Lighthouse: I have been practicing brightness. Fog: I have been practicing almost. Lighthouse: Ships depend on me. Fog: Ships doubt you. (long pause full of salt) Lighthouse: I am not afraid of being seen. Fog: I am not afraid of being felt. Somewhere offshore, a bell rings without choosing sides.

You try to sleep off the jetlag but get thwarted by the cacophony of vile scents invading your cabin. You desperately wrap your Oxford scarf around your nose, hoping the smell of the carefully placed cow excrement every ten meters would not pervade the thick British winter fabric. However, shit from a holy animal or not doesn’t care if you’re a Rhodes scholar or not. Certainly not its smell. And so sleep heads north while you continue south. You look at your two giant luggage

She was never a writer, not that I know. Yet that day, the tons of paper sheets I found in the dusty pantry, hidden between the pickle jars and my broken bicycle, told a different story. The meticulous handwriting was my grandmother’s; the same as the carelessly scribbled addresses, names, and phone numbers I saw in the kitchen every day. I took the first sheet that came to my hand and began to read. Şehnaz Özdemir. What an unusual name. The paper said the woman was the mana