Enlightenment
Page 43
But how thin and paltry her portrayals! As proudly as I strut her stage, I remain a noisy cipher – my family, my adventures, my philosophical evolutions and even my work banished to the shadows. And there she is – clutching her angst to her chest, clamouring for the truth, the truth, the truth…but somehow, never quite grasping the facts. And (perhaps most tragically) never grasping their true essence. Her account (I am not the first to say this) is littered with inaccuracies, cultural misunderstandings, and misreading of conversational nuances that – as small as most might be – cast doubt on her narration.
I can imagine that if she read these lines – and in spite of everything, I hope and pray she does – she would point out that she never intended to have the last word, that one good story should spawn another. That there is nothing to stop us from refuting and disputing her. That there is no point to a good story unless it encourages others to talk back. She would no doubt point out that this is what I am doing, in actual fact, as I compose this afterword. But I am in this book as I am in the world – a small and lonely coda to an occidental ode.
How could it be otherwise? The God of Ripping Yarns does not love all His subjects equally. What He privileges above all else is the Western gaze. And oh, how this gaze suffocates its lowly Eastern serfs! How it simplifies, mystifies, misconstrues, distorts! We are only of interest if we reflect its anxieties. We are only of consequence if we have provided a new and exotic playground for its warring factions. Or even worse – we are airbrushed of our flaws. We become heroic simply by virtue of possessing virtues decried as Neanderthal in other, more enlightened continents.
Oh, how sweet we all look on the terrace of the Hotel Bebek! Humanity in all its multifarious guises, gazing wondrously at the azure view! As I write these words on the self-same terrace, my view is tinged with jaundiced caution: of the smiles I see around me, I can not find one that is not simpering, conniving, nakedly hypocritical. The two women in gold at the next table – they are speaking to the poor, disheartened and so very dignified waiter as if he were a goat. As if they themselves were of consequence. As if the one’s father did not make his fortune in a land swindle and the other had not contracted gonorrhoea while ‘dancing’ on an illicit jaunt in Rio with her salsa teacher.
And those businessmen over there. The ones with the ‘models’. I went to school with one of their wives. What has he told her this evening? That he’s working late? That man at the table behind them – the fat one with the toothy smile who’s jumped to his feet to give a warm and loud embrace to the famous author who has just walked in. That man is my colleague, and only yesterday, he denounced this very author as vermin. As a traitor to the nation. What can I say? We live in a country of fakes, insinuators and poseurs.
A country of crooks. Crooks walking free, flashing their ill-begotten wealth with ever greater arrogance. At that table in the corner, the man now ordering his second bottle of champagne, in that dulcet voice, his arms raised to a dizzy height so that the world can admire his Rolex. He’s İsmet’s nephew. How warmly he greeted me when I walked in! How solicitously he enquired about Haluk’s health! As if he had not heard about the heart trouble! As if it would not trouble any heart to sit here waiting helplessly for news of lost friends.
Does this dulcet-toned nephew know something I have yet to hear? Am I to conclude that the stupid boy is repeating to his partners-in-gangsterdom some snippet about me garnered from The Book of Books? Or is his wide smile an indication that he is already one step ahead of me in the game of revenge? Could he tell me, if he wished, where our friend Jeannie is languishing? The fact that I am even asking myself this question is an indication of my wavering confidence in my country, its future and my very soul. Our enemies are prospering, and they are staring us in the face! Which reminds me of the maddening question Jeannie was so fond of. How is it, she used to ask, pursing her lips in that puzzled, musing way she had – how is it that you could go through what you’ve been through, and come out of prison to take up life where you left it and even find the strength and composure to work alongside the very people who turned you in? So Jeannie, shall I tell you why I’ve worked all these years surrounded by my enemies? I’ve never had a choice in the matter. They just won’t go away.
