If I Won the Lottery

Every Friday evening, Orhan buys a single lottery ticket from the same small kiosk near Taksim Square, a habit he has maintained faithfully for almost fifteen years. As he drives his taxi through the crowded streets afterward, he often lets his mind wander into an elaborate fantasy: what exactly would he do if he actually won?

If he won a large amount of money, Orhan wouldn't quit driving immediately, despite what most people might expect. He has grown genuinely attached to his passengers over the years, the strangers who share fragments of their lives with him during short journeys across the city. Instead, he imagines that if he had enough money, he would simply drive whenever he felt like it, without the constant financial pressure that currently forces him to work twelve-hour shifts almost every day.

The first thing Orhan would do, if the winning numbers ever matched his ticket, would be helping his daughter Ayşe finish her university studies without worrying about tuition fees. She dreams of becoming a doctor, but the financial burden weighs heavily on the entire family. If money weren't such a constant concern, Ayşe wouldn't need to work part-time at a pharmacy every evening, exhausting herself between classes and shifts.

Orhan also often imagines what would happen if he bought his aging mother a proper house instead of the small apartment she currently rents in Kadıköy. If he had unlimited funds, he would build her a garden exactly like the one she left behind decades ago in their home village near the Black Sea, filled with fig trees and rose bushes that reminded her of her own childhood.

Sometimes, while waiting at traffic lights, Orhan considers whether winning would actually change his fundamental character. If he suddenly became wealthy, would he still greet his regular customers with the same warmth, or would money somehow distance him from the ordinary life he has always known? He suspects that if he won tomorrow, his closest friends would treat him differently almost immediately, even if he tried desperately to remain exactly the same person.

His wife, Nazan, often teases him gently about these elaborate fantasies. "If you really won that much money," she once told him, laughing, "you would probably still complain about traffic every single day." Orhan couldn't help but laugh along, secretly suspecting she was completely right about his stubborn nature.

Despite years of these Friday night daydreams, Orhan has never actually won more than a small consolation prize, just enough to cover the cost of several future tickets. Some of his colleagues have stopped playing entirely, arguing that if the odds were realistically calculated, buying lottery tickets would make absolutely no financial sense whatsoever.

Yet Orhan continues his weekly ritual, not necessarily because he genuinely expects to win, but because the brief fantasy itself provides something valuable. If he stopped imagining these possibilities altogether, he wonders whether his difficult daily routine would feel considerably heavier without that small, hopeful escape.

Last week, while dropping off an elderly passenger near Karaköy, the woman asked him what he would do if he suddenly became a millionaire. Orhan smiled and answered honestly, without hesitation this time. "If I won that much money," he said, "I think I would still be sitting right here, driving this same taxi, just with slightly less worry weighing on my shoulders."