last night i met up with renata (my longterm serbian partner in crime and female sidekick) and my friend noah for a couple of drinks and discussion my new column..so we ha ddrinks and talk and a good time in general..it became late..i left..in front of the bar i stood and realisized that all taxis had been gone...so i was about to wander down the street to the next taxi stand when i heard someone call my name..i turned arround and saw a dude walking towards me i know since a couple of years..lets call him serkan..well..no thats his real name so maybe we call him just him...he is a turkish imigrant..same age as me...lives in germany since 17 years...he has barely any hair, is very tall, and has small soft and plump hands like a child...its not as if we are friends..we had a coupe of drinks on parties..we met here and there by accident and always had more or less short conversations about religion and politics...we really arent friends..not from my side of the fence...but i thought i know him...he is a very simple guy..he works in a factory...he drives a babyblue bmw which he bought from my martial arts friend...the name and number of his dojo is still printed on the side....a friend once brought me to the guys home which he shares with his parents...a cultural shock to be honest...i dont wanna go to the details of dirty old sofas in teh kitchen...golden plastic wallpapers and sized up passportpictures in golden red frames...the piles of dirty old shoes in front of the door..the brandnew huge flatscreen and the hundreds of dvds...the fact that the friend told me that "him" tends to bring sexual partners home and have sex with them in his parents bed...all that and more really..well..not scared me but seemed to be so strange and foreign for me and all this together ended in the fact that i never had any interest in becoming friends with him...also the fact of his always same good mood..i mean not good mood in the sense but..he always smiles..no matter what..always have this blank smiling face...never complains..never has a critic thought..never displays any emotion deeper then a shoe box...
so i wasnt exactly pleased last night meeting him..it was late..i wanted home..and so i told him that i m off to search a taxi..which he hold me back from and offered me a ride since he had to drive my way...in thought for a second about it and then agreed..shortly after that we arrived in ym street and i was about to leave the car when heasked me why i dont like him...i sucked some air in ...great..that wasnt the kind of conversation i was up to...anyway..i told him that its not that i dont like him but the fact that we live in two extremly different worlds and the fact that we dont have any common interests or friends which keeps us from socialicing ...his face turned dark...the blank happyness disapeared from his face...he looke dbitterly at me and said that i m an idiot..that i dont know anything about him...his hands banged down on the steering wheel in a helpless gesture...making the miniarure koran shake which dangles from the mirror...and then he started to talk..told me about his childhood..how his parents never cared for him and how his grandparents raised him in teh turkish woods..teached him how to find edible thinks in the outsides..how he was the first one to go to school in his family since four generations..how he would run there by feet and after that wait tables in a little village nearby at the age of 10....how his parents moved to germany and his father appaered who was basicly a foreigner and took him away from hsi grandparents...how he hated germany..how he tried toi runaway...how his father would beat him up and he would runaway and hide in a park...how he dropped out of german school and start working in the factory...making confiture and chocolate bread spread which he couldnt afford to buy...bringing money home to his parents who dont work..who can not read and write...how he wouldnt finde friends...how the years passed by ...how his father beat him up with a belt in the age of 27 becaus ethe neighbours ha dtold him that he had brought me and my friend to his appartment...how the years had passed him buy..how he felt all isolated...how he would have driven to a city far away..ringed someones door...went into a foreigners appartment..teared down the window decoration and trie dto jump out of the window ...how the police came and took him away...he said no one knows about that....he sobbed..his fingers clawed in the steering wheel..without looking at me he throuw up the story of his life...layed it out in front of me..one by one..a collection of bitter days and years...i was 15 when i start to loose my hair he said...17 when the rest became greyish...by 17!..a tear rolled over hsi cheek...what do you think why that is? why i look so old when i m still so young? he asked me...its stress and sorrow that makes me old! and grey haired..i thought about my grandma who never had any stress and was white by 22...i thought about explaining him the biological reasons for greying hair but then thought that i know he thinks he can not get infected with hiv because he is a man and only women and gays get that stuff..so i thought he wouldnt believe in biology anyway...he keept on staring into the night while i looked up to my own windows where the dimmed light called me home....he told me that he had moved out for a while..lived with someone far away...was happy in that relationship..happy for the first time..but then his mother started to call him..she would cry everytime they spoke ..telling him how much she would miss him..need him...that he would hav eto come home....in the end he gave in..left his happy relationship and went back into the darkness of his parents apartment....
last night he told me all this..for the first time ever he took the veil of his played happyness away...its so sad´...but yet i know it will change nothing at all...not for him..not for me...its a horrible story...but its a foreigners story..someone i dont have any conection too..we will never be friends...i have nothing true i could give him...offering him solace or friendship would be an act of mercy and be wrong...
still..it makes me think about under how many happy faces a horrible story is hidden...
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11 comments:
Wow. I am speechless. What a story. I'll be back after I process this for a bit.
Nicely written though. I will say that much!
Thanks for sharing.
pf
Woah. That's very heavy. And yes, you are right: knowing all that stuff isn't going to make anyone like him, or make them his friend. It might make us respect him a little bit more though, for what he's been through.
Thanks. Much food for thought!
What a story, and what a bold conclusion.
You are such a good story-teller, Danielle. I felt all of it- your discomfort and longing to go into your house, to not have to listen to this man whose story may have moved you but changed nothing.
Yes. As Yoko Ono said once, "Everyone has a story to tell."
And you are a real writer- you can tell your own stories and the stories of others, too.
Thank-you for giving us this one.
Wow, very powerful.
I've known a few people like this man.
In my opinion, you were right not to argue about gray hair and etc. This fellow just wanted to be heard by someone "outside his circle." By someone he sees as being in a better situation than he.
He, in many ways, has made his mind up about life. He could be 100% wrong about a point, but it's his opinion, and he'll hold onto that wrong opinion greedily, because it's his.
You definitely put me into the setting, and made me feel the emotions you felt in dealing with him. I guess that's why I ended up with such a strong impression of him.
@ pf
yeah..i was speechless too...
@ janine
yeah i know..some heavy stuff...all that is hard to process
and even though i know all thsi will not make us friends..i respect him for standing all that...
@ mwa
yes..an di wonder how many of the faces that pass us by everyday have such a story behind them
@ ms moon
thank you..that was what i wnated..to tell his story which is untold...nobody else will know..no one of his fmaily or friends really reads or speaks english or knows about my blog...but i wanted to share his story...
by the way i m in teh middle of your story and will email you soon about it
craig..thank you very much
"This fellow just wanted to be heard by someone "outside his circle."
and i think you are utterly right with this assumption
This story says so much about this man, but it also says so much about you. Sometimes people just need a witness (like Craig said) and it is easier to go to someone who is not emotionally invested in the situation. That you would sit, and be that witness, and listen and try to understand- that is a beautiful and valuable thing you did.
And of course your writing... You made me feel it.
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