Dearest committee members, you might very well have children of your own—may God protect them—so let me give you a word of advice: If you want them to have a musical ear, don’t bother with songs. Just make sure they’re exposed to rhythm. Even the great virtuoso Arif Sağ owes his talent in large part to the rhythmic clapping of the water mill in the village where he grew up.
And then there’s my father. He had a real way with words; they flowed from his mouth like verse. It was only when we were older that we realized it wasn’t poetry but profanity. He was—and still is—a man with a great sense of humor and an utterly foul mouth. But you know how it is, swearing just suits some people and doesn’t come across as rude. That’s how my father is: when he swears, it’s like poetry. One day, a friend of his from work stopped by and took offense when my father failed to swear once the whole time.
“What’s the matter, Tahir Abi?” he asked. “Have I done something wrong?”
“What the hell are you talking about, you damn fool!” my father replied.
His friend breathed a sigh of relief.
And so there you have it; such was my early cultural upbringing.
I went to primary school in Diyarbakır. I was a studious boy and did well at school, very well, in fact. But I wasn’t top of the class. That honor went to Bahir. He earned the highest marks and I was second only to him. Always neat and tidy, well behaved, and with impeccable handwriting, he was the model child. I wasn’t so bad myself, but never quite as good as he was. I was popular at school and had lots of friends. Bahir had only one, and that was me. His family had moved to Diyarbakır from another city, or at least that’s how I remember it. Nobody could pick on him because I wouldn’t let them. We had this little gang of troublemakers and I was the leader (the co-leadership system didn’t yet exist back then, of course). It soon became clear to us, though, that our gang wasn’t as tough as we thought. There were others much tougher than we were. But again I digress…
I don’t remember all that much about Bahir. I do have one vivid memory though. After school one day, we were walking home together through the narrow streets, tired and hungry, when Bahir exclaimed, “Mmmm, pastırma! Do you smell it?”
“Smell what?”
“Pastırma, pastırma,” he said.
“What the hell is pastırma?”
“You know, pastırma, that meat thing.”
“What meat thing?” I asked.
“You know, that spicy meat that comes in thin slices,” he answered.
I laughed. “What the hell do you mean, pastırma? There’s no such thing as pastırma, you idiot.” I teased Bahir about it the entire way home. I have to hand it to him, he didn’t get upset or angry in the slightest. I’d never even heard anyone use the word pastırma, let alone seen it. When I got home, I recounted the tale, between fits of laughter, to my mother (you remember, the pianist).
“There is such a thing as pastırma, son,” she said to me. “It’s a spicy meat that comes in thin slices.” I froze midchuckle. Forgive me, Bahir, I never told you about that.
In my second month in prison, I woke one night with a start. It was four in the morning. In my dream, Bahir had been saying to me, “Pastırma, don’t forget the pastırma.” I could hardly believe it; I didn’t know if I was awake or still dreaming. A full thirty-five years later, in this high-security prison cell, my childhood friend had appeared to me in a dream to remind me of something. He looked exactly as I remembered him. As I’m sure you all know, we prisoners draw up a weekly list for the cafeteria. That week, Abdullah Zeydan and I wanted to treat ourselves, so we’d decided to ask for pastırma. I got out of bed and went downstairs to check the list, which was pinned to the bulletin board. What do you know, we’d forgotten to include the pastırma. I thanked Bahir and added it.
That night, for the first and only time since I’d been in prison, I was overcome by a deep sense of sorrow. Bahir and I lost touch after primary school, so I only knew him as a child. Then one day, about ten years ago, if my memory serves me correctly, I was skimming through the newspaper when I saw a headline that read STAFF SUICIDE AT DICLE UNIVERSITY. Under the headline was a small, blurry photo taken from an identity card. Without bothering to read on, I continued flicking through the paper. But something made me turn back. I couldn’t believe my eyes; surely it couldn’t be Bahir. I tried to convince myself that it was just someone with the same name, but there was no doubt about it: It was him in the photo. I promised myself I would find his family so that I could offer my condolences. Though it weighed on my mind for a long time, I never did manage to find them. Instead it was Bahir who found me, years later, visiting me in my prison cell in a dream. Forgive me, Bahir, and may you rest in peace, my dear friend. You were always top of the class, and in my heart you will always be number one; I never had the chance to tell you that.
