Yousef and Irem drove me back to the hotel and asked me to call them if I needed anything. I apologized to both of them for making them worry over nothing and assured I would let them know if I needed something. After going inside my room, my thought went to that person, but I couldn’t recall what his face was actually like. It is like seeing someone in a fleeting dream, and you know their presence and voice, but can’t see their face.

Next day, I decided to go to the center again and meet the host to find out about that person. However, when I roughly described the whirler’s appearance to him, the host told me that he could recall no such person among the semazens. 

Seeing me perturbed and confused, he asked me to stay and watch the performance to see whether the person I was looking for was among the semazens or not. I agreed and sat down to watch the ceremony as the Sema ritual started with an eulogy, followed by a drumbeat on Kudun signaling Divine Command Kun, BE:

Be, and it Becomes, To come into existence and exist.

The eulogy was accompanied by Taksim on a reed flute which symbolizes Life-giving breath of God. The semazens entered the stage and greeted each other thrice, then, performed their four selams. The first selam signifies birth of the Truth through Knowledge, the second is the rapture of human being by witnessing splendor in creation, the third selam symbolizes self-annihilation and relinquishment before love, and the Fourth one, is complete submission.

Self-annihilation, I pondered, is the rapture of Self within the Beloved where One’s own being does not exist separate from the Other.

 I had been lost in the thoughts when I saw that person again, whirling among the dervishes.

This time, I shot up from my chair without wasting a breath and went after him, but the person had left the stage and disappeared through door. I chased after him, but when I came out of the door, I found myself standing in the middle of a desert.

In the distance, he stood wearing black robes and his face was also covered with a black veil, save for his penetrating amber eyes which held deep gaze.

“Who are you?” I shouted, but he turned his back towards me and started walking away from me.

“STOP!” I called, running after that person to catch him, but when I tried to grab his cloak, he turned into dust and slipped through my fingers.

“The ceremony has finished.” A man told me, and I realized that I had been crying again. I wiped my tears coming out of the center and returned to my hotel. I opened my phone and sent a message to Natasha about seeing a man at theatre.

‘Is it happening again?’

She texted back immediately, and I furrowed my brows in confusion. Why did she say it was happening again? I wasted no time and pressed a call to her.

“Hello, Rhea?” There’s an urgency in her tone. “What do you mean by it’s happening again?” I inquired from her.

“You do not remember, do you?” She took a sharp breath and spoke, “It’s not your first time telling me that you are constantly seeing someone.”

“But, I have never told you before this.” I was baffled at her revelation.

“Rhea, I think you should come back and receive your medical treatment.”

“What are you saying?” I asked for the clarification. “I’m already on anti-depressant pills.”

“You and I both know what I am talking about. It’s never been about depression.”  She paused for a brief moment before she told me, “You clearly show the symptoms of Bipolar disorder. The hallucinations—"

I disconnected the call, and turned off the phone when she called again. I didn’t have bipolar disorder. Natasha had said before that I had depressive episodes and experienced auditory hallucination because of them. Why did she say that I suffered from bipolar disorder?

It was my first time seeing him and definitely didn’t recall mentioning anything to Natasha. I thought about my flight and landing in Romania. I was on train—

‘The train.’ I recalled.

I might’ve seen him on the train, then what? Bits and glimpses of him flashed across my mind and my head started hurting before everything came flooding in, and I finally remembered.

The last time I saw him was in the Western Sahara Desert. I flipped open my laptop to check my flight history, but it showed that I had never been to Morocco before. The scar on the arm was also gone, and there’s no injury on my hand either.

Did I remember it wrong?

I opened my laptop and searched the discussion forums on internet where someone might have experienced the same thing. There were accounts of people telling  others that they had Déjà vu or felt that their reality had somehow changed, but couldn’t explain it. One said, that he used to have a golden fountain pen, but one day it was suddenly gone and no one in his house had a memory of it. A woman wrote that one day she woke, and couldn’t recognize the man who claimed to be her husband, but she had never been married.

It’s phenomenon of false memory: The Mandela Effect

I immediately looked for the hairpin in my luggage, but it’s gone. I recalled having it with me when I stabbed the men at the tavern but lost it after entering the desert. I slumped down on the floor as I tried to process it.  I thought of the places that had previously led me to another world, and recognized a chain of events forming a pattern. I saw statue of Elizabeth of Wied, sewing socks in Peleș Castle which later led me to find the souks of Morocco and got me into the desert where the Serpent had attacked us. The snakes are connected to Gorgon Medusa, and my arrival in Istanbul and visiting the places near Basilica Cistern was no coincidence either.

Things had been specifically arranged for me to see them. I decided to visit Basilica Cistern to see what clue I might find there.

Basilica Cistern 

Basilica Cistern or Yerebatan Sarayi, the Sunken Palace, is the largest surviving underground cistern of the Byzantine Constantinople. Situated Southwest of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, this cistern is named after the Stoa Basilica or Basilica Illus, a public square that once stood on the top of it and was reconstructed by Illus after a fire in 476 AD.

The cistern is 140 m long and 70 m wide and has a capacity of holding 100,000 tons of water. Justinian-I in the 6th century commissioned its construction as a huge water reservoir for the imperial residence and the local population’s usage. However, during the Ottoman Empire, the stagnant water only came to be used for watering the gardens in the Topkapi Palace. The cistern’s cavernous ceiling has arches which are supported by 336 marble columns having 12 rows of 28 columns each and 9 feet in height. Some of these columns have pea-cock eyes carved on them; hence, are called the weeping columns or teardrops because of their shape, while two of the columns are placed on the top of gorgon head of Medusa.

