The Museum of Candy Days

        I lifted my pair of eyes from the book to unintentionally meet those belonging to a lady sitting in a circle not far from me. "In her eyes was the light that you see only in children arriving at a new place". She was just distributing candies to her team from a half rolled down plastic bag. I averted my eyes, looking away, appearing indifferent, wearing a contemplative mask. I readily wear one of those during dreamy breaks I occasionally take during reading. It helps me digest, and by doing so I offer religious obedience to my ophthalmologist's advice.  After a short while, I went back to my book to pick up where I had left off.

Time passed. No sooner did I want a break and was about to get up, two candies flew and crash-landed, one on my lap, the other on my book. The one that landed on my book made a resounding noise like that of a boot heel on a wooden panel. The lady looked like could be my mum's age, and was by a man seemed her kids' dad. “Age had not made him less handsome, as is so often the case; it had simply made him less visible” in her company.

She didn’t wait for a word of thanks from me. Nor did she seem to care for a grateful glance. Who could she be? Perhaps a distant aunt of Kemal Bay’s, immortalized by Orhan Pamuk in his novel The Museum of Innocence. One of her teammates was wearing a Turkish flag strip on her headscarf signaling to me that we were not far from Istanbul. Looking happy, no matter whether they realized it or not. “In fact, no one recognizes the happiest moment of their lives as they are living it" it.”

I am no longer a big fan of candies. Not because I have convinced myself that I have outgrown them, but I was brainwashed by one of my friends to be a sugar-free, gluten-free, animal-fat-free idiot. I soon recovered my earlier self once he left the office where we worked together, but the sugar-free affliction remains.   However, I did fear I may dishearten my well-wisher, so I felt obliged to savor one of the still unwrapped gifts in appreciation of that kind gesture. Who was the other one for? That question didn’t take long to find a satisfactory answer. None other than the one who strongly suggested to me that if I was ever to read only one book by Pamuk, it should be The Museum. “If we give what we treasure most to a Being we love with all our hearts, if we can do that without expecting anything in return, then the world becomes a beautiful place.”

Those lines I displayed in quotation marks are the ones I pilfered from The Museum of Innocence, following in the footsteps of rich Kemal Bay shoplifting silly artifacts from Fuzun's impoverished house. Sorry, I couldn’t resist. “Let everyone know, I lived a very happy life” - being close, though not being among the museum circle. “Sometimes I would see them not as mementos of the blissful hours but as the tangible precious debris of the storm raging in my soul.”