“Your salary should be ready on Monday morning. Regards, Fatih Bey.”

Finally.

I get up and look out the window at the streets where I’m staying. Everything is soaking wet, with no sign of the rain letting up. Twelve noon and the sky is dark as night. The traffic is terrible. It’s always bad in Istanbul, but when it rains it’s worse.

The car horns shout out in staccato bursts, answered by long, loud moans, like the city is exposing its guts. The bus drivers choke the lanes, shout at other drivers, who respond in kind.

My name is Gökhan. (That’s Ger-kan, I know Turkish names are hard for foreign people sometimes; if it helps, just remember “Gök” means “Sky” and “Han” means, “king.” So I’m King of the Sky, or Lord of the Sky).

In Turkey, all of our names have meanings. My flatmate Deniz, his name means “Sea.” People sometimes ask if we become our names or if our names become us. I don’t know, maybe. I do know that Deniz is a really calm, easy-going guy – on the surface – but he can be really emotional on the inside.

I do know one thing though: if I really was the Lord of the Sky, I sure as hell wouldn’t be here right now. And I wouldn’t be broke. Where would I be? Sunny L.A., my friend. Growing and selling weed. Or maybe Amsterdam. But definitely not Istanbul. Don’t get me wrong, I love Istanbul. I love her like a sister, just not one of mine.

“Are you going out today?”

Irem’s voice, hoarse with the first morning’s cigarette, startles me for a second. Speaking of ballbusters. OK, in fairness to Irem, she has put up with my shit for two weeks now. She’s Deniz’s girl. Responsible, good-looking as hell. She’s wearing one of Deniz’s white oxford shirts, with nothing else. She’s tall, small-breasted, with long, good legs and nice feet. The name Irem, btw, doesn’t have a Turkish meaning. It’s probably Arabic in origin. She’s Turkish, but some of our names come from Arabic – it all goes back to the Ottoman Empire.

“Yeah, I’ll be out in an hour or so,” I say.

“Do you have any lessons?” Irem asks, holding the cigarette in her long, slender hand. She’s an accountant at a foreign company in Şişli.

“What about you, no work today?”

“I took the day off,” she says. “Deniz and I are going to Büyükçekmece this weekend. I’m packing – or supposed to be. So – the house is yours for the weekend.”

“Tamam. OK.”

“Oh, and Deniz left this for you.” She hands me a 50-lira note.

“Wow, thanks.” I’m not surprised. As I said, Deniz is really cool. He knows about my situation with the school.

“No problem,” Irem says. She says it like it’s she who’s giving me the money, like it was her idea.

We look at each other. I’m wondering if she’s going to bring up “the question” about me going into the army.

“I’m going to have a shower,” I say, cutting her off.

“Help yourself,” she says, with a kind of blank smile. She glides off, trailing her cigarette and those nice, smooth legs, toward the other bedroom and closes the door.

Irem always says these things that get on your nerves. Things like, “Are you still sitting in that sofa?” or “Are you going to wear that shirt?” Like she knows something about you, some embarrassing secret. God, and Deniz wants to marry her. She talks to him the same way and the poor bastard eats it up, like she’s his mom or something. Not me, brother.

The shower is nice and hot. I sing a little G n R as the water runs down, waking me up. Deniz and I were up late, drinking Bomonte and playing football on PlayStation. I think that’s what Irem’s pissed off about, tbh.

I shave (using Deniz’s razor, but what can I do?), brush my teeth. I analyze myself. I look good, all things considered. A little dark under the eyes. People say I look like a pirate because of my mustache and wavy dark hair. Whatever. I put on some jeans and a heavy black sweater my mom got me for my last birthday (I’m 27 this year). She’s living in Toronto now with relatives, and said she didn’t have any cash to send this year. My father is up in Moscow and they’re not speaking again. They go through these weird post-divorce phases. I don’t care either way. Six months ago, my father cut me off. Said it was time I “became a Man,” etc. And this after I finally managed to graduate from Sabanci. “It’s about time you did something,” is all he said.

And then just recently I got served a notice to report for my military service. That’s the question I was referring to.

Irem says something from the hallway.

“What?” I say, opening the door. The steam goes out into the hallway.

“I’m going out,” Irem says. She’s smartly dressed, with a thick coat with a whitey, downey hood.

“OK,” I say. “Maybe see you on Monday then.”

