Work Text:
It had been two months since İsmail Furtuna died
Two months since Fadime had last heard his voice, felt the warmth of his hands against her skin, or seen the smile that used to appear on his face whenever he wanted to annoy her, Two months since she’d felt his arms around her, since she’d rested her head against his chest and listened to the steady beating of his heart, since she’d looked into those familiar eyes and found him looking right back at her.
She hadn’t heard him call her fadimem, hadn’t felt his fingers brushing the hair away from her face, hadn’t experienced the comfort of simply knowing he was somewhere nearby, breathing the same air as her.
She missed the sound of his footsteps, the way he said her name, the warmth he left behind whenever he got out of bed. She even missed the arguments, the stubbornness, the way he could make her furious one moment and have her fighting a smile the next. There were so many things she hadn’t known she would miss until they were taken from her, so many ordinary moments she would have given anything to experience just once more. Sixty days had passed, yet she still couldn’t bring herself to speak about him in the past tense. Every morning, she woke up expecting to hear him somewhere nearby, and every morning, the silence reminded her that he wasn’t coming back
The sky above Trabzon was covered in thick grey clouds, and a cold wind swept through the cemetery, rustling the leaves scattered between the graves. Fadime sat on the damp ground beside his headstone, her knees drawn close to her chest. Strands of her dark hair had escaped their braid and were blowing across her face, occasionally sticking to her wet cheeks.
She didn’t bother moving them away Her eyes were red and swollen, the skin beneath them dark from countless sleepless nights. Even her lips looked pale, trembling slightly whenever she tried to take a deeper breath.
Her right hand rested against the cold marble, her fingertips slowly tracing the letters carved into it.
İSMAİL FURTUNA.
She had read those letters hundreds of times. She knew every curve, every little mark in the stone, yet she kept running her fingers over them as though one day they might spell something different. Her thumb moved gently across his name, stopping at the last letter. She stayed like that for a while, staring at it without blinking.
“İso…” she whispered, her voice rough from crying. “I’m here again.”
She waited, almost instinctively, before lowering her eyes. There had been a time when saying his name was enough to make him turn toward her, even if they were in the middle of an argument. Now she could say it a thousand times, and nothing would happen.
“I know I came yesterday. And the day before that.” A faint, miserable smile crossed her face. “You’d probably tell me to stop being so stubborn, wouldn’t you? You’d tell me to go home, get some sleep, eat something. And then you’d get angry because I wouldn’t listen.”
She let out a small breath that almost sounded like a laugh, but it broke before it could become one.
“I don’t know what to do, İso. I don’t.”
Her fingers tightened against the edge of the gravestone. She tried to swallow the lump forming in her throat, but it only grew heavier.
“Everyone keeps asking me if I’m feeling better. I don’t even know what that means anymore. How am I supposed to feel better? What am I supposed to tell them? That I slept through the night without waking up looking for you? That I managed to eat breakfast without remembering how you used to feed me?”
She lowered her head, pressing her palm flat against the marble.
“I still wait for you. Isn’t that stupid? I know you’re here. I know what happened. I stood there while they buried you, İso. I saw everything. But every time I hear a car outside, I look through the window. Every time someone opens the door, I turn around. And for one stupid second, I think it’s you.”
Her eyes filled again.
“Sometimes I hear something funny, and I turn to tell you. I actually turn my head, İso. Like you’re sitting right there beside me.” She shook her head slowly. “And then I remember. And I have to remember all over again my husband is not here anymore....i cant hear your voice or hug you, its so unfair ”
The wind pushed a strand of hair across her mouth. She tucked it behind her ear with trembling fingers.
“You know what scares me the most?” she asked quietly. “Yesterday, I was trying to remember exactly how you laughed. Not when you were making fun of someone. Your real laugh. The one you couldn’t stop even when you tried.” She paused, staring at his name. “I couldn’t hear it properly in my head. I kept trying, and I couldn’t.”
Her face crumpled.
“It’s only been two months. How can I already be forgetting things about you?”
