Chapter 7 "New Life" Chapter 5

After four full stitches on Jana's forehead, we boarded the first bus and hurried away from the lifeless Kanya.In that town, we walked past low courtyard walls, gray buildings, and treeless streets, feeling the mechanical tread of our feet on the sidewalk.I do have some memories of the next three towns I went to: one was full of chimneys, another was full of lentil soup, and the last was in terrible taste.After passing through these three small towns, the bus took us to one town after another, sleeping on the bus, and then waking up in the car with a hazy world in our eyes.I saw the cement wall that had already collapsed, and there were posters of the artists in their youth left on it.I saw flooded bridges and refugees from Afghanistan selling Korans the size of my thumb.I must have seen other things besides Jana's light-brown hair that fell down her shoulders, the crowds at the bus stop, the purple hills, the glossy plastic notice boards, the live dogs chasing the bus that was taking us out of town, Poor hawkers peddle their wares between the shuttle buses.At a remote rest stop, Jana has given up looking for clues about what she calls "investigative work."She put food from vendors, such as hard-boiled eggs, meatloaf, peeled cucumbers, and some unbranded local soft drinks, on our laps.Then, morning came, and night fell, and then it was a cloudy morning, and the bus changed gears.Then as the night grew darker and darker, the screen above the driver's seat glowed peachy like cheap lipstick, and Jana began to tell her story.

Her "relationship" with Muhammad, as she described it, began a year and a half ago.In her memory, she vaguely met him once among a large group of students from the Department of Architecture and Mechanical Engineering in the Tuskisla Hall.But the first time she really noticed him was when she attended a welcoming reception for relatives who had returned from Germany in a restaurant in Taksim.When her parents arrived in the hotel lobby around midnight, she was impressed by the pale, tall, thin man behind the counter. "Maybe it's because I can't remember where I saw him before." Jiana said, smiling sweetly at me again.But I know that this laugh is not because of me.

She saw him again in the hallway of the Tusquisla Pavilion after school started in the fall, and they quickly "fell in love."The two walked the streets of Istanbul together, watched movies together, and often reported to kiosks and restaurants. "We didn't talk much at first," Jana explained in a tone of seriousness she hadn't used to.She said it wasn't because Muhammad was too shy or didn't like to talk.As she got to know each other better, and the more time they spent together, it became clearer to her that this person might like to mingle with other people, could be very indomitable, stubborn, articulate, even positive and pushy. “His silence comes from the sadness in his heart,” Jana told me one night, her eyes fixed on the police chase scene on the bus TV screen and not on me.A smile curled up on her lips, and she added: "It's all from sadness." On the screen, the police cars sped up, and one after another fell off the bridge and fell into the river, smashed into pieces and twisted into a ball.

Jana tried hard to untie his sad knot, and once managed to enter the life behind his sad knot.At the beginning, Muhammad mentioned that in his previous life, he was another person who lived in a certain mansion in a certain province.Then he gradually lost his fear and told Jana that he had left his old life behind and longed for a new one; the past no longer mattered to him.He had been someone else, but he was determined to make himself something else.Since Jana only recognizes his new identity, he tells her to ignore his past and just accept his new identity.The horrible people and things he faced during his quest journey have nothing to do with his previous life, but are part of the new life he is eagerly pursuing.At the bus stop in a shabby little town, we had a friendly, even hilarious discussion about which bus to take; Ten-year-old food cans; we're still watching watch hands in the town's old clock repair shop and seeing children's comic strips on the dusty racks of the sports lottery store.At that bus terminal, she told me: "That was the life... the life he encountered in that book."

This is the first time we have mentioned that book in the nineteen days since we met in a car accident.Jana told me that getting Muhammad to talk about the book was as hard as getting him to talk about the reasons for his depression and his abandonment of his old life.When they were walking dejectedly in the streets of Istanbul, or drinking tea in a restaurant on the Bosphorus, or reading books together, she asked for the book, asked him for the magical thing, but he would only refuse solemnly.Muhammad told her that it was wrong for a girl like her to deliberately imagine purgatory, heartache, and blood, because in the twilight realm described in that book, "death", "love" and "fear" were like It's a cold and frosty hapless ghost who pretends to be fully armed and wanders around.

