Usually the interrogators went out on operations at night, in search of new prey. The moments when they captured their new victims were the only times when we could sleep or breathe freely. This was not a rule, they had a different formula for each person. There were times, like the first five days after they brought me here, when they tortured prisoners uninterruptedly day and night, without bringing them to the cell.
“I wonder what’s for breakfast today,” I said.
“You mean we get different food?”
“Of course, the bread and cheese are never the same. Sometimes the bread is stale and sometimes it’s very stale. And some days the cheese is moldy and other days it’s rotten. The cook varies our diet all the time.”
Uncle Küheylan smiled. For the past two hours he had been leaning against the wall with his legs bent. The wounds on his face were swollen and he was bruised all over. Only his eyes shone. He leaned forward and smoothed the jacket covering his shoulders. “Isn’t anyone coming?” he asked Demirtay, who was standing at the grille.
Demirtay came back and crouched down. He shook his head despondently. “We’d hear the iron gate if anyone was coming,” he said.
“Didn’t the girl say anything when they were taking her away?”
“Not a word.”
While Uncle Küheylan was asleep they had come for the girl in the opposite cell. He was worried about her and kept questioning Demirtay.
Uncle Küheylan had been tortured for two weeks in a military camp, then he had made the long journey here. The girl, handcuffed like him, had accompanied him on the journey, together with four armed guards. He worked out from whispered conversations overheard from the guards that they had been traveling for some time, that the girl had come from even further than he had. The girl had not said a word throughout the entire journey, not once moving her blood-encrusted lips. She had not eaten the bread they gave her when they stopped to rest, only drinking water. Uncle Küheylan had told her about himself and his village, and said to the girl listening to him wordlessly, “I trust your silence.” The girl had answered with her expression, nodding her approval. These two people who had met for the first time were journeying from one dark hole to another. Because time flows differently on the edge of pain, they had trusted one another.
“Didn’t she tell you her name?” asked Uncle Küheylan.
“She did,” said Demirtay, “or rather she wrote it.”
“What did she write?”
“Zinê Sevda.”
“Zinê Sevda,” repeated Uncle Küheylan. His face lit up. “Do you think she’s mute? Maybe she can speak but prefers not to because she’s a prisoner. She wrote you messages in the air with her fingers. Why didn’t she answer me in the same way during our journey? Was it because the guards were there?”
Uncle Küheylan held his fingers to his lips as though he were smoking a cigarette, and took a deep drag. Then, exhaling like he was blowing out the smoke, he leaned his head against the wall. He stared into space for a long time. He scrutinized the darkness of the ceiling from wall to wall. He held his fingers to his lips again and inhaled. His actions looked like the things people fantasize about doing when they’re alone. He used his hands and lips to pretend he was smoking. As he was taking a drag of his make-believe cigarette he turned his head toward me and our eyes met.
With a completely straight face he mimed the action of taking his cigarette case out of his pocket. He offered it to Demirtay and me. For a moment I was taken aback, but I didn’t reject his offer. I made as if I were taking a cigarette paper from the tobacco case in his empty hand and placed a few strands of tobacco in it. I smoked but I couldn’t roll cigarettes. I watched how Uncle Küheylan did it and copied him. Uncle Küheylan put his hand in his pocket again, mimed taking out a box of matches and lit our nonexistent cigarettes. Kamo the Barber was completely oblivious of our little game. He had been asleep for several hours. He was leaning against the wall with his knees bent, his head on his chest.
“The biggest problem for me is finding somewhere to stub out the butts,” said Uncle Küheylan. “Most of the time I look for a hole in the wall and put my butts there. If I can’t find one I have no choice but to throw them on the floor. Once, I woke up in a pitch black cell. I couldn’t even see where the door was, I had to feel my way to it. I leaned my back against the wall and rolled a cigarette. But no sooner had I struck a match than the cell lit up. I saw human teeth, jawbones, and chopped-off fingers embedded in the plaster. They plastered the prison walls with their dead victims. I touched the walls in surprise, and inspected the entire cell. At that moment I forgot that the match was still burning in my hand. When my finger got hot I yelped in pain and threw the match on the floor. My burnt finger hurt for two days.”
