by Yashar Kemal
fn1 Ali: the fourth Caliph, cousin and son-in-law of the prophet Muhammet, and revered by the Shiites.
Chapter 36
And one morning they opened their eyes and spring was there. So it always comes in the steppe, overnight. A delirious spring it turned out to be this year; the rocks, the brooks, the mountains, the whole world suddenly bright green, the vast forest redolent and softly singing, its every tree alive with white birds.
Spring comes late in the steppe and its flowers too are slow to bloom. Squat and blunt, no higher than a finger, they are brightness itself, and whether red or yellow, orange or blue, more brilliant than any other flower on earth, visible even in the night. Their fragrance is heady, piercing, impregnating itself into the earth of the steppe and enduring long after the flowers are faded and gone.
Hasan could not keep still with excitement.
‘Hurry up, Ummahan,’ he kept urging his sister. ‘Can’t you be quick, girl? What a slowcoach!’
‘What’s all the hurry?’ she shouted back from inside the house. ‘You’re not bursting, are you?’
‘Come out and I’ll show you, you stupid girl!’
‘Then I won’t come!’
He changed. ‘Come out, there’s my good sister. Come …’
A generous sun caressed the steaming earth, all astir now in the riotous awakening of spring, its myriad insects, birds, wolves, foxes, bears, serpents, tortoises, up and about, mating or chasing each other, spiders after flies, birds after spiders, big birds after small ones … In the forest, in the arid steppe itself, a quickening, a rejuvenation, a giving birth, a lusty, frenzied activity. And the earth stretching itself out, joyful, ecstatic, in the throes of resurrection. The soil, the rocks, the trees melting in a paroxysm of surrender, so soft now that a stone would sink deep into them as into a ball of cotton. The ants had opened up their holes and were heaped about the entrances, half-dormant yet, basking in the long-forgotten sunshine. Beady-bees, yellow-jackets, honey-bees, thousands of bees, their bright transparent wings quivering and flashing in tiny sparks, buzzed impatiently around the almost bursting flower-buds, ready to pounce on the first bloom.
The children were running towards the forest.
Hasan was happy. ‘I’m going to make a camel,’ he said. ‘A real sturdy one, out of a laurel tree …’
‘Make one for me too!’ Ummahan begged.
‘Gipsy!’ he scolded her. ‘You shouldn’t ask for everything you see.’
‘And you’re just a silly ass,’ she countered, giving him a push. ‘If you weren’t a silly ass you’d give me my matches, the matches I earned by waiting up with you all those nights in the snow and cold. If it weren’t for me anyone could have stolen those matches of yours.’
‘They’ll take them anyway,’ Hasan said, suddenly despondent. ‘Adil’s going to come now.’
‘How d’you know?’
‘Don’t you see how unhappy Father is? He hasn’t talked to anyone for days. He’s angry too …’
‘No,’ Ummahan said. ‘Adil can’t come any more. It’s spring now.’
‘Shut up!’ Hasan shouted. ‘Shut up, you stupid girl and don’t make me mad. Adil will come, and he’ll take all my matches too.’ He rummaged in his shirt. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘these two boxes are for you. Adil’s going to get them anyway, sooner or later.’
Ummahan hesitated, unable to believe her eyes. She was sure Hasan was teasing her.
‘Well? Don’t you want them?’
Hasan offering her the matches over which they had quarrelled all through the winter? It was impossible. Why, he wouldn’t give her a single stick …
‘Take them!’ he shouted. ‘Take them, quick.’
She held out her hand timidly and oh, the matches were in her palm! Tears rose to her eyes. She stood there, irresolute, looking from the matches to Hasan and back at the matches again.
‘Are they mine altogether?’
‘Altogether,’ Hasan said sadly. ‘Adil’s going to get them anyway …’
Ummahan burst out laughing. She laughed and laughed, and Hasan stared at her in bewilderment. Suddenly he broke into laughter too. The more they looked at each other, the more they laughed.
‘Are they really, really mine? Both of them?’
‘Both of them.’
They reached the forest at a run and immediately Hasan set about heaping brushwood beneath the jutting rock. How good this fire would smell! The scent of burning wood is quite different in the spring. He was seething with excitement after days of waiting for a chance to go to the forest. He sat down, emptied a whole box of matches on the ground before him, picked up half a dozen sticks and struck them all at one go. Then he lit another batch, and another, the bigger the flame the better, and watched the matches burn and flicker out, a strange mixture of pain and pleasure on his face. The box was soon empty. He produced another.
Ummahan was watching him with huge horrified eyes.
‘Stop, Hasan, stop!’ she cried at last.
It was as though he had not heard her.
Now he had no more matches left. He turned to his sister. ‘Give me yours too,’ he said.
Ummahan recoiled. ‘I won’t,’ she screamed. ‘You’re mad, that’s what you are! Mad!’
He made a grab for her and a fierce tussle ensued. Hasan wanted the matches with such passion that he fought like a devil and had soon wrung the boxes out of his sister’s hands. Panting, his face bleeding where Ummahan had scratched it, he crouched down, oblivious to everything and began to strike the matches again, in larger batches now, the flames spurting forth in crackling bursts. His fingers were getting burnt but he did not even feel it. He held the very last match to the wood and then settled down with his chin in his hand to watch the flames.
Suddenly he gave a shriek. Ummahan jumped.
‘Look, look Ummahan! The Holy Walnut Tree! The tree which used to come at night over Uncle Tashbash’s house … Look, look! Oh, it’s slipping away! It’s gone … Didn’t you see it?’
Ummahan was cross. ‘No, I didn’t! I saw nothing at all.’
Hasan let the fire burn itself out, then he rose and stretched himself. ‘Turn your back, Ummahan,’ he ordered. ‘Don’t move and don’t dare look or I’ll kill you.’
He ran, slipping in and out of the boulders, and came to the great rock that was set like an island among the pines. He found his stone and gazed at it, hope and reverence in his eyes. Then he stroked it gently once or twice and lifted it up. It was as though he had been struck by lightning. He stared at the open space under the stone, unable to take his eyes off it. Slowly, his face lit up, and the mountains, the rocks, the trees, the earth seemed to light up too.
‘Ummahan!’ he shouted. ‘Come here! Come, quick …’
His voice was triumphant. Ummahan rushed up, excited, and looked where he was pointing. They held their breaths.
Where the stone had lain there were three freshly blooming flowers, their long stalks trailing over the black earth. One was red, a brilliant crystal red like a flame, the other yellow, yellow as the corn, the sun, a crystal yellow, and the third blue, the blue of the thistle, the sky, the sea, a crystal blue.
Hasan looked into Ummahan’s eyes. ‘You see?’
‘Oh yes, I do!’
‘The three of them?’
‘I see them all.’
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Copyright © Yashar Kemal 1963
English translation © William Collins Sons & Co Ltd 1974
Yashar Kemal has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published with the title Yer Demir Gök Bakir, Istanbul, 1963
First published by Collins and Harvill Press in 1974
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9781846559662