She fixes me with a knowing look.

We’ll see,” she says. “Haydi, görüşürüz.”

“Güle, güle.”

###

Outside, the rain has stopped. Thank God. We can talk a bit as we walk. I talk to myself, btw. Hope that doesn’t freak you out. It does some people. But Einstein talked to himself, are you going to argue with Einstein? It’s the weed that does it, I guess. Maybe Einstein smoked weed. I smoked some at the flat before going out, one more thing Irem disapproves of.

Anyhoo, I’m feeling nice and stoned walking along, letting people push past me, ducking under umbrellas and dodging the puddles. Cars pass, sometimes throwing up these big splashes and you have to watch for that too. But I like the rain, it makes me feel good for some reason.

Good old, Deniz. It was cool of him to spot me the 50 lira. That gives me 100 total to make it through the weekend until Monday, when I can collect the money from the school. They owe me 1,500 lira. But they’ve been promising to pay for the past week. The owner is this really arrogant, retired businessman, and he and his wife try to cheat the teachers (most of them are foreign) every chance they get. But they’re dealing with I, the Lord of the Sky, bitches. I told them the other day I’d have the Ministry of Education on their asses, and that my father was a big businessman who knows everybody in Istanbul (that’s partly true, anyway – he used to know everybody in Istanbul, long story). But that’s the way you have to play it in this city sometimes.

Well, we’ll see come Monday if they come through. I’m counting on that money, as you can probably imagine. It could be the big difference in my life right now. With that money – I know, it’s only 1,500 lira, but it gives me options. Without money, you have no options. You’re stuck. Capitalism, my friend! Wasn’t my idea. Don’t get me wrong – I’m no socialist. I mean, the Soviet system was a nice experiment, but it failed. And I like money, and property and all that, it’s just that I’d like to have a bit more of it for myself. If Bill Gates can have 50 billion dollars, why can’t he send me a little bit, say 1 million? That’s nothing to him, but it would mean the world to me! Imagine what you could do with a million? I know what I would do, friend. I’d get myself residency in the U.S., move to Cali and set up a pot farm.

At any rate, if the school doesn’t pay up on Monday, I’m screwed. I don’t want to do my military service. It’s mandatory here in Turkey, and I was able to put it off while I was at university – most guys my age do. But now that I’m finished, they keep calling me. I’m supposed to go down on Monday and report – a notice was sent to my old address, and the landlady gave it to Ali Bey, who texted me. Ali Bey (I call him Ali Baba) is this tekel bayii (liquor store owner) in the neighborhood. My landlady (I still owe her last month’s rent, but fuck that, I’m paying her) knows that I still go to Ali Bey’s market because he lets me have beer and cigarettes on credit.

Actually that’s where we’re going now. I’m trying to hold onto my cash, at least as much as possible.

Anyway, you’re probably wondering why I don’t just go and do the military service. It’s only a year, right? My friends – including Deniz – all say the same thing. “Just get it over with,” they say. Deniz – lucky bastard – already did his service. He ended up with a soft job, serving tea and coffee in a canteen in a base in Izmir. Me? What do you think will happen to me? With my luck, I’ll be shipped off to Syria to get my ass shot at by Kurdish militants or ISIS. Fuck that! Not that I support terrorism or anything like that. No way, dude. I’m totally against those barbaric scumbags. I think they should be wiped off the face of the planet. And I think al-Assad is a douchebag puppet of the Russians. Don’t ask me what I think of our president – they arrest people even the smallest insult nowadays. Trust me: you have to really be careful in Turkey nowadays.

###

It’s been a fucked up year, hasn’t it? First David Bowie, then Prince, then Leonard Cohen, then our little failed military coup in Turkey, then Brexit, then Trump, the Italian referendum, blah, blah, blah. I’m a conspiracy theorist by nature, I should tell you. But don’t ask me what to make of all this. I’m still working on that. Plus, as you can see, I’ve had a lot of other shit on my mind of late.

I’ve been reading a lot more of the Russians. Lots of Dostoevsky especially. Raskolnikov, I can relate to him. His poverty, his desperateness, his feelings of superiority. I’ve even thought of murdering my landlady tbh, ha ha! Nah, that old bitch can keep her little room in Besiktaş. Did you know she tried to get me to have sex with her? Seriously – one night I was just hanging out in my room, listening to some Metallica (her husband is disabled, in his seventies or something) and this old bitch comes in all coming on to me. I, of course, said “No way!” and it was only after that that she kicked me out. True story.