She covered her mouth with her hand, struggling to steady her breathing. For a while, she couldn’t speak. She just sat there, watching a tear fall onto the marble and disappear into the thin layer of moisture covering it.
“I’m scared, İso. I’m so scared that one day I’ll wake up and I won’t remember how your voice sounded when you were sleepy. Or the way you looked at me when you thought I wasn’t paying attention. What if I forget how it felt when you held my hand? What if all I have left of you are photographs?”
She shook her head, almost angrily.
“I don’t want photographs. I don’t want to hear stories about you from other people. I don’t want your clothes, or your things, or everyone telling me how much you loved me.” Her voice began to shake. “I want you. I want you to come home and annoy me. I want to fight with you over something stupid and refuse to talk to you until you make me laugh. I want to hear you call me fadimem one more time.”
She pressed her lips together, but a sob escaped anyway.
“Just once, İso. I wouldn’t ask for anything else.”
For several moments, the only sound was the wind moving through the trees. Fadime rubbed her thumb against the stone, tracing the first letter of his name again.
She grew quiet, exhausted by the effort of speaking. Her fingers were numb from the cold, but she kept her hand against the headstone, unwilling to pull it away just yet.
“I don’t know if you can hear me,” she said eventually. “I keep talking because I don’t know what else to do. I can’t call you anymore. I can’t ask you where you are. I can’t even be angry that you’re not answering.”
She took a shaky breath.
“But if you can hear me, please don’t forget me.”
The words left her mouth so softly that she almost didn’t hear them herself.
“Please remember that I loved you. Even when I was stubborn. Even when I said things I didn’t mean. Even when I was too proud to tell you how much I needed you.”
She rested her cheek against the cold stone and closed her eyes. For a moment, she allowed herself to imagine that she was leaning against him instead, that if she stayed still enough, she might feel his arm slip around her shoulders or hear him quietly asking what was wrong But the stone remained cold beneath her cheek, and the only thing touching her hair was the wind.
“I have to go now,” she whispered reluctantly. “They’ll start worrying if I stay any longer.”
She lifted her head, but her hand remained where it was. Leaving him had become the hardest part of every visit. She could spend hours sitting beside his grave, telling him about things he would never get to see, but the moment she stood up, it felt as though she was abandoning him all over again.
“I’ll come tomorrow, okay? I promise.”
Fadime slowly leaned forward, bringing her face closer to his name She hesitated for a second before pressing her lips directly against the marble. The coldness startled her, even though she had kissed that same spot so many times before. She kept her lips there a little longer, her eyes squeezed shut, desperately trying to remember the feeling of kissing him when he was alive.
İsmail’s lips had always been warm. Even on the coldest mornings, even when they had been standing outside in the freezing wind, she remembered how warm they felt against hers. She remembered the way he sometimes smiled in the middle of a kiss, how she could feel that smile before she even opened her eyes. She remembered his hand settling against her cheek, his thumb brushing her skin, and how he would sometimes pull back just enough to look at her before kissing her again.
There had been a time when she could kiss him whenever she wanted. She could reach for him without thinking, and he would be there. Now she was pressing her lips against a piece of stone, trying to remember the warmth of a man she would never get to hold again or ay least that`s what she thought
A broken sob escaped her as she finally pulled away. She stared at the faint mark her lips had left on the marble, watching it slowly disappear.
Fadime wiped the tears from her cheeks and slowly pushed herself to her feet. Her legs felt stiff from sitting on the cold ground, and she brushed the dirt from her clothes with trembling hands. She looked at his name one last time, her lips parting as though there was something else she wanted to say, but nothing came out. She had already told him everything, and somehow, it still wasn’t enough.
She turned away reluctantly, walking toward the cemetery gates with her arms wrapped tightly around herself. Outside, İsmail’s red pickup truck stood where she had left it. The sight of it made her chest tighten. She approached the driver’s door and ran her fingers along the familiar red paint before climbing inside. For a moment, she sat motionless behind the wheel, staring through the windshield with tears still clinging to her eyelashes. Then she started the engine, took one last look toward the cemetery, and drove away.
