A letter to my dead friend I never met

A Story by Enes Ahmeti

Each short story for the competition should be about 2500 words. It takes place in the year 2025. Two students meet at Geneva University. One is from Armenia, one from Turkey. Who are they?...

A letter to my dead friend I never met

Dear Friend,

Today while writing this paper I am old and lonely. I have taken on my bed which stinks from the waste and my body`s decay. I am in such circumstances that I cannot even pour myself a glass of water. As of this moment, hunger is banging on my stomach and I feel powerless to move. However, I do not want to complain for complaining is a habit of losers; and for sure, I am not one of them. Since we never met, I wanted to share a crucial story of my life, a story which led me to take refuge to the mountains and to get rid of this indoctrinated world. This story is about HER, the light of eyes, the love of my heart, the whispers that wakes me up after every nightmare, ALMIRA.

As a successful person living in Geneva, I always had a look that filtered people. It worked in such a way that I always looked them down. Not only this, but I had established the power of making those individuals surrounding me feel that they had no power to compete with me, they were in a lower position compared with me. No other person was able to overcome and beat my position in society. I was working in a company where the boss loved me. The poor guy after a while, depending on my performances as he said, gave me half of the company`s shares. This obsession he had for me, he would never be able to get rid of his entire life. However, I am not surprised from his behavior; besides my performances in the company, I was able to develop a new way of thinking in mathematical reasoning. I invented a new way to represent society in large scale numbers. Everyone was astonished from this invention, even CNRS, The National Center for Scientific Research, invited me to work with them. But why would I do something like that? I was the king of Geneva, the guy in suits, all that was needed was for me to point at anything, and like that would come to life. In my social life, I had the chance to meet many women. Unfortunately, all the women I met, they had a flaw that did not fit my personality, or I would say my preferences. For example, Sarah was emotional, Anna had a strange smile and Laura was a little hairy. Contrary to this, women loved me. I was handsome, my body was in a perfect shape and the way I spoke was immaculate. When I used to speak, people used to say that it sounded like I am spilling poetry words. Thus, I was never in love but much being loved.

Usually, some weak people I used to meet accused me of being selfish and arrogant. I had no time to deal with them, after all why would the king of the jungle speak with an insect? Lions use their paws to kill the fly. Even though they used to accuse me, in contrast to that, I gave them the freedom to speak about me whatever they wanted. Freedom was the key to success for me. Since I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted, I believed that the weak and the sick of society should be given the freedom to complain at least. Freedom is a sacred entity my friend, one must not violate it. I detested people who had habits which would lead them astray from freedom. Smoking, drinking, drugging, these mere habits only take humans away from their right of choice. One day I even fired one of the most overzealous employees while he was smoking during his break time. Due to these set of beliefs I had, I never had an addiction and I was a free spirit.

My dear friend, you know quite a bit about my personality and the circumstances I lived in; thus, let me go back to my story. One late rainy night accompanied with the echoing of the thunder, I was driving home from work. I was exhausted and I could not open my eyes. It felt like everything was in motion, my body moving in the car, the trees outside, the partial pieces of the moon I could see, everything was blurry and I felt as if someone had overdosed me with huge amount of liquor. I was driving the car in a timeless bubble where everything was moving. During these moments, accidentally, I dropped the key of my suitcase under the seat, and the daydream disappeared. I tried to stretch myself to reach the keys but I could not grab them. I tried once more and then twice and thrice but I could not reach them anyhow. Frowning, I put the car in the automatic gear and I stretched my head under the wheel, helped with my feet and I was able to grab the key. In this very moment, while I was unstretching myself, I saw that a biker was crossing the street, I could not stop the car. I hit the break with all my power but the car was sliding in the slippery asphalt. I will never forget the look of the biker, she had frozen in the middle of the way and while the sliding car was approaching she looked directly into my eyes as if she wanted to ask me: “You are crossing in a red light”. A scratching noise only finished with a bump that would change my entire life. The entire story lasted only one second but to me it looked like an infinite period. The bump woke me up from the timeless dimension and immediately I went out of the car, only to see that blood had covered the road. I had never experienced the smell of blood before, and goodness gracious, it made me throw out. I was frozen like a tree and I did not know what to do. The smart guy, that I was, did not even know the emergency number. I started shaking and after some contemplation, I took that innocent woman in my hands and placed in the car. I started the engine and rushed to the hospital. One of the nightshift doctors shook his head and said something in Latin to the main doctor. They rushed to the emergency room and disappeared from the view leaving me with my thoughts and powerlessness. When I crushed her, I had crushed all the set of the beliefs I had. With each beep and clear sound I heard from the emergency room, I could feel that a belief of mine was fading away. I did not have a thing I could do, thus my freedom was gone. I did not have a person to call to bring her back to life, thus my power was gone. I did not have a reasoning solution to fix this, thus my mental capacity was gone. Still I could hear the doctor shout “clear” and it was clear to me that I was not the guy in charge anymore; I had fell from the throne that I had placed myself on. I had never believed in God, but this time powerless in my stillness, I raised my head towards the sky and said: “If you exist, please, I am begging you to take her back to life”. I sat on a chair speechless and I was listening to the beeps and the clears sounds. Indistinctly, I could hear other voices in the corridor, people shouting in a strange language, running towards the emergency room and trying to break the door to enter whereas the nurse was backing them off. It became clear to me that it was her family whom were giving me as much as hateful, pitiful looks. Her mother took a seat right next to me and could not stop herself from weeping. With all this tragedy I had caused, in the beep voices and the melodious weeping of her mother, I fainted with the suitcase`s key in my hand. It was later when the man shook me and hugged me while saying in a broken French that she survived. Her father, a stranger to me initially, now had become my family and was crying on my shoulder.