Dearest committee members, I’m not quite sure how I got onto this, but there you have it. Like I said, my friends kept asking me to write another story from prison. I insisted that I couldn’t, that it just wasn’t fair to you, the committee. I have the utmost respect for you as workers of the world and the last thing I want to do is add to your workload. I just thought you should know. I wish you all a good day and the greatest success in your careers.
Respectfully yours…
THE MERMAID
My name is Mina and I come from Hama, in Syria. We left our home two months ago. My mama held on to me the whole time and didn’t let go. Sometimes we walked, other times we rode on crowded buses and dusty trucks. The roads were full of potholes that bounced us up and down. But my mama never let me go. On the bus, people were always talking. And some of them cried. I cried, too. They killed my papa in Hama. I don’t know why. My mama cried a lot then. And I cried, too.
We were on the road for so long. Two children died and an old man as well. The men dug graves for them by the side of the road. The children’s graves were tiny. Their mothers lay on top of the graves, crying and crying. When it was time to leave, they didn’t want to come with us, but the men dragged them away, told them we had to get going.
We arrived at a place where the bus stopped. Everyone got a little excited. Some of the men told us that when it was dark, we’d go down to the beach and get on a boat. But they told my mama she couldn’t come. She begged them. Then she took out three bracelets from inside her blouse and gave them to the men. Okay, they said, you can come.
There was no sea in our village. I’d never seen the sea before. Neither had my mama. It was dark when we got to the beach and so we didn’t really get to see it this time, either. The men loaded us onto a boat. There were so many of us. My mama held on to me and didn’t let go. The men said to hold on tight to the side of the boat; my mama held on to me even tighter. The boat kept rocking. It was pitch-black so I couldn’t even see the sea. Salty water hit me in the face, made me throw up. The old women said prayers and so did my mama. She told me not to be scared. It won’t be long now, she said, we’ll be there soon. I wasn’t scared. The salt got in our eyes, made them water. But I cried a bit, too. The sea’s rough today, the men said. They were always shouting. Hold on tight, they yelled. And then our boat turned over.
There was no sea in our village, but we had a small stream. The fish in it swam very fast. Actually, it wasn’t that small; it was quite big. There were trees over by the stream. Once, my papa made me a swing in one of them. And our house was right next to the stream, too. Mama once made me a doll from old socks, but I forgot it on the bus. Our house was so pretty.
We all fell into the sea. My mama held on to me tight. We didn’t have a sea in our village, so none of us knew how to swim. Not even Mama. Me and Mama started to sink in the water. Then we bobbed up again. But that big group of men, they kept pushing us down with their feet and so we’d go back under. My mama never let me go; she held on to me very tight. The salt in the water made my throat b
urn. Mama held on to me, and in my head I said to her, Don’t be scared. I wanted to cry, but only a little. Mama wasn’t scared, either; she looked into my eyes the whole time. We never got out of the sea.
My name is Mina and I’m five years old. We left Hama two months ago. We never had the chance to see the sea from the outside. I’ve been at the bottom of the sea for a week. Now I’m a real mermaid and the big white sea is my mother. She’s wrapped herself around me and she won’t ever let me go. That’s what mothers do, because all mothers love their little girls.
KEBAB HALABI
“It seems I was mistaken, life is very long…”
Is there anything strange about any of this? I don’t think so. It’s just another day in the Middle East, a bomb or suicide vest going off somewhere, leaving in its wake dozens of broken bodies and a shattered marketplace in a poor neighborhood.
Number of dead: 68. Read it—sixty-eight.
