"No, it wasn't always like this. It wasn't like this back then... neither the houses were so new nor the streets so clean. But..." she corrected me and then sighed nostalgically. "But along with the trash, humanity also disappeared from our alleys. Now you only see foreigners here. And our own people? Even more strangers than the foreigners..."
Despite her over eighty years, she chirped tirelessly like a spring nightingale. During all those hours, I wasn't facing a person at the twilight of their life, but a lovestruck girl. A woman who experienced love, history, passion, and disdain to the very depths of her soul. "The City was like that, even before the expulsion of the Greeks... it had us, it had you... It was a little difficult, but it accommodated us all just fine. Some above, some below. And I kept going up and down. One moment in Paradise and the next in hell. Until I stayed there forever..."
"Where?" I asked her almost automatically. "In Paradise or in hell?" She looked at me enigmatically. It wasn't that she didn't want to confess. She was afraid to whisper it to herself. She didn't speak, she looked out the window. The sun was setting, and she was gently caressing the gray-green outline of the Beylerbey hills on the opposite, Asian side with her gaze. She remained motionless for a while. "You know..." she said with a smile, once her eyes had dried and she had no fear of making me sad. "Presbyopia isn't a disease for the ophthalmologist. Mainly, it's a disease for the psychiatrist..." "Why do you say that?" I asked genuinely puzzled. "Because as time passes, the gaze's vision fades and the soul's clarity clears..." she explained. "And sometimes, that's unbearable..."