Aslan’s Farewell

CEMRE KAVAFOĞLU POYRAZAuthor page →

I opened my eyes. Slowly. Because I had to.

It was the ugliest green I had ever seen in my life. I had never looked at it so closely before. It had never even occurred to me that a person could hate a colour. How did people bear it? I couldn’t.

The less I could bear it, the more stubbornly it came closer, and closer... It swung onto the dirt road to our house. I had been waiting, with a sliver of hope, for it to carry straight on and pass us by, but here it came, raising dust from its wheels, bouncing over the stones. “If only they wouldn’t jolt the car so, it might hurt her...”

I was waiting outside the garden gate, for my mother. The car came. It stopped right in front of me, as if there were nowhere else. Birds took flight from the pine tree across the way. From its needles, the snowflakes left over from the night fell, glittering. The clouds seemed almost to part. The storm that had raged until morning had died down. Now the calm song of the cold was playing in the empty streets. Where had the wailing gone?

Some people got out of the car. Even the familiar faces were strangers now. My eyes were searching for a single pair of brown eyes, but couldn’t find them. Everyone got out of the car. My mother didn’t. “If only someone would help her out, she can’t get out on her own... She hasn’t even got her wheelchair with her!” No one helped her out.

I felt a warmth against my leg. I turned to look. “Aslan, my boy...” The two of us were standing right beside the car. I stroked his great old head, and he pressed in a little closer. I was wearing my mother’s cardigan. That must have been why... “It smells like no other, doesn’t it?”

A voice, a deep but muffled voice, was speaking of my mother at the front of the car, a robe draped over it. I didn’t listen. Then, finishing his prayer, he called out to the crowd:

- Forgive her whatever is due to you.

- She Is Forgiven!

- WOOF!

- Forgive her.

- She Is FORGIVEN!

- WOOF!

- FORGIVE HER!

- SHE IS FORGIVEN!

- WOOF!

I turned my head and looked at Aslan. He was looking at me too. Had he given my mother his forgiveness, or did it only seem that way to me? Along with everyone else, he had barked exactly three times. In his eyes were crumbs of gratitude for all the bread he had eaten from my mother’s hand over the years. He was not like those who had fluttered around her like moths while she was well and shining with joy, then turned their faces away once she could no longer get about. Through all her illness he had stayed by her side, and as if that were not enough, today too he had not left her alone. If loyalty were a living creature, it would surely be Aslan. I stroked his head. He gave a short howl. Then he turned around, let his tail drop, and with his head bowed to the ground, walked slowly away and disappeared among the trees.

I wanted to go after him.

I stayed behind in that crowd; I couldn’t go.

That night, in my dream, I howled and howled on the dirt road.

And I never saw Aslan, or my mother, again.

This story received the Jury’s Special Award in the Tahta Gemi International Short Story Competition (2026). Translated from the Turkish.