-
Fadime drove İsmail’s red pickup along the familiar road leading toward Koçari, her hands resting loosely on the steering wheel. The cemetery was already behind her, but the heaviness she had carried out of it remained. Her eyes still burned from crying, and every now and then, she had to blink several times to clear her vision. She had driven this road countless times before, often with İsmail beside her, sometimes arguing over something neither of them would remember the next day. Now the passenger seat was empty, and the only sound inside the truck was the low hum of the engine.
As she approached Taş Köprü, the old stone bridge came into view beneath the grey afternoon sky. The road narrowed between its weathered stone walls, and Fadime instinctively slowed down. She had almost reached the bridge when another vehicle appeared ahead of her, coming from the opposite direction.
She slammed her foot against the brake.
The pickup jerked to a sudden stop, throwing her forward against the seat belt. A startled gasp escaped her lips as her hands tightened around the steering wheel. For a moment, she remained frozen, her heart hammering from the unexpected stop. Then she exhaled sharply, pushing the loose strands of hair away from her face. The sudden movement had left her already messy braid in worse condition, and several dark strands had fallen across her forehead.
“What the hell…” she muttered, looking through the windshield.
A black BMW stood a short distance ahead, its darkened windshield reflecting the cloudy sky. The side windows were heavily tinted too, making it impossible to see who was sitting behind the wheel. There was enough room for the BMW to pass her pickup if its driver maneuvered carefully, but the car remained where it was.
Fadime stared at it, irritation rising through her exhaustion. After the morning she had endured, the last thing she wanted was to argue with a stranger in the middle of the road.
She opened the pickup’s door and climbed out, shutting it behind her with more force than necessary. The cold air struck her face as she walked toward the BMW, her shoes scraping against the uneven stones beneath her feet.
But after only a few steps, something made her slow down.
Her eyes moved over the black car, from its headlights to the familiar shape of its hood. There was something unsettling about it, something that pulled at a memory she hadn’t expected to revisit.
It looked like İsmail’s old BMW.
The one he had been driving when he kidnapped her for the first time.
For a brief moment, she could almost see him sitting behind that steering wheel again, wearing that infuriatingly confident expression, looking at her as though he had every right to turn her entire life upside down. She remembered how furious she had been with him that day, how she’d sworn she would never forgive him for what he’d done.
If someone had told her then that she would one day stand beside his grave, begging to hear his voice just once more, she would have laughed in their face.
Fadime swallowed hard and forced the memory away.
It’s just a car.
There were thousands of black BMWs in the world. She knew that. She was simply tired, and everything seemed to remind her of him lately. A familiar song, a stranger’s jacket, the sound of an engine passing outside her window. She had learned that grief could turn the most ordinary things into reminders of someone who was no longer there.
She continued toward the driver’s side and stopped beside the tinted window. The glass was so dark that she could barely make out the interior. Even the windshield offered no clearer view; whoever was sitting inside remained completely hidden.
She knocked sharply against the window.
“Excuse me!” she called, struggling to keep the irritation out of her voice. “Are you planning to stay here all day?”
There was no response.
Fadime frowned and knocked again, harder this time. Her eyes were still swollen and red from the cemetery, her cheeks pale beneath the faint traces of dried tears.
“Hello? I’m talking to you!”
Still, the window didn’t lower.
She took a breath, preparing to say something considerably less polite, when she heard the unmistakable click of the door unlocking.
Fadime stepped backward to give the driver room to get out The door opened slowly.
At first, she saw only a man’s dark shoes touching the stone road, followed by the sleeve of a jacket as he pushed himself out of the driver’s seat. She was already opening her mouth to complain when he straightened to his full height.
And Fadime forgot what she had been about to say.
Her lips remained parted, but no sound came out.
The man standing in front of her had İsmail’s face.
The same blue eyes. The same eyebrows. The same familiar shape of his mouth, the same features she had spent the last two months trying desperately to preserve in her memory. Even the way he stood was painfully familiar.
For several seconds, she simply stared at him.
