Can all the shame of the world fit inside a single tomato?

Life does not flow behind the thick walls of palaces; it flows in the ruthless reality of the street. 

You don't need days of philosophical searching to face the human soul in its most naked, most vulnerable state; half an hour spent in an ordinary grocery store line on an ordinary street is more than enough to show you a whole country quietly dying.

I have been living in Üsküdar for at least forty years. In a middle-class neighborhood of Zeynepkamil... A few days ago, I entered one of those familiar, unsympathetic markets identified with the poor for some small kitchen necessities. 

While I was paying for the few items I had quickly gathered, I noticed the young man waiting right behind me.

He had only one tomato in his hand.

A medium-sized, single red tomato…

The cashier girl took that single tomato into her palm for a moment, placed it on the dirty metal of the digital scale, and handed it back to the man: "Five liras, forty-five kuruş."

The man took the tomato and held out the coins he had ready in his other palm. In his voice was that thin, fragile tone of a person crushed under the weight of a difficult life: "I have exactly five liras."

The sound exploded in my ear, growing and growing in my mind... 

And a moment came when time stood still for me. The gears of my simple world, which were spinning in my mind, locked at that second. 

It was a moment of twenty, maybe twenty-five seconds; but all the known and unknown shames of this dark period we are living through fit into that short span of time. 

How did I put the three or four items I bought into the bag, who was around, what happened there in that short interval? I don't remember any of it...

What remains in my memory is the man's timid hand holding a single tomato, the feeling deep in my bones of wanting to get out of there as soon as possible, and the cashier noticing that deep misery at that moment and not asking for the missing forty-five kuruş. 

And the man, with that single tomato in his hand that hadn't even been put in a bag, looking as if it were the heaviest burden on earth, walked away from me like a ghost. 

As he left, I noticed a weight crushing my soul... My head was always bowed. I couldn't look that man in the face. I had instinctively felt so heavily that he would be hurt that even if I wanted to, neither my face nor my eyes could turn toward him. I disappeared within my market to avoid hurting him... It was as if another 'me' separate from the one inside me had destroyed the 'me' I assumed and accepted. 

The palace sultans, those drunk on power, those who worship power, money, their interests, their calculations and plans, and perhaps even the collective sin of society, bowed my head. 

I am not exaggerating; not even half an hour had passed since this shock when I stepped into another market to buy one last missing item I couldn't find. I swear on my honor that the tragedy I witnessed there, in front of that register, had changed its disguise this time and stood before me in the image of an Anatolian aunt of about sixty-five, her face adorned with the lines of years and hardship.

The woman handed a tiny package of chicken in her hand to the register. "How much?" she asked in a whisper. After the shrill "beep" sound from the barcode, the number that spilled from the cashier's lips fell like a guillotine, tearing through the illusions they impose on the entire public: "170 Lira."

The woman said nothing. 

Not a rebellion, nor a surprise... She just took the 170-lira chicken from the cashier's hand with a deep, accepted helplessness and headed toward the refrigerator with silent steps and put it back on its shelf. Quietly.... 

Conscience… Morality… Justice…

It has been such a long time since we emptied these words of meaning, since we lost these values... 

On one side, a massive government that swims in billions of dollars with the small group of cronies it has created, looking at its people from the heavens and from far, far away; on the other side, a Turkey trying to scrape together the change in its pocket to buy a single tomato, forced to put a package of chicken back on the shelf…

As I headed home, curses spilled from my lips that anyone passing by could easily hear. I swore and cursed one after another...

And I thought of those small-time advocates on the streets, screaming and shouting as if having hysteria crises in front of the cameras, blinded, their consciences withered... And those who disguised themselves as journalists, whose pens dripped pus instead of ink, those trying to cover the sun with mud... And the faceless, identityless, soulless, robotized humans spreading all kinds of lies shamelessly with fake names and fake photos on social media... 

"Look to your right and left, do you see a single hungry or homeless person?" those who snap back. That incompetent crowd whose concern is neither this wounded homeland, nor justice, nor the cold, hard facts.

We know that their only concern is those pathetic interests for which they sold their souls… While their masters make huge windfalls with big lies; these small-minded people comfort themselves and each other with little lies. In fact, they know all the truths in every detail... They try to veil the big, big truths with hysterical lies for their petty interests. 

I don't know… 

How aware are those responsible of this great collapse, this silent slaughter? Can the bleeding wounds of the street be seen from those gold-leafed windows of the palaces?

If they haven't become completely numb, I have a proposal for them. Let them leave their palaces, their ostentatious lives, for just half an hour. Without their armies of bodyguards, let them listen to the breath of the street for just half an hour.

There, they will see their own work. They will see the malnourished, pale-faced children; that old woman who hasn't had a bite of meat pass through her throat; and that young man leaving the market, fitting all the shame of the world into a single tomato.

If there is a speck of mercy left in their hearts and the eyes of their consciences are not completely blind…