trial saturday

Part 1
Istanbul has a special talent: it makes you feel like the main character even when you’re just trying to find your hotel and not get scammed by a taxi meter that spins like a slot machine.

So there I was—freshly landed, checked in, and doing that classic tourist move where you “explore the surroundings” but actually you’re just walking around pretending you’re not lost.

Back in the hotel lobby, I spot it: a stack of tourist flyers. Most of them were the usual promises—“Unforgettable night!” “Authentic experience!” “Best price, my friend!”—but one caught my eye:

A night dinner tour.
Candlelight.
Live music.
Traditional Turkish dance.

And I thought: Sure. Why not? Tonight, I become cultured.

I book a seat.

A tourist bus picks me up, and suddenly I’m in a group of strangers who all look like they’ve either just met the love of their life… or are one bad kebab away from ending the night in regret.

We arrive at an open-air restaurant lit by candles—real candles, not the sad electric ones that flicker like a dying flashlight. The place is warm, romantic, and honestly… it looked like a movie set.

They sit us at long tables—about twenty people each. I’m walking toward my seat when the universe does that thing where it turns down the volume on everything else.

Because two tables away…

There she is.

Not “pretty.”
Not “cute.”

No—this was beauty queen with a secret soundtrack energy.

I swear she wasn’t sitting under a candle. The candle was sitting under her.

And I’m just standing there like:
“OMG. Istanbul… you didn’t warn me you were going to do THIS.”

The night starts. Live band, food, laughter. Then the folkloric dancers come out—traditional men’s dance, strong steps, proud posture, the kind of rhythm that makes your chest want to join in.

They announce:
“We need one male from each table!”

Now, I don’t know what came over me. Confidence? Jet lag? The fact that the beauty queen’s table was nearby?

I jump up like I was born for this.

Next thing I know, it’s a contest.

Winner gets all expenses covered.

And here’s the key detail:
I don’t drink.

So while some guys were performing with the courage of three shots and a bad decision, I was fully sober—watching, calculating, thriving.

And then…

They announce the winner.

Me.

I’m standing there like:
“Thank you. I’d like to thank oxygen, balance, and the fact that I’m not dizzy.”

The host says, “What song do you want us to play?”

Now listen—this is where the romantic part of my brain grabbed the steering wheel from the logical part and drove straight into a love story.

I said:
“Is it me you’re looking for?”

Yes. Lionel Richie.
Yes. Bold.
Yes. I already had a plan.

Because that song wasn’t for the crowd.

That song was for her.

Music starts. People begin pulling their partners to the dance floor. I take a breath, straighten my shirt, and walk toward her table like a man who has rehearsed this moment… even though I absolutely hadn’t.

As I get closer, I hear her speaking.

French.

Of course.

Because why would life let it be easy?
Why would the universe hand me a romance without also throwing in a language barrier for seasoning?

I freeze. My brain goes blank. My entire vocabulary is now:
“Bonjour… croissant… merci… Toyota?”

I retreat to my table like a soldier crawling back from battle.

Two girls at my table—also French—look at me like, “What happened to you?”

I whisper, “I want to invite her to dance. What do I say?”

They coach me with serious faces, like this is a mission of global importance.

They tell me:
“Voulez-vous danser?”
(But the way I heard it? “Vo le vo dance.”)

Perfect. I got this.

I rush back, heart pounding, Lionel Richie singing like he’s my wingman.

I stand in front of her and confidently say:

“Vo le vo… dance?”

She looks at me. A pause.

Then she smiles and says:
“Oui.”

And just like that—my hand reaches out, her hand takes mine, and we walk to the stage.

The crowd watches.

I’m thinking, Don’t trip. Don’t trip. Don’t trip.
Because nothing kills romance faster than falling in front of everyone and taking a candle with you.

We dance.

I try to tell her she’s stunning. She speaks back in French. I reply in English. We understand exactly zero words…

…but somehow we understand everything.

It was the most romantic conversation we’ve ever had that contained no actual communication.

When the song ends, I invite her to my table.

She agrees.

Now I’ve got my two French translators sitting like United Nations negotiators, turning my nervous English into smooth French and turning her elegant French into something I can understand without accidentally proposing marriage.

