RHNK #3
RHNK Berlin | Ä°stanbul | Barcelona
CREW
WRITERS
ARTWORK
Editor
Designed by
Printed by
Nazlı Koca
Ayşe Zeynep Özbay
Paper Street Co.
DAYNA GROSS
KEVIN KAISER
MATTHEW DENNIS
CLAUDIA GILLIES
ALEX REZDAN
SUSAN GROUCHY
NAZLI KOCA
CLAUDIA GILLIES
MERVE ERMAN
NAZLI KOCA
AZ ÖZBAY
HELLO reader
Today I am 27 and not a lot has changed. I often find myself zooming in and out on Google maps, checking ryanair.com or making rounds on the S-Bahn for no clear reason. Someone once told me there are two kinds of people; those who are happy with where they are born, and those who are only happy when they leave. I guess I am one of the second types. In old tales, lives of small village people change with a strange storyteller who arrives at night and gathers everyone around him, tells tales of lands they have not been, creatures they have not seen. Think of me as one of those old guys with a black cloak and a crooked wooden stick.
How often do you look at the map and dream of going somewhere far away from where you are? As a child, in class or on the school bus, I used to stare at maps so often and for so long that everyone knew how most of the time, I was actually elsewhere. I would dream of getting off the bus at the train station instead of going home and taking the train to the other end of the country.
Enjoy the ride!
I brought not only mine, not only one, but many stories and pictures from distant lands to you with RHNK #3. If there is anything I am sure of, it’s this; stories are the only way to see the real picture on the map. Writing them is perhaps the best way of transport. But reading and listening are definitely the best ways to get lost.
Ciao, NazlÄą
Roadtripping by Claudia Gillies
Tour de France by Claudia Gillies
DISTANT LOVE Dayna Gross
Maps. You’ve asked me about maps. Why I’ve got these great ancient maps on the walls. Well, they’re not there yet but we both imagine them there. The paper burnt like toast, and simply falls to pieces just as easily. I’m desperate to surround myself with maps. They live in my dreams and I live in them. I fly over the great oceans with the tip of a finger. I walk along continents with that same finger, or maybe another, but always with my left hand, and sometimes with my right.
I admire the maps and look at the places I have left. I have abandoned those places, them in those places, and long to bring those lines together, but I am no alchemist, or shape shifter, and I have been told by well known archaeologists in Egypt and Alaska that the continents are moving lightly, ever so slightly, but they have already conformed to their split and as the waters of the earth rise, I realize my parents will never marry again, and it breaks the pieces of me that are already broken. I have looked out the window and watched the horizon shift upward onto an angel and offered my tears to the curves in the land I was taught to own. “Why do you have to go?” He asks me with his morning eyes. How do I explain to him there is no spirit left to this land? Look at the map on the wall and study how little it will teach you. We will put letters and shapes together in the same way and declare truth and observation, but know this, what you call capital Truth I call symbols. Look into their faces, they’re inviting you to share their happiness, they want you to be apart of their world. Look at these
lines, you’ve drawn them yourself, through yourself, we’re only asking you to cross over to our version of the world, come here, don’t be shy, we know what’s right. Leave all of your pieces and borders and boundaries to the side, or behind, and come a little closer, we promise you our truth and your heritage. Look up over and behind and follow the line of time. They have kept you alive, Spain, France, Hungary, Auschwitz and America. You are lost, you have drowned, but we’re here to save you, come now, it’s all over, you’re safe now, you’re home now. Sleep.
Ghosts by Merve Erman
Sumeru Kevin Kaiser
The dog’s eyes followed the pilgrim, whose mouth winced in and out and up and down emitting low hums, and as her gaze followed him, she knew the traveler would not stop to ask her what she smelled. No human ever thought to ask her what she smelled. As his deliberate steps brought his body toward her, then past her, she smelled: chir, whitebark, and Himalayan pine; red and white sandalwood; spruce
and juniper; cardamom, cloves, and myrhh. As his foot planted on the earth before her snout, the strong odor of yak and sheep dung—mixed with chromium, gold, copper, iron, antimony, lead, zinc, manganese, mica, crystal, jade and marble—piqued her interest, but this was interrupted by a loud, long ripping sound, followed by an overpowering odor of tsampa and po cha, that made her ears prick up. But soon the scents wafted away, like the stranger, and, having sensed his emotional state and deciding she need not warn the monks at the gompa, she closed her eyes, returning to meditation.
large building beyond the monks, which rose like a mountain, he furrowed his brow, then looked at them and, untying a ribbon and unrolling a map, pointed to the center and declared, as he had so often before:
The pilgrim approached the three monks, who appeared to be engaged in a debate outside the southern lingshi. They were young, and when he stopped near them, the two facing him shut their mouths immediately, but the third, who was facing his peers, continued arguing that yes, it was stealing, for a moment, until he noticed their gaze casting beyond him. At this moment, he sensed the pilgrim’s presence and turned to face him. The pilgrim placed his hands together and bowed to each of them. Each monk returned the greeting. Squinting at the
The eyes of the monk facing him blinked.