With incredible perseverance and repeated expressions of concern about her lover, Jana was finally able to comfort Muhammad, but only to a limited extent. "Maybe he wanted me to read that book and save him from its magical and malevolent nature," Jana said. As she patiently waited for the train to pass at the level crossing, she added: "Maybe he unconsciously longed for us to enter that life together; maybe some corner of his mind still thought it would work." She screamed. The locomotives passing near my house chattered endlessly.A long line of box trucks, full of wheat, machinery, and broken glass, passed by our window, one after another, casting long shadows like spies and criminals from afar.

Jana and I don't talk much about the book's impact on us.That influence is too powerful, that's all too clear, and discussing it would absolutely reduce the content of my book to chatter and rambling.This book is about something that is undeniably integral to both of our lives, something that clearly exists between us, basically like sunshine and water.In response to the light shining on our faces from the book, we set out on the road, trying to move forward on this road with the power of our own instincts, without knowing where we are going. Even so, we often fought over which bus to take.At one point, for example, the station announcer announced to the passengers in the waiting room (with a coat hanger a little too much in a small town) over a loudspeaker that the bus The time and destination of departure sparked Jana's desire to get in the car; despite my vigorous protests, I finally gave in.Another time, we followed a young man carrying a plastic suitcase to the bus lane, past his teary-eyed mother and smoking-smoking father, because the young man's figure and slightly hunched appearance reminded her of muhammad.We also followed him on this bus marked "Terminal Turkish Airlines" through three towns, crossed two dirty rivers, and finally arrived at a barracks with a lookout tower surrounded by barbed wire fences, walled Above it read: "Happiness is being a Turk".We took all kinds of buses, deep into the heart of the prairies, sometimes just because Jana was obsessed with the dark green and ocher colors of the bus body; As the body vibrates and accelerates, it will become thinner and more curved, like a bolt of lightning.When we arrived in the dusty town, lingering in dingy bus stops and deserted supermarkets, confirming that Jana's alleged investigation had gone nowhere, I'd ask her why we were traveling and remind her that I learned from dead passengers. The money stolen has dwindled.Still, I'll pretend I'm trying to understand the illogical logic of this investigative work.

I told Jana that I had once leaned out the window of a class in the Tuskisla Hall and watched Muhammad get shot.She was not surprised.According to her, life is full of obvious, even intentional, intersections that some blunt fool would call "coincidences."Shortly after Muhammad is shot, Jana notices the guy who runs the burger joint across the street behaving unusually.She remembers hearing gunshots, feeling something was going on, and running to Muhammad, who was wounded and lying on the ground.At the place where Mohammad was injured, a taxi appeared and took them to Kasim Pasa Naval Hospital.If it were someone else, they might think it was just a coincidence. The taxi driver chose that hospital because he had just been discharged from the Navy. It was just a coincidence.Mohamed's shoulder injury is not serious and he will be released from the hospital in a day or two.But when Jana arrived at the hospital the next morning, he was gone and disappeared.

"I went to the restaurant where he worked, did a little check in the Tusquisla Pavilion, and went to the places he frequented, and then went home and waited for his call, but I knew it was all in vain." She calmly and clearly Said, I admire her so much. "I understand that he went back to that country. Since then, he has returned to the world of that book." I am her "travel companion" in her quest for that country; we will support each other in rediscovering that paradise.On the road of finding a new life, there is nothing wrong with holding the idea of ​​"three cobblers are better than one Zhuge Liang".We are soul mates and travel companions; we give each other unconditional support.Mary and Ali can start a campfire with only two lenses, and we are also creative.So for the next few weeks, we sat next to each other on night trains, our bodies rubbing against each other.