I realized that Uncle Küheylan was not fantasizing, that those events in his head had really taken place. It was obvious from all his gestures that he thought the cigarette between his fingers was real; from the way he brushed away the odd strands of tobacco that fell onto his lap as he was rolling his cigarette, the way he blew on the tips of his fingers when the match had burned out. I too liked playing with the truth, but although I fantasized about strolling in Istanbul with Demirtay I still remained anchored to the cell, I knew it was my boundary. My mind held onto the reins of my fantasies at all times. And it had never occurred to me to play the game by myself. But there was no question of illusion for Uncle Küheylan, it was all real. He could play when he was alone too, endowing the walls and the darkness with a different life. And he was also being serious when he said that this cell was Istanbul. As far as he was concerned there was no such thing as unreal. Feeling no need to go outside, he brought the world inside, transcending place as well as time here. So, this cell was Istanbul and there was cigarette smoke everywhere.
The smell of cigarette smoke grew more intense, filling the whole cell. I fanned the air with my hands to try and clear the air. I wanted to believe what I was doing. It was like not wanting to wake up from a beautiful dream. We were regressing to our childhood.
As I was looking around for somewhere to stub out the cigarette, Demirtay held out his hand. “Here’s an ashtray,” he said. His empty hand remained suspended in the air for a few moments, then he put the invisible ashtray on the floor between my legs. I stubbed out my cigarette first, followed by Demirtay.
“Demirtay,” said Uncle Küheylan, with a look of amazement, “you’ve just taught me an illusion by producing that ashtray. I’ve been squirming for days looking for somewhere to put my butts. You’ve solved the problem for me.”
Uncle Küheylan looked thoughtful. He stroked his beard. He turned to me.
“Doctor,” he said. “In a city how can you tell that a dog is a dog? Here people raze hills and erect giant buildings in their place. Streetlamps do the work of the moon and stars. To what extent is a dog a dog when people can change every aspect of nature?”
“In here existence depends on people. If you know people then you know all living things, including dogs,” I said. I doubted the truth of my words. I too asked myself similar questions and wondered what the most correct answer was.
“How well can you know people, Doctor? Did you really get to know the patients whose bodies you opened up and whose hearts and livers you examined? When I was a child and my father described Istanbul by projecting hand shadows onto the wall in the lamplight, he said people in Istanbul consisted of similar shadows. He’d say people had left one of their forms behind and taken their other to the city. He saw nothing bad about that, he found it exciting. The appeal of shadows was irresistible, it was impossible not to succumb. My father, who on some nights talked about exotic fruits in our humble home, asked us to imagine them. Once he described an orange, he showed us its color on a piece of fabric, and then he described the segments as he mimed peeling its skin. All together we would indulge in large make-believe banquets. City dwellers build illusions, whereas we were built within the illusion. We could smoke when we had no cigarettes and savor the arom
a. Was it because we were poor, or because we had a different perception of existence? My father never told us.”
I had witnessed the poor’s interest in daydreaming during their illnesses. They waited despondently in the corridors of hospitals that smelled of disinfectant. They would fall gravely ill and die very quickly. In their last breaths they only half looked at the world. There was no reproach in their expression, there was curiosity. I could see their desire to live in Uncle Küheylan.
