The Birds Have Also Gone

by Yashar Kemal

  “They took Longy to a hospital,” Semih explained. “But that same night, with God’s help, he slipped the collar.”

  “Another boy there showed me where they’d put away my clothes,” Süleyman said. “A good boy, I owe him a lot …” He clenched his teeth. “I’m going to kill that hadji,” he said with venom. “I swear I will!”

  “Don’t mind him, Abi,” Semih said. “He’s in a temper now, so he’s talking like this. Just let’s get some money from these birds and he won’t kill anyone.”

  “But I will!” Süleyman shook his fists, his eyes bulging. “See if I don’t!”

  “You mustn’t believe him, Abi,” Hayri broke in. “He wouldn’t kill a fly. Why, if it weren’t for us, he’d let all these birds here go free, all of them! He’s that soft-hearted, is Longy.”

  “The birds, yes. I would set them free, but the hadji I’m going to kill. And right there, in Eminönü Square too. And I’ll set fire to the body, yes, in front of Valide Mosque.”

  “No, no, Abi, he’s just letting off steam,” Semih said with a warning look at Süleyman, as though to say he should not talk like that in front of everyone.

  “Why should I hide from him?” Süleyman said, not at all put out. “What Allah knows, why should I hide from his creatures? I’ll kill that bigot, and before the winter is over too!”

  “Kill him then,” Semih cried, exasperated. “Kill him and rot in prison the rest of your life, so Aunt Zare falls really sick this time and dies of grief.”

  “I can’t help it,” Süleyman maintained. “Let her die. She needn’t have been so poor, that Kurdish Zare. Even if it kills her, I’ll still kill that hadji.”

  “It’s Allah who decides whether a person shall be poor or not,” Hayri reproved him.

  “Piffle!” Süleyman scoffed. “As though Allah had money and was doling it out!”

  “Shut up,” Semih snapped. “Don’t start talking like a heathen.”

  “Well, I am a heathen,” Süleyman retorted coldly.

  Hayri turned to me. “Don’t mind him, Abi. He’s just spoofing. He’s not a heathen. He and his family are just Kurdish.”

  “But I am a heathen,” Süleyman persisted. “I’m glad to be a heathen. There’s nothing better.”

  “Oh, go fuck yourself!” Semih cried. “You’re really drivelling now. Abi, don’t you pay any attention to him.”

  The falcon had drawn quite near. It was flying above the Municipal Beach to the left of the plane tree. But suddenly it glided swiftly off in the direction of the wood and in no time it was lost to sight.

  Süleyman glared at Tuğrul’s group.

  “There now, Abi,” he said, shaking his head despondently. “That’s how bad luck sticks to you. All because of those fellows staring as though they want to eat us.”

  “Let them stare. What does it matter?”

  “Yes, but …”

  “They’re not doing anything to you.”

  “But they mean to.”

  “How d’you know?”

  “From their eyes,” Süleyman said. “They’ve got that evil shifty look which … As though we were enemies … Just let them try something! I swear I’ll give them a good lesson.” He raised his voice. “So help me God, I’ll do to them worse than what I did to the hadji.”

  Semih went on scanning the skies for a time, but there was no sign of the falcon. Süleyman, mad with rage, began to rush about, opening and closing the cages, tugging at the decoy birds, fussing with the clap-net, uprooting tall thistles and planting them in the thicket in front of the net. Then he came across a thistle stalk on which a large yellow flower still held out and he jammed it right in the centre of the thicket.

  The three boys returned to their business of trapping the small birds, although the cages were full to bursting and the birds could not even flap their wings any longer but were stacked inside, squirming, one on top of the other, their wings sticking out of the wires.

  And still Süleyman persisted in cramming fresh birds into the cages.

  “Let them die,” he muttered as he rammed in another half-dozen. “It’s not my fault. The sin lies with the people of Istanbul, and for their sins this town will turn into another place like Van.”

