The Penguin Book of Migration Literature
Page 16
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On the train from Istanbul to Germany I had walked backwards and forwards along the train corridor for a couple of nights and looked at all the women who were going there as workers. They had rolled down their stockings below the knee, the thick rubber straps left marks on their skin. It was easier for me to tell from their naked knees that we were still far from Germany than from the signs of the stations we passed and whose names we could not read. ‘What a never-ending journey,’ said one woman. All were silently in agreement, no one had thought of saying a word, the smokers just took out their cigarettes, looked at each other and smoked. Those who didn’t smoke looked out of the window. One said: ‘It’s got dark again.’ Another said: ‘Yesterday it got dark like that too.’ Each cigarette pushed the train on more quickly. No one looked at their watch, they looked at the cigarettes, which they constantly lit up. For three days, three nights, we hadn’t taken our clothes off. Only a pair of shoes lay on the floor and vibrated along with the train. When one of the women wanted to go to the toilet, she quickly slipped on any pair of shoes, so the women went to the blocked toilets hopping comically in someone else’s shoes. I realised that I was looking for women who looked like my mother. One had legs like my mother. I put on my sunglasses and quietly began to cry. On the floor of the train I didn’t see any shoes that were my mother’s. How nicely her and my shoes had stood side by side in Istanbul. How easily we slipped on our shoes together and went to the cinema to Liz Taylor or to the Opera.
Mama, Mama.
I thought, I shall arrive, get a bed, and then I shall always think about my mother, that will be my work. I began to cry even more and was cross, as if I hadn’t left my mother, but my mother had left me. I hid my face behind the Shakespeare book.
When the night had come to an end, the train arrived in Munich. The women who had taken off their shoes days ago had swollen feet and sent those who had kept on their shoes to buy cigarettes and chocolate. Çikolata—çikolata.
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I lived with lots of women in a women workers’ hostel. We said hossel. We all worked in the radio factory, each one of us had to have a magnifying glass in our right eye while we were working. Even when we came back to the hossel in the evening, we looked at one another or the potatoes we were peeling with our right eye. A button came off, the women sewed the button on again with a wide-open right eye. The left eye always narrowed and remained half shut. We also slept with the left eye a little screwed up, and at five o’clock in the morning, when we were looking for our trousers or skirts in the semi-darkness, I saw that, like me, the other women were looking only with their right eye. Since starting work in the radio valve factory we believed our right eye more than our left eye. With the right eye behind the magnifying glass one could bend the thin wires of the little radio valves with tweezers. The wires were like the legs of a spider, very fine, almost invisible without the magnifying glass. The factory boss’s name was Herr Schering. Sherin, said the women, they also said Sher. Then they stuck Herr to Sher, so that some women called him Herschering or Herscher.
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We had been in Berlin for a week. The Herscher decided that on the tenth of November, the anniversary of Atatürk’s death, we should stand up for Atatürk for a couple of minutes at five past nine precisely, just as in Turkey. At five past nine on 10 November we stood up at our machines on the factory floor, and once again our right eyes were bigger than the left. The women who wanted to weep, wept with their right eye, so that their tears ran down over their right breast on to their right shoe. So with our tears for Atatürk’s death we made the Berlin factory floor wet. The neon lights on the ceilings and on the machines were strong and quickly dried the tears. Some women had forgotten the magnifying glass in their right eye when they stood up for Atatürk, their tears collected in the magnifying glass and fogged the lens.
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We never saw the Herscher. The Turkish interpreter carried his German words to us as Turkish words: ‘Herscher has said that you . . .’ Because I never saw this Herscher, I looked for him in the face of the Turkish interpreter. She came, her shadow fell over the little radio valves in front of us.
While we were working we lived in a single picture: our fingers, the neon light, the tweezers, the little radio valves and their spider legs. The picture had its own voices, we detached ourselves from the voices of the world and from our own bodies. The spine disappeared, the breasts disappeared, the hair on one’s head disappeared. Sometimes I had to sniff up mucus, I put off sniffing up the mucus for longer and longer, as if doing it could break up the enlarged picture in which we lived. When the Turkish interpreter came and her shadow fell on this picture, the picture tore like a film, the sound disappeared and there was a hole. Then, when I looked at the interpreter’s face, I again heard the voices of the aeroplanes, which were somewhere in the sky, or a metal thing fell on the factory floor and made an echo. I saw that at the very moment that the women interrupted their work, dandruff fell on to their shoulders. Like a postman who brings a registered letter and waits for a signature, so the interpreter, after she had translated Herschering’s German sentences into Turkish for us, waited for the word okay.
If a woman, instead of the English okay, used the Turkish word tamam, the interpreter again asked: Okay?, until the woman said, ‘Okay’. When a woman’s okay was slow in coming, because she was just bending the little legs of a radio valve with her tweezers and didn’t want to make a mistake or was inspecting the valve through her magnifying glass, then in her impatience the interpreter puffed her fringe up from her forehead until the English okay came.
When we went with her to the factory doctor, we said to her: ‘Say to the doctor that I’m really ill, okay?’
