Dear Shameless Death

by Latife Tekin

  The old men gave out five or ten flower seeds to each villager they came upon or who invited them into their homes for the yoghurt drink ayran. Accepting hospitality, the old men settled down in Alacüvek. But then they started to offer advice. ‘It’s sinful to be enemies,’ they said. Then, one night, one of the old men started off to prayer, fell down Stumpy Ali’s stairs and died. After his death, the other two somewhat moderated their mission for reconciliation. During the day, they leant on their walking sticks and sunned themselves beside the walls and in the evenings they retired early, griping about side and back pains. ‘Dear Lord,’ they prayed before going off to sleep, ‘take our lives too while we’re still on this mission of charity.’ But soon after the old man’s death the villagers made peace with themselves. ‘He must have been Allah’s chosen, so we’d better honour his spirit,’ they concluded. Then they went to pay their respects to the two old men and kissed their hands. ‘May you both live long!’ they said and sent them on their way the next morning.

  The Alacüvek folk waited in vain for the purple, perfumed flowers that were supposed to blossom in three weeks’ to three months’ time from the seeds which had been given out by the three old men. What they finally saw leaf and spread out overnight was nothing more than a shameless weed that even the animals refused to eat. It soon sprang up from every hole, from beneath every stone, covering all the gardens and roads of the village, climbing the poplars, reaching out to the sky and wrapping itself all around the houses, right up to their roofs. For three days and nights the villagers worked, trying to clear the ground, ripping out the wild weed by its roots. But it was hopeless. ‘You got us into this mess with the weed. Now you get rid of it,’ the villagers growled menacingly at Huvat, who was already depressed because of the weed, now called ‘Heathen’s weed’. So to save himself from the villagers’ wrath he left for the Circassian village of Cinniören.

  After Huvat had departed, gossip swelled in the village that he had been seen on his way to Gigi, the Armenian village. When Lame Aygaz from Gigi came over to Alacüvek to set up a carpet loom, he let slip that, at Gigi, Huvat had changed his religion, picked up an Armenian woman and danced all night with bells on his fingers.

  Atiye took the news gruffly at first. ‘Your bellies are breeders of lies,’ she said. But rumours ran so strong that she finally turned to Halit. ‘Shift yourself, boy,’ she ordered him sharply, ‘and fetch your father!’ Huvat returned to Alacüvek in a rage. He yelled and swore in the village square, but the villagers insisted: ‘Come, cousin, renew your marriage, stand forth for prayers, don’t leave us in doubt.’ Huvat was left with no choice but to perform an ablution at the village fountain, offer up his prayers and re-wed Atiye.

  For some time Huvat didn’t take a step away from home. ‘Fix me some ayran, girl. Come, wipe off my sweat,’ he shouted as he pruned and grafted the trees. He repaired the stable door, threw more dirt up on the roof and whitewashed the walls, leaving Atiye to wonder what to make of his behaviour. She felt both pleased and worried. But fear began to grow in her heart after Huvat sat on the veranda, fixing his gaze on the mountains and sighing. That same day she placed an order with the pedlar for red and green papier mâché and ten bottles of scent. After tinting her eyes and cheeks with the paper and generously perfuming herself, she would draw close to him with a sweet, soulful look in her eyes. But Huvat began to sigh even more deeply and to moan, ‘Ah!’ And each time he moaned, Atiye gathered up more eggs from the henhouse and gave them to the pedlar, who brought her scarves of shot silk, finely etched prints, hairpins and earrings. ‘They say it’s not good for you, man,’ she cautioned. ‘Looking out so far. People go nuts staring like that.’ Every morning and evening she dressed differently. With her made-up face, hairpins and dangling earrings, Atiye took on a djinn-like appearance, but she still couldn’t conquer Huvat. ‘Y’know, girl,’ he sighed one day, ‘I used to stare out at those mountains before I ran away from the village.’ Atiye’s heart skipped. ‘I know, I know,’ she replied, her face turned ashen. She held her breath and got up quietly from her seat.

