The Few

by Hakan Günday

  Ubeydullah and Regaip walked down Çemendağ’s main street and entered the apartment building. They went up to the fourth floor and into the men’s apartment. In the living room men sat on their knees, listening to the imam recite the Koran. Ubeydullah told Regaip to sit down beside Bezir, who didn’t even turn to look at him. There was a knock on the door and someone opened it.

  Derdâ entered the living room with a woman no older than she was. She told Derdâ to sit down. The imam’s voice filled the silent room. Then he fell silent. He opened the marriage registry, found an empty page, and carefully inscribed the name Derdâ. He looked up at Regaip, and Ubeydullah said, “Regaip.” The imam inscribed his name, too. Then he added the names of the witnesses and completed his list with the name of the groom, Bezir. He asked them the amount of money agreed upon, using the customary Islamic euphemisms. Ubeydullah told him how much he had paid for the girl. The imam looked at Regaip, who nodded his head in agreement.

  Then the imam began to read verses from the Koran when suddenly he looked at Regaip and chanted a long sentence which began, “By the order of God and the laws and decrees of our Prophet … being her representative, do you accept to give Derdâ … to her suitor Bezir as wife?” Regaip said, “Yes.” He repeated the question twice more. Twice more the reply was yes. The imam turned to Bezir and intoned another very long sentence ending, “Will you take her?” and for the first time in days Bezir spoke. He never said much, and now he only repeated the same word three times: “Yes.”

  “I now pronounce you man and wife,” declared the imam. He cleared his throat and began reciting more verses from the Koran.

  While all of this was happening, Derdâ stared at her knees covered in a black cloth and carefully studied the lion figure in the carpet below her knees. The lion was lying near three trees, watching her. Derdâ stared into the lion’s eyes until the woman behind her reached over and touched her shoulder. And just as she was dreaming of the lion leaping out of the carpet and devouring everyone, she lifted her head and saw a hand stretched out to her lips. It was Regaip’s right hand.

  Ubeydullah spoke. “Come, kiss your father’s hand.”

  She kissed the hand and brought it to her forehead, wondering if what she had just heard was true. Was Regaip really her father? She’d never seen him before, and she couldn’t stop staring. But her gaze was unreciprocated; Regaip stood up after Bezir and left the room. Just as she was about to cry, “Father, take me with you!” another hand was extended to her lips. By the time she finished kissing Ubeydullah’s hand, her father was already gone. She kissed several more hands and touched them to her forehead. No one seemed to notice that Derdâ was running a fever well over a hundred degrees. The little girl’s forehead burned like a stove.

  For two days Derdâ was taken in and out of various government offices. She had more photographs taken, but she no longer smiled. For two nights she burned with fever, which broke only after a night of heavy sweating. The women woke her up the next morning and told her to wear her long dark red trench coat, and to cover just her head with a scarf. They brought her to a car. Bezir drove and Ubeydullah sat beside him. They drove along narrow streets and avenues and as the car slowed near a bus stop Derdâ wanted to open the door and run, but instead the door flew open and Regaip got in and sat down beside her. It was the fourth time she had seen Regaip. Derdâ watched her father silently. He stared ahead into space. Derdâ brought her lips to his ear and whispered, “Father.” Regaip brought his index finger to his lips.

  Derdâ didn’t give up. She whispered again, “Take me away from here.”

  Ubeydullah turned around and said, “You know what to say, don’t you?”

  Regaip held onto the headrest in front of him and straightened himself, saying “Yes, yes, I know.”

  Derdâ had no intention of giving up. She whispered again, “Father, why didn’t you ever come?”

  Regaip waited for a garbage truck to pull up beside them. The traffic was heavy and when the truck revved into gear, he spoke into the girl’s ear, pretending to cough.

  “I’m not your father.”

  Derdâ didn’t whisper again. She just stared into the leather back of Bezir’s seat. She planned to jump out of the car the next time they stopped at an intersection, but the child lock was on.

