by Yashar Kemal
The beanpole lad was dying to speak. “It’s killing work to catch them, takes you a whole day. And the way they charge down at the decoys! I got the fright of my life yesterday …”
“Well, try and catch this one,” I said.
The boy’s long neck stretched up towards the bird. “It’ll soon be here,” he observed, and his neck remained extended, longer than ever.
The short one made a face. “Not for me, thanks,” he said.
“Catch it for me,” I insisted.
Their eyes shone. “What’ll you give us?”
I thought it over. “A hundred liras,” I said.
“Hurray!” cried the short boy.
The beanpole lad’s neck stretched to breaking point towards the bird. “Come, come, come …” he called. He turned to me. “It won’t be long,” he assured me.
“You can wait in the tent, Abi, if you like,” the short boy said. “We’ll soon catch that bird and bring it to you.”
“All right,” I said. I sat down in front of the tent. From inside came the clamour of hundreds of caged birds.
“A hundred liras …” the tough boy murmured, the restless one. Quickly he adjusted the string to the net. “A hundred liras,” he repeated. He gazed up at the sky. The bird was lower now, floating above the presidential summer residence. I could hear the boy muttering to himself. “A hundred liras, a hundred … And another one, that’ll make two hundred liras. Good … Five, ten, twenty falcons … Two thousand liras …”
He made a game of it, the tough little urchin, matching his motions to the rhythm of his litany, almost dancing as he checked the net and tugged again and again at the string to lift the decoys up into the air. The bird of prey hovered in the blue of the sky behind the veil of vapour rising from the sea, its wings outspread, quivering slightly, swaying this way and that in the blowing north-easter.
Eagerly, the tough boy ran up to me. He looked taller now. “How many of those birds will you buy if I catch them?” he asked. He pointed at the falcon. “Look, Abi, how it flies! Isn’t it beautiful?”
“Indeed it is,” I said.
“It’ll be yours in no time,” he said.
Hurrying back to the clap-net, he tugged at the string and four tiny yellow decoy birds shot up in a desperate attempt to fly, only to be pulled down to the height of one metre by the string tied to the small prongs attached to their feet. The boy drew the string once more and up went the birds again. He kept making the decoys spring into the air, fixing a watchful eye on the bird of prey as it floated calmly in the sky.
After a while, he was back again by my side.
“How many of these birds are you going to buy?” he asked.
“Let’s see you catch them first,” I said. “If I can’t buy them all, we can always sell them.”
“Who to?” he inquired sceptically.
“Well, to Skipper Hasan, for one,” I said.
“Who’s he?”
“He’s a sea captain,” I said. “A neighbour of ours. A Laz from the Black Sea. He used to own many birds like this one. They say he’s a first-rate hunter.”
“Lazes are good hunters,” the boy stated with an important air. “But what if he doesn’t buy them?”
“Then I will. I’ll give him one as a present.”
“Isn’t there anyone else around here?”
“There’s Ali Bey, the police officer, the one who takes people’s fingerprints.”
“Fingerprints! You don’t say!”
“Yes, indeed,” I assured him. “He’s a neighbour too. And before he became a police officer, when he was still living in Rize, he had five of these birds and he went hunting for quails with them, day and night, bagging whole baskets of quails. You know those wide Black Sea baskets?”
“Wow!”
“And as for Skipper Hasan …” I pointed to the sky. “He gave me the names of seven species of those birds, those hawks … And Ali Bey …”
“That’s not a hawk, it’s a falcon,” the tough boy corrected me. His name was Semih. The boy with the three-cornered eyes was called Hayri, and the other one, the beanpole lad, was Süleyman. But no one ever called him by his name. They all addressed him as Longy.
He now came and crouched in front of me. “Abi,” he said, pointing to Tuğrul and his friends, “who are those?”
“That’s Tuğrul,” I said. “He’s from our neighbourhood, the son of the head night watchman at Menekşe. The other one’s Hüseyin. And that one with the pointed nose is Erol, a fisher boy. I don’t know the other three.”
“So,” Süleyman murmured, “he’s a watchman’s son, this Tuğrul …”
“What of it?” I asked.