No, you don’t have to worry about me, bro. I hate violence. Too dirty and real, I guess. My friend from school Haluk, he’s the opposite. He’s a kickboxer, body-builder. One time we were hanging out with these German Erasmus students. We got drunk, and one of the German dudes – he was pretty big himself – started talking shit about Turks. He said we were “dogs.” And before you know it, Haluk jumped on the guy, slammed him against the wall. Punched him so hard he broke the guy’s jaw. Seriously. I didn’t have any problem with that, tbh. One thing, dude: be careful what you say about us Turks. Angels in peace, devils in war. It’s really true. I like Germans, especially their football teams. They’re disciplined, efficient and all that, but sometimes they can be arrogant bastards. You probably know there are a lot of Turks living in Germany. It goes back to the Sixties, when the Germans after the war needed people to work in the factories. They let a lot of Turks emigrate, figuring it would be just for the short term. But guess what – the Turks never left. And nowadays, with Syria and all the refugees going to Europe, and terrorism, you hear a lot of people talking shit. Well, sucks to be them, I guess.

###

I arrive at the tekel.

Ali Bey isn’t there. Instead it’s a young kid who I recognize as his nephew.

“Hoş geldiniz,” the nephew says.

“Where’s your uncle?” I ask.

“Evde. He’s at home sick today.”

“Ah, geçmis olsun,” I say, passing on get well wishes. He thanks me.

The nephew is very neat, well-groomed. I see that he doesn’t really trust me, for whatever reason. But when I mention Ali Bey he seems to relent. I ask about the army notice, and he checks near the register. There’s the verisiye defter, or account book, where all the creditors’ names are kept. He hands me an envelope. I put it in my jacket pocket.

“And four packs of Marlboro Red,” I say.

Grabbing the cigarettes from behind the counter, the nephew gives them to me. I tell him to put them on my tab. He asks my name, and seeing it already in the notebook, nods and makes a note. I squint to see how much is already owed: 158 TL, for beer and cigarettes I got the other night.

“Sag ol,” I say, already heading out the door. “Tell Ali Bey I’ll settle up on Monday.”

“Tabii k, no problem,” the nephew says.

That’s a relief. Enough cigarettes to last until Monday. Thank God for the verisiye defter, that’s all I’ll say. Where would we be without credit? Some day that’s the big problem in Turkey, in the world, these days. The lira’s way down against the dollar, the euro is in chaos because of Greece and Portugal, etc. We’re drowing in debt. China’s buying up all the credit and one day they’ll cash in. We studied all this at university (I majored in economics, btw). Well, maybe all that’s true, bro. But it’s not my problem. Nope, it’s not my cross to bear.

###

“If you can’t laugh at the misfortunes of others, what can you laugh at?” This guy at Hunter College, a guy from L.A., used to say this. He was really cool, he’s the one who got me into wanting to move out to Cali. Hunter College was cool, too. But things didn’t work out. I guess you could say I spent a little too much time on extracurricular activities. Ended up flunking my classes. That’s why I had to come back to Turkey. I almost didn’t make it back. My father was so pissed about it when he found out he was like, “You can just stay in your America if you just want to piss your opportunities away! Best of luck!” He didn’t want to send the money for a plane ticket, if you can believe that. He was just going to leave me stranded because I’d disappointed him. It was my mother who finally persuaded him to let me fly back to Istanbul. They were going through the divorce at that time, so things were really shaky back home.

###

Speaking of shaky situations. We were talking about me not going into the army, right. Yeah, it’s not for me. I realize the situation in Syria. I sympathize. It’s a tragedy. We see the people here every day. You can see a lot of them over in Sultanahmet, and along the waterfront in Kadıköy over on the Asian side. They sit on the sidewalks with their dirty faces, their skinny children, their shabby clothes and blankets, the pathetic placards asking for help. What can I say? Some of them probably have more money that I’ve got. I’m not exactly flourishing, my friend.

No, it’s a fucked-up situation. That’s why I want to get out of here, as I keep saying.

One of my professors at Sabanci once said, “Your problem, Gökhan, is you’re too smart for your own good. You end up chasing your own tail!”

Yeah, well … as they say in America, opinions are like assholes, everybody’s got one.

