Okuma – Alone or Lonely
5 Haziran 2020- Hikaye
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His friends always thought that Kazım was a greedy boy. He always dreamed of a life in which he would be rich, powerful and alone. He didn’t like people very much and he didn’t want to need people.
First he thought of becoming a politician. Politicians were usually rich and powerful. Although there were many people around them, they were alone because no one was actually their friend. Therefore they didn’t really care about them. He decided to ask his philosophy teacher, Hüseyin. Hüseyin, who knew a lot about Kazım’s personality, advised him not to be a politician. “because”, he said “politicians need people more than anyone else”.
When he was twenty he joined the army to do military service. While he was in the army he noticed that commanders, especially generals, were very powerful and rich. They were alone, too. For some time he was very happy that finally he had found a job which would give him the life he had always wanted. However, he learnt that in order to be a general one had to go to a military school first. Unfortunately he was too old for this. Moreover, generals depended on people, as well. “Without his soldiers”, he thought, “a general is nobody.”
After completing the military service he went home. He was over twenty now but he didn’t have a job yet. He didn’t know what job to choose, either. He felt utterly depressed. He had become a very bad-tempered man. He behaved to his family and his friends unkindly. This behavior was deliberate; he wanted to keep people away from himself as he believed that he didn’t and shouldn’t need them. In time, all the people around him came to believe that he was not worth their love and friendship. Trying to be alone, he was becoming lonely.
One winter night he had a dream. He had finally become the person he had always wanted to be. Yet he didn’t know what his job was. He was on a plane, his own plane. He was alone. He didn’t know where he was going. But he was happy anyway. He hoped he would find himself on a desert island. Suddenly the plane disappeared. He was all alone in the air, falling down like a stone. While falling he looked down on the place he would soon touch. It was a marvellous island. Yet that didn’t make him happy. Finally he was on the ground. He felt great pain. It was his leg. He wanted to see what had happened to it. He was shocked and terrified when he saw that it was an animal’s leg. After looking at his other organs he recognized that he had become a spider. Now his pain doubled. He needed help. However, there was no one around. Animals ran away from him too, because he was a large, dangerous, poisonous spider. He was hated and feared by all the living things. Then he woke up. Then he thought about the dream. “I was rich” he said, “that marvellous island was mine; I was powerful, too; so powerful that every living thing feared me. And I was alone, all alone. So, in the dream I had all that I had dreamed of. However, I was not happy. My leg was hurt but no one wanted to help me.” He thought of the dream some more time. He noticed that he had really become like a poisonous spider with his bad temper: people were running away from him because of it. His life was like the island: there was no one in it, not even animals. And he was in pain and in need, as he had been in the dream. “I will change it all” he said.
Bu hikaye 2005-2006 Eğitim öğretim yılında Pazarcık Anadolu Lisesinin hazırlık okumuş 10. sınıf öğrencilerine yazılı sınavda sorulmuştur.