Her mind refused to understand what her eyes were showing her. She had been sitting beside his grave less than an hour ago. She had touched his name, kissed the cold marble, and promised to return tomorrow. She knew where he was buried. She had watched them lower his coffin into the ground.
And yet there he was.
Standing a few feet away from her.
Alive.
No. That wasn’t possible.
Her stomach twisted violently, and the ground seemed to shift beneath her feet. She took a small step backward, her gaze moving frantically over his face, searching for something that would prove he wasn’t real.
Perhaps she had finally reached the point everyone had been afraid of. Perhaps two months of sleepless nights, barely eating, and crying until she could no longer breathe had done something terrible to her mind.
She had seen him in her dreams so many times. Sometimes he came home as though nothing had happened. Sometimes he stood at the end of a corridor, smiling at her, only to disappear whenever she tried to reach him. Every time she woke up, the disappointment was so unbearable that she wished she could fall asleep again.
But she had never seen him like this.
Not in the middle of the afternoon. Not standing beneath the grey sky, beside a car that looked exactly like the one he used to drive.
Her breathing grew shallow.
No. No, this isn’t happening.
She squeezed her eyes shut, her hands trembling at her sides.
“Please…” she whispered, barely recognizing her own voice. “Not now.”
She shook her head, keeping her eyes tightly closed.
“You’re not real.”
Her throat tightened painfully.
“Please, İso… don’t do this to me.”
She stood there, waiting for the image to disappear. Waiting for her mind to correct itself, for the man to become someone else when she opened her eyes. She told herself she only needed a moment. One deep breath, and everything would return to normal.
Then a voice broke through the silence.
“Hanımefendi…”
Fadime felt the ground shift beneath her feet. Her breath caught in her throat, and suddenly, the old stone bridge seemed to spin around her. She reached for the car to steady herself, her trembling fingers pressing against its cold surface. She knew that voice. She knew its roughness, its warmth, the way it sounded when he was angry, when he laughed, when he softly called her güzelim. It was the voice she had spent two months desperately trying to remember, terrified that one day she would forget it completely.
Her eyes remained tightly shut as tears slipped down her cheeks. Only minutes ago, she had been sitting beside his grave, begging to hear him just once more. And now, here it was, so close that she could almost convince herself he had never left. Her chest tightened painfully as she struggled to breathe. She wanted to open her eyes, wanted to believe what she was hearing, but she was terrified that the moment she looked at him again, he would disappear.
She had already lost him once. She didn’t think she could survive watching him vanish a second time.
Slowly, Fadime opened her eyes.
He was still there.
She blinked several times, staring at the man standing before her as though she were waiting for his face to change. But it didn’t. The same dark eyes, the same familiar features, the same mouth she had kissed more times than she could count. She stared so intensely that her eyes began to hurt, afraid that even the smallest movement might make him disappear.
“No…” she whispered, shaking her head. “No, this isn’t possible.”
İsmail frowned, looking at her with growing confusion. He glanced briefly toward the red pickup behind her, then back at the woman who seemed to be on the verge of collapsing.
“Hanımefendi, are you alright?”
Fadime flinched at the sound of his voice. She pressed both hands against her temples, squeezing her eyes shut again. This couldn’t be happening. She had just come from his grave. She could still feel the cold marble against her lips. She remembered the funeral, the people standing around her, the sound of the earth falling onto his coffin. She remembered every terrible second of the day they told her he was gone.
And now he was asking whether she was alright.
“Stop…” she whispered, taking a step backward. “Please, just stop.”
Her breathing became uneven. She looked around the bridge, almost desperately, searching for something that might explain what was happening. Perhaps she had fallen asleep in the pickup. Perhaps she was still sitting beside his grave, dreaming with her cheek pressed against the stone. She had dreamed of him before, dreams so vivid that she sometimes woke up reaching for him, convinced he had been lying beside her only seconds earlier.
But never like this.
“Am I dreaming?” she asked herself, her voice trembling. “God… am I dreaming again?”
