by Yashar Kemal
“And then?”
Hayri lifted his head. “That Semih’s no good, he hasn’t got a spark of honour in him.” He flung the words out very quickly, almost shouting. Then he fell silent, his head hanging, his face crimson. The next instant, he jumped to his feet. “It’s such a rotten thing to do,” he murmured, standing there, quite at a loss. “A crying shame, that’s what it is, a crying shame!” And he sank back, his knees huddled to his chin.
Then Süleyman spoke again. “I tried to argue with him. For heaven’s sake, Semih, I said, you can’t do things like that! We’ve already taken the money for this bird from that kind man, haven’t we? It belongs to him now …”
“The shame of it, that anyone calling himself a man should do such a thing …” Hayri said.
“Semih, I said …” Süleyman’s voice was trembling. “Man, how can you take this bird for yourself when we’ve already sold it and spent the money?”
“Ugh, it’s too sickening!” Hayri cried.
“If we don’t give that good man his bird, it’ll mean there’s no trusting anyone any more,” Süleyman pursued. “So I said to him … Listen, Semih, I said, we’ll catch another one and that one will be yours. And he said to me … Ah, it’s too awful … He said, we’ll give that man the next bird we catch, this one’s my very own, my kismet … For shame, I said, is there no honesty left in this world? And while we were arguing, those boys over there, you know, the ones with the agate eyes …”
“Agate,” Hayri hissed, “agate …”
“They were watching us, those agate eyes wide, goggling, like this …” Süleyman’s eyes bulged from their sockets. “You wouldn’t believe it, Abi, you know why they sat there all those days, watching us?”
I’d been wondering about that too.
“Did you find out, then?”
“They were waiting to see when we would decide to wring the little birds’ necks and eat them. Imagine! Roast them to make a meal! Hungry we may be, yes, but we’d rather die of hunger than roast those little birds and eat them …”
Their big secret was out. But now Süleyman bitterly regretted having spoken like this. Striving to change the subject, he spluttered on. “That hundred liras you gave us … For fifty, we bought another cage. We had to, there was no help for it … And Semih took the rest of the money. He wouldn’t let us touch it.”
“You mean, you couldn’t buy anything to eat?”
“Oh, but we did, we did! We bought lots of bread. Today, we really had our fill, olives, bread, cheese … Yummy! Hayri went and got the bread from Menekşe, freshly baked … Warm, just out of the oven, oooh, it burned my hand, ooooh, it was so good …” He closed his eyes. “Wasn’t it, Hayri? I have a swollen belly, I ate so much. Such a good feed we had today, wasn’t it, Hayri? That baker always gives Hayri the freshest of his loaves and, even if there’s no bread left, he keeps a loaf hidden for us inside the oven. And in exchange we bring him five large greenfinches every day … Warm … Isn’t that so, Hayri?”
Hayri raised his head. There was a hard bitter expression on his face and when his eyes met mine I saw they were full of tears.
“Warm …” he murmured, and that was all he had to say.
“Well, we had our meal today,” Süleyman said.
Hayri smiled sadly.
In my turn, I felt an urgent need to change the subject.
“But what happened afterwards?” I said.
Süleyman clutched at my question as at a lifebuoy.
“Afterwards … Well, Abi, Semih went into the tent and brought out a cage full of birds. Then he let all the birds out and put the falcon in instead. The bird had clawed and scratched him and he was bleeding badly by this time. All red with blood he was, isn’t that so, Hayri?”
Hayri’s three-cornered eyes were more than ever like two triangles.
“All red,” he said.
“Then, after he’d got the falcon safely in the cage …”
5
The falcon’s chest was bluish grey, its beak hooked and strong, its wings a chestnut colour. It was a very large bird with huge bright eyes that shone fiercely in their sockets. Crammed into that long cage, it had tried to fling its wings open and one of them had remained sticking out of the wires, while the other was folded back.
After making sure the falcon was secure in the cage, Semih, not even pausing to wipe the blood from his face and hands, marched up to the six boys under the poplar and planted himself in front of Tuğrul. For a while, they faced each other in silence, the six sturdy, already grown boys on one side, Semih all by himself on the other.
