Breakwater by Mina Hamedi (@minahamedi)

[[[Naomi’s note, Wednesday, September 7, 2022. Although Mina Hamedi’s prose is even with tranquility, its underlying sensibility is stormy, bewitched, and oracular. She is a writer of knowing and smokey substance; she tends her language under twilight. Her short essay entitled “Breakwater” recalls perceptions from the coast of the Marmara Sea, where she grew up.]]]

There are two directions I can take, but I always go to the left first. The rain has stopped for now, the tides are violent in the aftermath. I tread on the concrete, then walk softly on the damp, packed sand. There are small bones with black, white, and gray feathers scattered toward the shallow water. Most of the feathers have been scraped off. I pass the basketball courts, doors left open, and approach a glaring of cats. Some are huddled together, with the kittens behind them in the breakwater rocks. Others lay solitary on the path. I take the path that leads out of the marina, the rocks lining each side as the water flows between them. I hear calls from between the boulders, a black cat twists between crevices. She sees me but does not retreat.

Black ducks float with the waves by docked fishing boats, seagulls wail and drink water from puddles. I walk back to the main pathway and see the cargo ships in the distance, waiting for passage through the Bosphorus. There are lines of navy, red, and white, and they always anchor a good distance away from one other. This shore twists so much that you can see it clearly from above. I can always recognize its shape on maps.  Then I trace a specific point to the second row of houses from the seaside and find the contours of where I grew up.

I walk to the second path that stretches out and into the water, making a vow to bring my best friend here. The colors will remind her of home. Water finds its way above the breakwater rocks.

I start heading to the right, to take a photograph of my grandparents’ house that stands just a few feet away from the water behind a short ivy-covered gate. The mint tip of the adjacent greenhouse is visible now after the rain.

The second path is home to only one cat, who sits at the edge, right before the breakwater rocks. She's a calico, her white fur grayed, matted, and patterns muted. As I get closer her ears change angles. Her mouth opens slightly but I'm still too far to hear the sound she makes. She reminds me of my own calico cat, whose yelps I first heard out in our garden when she was a sick kitten.

There’s a hierarchy among these seaside cats. Maybe this one prefers to be alone, or was forced out of her clowder. I’m an observer of their lives, their interactions. I get to peer into their homes and alter their routines.

There is no other place quite like this shore. It reminds me that I am a descendant of it, that I was nourished by it and then I moved away. When I return, I imagine I’m among spirits, breathing the same air, or at least a small part of what is left. When the drops from waves sprinkle over my feet and I can barely discern islands in the distance, the future is not here.