Five o’clock. Back at the flat. Had a glorious nap. I wake up, smoke some weed, and browse Facebook while listening to some Barış Manco. There’s a video of a man punching a kangaroo. WTF??? I write, sharing the video on my timeline. A text from Deniz, repeating what Irem had already told me. “See you Monday (???) “Maybe,” I text.

After a while, I get ready to go out. Guns n Roses are blasting their way through “Paradise City.”

I drum along, landing the big beats in mid-air as I put on my black leather jacket. I go out to the balcony. It’s cold out, my breath freezes.

Down on the street, the rain has stopped again, but the wind bites through the coat. Friday evening traffic. Everybody’s going out. Across the street, some workers are drilling a big hole, while a tractor scoops up the dirt and piles it onto the sidewalk.

How many hours until Monday morning? I make a rough mental count – approximately sixty three. What to do with all that time?

The Bosphorus is its usual gun-metal grey. I walk past the walls of Dolmabahçe Palace, the chestnut trees swaying in the early evening wind. I grab a dolmuş and head up the hill past the football stadium to Taksim.

###

Up on the square, the wind is whipping everyone along the broad pavement. Over in Gezi Park the trees have taken on that stark, winter look. I walk through the crowds over to to Istiklal Caddesi.

It looks dead.

The street is usually lit up with festive, eerie blue holiday lights this time of year, but ever since the troubles started, Taksim has really gone downhill. It’s just not what it once was. Lots of places are shutting down, moving away because they’re afraid of bombings.

Anyway, I duck down a pasaj and past the dinner tables, where the waiters are shouting in excited voices, waving potential customers in. I brush past until I find Nevizade, a little pasaj where there are some good bars.

I settle on a bar that offers smoking tables protected from the wind by a plastic canopy and brassieries that were already lit for the evening crowds. The bar is still pretty quiet though. The garson brings a pint of Bomonte.

I light a Marlboro and sip the pint of beer, watching the people pass. Everybody seems in a great rush, as they always do in Istanbul. Probably rushing home to warm gatherings, dinner tables stuffed with kebab and köfte and potatoes – cold weather comfort food, my favorite – and everyone’s happy it’s the weekend. They have nothing to worry about. Nice to be them.

My life seems to have fallen into this empty chasm, an abyss. I feel like I’m blown apart by every passing wind. Even Deniz and Irem have plans. They’re going to see his parents this weekend. Well, at least I have the flat to myself.

I finish the pint, and the garson brings another. The price of beer has gone up again. How many pints can 100 TL buy? I quickly add it up … six, maybe seven. Cigarettes have gone up again, too. I noticed that earlier at the tekel. And the dollar keeps going up against the lira. It’s like 4.5 now. A couple of years ago it was 2. All because of the politics of my beloved country, the war, terrorism and all that.

Seven-thirty. I’m talking about these and other things with some Swiss guys at the next table. They’re all Erasmus students, out for the weekend.

“That’s cool,” I said. I’ve always admired the Swiss.

Over the next couple hours, we drink beer and talk about the political situation. The euro, the war in Syria, our president, the Italian referendum, the dollar and euro, and how basically everything is going to hell.

“So are you planning to leave Turkey?” one of them asks.

“As soon as possible, bro.”

“Where would you go?”

“Weighing my options, bro.”

Eventually, they get ready to leave. They’re heading up to Taksim, out in search of the clubs. While the bill was being settled, I manage to squeeze past some new arrivals and lose myself in the Friday evening crowd. In a dash, I’m around the corner, navigating the narrow back streets. How many beers – five, six? My head is a swimming. I feel good though, especially since the 100 lira is still in my wallet, untouched.

###

Sometime after midnight, I arrive back at the flat. On the way in, I managed to squeeze a few cans of Bomonte from the tekel, and bought some lamahcun, which are basically Turkish pizzas. I sit for the next couple hours in the the living room, eating, drinking, and playing football on the PlayStation.

I smoke a joint, and fall asleep sometime near dawn. Outside, the streets are quiet. The rain has stopped.

###

Noon. I wake up, hungover and with the ever-present feeling of dread, urgency. What day is it? Saturday. Wondering if I should have responded to the school’s text message. Maybe they would say they tried to contact me, use that as some sort of pretext to avoid payment.

I light a roach in the living room, sit down and review my options. Well, I wasn’t going to report on Monday for my military service. That was one that was definitely off the table.