Everyone at the table is shocked by her beauty.

Some guy even says, “How did you even see her? It’s dark!”

I told him, dead serious:

“She was shining like the moon among stars. How could I miss her?”

(Internally, I was also thinking: Yes, I nailed that line. Istanbul, write that down.)

We talk for hours. I ask where she’s staying, where she’s going, what her plans are tomorrow—trying to map my future like a GPS that only leads to romance.

She mentions she’s going to Marmaris.

My heart goes: Marmaris = destiny.

By the time it’s time to leave, she writes her address in France on a small piece of paper and hands it to me like it’s a love letter from a movie.

We go back to our buses. We separate.

And as my bus drives away, I’m staring out the window like a man who just watched his whole future turn into taillights.

Back at my hotel, I can’t sleep.

It’s 3 AM.

And the thoughts start attacking:

How stupid are you?
Why didn’t you ask for her number?
Why didn’t you ask her to marry you right there?
Why did you only get an address in FRANCE like you’re going to mail a pigeon?

At around 5-ish AM, I snap.

I decide: I will find her hotel.
I will switch hotels.
I will follow her program.
I will become a romantic hero… or at least a man with severe sleep deprivation.

I jump in a taxi and start searching for the hotel she gave me.

But Istanbul at dawn is a maze. Streets twist. Signs blur. My confidence fades.

By 6 AM, I’m defeated.

I tell the taxi driver to drop me near the port. I eat something to recover my soul.

That’s when I realize:

I have $200 in my pocket.

No cards.
No ID.
Nothing else.

Everything is back in my hotel room.

So now I’m romantically desperate and financially limited—basically the exact vibe of a dramatic Turkish series.

I walk along the beach, trying to calm down, when I notice a crowd moving toward a ship.

I ask, “Where are you going?”

They say, “Bursa.”

I ask the only question that matters:

“Is Bursa toward Marmaris?”

They say yes.

And my brain goes:
THEN I AM IN.

I buy a ticket and jump onto the ship like a man chasing love, fate, and possibly a very bad idea.

And there I was—heading to Bursa with no plan, no sleep, $200, and a heart that refused to accept that the night was over…

Searching for her…

…and finding nothing.
By the end of the day in Bursa, after a thorough search—meaning I walked like a man training for the Olympics of heartbreak—I still found nothing.

No sign of her.
No clue.
Not even a French “oui” floating in the air to keep me alive.

So I finally accepted it. I stood there like a defeated hero in a romantic movie and said to myself:

“Alright… Basem. Go back to Istanbul. Be a normal human. Sleep. Eat. Stop acting like Lionel Richie wrote your life story.”

I was this close to leaving…

When I noticed something.

The same group of guys who left Istanbul with me—the chaps, the wanderers, the “wherever the ship goes we go” crew—were heading to another city.

And I overheard the name like it was a prophecy:

Yalova.

My heart did that dangerous little jump it does when it thinks it’s smart.

I walked over casually—like I wasn’t about to ruin my life again—and asked, trying to sound calm:

“Yalova… is it toward Marmaris?”

They said:
“Yes.”

And just like that, my brain turned off again.

I whispered,
“You know what… I’m in.”

At this point, I’m not a tourist anymore.

I’m a love detective with no badge, no language skills, and a very questionable budget.

Before leaving, I did something that felt insanely romantic… and also slightly unhinged:

I sent her a postcard to her address in France.

Because of course I did.

In my mind, she would receive it and say:
“Mon Dieu… he really meant it.”

In reality, the postcard probably arrived like:
“Dear beautiful stranger, I danced with you once and now I live on bread. Please call me.”
Signed: a man in crisis.

Now here’s the part where the story turns from romance into survival documentary.

I check my pockets.

My cash is limited.

No cards. No ID. No backup plan.

So I made a responsible decision—by my standards:

I will survive on bread and water.

In Turkey, I remembered they call bread something like “sakura” (that’s what my exhausted brain recorded, at least).

So there I am in Yalova… chasing love… powered by bread… like a poetic homeless Romeo.

I search the city.

Nothing.

Not even a shadow of her beauty.

So I do the only logical thing a man like me would do:

I send another postcard from Yalova to France.

Because if I can’t find her in Turkey, I will at least haunt her mailbox internationally.

