2007
" - The youngest in the house always goes to the shop."
In the crowded house where I spent my childhood, I was the youngest in the house. In every crowded family, there is a figure who glues people together like glue and keeps them connected. In our house, this person was my grandmother. While all members of the household were out exploring life during the day, I spent most of my time at home and with my mother. My mother did not have a regular sleep schedule. She slept in cycles of intermittent naps during the day, sometimes for an hour, sometimes for 20 minutes, and so on. I remember her in our conversations, always in the room of the house facing the garden, looking out of the window. Because of the difference in his sleep cycle, there was always six low teas on the stove for 24 hours. While looking out of her room, she would drink her tea from the famous Turkish "thin-waisted" cup and quietly smoke her cigarette. Unfortunately, in addition to her tea, which was ready 24 hours a day, my grandmother smoked 2-3 packets of Maltepe brand cigarettes a day. I used to watch her preparing food in the kitchen and follow her recipes, accompanied by cigarettes that smoked at the corner of her lips and often went out without inhaling any smoke. My grandmother was often reluctant to send me to the grocery store, to take out the garbage, etc. When she ran out of cigarettes, she would shyly ask me to go to the shop and let me buy small treats for myself.
Unfortunately, my grandmother passed away in 2007 due to a late diagnosis of malignant lung cancer. Now, this rug, whose textures and motifs I had studied with curiosity throughout my childhood, is full of burn marks left by the cigarettes she dropped...
Thank you, Grandma. For touching me with tenderness all your life. My stubbornness for the beautiful is partly thanks to you...
© 2025 ismail tarhan
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