In the explosion three days ago, it was forty-three. Maybe death really is a commonplace occurrence and we are the ones blowing it out of proportion. People die all the time, and in droves at that. This afternoon’s bombing in Aleppo didn’t seem to have quite the same effect on Australians, who, at that very moment, were meeting up for dinner in Sydney’s restaurants. And in Toronto, Canadians rushing to work won’t even know about it yet. They’ll learn about it soon enough, but most won’t bother to read beyond the headline; it’s just another ordinary explosion, after all. Aleppo is the closest city to Hatay. So close, in fact, that if the people of Hatay were listening carefully, they could have heard the explosion with their own ears.
Hatay is famous for its mezes and for the variety of dishes it has to offer. Drawing from the many cultures that have left their mark on these ancient lands, Hatay cuisine has everything you could wish for and more. Throughout their history, the people of Hatay have taken note of each and every delicacy consumed by the local Arabs, Armenians, Assyrians, Turkmen, Kurds, Turks, Persians, and Greeks, just in case they might need them one day. And, of course, as it turned out, they need them every single day. Anyone who visits Hatay and leaves without savoring these delights is certainly missing out.
Sixty-eight lives lost.
The Arabs of Hatay have a specialty known as the Arab kebab, a true work of art. You really ought to try it at Hamdullah Usta’s place, a shabby workers’ restaurant in the old bazaar. Hamdullah Usta himself is like a character from a novel: the quintessential small-time business owner. As his restaurant grew in popularity, it began to attract tourists, too. This must have made Hamdullah Usta a little uneasy, as one day, in an attempt to spruce things up, he went out and bought half a dozen plastic trees and placed them around the restaurant. It was Sadrettin, the barber from across the street, who had given him the idea.
“Abi, you need to update your look,” he’d said. “The street’s starting to draw tourists already. If everyone would smarten things up a little, I swear they’d be coming here in throngs.”
This made perfect sense to Hamdullah Usta, and that’s how the plastic trees ended up there. The food is the same as ever, but now you can eat it in a faux forest setting. The only problem is, the trees are obviously fake and made of the cheapest plastic. They’re also caked in dust. And so they did create a new ambience, just not the one he intended. But never mind, the food’s as good as ever.
Sixty-eight dead.
There’s only one waiter in the restaurant and he’s Hamdullah Usta’s nephew. He can serve all seven tables at once without breaking a sweat. He’s been working there since he was a child—a full nineteen years now. Bereket is his name. He has two children; his wife died last year in a traffic accident. By traffic accident I don’t mean she flipped her fancy sports car. The poor thing was hit by a public bus on the main street and died on the spot. The kind of cheap death reserved for second-rate citizens. Bereket is a dedicated employee who adores his usta. He works with the utmost enthusiasm and presents every dish with an artistic flourish. He revels in satisfied customers and delights in even the tiniest spark of pleasure in their eyes. Choose anything from the menu, you can’t go wrong—but the meat is truly out of this world.
Sixty-eight bodies ripped to pieces.
It’s surprisingly affordable, too. I went there with a couple of friends and we had a real feast; when the bill came, we thought there must have been a mistake, they’d charged us so little. What I found most astonishing though is how Hamdullah Usta manages to stay so calm all the time. No matter how busy the place gets, he remains unfazed—dishing up plates behind the counter and handing them over to Bereket without the slightest change in his expression. I once went to Hamdullah Usta’s three times in a single week and was met with the same scene each time.
Hamdullah Usta’s family hails from Aleppo. It was his grandfather who moved them to Hatay, where they’ve been now for more than sixty years. Everyone knows them; the restaurant has been in the family for generations. His uncles own fabric shops in Aleppo’s old bazaar, and before the war, they would often visit one another. But when the war broke out, his relatives, like so many others, fled to Hatay. Hamdullah Usta pitched a tent in the garden of his two-story house and they moved in, all forty-seven of them. Given the circumstances, Hamdullah Usta was forced to plead with the downstairs tenant to leave, and when he finally did, it gave them a little more space.
