The albatross journey

15 - Let her go

Can

Two more interminable months have passed, I have left Bosnia and the journey has become more and more demanding, the landscapes which I encounter in Montenegro are beautiful while the mountain routes become more and more impervious and wild.

The harsh and inaccessible landscape suits my increasingly gloomy and confused thoughts in the face of the fact that nothing changes, my mood does not change and the fact that I cannot get Sanem out of my mind does not change. Every moment that I am not busy with work my heart races to her, to the memory of her, to what, I slowly realise, is more my Istanbul than the city where I was born.

The anger that had guided my decision to leave everything and come here, to the end of the world, has vanished, only to realise that it is there that I want to stay. At this moment I can hardly even remember the reason for that anger, which now seems exaggerated and unjustified.

I didn't leave because of pride, as I wanted to believe, or maybe for the sake of adventure, I actually ran away like a coward in front of something I wasn't able to manage, her feelings for me and mine for her.

Those feelings were obviously too much for me to handle, for a man who had never experienced or considered them before. The episode of the sale of the perfume to Fabbri, I now realise, had been nothing more than the catalyst for a growing feeling of unease. I had asked her to marry me because it was really what my heart wanted but, in the end, I was scared to death of what it would mean to stop permanently in one place and bind myself to a person forever.

I struggled enormously to become aware of all this, it's not easy to accept the fact of being a coward, of being afraid, of not being able to manage your emotions. It cost me so much to do this and then have to face the next question: what am I going to do with this new awareness now? What am I going to do in two months' time?

The answer came by itself one evening in a hotel bar in Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro.

A stranger flanked me at the bar and ordered a drink, in a short time she started to ask me questions about the reason for my trip and where I came from, I answered happy to exchange a few words after two months during which I had spoken only with the service staff in the various hotels and local guides who had accompanied me to the most remote places.

That drink was followed by another, she told me she was Albanian, in town for several days for a series of business meetings. We continued to drink, chatting about this and that, until it got very late and the bar staff told us they were closing. We paid our bill and headed for the lifts, she pressed the button for the second floor, I pressed the one for the fourth. When the doors opened a little later she got out, but turned around and put her hand on the sensor to stop them closing - Come to my place? -

At that moment, at that exact moment, I realised that I could do it, I could live the adventure of a night with a stranger, I could give and receive those physical sensations that I had precluded myself from since, once back in Istanbul, I had only had eyes for that naive girl with the traditionalist upbringing that I chose to respect.

I could use that stranger to erase the memory of her, her embrace, her lips, the scent of her skin, it would be a way to forget her, to move on, to resume living my previous life.

I could do it, it's true, but I didn't WANT to do it.

In a flash, I realised that there was no hug, no lips and no scent that I craved more than Sanem's.
She was in my mind, heart, soul and under my skin, just her and the idea of holding anyone else was intolerable.

This is the bitter truth that I had to face on the second floor of a hotel in Podgorica.

She or no one else.

I stretched out my hand to take that of the stranger holding the lift doors, brought it to my lips in a gallant kiss and said - Thank you, but it is not possible, there is only one woman for me, goodbye -.

The time to let go of her hand and the doors closed on an episode that was decisive in understanding what I feel, in understanding that there can only be her in my life, that there can only be a body or soul that fits me if not her body and soul, only her and me... in an instant I realise the bitter truth, I have let her go.