I am in search of Sumeru. The eyes of the monk to his left widened. Sumeru! The eyes of the monk to his right crinkled. Sumeru?
Sumeru. Then they gathered around him to gaze at the map, which was more accurately a mandala. Yet to gaze at the center might cause the human doing the gazing to feel a sense of vertigo, a vertigo caused by the sensation of rising to a height of precisely 80,000 yojanas while falling to a depth of precisely 80,000 yojanas. The monks knew what they were looking for, as did the pilgrim, and
quickly distinguished JambudvÄŤpa, the continent to the south of the central mountain, Sumeru. The monk to the left offered: It is in the middle of the Earth. The monk to the right suggested: It is in the middle of the Earth, but it cannot be seen there. The monk in the middle proposed: The sun and all the planets circle it. Rolling the map, the pilgrim asked: Which path do I take? The three responded: We do not know the path. Tying the ribbon around the map, the pilgrim asked: Who knows the path? The three responded: It is known. Crinkling the map, the pilgrim asked: Where can I find someone who knows? The sleeping dog the pilgrim had left meditating twitched an ear toward the crinkling map and registered that the pilgrim had
tensed. But the monks gave no indication of awareness of the subtle change in the pilgrim’s body. Glancing at each other, as if the answer should be obvious, the three responded: At Sumeru. For ages, the pilgrim wandered, visiting gompas and caves and mountains. He traveled across rivers and lakes and seas. He journeyed north and south and east west. Often he met people whose language he did not understand and who did not understand his. One evening, when the moon rose full and his beard hung long and white, he came upon a gompa guarded by a dog. Her fur was matted, and she seemed not to notice him. She did not sniff the air. Her ears did not stand on end. Her breathing was so shallow, he thought she might be dead. He squatted beside her, placing a hand before her snout. To his surprise, she reached out with her snout and tilted back her head so that his hand slid upon her crown. Of course, she had recognized his smell at once.
The pilgrim turned to see if anyone had noticed and spied a building that seemed somehow familiar. It rose like a mountain behind the southern lingshen, outside of which stood three old monks who appeared to be debating something. He approached the monks with the intent of unrolling the map and asking, one last time, if any of them might know how to find Sumeru. But the map was gone. Frantically, he searched for the map on his body but could find it nowhere. The monks watched, waiting. Glancing up, the pilgrim bowed with clasped hands. The monks returned the greeting. The pilgrim said: I meant to ask you a question. The three asked: What is your question? The pilgrim said: I cannot recall. The three responded: Then we have no answer.
The pilgrim said nothing more. The three said nothing more. After exchanging bows, the pilgrim made his way to the great building at the center. It seemed to rise to 80,000 yojanas and descend to 80,000 yojanas. Inside he found a single monk, a young boy, sitting in lotus-position, meditating before a golden statue. While he waited for the boy to open his eyes, he sat down beside him, carefully taking the same position. As he closed his eyes, he was aware of the boy rising and prostrating and leaving the room, leaving the pilgrim alone to meditate. The pilgrim’s laughter filled the room then ceased abruptly as the heart pumped its final beat. Outside, the dog pricked up one ear, sniffed the air, and barked with joy before her heart, too, had stopped. The monks, upon hearing the dog’s bark, turned to see who had arrived. Instead, they noticed that the boy encountered by the pilgrim was untying and unrolling what appeared to be a map. The boy rolled it up, retied it, and set off down the path that led away from the gompa. After a moment, the monks returned to their debate.