Semih was the first to speak.
“So what the hell?” he burst out, clenching his fists. “For days you’ve been staring your eyes out as though you wanted to eat us. What the hell, haven’t you ever seen human beings before?”
“Human beings, yes,” Tuğrul sneered.
“Hell is where your own father’s gone to,” Hüseyin said.
“Don’t go picking a quarrel with these hoodoos,” Erol the fisher boy advised his companions. His clothes were stuck with fish scales and he reeked of fish from yards away.
“Hoodoo yourself! And your father, and all your ancestors,” Semih retorted, bracing his shoulders, fists at the ready. “You agate-eyed, ill-omened dog! Ever since we’ve been here, you’ve fixed those nasty eyes of yours on us, spying on us, that’s what, like any vulgar slut, Menekşe street sluts!”
“Who’s spying on you?” Hüseyin said.
“We’re just here to see how you’ll soon be dying of hunger,” Fisher Erol said. “With all those birds that you’ll never be able to sell …”
“Why, your mouths stink of hunger already!” Tuğrul said.
At that, Long Süleyman moved to Semih’s side.
“We’ve got birds, yes, and plenty of them,” he said. “What the hell is it to you, you bunch of mollycoddles, if we do die of hunger? Will your mother burn henna for us to dye her you-know-where? A lot of candles she’ll be needing, thirty-six at least …”
“More, much more,” Semih laughed. “The way they’re made, their mothers, it’s three hundred and eighty candles they’ll have to burn for all that henna to fill their you-know-where!”
Stunned at the abuse being heaped upon them, the others cast about for some stronger insults but found themselves unable to hit upon anything to equal tough Semih’s inventive aspersions.
Semih on his part went on, non-stop, with a string of abuse.
Tuğrul swallowed and swallowed again. He tried to speak.
“You … But you … You …” he stammered.
Suddenly, Semih stopped. “What about us?” he challenged him. He was obviously eager to add fuel to the flame.
“You … When you’re too hungry to bear it any more, you’re going to wring those little birds’ necks and gorge yourselves.”
Semih hooted with laughter.
“So we are! We’ll gorge ourselves and good for us. We caught them and we’ll eat them. Right here we’ll light a fire and when the embers are all aglow we’ll roast them. Yum! Who knows how tasty they are, these goldfinches, these greenfinches when they’re roasted. Yummy, yummy!”
He smacked his lips.
“It’s to please ourselves we came hunting here. Of course we’re going to eat them.”
And he smacked his lips again with relish.
Longy and Hayri smacked their lips too, just like him. The others were dumbfounded.
Then Tuğrul snickered: “They’re going to eat those tiny little birds! Shame! Boo …”
“Boo,” Hüseyin hooted.
“Beasts,” Fisher Erol cried. “Eating tiny little creatures! Boo!”
“We will eat them. Good for us!”
The squabbling went on and on, back and forth, until they ran out of insults and their voices were hoarse. Then, all of a sudden, no one knew how it started, the two groups were at each other’s throats and a regular fight was in full swing in the middle of Florya Plain. Though th
ey were three against six, the tough boys from Fatih soon got the better of the mollycoddles. They’d gone through many another fight and squabble in their lives. It all ended in piercing screams that came from under the poplar and could be heard all the way from Basinköy and Menekşe and even from Şenlikköy.
Semih had drawn his knife and was stalking about Florya Plain, brandishing it, while the six boys, crazed with fear, scattered, shrieking in terror, running for their lives.
6
“Yes, Abi, that’s exactly how it happened. Semih just spat after them, after those milksops, he spat three times, stuffed the knife back into his pocket and went and washed his face at that fountain there. Then he took the falcon out of the cage and tied a string to its foot and simply went away. He left without a single word either to me or to Hayri. Tell me, Abi, is that a thing to do to a friend? It’s not right.”
“Oh, what does it matter?” Hayri said impatiently.