With the pot, I start thinking about Mr. Davis, my English teacher in high school. People are always asking about my English. “You’re English is so amazing,” they say. “Where did you pick it up?”

I always say, from Mr. Davis. And with my semester at Hunter, of course.

Mr. Davis was a young American guy – he must have been no more than 28 at the time. He had long hair and wore Metallica shirts outside of class. And he related to us in a really casual, laid-back way. Good old Mr. Davis. He was in Vietnam now, or at least last I had heard. He and his wife opened up a hostel there. I saw pictures on Mr. Davis’s Facebook page.

Vietnam. There was an option. Maybe Mr. Davis would let me work at the hostel, working reception, charming the guests. I can be pretty charming, people say. But no. I didn’t have the money for a plane ticket, for one thing. And you can’t just show up at somebody’s doorstep, not even Mr. Davis.

There was Father. He’s up in Moscow now, as I think I said earlier. He might have something in the business – clerking, answering the phones for English-speaking clients (actually, I know a bit of Russian, too, from when we used to go to Astana when my father’s business was there). A couple years ago, I tried to convince Father that I could be his public relations guy, traveling around, wining and dining clients. But he didn’t go for that. Said he’d had enough of sponsoring my degeneracy.

There was Mother, over in Toronto. No, had enough of her for a long while. When I’m around her, all she wants to talk about is my Father and what a bastard he is.

So, as you can see, my options at the moment are, on the whole, somewhat limited. There’s Deniz, and a few other friends from school. They’ve all moved on – some of them to grad school, others abroad, or to marriage and careers. Friends from school, except Deniz, had moved on – some of them abroad, others to careers.

I don’t know. Once it seemed my life was moving toward this sun on the horizon, and now it was all like a permanent night (OK, let’s not be dramatic about it), this life of living between the cracks, drifting with the 3 a.m.crowd, drifting nowhere.

###

Saturday.

The skies clear up, and bright, cold sunlight shines in the windows of the flat and over the neighborhood. I spend most of the day in and out of naps on the sofa, stirring only occasionally to smoke some of the skunk weed. The coffee table is littered with empty beer cans and the ash tray was full.

Around six thirty, I finally rise up off the sofa, putting on some Metallica performing with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. I shower, shave, dress and get ready to go out. Feeling a little guilty, I clean up the mess a little, and run the vacuum cleaner.

Outside it’s already getting dark. The traffic and city sounds are picking up for the Saturday night crowds. At the last minute, I decided to take my guitar. It’s an acoustic in a battered old case. Sometimes I like to take it out and busk, pick up a few lira. Outside, the streets are noisy, cluttered. But at least it’s a clear night. I rush to a dolmuş, squeeze in and head back to Taksim. It was like a perverse instinct, a moth to flame, or a long-suffering spouse coming home to crushing violence of boredom, that draws me there.

I change my mind. Not Taksim. Got to watch the cash. Better yet, try to earn some. Capitalism, friend!

So at a traffic light, I get out of the dolmuş and head over to Maçka park.

I set up with my guitar on a park bench, and start playing. A bit of GnR, Metallica, a few other favorites. People are cold, so most of them walk past in a hurry, on their way through the park up to Taksim. Over at the football stadium, Beşiktaş is playing, you can hear the roar of the crowd.

I play for – I don’t know, two or three hours or so. The match ends and people stream past, wearing their Beşiktaş jerseys, and chanting, on their way to the bars. This guy Çetin, who’s about my age, sits down and listens for awhile. Then he asks if I know any Turkish songs, and he sings one, and then I sing one. We’re singing and playing, and a few people even stop and film us with their phones.

And then all of a sudden we hear this loud explosion behind us. We’re used to loud noises in Istanbul, but this one really stood out. Then we heard another one, a lot closer.

“Holy shit!” I say, and we get up and start running in the opposite direction. I don’t even bother to put the guitar back in the case. I just slam the case shut, with all the coins in it, and run.

A little while later, at a bar in Taksim. I check Twitter. Just as we’d thought: Bomb explosions hear Besiktaş stadium and in Maçka park. The attack was aimed at the riot police who were still parked outside the stadium. At least a dozen injured.