  “Like Van, Istanbul will be,” Semih concurred. “Worse … That’s what Allah will do to Istanbul. In the old times, people were kind. Old-time bird-catchers would sell more than a thousand birds in one day for ‘fly and be free’. You know that apartment building they call the birdman’s house? They say the owner was a bird-catcher just like us. In those days, bird-catchers would dispose of five full cages in one day and no further than Valide Mosque. It’s true there weren’t so many motorcars then …”

  “Look here,” I expostulated, “they’re going to die if you go on cramming them into those cages.”

  “Of course they’ll die,” Hayri said, hunching his shoulders and thrusting his hands between his thighs. “They’ll die, and then you’ll see what’ll befall this Istanbul town. An earthquake, that’s what! Such an earthquake, not a single house will remain standing. All the buildings will topple to the ground. And the motorcars, they’ll be shattered too, broken into a hundred thousand pieces.”

  “What a shame,” Süleyman sighed. “I’ll be sorry to see Istanbul destroyed. But it’s the fault of the people. They shouldn’t be so wicked. Istanbul will be ruined, all because of these tiny little birds. Like Van it’ll become.”

  “It wrings my heart only to look at them,” Semih said. “It would wring anyone’s heart. The town of Van went to rack and ruin because of birds like these. That’s what Aunt Zare told us. And there was nothing left there but the wind howling through the ruins.”

  “No one with a heart could bear to look at these poor little birds,” I said.

  “But people have no hearts any more, they’ve forgotten what mercy is. If it wasn’t for that kilim … But we’ll get it back. And Aunt Zare will be happy again. Oh, how pleased she’ll be! There isn’t anyone in this whole world as kind-hearted as she. Why, if we went to her now, where she lies on her sick bed, and we showed her these birds in their cages, her heart would burn, it would break. She’d do anything, anything, even sell her house, to buy these birds and set them free, set them soaring into the air all together. Oh, how lovely that would be …”

  “How lovely …” Süleyman echoed. “Oh my poor mum …” His eyes filled and he turned away.

  “Poor, poor Aunt Zare,” Hayri said.

  Suddenly, Semih fixed his eyes on me in a long calculating gaze.

  “Is it true,” he asked at last, “that these falcons catch quails, lots of them?”

  “Oh yes, they’re famous quail hunters.”

  “How many do they catch in one day?”

  “It depends … Sometimes the quails are tired, coming a long way from over the Black Sea. Their wings are wet from the rain as they reach Rize town in the night. The people there put lights along the coast, and the weary birds, attracted by the brightness, pile up beneath the lamps. You see, they can’t fly any more, their wings are damp, heavy … And so the people can easily gather them up.”

  “Yes, but what about the falcons?” Semih asked.

  “Well, falcons hunt during the day. They’re very fast and quails are slow, you know. So when a falcon is flown at quails, it hardly ever misses its prey. Skipper Hasan says that falcons don’t tire easily. But you’ve got to train them. A falcon must learn not to fly off on its own once it’s flown. It must be taught to bring back the bird it’s caught, and without lacerating it too.”

  “I know the very man for that!” Semih exclaimed. “It’s Ali Şah. A wizard for training birds. He lives down in Dolapdere. I’ll take my falcon to him, that’s what I’ll do. Ohhoo, there’s no one like him in all the country!”

  “Skipper Hasan trained my falcon,” I said.

  “You had a falcon?” Semih cried in excitement. “What happened to it?”

  “I set it free.”

  “Did it c
atch quails for you too?”

  “Oh yes, a great many.”

  “How much would a quail cost?” Hayri asked.

  “Quails are expensive,” I said. “Fifteen to twenty-five liras apiece, I should think. I don’t quite know, for I never sold the quails my falcon caught.”

  Süleyman licked his chops.

  “Well, what do you know!” he exclaimed.

  “What do you know!” Hayri echoed, and he drew a deep sigh.

  Just then, Süleyman uttered a cry of joy.

  “Look, look!” He was pointing at the sky. “There are three of them now. Three falcons!”

  He rushed to get hold of the clap-net’s rope. Hayri grabbed the string attached to the decoys and began pulling them up and down for all he was worth.

