Istanbul, Istanbul

by Burhan Sonmez

  “Do you know what, Doctor, God can’t change the past either. God, the all powerful, rules over the present and the future, but can’t touch the past. Where does that leave us, when even He is powerless to change the past?”

  For the first time the Doctor eyed Kamo with pity, then he smiled. “Every barber I know likes talking. They talk about football or women. Why do you talk about these things? If I were your customer I wouldn’t go back to your shop. Maybe barbers shouldn’t go to university, otherwise where would we men go to chat about football and women?”

  “I’d still ask the same questions even if I didn’t have an education.”

  “Think of it this way, Kamo. Your childhood with your mother was unhappy, but meeting your wife set you free of your past. The same thing will happen again, once you find new happiness in the future you’ll forget the old days.”

  “New happiness?”

  The Doctor took a deep breath. He rubbed his cold hands together. He looked up at the ceiling, as though trying to decide on the best way of dealing with a difficult patient in his consulting room. Just then we heard the heavy sound of the iron gate.

  We looked at each other. We could hear the interrogators’ lighthearted banter as they entered. We listened hard to hear what they were saying in the corridor.

  “Did he spill?”

  “Give it a day or two and he will.”

  “What was it today?”

  “Electric shocks, hanging, high pressure water.”

  “Did you get his name and address?”

  “We know that already.”

  “Is he a big shot or some little shit?”

  “This old codger, he’s a big fish.”

  “Which cell?”

  “Number 40.”

  That was our cell.

  We piled our cold feet on top of each other, trying to get one last bit of warmth. At any moment we could leave and never return. Or we could leave sane and return mad, go from being human to animal without a soul.

  “They’re coming for me,” said Kamo, turning to face the grille. “Perfect timing.”

  The footsteps grew closer. The cell door opened. Two guards supported a heavily built elderly man by the underarms, they struggled to carry him. The man’s head had fallen onto his chest, his face and body a bloody mess. “Here’s a new friend for you.” The Doctor and I stood up, brought the man inside and lay him tenderly on the floor. The guards closed the door and left.

  “He’s practically frozen,” said the Doctor. He examined him to see if he was still bleeding or had any fractures. Lifting his eyelids, he checked his eyes in the dim light. He took one of the man’s feet and started rubbing it. I took his other foot between my two hands, it was like ice.

  Kamo the Barber said, “I’ll lie on the floor, you can put him on top of me, we have to protect him from the concrete.”

  The Doctor and I held the man and lay him on Kamo’s back. We lay down on either side of him and held him. In the past people used to snuggle up to their cows and dogs to keep warm. The cell took us back to the beginning of time. We were embracing a complete stranger in an attempt to give him life.

  “Are you all right, Kamo?”

  “I’m fine, Doctor. It’s as though this man has been buried naked in snow.”

  “Snow?”

  “Yes, the day I was arrested it snowed nonstop,” said Kamo the Barber.

  “Apparently winter has come early this year. The day I was arrested the weather was beautiful.”

  I listened while the Doctor and Kamo the Barber chatted. They didn’t stop long enough for me to join in. For the past three days Kamo had either been ignoring or berating me. He occasionally referred to me as “student,” but more often it was “kid.” I was eighteen years old and would have liked him to treat me with at least some of the respect he showed the Doctor. When I was arrested I had a good idea of the trials that lay ahead of me, but I never imagined that a problematic cellmate would be one of them. Pain had no boundaries, you either resisted it or it defeated you, but I had no idea how to react to Kamo. When I was arrested one of the civil policemen kept calling me “kid,” as he crushed my fingers in the car. “It will be a shame to waste your life, kid, you’d better talk now,” he had declared. When I said “I’m not a kid,” he put his two hands around my neck and tried to choke me. The other policemen must have stopped him, either that or they were playing their usual tricks. They knew my real name and asked who I was going to meet. I was more surprised by their knowing the time and the place of the meeting than by their knowing me. “I’m not a kid, I’m a university student. I was on way to class, I don’t know what meeting you’re talking about.” “Why were you running away then?” As soon as I realized they were following me I took the first turn and started running. “I was late, I was just trying to get to class on time.”

