By morning, what you see at night begins to weaken.
Barış sat on the terrace of the guesthouse.
Göreme lay quietly before him.
Morning light brightened the rock faces, and the hill that had seemed so heavy the night before now looked like nothing more than a dry slope.
Steam rose thinly from his tea.
From the kitchen came the smell of bread being warmed. Somewhere far off, a car door closed.
Everything was ordinary.
Because of that, Barış felt a little relieved.
The shadow beneath the outdoor light last night.
The footsteps on the hill.
The single blade of grass moving on its own.
Maybe the night had made all of it.
He had been tired.
He was in a place he didn’t know.
He had thought too much about his father’s map.
There were plenty of reasons.
Barış lined them up inside himself.
But the more explanations he gathered, the less quiet he became.
His father’s map lay on the table.
He had not meant to open it.
And yet, there it was again, spread out before him.
A line with no destination written on it.
The small mark near Nevşehir.
The deep folds in the paper.
Until yesterday, that mark had been nothing more than an old pencil trace.
Now it was different.
To Barış, it no longer looked like a place.
It looked like a question.
Why here?
Why him?
Why did that dog-like shadow appear and disappear?
He closed the map.
Enough.
That was what he thought.
Today, he would walk through town normally.
Take pictures like a tourist.
Look at the carpets outside the shops, the ceramic plates, drink tea.
If he kept some distance from everything that had happened, it would fade.
That was what he had decided.
“Did you sleep well?”
The young man from the guesthouse came over with a plate.
White cheese, olives, tomatoes, cucumber.
The usual breakfast.
“A little,”
Barış said.
The man smiled and set the plate at the edge of the table.
“Sounds carry strangely at night around here. People who come for the first time sometimes can’t sleep.”
Barış looked up.
“Sounds?”
“Dogs. Wind. Because of all the rocks, things can sound strange.”
It was a natural explanation.
So natural that Barış felt almost saved by it.
“Yes. Probably that.”
Saying it aloud made things a little easier.
Probably that.
Wind.
Echo.
Night.
Tiredness.
It could be explained.
And if it could be explained, it did not have to be frightening.
He wanted to believe that.
After breakfast, Barış walked to the edge of the terrace.
More people had begun to appear in the narrow streets below.
Tourists walked with cameras. In front of a shop, a man beat dust from a carpet.
Göreme was a real town.
The strange rocks, the hollowed dwellings, the shadowed paths—
all of them existed in the real world.
Maybe he was the one making them special.
Barış took a deep breath.
Then a dog barked beneath the terrace.
Once.
Short and low.
His body reacted first.
He leaned over the railing at once.
On the road in front of the guesthouse, only two tourists were walking.
No dog.
Nothing at the corner a little farther away.
Barış breathed out.
Just a dog.
That was what he told himself.
It was probably on some other street.
The sound had only echoed off the rocks and reached him from nearby.
That could be explained.
Still, his fingers were gripping the railing.
“Are you all right?”
The young man called to him.
Barış turned.
“I heard a dog.”
“Ah, yes. There are many in this town.”
The man laughed lightly.
“But I don’t see one now.”
The casual words pricked something small in Barış’s chest.
I don’t see one now.
Only now.
That was how it sounded.
Barış looked down at the road again.
Nothing.
No one.
Only morning light on the stones.
And yet something seemed to remain beyond the corner.
He returned slowly to his seat.
The tea had begun to cool.
A thin shine trembled on its surface.
Barış reached for the glass, then stopped.
At the edge of the table, there was a small mark of earth.
Dry soil.
Maybe from someone’s shoe.
Maybe blown there by the wind.
A guesthouse terrace was no strange place for dust.
But the mark was round and shallow, almost like a footprint.
Too small.
Unclear.
A shape that looked ready to fall apart.
Barış almost touched it.
Then stopped.
Again.
He was finding meaning in things that meant nothing.
That was what he thought.
But the voice inside him sounded weaker now.
He folded the map and put it in his pocket.
Today, he would not follow.
He would not think.
He would not check.
With that decided, he left the guesthouse.
The streets of Göreme were bright in the morning light.
The lamps outside the shops were not lit yet.
Blue and red patterns lined the ceramic plates. Carpets moved slowly with the wind.
At a tea place by the road, men spoke with small glasses in their hands.
Laughter rose.
A boy carrying bread went down the slope.
This town was living normally.
Barış thought that.
And he thought he could return to that normal life too.
But his eyes moved toward a street one turn in.
The direction of the fork where he had stopped in the evening.
The direction of the darkness he had looked down on from the hill at night.
He had not meant to go.
He only looked.
Then, at the far end of the narrow lane, a low shape neither black nor brown moved for a second.
Barış stopped.
Not a person.
Not a large stone.
Too brief to call it a dog.
Only a second.
By the time he thought he had seen it, it was gone.
Barış did not move for a while.
People on the street kept walking.
No one stopped.
No one looked back.
No one looked toward the lane.
The world continued as usual.
That was the strangest part.
Barış slowly closed his eyes.
“It’s nothing.”
This time, he said it aloud.
An old man passing nearby looked at him for a moment.
Then went on without saying anything.
Barış opened his eyes.
There was nothing at the end of the lane.
Only a thin shadow stretching across the stones.
Still, something inside Barış had already changed.
It’s nothing.
The words were no longer a denial.
They were more like the last thin cloth he had left to protect himself.
Beyond that cloth, something was moving quietly.
Barış did not enter the lane.
Instead, he stepped out onto the wider road.
He walked toward the voices of people.
It was close to running away.
But not completely.
He looked back several times.
Once.
Twice.
A third time.
On the third time, something was at the entrance of the lane.
Not a dog.
Not a shadow.
Only a small scrap of paper lying there.
Barış stopped.
The paper did not move in the wind.
It lay quietly on the stones, as if pressed there.
He hesitated.
Then went closer.
When he picked it up, it was not old paper.
It looked like a torn piece of a receipt dropped by a tourist.
Only a shop name and faint printed letters remained.
No meaning.
That was what he thought.
But on the back of the paper, a single thin line had been drawn in pencil.
Maybe just a scribble.
Maybe something a child had drawn.
But for some reason, the line resembled the nameless line on his father’s map.
Barış’s fingers stopped.
Morning light fell quietly over the stones.
Far away, a dog barked once more.
This time, much farther off.
Barış stood there, holding the scrap of paper.
Unable to move.
It’s nothing.
He tried to say it again.
But no voice came.