And then the chase becomes a full-blown adventure:

City after city.

Step after step.

Hope after hope.

I kept asking people—especially anyone who looked French:

“Have you seen a beautiful, gorgeous French girl?”

And every time, they’d ask the same question:

“Why are you looking for her?”

And I’d answer, like a man possessed by romance:

“She stole me.”

They’d blink.

“Stole you… what did she steal?”

And I always had one word:

“My heart.”

At that point I wasn’t even embarrassed. I was running on bread, zero sleep, and pure poetry.

The journey kept going—
Selçuk.
Bodrum.
And finally…

Marmaris.

People ask me now, “How did you survive a whole week like that?”

Simple.

For one week, I wasn’t living like a tourist.

I was living like a man who had been hit by love at candlelight speed.

A week.

Homeless vibes.

Romantic mission.

No success.

And by the time I reached Marmaris, I had almost nothing left—just enough money for a bus ticket back to Istanbul.

I bought the ticket like it was my last coin in a video game.

And even then… I searched one more time.

Because what if she was there, at the corner of the street, shining like the moon among stars again?

But no.

Time came.

The bus arrived.

I got on.

And as the bus pulled away, I stared out the window thinking the most painful thought of all:

Not “I lost money.”

Not “I walked a week.”

But—

“What if she was looking for me too… and I was always one city away?”

And there I was… heading back to Istanbul…

A man with a suitcase full of postcards, a stomach full of bread, and a heart that still hadn’t accepted the ending.
Part 2 — Istanbul: The Return of the Postcard Romeo

By the time the bus started crawling back into Istanbul, I wasn’t a traveler anymore.

I was a survivor.

One week of chasing a dream girl across Turkey had turned me into a walking disaster: depressed, exhausted, hungry… and spiritually begging for a Turkish shower so strong it could wash off my decisions.

The bus finally dropped us off—except of course it dropped us off far. Not “a short walk” far. More like “congratulations, you now live here” far.

And I checked my pockets.

No cash.

Not even taxi money.

Not even “buy a water and cry” money.

So I walked.

Ninety minutes.

My legs were on strike. My stomach was singing sad songs. And my soul was somewhere in Bodrum asking, “Why are we like this?”

When I finally reached my motel, I walked in looking like a man who had been through war—specifically a war between romance and common sense.

The receptionist’s eyes got wide. He rushed toward me like I was a lost child.

“Where have you been?! Are you okay?!”

I answered with the weakest voice in history:

“I… am ok.”

He said, “We were about to report you as a missing person! You left, never called, and your luggage is still in your room!”

I repeated, still half-dead:

“I’m ok.”

In reality, what I meant was:

“I’m not okay, sir. I’m a romantic criminal who tried to follow love with no French, no money, and no plan.”

But I didn’t have the energy for a confession.

I went upstairs, entered my room, and took a shower that felt like a religious experience.

Then I went outside and ordered food like a man returning from exile.

Two shawarma sandwiches.

Back-to-back.

No small talk. No shame.

Just me and shawarma rebuilding my personality.

OMG.

I started feeling human again.

Still buzzed, though—not from alcohol.

From lack of sleep… and the fact that somewhere in France a beautiful girl might be reading my postcards like:

“Who is this dramatic man and why is he collecting stamps for me?”

I stayed another week in Istanbul, trying to act normal.

Museums. History. Culture.

Taksim market—walking around like a peaceful tourist while my heart was still running a marathon.

Then eventually… I flew back home.

Life went on.

But the memory didn’t.

I still remembered her. Her “oui.” The candlelight. The dance. The moon-among-stars moment.

And then… a month later…

A letter arrived.

From France.

My heart stopped like a computer freezing at the worst possible time.

I stared at it and whispered:

“Oh please God… I know nobody in France… except her.”

I opened it.

My hands were shaking like I was defusing a bomb made of romance.

The letter was in French—beautiful, elegant, completely impossible for me to understand.

And then, at the bottom…

Two words.

In English.

“Love You.”

And in that moment I realized something dangerous:

All my suffering, all my walking, all my bread-and-water choices…

didn’t end in Marmaris.

It ended right here.

In my hands.

With two words that hit harder than Lionel Richie