UNTITLED #1 (DESSERT) Matthew Denis
Flight amazes us Because of how it frees Our vision Things Become objects Under these conditions Backgrounds separate Violet rays move freely Single atom stretch wide All that moves Across this surface Are contour lines With isobars and gradients Resonating with one another --
I see a desert Open stick cut back With violet rays That cut lines Into surfaces I see a desert Unified and singular Flat and crystalline With voids retreating To form SURFACES Our silicon trails Are arranged in constellations Our shades and patches DIVERGE Into flashing Aggregates So we resonate And HOVER Because we are already LIFELESS
COSMIC, DEAD, ETERNAL Lying like Uniform receivers Synoptic META systems Are always outside Always outside Open stick cut back I SEE A DESERT Stretching out inside Shattered and dehydrated Punctuated and organised Into layers of UNCUT but HOLLOW FLATNESS --
Rainbows Appear sometimes Cacti blossom Swarms swarm Among shells and bones Among teeth and exoskeletons No genus or species Exists here This is only a geometry of ions And charged particles But isotopes are Not dangerous Static attractions Are what connect us We are joined In ions We are composed In aggregates We are flattened into points and lines And converge to form CONSTELLATIONS
COORDINATES Claudia Gillies
Before? Too absorbed too tired, and nothing transpired? In another mind at an earlier time Would we Have found this? Or perhaps we needed
If you and I could track the tracks we tread
our evening route our morning commute
Would we Have we met
proximity, unconsciously, one-hundred near misses unanswered wishes
Friction Heat and here we meet – Eyes and intention, Ascension. And it’s later, now, I want you.
Are we Will we meet Today? Nearly missing Coordinates hitting Draußen, zwischen. Was it a push a sign, a signal time? Intersecting lines Do I think You Mine? Must I backwards track, to overlap, Will we still shine? Or will I cross Another, my lover.
Simpson Desert by Claudia Gillies
∞ Alex Rezdan
Don’t ask me how it works. Can you explain how your brain interprets neurons and synapses to control your every action and your entire perception? Well, maybe you can, but I’m not that smart. What I can explain is that time literally stands still. Imagine stepping into Google Street View and you’ll have a rough idea of what it’s like. Everything frozen: a couple, mid-stride on the sidewalk; a waiter, forever explaining the lunch menu; cars stopped at an eternal red light; even the wind stuck in place as it holds things pointing eastward, like a woman’s long hair and billowing dress and her loose-fitting sun hat making its move towards freedom.
I can stop time. Literally. I can make this moment last forever, turn it into an interactive photograph to manipulate however I want. Forget your 10-second social media snapshots. I have forever to play with.
I call it ‘going into the infinity.’ It isn’t the most creative name, I know, but that’s not the point. What matters is that I can make your smile last as long as I want it to. And that funny face you make when someone says something you disagree with. And the sparks in your eyes when you talk about something you’re passionate about. You haven’t realized it yet, and maybe you never will, but I’ve spent countless hours soaking up
your presence. I know all too well that nothing lasts forever, even if—especially if—I try to make it so. I’ve traveled all over the map and lived in numerous cities by now. Backpacking through Europe? Check. Motorbike ride along the coast of Vietnam and island hopping in Indonesia? Check and check. Learning how to tango in Argentina, driving a 1954 Buick convertible in Cuba, and finally having a proper conversation in Spanish in Colombia? Check to all of the above. And you? Well, you told me about those summers you spent with your family at the lake an hour’s drive away from the city. Yet, despite our travel differences, we still arrived at the same frame of mind. It’s not how many points you can pin to your map that count in the end if you haven’t bothered pinning your heart and soul to the people you meet. During my last night before moving on, you said the words I had thought many times throughout my life. You were doing cartwheels in the rain and couldn’t stop laughing when you
nearly slipped face-first onto the slippery tiles near the fountain. You lied on the wet ground, looked up at the stars, and made your wish. When you said, “I wish this night could last forever,” I knew it could. “Do you really mean that?” I asked, and when you said yes, I reached out, grabbed ahold of your hand, and said, “Okay.” I’ll never forget the face you made. Everyone I’ve shared the infinity with always had that same initial look of shock and awe, but each time was different, too. It was the rain frozen in midair that did it for you. You reached out to grab a raindrop, felt that gelatinous consistency of it, and giggled like a child. Sometimes, I wish I could make even the infinity last forever. But of course, nothing can truly last forever, and reality always eventually found its way into the infinity. Moving around as much as I do, there are bound to be people you meet for only one day, and more likely, for only an hour or two. I
found myself sharing the infinity with people whom I had barely met, those “you seem so cool, I wish we met sooner” people, those people that would have remained a stranger who instead became lifelong friends I was able to spend days or weeks with, or at the least, just a few more drinks with. In each country I visited, I was always tempted to stay, to settle down, but my desire to see what else the world had to offer kept me moving. In the infinity, it was always the person I shared it with that wanted to move on first. Thinking back, that probably played a massive role in making me want to move on, as well, and in choosing who I chose to share the infinity with. You were no different. I used to think it was my fault that things came to an end, that if I just stayed put and kept things the same forever, I would be happier and everyone else would be happy, too. But then I realized that the problem isn’t that we can’t make our time last forever. The real problem is that we can never go back. We can never return to that moment
