by Yashar Kemal
In those days, fowling was a lucrative affair for children. One hesitates to say that people were better then, yet, who knows, maybe they were different. Maybe they liked birds better. Maybe they were more softhearted, more loving, more easily moved to pity. Maybe they were closer to nature, who knows … People nowadays don’t give a damn if little birds die in their cages. People don’t even go to church or to the synagogue any more, or perhaps only from Sunday to Sunday, and merely a sprinkling at that, or to attend a funeral now and then. As for those roundbeards emerging from mosques, wearing black berets, all with harsh angry countenances, grinding their teeth, those surly, deathlike zealots so unbecoming to the laughing face of the great Süleymaniye Mosque, it isn’t from them one can expect pity for little birds shut up in a cage, not theirs the faith for “fly and be free” … Heigh-ho, a bloody world it is now … Perhaps in Eyup, among the humble poor of Eyup there is still some compassion left. Maybe also up in Taksim Square … Taksim is the most populous part of the town. Wouldn’t there be some, among the crowds that always throng the square, just a few with still a modicum of humanity who, for a trifling sum, will take pride and joy in setting little birds free? Such a sight it is when those birds soar joyously up into the sky …
“Yes, if there’s any hope left, it’s in Taksim and Eyup.”
“So charity is dead, is it?”
“Dead?” Mahmut said. “No, not dead, but in trouble, stranded somewhere or other.”
“Is that what you think? Where then?”
A bright smile lit up Mahmut’s face and I thought, perhaps that’s where charity is now, right there in Mahmut’s genial laughter, in the fullness of his heart. Who knows, maybe …
“The birds, too, have gone away,” Mahmut said suddenly.
We fell silent. The birds are gone now. And with the birds … It’s no use … Even the birds are gone.
These sullen, shifty-eyed zealots with berets on their heads, who emerge from the mosques as though having waged a mighty battle with God, as though whatever light there was in their faces has remained inside, are these the faithful, these men under whose angry tread the earth seems to split, these the believers? No wonder the birds have gone, left this place long ago …
And in Taksim Square, those people jostling each other, spitting loudly all over the place, blowing their noses with their fingers and then wiping off the snot onto the nearest tree trunk, the men with sickly faces, the garishly painted women, the surly choleric countenances, the hostile eyes, each man an enemy to the other, each ready to spring at the other’s throat, to gouge out the other’s eyes … And those who are afraid, and those who are ashamed, and those who are always bragging, I, I, I … Those stinking creatures, human beings? No wonder the birds have gone … And with the birds …
“Maybe in front of factories, as the workers disperse … Maybe at the Vegetable Market the Kurdish hamals might … Those Kurds, they can hardly speak our tongue, but they dote on birds …”
Maybe somewhere, in some comer or other, there are a few people left still generous enough to buy birds and set them free. Who knows, maybe …
Go ahead then, Long Süleyman, go ahead triangular-eyed, taciturn, angry Hayri. Load up your cages full of birds! Human beings are so unpredictable. Who knows but that in Taksim Square they may be seized with a sudden frenzy and start queueing to buy your birds, and not only one but five, ten, twenty apiece, so as to fling them up into the air. In no time, the cages will be empty and your pockets full of wads of money. How bitterly Semih will regret having abandoned you, how remorseful, how ashamed he’ll be. For man is a strange creature, truly unpredictable, who knows but you might hit upon one of his good days …
8
For a few days I kept away from the tent beside the poplar. What if the boys had not been able to capture that falcon … I was a thousand times sorry I had suggested they should catch it for me.
Then, one evening, I felt I could not stay away any longer. I was burning to know what had happened to those boys. Had they given up? Had they caught more and more of those little birds?
Indeed, from my window I could see the birds coming in greater numbers than ever. Florya Plain was one big patchwork of many flickering colours, now red, now yellow, green, orange, blue … The muffled rumbling of the distant city merged with the chittering of birds that flitted in swarms from thistle to thistle. The dry copper-coloured thistles were covered with birds, swaying lightly in the air.
That night, the sky was laden with stars. The starlight cast a dull shimmer over the gently rippling sea. The warm scent of pines drifted in from the wood and mingled with the odour of brine and iodine.
