Lili Marleen

Suddenly İstanbul Municipal Radio

starts playing Lili Marleen.

Tears in my eyes.

I flunked the entrance exam of the German High school;

Leyla, my steady girlfriend since the first grade,

my eternal love, got in.

Our roads, I know, will separate.

What a beautiful language, says my mother

making my melancholy worse.

Don’t let the girls see you crying,

advises my younger older-brother,

they’ll never go out with you again.

This was the song of the Nazi brutes,

declares my older older-brother authoritatively

as if this historical fact would repair my broken heart

After taking a sip from his lemonade,

my father pitches in, trying to find a gentle side

– as always – in everything:

All soldiers loved it,

Dutch, Hungarian, British,

and of course Italian…

Then he adds dreamily:

Even the Turkish reservists sang it

in the dark, in their barracks.

I see my parents looking at each other

– my father on leave for the weekend

in his meticulously ironed lieutenant uniform,

my mother, beautiful as a French resistance heroine –

sitting in front of our AGA v251 radio

holding hands maybe

and listening to Lili Marleen.