Some nights, long after the second video on the VCR ended with high-octave gunshots and exploding helicopters, and long after we weary and haggard passengers had set off to dream about Duke Zhou, we left our lives to death, and the bus lurched Under the turning of the forward wheel, continue the endless journey.I always woke up when the car drove through a ditch or stopped suddenly, and stared seriously and long at Jana's sleeping face like a baby by the window.Her head rested on the curtain rolled up to serve as a pillow, on which her pale brown hair rose in a sweet hillock and fell steeply on her fragrant shoulders.Sometimes her long, beautiful arms touched my hungry knees like a pair of parallel delicate branches; the elbow of the front arm.When I watched her face carefully, I saw that there seemed to be a touch of pain that made her frown.Sometimes, when her pale brown eyebrows were drawn into a knot between them, and the doubt written across her forehead made me shudder inside.Then I'd see a radiance creep over her pale face, and begin to fantasize about some velvety paradise of beauty, where roses bloom, and squirrels frolic at sunset, beckoning me to the wonderful paradise between her cheekbones and slender throat; or if With her head bowed, her hair loose on the nape of her neck, she called me to that untouchable part.I would look at the golden light on her face; if she even smiled in her sleep, touching her full, pale lips that were parted from frequent lip biting, I would tell myself: Although school and books have not taught , but, oh angel, how sweet it is to look at the sleeping face of the beloved!

