since you asked
Last night I dreamt about Oludeniz, the hotel I spent my childhood summers in. It is almost unbelievable, because my dad dropped me off with a car and I ran towards the garden bar that was once there, before they changed the garden area so many times; removed the bar, removed the swings, the ping-pong tables, added the swimming pool. Every summer we went there, I would find something had been altered but I would generally be the same, with my books and summer outfits and hopeless love stories.
But in my dream I ran towards the garden bar that was there when I was like 5, and started talking to this waiter -Ahmet abi- who was there through most of my childhood. But I was me -a grown up who can reach and lean over the bar- and he was somewhat older. I still called him Ahmet abi -something that suggests that he is older than me- but secretly wondered what what my older version was to him. I admit to always having had a thing for him, Ahmet the waiter.
And so, -late- in the morning I woke up with Gulin's key in the door, telling me to "wake up" so I do. (This is major, nobody wakes another off their sleep in my family.) There's a letter in her hand, a long-expected one from Marion&Heinz Hartner, my parents' ancient friends from that hotel in Oludeniz. From the time of the garden bar. We would meet them every summer in the hotel, and sometimes they would visit us in Denizli and stay in the beautiful hotels of Pamukkale. There would be ceremonies of exchanding presents. That was the highly European and definitely non-Turkish part of my childhood, which prompted me to utter the words "Heins nice man" at the age of 6 or something. Gulin and I were his froggies. I think we still are.
Yes, I am still a froggy with skinny legs and green eyes, opening the huge boxes of Barbie-doll equipments in half-lit hotel rooms and sleeping in dad's lap as they sat and talked in the garden late into summer nights, drinking gin and tonics. And maybe I am still after the mystery of the scent of hotel rooms accomodating Europeans- the curious combination of moisturizers and magazines, candies and insect repellents, sunblocks and perfumes. Why doesn't my room ever smell like that?
Yes, I still want to know.
But in my dream I ran towards the garden bar that was there when I was like 5, and started talking to this waiter -Ahmet abi- who was there through most of my childhood. But I was me -a grown up who can reach and lean over the bar- and he was somewhat older. I still called him Ahmet abi -something that suggests that he is older than me- but secretly wondered what what my older version was to him. I admit to always having had a thing for him, Ahmet the waiter.
And so, -late- in the morning I woke up with Gulin's key in the door, telling me to "wake up" so I do. (This is major, nobody wakes another off their sleep in my family.) There's a letter in her hand, a long-expected one from Marion&Heinz Hartner, my parents' ancient friends from that hotel in Oludeniz. From the time of the garden bar. We would meet them every summer in the hotel, and sometimes they would visit us in Denizli and stay in the beautiful hotels of Pamukkale. There would be ceremonies of exchanding presents. That was the highly European and definitely non-Turkish part of my childhood, which prompted me to utter the words "Heins nice man" at the age of 6 or something. Gulin and I were his froggies. I think we still are.
Yes, I am still a froggy with skinny legs and green eyes, opening the huge boxes of Barbie-doll equipments in half-lit hotel rooms and sleeping in dad's lap as they sat and talked in the garden late into summer nights, drinking gin and tonics. And maybe I am still after the mystery of the scent of hotel rooms accomodating Europeans- the curious combination of moisturizers and magazines, candies and insect repellents, sunblocks and perfumes. Why doesn't my room ever smell like that?
Yes, I still want to know.
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