Hamdullah Usta never married. When he was a boy, his father used to take him to Aleppo, and there he met his cousin Rukiye and fell madly in love. But when Rukiye was married off at the age of sixteen, he turned his back on the world, never to love anyone again. And now Rukiye lives with her husband and two children in a room on the ground floor of his house. Hamdullah Usta races out of the house each morning to avoid bumping into her. For what it’s worth, Rukiye has feelings for him as well, but it’s too late to do anything about it now. She’s still so beautiful he can hardly bear to look at her, and when he does, he can’t get enough. And by “look,” I mean nothing more than the briefest of glances when they happen to cross paths every few days or so. Hamdullah Usta is constantly on edge, as though they have hatched a secret plan together and might take off at a moment’s notice, leaving everyone and everything else behind.
Sixty-eight dead!
And because of this, Hamdullah Usta keeps his time at home to a minimum, sneaking into the house at night, after everyone else is asleep, and slipping into bed. He’s terrified that someone might be able to read his thoughts. He’s so worried that the flames of his love for Rukiye, rekindled after all these years, might become apparent to others that he has ceased conversing with Bereket altogether, not that they ever talked much to begin with.
He wants no one to notice his burning desire, its object downstairs in the room below, but he also wishes for those fleeting glances to grow longer. Each night he stretches them out in his mind until they envelop his silent world and send him to sleep. Is it a source of torment or comfort, knowing that she, too, breathes the air of this crowded beehive? But there’s no answer to this question, you see. As the saying goes, the ground can but accept what the sky bestows….So here they are, all these years later, under the same roof. And try as you might, there’s no silencing that bird of hope perched on your roof. It’s easy enough to chase that loudmouth away during the daytime. But once you’ve climbed into bed, all alone, and closed your eyes, there’s no way to shut it out. And sleep is no escape, either. In your dreams the bird becomes bolder, even more brazen. What’s worse, you have to wake up to face another day. “I’ll take my time getting ready this morning,” Hamdullah Usta says to himself. “Perhaps then, just maybe, I’ll catch a glimpse of her….No! Don’t even think about it.”
The marketplace in Aleppo is like a scene from a movie, frozen in time, its stalls selling nothing but despair. Since the war began, there’s no joy to be found there, no colors, no smells. It has the somber air of a hospital ward, a place visited only out of necessity, to buy or
sell scraps of food.
Sixty-eight human bodies ripped to pieces, Rukiye’s among them. Two days earlier, she and her husband had left the children in Hatay to collect a few more belongings from their house in Aleppo. They had gone to the market to buy some things for dinner. Did you know, Hatay is famous for its künefe, too?
“Allahu Akbar!” cried the marketplace killer before he blew himself up. As Rukiye’s body was being torn apart in Aleppo, Hamdullah Usta was performing the namaz on his wooden prayer mat at the back of the restaurant in Hatay. “Allahu Akbar,” he said as he bent down in prayer. At that very moment he felt a pain in his chest. “I must be getting old,” he said, sighing.
It’s the cheese that gives the künefe its flavor. And, of course, in Hatay they have their own special way of making it. When his customers order it, Hamdullah Usta has it brought over from Cemil Usta’s künefe shop next door. Hamdullah Usta makes a mean künefe himself but stopped selling it as soon as Cemil Usta set up shop. There was enough business to go around, so it didn’t seem right to encroach on his neighbor’s territory. Though if it’s the very best künefe in Hatay you’re after, you really ought to pay a visit to the Hatay Künefecisi in the Long Bazaar.
Sifting through all the body parts, Rukiye’s husband was able to pick out a few pieces of his wife by the fabric of her dress that still stuck to them. Hamdullah Usta couldn’t bring himself to go to the funeral or even visit her grave. The evening after she was buried, he locked the door of the restaurant and swallowed every pill he could find in the medicine cabinet, washing it all down with cough syrup. The restaurant was closed for three days in mourning.
Bereket runs the place now. Rukiye’s husband, Cuma, works for him as a waiter. Rukiye’s two children do the cleaning and can always be seen bustling about. If you ever find yourself in the area, do pay a visit to Bereket Usta’s restaurant: the Arab kebab is as delicious as ever.
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