It feels like I can see her look of surprise on the other side of the door. Then she puts something down by the door and leaves. I hear the glass door that opens onto the living room close. Yes, now I am alone and I can wash myself on my own. I am grown up!

*

August. I have passed the exams that will grant me free board. I am going to the High School in Niğde. Now I feel like a guest at home. Sitting on the edge of the pool, I am eating a tomato I have plucked right off the vine. In the air there is the scent of evening primrose flowers. I am wearing a light blue shirt with short sleeves. I bought my jeans last year: real Wranglers! I am all crisp and clean. The wind off the steppes starts at my feet and then makes its way up the rest of my body—this wind can make a man shiver—and I feel washed one more time by the wind as it rises off the top of my head and reunites with the air. Savoring the sharp tang of the tomato in my mouth and thinking that I might go back into the garden and grab another, I hear a song wafting out from the open-air cinema. They are playing Şükran Ay’s, “I couldn’t love my dark-eyed one.” This is the last song before the film starts. Hurrying out onto the street, I start to run. Truth is there are still the teasers before the film starts but I need to get there on time.

Holding a Tekel beer, the film machinist Brother Yavuz is explaining something to someone at the door. Good, so the film hasn’t started yet.

Not many people are here today. Soon a black and white film hits the screen. It is a strange one. There’s a man, a painter, who is in love with a woman’s portrait. The woman says, “What are you going to do with my portrait. Here I am standing right in front of you, love me.” The man says something like, “Don’t get between me and my portrait.” Later they both die. Wide-eyed, I watch the film. Leaving the cinema and heading home, I walk along the dark roads and there is a strange flutter in my heart. I think of the girl I’m in love with. Then I think of mom, dad and my brothers … Then how my face looks in the mirror and my body that is always changing. It feels like there are things in this world I know nothing about and it occurs to me that life isn’t something so easily understood. What’s happening to me now? Growing up isn’t easy …

*