TV FLY

I remember how, that afternoon, I lay on the couch, with my cheek pressed against the pillow, watching Telecinco and overhearing the conversation between two of my neighbours:
-How many garlics do I need to prepare “gazpacho” for two?
- That depends on how much your husband likes hot taste.
There were  some advertisements on the tv : Cortefiel and Mercadona. And then a documentary about birds, the swallowtail gull, the waved albatross, the snowy egret.
   And I remember the pounding of my heart when I gazed at them, flying in the blue sky, free, flying far away, on their magical wings.
  Are you sure?  Dad said when I asked for his permission to get married, 23 years ago.
  I am sure I love him, I said. He used to call me Venus before we married. I was nineteen and knew nothing of the world. Now I call him Polar Star.
But that afternoon I was sure only of one thing: I wanted to leave Carlos.
That afternoon, after the bird documentary, I went to the toilet and I watched myself in the mirror:  my eyes, my dark eyes, there were so lively, so bright. I opened the small cabinet and took a lipstick: “Istanbul Lovely Gloss”  it said  at the bottom, ISTANBUL! said my dark eyes in the mirror.
Oh! The sky! I thought while I was in the taxi, with its sign of  ”Seat belts must be worn” on my way to Madrid´s airport,looking with distraction  at the traffic signs on the motorway : “401 East” “All the roads out of Madrid” and listening at the football debate on the radio:
- Real Madrid is the team with more chances to win “La Liga Española”
- No, no! Valencia with no doubts!  
And I imagined how, at this very moment, my husband would be moving  nervously  about the narrow bedroom  with its kitsch furniture  that I had left behind forever, roughly opening  wardrobes and drawers with all the rage, fear and discomposure emotions of a man in his involuntary new life.
On the plane, I got seated next to a mother and her child who kept asking, "Mummy, can't we go home again?" I got annoyed, and things did not improve when the food was served, and the mother had to struggle with the food tray and the child. The child dropped the pickled onions and the potato chips on the floor, and I took refuge in my book which was "Istanbul" by Orhan Pamuk. Istanbul was where I was going, and I looked with interest at the many pictures from the city, among others "Beauties of the Bosphorus" by William Henry Bartlett, 1835. It was a long flight, but it came to an end.
When I arrived at the airport, a friendly Turk gave me a coin which I needed for the baggage trolley. It was a one lire piece and carried the portrait of Atatürk. On the way into town by cab, I saw myself in completely new surroundings, mosques with onion shaped domes, lots of high placards advertising all kinds of things from cars and soap powder to the latest James Bond movie with him and his Browning pistol.
Istanbul turned out to be wonderful, and it was a good place for contemplating. Along the way, I realized that I did love Carlos and wanted to return to him, irritating though he was, him never calling a spade a spade, but usually preferred to call it a showel or even an axe - metaphorically speaking of course.
So, in spite of the determined "forever" with which I left Madrid, I returned back home again.