Sea Drops

by Yağmur Sude Kaya (Turkey)

I didn't expect to find Turkey

Sea Drops ‘My legs started to tremble’ I said while I was having eye connections with a lizard looking at me from above. It was standing on the edge of the rock which has engravings on it. ‘We are almost there’ my 72-year-old grandfather, who is already 20 steps ahead of me, said. This old man was the most vigorous person I’ve ever met. My grandfather is a world traveler. He was, actually. Ever since he turned thirty years, he stopped going abroad all the time. He found a new job to stay in the town. Why? Because my grandmother said ‘yes’ to him. At least this was what he said to me when I asked why he doesn’t travel anymore. ‘Maybe we should come here some other time, when the sun isn’t trying to kill us all!’ As he refuses to leave the country, he decided to travel alone; however, my mother and my aunt turned out to be introverts. But there was me. His first grandchildren, a girl who likes to read about world war one and watches documentaries with her grandfather. We were one of those ‘Let’s explore somewhere local’ trips. He gave me his water bottle, I took a sip and said; ‘that’s barely enough, shall we go back?’ I knew he heard me, but acted like he didn’t. ‘Do you know why does this place is called ‘Cynidus’? ‘No, why?’ ‘I don’t know either.’ We were walking upwards. I could see the Mediterranean sea laying on my left and an ancient stories lying on the rocks on my right, yet the real history was not those places. The history of everything I want to know was walking in front of me and singing an old Greek song. The real reason we were here was not because he wanted to see the sea from most possible above, it was because he was going to tell me something. I felt it when were in the car, he was not talking, he was not listening radio either. Radio was turned off; which was a rare thing in his car. ‘I think this spot is good enough.’ He said. I don’t have a fear of heights, but that moment, I remember it clearly, I felt like falling down from a cliff. My heart was pounding so fast my face was frozen. ‘It looks like heaven’. He didn’t talk for a couple minutes after I said that. He waited. He was glazing around. I came here with my childhood friend when I was sixteen, he said. A tear dropped from my lashes. There was no need to cry, but it was the most proper place to cry, I heard a wave crashing to the shore while I was wiping my tears away. ‘He died yesterday. I wish I had call him enough. I wish I could bring him here again.’ I can swear I saw a merman diving down at that moment. Yağmur Sude Kaya