Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali

Of all the people I have chanced upon in life, there is no one who has left a greater impression. Months have passed but still Raif Efendi haunts my thoughts. As I sit here alone, I can see his honest face, gazing off into the distance, but ready, nonetheless, to greet all who cross his path with a smile.

Yet he was hardly an extraordinary man. Indeed, he was rather ordinary, with no distinguishing features - no different from the hundreds of others we meet and fail to notice in the course of a normal day. Indeed, there was no part of his life - public or private - that might give rise to curiosity.

He was, in the end, the sort of man who causes us to ask ourselves: 'What do they live for? What do they find in life? What logic compels them to keep breathing? What philosophy drives them, as they wander the earth?' But we ask in vain, if we fail to look beyond the surface - if we forget that beneath each surface lurks another realm, in which a caged mind whirls alone.


Translated from Turkish by Maureen Freely & Alexander Dawe.