In 2016, I said:
“No nerd is gonna brood in this comic without being called out for it. >O”
I kept Zeynel’s broken-off, jumbled rumination, as that’s how he speaks in his most emotionally-overwhelmed, usually anxious, moments.
–
The colour of their clothes in this conversation are an inverse of the ones worn during their first conversation. Like every cartoonist on the planet I associate characters with certain colours: Zeynel is blue and plain, Ayse is red/magenta and patterned. When he is given the purple, patterned jacket from Selim it visually indicates a personal shift that continues as he matures, as he moves away from the pressure of living up to his family’s legacy towards building his and Ayse’s own. Ayse wearing blue is her acceptance of him into her world, but otherwise she keeps her person.
Behind him, Ayse enters the verandah, wanting to check up on Zeynel. She sees that he’s in a state of serious, thoughtful melancholy, and places herself beside him. In a sarcastically teasing tone, she asks, “Forever brooding, aren’t you?”
Zeynel turns around. He narrows his eyes and smirks. “Oh, please, spare me, Ayse. It’s nothing. It’s just…”
He returns to where he left off, unravelling the red thread between his fingers. He continues his thought, “Remember what I told you last week, when we sold that red carpet?”
She remembers. “Yeah?”
He holds a section of the red thread between his teeth, forming a tight star-like pattern from the thread. He says, “You know that feeling when you used to think that something, which you never once considered, never bat an eye at, and at first you wouldn’t think it might make sense for you… but it does?”
She smiles. “I know.”
He looks nervous. “Ayse, I really think this is…”
He looks away and off into the distance. Beyond the forest of this house, where he has happily stayed during the last fortnight. He wants to tell her how much this trip has meant to him. But it also means telling her another truth about himself, a truth which he is only beginning to realise.
Zeynel confesses, “I feel like I’m thinking for myself for the first time. It’s strange…but I like it.”
Ayse is pleased at this development. Her plan has succeeded. She tells him, “That’s good. Anyway, Zeynel, I told my baba how you wanted to try becoming a carpet merchant. So he talked to yours.”
He suddenly turns to her, worry and panic in his eyes. He presses his right hand against his chest. “D-did you tell him as well, about…?”
She blinks, tilting her head. “No? I didn’t tell my baba about your anxiety… but I had to let yours know somehow… about the other thing.”
