From an early age, I believed in my world that there was something I couldn't see: somewhere on the streets of Istanbul, in a house similar to ours, lived another Orhan, almost My twin brother, even my double.I can't remember where or how the idea came from.It must have come from a tangle of rumours, misunderstandings, fantasies and fears.Yet for as long as I can remember, the feeling I've had about my ghostly counterpart has been clear. I was sent to another house for a short time when I was five years old.At that time, my parents' separation, which had been a series of ups and downs, was over. The two arranged to meet in Paris, and it was decided that my brother and I would stay in Istanbul and live in different areas.My brother lives with my grandmother at the family-owned Pamuk Apartments in Nisantasi.I was sent to Chihag's aunt's house.In the house of the man who treated me well, there is a picture of a child hanging on the wall.My aunt or uncle would sometimes point to him, smile and say to me, "Look! That's you."

That cute big-eyed boy in the little white frame does look a bit like me.He even wears a floppy hat that I occasionally wear.I know I'm not the boy in the photo (it's a cheap "cute kid" photo someone brought back from Europe), yet I keep asking myself - is this Orhan living in the other house ? Of course, I was also living in another house at the time, as if I had to move here to see my twin brother, but since I was so preoccupied with going back to my real home, I had no interest in getting to know him.Every time my aunts and uncles tease me about the boy in the picture, one thing becomes clearer to me: my love for myself, my home, the pictures and pictures that look like me, the boy that looks like me, and the other house. All kinds of thoughts were intertwined to make me want to go home and have my family around me all the more.

Before long, my wish came true.But another Orhan's ghost, somewhere in Istanbul, in another house, never left me.Throughout my childhood and most of my adolescence, he was always entwined in my heart.When walking through the streets of the city on a winter night, I would always stare at other people's homes through the light orange lights, imagining a happy family living a happy life.Then I shuddered to think that another Orhan might live in one of the houses.As I grew older, ghosts became fantasies and fantasies became recurring nightmares.In some dreams I greeted this Orhan—always in another house—always with screams of terror; in others, we both stared at each other in a terrible, pitiless silence. .Then, as I drifted in and out of sleep, I grasped more and more violently at my pillow, at my home, at my street, at my place in the world.Whenever I'm unhappy, I imagine going to another house, another life, another Orhan's place, and eventually I always convince myself that maybe I am him, and it's fun imagining how happy he is, how much fun it is For a while I felt no need to search for another house in another imaginary suburb.

Here we get to the heart of the matter: I have never left Istanbul — the houses, streets and neighborhoods of my childhood.Although I've lived in other suburbs, fifty years later I find myself back at the Pamuk Apartments, where my earliest photographs were taken and where my mother first held me to see the world.I know this persistence is due to my imaginary friends, and the solace I find in our connection.But we live in an era defined by mass migration and productive immigration, so it's sometimes hard for me to explain why I'm not only in the same place, but in the same building.The mother's lament came back to my ears: "Why don't you go out for a while, why don't you try to change the environment and go on a trip..."

Conrad, Nabokov, Naipaul—these writers are all known for having managed to move between languages, cultures, countries, continents, and even civilizations.Being away from home fuels their imagination, and the absorption of nutrients is not through roots, but through rootlessness; my imagination requires me to stay in the same city, the same street, the same house, and look at the same scenery.The destiny of Istanbul is my destiny: I am attached to this city because it made me who I am today. Flaubert visited Istanbul 102 years before I was born, and he had a lot of impressions about life on the bustling streets.He predicted in a letter that she would become the capital of the world within a century, but the opposite happened: after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the world almost forgot about the existence of Istanbul.The city where I was born has never been so poor, dilapidated, and isolated in its 2,000-year history.She has always been to me a city in ruins, full of the sadness of an empire's setting sun.All my life I either fought this sadness or (like every Istanbulite) made her my own.

At least once in our lives we have reflections that lead us to examine the circumstances of our birth.Why were we born in this corner of the world on this particular day? The families we were born into, the countries and cities to which we were assigned the lottery of life—all expect our love, and in the end, we do love them from the bottom of our hearts—but maybe Do we deserve a better life? I sometimes think of myself as unfortunate to have been born in an old and impoverished city, buried in the embers of an empire.But something in me always insisted that this was actually a matter of luck.If wealth is the key, I do count myself lucky to have been born into a well-to-do family: the city was in its worst decline (although some have had a way of proving to the contrary).Basically, I don't want to complain, I accept the city of my birth as I accept my body (although I'd rather be more handsome and fit) and gender (even though I still naively ask myself, what would happen if I were born a woman? will be better).This is my fate, and there's no point in arguing.This book is about destiny...

I was born in the middle of the night of June 7, 1952, in a small private hospital in Moda.I heard that the corridors of the hospital were peaceful and peaceful that night, and so was the world.Apart from the sudden eruption of lava and ash from the Stromboli volcano two days ago, nothing seems to be happening on Earth.The newspapers were full of small stories—a few reports about Turkish troops fighting in South Korea, and a few rumors spread by the Americans that stoked fears that North Korea might use chemical and biological weapons.A few days before I was born, my mother was eagerly reading a local report: Two days ago, the housekeeper and "heroic" boarders of the Konya Student Center saw a man wearing a terror mask attempt to sneak into Langa's house through the bathroom window. a family.They chased him across the street, and when they came to a lumberyard, the hardened criminal killed himself after cursing the police.A dry goods dealer identified the deceased as the gangster who broke into his shop in broad daylight and robbed him at gunpoint the year before.Her mother was alone in the room as she read the latest update on the drama, she recalled with regret years later.The father became distraught after taking her to the hospital, and when the mother's labor did not progress, he went out to see friends.The only person accompanying her in the delivery room was her aunt, who managed to climb over the hospital fence and enter in the middle of the night.When my mother first saw me, she realized that I was thinner than my brother was when I was born.

I would love to add "I heard".There is a special tense in Turkish that allows us to distinguish rumors from things we have seen.We use this tense when we tell about dreams, myths, or past events that we cannot witness.This distinction allows us to "remember" our earliest life experiences, our cradles, our prams, our first toddlers, and listen to stories told by our parents as much as we listen to other people's anecdotes.This sweet feeling is like seeing ourselves in a dream, but we pay a heavy price for it.Once etched into our minds, other people's accounts of our past turn out to be more important than our own recollections.And just as we learn about our own lives from others, we let others determine what we know about the cities we live in.

Sometimes I take what other people say about me and my city as my story, and those times I can't help but say: "A long time ago I painted. I heard I was born in Istanbul as a curious child Then when I was 22 years old, I seemed to write novels inexplicably." I wanted to write my life like this-as if my life happened to others, as if life was a dream, and in the dream I felt my voice Disappeared, the will was in a trance and could not hold on to itself.Beautiful as it is, I don't think the narrative language is reliable, because I can't believe that the magical story of the first life helps us face the clearer and truer second life, the one that is destined when we wake up. The unfolding second life.Because—at least for someone like me—this second life is the book in your hand.So, dear reader, please pay attention.Let me be honest with you, but please bear with me.