06- Returning Home, As If It Were Just Yesterday

 

It was three o’clock in the morning. Everywhere was pitch dark. The door to the apartment building opened quietly.

Last year, the entry code system had broken down, and since the residents couldn’t manage to collect the necessary maintenance fee, the door remained unlocked both day and night. Most of the people living in the building were retired civil servants, getting by on meagre pensions, and hadn’t really cared whether the door was locked or not. Taking advantage of this, children who didn’t even live in the building had begun to spend their time here—running up and down the stairs, sliding down the railings, or sitting on the steps engrossed in their smartphones. Over the course of the year, they had scratched their names and scribbled swear words on the walls. When Mr Mehmet from number 3 passed away last summer, his daughter cleared out the flat he had rented for many years, took what was useful, and left the rest piled in a corner of the large entrance corridor under the pretext of “someone might need it.” At the very front of the pile was a red velvet sofa, where Mr Mehmet always sat on the right side in his final years. The cushion had sagged under his heavy body. The children especially liked to play on this sofa, wedging chocolate wrappers between the cushions, wiping their snotty fingers on the velvet fabric. The most mischievous among them would sometimes climb to the top of the bookcase at the back and shoot arrows at people entering the building. With the arrival of autumn, even the cats had started to sleep there on cold nights. The apartment had begun to resemble something straight out of Elif Şafak’s The Flea Palace.

The building’s oldest resident was Mr Levon. When the apartment was newly built in 1936, young couples had moved into all the flats. Levon had been just five years old when his parents moved in. Back then, the neighbourhood and the building were both elegant and pleasant.
The wrought iron garden gate was always kept closed, roses bloomed in the garden tended mostly by Levon’s father, and both an apple and a cherry tree flowered in spring and bore fruit in summer. In this four-storey building, children had been born, many had married and moved away, parents had passed on or become too elderly to leave their homes. Even the newer tenants had now reached retirement age.

Mr Levon was an only child. He had never married and continued to live in the same flat after his parents passed away. In seventy years, the face of the neighbourhood had changed drastically—houses with gardens and small apartment blocks had been replaced by high-rises and office buildings. Now, this old building, squashed in between, had become a neglected relic of a bygone century. The garden gate had been removed, the garden converted into a car park. In the 1980s, a door lock had been installed, but now broken, the building had turned into a thoroughfare.

Since Mr Levon lived on the first floor, he was always the first to know what was going on.
He had been a handsome and flirtatious young man in his time, often inviting his girlfriends over—much to the frustration of some of the more pious residents. At seventy-three, he was still lively and good-looking. While he no longer carried on as wildly as he once had, his cheerful and courteous manner had made him the darling of the older ladies at the Pera Café, where he went every Sunday.

That night, Mr Levon hadn’t been able to sleep at all. Charles Aznavour’s Hier Encore was playing softly on the record player—low enough not to disturb the neighbours.
Levon sat in the reading chair by the window, his smiling eyes watching the empty street lit by a streetlamp, his thoughts wandering to the old days.

As the longcase clock, which he never liked but couldn’t bring himself to get rid of because it had belonged to his grandfather, struck three, he heard a sound like the clicking of high heels. Who could it be at this hour? He stood up from the chair and moved closer to the window, looking down. Outside stood a slender, elegant lady. One hand held her shawl, the other leaned on a walking stick. She looked around. Her hair, loosely tied in a bun, had strands of white fluttering in the light of the streetlamp. There was no sign of a taxi or any other vehicle.
As he wondered what this woman could be doing here at this hour, he recognised her.
It was Jale. Yes, it could be no one else—his childhood love. He hadn’t seen her in half a century. But those delicate wrists, that graceful head, that beautiful, upturned nose—how could he ever forget them, even after a hundred years? The building door opened quietly, and Jale glided in like a swan.

Levon and Jale were the same age. They had moved into the building the same year but had attended different schools. During their youth, they had shared no more than shy glances.
Jale’s father was a doctor, her mother had her take piano lessons, and Levon would drift into daydreams as he listened to the piano melodies wafting down from the floor above. In 1948, Jale had married the son of a wealthy family. When Levon found out, he was devastated, cried for nights, but in the end surrendered to the flow of life.

After marrying, Jale had moved to her husband’s family’s mansion in Bebek. Her parents had relocated to one of the newer, rising neighbourhoods and never returned to the area. She had a son first, then a daughter five years later. Her son didn’t follow his father into business but entered law school. During those years, Jale only saw her husband and son late at night, spending her days in the mansion with the staff and her daughter. She had piano lessons arranged for her daughter and eventually enrolled her in the conservatoire. In 1980, she lost her husband in a tragic accident. Later, she opened a gallery in Etiler and spent twenty years there.

To reassure himself he wasn’t dreaming, Levon rushed to the door, moved swiftly down the stairwell, and descended the stairs quickly. Jale had stopped at the pile of Mr Mehmet’s belongings and was staring into the dusty entrance hall. Her back was to the staircase.
The furniture was lit by the glow of the streetlamp streaming inside. Levon marvelled that she could still look so graceful. He didn’t want to frighten her, so he called out softly, “Jale, is that you?”