  Until sunset the three boys kept hard at it, their eyes on the falcons circling above, willing them to make a go for the decoy birds. But it was all in vain. A couple of times the falcons swooped down towards the clap-nets, down down down … The boys waited, their hearts beating high, all agog, then suddenly the birds sheered away, high up in the sky once more.

  At nightfall they lit a fire in front of their tent and cooked some soup over it in a soot-blackened pot, all three keeping up a running flow of curses on the population of Istanbul, godless, stone-hearted heathens, all of them.

  “It’s too awful,” Semih began again. “My heart bleeds at the sight. Who knows how many of these little birds will be dead by tomorrow morning. O dear …”

  “Oh dear,” Süleyman took up the refrain. “It really pierces a man’s heart to see them like that. If only we had another large cage, and also some grain to feed them, maybe they wouldn’t die. But like this … Tomorrow … Oh dear, they’ll die …”

  “They’ll die …” Hayri mourned.

  “Abi …” Semih looked hard at me, his sprouting moustache gleaming redly in the firelight. “Abi, you don’t say anything, but I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, if you feel so bad about these birds, why do you catch so many of them, why do you crowd them into cages like this, one on top of the other … Isn’t that so?”

  “Well, yes,” I admitted.

  “Look, Abi, it’s our job to hunt these birds, our duty. We’re fowlers and we’ve come here to catch birds. We haven’t invented this ‘fly and be free’ business. It’s an old custom that dates from way back. The fowlers catch the birds and the people of Istanbul pay to set them free.”

  “That’s true,” I said.

  “But now, the way things are, all these birds here won’t even live out the night, maybe.”

  “Maybe they will. You never know …”

  “Maybe they will,” Semih conceded. “But what if we catch another five hundred tomorrow and have to squeeze them into these cages as well?”

  “That’s a poser,” I said.

  “And how!” There was a long brooding silence.

  I looked at the three drooping heads and then I said: “Listen, there’s something we can do.”

  Three heads popped up eagerly.

  “I’ll give you a hundred liras now,” I suggested, “and you can buy a new cage with the money.”

  “Oh no, we can’t,” Semih demurred.

  “Why not?”

  “We can’t take your money. Why, we hardly know you!”

  “Hardly at all,” Süleyman said.

  “It’s not right,” Hayri cried. “We’d be ashamed to do such a thing. We’re not beggars.”

  “No, of course not,” I hastened to say. “But you’re going to capture that falcon anyway. So I thought I’d give you the money for it in advance.”

  “Ah then … We’re sure to have it here for you tomorrow.”

  “Before that fellow with the agate eyes arrives …”

  “Yes, it must be before,” Süleyman said.

  We all looked in the direction of Tuğrul’s group. They were still crouching there in the darkness, perfectly quiet.

  I produced a hundred-lira note and handed it over. The faces of the three boys glowed, and when I rose to go they all three leaped to their feet as though triggered by a single spring.

  “Well, so long,” I said.

  “Tomorrow,” Semih said. “Come tomorrow. We’ll have the falcon, maybe even three. All real good hunters … The kind that’ll bag you a hundred quails a day.”

  4

  For the next couple of days, business prevented me from going down to Florya Plain. But I was burning to know whether the boys had captured a falcon.

  That morning I was awakened very early by the rat-a-tat of a scow laden with sand, heading for Ambarli. The sky was clear, luminous, the sun just about to appear behind the minarets. Soon, its rays would flare up over Istanbul. The rumble of the distant city reached Basinköy in a moaning monotone.

  I went out and strolled over to the almond grove. The trees had already begun to shed their leaves. The thistle shrubs were alive with thousands of little birds, twittering away as if all hell had broken loose. It was incredible how many there were, tiny little birds, yellow, buff, red, honey-coloured, green, blue, myriads, fluttering from one clump of thistles to another.