“Nothing, only that he’s here at the crack of dawn every day that God sends …”
“I know …”
Süleyman went on talking about Tuğrul, his eyes, the way he looked at you … A queer one he was, a little crazy, wasn’t he?
“True enough,” I said.
“Yes, Abi, true, but what do they want with us, those fellows? We’re only here to make a little cash.”
“Well?”
“But that Tuğrul, he’s just taking it easy. Of course he is, seeing his father’s a watchman, no less, and at Florya too …”
“Not Florya, Menekşe …”
“But Florya and Menekşe are one, aren’t they?” He was almost pleading.
“You could say so, yes.”
This seemed to please him. “It was clear,” he went on, “that his father was someone important. Look, Abi, just look at those fellows! Are they maniacs, or what? To come here day after day before dawn and sit like that, side by side, without speaking, not a word, just staring across at us all the time. And their eyes! Agate eyes …”
“So they are!”
“Well, agate eyes bring bad luck. Why, but for those boys sitting there, that bird would have been in our net long ago. A hungry falcon, and all these decoy birds right under it … Would it ever remain swinging up there this long? Yesterday, those falcons were charging at the decoys like hungry wolves. Word of honour, Abi! I had the devil of a time chasing them away. And look how it is today, just when we want to catch one! How I swore and cursed it! Maybe it got offended. Maybe it understood. Can birds understand what we say?”
“Why not?” I said.
“Maybe they do,” he said with a doubtful look at the bird, then at Tuğrul.
“All the creatures of this world understand each other,” I said.
“Agate eyes, he’s got,” Süleyman repeated, staring at Tuğrul. “Blue-streaked …”
A helicopter had taken off from Yeşilköy and was coming our way from over the sea, flying very low as though it would hit the tall plane tree in front of the Municipal Beach.
“Now this!” Süleyman exclaimed. “Birds don’t like those thingummies one bit!”
“It’s those eyes,” I said. “Agate …”
Süleyman laughed, though he cast an even more suspicious look at the boys. All six of them were sitting there in the same posture, legs hugged to their chests, chins resting on their knees, not moving, not looking at anything in particular, just waiting …
With a great racket, scattering seagulls all about it, the helicopter barely cleared the plane tree and passed on over the presidential summer residence. All of us, Tuğrul and his friends too, looked up to see if the bird of prey was still there. And so it was. As though nothing had happened, as though stuck to the blue of the sky, its wings outstretched, quivering, it was flying below a very white cloud. How glad we were, all of us, even Tuğrul and his friends. I guessed it from their faces.
The boy Hayri was getting angry now. Furiously, he tugged at the string, hurling the decoys up into the air, and brought them down with a bang. At this rate, the unfortunate birds would not hold out till evening, they’d be dead by midday.
This time, it was Semih who came up to me.
“Something’s the matter,” he said. “Honest to God, something queer …” H
is face was tense with anxiety. “It’s a jinx, that’s what it is. Only yesterday those birds were pouncing onto our decoys like wild beasts … And now … You see for yourself. At the mention of that hundred liras … There!” He cast a wary glance in the direction of the six boys. “Ah, we’ve been jinxed all right,” he sighed. “But it’ll come …” He glared at Tuğrul. “Do what you like, it’ll come to us anyway. And how!” He took a turn at tugging the decoys and shouted: “It’ll come, yes it will!” His eyes were on the bird, willing it to descend.
“Sure, it’ll come,” I said.
