Originally posted by: whiterose29
I wanna know if Yabanci Damat is available with english subs? 😛
Originally posted by: DefLeppard
@AashiAbout turn to page 38,39 for some its videos shared by SaraF.That baker boy...is too hilarious. Me too scouting for only his edits...
When you write a story, even a cat on the street can be its protagonist. But, I have to tell you beforehand that this story's hero is me.
Heroes, legends, and prudish rumors which were fabricated over the course of time, with echoing sounds, and that were conjugated with "once upon a time"; those from the fairy tales of the East to 1001 Nights, from Tepegoz(1) to Dede Korkut(2), from Keloglan(3) to village plays in which the village headman plays a camel; if you get tired of them, travel two thousand kilometers away, and you will have heroes from Little Red Riding Hood to Pinocchio, from Cinderella to the bane of our life, Pollyanna.
Even though we don't realize it, they are our heroes. It sounds arrogant when we say "child's mind" but our heroes with their glossy paper shininess permeated into our childish ways are still somewhere inside us. If you skip the fabricated parts, all of them whisper something into our ears. If we understand them, they become our Kellile-Dimme, if we don't then we just forget about it. Your beard grows, your breasts develop, blah-blah you learn something and then you learn more... Then those colors painting your soul turn into a whiny scene of a drama actor who sees flashbacks with a lot of violin sound at the background.
When you go out, you turn your teacher or your friends into a protagonist with an unexplained probability theory and you become the best cast director of the world with your childish joy. Just to spite actors abusing bad guy clichs, you adorn epic bad guys with conscience. Once those heroes become extras and become the sadness of Yesilcam Street(4), then they call you "a man". And you start popping zits on your face with a razor in front of a mirror.
I am the hero of this story and I will build my sentences in a manner befitting to a hero. If only I could tell about myself a little, everything will pour out and I will start building sentences one after another. As you know, first you describe the physical features of a hero and then his/her psychological state. It is the misfortune of being a hero; the soul is buried between the body and its organs; it is described like an eye or a nail and you encumber your heart with a cardiovascular responsibility. Since I am the hero, I write my psychological state, choosing to write well-mannered things rather than make a literary mistake [Translator's note: he is playing on words here.
"Edepli" and "edebi" sound almost the same. "Edepli" means well-mannered or decent whereas "edebi" means literary].
SILENCE. Our psychological state that we are in foreshadows the future for some people and tells something from the past for others. I think it is been quite some time that I've found a "silence" button. I am turning it on and off now and then without blowing my fuse and, praise be, I can use it well. Like a latest fashion kitchen robot, blending into myself, I can silently get lost in modern life. I am telling this situation only to you. Without further ado, I am back to my hero, that is, to my story.
It was Friday. I wanted to take Istanbul and feed it with goat milk in the middle of Anatolia on that Friday. Many people are familiar with its traffic. Its roads and bridges, as if they are Esztergom Castle, don't give passage to you. You start doing calculations in your mind, "Man, when did they sell us so many cars?" If there is one car per head, widening metro bus roads is no use. After all, it is the same Istanbul conquered by Fatih (Mehmet the Conqueror). It was Friday and I was in a cab. My silence, permeating the cab, was charging 40 kurus per kilometer and mine was a silence of a kind that could mute 1.4 diesel engine of the cab. Driver, aloof, didn't even look at my face, as if he was traveling with the cigarette that he was inhaling. His unhappiness and anger pervaded the seat, the inside mirror, and the rosary over the gear shift rather than the cigarette. I pushed my silence button once again and rolled down the window to prevent my diaphragm from bloating from the lack of oxygen inside. I assumed that there was a solution for everything with a habit from my elementary school years.
When the traffic stopped suddenly, a kind of steam iron effect came out of the cab driver's nose.
"It is like that on Fridays", I said.
"Puff", he said.
I didn't say "You may be used to it, though". I was just about to say it but I gave up because I didn't want the anger and the temper on his face to personalize the problems.