The word okay also came into the hossel . . .
‘You’re cleaning the room tomorrow, okay?’
‘Tamam.’
‘Say okay.’
‘Okay.’
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In my first days in Berlin the city was like an endless building to me. Even between Munich and Berlin the country was like a single building. Out of the train door in Munich with the other women, through the door of the Travellers’ Aid. Rolls—coffee—milk—nuns—neon lights, then out of the door of the Travellers’ Aid, then through the door of the aeroplane, out of the plane door in Berlin, through the door of the bus, out of the door of the bus, through the door of the Turkish women’s hossel, out of the hossel door, through the Hertie department store door at the Hallesches Tor (Halle Gate). From the hossel door we went to the Hertie door, we had to walk under an underground railway bridge. Groceries were on the top floor of Hertie. We were three girls, wanted to buy sugar, salt, eggs, toilet paper and toothpaste at Hertie. We didn’t know the words. Sugar, salt. In order to describe sugar, we mimed coffee-drinking to a sales assistant, then we said shak shak. In order to describe salt, we spat on Hertie’s floor and said: ‘Eeeh.’ In order to describe eggs, we turned our backs to the assistant, wiggled our backsides and said: ‘Clack, clack, clack.’ We got sugar, salt and eggs, but it didn’t work with toothpaste. We got bathroom cleaning liquid. So my first German words were shak shak, eeeh, clack clack clack.
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We got up at five in the morning. In each room there were six beds, in pairs one above the other.
Two sisters who weren’t married slept in the first two beds of my room. They wanted to save money and fetch their brothers to Germany. They talked about their brothers as if they were part of a life they had already lived when they were in the world another time, so that I sometimes thought their brothers were dead. When one of the two wept or didn’t finish her food or had caught a cold, the other said to her: ‘Your brothers mustn’t hear about that. If your brothers hear that!’ After work they wore pale blue dressing gown
s in the hossel, made of an electrically charged material. When they had their periods their hair was charged too, and their dressing gowns of electrically charged material gave off noises in the room. When one of the sisters came down from her bed and in the dark, damp early morning put on her shoes, she sometimes put on her sister’s shoes, and her feet didn’t notice, because the shoes were so alike.
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In the evening after work the women went to their rooms and ate at their tables. But the evening didn’t begin, the evening was gone. One ate because one wanted to quickly fetch the night into the room. We leapt over the evening into the night.
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The two sisters sat at the table, leant a mirror against a saucepan and put their hair in curlers. Both had rolled their stockings below their knees. Their naked knees showed me that the light would soon be put out in the room. The two talked as if they were alone in the room:
‘Hurry up, we have to go to sleep.’
‘Who’s turning the light off today, you or me?’
One stood at the door, her hand on the light switch, and waited until the other had lain down in bed. She laid her head with the curlers on the pillow, as if she were carefully backing a car into a parking space. When she had properly laid her head down, she said: ‘Turn it off!’ Then her sister turned off the light.
We, the other four girls, were still sitting at the table, some were writing letters. The darkness cut us apart. We undressed in the dark. Sometimes a pencil fell down. When everyone was in bed and everything was quiet, we could hear the electrically charged material of the two pale blue dressing gowns, which hung on hooks.
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Ever since I had been a child in Istanbul, I had been in the habit of praying to the dead every night. I first of all recited the prayers, then recited the names of dead people whom I had not known, but whom I had heard of. When my mother and grandmother told stories, they talked a great deal about people who had died. I had learned their names by heart, listed them every night in bed and gave prayers for their souls. That took an hour. My mother said: ‘If one forgets the souls of the dead, their souls will be in pain.’ In the first nights in Berlin I prayed for the dead, too, but I quickly grew tired, because we had to get up so early. I fell asleep before I had said all the names of my dead. So I slowly lost my dead in Berlin. I thought, when I go back to Istanbul, I’ll start to count my dead again there. I had forgotten the dead, but I had not forgotten my mother. I lay down in bed to think about my mother. But I didn’t know how one thinks about mothers. To fall in love with a film actor and to think about him at night—for example, how I would kiss him—that was easier.
But how does one think about a mother?
Some nights, like a film running backwards, I went from the hossel door to the train on which I had got here. I also had the train run backwards. The trees ran backwards past the window, but the journey was too long, I got only as far as Austria. The mountains had their tops in the mist, and it was hard to make a train run backwards in the mist. That’s where I fell asleep. I also noticed that I thought about my mother when I didn’t eat anything and remained hungry, or when I pulled out the skin on my fingers a bit and it hurt. Then I thought, this pain is my mother. So I went to bed hungry more often or with sore fingers.
Rezzan, who slept above me, didn’t eat properly either. I thought, she’s thinking about her mother, too. Rezzan stayed awake for a long time and turned in bed in the dark from left to right, then she took her pillow from one end of the bed and put it at the other end. After a while she again started to turn from left to right, from right to left. Below I thought with half my head about my mother, and with the other half I began to think about Rezzan’s mother as well.
