by Rose Fox
“Hey, is there a fire here?” He inquired. “We can take some embers from it to light this pile of twigs,” he said, glancing at the children.
One of the kids ran to the tents and a few minutes later returned, followed by a tall youth, who was holding something. He was the kid’s older brother, who came running with smoldering embers on a piece of canvas, which he threw on the pile of firewood in the well. He looked up at Karma gleefully.
At first, nothing much changed. Then, an orange light flashed from within the woodpile, small yellow tongues rose from the branches and within a minute the pile of twigs collapsed and sank down into the well as a merry fire got going.
“Quickly, bring more firewood!” the children yelled, dispersed and returned with more branches and threw them on the little bonfire.
Karma pointed to the fire and the fish in the children’s hands and they threw them on the glowing embers. Within minutes, the aroma of grilling fish filled the air, accompanied by the joyful cheers of the children.
No adults came out to see or check on what their kids were up to. The children treated Karma like one of their own. They were accustomed to seeing youngsters roaming among the tents and it was not a rare occurrence. Only this time, they took pleasure in the bonfire and the initiative this boy had brought with him.
At sunrise, the air warmed and Karma was thirsty. He leaned over the river bank and drank from its contaminated waters, grimaced and spat. When he got up to leave, his belly ached but he ignored it and went on his way.
He carried on marching for four days. On the way, he would bend down and drink from the muddy waters of the streaming river that flowed alongside him all the way. It disappeared from time to time and reappeared once more at the next bend in the road. When he bent down to drink, he picked and sucked the fruit of thorny bushes, wounding his thin arms. He wiped the blood with the ragged clothes he wore.
The evening loomed when he was surprised by the roar of the motor of an approaching truck. He jumped into the road, facing the vehicle, and the driver stopped and looked at him. He nodded to him to climb on the back. Karma climbed up, clutching his dog under his arm and discovered other people already there. This group of people resembled him. They were also disheveled and dirty and made room for him. During the journey, they pulled out bags and offered him pitas with olive oil and threw pieces to Abdul, his dog. One of them offered Karma some lukewarm, turbid water from a filthy bottle, which tasted as bad as the river water he had been drinking for the past four days.
Darkness descended on everything and, after a few hours, waves of cramps rose from Karma’s stomach and he began trembling. He knocked on the window of the driver’s cabin and motioned him to stop. Karma jumped off and watched the truck disappearing as it continued on its way. Nausea rippled through his stomach and he threw up.
He turned to the side of the road and lay down in the sand. His stomach ached so badly that went and stood near a tree, dropped his pants and defecated on the sand. Afterward, he cleaned himself with some of the broad flat leaves that had collected to form a soft bed under the tree.
At night he slept on the layer of leaves, hallucinating and sweating and he knew he was ill.
He had an attack of the chills and he cringed and shivered with cold. Minutes later he was feverish and blazing hot. He lay with his eyes shut, hovering between life and death while, Abdul, his loving dog, licked his sweaty face lovingly and did not allow him to sink into a death sleep.
The boy lay there like that on the bed of leaves under the tree for two days. He would get on his feet and throw up from time to time, then move away a little from where lay to relieve himself and return to rest under the tree, his whole body trembling.
Vehicles traveling in both directions on the dusty roads passed by him and no one took any notice of him. People were accustomed to seeing neglected children everywhere. They were aware that many Kurdish children were orphaned or were on the road looking anywhere in the world for a place to live.
On the morning of the third day, Karma was exhausted from the struggle to survive. He got up and proceeded slowly, using his instincts to look for the river. He recognized the vegetation that grew on its banks. When he discovered the water, he lay down on the ground, felt the dampness of the plants on his chest, wet his face with the palm of his hand and enjoyed its coolness. His dog crouched beside him and lapped up the water with his long tongue. Later, Karma wandered along the bank of the river, looking for wild berries and sucking them hungrily.
Karma returned to his tree trunk that had been his home for the past two days and leaned up against it. He picked up a broad leaf, rolled it into a tube and blew into it, eliciting sharp high whistling sounds that made a kind of tune. Abdul, the dog, accompanied the sounds with long howls like a fox baying at a full moon at night.
Seven days after he left the tent settlement that had been his home he arrived at the town of Wan. Of course, Karma did not know that this was the place of his birth and the home of his grandfather and grandmother, the parents of Naziah, his mother whom he never knew.
Many children wandered around in this city and Karma assimilated with them felt as if he had always lived among them. Their appearance was similar to his, neglected and barefoot and they constantly rummaged in the piles of garbage on the streets, like stray cats. The open sewage canals flowed freely in the streets and a sickening stench filled the air for miles around. There were piles of garbage everywhere, but they served the children well. They burrowed in the stinking heaps, using sticks and sometimes with their bare hands and Karma would join them. He was hungry, as they were, and learned how to survive. He also taught Abdul, his dog to sniff out and look for food as he did.
Karma also saw adults roaming around and understood that they were refugees, who had fled their villages for fear of the soldiers, who were pursuing them. The skirmishes between the rebels and the army continued incessantly and Karma was reminded of Nana Kahit’s stories.
