57. On Being Unable to Stand Up and Leave

"According to my notes, one evening during one of our last meetings in the penthouse—at 9:20 pm, January 17, 2004, to be precise—Kemal spoke of himself as “a grounded ship, an ignominious heap of inadequacy and shame” after we’d each had rakı doubles. Our hero, whose heartbreak found increasing reflection in my own soul with our every conversation, used this expression to refer to how he felt when he spent evenings at Füsun’s and felt physically unable to get up and leave even as the hour grew late." (The Innocence of Objects by Orhan Pamuk)