Sabahattin Ali

Last night he’d said to me, ‘We never got the chance to sit down and talk.’ But now I knew differently. Last night we’d spoken for many long hours.
That same night, he’d left his life behind and entered mine. And there he would remain, truly alive – more so than anyone I’d ever known. Wherever I went, he’d be there at my side.
When I got to the office, I sat down at Raif Efendi’s empty desk. Placing his black notebook before me, I turned back to the first page.

Send a hero into a dragon’s den, and his task is clear. It is a hero of another order who can summon up the courage to lower himself into a well of which we have no knowledge.

And here was the strangest thing: the more my situation worsened, the less I could be sure of surviving from one day to the next, the greater my shame and my reluctance to ask for help.

The more I needed my friends, the more I longed to run away.

He seemed so confident, so pleased with himself.

never learned — or wanted to learn — how to make boys like me. I never blushed when I was around them or fished for compliments.

I could no longer love, or risk any form of intimacy, for I had been deceived by the one person I’d trusted and believed absolutely. After that, how could I trust anyone again?

That said, we rarely seek that which we do not expect to find.

The more I needed my friends, the more I longed to run away.

How absurd they were, the games we played in the name of friendship; did empty, artificial jockeying of this sort bear any relation whatsoever to the real thing?