In captivity

by Egor Katargin (Russia)

Making a local connection Turkey

“Stone is the only word I remember,” I said, sitting on a red leather sofa. But the large man sitting in front of me in dark glasses with a cigar and a glass of whiskey in his hands did not change the expression of his perplexed face, apparently my "bread crumbs" did not give him any clues. 15 minutes ago I had fun in a restaurant with oriental music with dancers performing a burning belly dance, and now I am sitting in a small room without windows, waiting for my fate. “Damn it, and why I needed to go into this unfortunate toilet,” it was spinning in my head. That evening, my brain had to give out and calculate many options for the further development of events. Having run out of the restaurant and found myself in the wasteland at night, listening to the howls of dogs or other animals, and seeing the lights of the settlement so far from me, I try to run after the bus, my bus, but the attempts are futile. The men and women who tumble out of the restaurant are in a state higher than al-dente for me, like eyes glowing in the dark, cause only a feeling of anxiety. But even in the afternoon these places aroused admiration and inevitable flight of imagination. The Cappadocia region seemed to have descended from the futuristic descriptions of other planets, huge plains dotted with mushrooms and mushrooms without “hats”. Only now mushrooms consist of rocks and their size is measured by several meters. And from the creations of man, only premises hollowed out in this breed, used for various purposes, from housing to churches for worship. As if time had stopped. As if listening to these words, my only option is to get out - the phone at this moment eats up the last percentage of charging and, I remain, in fact, without communication means and without means of payment. At this moment I have to deal with my “charge” received on the Internet, as well as from a guide and from friends who have already visited Turkey. And this charge was purely negative, because the Turks in my head were foxes who seek only profit from you. But here I am already following a man in a black suit with an earphone from the walkie-talkie in his ear, and the next moment I find myself in that very small room without windows. Cross-examination does not produce results until I pronounce the very phrase that gave the lead to my “investigator”. “My guide is Oksana,” I say. At this moment, a phone call is made on the landline telephone and the same man in a black suit returns for me and takes me out of the building. And now, sitting in the back seat of a taxi, the night Cappadocia, which seemed so aggressive a couple of moments ago, began to sparkle with new colors, because another stereotype of selfish Turks was destroyed by the owner of the restaurant, who personally helped me. After such moments, the whole world begins to play with brighter colors.