“But how can it not matter?” Süleyman’s eyes were wide and puzzled, his neck stretched longer and longer. “If Semih can do a thing like that, then there’s no one you can trust in this world any more.”
“Semih will come back,” Hayri stated with conviction. “See if he doesn’t.”
“I know he will, yes, Semih’s not a heel, but … But to turn his back on us, to leave like that, without a word!”
“Shut up!” Hayri cried, exasperated. “Lay off, will you? I’m telling you he’ll be back.”
Süleyman was quelled. “Of course he will,” he faltered.
“And I’m going to catch another falcon for Abi tomorrow.”
“Never mind about that,” I said. “It’s all right. If you can’t catch it …”
“What? Of course we must!” Süleyman cried. “It would be really shabby of us if we didn’t.”
“We’d be so ashamed of ourselves,” Hayri said.
“In that case, children, let me give you another hundred liras. You can buy a couple of new cages and if there’s anything left over …”
“No, no,” Süleyman protested.
“We can’t …” Hayri cried.
They were as determined not to accept the money as I was to make them take it. After a long argument, I emerged as the winner and I shoved the money into Hayri’s pocket.
“Your bird will be ready here for you tomorrow,” Süleyman vowed. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”
“Tomorrow,” Hayri said. “I’ll tie thirty or forty decoys around the thistles, sixty if necessary, so the falcons can’t fail to catch the scent. They’ll be down at them in no time.”
“Good,” I said. “And I’m going to Menekşe. There are some old fowlers there who may be able to give me tips as to how to sell these birds of prey. You boys are good at catching them, but you’ve no idea at all how to sell them.”
“That’s true,” they confessed.
7
It was indeed a rain of birds over Florya Plain that morning. All about me, as I walked down to the coffee house at Menekşe, hundreds of tiny twittering birds were sputtering over the thistle shrubs like hot popcorn. Where did they come from in such great numbers, and, after staying here from September to the middle of December, where did they go to? To what new distant thistle fields? Towards the end of December there are no thistles left on Florya Plain. Stormy winds, the fierce poyraz from the north, the black nor’wester, and also the lodos from the south, which whips the sea into a white foaming mass, will have uprooted them, tossing them this way and that and scattering their seeds over the earth. What a magician nature is, what prodigies she performs! All these tiny birds, each one no bigger than a thumb, who knows how far they will travel, what mountains and steppes, what seas, what deserts they will traverse? Who knows where they will nest at last to lay their eggs? The human mind boggles before the wonders of nature. These flecks of brilliant colour, how she scatters them in the skies, soaring, plunging, sheering, a sparkling flashing turmoil …
I came to the coffee house. Fishing boats were moored under the little bridge in front of it. There I found Mahmut.
Mahmut is a native of Menekşe, born and bred here. He knows these purlieus of Istanbul like the palm of his hand, Menekşe, Çekmece, Ambarli, the Long-Grotto, the lake, the seas and seamarks. He can reel off the names of half a dozen of those little autumn birds, detailing the colour of their plumage, their characteristic call notes, the shape of their bills, their eyes … Mahmut doesn’t show his age, but by my reckoning he must be sixty or so. Some days, when he’s in a black mood, you can see him ambling along the seashore, his hands clasped behind his back, refusing to speak to anyone, and this can last from dawn to dusk.
“Hello, Mahmut,” I hailed him.
“Why, hey there, hello!” He gave me a questioning look.
“Let’s take a turn Yeşilköy way,” I said. “I’ve got things to ask you.”
“All right,” he said, and his face beamed. It was like an explosion of joy. I’ve never met another who laughs like Mahmut, from the heart’s core, forcing you to share his gladness. Suddenly, I felt light and sunny, relieved of the grime, the rust of Istanbul town, the evil, the cupidity that made people so beastly to each other. May you have a long life, Mahmut, my friend, enduring as this earth, may you ever be here with your humble heartfelt laughter springing from the very veins in your body. Bless you, Mahmut, my friend …
Strangely enough, people who laugh like this always have very white teeth that gleam like pearls …
“I’ll bet you’re at it again,” he said. “You want me to give you some names of birds and fishes.”
