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Here I am, by virtue of the kindness of one man. Trapped, in a restaurant where the cat keeps peeking at me from under the table-cloth. I am having fish. Soon a swarm of cats starts to get together. I am un-bothered. Kind man can handle this. Cold, like the soup I hadn’t touched. Finished, like his entire meal. I was carrying on, spoiling for a fight in passive aggressive fashion, looking for reasons to hurt myself, to establish that he was a bad person for not loving me. Kind man was not without dignity, he would not indulge this. So we sat there in Princes’ Island, nowhere to storm off to, me - looking for a small sign to come back from this mock fight, him drawing the line. After that day I never really went back. I tried to lose myself in the city but he was always there. Always two paces behind but two steps ahead. The shoe-shine guy at the entrance of Galata Tower tried to offer him women; he nodded through that, smilingly. The conversation was translated for my benefit on the way back. I tried to lose myself in the house. A studio flat near Taksim Square, belonged to the mother of one of his friends. An editor for Le Monde, her house had all the markings of a cultured person: memorabilia from Africa, one self portrait, high cheekbones. I tried to lose myself in alcohol. Raki, my dear ones, will burn all vestiges of memory, dignity, and company. We drank like old friends who had more past than future. One sip to start the burn, alternated with water, ideal for a slow fire. I kept slipping on freshly rained streets on my drunken way back. He never let me fall once. We never made love. The mornings began with the distant sound of seagulls. We woke up sheltered by sunny white mosquito nets. He would make little jokes, I would laugh easily, and we’d laze in bed till it was too hot. Doing seagull voices and solving imagined seagull life problems. Going to the islands was his idea. It would give us a break from the monotony of waking up every day and heading out to discover Istanbul on mission-mode. A break from a break, great! The entire ferry ride was quiet. He was good with quiet, in a straight-back crisp white linen shirt, pale against the sun-worshippers. I am not good with quiet - my mind wanders extrapolating zombie attack survival methods. They thought we were odd - white tall scrawny with small brown horny! I must have used the spells of my exotic land to ensnare this progeny of the great coloniser, this civil engineer via whom all the riches of my plundered country would be repatriated back to me. He wanted to marry me - said casually, no ring, testing the waters. I couldn’t have spent my remaining years tweaking his first world, penchant-for-queuing manners to my dog-eat-dog world. He was patient, gentle, proprietor of the high moral ground, feminist, aging, sophisticated, Jacques Brel fan-boy. It was too late for him, and too soon for me. But you can’t get married out of politeness. So on that island seated on a table of red and white check cloth, with civilised table manners, Europe and Asia separated again. No bloodshed, no tears, the violence internal, forced smiles and small talk - we waited for the ferry back to mainland for 3 hours.