The Orange Train

From the moment I boarded the train, I began quietly observing my surroundings. From outside, it looked like an ordinary train. But once inside, I realised it was unlike any train I knew. It was dim and a little gloomy. The windows were narrow, letting very little light into the carriage. The seats had no numbers. They were not arranged in rows, either. It felt less like a railway carriage than a large room where people sat and waited.

Most of the passengers were elderly. They sat in small groups, talking quietly, sometimes staring ahead without speaking for a long time. No one was in a hurry. No one looked at the time or seemed to wonder about the next stop or how much of the journey remained. Now and then, someone would lean towards another person, whisper a few words and fall silent again.

My friend and I moved to an area with tables and sat down. I was still looking around.

After a while, whispers from nearby tables caught my attention.

Apparently, in another part of the train, there were people who would look at passengers and tell them things about themselves. One by one, passengers sat opposite them and soon returned with a small piece of paper. No one showed anyone else what it said. But something changed in their faces when they came back. Some read their paper several times and folded it again; others put it in a pocket without looking.

I wondered what they were saying.

‘I would like to try it too,’ I said.

One of the younger passengers sitting nearby turned to me. ‘They are not taking anyone else,’ they said. ‘All the places are filled. Everyone applied. They are very busy.’

After a while, one of the staff in white coats approached our table carrying a sheet of paper. She seemed to know whom she had come for.

In a small corner of the page was a photograph of me. Beneath it were a few lines about me.

First I looked at my photograph, then at the words.

They described me. But they were not my words.

‘How did you write this without ever speaking to me?’ I asked.

The woman did not answer.

‘You do not even know me…’

I looked at the paper again.

‘What did you base this on?’

Again, no answer came.

I put the paper on the table. Only then did I notice many more sheets like mine: small photographs, a few lines of text. Each page held a person reduced to a handful of sentences. How easy it was to fit a person's life into a few sentences. If I tried to write about myself, I would not even know where to begin.

Just then, people began arriving. Everyone was looking for their own paper. Hands reached out, sheets shifted, people picked them up and put them down. My paper became mixed in with the others.

I reached to take it, but could no longer tell which one was mine.

I looked at the woman in the white coat. She looked back at me.

I said nothing.

Then the train stopped.

Everyone got off. We were told it was only a short break and we would board again soon.

I waited beside my friend at the station. After a while, the train started moving. We were still outside. At first we did not understand what was happening. Then we looked at each other and began to run. The train stopped a little further on. My friend was already aboard. At the last moment, I caught up and climbed in too.

When I went inside, my friend was sitting at a table, talking to a few women I did not know. For a moment I thought of joining them. Then I changed my mind.

I noticed I was holding a cake in a transparent box. I had no idea how long I had been carrying it. I put it on an empty table, then walked towards another carriage.

The carriage I entered changed suddenly.

It was much more spacious. The windows were larger and let in more light. A few elderly people sat quietly. They resembled the passengers in the first carriage, but the silence felt different here. I spotted green velvet armchairs. I thought I could sit here.

Just as I was walking towards them, I heard my friend's voice behind me.

‘Where are you going?’

I turned around.

‘I want to sit in this area,’ I said.

I did not explain why. I did not really know. I simply wanted to sit there.

Just as I was about to sit down, the train stopped again.

We got off again.

Another break.

But this time, when we returned, the train had gone. For a while, we stood there at the station. This time, neither of us ran after it.

A little beyond the station, I noticed vehicles moving. They were buses that looked like trains. There were lots of them, leaving as soon as they filled up. My friend ran towards the bus at the front. I watched them go. The bus set off.

For a moment I thought about following. Then I changed my mind.

There was another bus in front of me, and this time I did not want to run to catch it.

I walked towards the bus. Just as I was about to get on, a young woman looked at me.

‘There is one seat left. May I have it?’ she asked.

‘Of course,’ I said.

I stepped aside.

I boarded the bus at the very back and sat in the last seat. The door closed. The bus began moving.

At first, there was the same silence. Then the light outside began to change. The sky brightened, the road widened, and the houses and trees became clearer.

The bus began travelling along the coast. The sea grew larger and larger. It looked blue, calm and familiar. I felt as if I had returned to a place I had not seen for a long time.

One of the women beside me looked out and said, ‘This place is known for its sea.’

She named the town. Was it Bayramlı or Bayramoğlu? I could not quite catch it.

‘Do you come here to swim?’ I asked.

The woman paused for a moment, then smiled faintly.

‘Yes,’ she said.

After a short silence, she added, ‘It is lovely here.’

I looked outside again.

The sea travelled beside us all along the road.

Until then, I had spent the whole journey trying to get somewhere in time. I had caught a train, moved from one carriage to another and searched for a place for myself. Now, for the first time, there was nowhere I needed to get to. Watching the sea from my seat was enough.

I felt an ease I had not known for a long time. As if I had arrived somewhere. Yet throughout the journey, I had never known where I wanted to go.

When I woke, I did not get up for a while.

I looked at the ceiling. Morning light came through the gap in the curtains. The dream's details were still vivid: the dim carriage, the elderly people, the woman in the white coat, the papers on the table, the cake in my hands, the train we missed and, finally, the sea that appeared before me…

It was the sea that stayed with me most.

I thought about the stories I had been writing recently. They were about different things, yet somehow the sea always found its way in. Sometimes in a sentence, sometimes as a distant patch of blue, sometimes among a few words before I even noticed it.

And yet I lived in a city without a sea.

I had never thought of it quite that way before.

Sometimes we do not immediately understand what we miss. We are busy with other things, trying to get somewhere, thinking about what needs doing. We only notice a longing growing quietly inside us somewhere else, at another time.

Perhaps that was how my stories about the sea had begun. First it slipped into my sentences without my noticing, then found a place in the stories I wrote.

And one night, it appeared at the end of a train journey.

The more I thought about the dream, the more I felt that what happened along the way was not so disconnected: people writing things about me, not finding my paper, missing the train, changing carriages and then boarding the bus in front of me…

Things I had not dwelt on during the day seemed to find paths of their own at night.

Perhaps some things in life happened that way too. We did not always know where we were going. Sometimes we missed a train, sometimes followed someone else, sometimes sat in a place no one else had chosen.

Perhaps what mattered was not always getting on the right train.

Sometimes, when we stopped running after the train we had missed, another road opened before us.

At the end of the road that opened before me, there was the sea.

That was what stayed with me most from the dream.

And the name of that town.

Was it Bayramlı or Bayramoğlu? I still do not know.

But somehow, when I woke, the name had stayed with me.

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