we realized we didn’t want to stay strangers or acquaintances, that first hug we shared that wasn’t just to say hello but out of a real desire to embrace each other, the first or second or even third time you invited me over and cooked for me, that time you introduced me to your friends like they were lucky to be able to meet me. I am lucky to have shared the limited time I have with you. Because no matter how hard I try to make things last forever—and believe me, I do try—the end always manages to come anyway. I broke down when I said all of this to you, trying hard to keep my tears in to no avail, but you shook your head and smiled. When I asked why, you responded, “You say all of that like it’s a sad thing, but without an ending, we would never really cherish the time we spent together.” “Says the person that wants our time to end.” I looked at you as if trying to convince myself that I was bored of you, but of course it didn’t work. You did that half-smile, half-laugh thing with your mouth that I had grown to love, looking like you
had won the lottery and wanted to share that news only with me. Your eyes flashed and you said, “I don’t want our time to end. I want it to begin. I want to share more nights and days and laughter and arguments and traveling and lazy days and developing a routine and breaking that routine and questioning our decisions but going through with them anyway because fuck it, we all make mistakes, but if we make them together, then at least we’re still together. I want to keep moving forward and never look back until we’re too old to move anymore and then turn to you and ask, ‘Aren’t you glad we had more than just one night?’ and even though you’ll probably still wish you could go back to relive those moments, you’ll also see that they needed to pass to get to the next great moments, because if you keep freezing time, you’re missing out on the future, and I personally can’t wait to see what our future holds for us.” You put your hand on my shoulder. “That’s why I want this moment to end.” You pulled me close and hugged me, then whispered, “I think my life was already frozen until I met you, and I don’t want to stay frozen anymore. I want to follow you wherever you go.”
I felt the pressure on my shoulders from your embrace and put my arms around you, and as we held each other, the rain fell to the ground, people moved around us and spoke to each other, cars honked, birds flew from one tree to another, even the scents of the bakery next door wafted over, and I realized you were right. Life is better when it’s moving forward.
Cardboard Men by AZ Özbay
MAPPING MEMORY Susan Grouchy
Maps forgot too. And the roads stopped going there. And the stories dried up with the rivers. The ashen town was lost. Covered by dirt, covered by stones, covered once again, by heedless humanity. Which in its evitability, forgets what came before it. To uncover this forgetting, to uncover this darkness, One must dig.
A city consumed by ash buried by things that blew away. It hardened its people and was forgotten by those that remained.
Dig into the dark. Dig into the soil. Until the soil falls away creating a map directing you to the lives of people long forgotten
Until we understand what lies beneath our feet, We will always be lost above the ground.
Simpson Desert by Claudia Gillies
A TRAIN STORY Nazlı Koca
I grew up on a train making rounds by the Mediterranean Coast. My father worked at the train restaurant. By worked at the restaurant, I mean he did everything there was to do from cleaning to checking tickets, except to conduct. By restaurant, I mean a counter where he sat behind and smoked exhibiting three types of sweets, three types of crackers and a tea tank to passengers who only ordered tea and occasionally asked for cigarettes. It was quite common
to smoke on the train back then, between the cars. I wonder if it still is. It probably is. I have no memory from the times before I got on that train with him. I just thought I must have been born in carriage 0 without a mother and I was okay with that. My father’s only friend Uncle Hasan called him Mona Lisa Rasim, after “a portrait of an ugly woman with the body of a man and half a smile”, as he put it. “Not even the smartest people in the world have been able to tell if she is smiling or sad for centuries, guess like who” he said when he first explained why, laughing and coughing at the same time. He was very proud of his jokes and every time he made one he would fix his eyes on me to make sure I laughed long enough to appreciate it, but this time I was preoccupied with a proud revelation of my own. I had opened my eyes as wide as I could and looked at my father’s lips more carefully than I ever did. There was no movement, no sign of reaction to be seen. I started to look at my father differently after that day, like looking at a portrait, or more like a picture on a book and came to the conclusion that he might as
well have been a picture on a book that came to life because I loved him too much. He didn’t seem to be interested in anyone or anything else –almost including me, but not quite. He always wore the same outfit, smelled the same - like lemon cologne, sounded the same –like an Imam calling a village to prayer at sunrise, moved at the same pace, had one cucumber and one tomato every morning and he always had a glass of tea half full. He had his tea in small Turkish tea glasses with the thin waist with a red and white plate under. No sugar, no spoon. He smoked all his cigarettes down to the same alignment; put them off by folding them and crushing the shorter end with the same pressure. He never had lunch and I never saw him have dinner because he always put me to sleep before sunset. I wouldn’t want to leave the wrong impression though. I loved the stillness of my father, and I certainly liked to think of him as a picture. This meant he would always be there and I could always sit next to him and he could read me all sorts of stories, all kinds of adventures we would go on together after that page. There was only one small problem.
