Istanbul Dawn

The city stirs, a thousand lives resuming. Cracked windows carry metal shutters clattering two streets over, bus brakes hissing, the simit-seller’s rising cry. Horns thick with impatience, heat building.

The warehouse holds night’s breath. Mitra—cardigan-armour—coaxes the camping stove to a blue flame. Coffee bitters the cold air. She moves with dawn-departure muscle: crisp, assured.

Karim cinches bags, stows maps and passports, eyes flicking toward the far pallet. I stir under a wool blanket, hair shadowing my face. Beside me, Asdar half-propped, his gaze fixed on me—reading flickers the way other men read sky for weather.

Lorries growl the quay-road; the floor vibrates. Cats yowl, answered from rooftops.

I roll back, blink into pale light. Pull the blanket to my collarbones. Grunt sleepy thanks to Mitra’s “Coffee in a minute.”

Sleep clings, everything blurred. My body feels raw, strange—I shift beneath the blanket. Wet between my legs. Jellylike. The sticky sensation pins me to what happened, whatever happened. Fragments surface: begging Asdar to enter me, desperate to be pulled back from something deeper.

I turn to him, voice barely above whisper.

“Asdar… what happened? Did I ask you to ground me?”

His ritual gaze softens.

“You were far away. Lost after crossing.” His thumb traces a small circle on my hand.

“You kept calling for Tarmo—spoke of plains-walking, soul-wander. In the old stories, crossing deep means the way back needs a tether. Flesh and breath, something immediate.”

I search his face, remembering the pitch of my own voice, the animal need.

“Did I ask you to enter me?”

A pause, his thumb still on my hand.

“You implored me. It wasn’t hunger, Elena. It was ritual—anchor in skin, in presence. Your way back.”

His words settle inside me, competing with uncertainty and strange gratitude. His palm is warm on mine. I let myself believe, for this moment, that I’m here.

He says nothing more. In his priest’s mind, still checking—listening for frayed tether, scanning my eyes for imbalance he’s seen in others after such crossings. I look at myself. But he knows better than to trust the first surface I show.

A ferry horn bellows down on the Golden Horn. Sea salt wind through the door gap. Time to move.

Mitra hands out coffee in enamel mugs. Karim stands by the door, bags ready, watching street and watch. The city is awake now. Every minute borrowed.

The stove-hiss fades, replaced by pedestrian chatter on cobblestones. The world pressing in, and with it the inevitability of the road to Iran.

Quay Departure

By the time we step out, the city is fully awake. Golden Horn salt and frying bread from food carts. Seagulls wheel with ragged cries; ferries hum deep at their moorings.

Mitra leads—duffel cross-body, practised gait, no intention to linger. Karim follows, bags in either hand, scanning faces without seeming to.

I emerge behind them, wool shawl around shoulders, steps careful on slick cobblestones still damp from the night. Asdar stays a half-step to my side, watching for signs no one else would notice—measuring whether I’m wholly myself again. I avoid his eyes, fiddle with the tassel.

The ferry terminal: a knot of movement. Suited commuters with briefcases, porters wrestling fruit crates, schoolchildren chasing parents. A vendor calls for simit; Mitra tosses a note, passes the warm bread-ring back to me.

We board near the stern, find space by the rail. Engines throb; wind teases my hair. Across the grey expanse, minarets puncture the sky. Istanbul’s layers fold into one long sigh.

Unspoken among us—the pivot point. Behind: narrow streets, warehouse-harbour, whatever safe shelter the city offered. Ahead: the line drawn eastward, uncertainties stacked along it.

The ferry jolts into Kadıköy, ropes thrown and tied, crowd surging. Back on solid ground, Mitra hails a yellow taxi under a peeling billboard. Bags thump into the boot, doors slam, and we join the pulse of traffic heading inland.

Through window glass, the city streams past: clotheslines between apartments, roasting chestnuts from corner carts, children’s voices spilling from schoolyards.

Halkalı Station appears almost without warning—modern lines against the press of old neighbourhoods.

I.Ph.