She looked at him, then at the black BMW, then back at his face. A frightened, disbelieving laugh escaped her, followed almost immediately by a sob.
“This isn’t funny anymore,” she whispered. “Please… I can’t do this again.”
İsmail took a cautious step toward her. “What are you talking about?”
She backed away from him instinctively, shaking her head. “You’re not here. You’re not supposed to be here.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“I was just with you,” she whispered. “I was just sitting with you, İso. I kissed you goodbye. I…”
Her voice broke. She looked down at her hands, remembering how she had pressed them against his gravestone, how she had promised to come back tomorrow. Had she imagined that too? Was any of this real?
Suddenly, the bridge seemed to tilt beneath her feet. She tried to take another step backward, but her knees weakened, and she lost her balance.
“Hey, careful!”
İsmail moved forward and caught her before she could fall, one hand closing around her upper arm while the other settled firmly against her back. Fadime instinctively grabbed the front of his jacket, her fingers curling into the fabric as she struggled to remain standing.
For a moment, she didn’t look at him.
She was too frightened to.
Her hands tightened around his jacket. She could feel the fabric gathering beneath her fingers, the pressure of his hand against her back, the warmth of his body so close to hers. She had imagined his touch so many times since his death that she no longer trusted herself to know the difference.
But then he leaned closer, trying to see her face.
“Can you stand?” he asked.
And Fadime caught his scent.
Her entire body went still.
It was him.
Not merely the familiar scent of a man’s cologne, but that particular smell she knew from his clothes, from his neck when she buried her face against it, from the pillow beside hers on the mornings he left before she woke up. She knew it so intimately that for two months she had kept one of his shirts close to her, terrified that washing it would take away the last trace of him.
She had never been able to remember a smell perfectly. No matter how hard she tried, it always faded in her mind.
But now it was there, surrounding her.
Fadime’s fingers tightened around his jacket until her knuckles turned white. She slowly raised her face, her eyes travelling from his chest to his throat, then finally to his eyes. He was so close that she could see the tiny details she remembered about his face, the ones no photograph had ever managed to capture.
She stared at him, her lips trembling.
“İso…?”
He looked at her strangely, but she barely noticed.
Her hand left his jacket and rose toward his face. She hesitated, her fingers hovering inches from his cheek, afraid to touch him. Then, slowly, she placed her palm against his skin.
Warm.
His cheek was warm beneath her trembling hand.
She drew in a sharp, broken breath. Her thumb moved slightly, brushing against his skin as though she needed to make sure she wasn’t imagining the feeling. He blinked at her touch, visibly confused, but she couldn’t bring herself to pull away.
He was breathing. She could feel the movement of his chest beneath her other hand. His skin was warm. His fingers were still holding her upright.
Only minutes ago, she had kissed a gravestone and remembered how warm his lips used to be.
And now she was touching his face.
“Oh, my God…” she breathed.
Her eyes moved frantically over him again. She shook her head, but this time the movement was different, almost helpless.
“No… no, how…”
Her mouth opened, but the words wouldn’t come. She wanted to ask him where he had been, how he had survived, why everyone had told her he was dead. A hundred questions rushed through her mind, each one colliding with the next until she couldn’t make sense of any of them.
“You’re…” She swallowed, her hand trembling against his cheek. “You’re alive?”
İsmail frowned. “What?”
She stared at him, unable to understand how he could ask that so casually.
“You’re alive,” she repeated, her voice breaking around the words.
A sob escaped her, followed by a breathless, disbelieving laugh. She looked at his face again, then touched his shoulder, his arm, his chest, as though she needed to convince herself that every part of him was really there.
“İso… you’re alive.”
She had spent sixty days imagining what she would give to have him back. She had begged for one more minute, one more embrace, one more chance to hear him say her name. And now he was standing in front of her, holding her upright, while she struggled to understand how something she had accepted as impossible could suddenly be happening.
Her face crumpled as the truth began to reach her.
“Oh, God…” she sobbed, gripping his jacket again. “You’re with me...”
For the first time in two months, the man she loved was close enough to hold.
