In The Station - A Magpie Tale

The old man in the photo got away briefly from his wife and told me some stories while chain smoking cigarettes. He has promised to quit smoking, he confessed to me, and it has only led him to more sneaking around. Then he led me back to where his wife was waiting and handed me his camera preset to sepia. He asked me please to take this portrait before they embarked. I do not question why a guy who looks like him is actually American. But then I don't know how to question what we were doing in an Albanian train station either. Stuff like this always happens to me.

He sent the picture to my Google Email Account the other day. I don't know how Tess got it for The Mag. Oh by the way, to the left the communication icons say, NO SMOKING and also NO CAMERAS. And why does the wife want him to quit when she smokes too? Will she quit smoking as well?

And if there is no smoking there, why do they provide an ash receptacle?

As best I remember, here is what he said at one point in his phlegm filled voice. I have taken out the coughing.

This Argument Started
In Third Grade

I can't ever see
why a self respecting place
calls itself Turkey.
Togan and Şahan
are lads from a large dumb bird
and I like roast beef
for my Thanksgiving
dinner anyway, brother.
I have not resolved
this childhood tangle
in my full grown ear and brain.
It still makes my head
rattle and wobble,
though nowadays I try to
deny it, be cool.

May 12, 2013 10:25 AM

Togan Gökbakar and his older brother Şahan Gökbakar as he told me are indeed from Turkey and are young filmmakers.

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