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Two cousins from Istanbul slept in the other pair of bunk beds. They were working in the factory in order to go to university afterwards. One had two little braids and deep scars on her face, because as a teenager she hadn’t left her pimples in peace, and she had bad breath. The other cousin was beautiful and sent the one who had bad breath to the post office or to Hertie. Once she came back from the post office, and the beautiful cousin forced her to lie down on the table, she rolled up her sleeves, then she pulled the belt out of her jeans and struck her cousin across the back with the belt. The two sisters in their pale blue dressing gowns, Rezzan and I said:
‘What are you doing?’
She shouted: ‘The whore went to the post office and came back late.’
We said: ‘She hasn’t got wings, is she supposed to fly? She didn’t come back too late.’
‘No, don’t interfere.
‘Don’t interfere.
‘Don’t interfere.
‘Don’t interfere.’
And with every sentence she struck her cousin across the back, but looked us in the eyes as she did so. Her pupils spun like a light that had gone crazy, like all the other women her right eye was bigger than her left.
That night, as everyone lay in bed, the two sisters with their curlers one above the other in two beds, the two cousins one above the other in two beds, Rezzan and I one above the other in two beds, the cousin who had bad breath and had been beaten suddenly climbed up on to the bed of her cousin who was beautiful and had beaten. In the darkness they pulled the blanket out of the quilt cover, dropped it on the floor and crawled into the cover as into a sleeping bag, buttoned it up and then—buttoned up in this bag—they kissed each other slurp slurp and made love. And we, the other four, listened without moving.
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Opposite the women’s hossel was the Hebbel Theatre. The theatre was lit up and a neon sign was constantly going on and off. This light also fell into our room. When the sign went out, then from that day I heard kiss voices slurp slurp in the dark, when the sign was on I saw the curlers on the two sisters’ heads gleaming on their pillows in the semi-darkness and the two pairs of shoes on the linoleum floor.
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Rezzan, who slept above me, never took off her shoes at night. She always lay in bed in her clothes and shoes. When she slept she held her toothbrush in her hand, and the toothpaste was under her pillow. Like me Rezzan wanted to become an actress. Some nights, as the light of the Hebbel Theatre went on and off, we talked quietly from bed to bed about theatre. Rezzan asked: ‘Which part do you want to play, Ophelia?’—‘No, I’m too thin, too big for Ophelia. But maybe Hamlet.’—‘Why?’—‘I don’t know. And you?’—‘The woman in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams.’—‘I don’t know Tennessee.’—‘He was homosexual and left school for the theatre, like us.’—‘Did you know that Harold Pinter left school, too?’—‘Do you know The Servant by Harold Pinter?’—‘No.’—‘An aristocrat is looking for a servant. In the end the servant becomes the master and the master the servant. Goodnight.’ Rezzan said nothing, the rollers of the two sisters gleamed in their beds as the light of the Hebbel Theatre went on and off.
When we got up at five in the morning, Rezzan was already finished. She brushed her teeth and made coffee, a full cup of coffee in one hand, her toothbrush in the other. Brushing her teeth shuff shuff she walked up and down the long corridors of the women’s hossel. All the other women were still running around in their dressing gowns, with towels around their bodies or in their underpants. But Rezzan already had her jacket and skirt on. All the women looked at Rezzan as if she were their clock and then did things faster. Sometimes they even went to the bus stop too early, because Rezzan was already standing there. In the darkness Rezzan looked in the direction of the bus, and the women looked at Rezzan’s face.
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In the morning the Hebbel Theatre had no lights on. Only our women’s shadows waiting for the bus lay on the snow. When the bus came and took us, only the marks of
our shoes and splotches of coffee were left in the snow in front of our women’s hossel, because some women came to the bus stop with their full cups of coffee, and when the bus came and the door opened tisspamp, they poured what was left on to the snow. The lights of the bread shop were on, in the newspaper case the headline of the day was: HE WAS NO ANGEL. Out of the bus window on my right I saw the newspaper, out of the bus window on my left I saw the ruin of the Anhalt railway station, which like the Hebbel Theatre was opposite our hossel. We called it the broken station. The Turkish word for ‘broken’ also means offended. So it was also called ‘the offended station’.
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Just before we reached the factory, the bus had to drive up a long, steep street. A bus full of women tipped backwards. Then came a bridge, there we tipped forward, and there, every wet, half-dark morning, I saw two women walking hand in hand. Their hair was cut short, they wore skirts and shoes with low heels, their knees were cold, behind them I saw the canal and dark factory buildings. The asphalt of the bridge was cracked, rain collected in the holes, in the lights of the bus the women’s shadows were thrown on the rainwater and on the canal. The shadows of their knees trembled in the rainwater more than their real knees. They never looked at the bus, but never looked at each other either. One of the women was taller than the other, she had taken the hand of the smaller woman in hers. It looked as if at this time of the morning they were the only living people in this city. It was as if the morning through which they walked was sewn on to the night. Were they coming out of the night or were they coming out of the morning? I didn’t know. Were they going to the factory or to the cemetery, or were they coming from a cemetery?