We lose only our heroes. The beauty of our faith in them. Yes, this is what I miss the most about the days when Dutch Harding was our secret, and our hero. But life goes on. Hearts break and then they mend. Soon, very soon, I shall look up at the door of this benighted terrace for the thousandth desperate time and I’ll see Chloe, looking nonchalant, even as she passes the so-called therapist who spilled all her secrets to her dear departed husband’s less than dear sister. Who, as we soon discovered, had amorous links with İsmet. Who, when he had gathered enough details, spilled it all into the press, adding lies in such a way that soon the entire city was of the mistaken view that Haluk had taken Chloe on as his mistress.
Such poppycock! But what can it do to us? It gives us a purpose – to be seen not to care. Which is why, when Chloe’s seated, she’ll order me a gin and tonic, and two for herself, and she’ll tell me about the latest disasters at the clinic, and say something about a salsa teacher, at which our golden friend at the next table will grab her sunglasses to make a hasty exit.
And I won’t be able to hold it back one more moment. I’ll take out the postcard I’ve just received, the one with the Lebanese postmark, and a certain poem by a certain Nâzim Hikmet on the back. Whose handwriting? Whose telling initials? Is that a J next to the M? Could it be that M has succeeded in her quest and found her? Are we to understand that she is now keeping her safe? Chloe will understand my questions from my silences. She will lean over the postcard and…
Say nothing. Simply smile. For this is not the apposite moment, and already it will be hard to see the letters in the setting sunlight. We’ll sit back and look at the azure view turning pink at the edges, and just as we are running through our final ounces of forbearance, we’ll look over at the door and there will be Haluk, looking bronzed and so much stronger after his month in Bodrum, and next to him Lüset, and in her arms, our Emre.
Who is perfect, who is ours, who needs no proof, no test, no document to make him so. Who is waiting, as are we all, for the day his parents come home to us. Who trusts us with such wide and aching eyes when we tell him it is only a matter of time.
But first, justice. First, the truth.
Swords of Ice
by Latife Tekin
Halilhan Sunteriler, would-be entrepreneur, rescues a red Volvo from the scrap heap, which he believes will lead him to big money in business ventures.
He solicits the help of his staunch friend Gogi, the most ‘cultured’ man of the neighbourhood, and gradually Halilhan’s two younger brothers, Hazmi and Mesut, are also drawn into the project.
Hazmi is aggressive and fights Halilhan whenever he gets a chance, Mesut lives too much in the shadow of his wife to confront his elder brother, and as for Halilhan, he is too busy having affairs to take much notice of either of them – or his wife Rübeysa.
‘A nihilistic wit reminiscent of Samuel Beckett’
Independent on Sunday
Translated from the Turkish by Saliha Paker and Mel Kenne
ISBN: 978–0–7145–3135–9 • £7.99/$14.95 • May 2007
Berji Kristin
TALES FROM THE GARBAGE HILLS
by Latife Tekin
The cast-offs of modern urban society are driven out onto the edges of the city and left to make a life there for themselves.
They are not, however, in any natural wilderness, but in a world of refuse and useless junk - a place which denies any form of sustainable life.
Here, the unemployed, the homeless, the old and the bereft struggle to build shelters out of old tin cans, scavenge for food and fight against insuperable odds.
And yet somehow they survive: it seems that this society thrives on the garbage hills because it has always been built on one.
In
this dark fairy tale full of scenes taken from what has increasingly become a way of life for many inhabitants on this planet, Latife Tekin has written a grim parable of human destiny.
Translated from the Turkish by Ruth Christie and Saliha Paker
‘A provocative and enjoyable work.’
Times Literary Supplement
ISBN: 978–0–7145–3011–6 • £7.95/$14.95
Copyright
First published in 2007
by Marion Boyars Publishers
26 Parke Road
London SW13 9NG
www.marionboyars.co.uk
This ebook edition first published in 2011
All rights reserved
© MAUREEN FREELY, 2007
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ISBN 978–07145–2050–6