Unlike Uncle Hasan, my father was not the biggest fan of having fun. He never told stories, not even real ones, neither about the past nor the future. That must have been be why it had not even crossed my mind to ask about my mother until the day a stranger asked for me.
“Where did she go? How far away?”
“She passed away” answered my father.
“Is it where we are going? Are we going to meet her there?”
“What does it mean, to pass away?” I asked after the stranger left.
I did not realize we were making rounds for a long time. In a way I did, but not really. I had a different understanding of rounds. The towns we passed all looked the same. So similar that you could not recognize when you actually passed the same ones again. Or at least I couldn’t. And my father certainly was not interested in what was outside of the train, let alone explaining how things worked to me.
“It means to be dead.” I knew what to be dead meant. I have seen dead birds and rats under the train when it slowed down before. And once I heard the conductor tell my father that someone jumped on the tracks so we had to wait for a while. I asked what happens if someone jumps on the tracks back then and my father said they would die. But to pass away. To pass, away. These words had other meanings to me until then. Wherever we passed, we would eventually go back to. And wherever was far away, we would reach sooner or later.
He turned around as if he did not hear what I had just asked like he always did when he did not take my questions seriously or when someone was trying to have small talk with him or complain about the broken window of the train.
“If that’s what God wants, one day, Inshallah” he finally answered. See? My father also believed the rounds were taking us somewhere! “When will we be there?” I asked. “Only God knows the answer to that.”
He left his stand to make a round and check tickets. I was confused. My father always knew when we would get to places. Every day at least five people would ask him when we would get to the final destination and he would always tell them the exact time. Sevenfifty-four. Eight-thirty-seven. Nine thirty-one. When he came back, I kept asking, “But when did she pass away? Maybe there is something we can do to meet her again-” “All we can do is stay on this train.” he said. For a second I thought I saw him cry, but it also looked like a smile. That night, after he tucked me into my bed in carriage 0 and left, I went over the whole conversation in my head carefully and came to the conclusion that my father was hiding something from me. Having passed away must have meant something extremely important which had to be kept a secret. So I had a mother but she passed away, like our train passed trees, buildings, electric sticks, street lights, small towns, ugly cities. Did it mean she was faster than us?
I wondered what she sounded like. Did she sound like the wind? Or like the sound of other trains when they passed from the tracks next to us from time to time? I asked myself more questions than I could count and then I passed out. I had heard people talk about other trains many times before, but I had never been truly interested. I knew our train, our home like I knew the inside of my palm – that’s what they say when they want to say they know something well, though I have always been suspicious about how well they could know the inside of their palms. I mean, can you describe it with all its details without looking at it? I could tell you every stain on every seat and every crack on every wall of our trains’ twelve carriages plus ours. When I asked why our train was called a twelve carriage train when it actually had thirteen, my father said because that’s the way it is, but Uncle Hasan said because people were scared of the number thirteen, and black cats. I had never seen a black cat, but I would have loved to, I thought, it sounded beautiful. So did thirteen. Thirteen.
