THE SCENT
Written By Engin Akyurek
[Translated from Turkish to English by Engin Akyurek Universal Fans Club]
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Years ago
In my school bag, a scent had started permeating from my notebook next to my 0.7 retractable pencil. When one has a school bag, one's mind is also like an office supply store. It had taken me as long as a child in a red school uniform memorizing the multiplication table to figure out the source of the scent. An answer for nine times seven or zero turning everything into zero was way beyond our comprehension back then. The scent diffusing from my notebook had captivated my school bag so much that it had almost seemed like someone else's bag. This was the scent that was latched onto my school bag, and implicitly to me, by the scented eraser belonging to Aya (ay-cha) whose teeth were like gnawed by a mouse. The scent exuding from the pages of my notebook had created the scented world of the child who had been trying to study on the table at home. The relationship between the scent and the action of erasing had become Aya herself rather than a philosophical level. Erasing meant a little bit hiding. Like a stamp collector, I had started collecting my memories with the scent permeated from that notebook. This was the beginning of a passion that would become the world's most beautiful hobby. I had recorded a lot of things while deleting a wrong-placed comma. The eraser of Aya whose teeth were gnawed by a mouse had become the world's most powerful recorder. Maybe, this was why the things I tried to erase for all my life had a smell. Trying to erase things was a superhuman act and there was no place for spelling mistakes in life. Maybe, I wouldn't remember Aya's face years later, but everything shared during those school years would cling into my memory with a smell, making me more human.
Years later...
In my most preoccupied manner, I was browsing the worst sellers in a bookstore. I felt as if I was in a supermarket rather than a bookstore and was taking a literary journey among the aisles. When I was just about to turn to Turkish Literature aisle, my coat and my hands suddenly started smelling like a perfume. Actually, it was more like the way she wore the perfume rather than the perfume itself. I looked around, thinking if the girl standing at the personal development books aisle was wearing it. The more I walked the more the scent permeated. It seemed like I was exuding perfumemonoxide as I breathed out. Why had this scent that created big hearts at my smell borders been surrounding my body? Leaving the book store, I had gone to the restroom of the caf across the street and I had wanted to get rid of that scent by washing my face and hands. When I had caught my eyes in the mirror while washing my face, I had soused water on my face again, thinking that it might be a dream. When someone had knocked on the door, I had been pulled back to the reality by the first knock and left the restroom to the next person without even toweling my face. I had jealously looked at the man whom I met at the restroom door because it was impossible for him not to smell the scent exuding from my body and sharing her scent with that man had brought the word "jealousy" back to my life again. I was walking fast and meanwhile, turning my nose around and sniffing my body to mark where my body exuded that scent. I knew that I had to get rid of that smell as soon as I could by taking a shower. When once the memory file was opened, the world might turn into a perfume caldron.
While my nose swapping place with my mouth which was tired of smelling, one of my friends whom I would usually stumble into at the most ridiculous moments, had said "What's up bro?".
Using one of the circumlocution sentences, I had said "Fine, and you?"
"I'm fine bro. If you have nothing to do, let's have some tea."
"I will go home."
"Just one tea, man."
"Do you smell something on me?"
"You mean like sweat?"
"Don't you smell anything on me?"
"Nooo".
The three "o" of "no", which don't have any correspondence in Turkish, had confused me more. I guess the nasal valves under his nasal hump had been clogged.
"You mean you don't smell anything on me?
"Nooo."
After we went on our ways scentless, I had gone back to the bookstore. Actually, I knew what I needed to do. I needed three things but I had especially wanted to browse the section where they kept scented erasers. Colorful and featuring animated characters which I didn't know, they were smelling like a detergent. While I was hovering my nose over erasers, I had caught a little girl's eye. Trying not to draw any attention, I had found an eraser similar to Aya's eraser, bought a notebook and a pencil with it, and then left the bookstore.
A table, a pencil in my hand, and an empty white paper... Although the scented eraser was the leading actor, it knew the importance of how and where it would be used. The smell, becoming tangible like a part of me, was on the move with my hands and my hair. I had started writing the source of the scent, our meeting, our first hello...
HELLO
HELLO
Before I half-finished my tea, I had written many pages. The harmony created by beautiful sentences was gushing out of my mind's seven tower dungeons [Translator's note: He means deep corners of his mind.] As I wrote, Aya's scented eraser was being demoted to an extra from a leading actor. I didn't want to delete anything. Everything was as real as what I wrote. While I was writing her scent, I was describing all kinds of flowers without using a single comma.
HELLO
Everything was continuing in an innocent manner created by a greeting. I didn't have a dictionary to write bad sentences. As I wrote, I was feeling that the scent surrounded my body was diminishing slowly. My verbs were becoming permeated with the basil smell, and the ruthlessness and rebelliousness of a verb was conceding itself to the supremacy of its subject.
HELLO
I was underlining that word as the world's most beautiful love word. I knew that some words had scent and legendary poets' rooms had beautiful scents that couldn't be produced by any of the fragrance brands.
I wasn't even drinking the tea in front of me because we had sentences that we drank tea. The things pervaded into our memories could be stronger than anything else. Even the sound of a teaspoon was more effective than modem indicators that indicated time and place. I had a huge smile like a croissant on my face. It was a smile standing between my lips and teeth, waiting to laugh. When I raised my head, I had caught my friend's eye, whom I stumbled into earlier. My smile had slid from my teeth back to my internal organs. Accosting me and sarcastically, he said:
"Bro, weren't you going home?"
"I wanted to have a tea."
Saying "Uh-huh", he had sat before me. As if that wasn't enough, he had said,
"Can I have one, too?"
Then, when he got up and said "Bro, what's up, have you washed yourself with a woman fragrance? Your whole body smells."
I had warmed up my old smile back and said "Noo."
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[Translated by Engin Akyurek Universal Fans Club.
Edited by SaraFatma - 8 years ago
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