Sometimes he would pass through built-up roads and he would peer into the buildings in which people sat at tables, allowing another idle day to pass. He went down the steps and glanced at little dark bars. He saw people drinking from beer bottles and smoking cigarettes they rolled from dark tobacco leaves, which he recognized from the fields where he had worked with his mother and grandmother.
One day he followed the smell of food cooking and reached a tavern where groups of people sat playing cards while others played dice with dotted cubes. Cigarette smoke wafted everywhere and the people sipped tea noisily from glasses as they talked and chattered away. The atmosphere was that of a social gathering.
Karma slipped into the room and stood behind the backs of the dice players. He followed their hand movements, trying to understand the method. When the game was over and the shuffling of the cubes for the next game began, he smiled and requested:
“May I?”
“Sure, why not? Pull up a chair and join us.”
They made room for him at the table and he was amazed how easily he fits in with them.
The truth was that Karma was different from the other children, who milled around in this area for years. His skin tone was lighter. Honey-colored eyes, bequeathed to him by his beautiful mother, lent him the appearance of a foreigner and he displayed a unique other-worldly quality. Karma had a special smile that spread out on his face to reveal perfect white teeth, which were also inherited from his noble family he was unfamiliar with.
They drank and talked and Karma brought one of the bottles to his lips and filled his mouth with the bitter beer for the first time in his life with the height of panache. He grimaced. They all laughed when he was overcome with a spasm of coughing and slapped his back.
He stood up and called out as one of the men, and demanded out loud:
“Can we get something more to drink here?”
“Hey, come and get it yourself, there are no servants here!” someone yelled and Karma rose and went to the counter that smelled of frying oil. T
he man looked at him and pointed to the Finjan that stood on the grill over smoldering embers and Karma embarrassedly flashed his enchanting smile.
“Here are the glasses, here’s a tray and here’s the teapot. Pour and serve yourself and the others.”
That same day, towards nightfall, he had served everyone with tea from the hot finjan. Hamis, the owner, called him with a crooked finger and Karma approached him reverently.
“I need someone to work here. Are you available?”
Karma nodded in embarrassment.
“So what are you waiting for? Ya'llah, (come on) get to work!”
Later, the owner rebuked him for picking his nose and even rapped the dirty fingers of his new employee and reprimanded him:
“You had better learn how to behave, brat!”
Afterward, he went to the other room, shoved a mop in Karma’s hand and added:
“Here, take the mop and make yourself useful.”
He made a gesture to show him that he should push the wet mop back and forth to wipe down the filthy floor.
“Bend down, don’t be lazy and clean under the tables and chairs,” he ordered.
Karma dipped the mop into the water in the tin bucket he had brought, wet the floor and saw with pleasure how he left clean paths behind him on the stained floor. Hamis stood behind the counter and Karma glanced at him and recognized the look of satisfaction on Hamis’ face as he watched Karma’s first efforts at cleaning in his entire life. To tell the truth, he was delighted with the scent that rose from the floor. He liked to see how the floor was reappeared from under the layer of cigarette butts and yellow spit stains from the tobacco people chewed during the day.
He learned to pour the bitter beer slowly into a glass, tilting it at an angle to the side to prevent the frothy head from overflowing. The following day, one of the patrons stood up and called out to him:
“Hey, come here, my young man!”
When Karma approached him, the man pushed a cigarette between his lips and shouted at him:
“Inhale as deep as you can! Be a man!”
Karma inhaled the cigarette smoke into his lungs and began to cough. He could hardly breathe and his eyes welled up with tears at the sound of the laughter of the men surrounding him. Afterward he passed between the tables, collected crumpled papers, cleared away empty glasses and served plates with snacks. He was diligent and Hamis was delighted with his choice. With his unlimited industriousness, Karma deserved the bread and spicy eggs he received and Hamis knew that Karma honestly earned the meals he fed him.
By the second day of his employment, everything looked different. Apparently, the owner would not dismiss this fine-looking, energetic lad that fate had brought to his door. At the end of the day, a pile of clothes awaited him on his bed in the backroom. The neatly folded items included socks, trousers, a shirt, underpants and a vest.
“Hey, kid, go and take a shower,” Hamis urged him and pushed a towel under his long arm.
It was the first time that Karma saw water coming out of holes in an iron head fixed on the ceiling above him. The water was warm and pleasant and it was also the first time that he used soap. He dressed excitedly and straightened up to his full height that was increasing from day to day.
Karma was slim and since he was also very tall, he looked like a Macaroni Noodle. One day one of the patrons called him:
“Hey, ‘Noodle,' could you come here and remove these plates?”
From that day on the nickname, ‘Noodle’ stuck to him. Karma smiled and mused that it was better than the nickname of his childhood: “Orphan Bastard,” which was said to mock him and was accompanied by painful kicks and shoves.
He took an interest in the patrons’ conversations all the time. Especially interesting to him were the rumors from the battlefields. He noticed that groups of regulars arrived every day and gathered in a corner of the bar. At times, he heard them covertly singing quiet songs of yearning and a word that was repeated, the ‘Pe-Ka-Ka,' (PKK), would be whispered secretly. He heard Abdullah Öcalan’s name murmured behind closed doors, and anyone who dared to speak it, out loud, faced the danger of trial and imprisonment.
