Harsh (Morning People)
Hello, friends! As you may know, I’ve recently self-published my second memoir, Morning People. 
There are some notes and drafts that I haven’t included in the book. I may have forgotten, or maybe I couldn’t fit them in. Anyway, I thought I could share them here with you. Just keep in mind that this piece of writing is not edited. And here‘s the link to the book if you’d like to have a look.
The heavy traffic was killing us and we couldn’t make sense. It was the rush hour, around seven in the evening, but I’ve never seen the streets that busy. We hadn’t moved at all for the past ten minutes. Iman was discussing something with the driver, and I tried hard to listen and follow. My phone rang, Didam was calling. I thought she wanted to know where I was, and how come I haven’t arrived yet; she was waiting for me at the bar we used to hang around when we live in this town. She asked if I was okay. I said I was. She sounded worried, so I asked if she was alright. Where are you, she asked if I heard the explosion. What explosion? I had no idea. She told me all about it. There was an attack downtown, just a few blocks away from the bar. They’d heard it, even the glasses of the windows had shaken up with the waves. She said she was fine.
I announced the news to other people sitting with me in the cab. The driver turned up the radio. It was already all over the news. Iman started to call people he knew, just to make sure everybody was fine. And so did I. I called Pelin; I knew she was on her way home. She was out of breath, and sounded a bit scared. They lived close to downtown, and she’d heard it. She was running home, almost. I then called Erhan. He was on his way home too. I remembered the path he drove us every day in order to come back home. He must’ve reached downtown by now, the street where the attack had happened, I thought to myself and panicked, called him right away, and panicked even more once I couldn’t reach him. Although, a few minutes later I found out he was fine; Pelin told me. How scary to go back home in that great discomfort! How awful to have your nose filled with the acrid smell of explosion wafting in the neighborhood as you step into your apartment!
Just as I was trying to dial up Soheil’s number, I began to realize what a fool I was, with all our dumb comments on the heavy traffic, and the black police cars that had just passed us, the special security guards with their guns and weapons. It all made sense now. The good news was that everyone I knew was safe, but it was nothing compared to the flood of bad news drowning us all over. It was just the beginning.