Ah, the unappetizing beauty of an airport lounge resembling a bustling beehive at 6 o’clock on a weekday. A collection of people heading out on work trips who would rather be flying somewhere else. We are a tribe united by a quiet yearning to be anywhere but this airport lounge.
On any given day, staring at the long list of departures from Istanbul Airport, one cannot help but wonder how drastically different one’s life might look if one were going somewhere else that day. Imagine, for example, making a last-second decision to go to Izmir for a seafood dinner, or to Diyarbakır to gather around a robust breakfast table with old friends. At least, that was the thought that crossed my mind as I waited for my flight to Trabzon to board.
There was a time when I would have adored this kind of trip, a work visit to a beautiful part of Türkiye I don’t get to see often. But possibly a thousand flights later, the romance of traveling for work has worn thin. Not because it has become a nuisance, but because time teaches you to avoid unnecessary movement, especially when there won’t be enough space to savor the destination in any meaningful way.
But the airport lounge occasionally produces a gem you only notice by accident, yet which somehow carries you down unintended alleys of thought. On this particular day, that happened when I overheard a couple at the next table making small talk while waiting for their flight to Gaziantep to board.
“What can I do sometimes?” the man said to his wife, in response to a question he clearly did not wish to answer at length.
To the untrained ear, the sentence – delivered in English, in the middle of an otherwise Turkish conversation – might have sounded out of place. Not to me. Not my ear. I’ve learned to spot and appreciate a Fatih Terim sentence delivered in the right place and at the right time under almost any circumstances.
Fatih Terim, who moved from the pitch into the pantheon of Turkish football by leading Galatasaray to its European title in 2000, has not been active for some time. Yet, his sentences – comparable in their cultural afterlife to Eric Cantona’s famous “seagulls” quote – have quietly outlived the moment that produced them.
“What can I do sometimes?” was how the godfather of Turkish football once responded to a question after a painful defeat to Greece in October 2007, during his tenure as national team coach. What followed was broken English that somehow made perfect sense: he did not want to look back, only forward.
Delivered without polish, the sentence captured something instantly recognizable, the quiet acceptance that follows an unfavorable result, whether in football or in life. It acknowledged limits without dramatizing them. It ended the conversation without closing the relationship.
There is a particular kind of wisdom that does not improve with fluency. Some sentences survive precisely because they resist explanation. They offer orientation rather than solutions. They tell you where to stand when things don’t fully add up.
The way these sentences continue to surface in everyday conversation often brings me back to "You’ve Got Mail," the 1998 film starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. Set in a hopeful, predigital New York, the film carries the buoyant optimism of its era, even in its soundtrack. At one point, Hanks’ character remarks that many situations in life can be answered with a quote from "The Godfather": "The Godfather is the sum of all wisdom. 'The Godfather' is the answer to any question. What should I pack for my summer vacation? Leave the gun, take the cannoli."
Perhaps fittingly, "You’ve Got Mail" itself was inspired by "The Shop Around the Corner," a 1940 classic now firmly embedded in the Christmas canon, which in turn was based on "Parfumerie," a 1937 play by Hungarian writer Miklos Laszlo set in interwar Budapest. Perhaps the best stories and the best sentences survive not because they constantly reinvent themselves, but because they don’t need to. Whether it’s a 1990s rom-com, "The Godfather," or a line from Fatih Terim.
As 2025 comes to a close and we step into the new year, it feels worth cherishing such constants in our lives: friendships that endure, the fruits of our labor, unhurried time spent with family, a new vinyl record, or an old book read anew. And perhaps, one can hope, the quiet discovery of a few borrowed thoughts, stumbled upon in a newspaper picked up at an airport lounge.