And Fadime still couldn’t quite believe that she was allowed to touch him.
Fadime couldn’t stop touching his face. Her trembling fingers moved along his cheek, as though she were trying to convince herself that the warmth beneath her palm was real. She wanted to ask him a thousand questions, but every time she opened her mouth, another sob threatened to escape. He was alive. İsmail was alive, and somehow, after two months of mourning him, she was standing in his arms again.
But İsmail wasn’t looking at her the way she remembered.
His expression remained guarded, his eyes following her movements with an uncomfortable confusion. Finally, he caught her wrist gently and lowered her hand from his face.
“Who are you?”
Fadime froze.
For a moment, she simply stared at him, certain she had misunderstood. Then a small, nervous laugh escaped her.
“What?”
“I asked who you are.”
She searched his face for a smile, for the slightest indication that he was teasing her. “İso, what do you mean, who am I?”
He frowned at the familiarity with which she spoke to him. “How do you know my name?”
The question struck her harder than she could have imagined. Her fingers loosened around his jacket, and she stared at him in disbelief.
“How do I know your name?” she repeated. “İso, it’s me. It’s Fadime.”
He studied her face for a few seconds, as though the name might help him remember something. But nothing changed.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know you.”
Fadime shook her head. “No. No, don’t do that.” Her voice grew desperate. “Look at me properly. Please, just look at me.”
“I am looking at you.”
“Then how can you say you don’t know me?” she whispered. “İso, I’m your—”
She stopped, suddenly frightened by the emptiness in his expression. There was no recognition, no familiar affection, not even the irritation he used to show when she was being stubborn. He was looking at her as though they had never met.
“Did something happen to you?” she asked, her voice trembling. “Were you hurt? Is that why you didn’t come home?”
İsmail didn’t answer. His gaze shifted past her toward the red pickup, then to the road stretching beyond the bridge.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
Fadime blinked, confused by the sudden question. “What?”
“That road. Where are you headed?”
“Home,” she answered weakly.
“To Koçari?”
She nodded without thinking.
The change in his expression was immediate.
His hands released her arms.
Fadime wasn’t prepared for it. She had been leaning against him, her legs still unsteady, and without his support, her knees buckled. She reached for him instinctively, but he stepped away before she could catch his jacket. She fell beside the red pickup, her palm scraping against the rough stone.
For several seconds, she remained where she had fallen, too shocked to move. Then she slowly lifted her head.
“İso…?”
His name came out quietly, almost like a question. She looked at him with such wounded disbelief that, for the briefest instant, an unfamiliar sensation flickered in his chest. He couldn’t explain it, and it disappeared as quickly as it came.
Then his expression hardened.
He looked down at the front of his jacket, where her hands had been gripping him moments earlier, and brushed the fabric with a sharp, disgusted movement, as though her touch had left something dirty behind.
Fadime watched him do it.
She had seen İsmail angry before. She had argued with him, shouted at him, even hated him once. But she had never seen him look at her with such open contempt.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she whispered.
İsmail’s jaw tightened.
“I don’t help Koçarıs.”
Fadime went completely still.
“What?”
“I said I don’t help Koçarıs.” His voice was cold now. “Not after what your family did to mine.”
She stared at him, unable to understand what she was hearing.
“What are you talking about?”
“My father. My grandmother.” His eyes narrowed. “Your family killed them. Did you think I’d forget that?”
Fadime felt the blood drain from her face.
His grandmother?
She knew about the hatred between their families. She knew about the blood that had been spilled long before either of them had been born. But İsmail had never spoken to her like this. And his grandmother’s death—what was he talking about?
“İso, who told you that?” she asked, her voice barely audible.
He ignored the question.
“Stay away from me.”
Fadime’s lips parted. She wanted to tell him that he was wrong, that someone had lied to him, that whatever had happened could never explain why he was treating her like a stranger. But she could hardly think. The man who had once promised to protect her from the hatred between their families was standing over her, repeating that same hatred as though their love had never existed.
“İso…” she said again, tears spilling down her cheeks. “Please.”
He turned away.
