Elif Shafak - Nausea

The street where I live doesn’t know it is not yet another snaky street in Istanbul but in truth some kind of a vessel. We the fortuitous passengers keep this as a secret, divulging it to no one, not even to our children. We don’t talk about it. Never have we been told about it. We just happen to know—like the ones before us did and the ones after us will some day.

At night, even in deepest sleep we listen to the splashes the street-boat unleashes as it floats on the ghostly, smelly seawater, ready to sail anytime, sail anywhere. When darkness canopies us all, we hear the fish beneath our feet gnaw the ropes fastened to myriad moorings in the mainland—a ground that encapsulates less a definite homeland than an elusive homesickness. more...