The Passage

Chapter 14 Who am I? Since I wrote what you've read so far, you may have an idea about who I am, but let me introduce myself anyway. My name is Sencer. Ali Sencer. Sencer means "castle." Not a sand castle! Like a large building, typically of the medieval period, fortified against attack with thick walls, battlements, towers, and in many cases with a moat. Like Esztergone Castle. My grandfather Sermet named me. My uncle's first name is Ali also, he is Ali Serhat. Ali was my grandfather's father's name. To my mother, I'm a brainy child living in my own world. But I have some weird behavior. I have to find out what those quirky behaviors are, and I need to smooth my edges. As for my father, to him I'm a useless spoiled brat. He says that although I have everything, I am always unhappy. He thinks I am consciously trying to grab my mother's attention. That's why he thinks I am erratic and stubborn. According to my uncle, I am ahead of my time. He sees a resemblance between the two of us in that regard. Yet, he thinks I am ahead of him for my age. He thinks I have a promising future with the kind of memory I have. According to my grandpa Sermet, I am an airhead, indifferent to what is going on around me. In other words, I am an irresponsible kid. That's what today's technology does to kids, he says. He claims one cannot learn about life without a little scarcity, a little hardship. I don't know what Grandfather Safa thinks of me. One day, I heard him say, "I can't communicate with this boy, Sumru! I do not comprehend the questions he is posing about topics for which I hardly have any context or opinion,” he added. My mother said to him, “Papa Safa, you’ve been using very old vocabulary in your conversations. Those old-fashioned words are hard for him to understand. That’s what causes a communication gap.” According to my teachers, I am careless, lazy and rebellious. They say I am intelligent but not sane enough. They think I resist learning, and, also that I am making a special effort to drive the teachers crazy. According to Melek Hanım, I have some inborn neural and behavioral disorders. The disorders she talks about are not that important. Still, I had to be in special education. She said it might take time for my father and my teachers to understand me. She asked me to find out about my own strengths and weaknesses to know my direction in future. There is also Nazlı. My mother's friend. If I say "Aunt Nazlı" she does not like it. That's why I say "Nazlı," like my friend. Nazlı has a daughter, Sementen. She is two years younger than me. Nazlı was born in Germany. Her husband was German. They came to Turkey after Sementen was born. While they were on their way to Turkey, they had a car crash. Sementen’s father died in that accident. Nazlı and Sementen survived. That's why she doesn't have a father. Sementen spoke her first words too late. Nazlı always spoke with her in two languages, so that she could learn both Turkish and German at the same time. “You are very special,” Nazlı tells me. Why she says that, I do not know. We don't talk much with Sementen. My mother said, she is on the honor roll every semester in school. She stares at me when she visits us but she doesn't smile. One day I asked her, “Shall I recite to you fifty digits of pi?” “You are a weird kid,” she said and, she walked away. I don't know why she said so. Well then, who am I? A different person to different people. To me, I am a twelve-year-old boy. Actually, I'm not exactly twelve yet. I am in my twelfth year. I am the first-born in the twenty-first century in the family. Sometimes I don't know what to do or what to say. To me, what people say is very confusing. I fail to understand them. Especially the teachers. There are things I like or dislike. I like collecting sea-shells, I like to speak English. I love math and numbers but I don't like math classes, everything moves very slowly in that class. I can recite the first fifty digits of pi without missing a digit: 3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 41971 693993751. There are more digits after that, of course, but I stop at the first fifty. It goes on as 5820974944. Pi is an amazing number. All those digits come out of 22 divided by 7. Or you get the same result when you divide the circumference of any circle by its diameter. I know the license plate numbers of 81 provinces in Turkey by heart. I know the cellular phone numbers of the whole family too. The most common letters among cities are A and K. There are 11 provinces starting with the letters A and K in both groups. The letter B comes as the second highest, the number of provinces starting with B is 10. I like learning new things, but I don't like school. I want to be friends with my classmates but they laugh at me when I talk. I don't even know why they're laughing. Once I answered a math question that nobody else did. Someone behind me said, "The imam has started preaching, now shut him up if you can." Then, someone sitting next to him said, "What imam, dude! He is a professor, a real one!” And then they both laughed. I didn't understand what they were talking about, and I don’t know what they mean either. I love space stories. I love cryptology too, but I have a lot more to learn on that. I love my mother. My mother loves me back too.