in the blink of an eye. They were there, and we were watching them from our living rooms. They romped in the wilderness, among the craters, like burlesque puppets hopping about in an absolute terra nova. They went there, but at the cost of our dreams, which perished. Neither the unforeseen creatures nor the faraway lands that responded to our clandestine messages existed from then on. The closer we got to the universe, the farther it slipped away and faded into the distance. The endless void deepened as it slowly engulfed us. We returned to Earth after we put out our flags on top of a wrinkled-faced planet, as if we were small children desiring to prove ourselves. That was it. Colorful pieces of fabric swaying in the wind on the moonscape, on a lonesome planet. Traces of childish pride inscribed on a limitless sky.
If there were someone watching us, he must have roared with laughter at our ludicrous feat.
So much has run its course. Things unattended in the routine of everyday life. So many disasters, wars, and inventions that reached us through the stark headlines of the daily paper. An unceasing evolution has passed us by, unglorified.
The world must have grown up just as we did and was left bereft of its charm.
Because we saw ourselves from there, from afar, from those strange places, we realized we were but a speck of dust in eternity.
Merely a speck of dust in the vast universe.
Did we really understand?
I have been told the same thing over and over since I was a little girl: “Accept reality!”
Yeah, but why accept the kind of reality that makes me miserable?
Think what you like, but I am fond of lies. Fantasies, dreams, and harmless lies.
If someone idles away her years in such a house like this, dwelling on nothing but reality, all that is left to do is to wonder why life takes so long to end. And you cannot help getting bored.
Besides, who can say that the lively play of fantasy is not truly life itself?
No sooner than I put my head on my pillow and hear the same music again, I can arrange all those incomprehensible coincidences and believe that all is destiny, a farfetched narrative, our predetermined fate from the day we were born.
So who knows, maybe that is the way it was.
Remembering is tiresome. However, if you manage not to forget anything, carry with you all the time everything that has receded into the past—images, details, faces, scents, and voices—you no longer have to recall them because they stay with you forever.
They are neither memories nor the indistinct, threadbare pieces of your lost life; nor are they faded photographs that can be revived or tampered with anymore. They are life itself, keeping pace with you with every new day.
Some things are never forgotten—like someone you miss, someone you remember even when he is with you, by your side.
Therefore,