mr. yasin karahan

who knows what your id number looks like. you and few people who love you do. you're a random person to me, but i know your previous phone number, even memorized it. yes, they've given me someone else's number again. 

i could go to certain banks and find out your id number. some shitty bank you never bothered to update your information with; like teb. i'd act like i'm you. i'd wear a suit and pin a chp badge to my lapel. they'd say a code is going to be sent to me, and i'd pull my head back as if i can't read it, instead of just moving the phone forward. i'd read out the code, but it wouldn't get me anywhere, and the teller would find it strange that i'm a different person and wouldn't give me your id number. 

people's id numbers are different but their lives are similar. when i was in primary school i called the school bus driver "teacher" and felt awful about it; you called the shopkeeper near your school "teacher" and felt awful about it. the teacher spells hoşça kal wrong, the driver spells şoför wrong. what does it tell you that the mistakes we left ourselves alone to make are identical down to this level? 

there must have been a period where you too thought you were the worst-off person in the world. the pain of people starving to death in africa is a recognized pain, given that it's constantly held up as the worse thing, and given that i've just held it up here myself. if you're a hungry person in africa, then on top of everyone else in the world, the people actually around you know exactly what you're feeling, and they don't set about reducing it and waving it away. but yours is a pain nobody recognizes, that you can't even put into words, or that nobody notices; singular, resistant to comparison, impossible to summarize. and it really is, until somebody else summarizes it. if you're lucky, you'll find it. it's the kind of luck you're aware you have, whereas people to whom nothing bad has ever happened never once realize how lucky they are. 

this time i changed too. the last four digits of your... -my- number are really valuable to me. for the first time i chose a number for myself, for the first time with my own desires, without being under any influence. and one becomes closer to themselves with a number they choose. the verification codes that come in feel safer, the outgoing calls go more in every direction. i feel like my voice will reach people more as me. i don't know if it was like that for you, but the last four digits of my number give me hope. maybe you also went from this number whose digits you didn't choose to a number whose digits you did. maybe you changed too.