I was cheered to see a small fire burning in front of the tent. So the boys had not gone away, they were still at it, holding their ground …
There was something odd in the way they greeted me. They were not exactly cold, but obviously far from pleased to see me. Hayri did not even look up.
Süleyman cleared his throat several times. He seemed to have trouble speaking. Hurriedly, he spread a newspaper in front of the fire.
“Sit down, Abi,” he said morosely. “Welcome …”
I sat on the newspaper and he dropped down beside me. Hayri was still standing.
“Come and sit here, Hayri,” I said.
He crouched down to my right, averting his face.
“Welcome,” he murmured.
Our eyes fixed on the fire, we did not speak for a while.
“Abi,” Süleyman blurted out suddenly, “that friend of yours, Mahmut Abi, he came here, you know. He talked with us. He asked about the birds, how we were doing … He’s a good man.”
“That he is,” I agreed. “Mahmut’s the best fellow in the world.”
“Listen, Abi,” Süleyman began again. “Listen …” He was talking very quickly now, as though afraid the words would be stolen from his mouth before he had time to utter them. “Ah Abi, we couldn’t catch your bird. It’s like those big birds have a grudge against us. They used to come again and again, but every time they came, we chased them away, we humiliated them by not catching even one, by bagging all these small birds instead. So they were offended and took themselves off in a huff. Wouldn’t you do the same if you were in their place, if you’d been driven away time after time? Wouldn’t you, if you had a spark of pride, wouldn’t you go away and never come back again? Wouldn’t you, Abi?”
“I suppose so,” I said.
“Well then … Those birds too have gone away.”
“It happens they disappear sometimes. I shouldn’t worry,” I said.
“Look, Abi, as God’s my witness, we fixed maybe a hundred decoys here …”
“A hundred,” Hayri repeated without lifting his head.
“One day, for a whole day from morning till dark, there were seven of them up there, above that poplar, seven falcons hovering wing to wing, not even flying, just floating on the breeze, and we down here, pulling at those decoys, up, down, up, down, and would you believe it, not one of those falcons made the slightest move to attack them. They did not even bend sideways to look at the fluttering decoys! And then, in the afternoon, Hayri couldn’t bear it any more …”
Süleyman paused, looking at me insistently.
“No one could bear it,” I said.
“So Hayri looked at those birds and blasted out a bellyful of curses. He called them turds and carrion crows and all sorts of bad names. He swore and swore …”
“So what?” Hayri flung out savagely. “I cursed, I swore, so what?”
“You did right,” I said.
Hayri gave me a wary look as if to say, are you mocking me now?
“Of course you did right,” I repeated. “There’s nothing to be done with such dirty stubborn birds but swear at them well and good.”
Hayri seemed more at ease now.
“But after that, the birds went away,” Süleyman persisted. “They couldn’t put up with all that cursing. They flew off and never came back. Hayri’s n
ot one for talking much, you know, but there are few people in Istanbul town who know so many swear words.”
“Very few,” Hayri said.
“He learned all those swear words from a real master, Ismail, a former wrestler, who is now a fisherman in Samatya.”
“Ismail the Laz, from Samatya,” Hayri said proudly.
“One would have to be made of stone to take all those curses lying down. How could the birds not be offended?”
“Impossible …”
“So they’ve gone away,” Süleyman concluded, still with that mortified look on his face.
“Oh, they’ll be back,” Hayri cried. “They’ll soon have forgotten all about it.”
He rose and flung his arms out wide.
“Like this they’ll swoop down on the decoys! And like this I’ll capture them, yes …”
And silently he enacted the scene, the swift plunge of the falcon, the clap-net snapping over it, himself seizing the struggling bird as it clawed at his hands and stuffing it into the cage at last. Still without a word, he slumped down again.
“We’re very sorry, Abi,” Süleyman said. “We haven’t kept our word, we haven’t got your falcon. But they’ll come back, those birds. Sooner or later …”
“Yes,” I said. “Birds forget quickly. Sooner or later …”
“They’ll be back,” Hayri stated with conviction.
