Hello Ester (Afternoon, Day 1)

Your voice echoed through the room this afternoon. Are you going to be a killer? It wasn't a dream. I swear it wasn't a dream. Your voice was so close to me and so clear, it was as though you were standing next to me. You were shouting at me, your voice full of fury and anxiety.

‘Tell me, Şehsuvar, are you going to be a killer?’

Your voice was so real I could almost feel your sweet breath on me. I momentarily succumbed to a futile hope and scanned the room, this hotel room in which I am probably spending the last days of my life. Of course, you were not there, but such is the power of hope I still got up and looked for you in the bathroom. I even opened the door and looked up and down the hallway. You were not there, nor could you have been. Those words I heard you had uttered a long time ago, before our bodies were this jaded, before our souls were this battered, at a time when our hearts were still full of hope…

It was the end of summer. We were in that garden crowned by purple grapes hanging down from the vines, by the stone pond whose fish had long since died. Your face seemed paler amongst the yellowing leaves. Your gaze bored furiously into mine. Actually, I had already guessed that I would not be going to Paris with you. News had already probably reached you of my joining the movement. Even if you hadn't heard about it, you sensed it.

The moment I told you I was joining the Committee of Union and Progress, you could not hold back your anger and erupted.

‘So are you going to be a killer?’

It was the first time I had seen you so livid, and so desperate and helpless too. I tried to console you but you would not listen. And you were right not to, because I had lied. The truth is I had long since been a member of the Committee.

Yes, I feel ashamed now telling you like this; that was something else I had withheld from you. It was a year earlier, in the summer of 1907, when you were in Paris writing me those letters peppered with lines by Baudelaire.