Untitled Mercan Aras
Time was running like always. But this time I wanted it to go faster. It was the summer of 1999, and I was a15 years old, anxiously awaiting August when I would finally live the summer of my dreams. My mother was taking my sister and I to Istanbul for a vacation full of what mom promised to be “café hopping and lots of shopping.” I couldn’t wait—though thinking back, I don’t know how I had time to daydream with all the packing and unpacking we were doing at that time. Before we could start the vacation, we had to finish moving into our new apartment. I always thought when we moved I would finally get a bedroom to myself, my own privacy. I thought I deserved it after a lifetime of sharing with my unbearable older sister. But this apartment was smaller then our last one. And we had to share again. The two of us could never agree about when to turn off the lights at night. I was always a serious student, one who took a lot of time with my work. I’d study for hours for an upcoming exam, bent over a stack of papers and textbooks on my blue bedspread. It drove my sister crazy to have the light on when she wanted to sleep. I would probably have made an effort to turn the lights off earlier if she wasn’t so hypocritical. She always forgot that when it was she who had an exam, she’d pull all-nighter’s cramming right before the test. On such nights, the light would still be on at 6 am, when my alarm went off. But I never said anything to her about it. To me, studying is a necessity of life, and light is a necessity of studying. So instead of complaining, I would simply bury my head underneath my pillow, shutting out as much light as possible until morning. She on the other hand, was not so courteous. On the nights I would stay up late studying, I could barely concentrate due to the endless exasperated sighs coming from her side of the room. I would usually ignore her until the inevitable “YOU’RE DONE!” followed by my sister angrily jerking back her sheets to leap out of bed, and flip off the light switch, leaving me bent over darkness. At that point I’d usually just admit defeat and go to bed. But then came one night when I refused to give in. When she turned the light off, I angrily climbed out of my own bed and flipped it back on. “Turn it off!” she said warningly. I waved her to be quiet and went back to my books. But she wasn’t backing down either. Before I knew it she was passed me again, and the room went black once more. And then it was war. We both had a hand on the light switch angrily jerking it On. Off. On. Off. On. Off, Each of us growing angrier by the minute—too angry to notice a telephone ringing upstairs. We heard about it soon enough though, for a moment later our dad was in the doorway, shaking his head. He had just gotten a call from a concerned neighbor who had seen the lights flashing off and on in the window. She was calling to make sure everyone was ok. My sister and I grumbled our apologies. My dad just continued shaking his head. My brother made the move easier for all of us. Well—more humorous anyway. He thrived on being funny and well-informed. I think the well-informed part was a way of coming up with new material. Every evening, after hours of lugging our bags and furniture from the moving trucks, he’d insist we sit together in the living room, amidst “You know the timers in those things are only set for one minute, right Mom?” my brother asked with a straight face. “The door will open automatically, no matter what.” “Really?? And what if you are not finished?” my Mother asked shocked. I remember seeing her surprised face out of the corner of my eye. I always felt a little bad when my brother joked around like that with my mom. She wasn’t as easy going as the rest of us. She had this habit of ringing her hands like the women in scary old movies. But we all did pretty well with the move. Before long we had all pretty much settled in. Most of our things were in their permanent place. My brother wasn’t joking as much and I noticed my mom wasn’t as high-strung as usual. I think she was looking forward to our trip as much as my sister and I. Our father was smiling more too. All in all, the new apartment seemed to agree with us. My sister and I still fought about the light though. As it was summer, there wasn’t any studying to do. But we still couldn’t agree when to go to bed. We awoke the next morning to an awful smell. I immediately called my mom in to investigate. “Mom, what could it be? I thought this was supposed to be a new apartment!” We soon discovered the smell was coming from the wall. We called the construction company to identify the problem. A pipe in the wall had burst. The wall had soaked up the water, and soon the entire apartment would be wet. The company brought in huge red machines to help soak up the water. All of the furniture needed to be moved. Knowing we would all have to spend the next two weeks helping with the repairs of the resulting damage, I realized my beloved trip to Istanbul was at least postponed, if not cancelled. I couldn’t help but feel angry that the one thing I was looking forward to, the one thing that had gotten me through this terrible move was not going to happen. That evening we sat watching the news together during dinner. A science program came on. It was all about lavas and earthquakes and the nucleus of the world. My brother mentioned a scientist’s recent prediction of an earthquake in Istanbul. My mother scolded him good-naturedly. “Is that another one of your jokes? Because you know your sisters and I are looking forward to our vacation there next week!” My brother looked serious though. The next morning, I awakened to the sound of his voice. He was yelling. And not in a happy way. An earthquake had just hit with a severity number of 7.4. Strong enough to destroy a city. About 18000 people buried in 43 seconds. Thousands of others homeless in one night. I looked astonishingly at my family. In an instant my mother was off the sofa to call her father residing in Istanbul. She was back to wringing her hands. My brother was speechless. My father was bent over at the waist, shaking his head. I looked to my sister. She wasn’t making much of a reaction at all. But she sat next to me on my bed that whole night, neither of us saying anything, neither of us wanting to turn off the lights.
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