The Length of a Cigarette — İsmet Abi

Dreams, he said, there’s nothing in this world as powerful as dreams.

First he cleared his throat, fouled by cigarettes, straightened up in his chair, took off his glasses, wet with tears, without minding that it made his ear itch, barely managed to reach the undershirt beneath his sweater and wiped them, and then said: dreams, there’s nothing in this world as powerful as dreams.

He was a little tipsy again that day. It was obvious he’d been listening to Zeki Müren again. Whenever he dug Zeki Müren out from among the old records, he couldn’t resist having a few doubles. Don’t mind me putting it like that; İsmet Abi wasn’t really much of a drinker, but he just couldn’t resist Zeki Müren.

İsmet Abi had always had a bone to pick with the norms society imposes, right from the very start. The guest room, for example. Shutting off the nicest, most spacious room in the house just because guests would come 3–5 days a year never made sense to him. In the very first week of his marriage, he had completely redecorated the guest room. First he had brought home a Technics turntable, the most expensive of its day, carefully placed it in the nicest corner of the nicest room in the house, and built a nice cabinet for the records too; he was good with his hands. Every week he would take each record out of its cardboard sleeve one by one, gently dust it off, listen to the few songs he loved on each record, and then gently put it back in its place. Aunt Nazan, may she rest in peace, was very jealous of the records. If you looked at Aunt Nazan while İsmet Abi was busy with his records, you could see that sometimes she wanted to smash every single one of them. “There you go, reunited with your beloved again,” she would say sometimes, unable to hold herself back. “Oh İsmet, if you loved me even half as much as you love those records, I’d be the happiest person in the world,” she would say, half joking.

Ever since Aunt Nazan passed away, İsmet Abi hadn’t been listening to the records as much as he used to. “I never let Nazan see it, but listening with her was what I loved most,” he would say, take another sip of his rakı, tap once on the cigarette he’d forgotten he lit to knock off the ash, bring it to his mouth, take a long drag and then let the smoke out with all his sorrow. He liked the sound a cigarette makes as it burns.

“I saw Nazan in my dream again, Ahmet,” he said after putting his glasses back on. His voice sounded bad; the weight of the longing he felt made all his words unintelligible before they had even left his mouth. Apparently Zeki Müren wasn’t the reason for his tears! “We were in the guest room, I was cleaning the records again, and she had picked up something to knit again, and meanwhile Zeki Müren’s ‘Yıldızların Altında’ (‘Under the Stars’) was playing. Nazan hated that song just because I loved it so much, and as soon as it started she frowned again without even lifting her face,” he said, and, without minding that the cigarette, now almost burned down, was lightly scorching his fingers, put it back in the ashtray and said, “dreams, there’s nothing in this world as powerful as dreams.” You could tell from all his words that İsmet Abi had run out; he just didn’t show it, so as not to be rude to the cigarette, that’s all..

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