Each day after that, while she was in the hospital, I visited her with a bouquet of flowers in my hand. Her family was really nice towards me; her father used to say “Simon, we really appreciate everything you are doing for us”, and then her mother would continue: “We know that you did not mean to do such act. Don`t worry my son!” With her words, she used to direct me nice looks of gratitude. Yet to this day I haven`t been able to detect if these looks were a product of her really feeling pity for me, or it was because I paid for all the expenses of the hospital. I continued to visit her everyday after work for two weeks, 14 days, and on the 15^th day when I went there, the nurse told me that the mistress got better and they left. They did not even have the decency to leave me an address or a phone number.

No matter how pissed off I was, I continued with my life. However, this time I changed �" I was looking at people with respect and tried to understand the reasons why some of them are more ignorant, or I should say less knowledgeable, then the others. I started contemplating the world, the reason why we live, the purpose and the meaning of life. I engaged myself in volunteering activities and my old “weak” enemies were still backbiting on my back that there was a materialistic reason why I was doing all of these. Moreover, I had a debt to pay back; that day when I was in my powerless position, I directed my prayers to God who answered me and I had to start keeping a relationship with him. I was not interested in religions because I believed that God appears to each individual in different forms. For one like me appeared when I was desperate and answered my prayer, for another He might have appeared when success was achieved and from joy that person thanked Him and so on. So I started praying in my way, once a day, after I would finish work, I used to raise my head towards the sky and say “I love you”.

One day while I was taking a walk in the English Garden Park, I saw her but she did not notice me. Apparently, or so it looked to me, she had been running and now she was heading home. She was wearing some tight black stretches and a purple sleeveless t-shirt. I started following her, I was about 20 meters away from her and I could see in every step she took, it felt like the nature is singing a song only for her and her body was dancing to the melody. Passing through the park in every step she took, it seemed as if a flower was blossoming. Those little strings in her pony hair style were dancing with the steps. Her booty cheeks with each step were dancing and growing in me a great desire to talk to her. Before I reached her, I looked once more towards the sky and I said to Him: “Read my mind”. I approached her and touched her in the back. “Excuse me” I started “Do you remember me? I am Simon from… you know…” She smiled and said that how could she have forgotten me?! I continued to walk with her and I firstly asked her if she was alright. She told me that she could never have been better and that her health has been improving even more than before the accident. In the last words she relieved a laughter voice and continued to smile. I asked her if she wanted to drink a cup of coffee together and she kindly accepted. To be honest, I do not really remember what we spoke about that day because I had gotten drunk from the way she spoke, the nonchalant ways of movements and laughter. In the end, we exchanged numbers and we promised to keep in touch. We started texting with each other, later it developed in long calls and then we were seeing each other quite often. In each meeting, I learned something new from her; although she was a university dropout, she had great knowledge about arts, science and literature. One day after we were in relationship, I asked her how come you know so many things; with her smiling voice she said: “Well, I am a great autodidact.”