“And we’ll catch them this time, we will …”
“You mustn’t worry so much,” I said. “If you don’t catch them, well, never mind.”
“But we have to, Abi,” Hayri countered stiffly. “We’re not beggars, or swindlers either.”
“Why, what kind of talk is that?” I protested. “Of course not!”
Süleyman hastened to change the subject.
“Mahmut Abi …” he began.
How, in the dark, did I guess that Hayri was much more at his ease now? He did not speak, and I could hardly make out his features in the light of the flickering fire.
Süleyman got up and collected an armful of dry brushwood from the foot of the barbed wire fence. He threw the wood onto the fire which blazed up. Hayri also went to get some wood and soon they had built up quite a pile beside the fire.
“Now we’re all right,” Hayri said.
For a long time we sat there before the fire, silent, the three of us, each one alone with his thoughts. Then Long Süleyman began to talk. And suddenly Hayri was talking too, Hayri the taciturn one, talking twenty to the dozen. That’s how it is, sometimes, with closemouthed people. Once started, there’s no stopping them.
The whiteness of the dawn sea hit the topmost branches of the great plane tree in front of the Municipal Beach. The crest of the tree was bathed in brightness and from there a stream of light flowed out into the plain.
Over Istanbul city, the sky was flame-red. The sun was about to rise, and soon the leaden domes of the mosques would turn pale. From Ambarli way came the throb of an early motorboat. The two boys had fallen asleep, still sitting, their heads drooping to their chests. The flames had died out and the fire was crumbling into ashes now. In their cages the birds must have been asleep too, though a faint beating of wings sounded now and then from the cramped cage at the foot of the poplar. The dawn breeze was blowing gently, coming from everywhere, from the woods, the sea, the lake, filling the whole world with gladness and making a man feel all cleansed and pure inside, light as a feather, ready to take wing.
9
Ali Şah lives in Dolapdere. And this Dolapdere is by far the most enchanting quarter of Istanbul, a bustling hodgepodge of a place. Istanbul is immense, the city seems to stretch on and on infinitely, its populace teems like ants, but the limits of this multiformity, this hugeness, are well-defined. Dolapdere is small, but it is a universe in itself, boundless in its variety. One can confidently assert that it is unique in the world. A labyrinth of streets and alleys, of shanties, brothels and ill-famed hotels, yet chaste and pure at heart … Dirty enough to engulf all of Istanbul, yet its dwellings scoured clean as a new penny … A pageant of humanity, garage mechanics, odd-job men who can repair oil lamps, sailors’ lanterns, people who can produce a brand-new bicycle out of a couple of old wheels, rebuild a car, devise some new kind of outboard motor or even an original watercraft … Cobblers hammering in hobnails, weavers, lottery-men and people drawing for lots, vendors of black-market cigarettes, hard-drinking carousers who know how to hold their drink, blind-drunk boozers – you can run across all kinds in Dolapdere. All the failures, the wash-outs of the universe seem to have taken refuge here and found an anchorage. In Dolapdere, vice and turpitude, corruption and treachery are rampant, but so are friendship and love. Indeed, it is a magic town. Whatever his origin, whether he comes from the mansion of a bey or the tent of a gypsy, the man who has once lived in Dolapdere will never again escape from its slime and hurly-burly, not if you offer him the whole world. Kurd or gypsy, English, French, Laz, Turk or Turcoman, Arab or Persian, once a man has settled here, wild horses cannot drag him away.
All kinds of languages are spoken in Dolapdere. Swarthy gypsies, fair-haired immigrants, tall Kurds, beautiful-eyed Georgians, and countless others have brought with them their thousand and one songs, their thousand and one dialects. Not in the whole of Istanbul is there a place to match Dolapdere. In fact, I defy anyone to show me another like it in the whole world.
Take the autumn of 1943 when Zühre, that Dolapdere beauty, with her waist so slim and her long lustrous black hair reaching down to her ankles – the women of Dolapdere have the loveliest hair – when Zühre, bronze-skinned, blue-eyed, won the belly dance championship. Dancing for three days and three nights in Kasimpaşa Square, with God only knows how many undulations of the belly a minute, she wrested the first rank from the famed Sulukule gypsies and made the whole of Sulukule and the neighbourhood of the Old Walls burst with vexation like an overripe red watermelon.