  Derdâ uncovered her head when Ubeydullah told her to. They were in the waiting room of a building with high ceilings. When their names were announced, they stood up and went through the designated door. A security guard led them along a corridor, stopped in front of a door, and pushed a button on the wall. Two seconds later a green light flashed under the button. Their guide opened the door and showed them in—three men and one little girl. A man in a suit sat behind an enormous desk. Smiling, he stood up and held his hand out to Ubeydullah. He didn’t shake hands with anyone else. When he sat back he asked in broken Turkish, “Are the papers ready?” Ubeydullah said they were.

  Ubeydullah then introduced Regaip, a future employee in his furniture company, and his daughter, Derdâ, to the commercial attaché to the UK. The attaché looked at Derdâ and told her there were very good schools in his country. After forms were filled out and a few questions were answered, it was settled that both father and daughter would be given a five-year visa. As the attaché picked up his phone to communicate the necessary orders, he offered his guests something to drink. Ubeydullah declined but the attaché took a piece of chocolate from a jar on his desk and offered it to Derdâ. The little girl took it and looked at Ubeydullah. The old man nodded his head and she unwrapped the chocolate, put it in her mouth, and started chewing. Suddenly she grimaced and vomited the chocolate and everything else in her stomach onto the coffee table in front of the attaché’s desk. After three days she still felt nauseated from high fever. She vomited onto the cover page of one of three magazines on the coffee table between Ubeydullah’s and Bezir’s knees, the one with the Queen of England emblazoned on the cover.

  Ubeydullah was the angriest. No surprise considering that he was the one who most passionately swore his loyalty to the Queen of England twenty-six years ago when he became a British citizen. As they were both British nationals, Bezir and the attaché were not overly put out.

  Regaip took Derdâ in his arms and carried her out of the consulate, wiping the wet hair out of her eyes and off her brow and pressing her head to his chest, like he was a father who had abandoned his child before she was even born. Maybe that was why Derdâ had hope. She opened her eyes and said, “Father.” This time Regaip didn’t deny it. But he didn’t admit it either. He didn’t say a word running to the car with Derdâ in his arms.

  When they arrived in Çemendağ, they stopped at the Sheik Gazi clinic where they entrusted Derdâ to female doctors before performing their noon prayers in the small mosque in the clinic’s garden. Rising after his prayers, Ubeydullah said to Regaip, “That’s all we need from you now. You’ll go your own way, and we’ll go ours.” But Regaip had no intention of going anywhere.

  “Take me with you!”

  Ubeydullah had not expected this. He assumed he’d paid Regaip enough to satisfy him.

  “Where?” he asked, surprised.

  “To wherever you’re going.”

  Hearing Regaip’s tone, Bezir took two quick steps forward. One sudden move and he could have broken Regaip’s arm, but he stopped when he felt Ubeydullah’s hand on his chest.

  The old man fixed his gaze on Regaip and slowly intoned, “We have an agreement. We take the girl and go. And you stay.”

  Steadying his eyes on Bezir, waiting for his father’s signal to attack, Regaip asked, “And if I go to the police?” He said the words slowly, calmly, but not as an obvious threat.

  “What is it you want? Tell me!” Ubeydullah shouted, unable to restrain himself. He was tired from standing for so long; he leaned on Bezir’s shoulder for support. Negotiating was what he did best, but now his voice was trembling. Normally he could negotiate for anything and with anyone, with the devil, w
ith God, with anyone.

  “I’ll go with you and then I’ll disappear. That’s all. I don’t want anything else. Take me to England with you, and then I’ll go my own way.”

  “You pay for your own ticket,” Ubeydullah interrupted. He was in no state to come up with any other way to silence him. He was tired and he was concerned about the health of a young girl he’d just bought for his son. He was worried about his factories, the ones he called his shops. He was worn out by this wretched man’s insistence and by the thought of having gone to such pains for his son. Now what, he thought. The swine will come with us and will surely cause us grief. Will I be dogged by this man until the girl comes of age? Should I give him a job? Maybe it would be better to keep him close, so I can keep track of him. But I won’t pay for his ticket! He’ll pay himself! God damn him. The sly bastard.

