He had worked day and night for years, all for the green Mercedes he’d always dreamed of. Just once, he wanted to recline in the back seat, pass through his neighborhood in style.
The marriage he dragged through, the children he couldn’t tend to, the relatives he couldn’t visit, even the prayers he kept missing — all of it was, to him, a waste of time. His eyes saw nothing but the dream he was rushing toward.
Like most of us, he was deceiving himself:
“Work is also worship — may God forgive me. My heart is pure, that’s what matters.”
So he told himself.
Time passed, and at last the great day came. He went to bed early the night before, packed and ready, waiting for morning to meet his Mercedes. The household, who had awaited this dream for years, woke up early in excitement.
That excitement soon gave way to weeping and cries. You might think such emotion excessive — but for a family that had waited years for this moment, it was perfectly natural.
The neighbors, hearing the noise, began filling into the house in bewilderment. While they tried to understand what was happening, a brand-new green Mercedes pulled up to the door.
A short while later, the official driver and an attendant came inside to collect him, and the murmur of the curious crowd gave way to a deep silence. Together, they lifted him onto their shoulders and carried him to the car.
Just as he had always dreamed, he lay stretched out in the back of a green Mercedes, passing through the neighborhood with an official driver.
As they pulled up before the morgue, a writing appeared on the wall.
“Man, while alive, misses nothing so much as life itself,” it read.
Turkish original: “Yeşil Mercedes” on aliosmanakcaoglu.com.