Missing AyFer's moments.

To build a memory. To build a couple. To build a love.

Arriving at the hotel, I placed my luggage in my room and changed to start my business meetings. I had to admit to myself that I didn't have the concentration needed to discuss legal procedures and corporate acquisitions. Although I had always given the right weight and importance to work, on this splendid sunny day I just wanted to be able to spend time with my wife: go for a horse ride, get lost in the picturesque alleys full of flowers of Antakya, going into every little shop, dragged by Ayse who would have taken my hand in hers and put me to the test, questioning me about all the spices whose scents we would encounter along our way. I was sure that if I had looked at my city and the world in general with her eyes, everything would have seemed more perfect, more beautiful.

I had hung up the grey dress that I was going to wear that afternoon and began to unpack my luggage: I took out, with great care, the perfectly ironed white shirt. I wondered if it was Ayse's doing and the thought amused me. Having seen her the night before, engaged in that simple daily activity had surprised me, no doubt, but it had also filled me with a sense of calm and harmony, in the sense that, observing her there, in my environment, among my things, I liked and it made me want even more the idea of being able to be like those happy couples, who together manage to enjoy even the most normal things. I was starting to learn how with Ayse; however, even simple gestures could open a crack, a window, which would allow me to be able to look inside her soul. In fact, when I found her ironing, during a "sparkling" exchange we had, she reminded me that she wasn't just made of flesh and blood. "I also have a soul", she had declared solemnly, proudly.
Ah, if I had understood that inside that wonderful woman lived a soul, which burned like a fire. A fire that touched my conscience, waking it from a numbness and making it more alive than ever.

While I was unpacking, something caught my attention: it was Ayse's green scarf that was among my things, probably inadvertently ended up among my ties in the closet. I liked to think that it was a further sign of how our lives were intersecting each other, finding new balances that could have made us feel good, because happy.
I took the scarf in my hand, cautiously, handling it as if it were something precious. I remembered exactly when she wore it: it was the day I decided to take her to see the magnificence of our waterfall.

When I went to get her, for the first time Ayse had openly questioned me about my relationship with Hande and whether I could forgive her and still have feelings for her. Her tone suggested that behind this sudden curiosity there was something else and that probably these solicitations and doubts came to her following discussions with my mother or with Hande herself, discussions that Ayse did not seem to want to make me know about, however. I don't know if to protect myself or for fear of my eventual response and therefore, perhaps, to protect herself. I did not dwell on this and I simply smiled and when she asked me why I was chuckling, I replied that it was she who made me smile, because if we had really been husband and wife, that slightly inquisitive and feigned disinterested attitude of hers would have could give the impression that she was jealous of me.

- "You're not even my type", she had dismissed me and her words had had the effect of a bucket of frozen water on my ardours.
That thought would have "haunted" me for a long time: who was her type? Was he tall or short? Dark brown or blond? With a beard or without? With long or short hair? Brown, black, green or blue eyes? How much I would have liked to know ... Not knowing exactly the answer to these questions, stirred my masculine insecurities, because I knew that in reality, I was not interested in knowing in detail the physical characteristics of the man who could have been the object of Ayse's desire, but what really mattered to me was knowing if I was her type. I wanted this to be with all of myself.

I brought the scarf to my nose and inhaled the smell, the perfume of Ayse: clean, fresh, good, titillating and intoxicating. It seemed that all the most fragrant flowers and the finest spices had decided to concentrate on that fabric, mixing in an aromatic bouquet with the smell of her skin. All this had the disarming result of lowering my defences and transporting me to a new dimension, which however I felt belonged to me.
Was this perhaps love? Being in unfamiliar places, which still had the power to make you feel at home?
I would have liked to accelerate the stages, take a step forward, put me and her in front of these pure and flaming emotions, letting them burn us with their charm. But probably love was not haste and impulse, love was above all patience: like a flower, it deserved to be watered and cultivated with care to allow it to take root, grow and reproduce.