Dawn by Sevgi Soysal

Author:Sevgi Soysal [Soysal, Sevgi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2022-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

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The office is wreathed in smoke. Zekai Bey stubs out his cigarette in the metal ashtray that was a new year’s gift from Ismet Bey, the manager of the International Industry and Commerce Bank. He likes this ashtray. When he presses on a lever at its side, all the ashes fall into a lower chamber. Zekai could spend entire days playing with his lighter, his ashtray, and a good fountain pen. He prefers them to people, he feels more attached to them. But he needed to keep changing these little gadgets. To keep himself happy. The people Zekai Bey keeps around him are well aware of this, and they do what they can to keep him happy. But now, when Zekai Bey pushes down on the ashtray’s little lever, nothing happens. And that annoys Zekai Bey to no end. Someone had broken his ashtray. He was about to ring the bell for the janitor and give him a good scolding, when he remembered that he’d brought his little daughter Ayça into the office with him that morning. And she’d been playing with the ashtray. Zekai Bey lost his frown. He doted on this little daughter of his, born after ten years of marriage. She was the only one in the world who could break his beloved gadgets and get away with it. He imagined her tiny little fists and smiled. Why fret over an ashtray, my dear? He remembered now that he’d promised to bring her a box of colored pencils. When she woke up in the morning, she’d be upset not to find them next to her bed. Because that was what she grown to expect: if she asked her father for something, it was waiting there for her when she woke up. It looked like this anarchist business was going to keep him here till morning. As soon as the shops open, I’ll send out the chauffeur to buy them. He can drop them off at the house. But what if his wife is still asleep then? She’ll be asleep, for sure. When does the lazy thing ever wake up when she should? The thought of his wife has Zekai Bey frowning again. His mother had chosen this woman for him because of the land she owned in the Karataş District. But in all this time, God be his witness, it’s never brought him more than a tin or two of olive oil. In exchange for that olive oil, he had to spend his days with this stillbirth of a woman. Her pudgy round face. Her skin so dark it verged on purple. Always complaining of backaches or some other ache in that husky voice of hers. And oh, how she huffed and puffed when she got up in the morning. Thinking now of the thick, dark, oily hairs she left on her pillow, his stomach went sour. But they did still have relations once a week. This he still did. It had to be

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