Reading Time: 3 minutes



It started, for her, a little later than their hide-and-seek meeting in Yildiz park. It started from when their parents had introduced themselves to one another, later. And she, standing beside her father – protected by his powerful arm draped gently across her shoulder – had blushed at the realisation that there was another reason why she enjoyed this boy’s company, other than just the thrill of the game.

Yes, there was another thrill: She felt it renewed as it coursed through her body… When he had looked across from his parents side – their eyes locking with one another with unnerving accuracy.

She never thought herself - themselves - lucky that they were born to more unorthadox parents from a religious point of view. Parents who were less controlling than those of their devout Muslim friends. Parents who became friends after that Yildiz meeting. It seemed a natural course of events that allowed their love to blossom and mature during the years that followed, albeit under the traditional, watchful, and guiding influence of loving parents.

— o-o —

Neither of them had eaten breakfast so they stopped to buy a simit each, for later, from a perspex-walled blue covered cart stationed on a corner of the road. They walked on, excitedly discussing their application; the future they saw together in London when he took up his job at his uncle’s wholesale kilim business; the plans that they had, after their wedding, to have children of their own. A home together. The rest of their lives together.

At the doorway of the Consulate, he held the door open for her, and she walked ahead.

The blinding flash was accompanied by a deafening thud and a violent rush of air as first all the oxygen was consumed, and then new air and smoke rushed in to take its place.



His eyes blinked opened to the dim and dusty light of day. He could barely see, but around the edges of his vision he could make out the cold greyness of the dusty floor. Someone was bending over him. He felt a cool dampness between himself and the floor. They were saying something, but he could not hear above the roaring sound that permanently boomed in his ears. He struggled to understand; To comprehend what, if anything, was a dream, and what, if anything, was reality.

Now they were moving him. Lifting him into a seated position… leaning him back against the wall.

That was when he saw her dress. It was the white one. The one with the little yellow daisies printed here and there… But the upper part was stained red. It was still covering her headless and legless torso, and still in her right hand was the small paper bag containing the simits.

That was the moment that he comprehended this reality was his awakening to a nightmare. A nightmare that would only end, when his life itself was ended.




© Allen Ansell 2007, 2023