(Here is an excerpt chapter from my memoir Sex and Homeland... Note: This writing deals with some heavy issues and is not for everyone. If you are so inclined please send me feedback!)

Sertaç and Engines Running Over White Palace

  Sertaç had got the Portuguese translator job with Turkey’s biggest soccer team and his stomach had started to grow. Flying high we drove fast around the city in a team car, followed by a rich Brazilian girl he was fucking. All things were possible! In Istanbul the roads were gold paved! We drove along the Bosphorus, the girl passing us, Sertaç passing the girl. He was speaking to me in Turkish and then she was calling him on his cell in Portuguese. He had a full can of cold beer.

When we first met, Sertaç had a sales job with ties and shoe shines and 6 o’clock rising and 14 hour days; long bus rides and ferry rides with the rest of the commuting clump of middle class Istanbul. Now he was riding high – respected – at 23 he had found his place!

In the quiet times when the car wasn’t roaring over the hills of Istanbul, carrying international Brazilian football players from one restaurant to another press conference, Sertaç waxed about his past. I felt I had a glimpse into his life; private, something forbidden, shown to me alone. At those moments he would often remember the bad times out loud; suffering it again was a holy ritual for him. I felt lucky to be in his presence then.

We drove past Dolmabahçe Palace along the Bosphorus in the Besiktas district. Towering poplar trees lined the sides of the coastal road between the Palace and the rest of the city. Trunks of the trees were brown and red colored marble in the neon night light. The trees changed colors and this city which can be so agonizingly ugly and so painfully beautiful was painful that night. The leaves fell like pieces of silver in the car lights.