I decide to just head back to the flat. But it’s hard to get home, the streets are closed and there are police and ambulances everywhere. I cut around the cordoned off area. A policeman stops me. He asks me where I’m going. “Home,” I say, pointing toward Besiktaş. The policeman is about my age. He looks for a moment at my guitar case, and I think he’s going to ask to search it. I hope not, because I still have some of the weed in there. Luckily, he just looks at me and then waves me on.

By morning, the numbers are much higher. Nearly 50 people dead, 150 injured. A lot of the casualties were police, but also people in taxis and buses who just happened to be passing by. I think about how close we were to the explosions. Touch wood, man. I take it as yet another sign that I need to clear out of this mess.

###

Monday.

What happened to Sunday?

I spent it most of the day sleeping, just killing time, checking the news on the bombings. There was a big protest, thousands of people marched past the stadium in Beşiktaş. People were fed up with terrorism, they were standing up for the country, etc. The news said a Kurdish group was responsible for the bombings.

Now it’s Monday finally, so I take a dolmuş to the school. I’ve already got my bags with me. Well, it’s just one bag anyway, with some clothes and a few books in it. The girl at the reception is nice, and when before I can even say anything, she’s already handing me an envelope with my name on it. She asks me to sign for it. My hands shaking, I tear open the envelope. There’s exactly 1,500 lira. Result! I thank the girl and head out before anybody else can see me. I’m not in the mood for social calls.

###

Feeling suddenly rich (although 1,500 TL is not much, not really), I walk along the sidewalk, looking out at the busy streets. It’s raining again, but I don’t feel it. I feel like Gökhan, Lord of the Sky, again.

At a cafe, I check online for flights to Astana. There’s a one-way flight the following day for 700 TL. That would leave me with 800 or so on the ground, or about 76,000 in Kazakhstan tenge. That’s about half a month’s salary in Astana, according to the local cost-of-living index.

I buy the ticket.

Once I’m on the ground in Astana, I’ll be OK. As I said, Father used to have his business there, so I know the city pretty well. I’ve even got a few old friends there, we keep in touch on Facebook. I message a couple of them, letting them know I’m on the way. One of them, this guy Erkin, responds immediately. Erkin says we can meet up for drinks. “When do you arrive?” he asks. About 6 a.m., local time on Wednesday, I say, could I crash with you for a few days? Trying to watch my cash. Sure, Erkin writes. He types his phone number, and says to call him when I get in, he’ll come pick me up. Thanks, I say. Do you know of any jobs there? Not at the moment, he writes. But we can talk about that later.

Good old, Erkin. Well, you never know. I’m not feeling bad at all, not really. I’ve got a ticket to Astana, a place to stay, and even some cash to get buy for at least a couple weeks, if I can watch myself.

Astana! The capital of Kazakhstan, along the Ishim River. A growing, emerging city. Lots of work in the energy sector – I’ll bet I could get work teaching English again, if I have to. But maybe Erkin can help me find something else. At any rate, I’m feeling optimistic, as though that distant horizon was once again hovering in the sky. So long, military service! So long, terrorists!

Farewell, Taksim! Farewell, Istanbul! Farewell, my beloved Turkey!

###

At the airport, I change the lira over to dollars (about $230), and then head through the passport control. Fortunately, Turks don’t need visas to enter Kazakhstan – that’s one of the reasons I chose it. At the gate, I settle into a chair and wait for my flight, which was leaving at 4:30 pm. Outside, the tarmac and skies above, are clear. But as the afternoon wears on, the clouds come, and the first snowflakes of the year are beginning to fall, wispy and light. I count the dollars in my wallet, and check my ticket. They’re my tickets to a new life, these two things, and suddenly life seems so tenuous, precarious, like these dollars and ticket are the only things separating me from total despair. Without them, I’m almost sure that right about now, I’d be falling into total madness …

– Up on the TV, there are more reports about the bombings, and some updates on the fighting in Aleppo. The man sitting next to me is reading about the football match results, and a young, pretty girl is checking her Facebook status. Two hours to go until departure time. Crossing my fingers, I settle back uncomfortably in the lounge chair, hoping to get in a nap. But all the time, I keep opening my eyes to look out at the tarmac, praying for clear skies from here all the way to Kazakhstan.

###

James Tressler, a former Lost Coast resident, is a writer and teacher living in Istanbul. His story collections, including the recently published “Living With Terror: Letters from Istanbul, Vol. 3,” can be found at Lulu.com.