Thursday, September 30, 2010

It happens sometimes...

It just happened again; a motor somewhere purrs down some street on a normal night, and there is a sound like a garbage dumpster being dropped. After that, the motor is silent. Sometimes there are rapid-fire voices immediately afterward, and the men at the tea shop downstairs stop playing their game. For an instant, the voices of people on adjascent balconies stop... just long enough to listen to the nothing that happens after the crash before resuming their conversation. The men at the tea shop start to play their game again, whatever that game is. Even from my apartment on the eighth floor, I can hear the plastic pieces moving around on the game board.

Tonight it was a motorbike that went suddenly silent, and the script played out predictably. Now, only minutes after the crash, I can hear the usual sounds around my apartment as if nothing happened. Maybe in Turkish people wondered aloud, "Was that a crash?" "I don't know. Maybe not..." before the hiccup in their converstion passed and the topic turned back to the usual. I don't know. I don't speak Turkish.

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