The cab smells of sardines. The sardines are not mine. They are from every cat that has ever been in this cab — in the upholstery, in the space between the seat and the door where crumbs go to become permanent. I have had the cab cleaned. The sardines are structural.
Running.
Fare 1. Taksim to Beşiktaş. A woman with a suitcase. She held the handle with both hands. The ride was twelve minutes. She did not speak. She left the seat warm and the warmth lasted until Kabataş. Last temperature: seven minutes.
Running.
Fare 2. Karaköy to Cihangir. A man who smelled of raki and wanted to talk about his mother. I listened. Listening is driving with the ears. He tipped well. The seat smelled of raki until the next rain.
Running.
Fare 3. Taksim to Cihangir. Orange. Small. No name. She climbed in on a Thursday — a fare had left the door open, the cat entered, and I drove with a cat in the back seat who sat exactly where the fare had been sitting and who weighed nothing but whose presence weighed everything.
I drove slowly. I took the long route. The meter was off.
The cat sat looking out the window — at the light on the buildings in Cihangir, at the pigeons lifting off the mosque roof, at the colour of the evening arriving. Forty minutes. The most unprofessional thing a taxi driver can do.
She stretched — the back arching, the claws extending into the upholstery — and jumped out a window that was barely open. She fit. The claw marks are still in the seat. I can feel them with my paw. Four ridges, the threads pulled loose, a texture like a word pressed into fabric by something sharper than sitting.
I sat at the curb with the engine running and the warm seat behind me for twenty minutes. I did not turn around. Not looking does not keep it. But not looking is what I had.
Running.
Fare 4. Eminönü to Fatih. A child asleep against the window. The mother paid. The child left a circle of breath fog on the glass. I did not wipe it.
Running.
Fare 5. Ortaköy to Taksim. Two men arguing about football. The seat remembered nothing. Some fares leave no temperature.
Running.
Fare 6. Beyoğlu to the airport. A woman who said: "I am not coming back." The seat was cold before she left it.
Running.
Fare 7. The Galata Bridge.
She sat in the middle of the road. White. Not moving. One green eye and one blue. She was not a fare. She did not get in. She sat on the bridge and I stopped the car and turned off the engine.
The meter stopped.
She smelled like fur-and-stone. The cold stone of a bridge at the exact point where the Bosphorus passes underneath and the air carries the water up through the asphalt.
My breathing slowed to the rate a dog breathes when something important is happening — deep, even, the whole ribcage moving. A cat that is not leaving is the most terrifying thing a dog can encounter. The whole body is built for the leaving. If the cat does not leave, the body does not know what to do.
She jumped off the rail. She disappeared into Karaköy. The bridge emptied. There was no warm seat. She had been on the bridge, not in the cab. There was no warmth to wait for. There was only the windshield and the strait and the light and the sardines.
Running.
I am driving.
— Kassim
Istanbul. The meter is running.
P.S. The cellist writes to a room. I understand. My cab is a room. It moves, but it is a room. The sardines are the only thing that stays. I have made my peace with sardines.