It had been three and a half months since I last saw him. Looking back, it’s hard to say whether the time passed quickly. I could say only that I’d grown acutely aware of time. Three and a half hours to be exact.
Three and a half hours was the time difference that separated us since that humid, late-July evening in Istanbul. I could still remember the envy I’d felt when we’d arrived at the airport – one a passenger, the other coming to say goodbye – and joined the queue of Iranians clutching tickets for the loud, yellow airline that would fly them cheaply between Turkey and Tehran. I’d felt desperate to take my place among them, knowing that in a matter of hours, I would be left behind. Still, it had been excitingly familiar to see them again, the men in immaculate polished shoes from Melli tapping through the thick plastic covers on their mobile phones, the chubby maybe-maybe not prostitutes in gold-stitched jeans and the calmer, assured-looking women with reading glasses and loose flowing hair, women who might reach across and call me ‘jaan’ and quiz me with their trademark studious warmth if I sat next to them. Maybe offer me half a sandwich or show me photos of their children overseas; if I too were flying to Iran that evening.
When he boarded I wasn’t hurt when he’d shooed me away, not wanting an emotional goodbye. He kissed me quickly on the lips, the first time he’d done so in public and I turned and walked slowly out of the airport, gasping the first breaths of loneliness and uncertainty. I sat at the back of the nearly-empty airport bus and wept as it travelled through the outskirts of the city, until at last I walked down the hill from Taksim Square, to spend a last night alone in the apartment we’d shared during our final days together.