He lighted another cigarette. He inhaled a very caring sentence like "You won't be disturbed, right" in one breath and exchanged everything inside with nicotine. He inhaled it so deep that the cinder of the cigarette was reflected on our faces from the cab window. His sufferings, angers, what he lived through or what he couldn't do, all of them, becoming a smoke, got into his lungs, then was exhaled as a melody of severe cussing. While exhaling his smoke, he said "I wish we hadn't taken this way." When he said "I wish", I took it personal and said "It is like this on Fridays." When he didn't answer, I started playing with my phone. Nobody had called me. I began to read the old messages to pass time. Luckily, a couple of things disturbed the silence; first cab's radio system beeped and then his friends told things like "No, don't take that road!" "Ismail, where are you?", etc. These disturbed him as well. So, he turned on the radio. Since the labels on the radio were wiped off, he just pushed the buttons randomly. He tuned to a very ridiculous station and we listened to the same commercial for 15 minutes as if we were listening to a lullaby and moved forward for 200 meters more. The commercial took so long that I wanted to be the first person who took the cure-all potion that they offered first 100 people who called.
It seems that the potion had worked because the traffic built down and the driver finally shifted to second gear. When he shifted to third gear, everything got better. If he shifted to fourth gear, I could cry tears of happiness but I didn't want to shift to fifth gear with this driver. When the traffic jam broke up, our cells brotherly started dancing Halay as if our arteries were unclogged. Even the driver inhaled his cigarette with pleasure. He inhaled it gently not to offend his brotherly dancing cells. My silence evaporated. The simple side of life made you dance Halay, the things you took so seriously made tinny noise on the strings of your heart. The cab became the center of some things like everything else.
Since I was going to get off the cab soon, I checked the meter. It showed twenty eight liras. While I was restoring the value of the folded money which I took out of my pocket by unfolding them, I saw the picture of a little child attached next to the meter. I thought to myself "How can this sour faced man have such a beautiful child?" I thought about his mother without crossing the moral lines. And then, to be honest, like every human being, I thought about how my child would be if I had a child.
"He is so sweet, God bless him" I said.
"Huh?"
"The child in the picture."
"Ah," he said and laughed, showing that he could laugh. "That's me."
"What?" I said without reacting too much.
"Yes, that's me. I love this picture. I look at it when I feel stressed or bored. That's my only picture."
"Only?"
"Yes." He had already passed where I would get off. I noticed that the meter displayed 32 liras now.
"Only?"
"My mother burned the pictures in the stove by mistake. I had only four or five pictures."
"Sorry to hear that. Luckily, you have this one."
"I made a couple of copies of this. You never know."
"You're right."
I was so surprised. How did this merry child turn into this? As if this picture was the last time that he smiled.
"You smile there is very nice." Looking at the picture, he clutched the driving wheel as if he was holding the hands of his childhood and as if he didn't want to talk about this anymore.
"It is always like this on Fridays."
"Yes, it is always like this on Fridays."
When I told you that I was the hero of this story, I lied a little bit. The driver was the hero of this story. While getting off, I looked at that happy picture once again and he gave 10 liras change back to me.
I called my mom as soon as I got off the cab.
"Mom..."
"Yes, son?"
"Could you send my childhood pictures?"
"What gives?"
"I want the ones that I smiled."
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Translator's notes:
(1) A legendary creature (ogre) with only one eye on his forehead in Turkic mythology
(2) A very famous epic story of the Oghuz Turks
(3) A bald boy who is a Turkish fictional character
(4) Yesilcam Street refers to Turkish film art and industry
When the phone jangled, bedbugs were eating my heart out, my hands and arms were tingling, and a 2d nail' was fastening my neck and body together as if I was made of a couple of planks.
Even though my palms were getting sweaty, my fingertips, slapping on my neck, were turning my body into a carpenter's shop as if they were rehearsing the gestures of a prelude to lying before telling a lie. Although I knew what I was getting myself into soon, I wasn't able to get away from it. While that made me want to love Pinocchio more and more, I was cussing a blue streak at its master. He should have found a solution for its nose. I was thinking about the real life equivalence of lying, not its fairy tale angle. I was thinking about it so much that I picked up the phone after the twelfth unanswered ringing, finally ending its melody which turned my body into a carpenter's shop.
My old friend on the other end of the line, who was still my friend and would continue to be my friend in a predicate that would be used in the future, was Hakan. I was listening to Hakan and there were long silences during my listening because I knew by heart what he was going to tell. One can understand an aged friendship from the silences during a talk and never know when, like old jackets, its stitches is going to come apart. I knew what I was getting into and I was rehearsing to myself the lie that I was going to tell him without even getting tired of hearing over and over again thethings that I already knew. My brain was turning into a theater stage and my left lobe was becoming a talentless actor. I was very bad at this role.