  When Huvat left once more, Halit, the older boy, ran wild. He spent his nights in the teacher’s bachelor room. He combed his hair down to one side, whistled and held up mirrors at wives and young girls. One day he thieved and the next he was drunk. He puked beside every wall in the village, toppled over at every doorstep and tore his way through every garden and vineyard. Day after day he sang his türküs and cursed and swore until all the villagers turned against him. Then he started sitting in the village square with his legs stretched out and his knife blade bared in the sunlight. With never a thought for his elders, he lit one cigarette after another while from his breast pocket he flashed pictures of naked women to young and old alike.

  Atiye beat her son’s flesh black and blue with her rolling pin, and she chopped off his hair while he slept. ‘Please, son, don’t!’ she begged when the villagers came to complain. The next minute she would jump on him. ‘Have you gone stark raving mad, you good-for-nothing!’ she screamed as she bit him all over. Every other day she stopped the school teacher. ‘Did you only come here to drive the young men in this village wild?’ she asked him, blocking his path. But Halit only grew wilder by the day. And on top of that the younger boy started to put pressure on her too. ‘You get Elmas for me, or I’ll bring the roof down on top of you,’ he threatened. So Atiye left the older boy and immediately set about Seyit. If Seyit charged out the door, he came back in through the window. ‘Marry me off, girl,’ he commanded, grabbing Atiye by the hair and pinning her to the floor. He wept loudly from the tops of walls, or he pitched stones in the air and let them fall on his head.

  When Atiye found that she simply couldn’t control her sons, she sent word to Huvat. ‘Get that fancy-pants to come back here and do something with his boys!’ she ordered. In a short while she received a letter from Huvat. On the day the letter arrived, Halit and Seyit met and walked out side by side towards the sheepfold. Atiye watched them till they were out of sight, and then she went and put a padlock on the door to the men’s lounge.

  That night Settar’s daughter Menşur ran off with the school teacher. Around dawn the village awoke to shrieks and the howling of dogs. Horses were saddled and bridled as men slung their cartridge belts around their necks and their shotguns over their shoulders. Women settled down for the dirge. Before noon Menşur’s headscarf was found on the branch of a bush on the way to Buǧlek. When the news reached the village, the women came up to the sheepfold. Menşur entered the village at noon slung over the back of a horse. She had woven two garlands of spurge flowers for her head and undone her forty plaits to let her hair fall loose.

  They brought Menşur home and laid her down on the divan by the wall. Then they placed a black-handled knife on her belly and tied a black scarf over her eyes. Two women wrapped themselves in their shawls and went to fetch Sittile. The others left Menşur and withdrew to another room, as Sittile entered, leaning on her stick. After closing the door, she walked over to Menşur’s side, drew the girl’s dress up to her waist and checked to see if she was still a virgin. Then she untied the black scarf from Menşur’s eyes and left the room with it. ‘May your eyes be bright,’ Settile pronounced, holding the scarf out to Menşur’s mother. ‘Put the cauldron on the tandır, get her henna ready,’ wailed the girl’s mother as she waved the scarf from side to side and keened. ‘My Menşur’s a virgin after all.’ So Menşur entered the earth with honour, dressed in her bridal dress and with her fingers hennaed. Before the men returned from the graveyard, black smoke rose over the village, billowing up and then fading into the sky. The women had broken down the school teacher’s door, rushed in, torn up the pictures of naked women that were on the wall and thrown out his belongings. ‘May you be drenched in red blood, Teacher!’ they cursed as they set them on fire.

  ‘Teacher, do you remember this black-covered notebook?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘And me?’


  ‘Not you either.’

  Dirmit left the women by the fire and went to the fields farthest from the village. She hid among the ears of grain and took from her bosom the notebook she had stolen from the school teacher’s room. Her heart started thumping crazily.

  ‘I’ve not forgotten you.’

  ‘I haven’t understood a thing!’

  ‘Nor have I.’

  She gave the teacher the black-covered notebook that was filled with bawdy poems. ‘I’m Dirmit from Alacüvek,’ she said. ‘Huvat’s daughter.’

  It was during the time of the hennaed mourning that the migrant birds came to Alacüvek. With them they brought silver-tasselled bridal veils for young girls, sand eggs for children and embroidered handkerchiefs for young men. The front-line birds picked out the poplars they liked best. The rearguard ones scavenged bits of rubbish. For three days in Alacüvek dogs slept, but the rearguard birds didn’t. They built their nests on chimneys, on the eaves of the houses and on forked branches.

  ‘Rearguard bird, what would you give me if I set you free?’

