More

by Hakan Günday

  My weeping juddered to a stop a few minutes later, like a train braking. My tears petered out and eventually dried. I was like a dead body now. A corpse sitting motionless, hands on knees just like before. I was one of them. Like one of the people surrounding me. The only difference was that I was still breathing. All of this seemed like a mistake in calculation. Me being the only survivor in a pile of corpses where all should be dead had to be some sort of mistake. But in that tiny void, I was the only one capable of making mistakes. If there had been another, he was dead now. So all of this was my fault. Everything … and this fault must be corrected …

  I was sure no one would be able to find me. That road we’d been riding on must have been out of use for years. And we didn’t matter the tiniest bit to the captain waiting for us at that dark cove! He, like us, like the Afghanis, was illegal. Even our existence was illegal! I highly doubted he’d try to track us down. He’d never take that kind of risk. Right then I thought of Yadigar. Our legit partner in crime!

  Maybe he knows, I thought. What road we’d take and where we’d go to deliver the goods … but then I realized he wouldn’t care, either. It would have been unseemly for him to coincidentally find us, so far away from the patrolling area of the gendarmerie. He had no reason to put himself in danger. No one would come to save me. I was the only one that could.

  Suicide had ceased to be an option in my mind. It was more of a sensation like a thousand knives stabbing me all over at the same time. It was like hate! That was the instant I ceased to think of suicide but to feel it. My sixth sense was suicide! If everyone around me was dead, then so would I be! My lighters would be good for something when I burned myself to death. I’d set us all on fire. First I’d set alight the ones around me, then myself.

  I was such a fool I really thought I could do it. I was such a fool I even pulled the pack out of my pocket to try. I was such a coward, however, that I couldn’t do a thing. I was afraid not of dying, but of burning. Plus how was I supposed to go around setting fires with that meager flame and all the wetness around me? Lighter in hand, I just froze there … and it suddenly made more sense to set alight a cigarette rather than myself.

  When the flame from the lighter lit up that tiny hole, it was too late. I struck the lighter, forgetting for a brief unwitting moment how much I feared the light and the things I could see in it. But I was able to neither bring the flame up to the cigarette that was between my lips, nor even move. For in its light, I saw hell itself. And in that hell, the only fire was the one in my hand. That would mean that I was the devil and this was my home.

  But I wasn’t able to regard for too long the walls of my home and, vomiting, flicked off the lighter. With my hands I wiped what I could off my jaw. And just as I tried to dry my palms by rubbing them against my trousers, twelve small, glowing dots I hadn’t noticed until then caught my eye. They glowed on my wrist along with the minute hand, the hour hand, and the stick that indicated seconds. The face of the watch, the governor’s gift, showed quarter past three. Like in that photo in From Kandalı to the World. But this time, it was night. The darkest night of the world, in fact. For no one was burning and not a single flame was rising in hell. When really it was what lit up the Earth, not the sun: hellfire … and maybe some morphine sulfate.

  I’d taken the watch off my wrist and gripped it in both hands. Elbows resting on my knees, I sat motionless. For exactly two hours I’d watched the seconds indicator revolving. Or this was all some autohypnosis and I just didn’t know it. In the glow of the stick that indicated seconds, I tried to forget the hell I’d seen in the light of the lighter flame. At a quarter past five, something happened.

  “More … more … more … more …”

  Who was speaking? Whose voice was it? Where was it coming from?

  “More … more … more …”

  Was I hallucinating? But no, I could really hear that voice. It was coming from afar and sounded strangled, but I could hear it. I hollered.

  “I’m here! In here! I’m in here! Can you hear me?”

  Going silent, I waited.

  “More!”

  Whoever it was, they were replying to me. Just as I wondered why they kept saying the same thing, my question collided with its answer like a pair of accelerated particles. Because that’s how much Turkish they spoke, that was why! As well as “More!” Because it was one of the Afghanis from the back of the truck! So where were they?

  I wished I could ask, but I didn’t know any Pashto. Throughout the years, perhaps a thousand people had passed through the reservoir speaking Pashto, but I’d never cared what they were saying. There wasn’t a single Pashto word in my mind. My ears had heard thousands of words in Pashto but withheld none. My hearsay mechanism, which always and everywhere worked like an obstinate butterfly trap, hadn’t turned a hair in that reservoir. Because it had been sure that Pashto wouldn’t have any use in real life! When really real life was everything that fell outside human perception! I was learning … and hearing:

  “More … more…”

  I couldn’t figure out where exactly the voice was coming from. It seemed to be shattering into a thousand pieces and coming at me from every direction. Or reaching me through the thousands of holes in between the bodies around me. I didn’t know where it was coming from, but it was always at the same volume. Or at the same low volume, I should say, because it was very faint by the time it got to me. It was as if one of the bodies was speaking from its stomach! Apparently the distance between me and the owner of the voice never changed.

