My Yellow Room and Sartre’s Whispers
"I would like to taste every kind of adventure. Boarding the wrong train. Getting off in an unfamiliar city. Losing my wallet…In my opinion, sir, an adventure can be defined as an event that is out of the ordinary, though not necessarily extraordinary."— J.P. Sartre, Nausea
After a long journey, I arrived in Tel Aviv. I spent the Yom Kippur holiday in Jerusalem with a wonderful Turkish community. I had missed speaking my mother tongue, and it was an extraordinary joy to hear Turkish spoken all around me. No holiday is ever like another, and this year's was deeply meaningful and very different from the rest.
Based on how I interpret Sartre’s words, every journey is an adventure. But today, I don’t want to talk about my trip. Instead, I want to briefly share the experience I had just before it.
What do you do before going on a trip?
I don’t know about you, but if I am healthy and have the energy, I organize my house. I go through the closets. I sort through things to throw away, donate, or items that have been sitting around for a long time waiting for the day "I might use them." I make sure they get to where they need to go. Truthfully, I don’t always wait for a trip to do this, but for some reason, this pre-travel rush makes me even more hyperactive. I don't know why...
And so, just before another trip, it was time to tidy my study—that yellow room I painted with my own two hands.
While cleaning, I was sorting through piles of paper and organizing the books I had stacked in the room. By moving the cabinet and the chest of drawers, I gave the room a fresh, new breath of life. Of course, as I dusted the books, I couldn't help but go on a mental journey too. I picked out a few old books to keep me company on the plane. After finishing my work in the room, resting a bit, and eating lunch, I took a break on the veranda with the books I had chosen.
It wasn't clear where these books came from, but they were quite old. Two of them were by Jean-Paul Sartre.
First, I read a little bit of Nausea. Then, out of curiosity, I checked the date on the yellowed pages of the old book. First edition: November 1961.
My goodness! Where did this book come from? I racked my brain. Did I buy it from a second-hand bookstore in Istanbul? Or did it somehow end up in my suitcase years ago and travel with me?
Then I moved on to the author's other book: Essays. The most striking detail here was that the book was translated from French by Sabahattin Eyüboğlu and Vedat Günyol. It was printed in Cağaloğlu in December 1964.
Reading the word "Cağaloğlu" opened a time tunnel in my mind. I traveled back toward the 1970s. I remembered my father’s workplace and the unforgettable visits I made to Cağaloğlu as a child. If I tried to explain everything these two old books made me think about, lines would not be enough.
These two Turkish books, printed way back in the 1960s, had crossed an ocean with me. Now, they appeared before me once again on a veranda in Québec, in the cool autumn breeze.
We live in an era where old books are digitized and destroyed to feed artificial intelligence, and newly written ones are suspected of being artificial. Sadly, my dear friends, just like the artificial, modified tomatoes and cucumbers on our dinner tables today, I can no longer believe that anything written in this era comes purely from human hands and minds. That is why what these two books whispered in my ear felt so real, so "human," that it filled me with an indescribable joy.
When we were kids, my father used to ask us: "What made you happiest today?"
That day, it was those books—stepping out of a time tunnel and smelling of true humanity—that made me happy.
Stay with adventure, books, and love.
Rahel Çela Behar
IYT dip not:
İfade edilen görüşler İYT web portalının editöryal politikasını yansıtmayabilir.
Yazarların düşünceleri sadece kendilerini bağlar.
*Daha önceki yazımı okudunuz mu?*
Have you read my previous post?
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