  ‘Sand eggs.’

  ‘I don’t want them.’

  ‘And what do you want, Dirmit girl?’

  ‘My father.’

  The rearguard birds didn’t wait for the grape harvest. They pushed the front-line birds off the tops of the poplars and killed them, then decked out their wings in mourning. Clacking their beaks, they circled the village once or twice and flew away, screeching.

  That morning Atiye found three dried sheep’s turds in Dirmit’s bed. She picked them up and laid them aside. They multiplied to four, then five. Atiye started picking up droppings from her daughter’s bed by the handful. ‘What’re you doing with these turds, girl?’ she enquired, but Dirmit only shrugged her shoulders and stuck out her tongue. Finally Atiye snatched up her rolling pin and took off after her. She threw Dirmit to the ground in front of the wing-gate and knelt on top of her. ‘Out with it, bitch,’ she ordered. Dirmit struggled a little, stamped twice and then confessed that she had put the droppings in her panties. ‘May the earth swallow you whole!’ Atiye fumed as she dragged her back to the house and locked her in the storeroom. Grumbling, she sat down to knead the dough, but, just as she began to settle down, she remembered Djinnman Memet saying, ‘Aha!’ as he carved a notch in the pastry board before Dirmit was born. Atiye’s heart filled with fear, and she felt the strength drain from her hands and feet. After that she didn’t let Dirmit go outside for some time. Dirmit wandered round and round the house like a dog with a hurt paw. ‘I’ll be out and back in before your spit dries,’ she begged. ‘Are you going out for more turds, good-for-nothing?’ Atiye railed at her each time. One day, however, her mother’s heart could stand it no longer. ‘Come on, you bitch, get up,’ she said and turned Dirmit loose upon the waterways, the wall sidings and the fallen trees. Dirmit filled her dress pockets with roast-flour snacks, snatched up a huge bunch of grapes and gave a whoop as she bounded down the stairs.

  ‘Dirmit girl, who took a shit in your hollow tooth?’

  ‘The midwife’s bitch dog.’

  ‘What a nanny!’

  ‘The goat’s your own kid.’

  ‘Will you hitch up with my son?’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Your dear sweet boy’s a bastard.’

  That day the roof-flying wind drove Dirmit ahead of it. It sent her racing along with the colts in the Savmanı pasture and pushed her into a spat with the greyhounds at Üçoluk. One minute it flung her beside the girls who were weaving carpets, and the next it tossed her onto the backs of some buffalo wallowing in the lake. It tore the grapes from Dirmit’s hand and the roast-flour snacks from her pocket, clawed through her hair and brought blood to her mouth and nose.

  ‘Roof-flying wind, I’m starving.’

  ‘So eat earth.’

  ‘You’ll tell my mother.’

  ‘I won’t breathe a word.’

  ‘The djinns are coming!’ the roof-flying wind hissed at dusk. Frightened, Dirmit was whisked back home where, in two blinks of an eye, the wind was telling Atiye that her daughter had been eating handfuls of earth. First Atiye confronted Dirmit behind the door. ‘Open up your mouth, bitch,’ she commanded. Next she pushed Dirmit down onto the floor and thrashed her. ‘You’ll get worms in your belly if you keep eating earth, you good-for-nothing!’ she shouted. Finally she seized Dirmit by the hair and yanked her back to her feet. ‘Are you going to swear, girl, never to do that again?’ she demanded. Dirmit shook herself free and defiantly raised her head. ‘Give me your word, girl! Promise me, bitch!’ Atiye scolded as she beat her, alternately asking and beating until she was out of breath. Finally, when her heart was about to burst from the strain, she pressed down hard on her daughter’s throat. ‘May your stubbornness wither away!’ she hissed. Then she pinched Dirmit’s nose and spat splat right into her mouth. ‘I’ll eat it, just you watch, girl. I will,’ Dirmit shouted as she leapt onto the stone raising and stamped her feet. ‘Just you watch, girl.’ Then she ran away and hid under the divan.