After a considerable amount of meeting we had together, I felt like she was the flawless person I had my entire life been looking for. It is funny because one day my colleague Pierre said that she is not very beautiful and she has more flaws comparing to the women I had before. But I reacted offensively towards him and he said that this is how it feels to be in love. I created a very romantic environment one day, which I do not want to go through the planification, and I expressed her my love and immediately asked her to marry me. She was shocked! She started crying and she gave me the kiss. It was our first kiss and even though I had had many kisses before that, this time, my chest opened and absorbed all the love from her chest. I could feel my blood moving throughout the veins. We stayed for a while together and then we decided to go to my apartment. When we arrived there, I pull out the keys from my pocket and when I tried to put the key on the lock, she asked me what does this word on the key label mean? I started laughing so hard and I provoked by asking her that how it is possible that she does still not know my surname? I told her that the word written on the key is “Coşkun” which is my surname and means sharp. Immediately she reacted by saying: “ohh no, no, no” and her beautiful neat forehead drew a line between her brows. She started crying and told me that it is going to be impossible. She said that she is Armenian and my being Turkish will be unacceptable for her family. I was ignorant of the history between the two countries and I asked her: “So what? Didn`t this happen a long time ago?” She continued crying on my shoulder; however, with my great eloquence, I was able to convince her that everything will be alright.

Two weeks later she came running to my place, beaten up and covered with bruises, and told me that her father said that he will never bless our marriage. Her father had told her that she had dishonored the name of the family and that he will never accept that his grandchildren`s blood to be mixed with that of a dirty Turk. For the second time in my life, I was left speechless, I stood still and I did not know what to do. She hugged me and she said: “Let`s run away. A country far away from this place. You have the money, let`s just run, please…”I was shocked and I was left with the choices of following my royal career or leaving with my love. For a month I was trying to come up with another solution, but it did not work and as a result I chose to be next to the bloom of my heart. We decided to run away one evening when her parents were visiting some relatives. I told her to leave everything behind but she insisted on taking some of the photos as a memory. She went inside and only God knows how scared I was during that time. I was afraid that they might kill her and I would be the reason of it. For twenty minutes which seemed to me as one life I was waiting for her. She came out with her luggage and we walked towards the car which I had parked away from her house. We walked for ten minutes and we arrived at the place where the car was parked. I placed her luggage in the trunk and looked at her and she looked back at me with her beautiful smile. “America is waiting for us” she said. I kissed her passionately and entered the car. I put the key to start the engine and looked at the seat next to me, the passenger one �" she was not there. I got panicked and went out of the car to see where she went - Only to see that she was stabbed with a knife in her heart. I heard people running and speaking the strange language. I approached the light of my eyes that was fading away from this life. I sat down next to her holding her head and crying like a baby. I tried to remove the knife but I dared not to do that. I called the ambulance this time, they came but now it was too late. She did not belong to this dirty world anymore. She went up in the sky and left a stain in my heart, she continued looking at me with her lifeless eyes and in this moment I realized that I will never have her again.

Later on, depression got me, I quit my job and locked myself inside the flat. One day police came at knocked on the door and started reciting those monotonous words: “Mr. Coşkun, you are under arrest. You have the right…”. I was sentenced 20 years in prison for killing my love. I did not hire a lawyer and I did not refute the accusation; for me life was meaningless after that…

I do not want to describe my life in prison because that is a different story. However, after I had finished my sentence, I decided to take refuge in the mountains because living in an indoctrinated world for me there is no sense. I had never identified myself as a Turk or a Muslim, rather I always identified myself as a Swiss. I even did not know any word in Turkish language. I had never been there and had no desire to visit that country. However, the ghosts of the past kept haunting me even though I never wanted or had any interest in them. The nationality of my forefathers brought me, a Swiss citizen, the plague of loosing love, her, ALMIRA.

Today while writing this letter my friend, I do not have a pen, what I am using is a key and with it I am scratching the paper. Keys led me to meet my love, keys led me to the death of my love. Keys led me to believe in God, keys led me to forget and despise God. Keys led me to success and keys led me to failure.

With no love or gratitude,

Simon Coşkun �" 22.04.2056