  “Those years when the thistles are grown tall and thick …”

  “Those years when their needles are long and loaded with flowers …”

  “When the earth has seen rain in plenty, and snow as well …”

  “Then they will throng up in thousands, the small bright birds, to Florya Plain …”

  “Then the cages of the fowlers will overflow, all for ‘fly and be free’ …”

  And so, in those good years, it was a sight for sore eyes on an autumn day to watch the children of Menekşe and Florya, of Cennet, Yeşilyurt and Şenlikköy, all spruced up in clean, brand-new clothes, trousers, coats, shirts, shoes, all bought with the fruit of their labour, the money from the sale of the birds they had caught, to see them parade up and down in the more prosperous neighbourhoods of Basinköy and Yeşilköy, showing off to the girls there.

  For, when the thistle shrubs are hardy on Florya Plain and their flowers have bloomed all through the summer, then, come the autumn, their seeds are sure to be abundant. And these are the seeds which the little migratory birds are so fond of. That is why they come in thousands, swarming onto Florya Plain, clustering over the thistle stalks, dried up now and glistening with a coppery glow.

  It was a wonderful din the birds were making that morning, all in a ferment, a riot of colour on Florya Plain.

  In a few minutes, I came to the tent. And what should I find! A dismal silence reigned there and Semih was nowhere to be seen. The long lad’s head was wrapped in bandages, his hands cut and bruised, his clothes stained with blood. Hayri’s face, too, was scratched, a long gash ran down the arch of his eyebrow and his trousers were in tatters. They did not even lift their heads to greet me, but just sat there glumly, in front of the tent. Tuğrul and his friends, I noticed, were no longer in their usual place.

  I squatted down beside them on a patch of turf.

  “Well, speak up, whatever’s happened to you?”

  Süleyman turned to me slowly and gave me a wary look.

  “Nothing,” he said at last.

  “Nothing, really,” Hayri supported him.

  I glanced at the cages. They were full to bursting. It would have been impossible to squeeze another bird into any one of them. Süleyman caught my look and a trace of joy passed over his face.

  “It’s a rain of birds today,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe it! Our arms are aching from pulling those strings, Hayri and me. Just look at those cages!”

  No sooner had he spoken than we saw a flight of birds flitting swiftly our way from over the railway station. Right above us, they broke into two groups, and one of the groups came to settle plumb upon the boys’ clump of thistles.

  “Let them come,” Süleyman growled. “What good will it do us? They don’t sell. There’s nothing we can do with them in this godforsaken town.” His face was tense with fur
y.

  “Heathen! That’s what Istanbul is, a heathen town.” Hayri spat out a huge gob of spittle. “Damned for ever.” And he ground his teeth.

  “Come now, what happened?” I said pointing to their scratched faces. “And where’s Semih?”

  “Don’t ask,” Süleyman said. “He’s gone.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “He just went away.”

  With a motion of my head, I indicated the plane tree where Tuğrul had been.

  Süleyman clenched his fists. He leaped to his feet, then flopped down again.

  “Out with it, Longy,” I insisted.

  Süleyman gave a short laugh. Then, as though divulging a piece of good news, he said: “We captured your falcon three days ago, as soon as you left.”

  “Well then …”

  “It’s as if it was waiting for you to go, that bird. The minute you were away, it turned up, right there, over the plane tree. And before we knew it, it had swooped down over the decoy bird and was making away with it. But Semih was quicker. He grabbed the rope and brought the net down in the nick of time. And if I hadn’t pounced there in a couple of steps, the falcon would have torn the net and escaped. At that moment, Semih snatched the bird from my hands …”

  He stopped. There was an uncomfortable silence. Süleyman swallowed. His eyes riveted on my face, his neck longer than ever, he seemed unable to say another word.

  I had to press him to go on.

  “What is it, Süleyman?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

  He was sweating now. The veins in his long neck twitched.

  “You know what he said, that Semih, the minute he got hold of that bird?” he blurted out, then broke off again.

  “How should I know? Tell me.”

  He made a big effort, while Hayri just sat there, mute, staring at the ground.

  “You know what he said, he said this bird’s mine. I like it too much to give it to anyone … Yes indeed, that’s exactly what he said …”