She watched him walk toward the black BMW, waiting for him to stop, to look back, to recognize something in her voice. But he opened the driver’s door without turning around.
“İso!” she cried.
He paused only briefly.
“I’m your wife.”
The words escaped her before she could stop them.
For a moment, he stood motionless beside the open door. Then he looked back at her, his expression caught somewhere between disbelief and irritation.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
He climbed into the car.
Fadime stared at him through her tears as the engine started. She tried to stand, but her legs wouldn’t support her. By the time she managed to pull herself against the pickup, the BMW was already moving away.
“İso, please!” she screamed after him. “Don’t leave me!”
He didn’t stop.
She watched the black car disappear beyond Taş Köprü, her chest heaving as she struggled to draw breath. Then she covered her mouth, but it did nothing to quiet the sob that tore out of her. Another followed, and then another, until she was crying so hard she could barely breathe.
He was alive.
The man she had buried was alive.
But he didn’t remember her name, their marriage, or a single moment of the life they had shared. He had looked at her as though she were someone he had been taught to hate, and when she reached for him, he had stepped away as though her touch disgusted him.
Fadime curled against the side of his red pickup, her shoulders shaking with every broken breath.
She had spent two months grieving a husband she believed was dead. Now she was sitting on the same bridge where their story had begun, crying for a husband who was alive but no longer knew who she was.
İsmail shut the car door and started the engine, trying to push the strange encounter out of his mind. He had barely driven a few metres when he heard her voice again.
“İso!”
It came from somewhere behind him, broken by tears. He glanced into the rearview mirror and saw her sitting on the ground beside the red pickup, one hand stretched toward his car as though she still expected him to turn around.
“please!..”
He looked away, tightening his grip on the steering wheel. He didn’t understand why she kept calling him like that, or why she had looked so devastated when he’d told her he didn’t know her. He had never seen that woman before. At least, he couldn’t remember seeing her. Yet the sound of her crying seemed to follow him even as the distance between them grew.
He glanced at the mirror again.
She was still there, bent forward now, her hands covering her face. He couldn’t hear every sob over the engine, but he could see how violently her shoulders shook. Something about the sight made his chest tighten. It was a small, sudden sensation, almost like someone had pressed a finger against a bruise he hadn’t known was there. He frowned and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. A moment later, it was gone.
Then, without warning, a tear rolled down his cheek.
İsmail blinked in surprise. He lifted his hand from the steering wheel and touched his face, staring at the moisture on his fingertips. He hadn’t even felt himself begin to cry. He wasn’t upset, and he couldn’t think of a single reason why a stranger’s tears should affect him. For a few seconds, he sat there completely bewildered, listening to the fading sound of her voice.
He wiped his cheek and continued driving.
But before the bridge disappeared behind the bend, he looked into the mirror one last time. The woman had become a small figure beside the red pickup, almost impossible to distinguish from the grey stones surrounding her. He couldn’t see her face anymore.
He wondered why she had called him İso with such tenderness. Why she had touched his cheek as though she had done it a thousand times before. Why she’d looked so relieved to see him, only to fall apart when he walked away.
He had no answers.
And eventually, he stopped looking.
Behind him, Fadime remained on the ground, crying so hard that she could barely draw breath. She had watched his car until it disappeared, refusing to look away even after there was nothing left to see. Her hands still remembered the warmth of his face. His scent still lingered on her clothes. For the first time in two months, she knew exactly where he had been, what he had sounded like, and how it felt to have his arms around her.
But she had no idea where he was going.
She didn’t know whether she would ever see him again, whether he would remember her tomorrow, or whether the man who had once promised never to leave her would spend the rest of his life believing she was a stranger.
Fadime had spent two months mourning a man she would have given anything to see again. Now he was alive, and she could no longer recognize the person he had become. The eyes that once looked at her with so much love had held nothing but contempt.
And İsmail drove away without knowing that the woman he’d left crying on the ground was the same woman he had once loved more than his own life.
She remembered a love he no longer knew existed. He remembered a hatred that had never belonged between them.