“Who is Öcalan?” he inquired of Hamis one day.
Hamis raised his hands to his head in fright and quickly pulled Karma roughly behind the counter that was greasy with food. There he stood and hit the back of Karma’s head as he whispered to him in fright:
“Shut up, in the name of Allah! Hey, you little scoundrel. Do you want to ruin my business, you brainless ‘Noodle’?”
Karma shook his head and kept silent. He stayed away from Hamis for the rest of the day. In the evening, Hamis called Karma and explained, with lovingly whispered reverence, that Abdullah Öcalan was the leader of the Kurds.
“Where is he?” Karma asked in under his breath.
“He’s been locked up in prison for more than ten years now.”
“Why, what did the man do?”
Hamis laughed and embraced the skinny shoulders of Karma, who was already a head taller than him. Karma bent his head down to be able to hear Hamis.
“The man leads the ‘Pe-Ka-Ka’” he whispered, squinting to the sides to check whether anyone could understand him. Tears could be seen in Hamis’ black eyes.
“What’s that?” Karma asked, but was careful not to repeat the words. He sensed Hamis’ agitation and noticed his tears.
“It’s our underground organization, the Kurdish Liberation Movement, to which we all belong,” he stated, drawing a circle in the air with his thick finger,
“I, you and everyone you see around you.” He added and Karma beamed with joy when he heard that he was included in the same breath as everyone else.
Hamis pulled Karma into the kitchen behind them, pulled a cellphone out of his pocket and began showing him the photographs on it.
“Here are my two brothers, who were killed in action against the army and here, come, look here, come!”
He pressed on the back of Karma’s neck and brought him closer to the telephone.
“This is our leader, you see? And, this is his wife; see how beautiful she is.” He said and ran his finger over the pictures. He began kissing the images that appeared on the small screen, kissed them and wept.
“Can I join this organization?” Karma inquired and was amazed at this because the words burst out of his lips without him intending to say them.
“We all belong to it,” Hamis said, “Don’t worry, someone will approach you, I promise,” he assured him. He pulled Karma’s face towards him, kissed him on both cheeks and immediately added a loving slap on his slim shoulder.
Karma began noticing pictures of Öcalan and saw that they covertly decorated living rooms of people’s homes and the screens on computers and cell phones.
One day a group of unfamiliar people arrived. One by one, they entered a room on the side, at the end of the corridor in the tavern, taking care to be quiet. Karma noticed how they glanced around and it was clear to him that this was a clandestine meeting. They welcomed each other with a unique greeting. Shaking hands, they interleaved their fingers and then pressed their forearms together up to the elbow. The youngster watched them and kept what he had seen to himself.
Each of the men had brought a package or a bag and Karma was curious to know what they contained. He couldn’t resist finding out and a few minutes later went out to the corridor and stopped a few yards before the entrance to the room. He heard them speaking and listened. One of them talked about weapons and rifles and another answered that they were being sent from the USA to their activists.
“It was clearly specified that these arms and ammunition were not intended for our organization here.”
“So, where are they to be sent?” He heard someone ask.
“They were sent to our people in Iran, Syria and especially Northern Iraq.”
Someone moved a chair and Karma hurried to return to the bar and saw the people leave the room and disappear outside.
&n
bsp; Hamis stopped beside him, patted him on his shoulder with feigned anger and remarked:
“Why are you idle, eh?”
In response, Karma asked him:
“What’s going on in Iraq?”
“Shhhh…” He hushed him. “Why here? Come to the kitchen where we can talk.”
When they retreated and returned to the kitchen, Hamis hurried to explain to the curious youth:
“Our training camps and military are there but, next time, keep your voice down, Noodle Brain.”
“Really?” Karma expressed his amazement.
He stopped to imagine himself joining the Kurdish rebels and he was convinced that the stories Nana Kahit told him when he was a child were precisely about men like them.
Men also arrived the following day and Karma almost wept with excitement. He wanted so much to be one of them, one of the warriors of the ‘Pe-Ka-Ka’, who fired his wild imagination.
That was what he thought yesterday evening when his world was upturned by the things he heard whispered between two men.
“I heard that the USA has wiped the organization off its terror list.”
“What? Our organization, the ‘Pe-Ka-Ka’?”
“No, idiot! I’m talking about the ‘Mujahedin-e-Khalq’.”
Karma pretended he hadn’t heard anything and continued passing the drinks around the tables as he tried to disappear into the background.
One of the two, who had been whispering, was a short man. He placed a finger on his lips and his eyes darted around suspiciously. Suddenly, his gaze stopped on Karma for a few seconds but immediately moved away. He was convinced he had nothing to fear from him.
He was Dugar.
The day Dogar came to the bar, Karma was sure he was a child because of his diminutive height and slender body. Afterward, when the light illuminated his facial features, he observed that he was an adult, a kind of “little man.” His energetic movements led people to mistakenly believe that he was a dynamic young man, who behaved like a naughty boy.