Jale startled slightly, but then turned her noble head proudly in the direction of the voice. Then, beaming as though they had seen each other only yesterday, she began: “I took a taxi,” she said. “I needed to come home.” Levon hadn’t seen a taxi—but perhaps she had got out further away and walked. What was she doing here in the middle of the night? Despite the wrinkles, he could still see the young girl in her beautiful face, but the fact that she was returning to this building she hadn’t lived in for fifty or sixty years made him uneasy. “Why have you come? There’s no one here anymore!” he managed to say. Jale’s eyes sparkled and she smiled mischievously. “I ran away, Levon,” she said, laughing. “My daughter called my son over from Paris, saying I had Alzheimer’s. He rushed here to put me into a care home. So I snuck out in the night without telling anyone. Said I was going to my parents’.”

About five years ago, Jale had started disappearing now and then, and often wandered back to the old neighbourhood. But she had always managed to return without being seen.
Once, she’d said she was going to meet a friend, then forgotten and got lost shopping.
During the millennium celebrations in 2000, when the whole family had gathered at the mansion, her disappearances and memory lapses had become noticeable. First, the gallery was handed over, then a carer was hired. But when she began vanishing from home more frequently, her daughter Suna had urgently summoned her brother from Paris. Now, the children were at home trying to figure out what to do about their mother.

Jale looked at Levon: “I may have Alzheimer’s, but I remember you, Levon!” she said.
“Your eyes were always beautiful. They still are—but you’ve aged terribly!” They both laughed. Levon managed to reply, “And you’re still beautiful.” Then, not wanting to wake the neighbours, he put his hand over his mouth and gestured for silence. “Come upstairs,” he said.
“You know your parents aren’t here, don’t you? It’s been sixty years—could they still be alive? I’ve always been here. I’m glad I never left.” Jale lifted her head as though something had suddenly clicked in her mind. “Yes, we lost Mum. We lost Dad when the children were still young.” Then she looked again at Levon. “Come on, take my arm. I don’t know why I thought wearing these heels was a good idea.”

The two old friends linked arms and climbed the stairs together. As they entered the flat, Aznavour’s voice echoed softly from the record player.

 

05- The Man Sitting on the Bench

 

These days, the old Dalhousie train station, now hosting art events, has two benches set against its northern wall. On each bench sits a man—both Black. If you look down the stairs from Notre-Dame Street to Saint-Hubert Street at 12:30 p.m., you’ll surely see these two men. And if they’re not there, you’ll feel their absence. At first, you might not pay much attention, but with time, you begin to observe and realise that these two men share nothing in common except their skin colour.

One of them is just as you might expect at first glance—one of those homeless men who sleep on benches at night. His body is slumped forward with exhaustion, his hair unkempt, his hands constantly moving and rummaging through his belongings, which are scattered across the bench. He is one of those whom Montreal’s politically correct crowd gently refer to as SDF (Sans domicile fixe = without a fixed address).

The other, though from a distance may appear to be a similar dark silhouette, reveals on closer inspection a completely different picture: neatly pressed trousers, a smart jacket, a dark shirt to match, spotless shoes, perfectly trimmed hair, an upright, dignified posture, and a well-kept physique. Clearly, this young man does not sleep on the bench. He always sits with his hands clasped on his knees, one leg stretched forward, the other tucked under the bench, gazing straight ahead in stillness.

Once you notice this difference, the man with the clasped hands, sitting as if burdened by something, begins to occupy your thoughts. What could be troubling him? You may conclude that he’s lost his job but hasn’t been able to bring himself to accept it—so he dresses each morning as if going to work and leaves home. Perhaps it’s such a deep blow that he hasn’t even told his wife. He spends his day sitting on this bench, deep in thought, only to return home in the evening as if coming back from the office—just like in a film.

You begin to obsess over seeing him there at lunchtime. Wondering if he sits there all day, you start to keep watch even from your home. You realise that his presence there isn’t random—it’s rooted in his inner world. Eventually, you notice that he spends only about an hour and a half there each day. You think, perhaps instead of joining his colleagues for lunch, he uses this window of time to think, to weigh his troubles. Perhaps he’s religious and occasionally folds his hands to pray. Or maybe he just closes his eyes to rest.

To one man, the bench is a bed he sleeps on every night, his home. To the other, it is a place of retreat, a spot to gaze into the distance and unload his sorrows. Though they’ve long been aware of each other’s presence, they have never spoken.

Yet if you delve into the well-groomed young man’s mind, you’d learn that his father has been homeless for some time. After living for a year in an old caravan, he has now been missing for a month. Grieving and hoping to find him, the young man has developed a growing curiosity and compassion for those living on the streets. Had his wife agreed last year, he would have offered his father the small workshop annex with a separate entrance. But now, with his father having sold the caravan and vanished, the guilt gnaws at him. He has started greeting the man on the next bench in the hope that he might learn something from him. Still, he hasn’t been able to strike up a conversation. Even when the homeless man doesn’t turn up, the young man never gives up coming to the same spot.

These benches, nestled in the cosmopolitan swirl of Montreal, serve as a sanctuary and space of calm. They are the place to which these two men have been brought by hardship and weariness. In this quiet corner of the city, far from the crowds and noise, by the old station wall and its two benches that sit before a park, life continues to unfold—and these benches continue to bear witness to the lives of these two men.