Just then, from below Basinköy, down by the railway tracks, a large flight of little birds soared into view and in a moment the three boys were all in a bustle, seething with excitement, Süleyman on his knees emitting bird-like sounds to lure the flock, Semih making the decoys fly, and Hayri ready with the rope to the clap-net. All three necks were craned in eager expectation, three pairs of eyes never left the flock of birds that was drawing nearer, surging, sinking, veering hither and thither in the sky. Now they were right above Tuğrul’s group, pausing above the old poplar tree, rising, falling … Three of them came to perch on the snare’s thornbush and with one voice the decoys started trilling ever more shrilly. The main flock swept off towards the wood. In no time, it was back and five more little birds settled on the thistles, while the rest drifted on above Menekşe. Still Hayri waited. He made no move to pull the rope. And soon the main flock sheered back from over Menekşe, swarming high and low, and alighted in a body on the thornbush. In the same instant, Hayri tugged at the rope and the clap-net closed down over them. Strident twitters broke out, like a clamour, as the trapped birds floundered madly in the net. The three boys at once rushed up and began taking the birds from the net and shutting them up in the cages. Tuğrul and his friends had bounded to their feet the moment the birds were captured and they stood staring, dumbfounded, their eyes wide with what was perhaps anger.
“They’re quite full now,” Semih said as he walked up to me. “All the cages … Some days we catch as many as five hundred. When they come like that, you know, you can’t not catch them.”
“Of course not,” I said. “Since you’ve set up your snares anyway …”
“No, of course not,” he echoed. But he seemed crestfallen all of a sudden.
“You can sell them for ‘fly and be free’ in Taksim or Sirkeci or Eyup, as always.”
“They won’t buy them. Nobody buys birds for ‘fly and be free’ any more. Yesterday, I ranged the whole town. Not a living soul was there who wanted to free a bird, to set it soaring up into the Istanbul skies … People have changed. There’s no faith, no religion left in anyone, no conscience, no belief in Allah and the holy book …”
Semih had worked himself into such a passion that the veins in his neck swelled. It was as though he had the faithless, godless population of Istanbul there before him and was taking issue with them. With clenched fists he hit at the air, talking, shouting, beside himself.
“Look, Abi, just look at my feet! See how swollen they are? You wouldn’t believe it, all day long, yesterday, there isn’t a place in Istanbul I didn’t go to, and not one, not a single of Allah’s creatures came and said, it’s for my afterlife, for my place in Paradise, not one would give two and a half liras to set a little bird free! Istanbul town’s nothing but a nest of infidels now, Abi. Look at these birds, Abi. In the old days … Why, only five years ago, my big brother would sell a thousand in a single day, all for ‘fly and be free’, and he’d make one thousand five hundred liras each day at the coming of the birds. And look at me, Abi, look at my feet …”
He grabbed the cage full of screeching birds and swung it in front of me.
“For God’s sake, Abi, look! Aren’t they beautiful? Wouldn’t any man with a spark of human feeling, any good Moslem, any God-fearing person, buy one of these birds to set it free, and not only one but five, ten, forty? What crime have they committed, these tiny little things, to remain cooped up like this in cages, one on top of the other? Won’t Allah punish those who see them like this and do nothing to free them? Just look at the poor things, dying to get out, look, look, Abi, wouldn’t anyone’s heart melt at the state they’re in? Every day five or six of them die in this cage, Abi. They die! We didn’t catch the poor things to torment them. We thought they’d be set free at once.”
His voice was tearful, his face drawn with pain. At a touch, he would be sobbing outright.
“You could take them to the bird market in Eminönü. And what about the Flower Market up in …”
“But we did!” Hayri broke in. “Those scoundrels, those dirty thieving bird sellers offered us ten kurush only for each bird! Now, who ever sees a ten-kurush coin these days? Do you, Abi? Does anyone call ten kurush money any more?”
“What scoundrels!” I was beginning to feel as angry as Hayri.
The long boy joined us.