  He stopped himself and said, “How do I know you won’t cause trouble? If you’re just going to cause trouble, then don’t come. You’ll never leave my sight and you’ll work for me, understood?”

  “We’ll see.”

  “What’s your line of work?” Ubeydullah asked.

  “Don’t have one. I was a ranger in the government militia.”

  Though a keen negotiator, Ubeydullah’s patience was at the limit. “What were you doing in Istanbul then?”

  Regaip’s lips curled into a frozen smile and his tongue lashed like a razor between his teeth. “I killed people. When your men found me, I’d just been let out of jail.”

  Killers did not intimidate Ubeydullah. When it came to sheer violence, there were hundreds of men around him who could outdo Regaip. Only thieves scared Ubeydullah. He didn’t hesitate a moment more.

  “All right then,” he said. “You’ll be a bodyguard.”

  “We’ll see,” Regaip said, deliberately aggravating the men even more. “Let’s just get there first and then we’ll see.”

  Bezir’s right hand seized Regaip’s neck like a knife thrown at a target and yanked the man up into the air. Regaip could hardly breathe, struggling to balance on his toes. People in the clinic garden turned to look but when Ubeydullah shouted “Bezir!” he released Regaip’s neck as fast as he’d grabbed it.

  Coughing, Regaip forced a smile and said, “You want to kill me? You wouldn’t kill your own father-in law, would you?”

  Regaip insisted they all travel together so they couldn’t double-cross him. But when he couldn’t get a seat on their plane, they all had to travel the next day and Ubeydullah had to forfeit his tickets. The police kept close surveillance on Ubeydullah. Now they had an extra day to kill, so he told Bezir to drive them to a cemetery. There Ubeydullah recited verses from the Koran at the grave of Yakup Hodja Efendi, Sheik Gazi’s brother. Yakup had been nomadic just like his brother, moving from one place to another all his life, and was buried where he had died. There was a wooden fountain beside his tomb, so the whole thing looked like a small mausoleum. At least that was the intention. If they could have, they’d have made a tomb out of the man himself. Just the way it was with his brother.

  Derdâ was tasked with pulling out all the weeds covering the grave. When the car pulled into the cemetery a boy about Derdâ’s age watched it drive down the cemetery’s lane. Now he approached them with two tanks of water.

  “Shall I pour some water, uncle?”

  Ubeydullah frowned at the boy and continued to loudly recite from the Koran before quickly falling off into his typical mumbling. But sensing that the boy wasn’t going to leave them alone, he lifted his head and signaled to the grave with his eyes.

  The boy stepped toward the grave and carefully began to pour water over the grave where Derdâ had already cleared, watching the water seep into the soil. Derdâ angrily continued to pull out the weeds, and the boy poured water into the holes left in the earth. They moved in silence around the grave. There were other members of the Hikmet Tariqat who had come to the cemetery to visit the graves of their relatives and Bezir stood silently listening to their stories. Whatever it was they were telling him couldn’t have been very interesting because he kept looking around over his shoulders.

  The boy had finished watering the grave and went to fill the marble basin at its base. Though he rarely saw birds come to drink from the basin, he wanted to diligently fulfill his task to ensure a good tip. He opened the second tank and began to fill the basin. Then he saw a pair of hands stretching out to the tank’s spout, held close together as if in handcuffs. They were covered with dirt. The boy raised his head and his eyes met Derdâ’s for the first time. He shifted the barrel and began pouring water over her hands. Derdâ washed her two white hands under the stream of water. This kept them close to one another, in fact too close.

  “Thank you,” Derdâ said.

  The boy was about to say “you’re welcome” when a hand seized him by the collar and dragged him away. Then Bezir lifted him into the air and tossed him like a stone. Ubeydullah lifted his head, looked at his son, and began reciting the Koran even more loudly; Bezir understood. He took a few coins from his pocket and gave them to the boy dusting himself off. He stood up and picked up his tanks. First he shot a glance at Bezir and then he looked at Derdâ. Then he turned and walked away. Ubeydullah closed the Koran in his hand, still mumbling, and then pronounced a clear “Amen” for everyone to hear.