  “I’m here!” I’d shout. “I’m here!”

  Then I’d fall silent and wait and they would reply, “More!”

  That was all. That was the extent of our communication. We repeated this dialogue over and over. We repeated it so many times that it eventually turned into a single sentence, “I’m heremore!”

  The hour, for that matter, eventually turned into six in the morning. But still I couldn’t spot a single stirring in the bodies around me. If it wasn’t someone who’d survived the accident and was standing by the pile of bodies, wondering how to get me out, I didn’t even want to think about what it might be. For that scenario would involve someone stuck somewhere else in the wreck just like me. A while later, I had to believe that this was the case. My reluctance was the reason it took so long …

  The voice also mustn’t have wanted to believe, for it had yelled, “More!” hundreds of times. Goodness knows where it was trapped, waiting for help from me. For forty-five minutes we’d begged for help from each other in vain. What’s more, they had had it tougher, having had to do it in Turkish, saying the only word they knew.

  In the meantime, the vomit that had left me when I saw the walls of hell had long dried up, and I’d vowed not to use the lighter again. But the place that I was at in the world and in my life made me well aware that I could fuck away with any vow within a matter of seconds. Neither my loyalty to my vows nor my spine had been left intact by the boulder I was bent double under! In fact, I hadn’t just lost my loyalty to my vows, but to everyone else as well! I had lost it so much that what little consolation I could give myself came from imagining that my father was dead.

  At least he’s done for, I thought. Then it’d abruptly occur to me that he might not be dead. Maybe he too was lying injured somewhere. But I’d shake this thought out of my head and yell, “No, no! Ahad’s check is cashed! Ahad is no more!”

  I’d receive as a reply, “More!”

  To which I’d call, “Get it already! I’m stuck in this fucking hole just like you! There’s no point in yelling!”

  Yet again it would say, “More!”

  … Which one of them could it be? Which of the ones from the reservoir? Which of them could have learned the magic word because they knew they would be passing through Turkey? Who could this person be who’d obviously asked around before even setting out in order to ask for more water, more food, more air, more this, more that, and more of everything? With anothe
r group I’d have known for sure. But this time a man by the name of Rastin had come between us. They’d had no need to look me in the face with expressions like those of starving children and beg, “More!” as they usually did, instead begging to Rastin in their native language …

  The voice was so low I couldn’t even tell if it was a woman or a man. Maybe it was that kid who’d sung the March of Independence with me! His body the size of a leaf, surrounded by corpses on all four sides, trying to make his voice heard …

  “Who cares who it is?” I said. “What do I care? What difference does it make? It’s not like he’s going to be able to come rescue me!”

  But they didn’t think so and kept repeating, “More!”

  So, in order to ignore all else and forget about the enormous disillusionment I was experiencing, I began to stare at the hand indicating seconds. With each tick rightward, I imagined that the sun would rise soon and that surely someone would see the truck or the human pile over me and come for help. I imagined this sixty times per second and 3,600 per hour. I stared at that indicator as though I were counting prayer beads …

  It was now seven. I was sure that the sun had risen, but no one was coming to rescue me. I was still in the dark, too. The dead were lightproof. They’d embraced one another so tightly that nothing could penetrate them. Except rainwater and oxygen. No matter how thirsty I became, there was no way I’d ever gather the water droplets in my hands to drink. The water, trickling over the bodies and dripping onto my legs from the edges of the rock over me, repulsed me. Who knows what pathways it took and what it mixed with? Whose blood and saliva? It made me so nauseated that I kept moving my hands around so I wouldn’t touch it.

  But it was different with oxygen. I couldn’t avoid that. It entered me even when I sealed my lips shut. It overcame all obstacles in its way just to keep me alive in that hell and found some way to barge into my nostrils. In that very place and time where I thought no one was coming and I was feeling suicide afresh, it would keep me alive to death! I fucking hated oxygen. For not getting off my tail and tracking me down in that hole! Maybe it was a curse! No matter where I went, I wouldn’t be rid of oxygen! I was cursed! Tutankhamen the child pharaoh of the reservoir had finally been cursed! After all, I had a pyramid of my own now! An actual pyramid of human flesh rose above me. In fact, dozens of people had died in the name of erecting it. When I was the first person that should have died! Because this pyramid was mine! I was buried under it, just like I was supposed to be. But a curse put upon me by all those deaths caused me to survive. I’d been buried in my own pyramid along with the curse. Oxygen was the curse I was doomed to breathe in. Such a curse it was, it kept me, the pharaoh, alive in my own grave.