We did discuss the topic of angels, but the conversation was so flimsy that it wasn't worth talking about, like the fragile items Jana haggled for at the market (i.e., the corner hardware store, the dead dry goods store).After buying those little things, we played with them a little more and left them in the restaurants or on the bus seats at the station.We also talked about Reaper, who seemed to be the majestic, dour half-brother or half-brother of the angel.He is everywhere, especially "there," because from "there" comes Death.We search for clues, hoping to get "there" and find Muhammad, but we also miss some clues.Most of our information comes from that book - like we know the unique moment when the accident happens, we learn the starting point of being able to see another world, we know the theater foyer and the new life brand caramel, we know that Muhammad may be shot, Even the assassination that took us down, recognized the inn tent that locked my progress, recognized the long silence, the night, and the dimly lit dining table.I should have written this: After all that was said and done, we boarded the bus again; After all that was said and done, we set off on the road again, sometimes even before nightfall; Passengers chatted with each other, while children and more anxious passengers looked out the window at the flat asphalt-paved mountain road as if they were watching a TV screen.With a sudden gleam in Jana's eyes, she began to tell a story. "When I was a kid, I'd wake up sometimes in the middle of the night," she said once. "I'd pull the curtains and look out, and I'd see a man in the street, a drunk, a fat man with a hunchback, a night watchman, whatever. There's always a man in the street... I'm scared, and I like my bed, but I'd love to be in the street." "I know boys from playing hide-and-seek with my brother's friends at the summer vacation place. Or maybe it was in middle school, watching them look at the things they took out of the desk. Maybe it was when we were younger, we were playing games. Come on, they suddenly say they want to pee, and I know what boys are up to from the way they wiggle their legs," she said again later that night. "When I was nine years old, I fell on the seashore and hurt my knee. My mother screamed and cried. We went to the hotel doctor and he said, what a beautiful little girl, a sweet little girl. He used hydrogen peroxide Cleaned my wound, and said, What a smart little girl. I knew from the way the doctor looked at my hair that he liked to look at me. There was something dazzled about his eyes, and he saw me as someone from another world. He Her eyelids are a bit heavy, and she looks a little sleepy, but she still takes a good look at me." She said later. Another night we talked about angels again. "Angel's gaze is omnipresent," she said. "His eyes see everything: Eternal existence. But we, unfortunate human beings, still suffer from not seeing these gazes. Is it because we are negligent? Or is our will not strong enough Or because we can't love life? I know that someday, day and night, I'll look out the bus window, from town to town, and my eyes will meet the eyes of an angel. I've got to learn how to look , then I might see an angel. I have faith in the bus. I have faith in the angels...sometimes...no, always, yes: always. Well, just occasionally." "The angel I was looking for came from that book. The reason why this angel appeared in the book seems to be another person's idea. The angel is like a passerby in the book, but I can still recognize him. I am sure that seeing him In that moment, the mysteries of life unfold before my eyes. I could feel the presence of angels at the scene of the bus accident, and on the bus. Everything Muhammad said came true. Do you know? Whether Muhammad Wherever he went, the light of death surrounded him. Maybe it was because he took the book deeply in his heart. I also heard the car accident victims mention angels, and those people knew nothing about the book or the new life I followed him, collected the information he left behind, and followed him all the way. One rainy night, Muhammad told me that those who wanted to kill him were already preparing to do it.They could be anywhere and even eavesdrop on our conversations all the time.You might be one of them too, but don't get it wrong.People's thinking and actions often show the exact opposite of what they really think.You set out on the road in search of that promised land, and your heart draws inward.You thought you were reading that book, but you were just re-copying it.When you think you're helping, you're hurting someone.Most people don't want a new life or a new world, so they kill the author of that book. " This is how Jana first mentioned the writer (or the old man she referred to as "the author").Although I didn't understand her words very well, the way she said it made me very excited.It's not that these words have something to say, but that there is a full sense of mystery in them.She sat in the front of a brand new bus, her eyes fixed on the shiny white centerline of the asphalt.For some reason, the headlights of other oncoming buses, trucks, and cars on the road were invisible that night when the sky was purple. "I know that Muhammad had a conversation with the old writer, and they read everything in the other's eyes. Muhammad was always looking for him and admired him. They didn't talk much when they met, they were quiet; they sometimes There was an argument, but then there was silence. The old gentleman either wrote that book when he was young, or he was writing about it when he was young. He once said sentimentally that it was a young man's book. Then, 'The people 'Terrorizing the old man to give up the work he wrote with his own hands, deep in his own soul and painstaking effort. It's no surprise.'They' killed him in the end... Now that the old man is dead, it's no surprise that Muhammad is going to kill him... ...We will find Muhammad