İstanbul Kırmızısı (The Red of Istanbul)

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…Ama mutlu oldu biliyorum. Mutlu bir kadın oldu çünkü sevmeyi bildi. Aşk karşısında hiç geri adım atmadı. Bunu hala yinelemeyi sürdürüyor: sevmek gerekir, sevme cesaretini göstermek gerekir.

Yokluğuna, yalanlarına, şiddetine karşın babamı sevdi. İlk kocasını, ablam Filiz’in babasını da çok sevmişti. Yakışıklı, çok yakışıklı; Clark Gable bıyıklı, bakışları canlı biriydi. Onu sonsuz bir sevgiyle sevdi ve aşkı için evlendi. Sonra aşk uçtu gitti. Birkaç yıl önce o öldüğünde bana şöyle dedi: “Bugün benim için çok hüzünlü bir gün. İlk kocam öldü, bir parçam sonsuza dek yok oldu.”

“Ama anne sen ondan boşanmıştın, o sana ihanet etmişti. Hem sonra babamla evlendin. Onu hala sevdiğine inandırmak mı istiyorsun beni?”

Bana hayretle baktı ve neredeyse hayal kırıklığı ile yanıtladı: “Ama nasıl olur, bir film yönetmenisin, aşkı anlatıyorsun ve şimdi insanın aynı anda iki kişiyi sevebilmesine şaşırıyorsun. Aşk ömürlüktür.”

Annem hakkında bilmediğim ne çok şey var…

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

…Kadına her şeyden daha çok “kendi” İstanbul’unu anlatıyor. Lüks oteller ve alışveriş merkezleri yapmak için parkları ve tarihi yapıları yok etmeye çalışanlardan; baskıcı bir zihniyetle din ya da başka şeyler adına başkalarının hayatına müdahale edenlerin, kişisel özgürlüklere, tercihlere karışanların yarattıkları korkudan; gençlerin direnme arzusundan, onların, duvara renkli bir grafiti çizerek bile olsa sergiledikleri protestolardan söz ediyor. Ona terk edilmiş bir elektrik santralinin artık sanat merkezi olduğunu söylerken gözleri ışıldıyor.

Anna, şu ana dek tanıdığı, kendine anlatılan İstanbul’un bu olmadığını fark ediyor.

“Bir askerin adını taşıyorsun Murat,” diyerek onun sözünü kesiyor kadın. Ne ilgisi var şimdi. Hiç. Zaten artık hayatında mantıklı hiçbir şey yok; sadece bunu söylemek geliyor içinden, o kadar. Gioacchino Murat; cesur general: işte dedesinin anlattığı öykülerden biri daha. Günün birinde ona bir tarih kitabından Murat’ın gençlik resmini göstermişti: gururlu, sırma kordonlarla ve madalyalarla bezenmiş kırmızı-beyaz ceketli, neredeyse omuzlarına dökülen siyah bukleli saçlı.

“Bir Fransız askeriydi, sonra general oldu; Napoleon Bonaparte’ın kız kardeşiyle evlendi ve Napoli kralı oldu. Hiç duymamış mıydın? Gioacchino Murat.”

Kendi siyah bukleleri de dağınık ve asi olan genç gülüyor: “Duymamıştım. Murat bizde de çok yaygın bir addır, bir sultanın, daha doğrusu Osmanlı hanedanından bazı sultanların da adıdır. Sizin Fransızlarla hiç ilgisi yok.”

“Dedem bana ne anlatırdı biliyor musun? Tehlikeyi o denli küçümsermiş ki, kanlı bir çarpışmadan sonra bir başka general şu açıklamada bulunmuş: ‘Murat biraz daha az cesur, biraz daha sağduyulu olsa keşke.’ Ve tutsak edilip Calabria’da kurşuna dizileceği zaman son sözleri şunlar olmuş: ‘Yüzümü zedelemeyin, yüreğimden vurun; ateş!'”

