As of January 2023, a new breath of fresh air entered our literary life with a novel titled Aşıklara Yer Yok. In this work published by Doğan Kitap Publishing, Tarık Tufan tells us that falling and the things we hold on to while falling are not accidental at all.

The first sentence of the book starts with “I ruined my life, and I was in my right mind when I did it”. We hear this sentence from the mouth of Orhan, who falls in love with someone he should not fall in love with but cannot break away from her. Afterwards, we move on to the life of Firdevs, the woman to whom Orhan’s life, dreams, body and soul are dragged.

Orhan is a young academic at the university. He meets Firdevs in the same interview at the university. Unlike the speeches of other academics, Firdevs influences many people, especially Orhan, with what she says. This proud woman who speaks firmly opens a completely different window in Orhan’s life, but he never looks through that window. The possibility that Firdevs will enter this window opened by Firdevs at any moment drags Orhan into an inextricable confusion over time. While he admires Firdevs for being like him in one way, he also waits for her to come to his world through that window. He waits even if Firdevs leaves, he waits even if Firdevs harms herself, he waits even if Firdevs falls in love with someone else. The important thing is to wait for Orhan. He fits his love into the hope of being able to wait.

Orhan is a man in no hurry and Firdevs is a woman who is late for everything.

While thinking “What persuades one to go to unknown places?”, Orhan goes to Saklıkuyu to get away from everything, especially Firdevs, through a friend and learns that this place was used as a Bimarhane in the old times. Although he plans to return with an open suitcase at any moment, Orhan’s path crosses with his neighbours Defne, Ahmet Hilmi Bey and Belma Hanım. While the story of each of them opens up the unknowns in Saklıkuyu, Orhan wonders what this place will reveal to him. Therefore, he stays in Saklıkuyu longer than he thought.

From time to time the reader goes back to the past and finds himself in the depths of Saklıkuyu. Months later, Orhan, who is torn between whether to open a letter from Firdevsten or not, reads the letter from Firdevsten with all openness. In fact, this letter, which does not say anything he does not know, enables Orhan to accept the fact that belief is also included in love. He does this thanks to Defne, who heals him day by day and knows his own wounds very well.

Orhan confronts everyone he ran away from in Saklıkuyu. In his father’s love of domination, in his mother’s accusatory words, in the nightmares he sees in Ahmet Hilmi Bey’s mirrors, in Belma’s wounding from the place that people know best. In Defne, on the other hand, Orhan did not confront but took a breath, enough to want to stay in this breath. Because, as Tarık Tufan mentions in another book of his, they did not invade each other’s country like barbarians, but accepted to stay where they were invited as long as they were guests.

In Tarık Tufan’s works, although the places, words, characters and places to underline change, we always see the following: All of the characters are sane people who are willing to ruin their lives. For this reason, he added to his book: “Who knows, maybe hell is the inability to forgive oneself.”