The cistern was a dark and eerie place, and I had a morbid feeling of unease after going inside it. The continuously dripping water from its vaulted ceiling and water reflections in the dimlit space create haunting atmosphere which I found unsettling. I looked around the cistern and went to see the flipped, upside-down gorgon head of Medusa placed at the base of a column. Even as a gorgon, it was still disheartening to see the head of a once violated woman pressed sideway under the column in such an oppressive manner. I knelt to take a better look at stone head and see if I could figure out something but there was nothing.

I got up and turned to leave when I heard a cracking sound behind me. I looked back in horror and saw the cracks appearing on the stone head all way up the column to the ceiling above. There was a loud rumbling sound, and I hurried to get out of the cistern thinking that it might be an earthquake.

The sound came again, and I stopped midway. Ripples appeared on the surface of water, and a hissing sound made me turn around to see a giant serpent with a head of a woman towering behind me. The snakes on Medusa’s head hissed again, and I instinctively looked away from her face in fear.

 I started running through the water and cursed myself for failing to realize that I had entered that placed again. The column on the top of Medusa’s stone head was actually her body that came back to life. She crawled between the columns and caught me again.

I immediately shielded my eyes with the arm, remembering that looking her in eye would turn people into stone.

“Will you not look at me?” She hissed, and I turned to run again, splashing through the water. No matter, where I’d run to, she would find me again and ask me to take a look at her.

I couldn’t physically outrun her, so I did what a human could and pulled a mental trick on her. I shouted the name of her nemesis, ‘Perseus’ and took this chance to escape from when she turned to look for him.

I hid myself behind a column, and searched for my phone but I couldn’t find it on me. I looked down at the wrist watch I was wearing, and raised my arm to see her reflection in its glass.

She had crawled up on the column behind me and was looking for me. Then, its gaze caught me looking at her in the reflection. I immediately pulled back and closed my eyes hoping for her to go away, but what a wishful thinking. A trickle of water fell on my cheek from the ceiling above, and I instinctively knew that she’s hovering above me. One of her snake-head hissed at me before lurching forward to bite me in the face.

I screamed and darted out from behind the pillar with closed eyes as she crawled after me. She came to stand in front me, and I covered my face with both hands in fear to avoid meeting her gaze since she bewitched people into looking at her and turned them into stone.

“Will you not look at me?” She tempted, and I shook my head on the verge of tears. Of all the things in the past, I had never been this afraid.

“Look at me!” She hissed, and I found myself lowering my hands to look at her face.

“Don’t look at her!” Someone shouted, and I recognized the voice.

“Blindfold your eyes.” He said to me as he fought with the gorgon. I ripped the hem of my shirt to make a blindfold and tied it securely around my eyes.

“Run in the opposite direction!”

I started running in the opposite direction back to the Gorgon’s head. Behind me, I could hear Medusa slithering through the water and hissing at me.

“You can’t escape from me.” She whispered, and I resisted the urge to turn and look back at her.

“To your left!” He instructed, and I ducked to my left to avoid running straight into the column. I continued running through the columns on his directions and heard a swishing sound of the blade behind me.

Something flew past me, almost grazing my cheek, making me flinch in pain; then, complete silence.

I halted and called him out in dread before a huge splash of water hit me as Medusa emerged from behind me.

“Pick up the sword!” As if my body acted on its own, I bent down to find the sword in the water and held it in my both hands as I turned around to face the gorgon.

“45° to your right.” He directed, but before I could even turn and swing the sword, the serpent slammed its tail and sent me flying into a column knocking the breath out of me.

I fell forward into the water, groaning in pain and cursed myself for being unprepared for the attack but recovered and got up to search for the sword in the water and picked it up again.

“9’o clock to your left.” I flung out the sword again, but my attacks landed short since I never had been good with the directions and being blindfolded didn’t help either.

I gritted my teeth; however, instead of blindly following his directions, I tried to anticipate her next attack by sensing and paying attention to her movements myself.

I steadied my breath and tried to locate her by sensing and listening to my surroundings, but I heard the dripping sound of the cistern’s water from the cavernous ceiling into the pool.

Suddenly, my ears perked up as I picked a faint hissing sound behind me. However, I took a gamble and waited for the right time by letting her come near to myself and held my breath.

The moment she came closer, I span around slashing the sword through the air and severed her snakehead. A high-pitched scream echoed through the empty cistern followed by a loud splashing sound as her body fell into the water; then, it was radio silent.

I removed the blindfold and saw the headless body and the severed head of Medusa floating in the cistern’s water, but the sword in my hand had disappeared.

 I looked around the cistern, but there was no sign of him either. The water on the floor started receding, and I noticed something next to the serpent’s body.

It’s my hairpin.

A drop of water fell on my cheek causing me to flinch, and I looked up at the ceiling to see all the Cistern’s water collected on it, mirroring the entire place.

In the reflection, I saw him standing there with the sword in his hand and smiling down at me. It’s the mirror world opposite to mine, and for the first time, I could see both of us separated by two different worlds.

“You have dropped this.” A voice broke me out of the reverie.

“Huh?” It took me a full minute to get used to my current surroundings. The boy gave me the phone that I forgotten near the Medusa’s stone head and eyed my ripped shirt in suspicion.

“Your cheek.” I touched my face and felt the scratch which I had got from the blade. However, I tried to act normal and took the phone from the boy thanking him for this kind gesture.

I looked up at the ceiling again, but there’s nothing there this time.