  Half an hour later they took me to the meeting place, the bus stop in front of the University of Istanbul library. They ordered me to wait at the bus stop and said they would shoot me if I tried to escape. The civil policemen got out of the cars and dispersed. From their vantage points they set about observing everyone waiting at the bus stop with me. I looked at my watch, it was three minutes to two. Our rules for meetings were very strict. We had to arrive at the earliest three minutes before the designated meeting time, if the meeting didn’t take place we couldn’t wait any longer than three minutes. As I looked at the people getting off the bus in front of me I feared seeing the person I was waiting for. I was surprised to see so many people at this bus stop where I came so often. Everywhere there were students, tourists, men in suits. Time was ticking on, it was two minutes to two. I checked out the people on the other side of the road looking over to my side. In the crowd everyone looked alike. The person I was meeting may well have been one of the people weaving their way hastily through the cars and crossing over to this side of the road. Perhaps they would realize this was a trap, perhaps sense something odd about the civil police surveying me. They would perceive I had been caught from the distressed look on my face and immediately dissolve into the crowd. I consulted my watch, it was one minute to two. On an impulse I leapt out in front of the approaching bus. The impact sent me flying. I heard screams. Several people put my arms over their shoulders and carried me to a car. They started punching me in the back seat. “Who was it? Tell me which one it was, bastard.” They put the barrel of the gun in my mouth. I couldn’t open my eyes, my head was spinning. “You’ve got five seconds before I pull the trigger.” Five seconds later they took the gun out of my mouth and squeezed my testicles. I wanted to scream but they covered my mouth. Tears ran down my face.

  No matter how much you think you have braced yourself, the reality of pain numbs your mind. Pain brings time to a standstill and you lose all sense of future. Reality disappears and the whole universe is restricted to your body. You feel as though you will remain frozen in this moment forever, that there will never again be another moment. It was like Kamo the Barber’s imprisonment in the past. I understood him. But why now, why out of billions of years of time, do we have to be at the precise moment in which I am suffering pain, I thought, asking myself meaningless questions. It was like the child who is wary of everything after it has burnt its hand on a hot glass. I knew no other definition except pain, and could think of nothing except time. If I thought he would answer my questions I would ask the Doctor. The Doctor believed not thinking about pain would make us more resistant than thinking about it. When endless time came and convened on my body I couldn’t stop myself from thinking: out of all the billions of years during which time had flowed, why were we now at the precise moment in which I was being oppressed by pain?

  The Doctor raised his head and asked me too, “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “We should get up, before Kamo freezes.”

  We removed our jackets and spread them out on the floor. Kamo the Barber didn’t have a jacket. We lay the elderly man on top of the jackets.
The Doctor took the man’s pulse and touched his neck. He wet his fingers and pressed them to the man’s parched lips. The man coughed, his chest heaved violently.

  The three of us sat in a row with our backs against the wall. We looked at the elderly man’s face and long hair. His feet practically touched the door. His bulk took up the entire cell as he lay there like a corpse in a grave. We had already been buried in that same grave. Cities were built on the ruins of old cities, while the dead were buried in the soil of the old dead. Istanbul breathed in unison with the underground cells where we lived, while our skin bore the odor of the dead. The wreckage of old cities and the people of old was stamped on our minds. Our burden was heavy. Which is why pain attacked our flesh so viciously.

  “Will he live?” asked Kamo the Barber. “If he doesn’t we’ll have more room, like we did before. There was barely space for three, now there are four of us. How are we supposed to lie down now?”