  Ubeydullah imagined he was performing prayers in his house in London as he walked through the maze of steel benches at the airport, running his prayer beads through his fingers. Bezir and Regaip carried the suitcases, and Derdâ walked behind them with her schoolbag flung over her hated black chador. Her mouth gaped open in surprise as she took in the immensity of the building. It was the first time she’d been to an airport.

  But her wonder came to an end when she remembered how much she despised each and every person she had known in her short life. Now there were people everywhere. She was surrounded by them, by all these people, people hurrying past her. They were racing past her, going the same direction, not seeing the girl dressed in black. Why don’t they understand, Derdâ thought. I am walking beside them. I am here with them. But nobody cares. They don’t even see me. They’re blind. Or maybe it’s this black robe, my cloak of invisibility.

  Three hours later a stewardess peered down into the only visible part of Derdâ’s face and smiled at her with pity before helping her fasten her seat belt. Half an hour later the plane’s wheels disappeared into its white belly, Derdâ looked down at Istanbul, and the plane flew away like a migrant bird.

  For a while she thought of the girl from Yatırca and her teacher Yeşim. As if they were right there before her eyes. One cried as the other spoke to her. And then slowly their faces faded away. She’d learned the word from Nazenin and she said it just like her. She said it to herself in her mind, in one sharp exhalation: Fuck! It felt good. So she said it again, Fuck, fuck, fuck! and an imperceptible smile flickered on her face. No one could hear her. Just people, she thought. They can’t see me, they can’t hear me. I’ll say it a thousand times for every one of them. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, “fuck, fuck, fuck …” A few of them she even whispered out loud, only to mock the people mute to her profanity. She pronounced the “k” a little more loudly. Ubeydullah was sitting next to her and noticed the little girl moving her lips. He was pleased, assuming she was either praying out of fear or reciting a verse from the Koran—Ebcet had told Ubeydullah that Derdâ had been sent to a Koran course when she was five.

  When she had recited a thousand fucks, she tilted her head back and looked at the buttons above her. She noticed a circular stain in the overhead light. She looked more closely. It was a fly, still alive. Somehow it had gotten inside the cover and it got stuck inside. It buzzed helplessly behind the little plastic cover, unable to escape. Derdâ felt no pity, felt nothing at all, and switched on the lamp.

  Derdâ watched everything with intense curiosity. A minivan had picked them up at Heathrow Airport and they were pulling onto the ring road. Derdâ sat by the
window. Though she hadn’t spent much time in cars, she’d already decided it was the best spot. But it wasn’t because a window seat let her watch the scenery. In a window seat there was one less person next to her. Derdâ was learning. The fewer the better. But now the scenery was new. She gazed out over green fields and marveled at the farm houses along the highway. It was all like the pictures in the books she’d once read. She looked at everything. Signs, people in passing cars, clouds, and giant power plants. Her eyes burned from looking so much, they ached from the sensory overload.

  They were driving at ninety kilometers per hour but she didn’t want to leave a single image behind. Nothing escaped her eagle eye. Sometimes she missed things as they sped by—a building or a bridge—but she immediately turned her head. Back. But she turned too quickly, loosened the black chador wrapped tightly around her, and everything went black. She wanted to pull the cloth tight around her cheeks by adjusting the pin under her chin but she couldn’t—she was afraid she might miss something in the passing scenery.

  She was fascinated by everything she saw, her eyes moist with pleasure and surprise, hardly blinking. Traffic picked up when they arrived in London. Just when Derdâ came eye to eye with a punk begging on the sidewalk, Bezir reached over her to a black tube above the window—Derdâ hadn’t even noticed such a thing was there—and yanked down a tinted plastic curtain. The window went dark. The world was invisible. Derdâ lowered her head and looked at her knees. She closed her eyes and thought about everything she’d seen on the way in from the airport. She imagined the images just as they had been in her mind’s eye.