Every passing day began to bring new questions with it, to me at least. My father or his smile didn’t seem to change at all. When I’d ask him questions like how many people lived outside of the train, he would say numbers did not matter; the important thing was to live here and now. When I asked him questions like why we were stopping when the clock showed certain numbers, he would say because we had to. I have learned, even before I even knew how to count, that there were three categories of passengers which got on our train; regulars, typicals, the ones who got on the wrong train. Regulars had faces, some even had names. I knew most of them by the stations they got on and off, some by their jobs, and some by the presents they brought me from time to time. My favorite regular was of course Uncle Hasan. We used to play a game, him and I. We would look at typicals and try to guess where they will get off, what their names could be “He looks like a Zülfikar” he would say to the tall men with long faces and shirts. “Yes, he is definitely a Zülfikar” I would confirm. Zülfikars were mostly butlers. Though there were not many houses which
would have butlers in the areas we passed. Uncle Hasan would tell me they’re always Zülfikar in old Turkish movies, he would promise to watch one together one day and change the subject. Then there were the ones who got on the wrong train, either literally or philosophically - Uncle Hasan loved this word. Pale foreigners who spoke other languages were definitely literally on the wrong train. Young men with long hair, who were starting to make me feel funny and shy just by looking at me and I did not know why, were philosophically on the wrong train, Uncle Hasan would say. They were looking for a camp where they could meet others of their kind, but in our area their kind was hard to find. No matter which category they belonged to, all passengers loved our train. “It is peaceful to be here,” they always said. “So calm, so quiet”. “Such an honest man, and hard working too!” I would often hear the regulars and typicals say to each other about my father while they waited for their tea. No one except me seemed to have any questions about why things were the way they were and I was not happy with it.
Train by NazlÄą Koca
One day a girl like no one I’ve ever seen got on the train. She was with others, but her light blue hair shined over everyone around her. Light blue hair! They were speaking in a language I never heard before or after. She looked happy, like my father when he prayed or Uncle Hasan when he won at backgammon. But she was just happy. She looked into the eyes of the boy sitting next to her with her blue eyes and kissed him. I must have been in some sort of a trance because I did not stop looking at her until Uncle Hasan carried me to the cafeteria car. “What were they?” I asked. “Just some people on the wrong train” he said. “I want to go back and look at the girl” “Why would you want that? It’s not a good idea Dünya. Listen, look at me, Dünya, you do not want to end up like them, like her, on the wrong train looking like a clown.” That was the first time I felt stuck. It was my own body, and my own thoughts, feelings. How was Uncle Hasan able to make me feel this way? I did not understand any of
it and I did not say anything to him. I just waited for this feeling to go away. When I went back to the other car, the girl had already left. Why did he have to do that? How did he know I wouldn’t want to end up like her? Maybe I did want to be her. Maybe I did want to be on the wrong train once. It was a cold winter, it snowed for the first time in ten years, Uncle Hasan read a newspaper headline out loud. Lately I had been asking him more questions about the outside. I began to wonder where he lived, what he did. I didn’t even know if he had a kid or not. How did he spent his time when he wasn’t on the train with us? When I asked “How is it to be outside?” he answered, “Not that different than being here, except it’s cold and there’s no window to protect your little nose from freezing” Then he lit a cigarette and poured some tea even though he had just filled his tea glass. I went over the conversation in my head carefully and came to the conclusion that I could only trust myself on that train –but I was not even sure about that. I started seeing everything differently every morning and each time things changed I
thought, this time I was seeing them as they truly were. But in the afternoons I would remember I was just making rounds on the same circle which used to feel like a world in and of itself. As I got bigger the train got smaller. My father and I did not fit in our shared carriage anymore so he started sleeping in the restaurant. I stopped playing games with the regulars, including Uncle Hasan. I even stopped asking questions. Days passed and everything except my father and the train kept changing. I spent most of my time standing between carriages and imagining myself standing between the woods I only saw from afar. I would cover my ears with my hand and try to imitate silence even though I had no idea what it sounded like. I would close my eyes and imagine being under water at night. Sometimes I would cry without even understanding why which made me cry more. Then I would feel tired. So tired that I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I would toss and turn in bed until the sun began to rise. It was the end of Fall. One morning, somewhere between getting out of bed and putting my slippers on, I decided to leave the
train. Everybody was doing it, so why couldn’t I? I wondered why I hadn’t done so already. Then I thought of my father and changed the subject. I mean in my own head. But sooner or later, mostly sooner, my thoughts would come back to the same point. I don’t know if it was because we spent our lives making rounds that my thoughts worked the same way or the other way around. I don’t know how many rounds I made before I actually got off of the train. I can’t tell you how old I was when I left. Do you think my father cried or smiled?
My father My father My father -
My father worked at the restaurant of a train which made rounds by the Mediterranean Coast. I, wanted to be the conductor of my own train. Now I conduct a train which goes back and forth between Malmö and Stockholm. It gets a little cold in here sometimes. But I am okay with that.
HOMELESSNESS
IS COMING TO BE THE DESTINY OF THE WORLD Martin Heidegger
Tour de France by Claudia Gillies
Berlin | Ä°stanbul | Barcelona facebook.com/rhnkmag rhnkmag@gmail.com