* One time I slept in a linen cupboard. It was my first night in the completely empty and newly-rented house. First, I spent the night lying down on the carpeted floor. After an hour I was shivering from cold and I thought that inside the cupboard/ closet it might be less cold. The closet was narrow and I barely could tuck my whole body inside till the morning.
* In my first days in the hostel room, I found out a small closed door behind the head of the bed. When I opened it and bent down to go inside, I found a dark spacious store-like room that contained nothing but a small size refrigerator. The front office of the hostel said they knew nothing about the room or to whom the refrigerator might belong. I closed the door and moved the bed back to its position and never opened it again. A friend with stretched imagination said the secret room could be ideal to keep body remains.
*A psychic handed me a small piece of paper, asked me to stand up facing every corner in the 5 rooms, 2 bathrooms and one kitchen house, and read what was written in the paper in an audible voice. He said that was the way to get rid of the bad spirits in the house. I nodded, and the moment he turned his back I threw the paper away in the bin.
* My father’s family countryside house was majestic. Huge with very high ceiling. Walls were of dark color that I could not tell if they were dirty or just old. I only visited it once or twice, but later it fell to my share in the inheritance. The surrounding of the house was too seedy and ugly to be overshadowed by the beauty, so I decided to sell it when the chance came up. The offered price was low but I sold it though. Sometimes I regret my decision but when I remember the location I feel a bit at ease.
* The real estate agent was petite, cute and a bit nervous. She could be easily mistaken, from the first look, for a 15 years old girl. The moment we entered the building to see the available apartment, she started to talk to herself in a low but audible voice reciting the steps she should take, such as meeting the concierge, taking the key from him, showing the apartment to the client and so on. It was funny. She later mentioned casually that it was her first day in the job. While driving our way back, she realized late that the traffic sign turned yellow, so she had to stop on the edge of the zebra crossing and was so ashamed of what she did that she covered her face with her hands to avoid the pedestrians’ looks.
*The fiftyish landlady said on the phone she would come and bring a repairman to fix the broken fridge. The repairman turned out to be quite old. He and I found out we were of the same ethnic background and started to talk in our mother tongue. She left us in the kitchen to talk on her mobile, and while he was doing the job we talked about different subjects related to our home countries. We discussed politics, immigration, Europe and the Middle East . I was surprised by his outdated political vocabulary and opinions. He talked about issues like colonization, non-aligned movement and other nationalistic views that prevailed in the developing countries in the fifties and sixties of the last century. I attributed it to his detachment from the Middle East since his migration to Europe .
He was holding the fridge door when the landlady came back to the kitchen and stood very close to the door that his fingers touched her breast, and then he started to discreetly stroke it. He did not stop and she did not object. I felt embarrassed and pretended doing something else to avoid standing there idle watching them. It lasted less than a minute before he said “Job is done. The fridge is now just fine”. “You always do a good job” the landlady commented.
