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Shares
I was alone in the plane, and since my sit belt was tied up, only was I preoccupied by the next disaster that the Lord would put on my shoulders. I was 18, angry, mad to have succeeded and mad to get no recognition whatsoever for who I was becoming. I had to say my piece by leaving Paris, and Istanbul, in the midst of the Gezi Park protests seemed for a future journalist the place to be. I had found a host family online, very fancy, elite even. The house looked extravagant, in the middle of the city, on top of a hill resembling a virgin forest looking over the Bosphorus and the Stambuliots bridges. I hadn’t participated to my prom, I hadn’t waited on my academically results. I knew I had succeeded. Honestly it was a revolutionary act. I still pay what everyone considers in my entourage as the mistake that made me fall from grace, not knowing it would have ripped me out open in France or somewhere else. “So God? What other shitty trick you have for me in Turkey? I’ll wait.” Was I shouting in silence. “Hello” she said, her eyes so little under her pleasant, gentle smile. She sat next to me, beside her husband. They were old so I just assumed they were married. She looks at me...I look at her with a little bit of deference. “Want a gum?” She could be my mom! “Yes, sure, thank you” At that point I really hated how close we were one from another. We just had to socialise. She was too nice, and clearly my newly 18 years old ass looking from a very bright future must have been written in neon colours on my forehead so we just couldn’t stop what destiny ordained. Still, I tried to get my nose straight back into my book. “L’Evangile selon Pilate” - “Gospel of Pilatus”, by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt. “What are you reading?” She asks vehemently. “My favorite author for the time being, E.E. Schmitt” “Oh, he’s really bad” She wasn’t wrong! It literally took me ashes to finish that last book of his and then I found Gary for some time. Loved the fact that he took his own life. I never saw it as a weakness. But on that plain mine was to defend a book as if my life depended on it when all that it was, really, was a sense of pride I couldn’t erase yet. “Do you have children?” She gave me another gum. “No, just the ones my husband has” “Aren’t you sad?” Feminism had yet to kick in I thought. She bursted into tears. “I am so sorry I didn’t want to... here, some tissues, I apologise truly!” “It’s not your fault. We all have choices in life.” Feminism had nothing to do with this I came to think. She hugged me at the exit. Told me where the French embassy was. She was so small compared to me. She was a little white mama for my lost mixed ass. I saw those eyes again during my trip in Turkey, in a very old marvellous beauty who looked at me with the kind of love I only dreamed to witness in anybody’s eyes for me. I wonder if it was my skin or just a very deep soul connection my young self thought I felt. But those two women reminded me why I had left in the first place. Why wasn’t I feeling this love - never - from my own mother? This trip would be a solo exhibition inside of my terrorised mind. For real. Until I understood a third of it all.