Early in September at the beginning of a 51-day short story, Lucky suggested to Trabzon management, I’ll be happy to move to Giresun. You need a full time eloquent teacher there. It saves you time and money. It means you don’t have to send a native barbarian over by daily bus. Saves 2.5 hours two ways. Turn around time. Students will have a full-time talking monkey expressing clear pro-nun-ci-a-tion with a silent eye.
The ineffective English coordinator-director married to Mr. Fat Profit said, Ok and called the Giresun Die Rector conversing with wild specific gestures. She stopped yakking. Connection died.
She spoke with trembling hands it’s ok. She grabbed the teachers’ schedule and scratched out his name. I eliminate your name, identity and memory. I erase your existence here. You do not exist on my scheme of language inquisition and massive revenue if you only knew. We want our teachers to be happy, lying through her teeth. In Giresun they will help you settle in. Get a spacious apartment near The Department of the Forest. No hot water and a view of the Black Sea. Find your way. Etc.
Thanks this is my lucky day.
He traveled to Giresun by bus along the sublime Black Sea. The bus passed a long haul semi. The blue plastic canvas tarp read TRANSTIM.
Met a four transit. The rucksack truck carried refugees from Georgia to Grease. Three million lived in Germany. They were the pre-invasion poverty and destitute force seeking social welfare benefits.
B quiet, said Ata Leader born in 1923. Immigrant mothers covered children’s mouths. Don’t speak. If they discover us they will kill us with false hope, lies and acts of random kindness.
Police stopped TRANSTIM. They murdered adverbs and adjectives. Kill modifiers. Murder darlings.
In Giresun Lucky saw many people with bandaged hands - domestic victims…shhh no talking about reality.
4/10 Turkish women suffer domestic violence in terrified silence, speaking of unpleasant facts. If they go to a hospital, human services, or police to file a complaint they are exterminated with extreme prejudice. Liar, liar, pants on fire.
Everyone’s ego carried a gun reinforcing visual intimidation.
Shit Outta Luck
In Giresun, Lucky needing a temporary place to crash met Sooner Or Later (SOL) or Shit Outta Luck, a sad spinally hunched over articulate 28-year old part-time neurotic Turkish/English teacher. He was strong on grammar rules and weak on life.
I love rules, said SOL. I failed my government teachers’ exam by one point. What’s the point, asked Lucky pointing at the Black Sea. Being correct is never the point.
The point is to get a cushy government-teaching job, said SOL. Now I teach, cajole, bribe, insist and incite with grammatical insight, exam material to blind, deaf and dumb university students.
How to pass, how to pretend they know the grammar rules. How to keep their fucking mouth shut in a Big Ears No Mouth society. They struggle for jobs. They struggle in/out of university. They struggle to be free and independent. They struggle to escape the tyranny of oppressive, emotionally distraught neurotic parents and teachers like me with our obsessive-compulsive control issues.
Yes, said Lucky, I see a distinct similarity between your fate and young female Chinese university teachers. Your age is the same as students. You are their brother. In China teachers were sisters. Students’ attitudes were, ‘be my friend.’ It’s impossible to be objective treating them like siblings. It perpetuates dependency versus autonomy.
I motivate them in the simple present, said SOL. Subject+verb+object. My fate is future past perfect, he said.
I am simple present and empty, said Lucky. The day after tomorrow belongs to me. Welcome to the insane asylum. I celebrate with crazies.
I invoke the Light of God within.
I am a clear and perfect channel.
Light is my guide.
Welcome to Land of Erasers. Turkish university students at TEOL loved forcing erasers across paper with passion, purpose and dexterity.
Erase mistake’s memory. There’s the rub.
In Banks We Trust
Every morning scared Giresun citizens lined up at banks before opening time.
In Banks We Trust. Give me your coins. Give me your artificially valued numerical currency with implicit trust. Give me your economic life. Give me your insolvent fear of financial collapse and worthless exchange. Give me your tomorrows. Give me your unlimited potential. Give me your laughter and stupidity. Give me your hope, the last evil thing to die at low interest rates.
Stepping with energy along a frozen alley at dawn an old bearded man wearing a knit cap and layers of cloth carried a sharp saw and wicker basket over his shoulder. Going to The Department of the Forest to harvest kindling. His best friend stumbled behind him staying one step ahead of death closing in.
Age whispered, Faster, faster. Enjoy the time you are given.
A young girl carrying a bouquet of red balloons walked past crumbling Ottoman walls. Her head scarfed mother gripped her hand in morning’s desperation. Stone stories sang as red, pink roses wearing thorns said hello to men haggling over silver fish. Are you passing through, said fish man, Yes, said balloon girl, there are not many things you need to remember about your visit to Earth. This is the day of my dreams.
Give us a quick Giresun tour one fall afternoon.
You take a path away from bland towering apartment blocks watch time shops, sartorial dummies and modernity into a neighborhood of eighty-year old plastered stone/straw homes. A smiling curious Kurdish woman on her balcony asked quest-ion words. You shrugged. You didn’t know. You smiled. She smiled. Smiling is the answer. She shared Kurdish stories. Leaf plane shutter images whispered family and community minus alienation.
You wandered down another path and met a shaggy golden retriever chained to a wall. He was happy to have his ears scratched by Lone Wolf. Everyone stared at you playing with the dog. When they were distracted by nothing as usual you cut the chain. The dog ran free. Trailing thread a tailor emerged from his shop yelling, where’s my fucking dog?
Red, yellow and white wild roses said hello. A man planed wood for an axe handle at his shop. Honing laughter’s axe his bushy moustache and sharp eyes said he studied biology. His methodical passion reminded you of your father in his basement workshop on Independence Street. He respected his tools.
You visited a kind seamstress in her hole-in-the-wall shop. She fashioned a coin bag with satin ribbon drawstring refusing money accepting a smile.
You sat outside a teahouse. Across the street hard-working men and women with weathered faces haggled over farm tools, axes, hoeing instruments.
Young black haired men with strong backs, dark eyes, solid boots and motivation carried sacks of hazelnuts (Findik) to a wholesaler. He weighed them on a scale. Men sold their nuts. My wife loves my nuts, laughed one. His friend said, my wife never says show me your nuts she says show me the money honey.
Late light slanted off cobblestones.
A nursery gardener shook dirt off a small tree and cut roots. He helped an old woman bag it. Planting it in her garden she heard a woman crying in a Bursa cemetery water soil with tears near a gravedigger pounding a sledgehammer.
Everything must go.
Verifying her existence a woman studied her undulating reflection in a window of female dummies sporting wedding dresses. She glimpsed a serious fleeting vision of her calm beauty self-reliance and wisdom without a care in the world.
It will be cold in January, said Bamboo. Turning pages, yellow leaves sang, what a long strange trip it’s been.
The Language Company
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