TALEY

It happened when I was about 16 years old. I was walking along the embankment in Baku with friends. We arrived to the pier which had always been crowdy. But at that moment there happened to be nobody except us. We had fun, we were laughing and shouting on this pier. Suddenly I felt somebody was staring at me from behind. I turned back and I saw a Gipsy a few meters away from me. Her huge turquoise eyes with black long eyelashes were shining on her suntanned freckled face. She had a silky pale yellow kerchief tied over her thick thatch of blue-black hair. She was holding a baby clutched to her chest with one hand and holding a toddler standing nearby with another hand. She let toddler’s hand go and gestured me to come closer. I approached her. “Soon, you’ll be leaving this city and going away, — the Gipsy said. — After many years, you’ll get the fateful meeting in your life with beautiful blond woman. Then you will remember me, and my name is Taleyi”.
She didn’t ask for money. Anyway, I groped a pocket change and gave it to a Gipsy, smiling skeptically towards her prophecy. Many years later, I unexpectedly remembered this story. It had emerged in my mind when I met a beautiful blond woman, with the eyes of the same color that Gipsy woman in the Baku’s pier had. I heard her voice in my head: Taleyi… This meeting was really fateful. I have chosen her photography as an initial image for this picture. It’s funny that I didn’t pay attention to the Gipsy’s name then. In Azerbaijani Taleyi means “destiny”