“Me, I went to Eminönü three days ago with two cages full of birds and I barely escaped being killed by a horrible man with a beard. He was in such a rage, snarling, brandishing a stick, too … Like a wild bull, honest to God, he chased me twice round the park, me running for my life, him with that stick, a stick as big as this … It was touch and go. If I hadn’t dropped the cages there, in the middle of the park, I would’ve been done for. He was after me to the death, his beard quivering, his lips twitching. To the death! But I’ll get even with him, I will … When he saw that I’d left my cages, the bearded man rushed to them, still snarling, he crouched down, his stick beside him. And me, trembling in all my limbs, I stopped on the steps of Valide Mosque and watched him. And what do you know, he lifted up his hands and for maybe half an hour he recited prayers! Then he opened the cages and let the birds out, and for every bird that flew off he said a prayer, and this went on till noon. Yes indeed, I know, because they were calling the ezan for the noonday prayer just as he held the very last bird. For a long, long time he stroked it and prayed and prayed and then he let it go. I was furious, you can imagine. Still, I dared not move. Mad I was, dying to do something, but I was tied hand and foot. And that’s not all! The next thing I knew, the bearded man was stamping on my cages, smashing them! By the time he stopped, they were flat as a board. Was I mad! Mad … When I think of what I did with that kilim … My mother’s kilim … Why, she had me slung up to the ceiling by the feet and left me hanging upside down like that for a whole day! Such a rug it was, Abi, with the finest embroidery you ever saw. It hung on the wall, and I could sit and watch it for ever, especially when the sun touched it and the colours came alive and flittered here and there … When I think of that kilim …”
“What’s all this about a kilim, Longy?”
“Well, Abi, it’s like this …” Süleyman stopped and swallowed several times.
“He’s ashamed now,” Hayri observed.
“What about?”
Hayri gave Süleyman a pregnant look. Süleyman was trembling and his face was quite pale.
“If only it hadn’t happened,” Semih sighed. “If only Longy hadn’t done that.”
“Done what, for heaven’s sake?”
“It wasn’t right,” Hayri declared. “We should never have let him do it.”
All at once Süleyman seemed to come to life. “I sold it,” he hissed with a defiant toss of his head.
“Yes, he sold it,” Semih mourned. Semih the tough one! There was nothing tough about him now. He looked wretched. “We sold it,” he repeated, his voice breaking. “It belonged to his mother, who got it from her own mother when she became a bride. A precious keepsake, it was. Beautiful …”
Süleyman cast him a look charged with resentment. “Well, it was you put me up to it,” he burst out. “You with your made-up moustache!”
Semih’s face changed. “Look here, Longy, don’t provoke me,” he growled. There was a dangerous gleam in his eyes.
“You can get as provoked as you like,” Süleyman retorted, though his tone was less aggressive now. “Y
ou can kill me for all the good it’ll do us after this.”
“It’s too late,” Hayri said. “The poor woman took to her bed with grief. Who knows, maybe she’s dead even …”
“I’ll get it back,” Semih vowed. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for Aunt Zare. Even if I have to die, I’ll get it back for her from that man.”
He looked at me as though for assistance. “I can get it back, Abi, I’m certain. Can’t I?”
“You could try, at any rate,” I said.
“A keepsake,” Semih sighed.
“A family keepsake,” Hayri insisted. “That’s something you can’t ever put a price on. Longy never told us that kilim was a family keepsake.”
“Didn’t I though!” Süleyman protested. “For a whole month I said the same thing to you, and to Semih too. And it was you suggested we swipe it and make a deal of it at the Grand Bazaar. Now, wasn’t it?”
“Well, what if I did?” Hayri flared up. “How was I to know Aunt Zare would take sick? If we’d known …”
“Would we ever have done such a thing?” Semih said.
“And now, we can’t even sell these birds,” Süleyman wailed. “People will snap up an old kilim, but they won’t buy a single bird.”
“So much the worse for them!” Semih burst out. “Turds, that’s what they are. They’ll see!”
The helicopter that had passed above us a while ago, going in the direction of Firuzköy, was now returning. It was flying so low we could see the men inside.
“Look,” Süleyman cried. “Look at the pilots!”
We all gazed up as the helicopter went swiftly by. Tuğrul and his friends also had their heads in the air.
“Well, Longy?” I said. “What happened afterwards?”
“I’d gone crazy, Abi,” he began again. “Plum crazy. You see, it was with the money we’d got from the kilim that we bought all our cages. My mum, she rose before my eyes, sick to death because of us … Well, I went mad. The minarets of Valide Mosque were whirling round and round, everything went black, and all I saw was that bearded zealot, that hadji stamping away on my cages, a savage beast. Before I knew it, I had hurtled down the steps of the mosque and was at the fellow’s throat. I don’t know how they got him out of my clutches. I even had my teeth in him.”