Hakan was in love with Asli who was a very good friend of mine. Hakan and I were very close friends and, as I said before, I had already knew this story's beginning and end. Hakan was going to make a move tonight, as if he wanted to play a season finale of a confession which he wasn't able to make. Asli was going away; I was not sure whether it was because she would rather not to be a second-person singular of an overdue confession or because Hakan's amorous stares couldn't stage a romantic shadow-show on her retina. Asli was going away and she would say "I am going away to study", finding a label for her action of going. Talking my head off, Hakan asked "Bro, isn't there a school here?" His voice was causing a second-degree hearing loss in my middle-ear as if it was piercing through my incus and stapes. Like all lovers, he loved his country's schools.
Waiting for his anger to subside, I was saying "Hmmm" in a tone which was used for people in love. In Hakan's cardiac rhythm, "hmmm" was the most epic word of the world. "Bro! Let's have a dinner tonight; you, I, and Asli." Hakan was asking questions whose answers I already knew. Remembering Pinocchio's master, I was saying "Ok" without my nose evoking anything sexual. Hakan was telling me that he was going to confess his love, that he was going to warn me to go and take a piss by kicking my leg while we were eating, and that he would finish this by the time he heard the sound of flush. While my phone's battery was about to die, I was still saying "hm"; this time I was saying it with single "m" and I was comparing myself with those bullocks in a sacrifice market. I wish I had a mirror and could have seen my stares on this threesome share.
I was thinking about the time and the venue of our dinner and even our geographic positions to each other at the table. After a bunch of green colored texting and check marks showing that the message had been read, I was handling everything in a manner that topped even the best organizers. Our round table that consisted of a friend, a lover, and me was ready for everything. I wasn't talking. Hakan was keeping quiet with his mouth and talking with his heart in a manner that suited people who suffered the pangs of love. Asli, like a tourist guide, was telling us about the details of the city to which she would move. Hakan had his eyes on his steak, like tourists' eyes which were trying to find someone from their country since they couldn't speak a foreign language. Clock was ticking, our conversation was getting deeper, and Hakan was getting quieter as if he was there just to have a dinner.
I was kicking his foot. Asli was getting more conversable. While she was telling us what she would do there, her plans, and -like children in front of a castle that told history of Urartians in eight languages- museums which she would go, - during her mentioning about two squares and three exhibitions -, she was also telling us that there was someone in her life. Her mood as a result of feeling something was being promoted to being a woman from being a tourism agency. I was still saying "Hmmm" while Hakan who probably didn't understand Asli's last sentence was getting a big fatty meat piece that he cut with his knife into his mouth. I liked saying "hmmm". I was stealing a glance at Hakan as if I was rereading a scenario that I read before.
Everything was getting quiet. Whole mankind had stopped talking and the sound of cutleries had turned into the sound of Hakan's cardiac rhythm. Being tired of carrying the things coming from the places that I knew to a point that I was not familiar with, I was also stuffing the steak into my mouth and saying "Hmmm" again. Was I telling this to the steak or to our situation? "Hmmm" was becoming the story of our life and this night. Asli was telling the man with whom she fell in love and how he made her feel better. She was breathing upon Hakan's bronchus how he would come abroad with her. We were memorizing the man's face. While we were eating our dessert, we could go and kill the man with having a taste of hot turnip in our mouth. Hakan's face had started looking weird because of his heart's indigestion rather than eating fast, or rather, his facial expression was looking like great saints or thanking looks of poor peasants who saw Hizir (peace be upon him). After the waiter brought the check, Hakan was slapping our hands and quickly paying the bill in a manner of craziness that suited people who suffered pangs of love.
Thinking that he undertook all the sufferings of the mankind, he was having multi-zero empathy with the waitress and with everything. It was as if the word "quiescence" was living on the table at that moment. Hakan's face was becoming my concern and, using my visual memory, I was renewing the scenario that I had read before. While our last teas were being served, Hakan was smiling the tea with a look that showed he cared for the tea and was looking at Asli, thinking that the clinking sound of his stirring the sugar was his heartbeat.
I didn't need to know the end of the scenario. As I looked at Hakan's face, I was realizing that this was the most innocent state of a man... As a smile on his face.
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