Moving As Black Pieces

Yesterday, my brother and I pulled the car over in Bornova, to a spot few people visit at night. Below us, İzmir stretched out, but it didn’t look like a city—more like a jumble of lights. We turned off the engine, rolled the windows down a little, and the wind drifted in. I lit a cigarette, then another. We didn’t speak. As the silence stretched, it filled your ears with more than just sound.

Then, out of nowhere, my brother started talking about chess. About games, about positions… Not so much who was ahead, but who couldn’t see what was in front of them. I listened. After a while, he stopped, as if he wasn’t looking at the board at all, but somewhere else.

“Life’s like this,” he said. “No one starts the game with the first move.”

When you open your eyes, you’re not the one making the first move. The board is already set. Family, city, circumstances… the first move has already been played. You’re just looking at the position. Then you play an opening. The start of the game is familiar. Safe. You more or less know what to do. You repeat what you’ve seen around you. There’s a pattern. Life is like that too. The first years are like an opening. Played without much thought. “This is how it’s done” exists. But that feeling doesn’t last long. Because no game is ever the same.

As the game progresses, positions start to diverge. Sometimes pieces clash rapidly. The board clears. Options shrink. Life can feel constricted. Sometimes it seems like there are barely any moves left. The game either ends quickly or drifts toward a draw. But here’s the strange thing: people don’t always choose the safest move. Sometimes they take a risk deliberately. Even knowing it might be disadvantageous. Just to feel something in the game. And other times, the opposite happens. Pieces stay put. The board grows crowded. Possibilities multiply. Every move triggers something else. Calculating becomes difficult. In moments like these, life accelerates. A decision, a meeting, a small move… and suddenly the game is somewhere entirely different. Tactics matter in these positions, but there’s never a single “right” move. Sometimes you want the bishop pair, sometimes just a solid position. Which is “good” depends entirely on the game itself.

The strange part is this: most of the time, you don’t really know where you are in the game. Just when you think you’ve lost, unexpected spaces can open up. Just when you think you’ve won, the position can slip from your hands in an instant.

We fell silent for a moment. I took another cigarette from my brother. We looked at the view. We didn’t talk, but it felt like we did. That’s when I realized: at the end of the day, the players are different. Experience, courage, expectations—they vary. The opponent might be the same, but the players are not. A position I dislike might be hope for someone else. A possibility. A dream. At that moment, it felt like the game we were playing didn’t belong only to us. Someone else seemed to be across the table. I don’t know who. But Bergman had shown it years ago on a darker board.

When we got back in the car, the conversation was over—but the thought wasn’t.

The board was still there,
The game continued,
The black pieces were still mine.