Liberation Movements

Katja

The sunlight ruins me. It’s inescapable. Even when I find a crevice between buildings, the light clings to the shadows, and I search for a closed door to hide behind. The first door is a teashop with pillows around low tables and dark men hunched in the darkness, whispering. That is, until I enter, when they all look up from their reveries, confused.

I tried not to run out of the hotel. I ran from the room, then stood in the empty corridor with blood on my knees and hands and blouse, the knife still in my hand. Then, in a moment of sudden fatigue, I stepped back inside and closed the door, lucky that the guests were all gone, eating late breakfasts or gazing at Istanbul’s sights. I stepped over the dead man, sat on the bed, and closed my eyes.

I don’t know how long it took me, in the darkness of my head, to decide what to do, but when I came out of it I found myself undressing.

I tried to ignore him as I washed my hands and went through the wardrobe and put on his undershirt and then tried pants, but they wouldn’t stretch over my hips. So I put my own back on and found a long raincoat with large pockets. I dropped the pistol and the knife into a plastic trash bag from the bathroom and slipped it into one pocket. Into the other went my crumpled, bloodstained blouse. I found an inner pocket to hold the Deutschmarks. Then I looked around, at everything except the body.

Before leaving, I admittedly squatted beside Peter Husak again, just outside the pool of blood, and gazed into that flaccid, blood-smeared face. That stupid little mustache.

I spat on it.

Only then was I able to walk calmly out of the hotel.

I walked eastward. Up a narrow cobblestone street, jumping aside to avoid cars and lumbering tour buses. Up, pouring sweat under the overcoat, until my calves hurt, burning away all thoughts. In an open square I saw men washing themselves in fountains.

Then down, almost tripping on the stones as I followed baffling curves.

Trees covered me at some point, and then I reached the water. A perfect horizontal line. Water above; road below. In the distance, ships and Asia. I sprinted across the road to a shore of large rocks. Just at the water, feet wet, I collapsed and threw the blouse and the pistol into the Bosphorus. The knife, though-I held on to that. I looked around finally, but I’d been alone all along.

It was walking back through these choked, confused streets that ruined my shaky calm. The heat and the weathered faces and the unsettling songs of prayer that burst from rooftops like the scorn of God. The sun.

So I’ve stepped into this dark cavern of men over steaming cups. The last place I want to be. I find a pillow at an empty table and try to smile at the gaunt waiter with the long sideburns. “ Rak? please,” I say.

He frowns, then shakes his head vigorously.

“Cay,” he says, then: “ Chai. Tea.”

“No alcohol?”

He shakes his head again.

“Oh.” With effort I climb back to my feet. All those mustached faces follow me as I walk back out into the light.