“Humans are the only living things who aren’t content to be themselves, Doctor. A bird is just a bird, it reproduces and flies. A tree just turns green and produces fruit. But humans are different, they’ve learned how to fantasize. They can’t be satisfied with what already exists. They want to fashion earrings out of copper, build palaces from stone, their eyes are constantly turned toward the invisible. The city is the land of dreams, my father used to say, it has endless possibilities, and people there aren’t a part of nature, they’re its sculptor. They build, they assemble, they create. In this way they mold themselves, while making tools they shape themselves, too. People started out as a humble piece of marble, but in the city they converted their existence into a magnificent statue. That’s why they make fun of their original unrefined selves. In the city ridiculing others is sacred, they feel superior to anyone who isn’t like themselves. They strive to turn soil into concrete, water into blood, the moon into a destination, they change everything. And as they change it, time accelerates, and as it accelerates, human desire becomes irrepressible. As far as people are concerned, yesterday is dead and gone, and today is uncertain. Dogs and love and death are uncertain. People regard them all with the same suspicion and enthusiasm. And my father, who was used to all that, was a different person in the city, he always returned to the village as a stranger. He was reluctant to embrace us and waited until he had reverted to his old self.
“My father used to compare this tendency to the depth intoxication suffered by deep sea divers. City intoxication he called it. Those were the only times he drank wine. Apparently the most dedicated wine drinkers and the most incurable dreamers are also sailors. Once my father was locked up in a cell with an old sailor and witnessed his nightmare. The elderly sailor dreamt that his ship was sinking and woke up in a cold sweat. According to him a white whale roamed the dark seas, dragging ships toward storms in its wake. Every sailor’s dream was to see the white whale, pursue it through the waves and harpoon it to death. A captain who navigated distant seas was the only one who succeeded in finding the white whale. The captain harbored a passionate hatred of this sea monster, which had torn off one of his legs many years previously. When their paths crossed again the white whale’s fury clashed with that of the captain. Eventually the whale destroyed the great ship, sending the captain and all his crew to the bottom of the sea. Only one deckhand survived to tell the tale of the long chase in the sea and the last battle amid the waves. Since that day every sailor dreams of sighting the white whale, even more than they dream of sighting a mermaid. As my father projected the shadow of the whale onto the wall of our room with his fingers, making it swim up and down for us, he would say that the Istanbul sailors had gone to ruin on the same road. The ones who roamed from north to south and east to west returned months later to the misty port, dejected, empty-handed, and utterly defeated. Many was the sailor who lost his mind to fantasies of the white whale, who plunged daggers into his own flesh, whose sleep was haunted by nightmares. The elderly sailor in my father’s cell was one. It was true, Doctor, like all my father’s stories, it held hidden secrets, and very few people had ever heard it.”
Uncle Küheylan took a deep breath. He sat up straight, as though about to make an important statement. He turned to face me and said, “I already knew the story about the old woman that you just told us. I heard it from my father. He laughed as he told us about the old woman who mistook her sheep for a dog, and about the youths who snatched it and feasted on it.”
“Is your father still alive?” I asked.
“Do I look that young? My father died a long time ago,” he said.
He raised his hand and felt the wall with his fingers as though to confirm the cell existed. He was probably thinking that his father had also been in this cell many years ago. He searched the walls for evidence of his presence. Although there was no evidence of his father there was plenty of evidence of our other predecessors. I also touched the wall, exploring it very slowly with my fingers.
“Uncle Küheylan,” I said, “If you know the story about the old woman I know your story about the white whale too. I could have told you many a tale, from when the captain sailed the seas for forty years attempting to harpoon the whale, to the life of the sole surviving deckhand.”
“You already knew the sailors’ adventure?”
Seeing Uncle Küheylan’s surprise, Demirtay joined in.
“I knew it too,” he said.
A faint sound came from the corridor. Demirtay motioned to us to be quiet, crouching down, he looked out from the crack under the door. The guards sitting in the room at the top of the corridor occasionally did the rounds of the cells, trying to catch prisoners talking. Each guard had his own rules, some eavesdropped silently and gathered secrets, while others burst in and disciplined whoever was talking. Demirtay sat up. “It’s all right, he’s gone,” he said.
“So you knew about the whale,” said Uncle Küheylan.
“In this cell we tell each other stories that we already know, Uncle Küheylan. At first it was just Demirtay and me, there were times when we told the same story twice. We’ll tell it a third time for you.”
