Short Story: A Very European Wholeness by Malavika S. Udayan

Malavika S. Udayan shares a heartwarming tale wrapped in travel and the magic of discovering new places.

I 

It was noon, a vivid sort of noon when I spotted headscarves deep blue. There were yellow patches on its main cloth. On the road, Aksin was caught up with unloading some goods, transferring their latest harvest, which was mistaken for the cheapest produce; The produce was farmed and preserved, highly expensive, yet the best buy you could get as soon as you got outside of your neighbourhood to the empty trucks which were boarded in front of their houses. On the last day when I arrived in the evening, typically between 6 and 7, the taxi driver charged me a big amount, and he felt ashamed to bring me any closer to where I had decided to stay for a few days. He dropped me off at around 200 feet distance for 100 quids. From afar I could see children playing in front of their doors, their limbs and jackets shimmering, appearing, with no pretence against the evening fog. It was hotter than England; I saw a prostitute leaving one of these houses. She was wearing a white pant, a white headscarf, and a white sporty coat, which looked very much like my beige coat with a spunky intercrossed design. Her lain walks were very seductive for me, and I ogled directly down at her bare bottom. I wished had she worn anything better, which reminded me of how frustrated girlfriends left their boyfriends, after lots of sex. It’s everywhere these days, immoral women, and men whose hunger doesn’t come down. They are making up for their own lives or their lives are half lost that way. Aksin thought of herself as half-European. A lot of the Turkish men thought too, that they were half Europeans, unless, sometimes or mostly they saw independent European ladies walk down the streets for half an hour or a full hour. They played fashionable French music, and other, traditional Turkish music.