  The next morning Dirmit awoke before sunrise to the creaking of the water pump. She dressed quietly and bolted from the house without Atiye noticing. ‘Who knows what ash heap she’s pawing around in, the little fiend!’ Atiye groaned as she roamed about the house all afternoon. Deep inside, she expected her to come back at any moment. But when Dirmit didn’t show up, she pulled Nuǧber away from her loom. ‘Go take a look,’ she told her. ‘She might’ve curled up somewhere and…’ Nuǧber set out grumbling to look for Dirmit, as Atiye headed down to the garden to feed the chickens. She scattered the feed, filled the water trough and entered the henhouse to gather the eggs. When she stepped through the door what did she see but Dirmit lying under Grimy Rıfat’s younger son Ömer, and neither of them with their pants on! Atiye forgot about the eggs as she pounced on Ömer and Dirmit. She bit them wherever she could, not caring where. On the arms. On the legs. Then, after she had pelted Ömer with stones until he was out the garden gate, she returned and pulled Dirmit up by her hair.

  Atiye didn’t let Dirmit go out for the whole winter. ‘Mother, it’s the dog snow, the snow’s got teeth. There’re icicles on the eaves. Please let me go out for a little while,’ Dirmit begged for days. As she begged, Atiye went from the tandır room to the storeroom, from the storeroom to the divan, from the stone raising to the veranda. Dirmit wept at one side of the house, while Atiye wept at the other. Atiye couldn’t push Djinnman Memet’s pronouncement out of her thoughts. ‘If the child is born healthy and whole, there’s no telling what’ll befall it!’ Or the notch he cut in the pastry board as he intoned, ‘Aha! Mark my words!’ In her fear of whatever might befall Dirmit, Atiye not only confined her to the house but she started to spy on her daughter, discovering all kinds of odd meanings in everything Dirmit said or did in her desperation. When Dirmit picked up her rag doll and talked to it, when she watched the snow outside and cried out in anguish, when she fell asleep while playing under the divan, all these actions were attributed by Atiye to the notch Djinnman Memet had cut in the pastry board. Finally she started to suspect that Dirmit was in league with the djinns and stopped spying on her. Instead, she approached her often and cooed winsomely as she tried to sound her out. ‘My little girl,’ she entreated, ‘my little hennaed girl! Tell me, do the djinns call you by your name?’ At other times she threatened her. ‘If you don’t tell me, they’ll take you away and never let us see you again,’ she warned. ‘Have you been to the djinns’ wedding? Have you been to their home?’ she went on, and tied Dirmit to the divan so the djinns wouldn’t make her walk off. ‘I’m telling you to free me, girl!’ Dirmit cried out again and again, weeping as she struggled. At last she fell ill and started to sweat feverishly. She foamed profusely at the mouth and closed her eyes. For three days they remained shut, but on the fourth she opened them and fixed them on the ceiling. ‘We’ve lost the girl,’ Atiye cried as she beat her breast. ‘My head! My he
ad!’ Dirmit moaned. Then she broke out in a rash of red notches all over her body. ‘My God! It’s the Djinnman’s notch!’ Atiye exclaimed. Each notch on Dirmit blistered, itched and grew a black scab. ‘Don’t pick at the scabs or you’ll get deep wounds!’ Atiye warned her. But just to be on the safe side she tied the girl’s hands up in a sack.

  At spring oat-planting time Dirmit recovered and got up from her bed. Happy that the illness had left no trace on Dirmit, Atiye let her go outside that very day. But Atiye was wrong. The illness had marked her daughter in other ways. After the notch disease, Dirmit was left with certain traits that passed unnoticed. She kept everything she did a secret, and started to take pity on odd things.

  ‘Pity about the water pump, isn’t it, Mother?’

  ‘What’re you saying, girl?’

  ‘I’m saying it’s a pity about the water pump.’

  ‘What d’you mean, a pity?’

  At night the pump looked like a lonesome dog howling at the moon. And it was always wagging its tail and calling Dirmit over to its side. At first Dirmit was scared and, for a while, she immediately ducked her head under the quilt when she saw the pump wagging its tail. But one day, while she was having a pretend picnic, the pump confided something to her. ‘If you come to see me at night, I’ll tell you where the rosebuds will bloom in the morning,’ it said. In less than two days Dirmit learnt where all the rosebushes were in the village gardens. At night she would secretly go down to the pump’s side and, by morning, she had already crossed the waterways, unseen by anyone, and reached the rosebuds.

  ‘I can’t sleep, ever-blooming rose.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I’m forever thinking of you and your buds.’