The student Demirtay, who was sitting by the door, motioned to us to be quiet again. We heard the faint sound of footsteps. The guard’s shadow was cast onto the bars of the grille, then slowly drifted by. The footsteps did not go much further before they stopped. The guard was listening at each cell in turn. We looked at each other. Demirtay and I had grown used to these inspections and would sometimes sit for long spells in silence. When the guards’ rounds went on for a long time we tried to sleep instead of waiting, then we would hear a cell door opening. We would hear the sound of beating. Some prisoners would beg, others would protest. Once the guards had gone back to their room, Demirtay and I would dream we had left this place and go far away. We would board a cargo ship with a Panama flag that was passing through the Istanbul Bosphorus and heading toward the Black Sea. A cool breeze would blow on the deck, as we cruised in the company of the choppy waves and the seagulls. When night fell we would go down into our cabin. We would watch television with a deckhand whose hands were blackened with oil. We would tell each other about whichever film was on. If the film lasted two hours we would make the story last two hours. The cabin was as tiny as this cell; when we felt tired we would curl up and go to sleep. It was cold there too.
If Kamo the Barber had woken up while we were listening to the guards’ footsteps and seen us sitting in silence, lost in faraway thoughts, like old men in coffeehouses, what would he have done? Instead of wondering whether anything had happened while he had been asleep, would he be thinking of how unbearable everyone except himself was, and wondering why he was forced to put up with us? He would not speak nor feel the need to ask questions. Wearily he would let his head fall onto his chest once again and nod off to sleep. Before going to sleep he would avail himself of some excuse to reproach Demirtay. He was permanently down a well, while we were outside it. He knew himself, that’s what he said, whereas we had grown too arrogant and now had to face up to ourselves here. We had dabbled too much in the light. That’s why we went through life in such a state of confusion and foolishness. We were hopeless cases. Kamo had no other option but to curse and let us be.
The day Kamo arrived I was alone in the cell. He was as on edge as a cat enclosed in a hut with a dog. I asked if he was wounded, he did not reply. I introduced myself, but he fired questions at me as though he hadn’t understood. “Who are you? How long have you been in t
his cell? Why have they put me in with you?” He was filthy, he stank, he was hungry. He hesitated in accepting the bread I offered him, he stared at me as he reached out his hand to take it. We had met in the wrong place. I had arrived first, he was new. He was ready to sit and wait in silence for hours, but also to fly at my throat and choke me. Was this the hold of a ship that had lost its route, or the bottom of a precipice that he had no idea how to get out of? There were just three walls, one door and a blood-soaked man. He thought if he closed his eyes he would wake up in a different place, that the place would be transformed in an instant. He stared with curiosity, trying to comprehend his own existence all over again. When we heard a scream from outside he raised his head. Whose voice was that echo? Was it his own? How far away was the wall where the voices came from? There was a very fine line between believing in himself and losing himself; was Kamo afraid of his head spinning on that line?
Knowing in your mind that you couldn’t share pain was one thing, but discovering it with your body was something else entirely. Whenever we came around after suffering unendurable pain, we thought months or years had passed. “Was it a brief, fleeting moment?” We puzzled over that, and were terrified that the moment might turn out to be the longest ever. When it came to pain, time got deeper instead of longer. It was as though Kamo the Barber already knew that from experience. When he entered the cell his face was in a mess, his mind in a daze. He had crashed into life’s wall too many times and fallen down again and again. If suspicion was a defense mechanism, I could understand his icy attitude. I gave him bread and water and talked to him. I was no stranger; like him, I stood at death’s threshold. Kamo the Barber examined the bloodstains on the walls, inhaled the smell of death hanging on the air and said, “A person has no island but himself.” Was it indifference talking? Despair? In those cases I could always find the right words to soothe any problem. “Hope is better than what we have,” I said, pointing to the light shining in through the grille, “hope is better than what we have.” He stared at me blankly. I too had gazed at the walls in just the same way the day they had put me in the cell. Our borders here were walls and people.
Istanbul, Istanbul Page 4