ISTANBUL: MEMORIES AND THE CITY -- 6

BY ORHAN PAMUK

Then I would shudder to think that the other Orhan might be living in one of these houses. 

As I grew older, the ghost became a fantasy and the fantasy a recurrent nightmare.

In some dreams I would greet this Orhan–always in another house–with shrieks of horror; in others the two of us would stare each other down in eerie merciless silence. 

Afterward, wafting in and out of sleep, I would cling ever more fiercely to my pillow, my house, my street, my place in the world. 

Whenever I was unhappy, I imagined going to the other house, the other life, the place where the other Orhan lived, and in spite of everything I’d half convince myself that I was he and took pleasure in imagining how happy he was, such pleasure that, for a time, I felt no need to go to seek out the other house in that other imagined part of the city.