  The Doctor did not reply to Kamo. He placed his hand on the elderly man’s heart, as though touching a sacred book. He closed his eyes and waited. There was a serenity about him that would resurrect the dead and heal pain. “He’ll come around, he’ll come around,” he murmured. When they brought me in unconscious did he look at me in the same way, did he calmly wait for me to come around too? Did he listen to my breathing more than he listened to his own?

  I stood up and put my face to the grille. The girl in the opposite cell was at the grille too. I nodded to her. I searched for a change in her expression, some response. We couldn’t speak, the slightest whisper would echo through the corridor and reach the guards. I pointed at her and tried to mime, “Are you okay?” She scrutinized me, then nodded. She looked rested, as though she had slept. The blood on her lower lip had gone but her eye was still closed. She raised her left hand to the level of the grille and started tracing letters in the air with her index finger. I didn’t understand what she was asking about, when she realized she wrote again. “How is the new arrival, Uncle Küheylan?” she asked. She knew the man’s name, she knew who he was. Likewise I traced letters in the air. “He’ll live,” I said, then introduced myself. “My name is Demirtay.”

  As the girl was tracing her name with her slender finger, the sound of the elderly man’s groans made me turn back. The man opened his eyes. He tried to work out where he was. He looked at the Doctor and Kamo hovering above him. He observed the walls and the ceiling. He brushed his hands over the concrete he was lying on.

  “Istanbul?” he rasped. “Is this Istanbul?”

  He closed his eyes, and fell asleep with a strange expression that suggested happiness rather than someone about to lose consciousness.

  2ND DAY

  Told by the Doctor

  THE WHITE DOG

  “Uncle Küheylan, did you think this cell was Istanbul? Right now we’re underground, everywhere above us there are streets and buildings. The city stretches from one end of the horizon to the other, even the sky finds it hard to cover its totality. Underground, there’s no difference between east and west, but if you observe the wind above ground it meets the waters of the Bosphorus and you can gaze at the sapphire-colored waves from a hill. If your first view of Istanbul, which your father told you so much about, had been from a ship’s deck instead of inside this cell, you would understand, Uncle Küheylan, that this city does not consist of three walls and an iron door. When people arrive by ship from distance places, the first thing they see are the Princes’ Islands on the right, draped in a cloud of mist. You think those silhouettes are flocks of birds that have landed there to rest. The city walls on the left, which snake along the entire length of the coastline, eventually meet with a lighthouse. As the mist lifts, the colors multiply. You contemplate the domes and the elegant minarets as though you were admiring the wall rugs in your village. When you are engrossed in the picture on a wall rug you imagine a life that you know nothing about is weaving its course without you in another world; well, now a ship is transporting you to the heart of that life. A person consists of the breath he takes during a sigh. Life is not enough, you tell yourself. You think the expanding city, with its city walls on the horizon, its towers and its domes, is a new sky.

  “On the deck, the wind snatches up a woman’s red shawl and carries it to the shore ahead of the ship. You dissolve into the crowd and wander through the cobbled streets, just like that shawl. When you arrive at Galata Square in the midst of the cries of street vendors you take a packet of tobacco out of your pocket and roll a cigarette. You watch an old woman advancing slowly along the road, holding a sheep by a lead. A young boy calls out to her, old woman, where are you going with that lead around that dog’s neck? The old woman turns and looks first at the sheep, then at the young boy. You blind boy, you think this sheep is a dog, she says. You walk behind the old woman. A youth walking in the opposite direction says the same thing: Old Woman, are you taking your dog for a walk? The old woman turns and looks at her sheep again, grumbling, it’s not a dog, it’s a sheep, have you been drinking this early in the day? A little further ahead someone else calls out, why have you got a lead around that mangy dog’s neck? Then the street becomes deserted and the voices fall silent. When the hunchbacked old woman notices you she asks you, have I lost my mind, Old Man? Have I mistaken a dog for a sheep? Once my mind cleared, the whole world cleared too, all that’s left are you, me, and this poor animal. As the old woman talks you look at the animal on the end of the lead. Do you see a sheep or a dog? You’re afraid that your day in Istanbul that began with doubt will pledge you a lifetime of doubt.