Dedesi. Ona çiçeklerin, maceraperest kadınların ama aynı zamanda savaşların ve cesaretin öykülerini anlatırdı…

-Ferzan Özpetek

 

“About a Boy” Quotes

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(Will)    

Occasionally, when the mood took him, he applied for jobs advertised in the media pages of the Guardian. He liked the media pages, because he felt he was qualified to fill most of the vacancies on offer. How hard could it be to edit the building industry’s in-house journal, or run a small arts workshop, or write copy for holiday brochures? Not very hard at all, he imagined, so he doggedly wrote letters explaining to potential employers why he was the man they were looking for. He even enclosed a CV, although it only just ran on to a second page. Rather brilliantly, he thought, he had numbered these two pages ‘one’ and ‘three’, thus implying that page two, the page containing the details of his brilliant career, had got lost somewhere. The idea was that people would be so impressed by the letter, so dazzled by his extensive range of interest, that they would invite him in for an interview, where sheer force of personality would carry him through. Actually, he had never heard from anybody, although occasionally he received a standard rejection letter.

 

(Will and Marcus)

‘Do you watch telly all day then?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘So what else do you do?’

‘Read. Shop. See friends.’

‘Nice life. Did you go to school when you were a kid?’

‘Yeah, course.’

‘Why? I mean, you didn’t really need to, did you?’

‘How d’you work that out? What do you think school’s for?’

‘Getting a job.’

‘What about reading and writing?’

‘I could do that years ago, and I’m still going to school. Because I’ve got to get a job. You could have left school when you were about six or seven. Saved yourself all the hassle. You don’t really need history to go shopping or read, do you?’

‘Depends if you want to read about history.’

‘Is that what you read about?’

‘Not often, no.’

‘OK, so why did you go to school?’

‘Shut up, Marcus.’

‘If I knew I wasn’t going to get a job, I wouldn’t bother.’

‘Don’t you like it?’ Will was making himself a cup of tea. When he’d put the milk in they went back to the living room and sat down on the sofa.

‘No, I hate it.’

‘Why?’

‘It doesn’t suit me. I’m not a school sort of person. I’m the wrong personality type.’ His mum had told him about personality types a while ago, just after they had moved. They were both introverts, she said, which made a lot of things – making new friends, starting at new schools and new places of work – more difficult for them. She’d said it as if it would make him feel better, but of course it hadn’t helped at all, and he couldn’t understand how on earth she thought it might: as far as he could see, being an introvert just meant that it wasn’t even worth trying.

‘Do people give you a hard time?’

Marcus looked at him. How did he know that? Things must be worse than he thought, if people knew even before he had said anything.

‘Not really. Just a couple of kids.’

 

(Ellie and Marcus)

He turned round to look at her, but he wouldn’t open her eyes.

‘Are you OK?’

‘Yeah. Well. Not really.’ She rummaged around her bag and produced a bottle of vodka. ‘I’m going to get drunk.’

Suddenly Marcus could see a problem with his guided missile plan: the problem was that Ellie wasn’t actually a guided missile. You couldn’t guide her. That didn’t matter so much in school, because school was full of walls and rules and she could just bounce them off; but out in the world, where there were no walls and rules, she was scary. She could just blow up in his face any time.

 

(Ellie and Marcus) 

‘Why does it matter so much?’ he asked her quietly. ‘I mean, I know you like his records and everything, and I know it’s sad because of Frances Bean, but–‘

‘I loved him.’

‘You didn’t know him.’

‘Of course I knew him. I listened to him sing every single day. I wear him every single day. The things he sings about, that’s him. I know him better than I know you. He understood me.’

‘He understood you?’ How did that work? How did someone you had never met understand you?

‘He knew what I felt, and he sang about it.’

Marcus tried to remember some of the words to the songs on the Nirvana record that Will had given him for Christmas. He had only ever been able to hear little bits: ‘I feel stupid and contagious.’ ‘A mosquito.’ ‘I don’t have a gun.’ None of it meant anything to him.

‘So what were you feeling?’

‘Angry.’

‘What about?’

‘Nothing. Just … life.’

‘What about life?’

‘It’s shit.’

Marcus thought about that. He thought about whether life was shit, and whether Ellie’s life in particular was shit,  and then he realized that Ellie spent her whole time wanting life to be shit, and then making life shit by making things difficult for herself. School was shit because wore her sweatshirt every day, which she wasn’t allowed to do,  and because she shouted at teachers and got into fights, which upset people. But what if she didn’t wear her sweatshirt and stopped shouting at people? How shit would life be then? Not very, he thought. Life was really shit for him, what with his mum and the other kids at school and all that, and he’d give anything to be Ellie; but Ellie seemed determined to turn herself into him, and why would anyone want to do that?