Right away, he was ticking off fish names, unusual fish no one had ever heard of. All the way from Menekşe to Florya, he went on teaching me names of fishes and describing their colours and habits.
“Wait,” I said at last. “I’ll have to write all this down so I won’t forget it. But some other day.”
“Write it down, you must,” he said. “Write down all that Mahmut tells you, Mahmut the bard of the denizens of the deep. That’s our job, to celebrate the fish of the sea.”
“Tell me, have you really caught all those fish you were just telling me about?”
“Not likely!” he said. “Some of those fish don’t even frequent the seas around here. But I have seen every one of them, those I’ve been telling you about, because I’ve fished in the Mediterranean in my time, all the way to Algeria.”
“And what about those birds you keep describing?”
The smile froze on his face.
“Those I hunted, every one of them. Would that I hadn’t …”
And he was launched on the subject of birds.
Ever since ancient Byzantium, and even further back … In those days, the land stretching beyond the Old Walls of the city up to Florya Plain was all woods and fields and thistle shrubs, with not a single house in sight. The little autumn birds would come not like this, not like now, but in hordes, clouding the sky, like swarms of butterflies … If you happened to be sitting by one of the thistle shrubs and you rose suddenly, you would find yourself engulfed by hundreds of those tiny birds, their wings brushing your face and hands. It was like standing under a shower of birds. There was a blue bird then, it doesn’t come anymore, the species must have died out. So tiny it was, hardly larger than a thumb. Oh well, maybe bigger than that, a man’s brain is not a machine, it may sometimes remember a small thing as large and what is big as tiny … Anyway, this bird was a rich blue, with large black eyes and a lovely graceful bill, a shimmering blue, flawless, that flooded a man’s face, his very soul, in a torrent of light. The whole world was drowned in this rich blueness. Why, those birds even made the night blue, and the moonlight too …
There was no village then, at Şenlikköy, only vegetable gardens and blindfolded horses working the treadmills among the green lushness. And always that rain of blue birds … They would perch on your shoulders, your head, your arms, so many of them you looked like you had turned into a blue statue.
�
�In all the years of my life, I’ve never come across a bird so close to people, so warm, so trusting, more human than a human being.”
“Did you catch these blue birds too and sell them for ‘fly and be free’ in front of mosques?”
“Never! I didn’t have the heart to do that. They were so soft, such a velvety blue. No, the ones I caught for ‘fly and be free’ were the chaffinches, the coal titmice, the goldfinches … They’re small too, yes, but sturdy, whereas the blue bird is frail, light as a feather, as if like a butterfly it might dissolve into dust at a touch … No, never, not once did I sell one of those blue birds for ‘fly and be free and meet me at the gates of Paradise’. They were my very own sacred birds, the blue ones. It was for me, perhaps, that they came this way, for Mahmut’s sake … I hardly dared touch them, even in a caress …”
In those days, thousands of birds would be captured on Florya Plain and taken to Istanbul to be sold in front of the mosques of Eyup, Valide, Sultan Ahmed, Mihrimah, Fatih, and before Haghia Sophia too. “Fly little bird, free as the air, and meet me at the gates of Paradise …” The cages would be taken by storm, people would vie with each other to buy the birds. Why, the fowlers could never catch enough to meet the needs of Istanbul town!
And before churches too, and synagogues, every day, thousands of birds were released from their cages with prayers and invocations, and their joyful flight to freedom would be followed with pride and hope by their deliverers.
Once, Mahmut had tied coloured threads to the feet of a whole cageful of birds before he sold them, different coloured threads, yellow, red, blue, green …
“I sold them for ‘fly and be free’ in front of Valide Mosque, all those tagged birds. In one instant, the sky over the mosque, over Eminönü and Karaköy was full of them. Then I went back and set my clap-net over there, where the wood is now. At that time, the place was a jungle of thistles. And after a while, in the afternoon, what should I see! Six of the tagged birds right there, back in my clap-net! In one week I had retrieved three hundred and six of them. And when, three years later, I discovered another one in my net, I was mad with joy.”