  “The old woman slowly walks away, tugging at her lead. You look not at her but at the things around you, at the things created by mankind. Men have built towers, statues, squares, walls that could never have sprouted out of the earth of their own accord. The sea and the earth existed before men, whereas the world of the city was created by men. You understand that the city was born of men, and that it is reliant on them, like water-dependent flowers. As with the beauty of nature, the beauty of cities lies in their existence. Irregular stones become a temple door, broken marble a dignified statue. You think this is why in the city you mustn’t be surprised by sheep being dogs.

  “You stroll until the sun plunges behind the rooftops. You drink cool water from an ancient street fountain. When you hear a dog barking you raise your head and look in the direction of the sound. You see the red shawl, it’s fluttering on a breeze blowing from Galata toward the sea. Life is such a strange adventure. The shawl that came from the sea returns to the sea; you wonder where a person in the city will return. You walk at a leaden pace toward the street where you heard the dog barking, as though the sign you were searching for is there. You are guided first by a scent, and then by rising smoke, to a dilapidated courtyard further ahead. You approach and peer over the wall. The three youths are sitting on the ground roasting meat over an open fire, laughing and joking as they drink wine. One of them is gently humming a tune. When you see the sheepskin and lead beside them you realize it’s the old woman’s sheep. These are the same youths who have been following the old woman around all day and teasing her. The old woman eventually fell for their trick and released the sheep, finally convinced it was a dog. The three lads grabbed the sheep, hotfooted it to this courtyard and prepared their banquet.”

  Uncle Küheylan, who had not taken his eyes off me while I told my story, laughed. I imitated the student Demirtay and repeated the final sentence: “The three lads who grabbed the sheep lost no time in preparing their banquet.” Uncle Küheylan laughed harder.

  “You speak well, Doctor,” he said, “but a voice inside me still tells me this cell is Istanbul. My father used to talk about Istanbul so much that sometimes I couldn’t tell what was the truth and what was make-believe. When I was a child I never knew whether the stories about the underground city with its city walls that stretched from one end to another, or the missing people who lived in the cemetery and only came out at night were real things he had seen, o
r part of the Thousand and One Nights. As you say, Doctor, living is such a strange adventure. Two weeks ago they blindfolded me in the military police station of a distant village, then I went through a dark corridor and I opened my eyes in my father’s Istanbul.”

  As Uncle Küheylan spoke, he moved his hands, he groped the air and placed two fingers in front of his mouth as though he were holding a cigarette.

  “In the evenings my father used to make shadows on the wall in the lamplight with his hands, he would build cities with his skilled fingers. And use them to describe Istanbul. He would make long shadows for ferries and longer ones for trains, then he would project a shadow of a young man waiting beside a tree. When he asked what the young man was waiting for we would all chorus, for his sweetheart. But he insisted on making things otherwise, locking the young man up in dungeons, throwing him into dens of thieves; it was only when we despaired that he would reunite him with his sweetheart. Istanbul is vast, he would say, there is a different life behind every wall, a different wall behind every life. Like a well, Istanbul is both deep and narrow. Some are intoxicated by its depth, others are oppressed by its narrowness. Then my father would say, I’ll tell you a true Istanbul story that I witnessed with my own eyes. As he told the tale he would cast picture shadows on the walls with his fingers, taking us out of our tiny house and transporting us to that unknown city that was born in the lamplight and enveloped our nights with its vastness. I grew up on my father’s stories, Doctor. I know this door, these walls and this dark ceiling well, this is the place he described.”

  “It’s still only your first day, Uncle Küheylan. Don’t be so quick to decide, give it a few days first.”

  “Doctor, while you were telling your story I felt as though I’d been here for a long time. Is it day or night now?”

  “I don’t know. We know it’s morning when the food arrives.”