Drifting between essay and fiction, this text draws on magical realism through the echoes of the body, memory, and the unseen. I hope it carries each reader toward the shore of their own inner voice.

They say that Gülsüm’s granddaughter keeps a magical snake in the olive tree in her garden. Her name is Ayperi—the girl’s, not the snake’s. But the wild girl went ahead and named the snake anyway: Iris. After the eye’s cradle, or something of that sort. My name is Güner. I was Gülsüm’s neighbor, may she rest in peace. Everything I’m telling you here was whispered to me by Gülsüm on her deathbed. Well, every family secret has its hour to rise from where it’s been buried, doesn’t it?

***

Gülsüm’s inner voice: “My granddaughter turned out sharp-tongued like a snake, may God forgive her...”
Ayperi: “Oh, grandmother, if only you knew how right you were...”

***

Gülsüm: I called that nest ominous again and again. But it was my own jealousy speaking. Now that it’s my turn to lie on a deathbed, to wait on the threshold of death, I can admit it. I had let jealousy coil around me like a snake. The truly haunted one was my own.

***

The Encounter: A Twilight Scene

Ayperi woke with a jolt just before dawn.
Her body’s memory had pulled her out, though she had wanted to linger in the dream.
She hovered between sleep and waking, between the dreamworld and the world of flesh.
Her eyelids were open, but the inside of her still slept.

She shuffled through the house.
Cracked the door open silently.
A cool breath of air brushed her skin.
The air was neither dark nor light.
Neither night nor morning.
Only gray.
Only in-between.

Her feet were bare.
When they touched the soil, something stirred within her.
Something... but what?

She stepped into the garden.
Walked toward the olive tree.
Standing before it, she remembered the stone mound her father once stood upon in her dream.
She reached out to touch the tree.
And at that very moment...

A rustle from the branches.
Time seemed to hold its breath.
Something drifted downward, slow as a prayer.
A shadow.
A glimmer.
A spiral.

İris

Slender, long, ancient.
There was patience in her eyes.
Ayperi did not step back.
She knew.
She should have been afraid.
But she wasn’t.
The only thought passing through her was:
“So it’s real.”

Iris glided down to the soil.
Turned her head toward the girl.
Ayperi met her gaze.
As if they had known each other for years.
As if this meeting had been decided long before.

That moment.
In the presence of the now, nothing was spoken.
Yet those who know, know well:
Sometimes silence carries the sound of everything that needs to be said.

***

She knew she should be afraid. But no fear stirred in Ayperi. Instead, a small tremor of tenderness awakened within her. She stepped back slowly, reached the shed, found the plastic cup she had forgotten to bring inside the house the night before, and filled it with water from the bottle. With the same quiet steps, she returned to the olive tree. She set the water at the foot of the trunk. The snake coiled downward headfirst. Its body wrapped around the tree’s bark, its head hanging toward the earth. Gently, drop by drop, it drank. “Ah, my dear,” whispered Ayperi, almost as if singing a lullaby, “you were thirsty.”

***

Passage: Silence, Water, Thirst

Morning came.
Ayperi was gone.
She had gone off to Diyarbakır, that wild girl.
Just like her father—never able to stay still.
Why did she go? What did she do there? No one knows.
“Ritual,” she said at first, and something about “water.”
But none of us understood a word of her mad talk.
She didn’t try to explain it again anyway.

Now, who found whom, who lost whom, no telling.
Where was that wild girl to find water in that desert city?
Diyarbakır has nothing but stone.
Stone... and silence.

***

“A Prayer for Those Who Cannot Become a Home: Ayperi”

There are people...
Those who spend their whole lives seeking a home.
They knock on a door, look out a window, then turn to another sky...
But no place ever says “here” to them.
No water ever says “drink.”
No tree offers its shade.

And yet, some among them build their home not outside but within.
They sit upon stone, yet their hearts soften.
They walk through drought, yet keep a single drop tucked in their pocket.
They see the serpent and do not flee.
For they know:
Even in what seems ominous, there can be room.

Among those who never found a home, Ayperi carried stone.
On land that was not her own, she offered water to another.
Iris asked nothing of her.
And Ayperi never said, “Your home is here.”
But both understood:
To become a home is the responsibility of those who cannot find one.

And so...
Neither silence broke Ayperi,
Nor jealousy,
Nor slander,
Nor the desert.

Because the true devastation is
Failing to make room inside oneself.
Ayperi made room.
And Iris entered through that space.
Sometimes, a home is nothing more than this.

***

Finale: After the Girl Who Came Like Water

And then...
She left.
No one could bring themselves to say “don’t go.”
No one even fully grasped what she was leaving for.
But somehow, everyone understood:
When someone leaves, the ground shifts.

After Ayperi, the tree was silent.
Güner was silent.
Gülsüm had long fallen silent.
But something remained:
A glance.
A trace.
A cup of water at the foot of an olive tree.
And a few drops seeping into the soil.

No one has stepped close to that tree ever since.
Yet everyone slows their pace a little when passing by.
As if someone were still there.
As if someone were still waiting.

Ayperi was gone.
But they said Iris still appeared from time to time.
And the stones sometimes stirred.

And the water...
Even the water became a secret in that house.

***

“And the girl left. But the snake still lies at the foot of the tree...”