That’s how renowned Dolapdere is! And its most renowned resident is undoubtedly Ali Şah. Of course, there is Rüstem the fiddler, with his performing bears, and Halim the Black Sea viol player, and Gülizar the belle of easy virtue, but no one in Dolapdere has yet attained Ali Şah’s repute. Not even the most noted gypsy chiefs of Sulukule can measure up to Ali Şah for his many talents, his staunchness, his courage, his loyalty. Ali Şah always girds himself with a wide red sash, as in the days when he was chief of a gypsy tribe in Edirne. He speaks with an Albanian accent, starting with the “a bé moré” so typical of Albanians. Maybe he does come from Albania, but no one can tell, just as no one can tell where the wolf’s lair is. Who knows when he came strolling into Dolapdere, as nonchalantly as though he owned the place, and then, the moment he was settled, became the most respected personality there, everybody’s mentor, whom you could trust and tell all your troubles to. As for his gypsy clan, one fine day, so the story goes, he got bored of being a chief. Here, he told the clan as though handing over his old coat, take back your trust, I can’t go on with this task, goodbye and bless you all … And so he took himself off. Where he went after that, what countries he roamed, what adventures befell him, God only knows.
One has only to ask something of Ali Şah and he will do it for you, regardless of what it costs him. Not that anyone would dare approach him with a trifling matter. Ali Şah knows this, and that is why he never turns away someone who comes knocking at his door.
And now, our Semih, the one who ran off with the falcon, leaving his friends in the lurch with hundreds of unsaleable birds on Florya Plain, hungry, penniless, that same Semih is going straight to Ali Şah. How does Semih know of Ali Şah, you’ll ask. Ah, but that’s Semih for you, a lad who has scoured every street and back alley of Istanbul town, who has worn his soles out in every gutter, on every pavement …
Ali Şah wears a long grizzling yellow moustache, and every morning he rubs and twists this moustache with almond oil until it is shining bright. In his younger days, he used to dye his moustache with henna. It was flame-red then, maj
estic, awe-inspiring, but it is two years now since he gave up this practice. Ali Şah always goes about with two revolvers thrust into that red sash of his, and no policeman has ever apprehended him for this. Indeed, no one, police or civilian, would dare take issue with Ali Şah. Just let someone try and all the pickpockets and thieves of Dolapdere, the cutthroats and toughs, the local lads and girls would fly at him in a holy rage and make Istanbul town too hot for him.
Semih will go to Ali Şah and say to him, train this falcon for me, train it well so it’ll bag a hundred quails a day, even two hundred … Yes, that’s what Semih will do. No one else in the world understands the language of birds like Ali Şah. He’ll work on a falcon a week, or maybe a fortnight, at the most a month, and in the end he’ll have made of that falcon an Azrael for quails.
Afterwards, Semih will make straight for Kilyos village and set up tent on the rise where the Coast Guard station stands. And perhaps, if he feels like it and if they are of a mind to patch up the quarrel, he’ll allow Long Süleyman and Hayri to come too. For it is there that quails drop onto the shore, exhausted, after travelling across the wide sea, coming from far-off lands beyond the Black Sea. It always rains as they cross the water and their wings are wet and heavy. Then is the time to fly the falcon. Like lightning it’ll swoop over the quails, but it’ll never eat its prey, only wait for Semih. And Semih will run and bag the quails … If they are reconciled, then Long Süleyman and Hayri too will gather quails on the shore, fat juicy quails, a hundred, maybe two hundred in one day. They will fill plastic bags with them, jump into the dolmuşfn1 that goes from Kilyos to Taksim Square and then make for the butcher shops behind the Flower Market. The quails will sell for two and a half liras apiece. A hundred quails will make two hundred and fifty liras, two hundred will be five hundred, two hundred and fifty, six hundred and twenty-five liras, isn’t that right? With quails it’s not like with those miserable little birds. There’s always a ready market for quails, you deliver them and pocket the cash, as easy at that! And who knows, a quail may be selling for ten or twenty liras these days …