before the killer does it...Important: There are other people who read that book and believe what it says. I see those readers in towns, in towns, on buses I know them, I know them by their eyes. People who have read the book and believe in it have a different look on their faces; they have a sad longing in their eyes, always One day you'll understand, maybe you've already. If you understand what's going on, if you can go after it, life will be astonishing." If Jana had been speaking to me at a fly-infested wilderness rest stop, we would have been smoking cigarettes, drinking free tea from a listless restaurant waiter, and scooping candy that tasted like plastic Boil strawberries.If we had been in the front seat of the rickety bus, my eyes would have been fixed on Jana's mellow lips and full mouth, but her eyes would have been fixed on the front of the occasional passing truck, which heaved and swayed with the vibrations. light up.If we were at a crowded bus stop with a crowd of passengers carrying plastic bags, cardboard suitcases, and burlap sacks, Jana would cut off mid-sentence, and, oops, she’d go from The dining table fled and went missing, leaving me alone among a large group of people. Sometimes I would count the time, and it took me a long time to finally find her in the second-hand store in the alley in the town where I was waiting for the bus.Sometimes she anxiously studies a broken iron, or an old-fashioned charcoal stove that is no longer in production; By allowing livestock to use the main street when they return home in the evening”, or Turkish Petroleum agents advertising their new products in local stores, all advertised fresh from Istanbul.I'd often spot her chatting intimately with other people from a distance; she'd have deep conversations with an old lady in a hijab, or repeatedly kiss a girl with a duckling face sitting on her lap, or confuse bus routes and bus stops An astonishing common sense of famous information to help weak-willed strangers reeking of OP shaving soap.When I approached her breathlessly and hesitantly, she would put on an expression of "we travel to help others solve their difficulties". "My dear lady, her son is out of the army and they should meet here," she'd say, "but he's not on the bus from Van." We look up bus schedules for others , Changing tickets for others, comforting their crying children, and guarding their luggage when they go to the toilet. "May God bless you," said a fat old woman with gold teeth, and then she turned to me and raised her eyebrows. "Your Madam is stunningly beautiful, you know?" The screens were turned off, and onboard activity ceased, except for the most sombre, light-sleeping passengers, still smoking.Her body and I gradually approached with the slightly shaking seat.Jana, I feel your hair brushing against my face; your slender arms touching my knees; your sleepy breath caressing my neck.The wheels whirled, the diesel engine roared, and the day passed between us like a dark, warm, sluggish liquid.At this primitive moment, a nascent feeling penetrates into the bones of our numb, powerless, stiff legs, teasing our flesh with desire. Sometimes it's the touch of her arm that sets me ablaze; Without messing with the strands of her hair hanging around my throat, I was frozen in my seat and did not dare to move; I counted her breaths reverently with a timid heart; seeing the fleeting trace of sadness on her brow , I began to wonder what the meaning was.How excited I was when the pale face suddenly caught in the light woke up to my gaze, and instead of glancing out the window to make sure where she was, she gazed into my comforting eyes and smiled at me.I kept vigil for her all night, so that her neck would not rest against the cold window and catch the cold.I took off the maroon coat I bought at Elgin and threw it over her lap.When the driver led us staggeringly on the mountain road, I tried my best to protect her sleeping position and follow her staggering, lest she fall out of the seat and get hurt.Sometimes, although I am listening to the noise of the engine, the sighs of the passengers, and their longing for death, my mind is dizzy and confused, but my eyes are still focused on her smooth neck and Between the soft cochlea.My consciousness floated into the fantasies of my childhood boat rides and snowball fights, and it merged into my dreams, and I looked forward to the day when I would be blessed with such a happy married life with her. A few hours later, I was awakened by a mischievous, cold, angular daylight like cut glass, and realized that the sultry garden scented with lavender in my dream was actually the lavender she had been rubbing on my head. The teasing neck; between sleeping and waking, it quietly stayed on my head for a long time.I blinked and said good morning to the bright morning light outside the window, just to sigh how far away I was from her eyes.At this time, the lavender mountain and the clues of a new life are just about to appear. One evening, she said like a seasoned storyteller: "Love can point the way, love can empty your life, love will eventually lead you to explore the secrets of the universe. Now, I understand love, we are about to get 'there '." These words blew out the scorching flame that was stuck in my throat. "The moment I met Muhammad," she went on, ignoring the old magazine cover of Clint Eastwood staring at her at a table at the bus stop: "I know , my life changed. Before I met him, I had my own life; after I met him, my life changed. Everything around me seemed to change color and shape—people, beds, lamps, ashtrays Nothing was the same, the streets, the clouds, the chimneys. I began to discover this new world in awe and awe and wonder. I bought that book, thinking I would never need another book or novel. In the world in front of me, I had to learn the art of 'seeing with my heart', to see everything and everyone clearly with my own eyes. However, once I read that book, I immediately understood that I must see clearly behind everything So I encouraged Muhammad, who had returned sadly from the country where he was looking for a new life, and convinced him that if we all worked together, we would reach that new world. In those days, we read that book over and over again, each time with a brand new Sometimes we spend weeks just to study a piece of text; sometimes, after reading it, we understand everything, and our minds are as clear as a bell. We watch movies together, read other books together, and read together newspapers, wandering the streets. When that book haunts our thoughts, when we hold it in our hearts, the streets of Istanbul shine so brightly and marvelously that the city belongs to us alone. We learn that the oblique An old man leaning on crutches, planning to spend time in a daze in a cafe, waiting to pick up his grandson from school. We found that among the three carriages, the mare pulling the last cart was the same as the two skinny horses pulling the first two carts. Mother-child relationship. We understand the reason why more and more men wear blue socks. We learn to read the train timetable from bottom to top and decipher the mystery. We understand that the fat and sweaty man is carrying The suitcase on the bus, full of underwear we just grabbed from the store. We go to the restaurant, read the book again, and talk about it for hours. This is love. Sometimes, I Thinking that love is the only way to know the world far away, just like in the movie; and love is the only way to get to 'there'." "But," she said one rainy night, staring intently at the kissing scene on the screen, "there are a lot of things I don't know: never will." For a while, the ensuing image is of a vehicle much like ours driving through a region that is so stunning and so different. "We will also go to a completely unknown world." Jana added. When our clothes are stiff with dust and dirt, and when layers of yellow dust from all the people in history since the Crusades have piled up on us, we will choose a small place at random before changing buses. Town, choose a store to buy at will.Jana would buy herself silk-and-wool poplin gowns and wear them like a good district school teacher; I'd buy white shirts, parodying her ex-lover.If you see the office buildings of regional administrative units, Kemal statues, Azilik home appliance dealers, pharmacies, and mosques on the road, you will notice the elegant white jet tail drawn by jets in the clear blue sky, and look at the canvas enrollment banners of Qur’an schools in the distance The scenery in the back, seeing the circumcision celebration is going on, we will stop at the same place with bundled packages and plastic bags, look up enthusiastically to the sky, and then ask the listless officials in faded ties how to get to the public bathhouse. Since the bathhouse is only for women in the morning, I spend time on the streets and in cafes.Passing the town hotel, I imagined myself telling Jana that we'd have to spend at least one night on real "land," in a hotel, for example, instead of continuing on the road and sleeping on the bus.Several nights, when I contemplated telling her about the long-fantasy event, Jana would show me the results of her great "investigation" when I went to the bathhouse that afternoon: a bundle of old sweet Photo magazines, children's comic strips older than magazines, a sample of a brand of chewing gum I don't remember chewing, and a barrette that didn't seem important for a while. "I'll tell you on the bus," she'd tell me, smiling at me.This special smile only shows on her face when the videos she has watched are shown on the screen. One night, instead of playing the usual vulgar movies on the bus, a serious and serious announcer who announced the death appeared on the TV screen. "I'm already on the road to another life of Muhammad, but it's not Muhammad, it's another person, another person in another world," Jana said.The bus sped past a gas station, flashes of neon red reflected in her face. "Muhammad didn't reveal much about his past, except that he had a sister who lived in a mansion and had a mulberry tree; and that he was called another name and had another identity. He once told me that when I love a magazine called Children's Weekly. Have you ever heard of the Children's Weekly?" Her long fingers slid across the large, yellowed bundle stuffed between our legs and the ashtray. old magazines, watching me flip through them, but not looking at them myself. "I collected these publications because Muhammad said that everyone eventually returns to the world in the pages, the books that built his childhood. They made the book. Do you understand?" I don't quite understand, there are I didn't know anything about it at the time, but the way Jana spoke to me made me feel like I did understand what she was saying. "Muhammad read that book just like you did, and he fully realized that his life would change. He translated what he understood into reasonable results. He studied medicine in order to devote all his time to the book mentioned He had a new life in his life and interrupted his studies. He knew that if he wanted to become a different person, he had to abandon the past completely. Therefore, he severed his relationship with his father and his family... It is not easy to completely abandon. He told me, In fact, through a car accident, he completely decoupled from the past and moved towards a new life. The truth is that accident means departure, and the way of leaving depends on accident. At the magical critical moment of departure, you will see the angel : Until that moment, we don't know the true meaning of the uproar, which is called life. Only then can we go home." Listening to her words, I found myself thinking about everything I had left behind, my mother, my room, my things, my bed; But I would just weave myself and Jana's fantasies of chasing a new life together into a sweet dream.