  By eight I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I let go of all the urine pooled inside me and straining my groin to get out. My trousers and the ground I sat on grew warmer. For a moment, in the cold, I felt slightly better. I even felt angry for not going for so long. What did it matter what I looked like when I got out of that human trap hole? What would it matter if I puked or pissed or shit on myself? Though of course I’d only been in there for five hours. That wasn’t long enough to leave civilized habits behind. Maybe in a few more hours … say, ten or fifteen hours later, I might turn into a real subterranean animal and start eating my own crap. But five hours were useless. At most one pissed on oneself and thought it embarrassing, then finally arriving at, “Fuck it! Who’s gonna know?”

  Really, it all came down to hope. I was kept civilized by believing that the moment I’d mix with humankind again was very near. My suicidal thoughts had evaporated with the sun, which I knew was rising though I couldn’t see it. Once again I was having the dream in which someone found me and lifted the bodies off me, rescuing me. In the hole, pessimism and optimism switched places so often that one would take over my mind before my emotions could adapt to the other. For instance, in the moment I was in what ruled me and everything else was the thought of liberation. It was having its stint, and though I might be in the dark, it was lighting up every corner of my mind. I’d sunk into the lowest depths of the earth, but I still wanted to live. Though I’d practically have to rip my mouth open to breathe, though I’d have to expand my nostrils like craters, I wanted to live. Oxygen was no longer a curse but a hero with superpowers! A superhero that could infiltrate the wall of human flesh to reach me! I wanted to survive!

  I wanted it so badly, in fact, that I hollered, “Until everyone dies! If this world has shutters, I’ll be the one to close them!”

  The voice, which I hadn’t heard in the past half hour, replied, “More!”

  “I’m going to live!” I said and in return came another “More!” I laughed.

  All this would pass! Pass and be through! Once I was out of here, I’d go back to school! Everything would be different. Ahad would be dead. I’d start life afresh. I was only fifteen. It wasn’t too late for anything. I could pretend I’d emerged from my mother’s womb after fifteen years and be a completely new Gaza! I wouldn’t repeat any of my mistakes. All that I’d lived through until then would have been a test drive of sorts! A test life or something! A rehearsal that had been bequeathed me so I could see potential traps and mistakes and take precautions before real life started. My head had turned into a volcano and erupted, spilling optimistic lava all over me. It was hot, but it didn’t burn. I was warmed by optimism. My skull had burst open so wide it bloomed like a flower out of my hair. It resembled the crown of a king. A crown made of bone, looming over my brow and ears! Encased in the crown, my velvety brain! No one knew it, but I was king of the world. All I had to do was sit and wait, until I could declare my kingship in a whisper into the ear of my savior. I wanted to be reborn as soon as possible. Born again! I’d been buried a fool but I’d be born again as king. I just needed to be patient. And survive, of course! For that, I had to have some water. No matter what it was, I had to drink the corpse water dripping onto me. All I had to do was reach out my hand.

  I did and opened up my palm. The first drop fell and the second came thirteen seconds later. I filled the cup of my palm in two minutes and twenty-nine seconds, checking it against the watch on my other wrist. Then I brought it to my mouth and spilled half the water down my chin and the other half between my lips. In the instant I swallowed, however, the four pieces of my skull, agape like the four corners of an envelope, locked together and my crown disappeared.

  For I’d been reminded of the face of the weak man I’d buried in the garden. For after he’d been beaten and tossed aside, no one had given him water and he’d laboriously raised his hand and reached for the wall near him. He’d intersected one of the trails of water formed on the wall due to the dampness in the reservoir, wetting his fingers first and then his lips. When I collected water in my open palm, we’d resembled each other so much that it hadn’t taken long for that image of him to spring to my mind. But far from coming alone, that image of his gaunt face had also brought with it the expression he had after he died. And with that image marched in all the dead faces surrounding me, and together they wrenched my kingdom away from me.

  The heat of optimism abruptly vanished and left in its place a spiky March chill that bit into me from every direction. I was shaking. I gripped my jaw to stop my teeth from chattering. My hand, however, was also shaking. From both fear and the cold. I knew that if no one came to save me very soon, I’d have to watch all those faces decay. With the exception of the boulder that I leaned my back against and which covered me, allowing me to survive, everything around me would rot sooner or later. My whole world would be infused with decay. Who knew what kinds of insects had already formed an army and started marching toward the foot of Kandalı to feast on the giant cake waiting for them? Maybe they were already coming up through the earth. Right in the spot I was sitting! They would beeline between my legs to gnaw on whatever dead thing was in their path. What was I supposed to do then? Was I going to have to eat them to survive? I didn’t know the first thing about
how bodies decayed. My expertise was elsewhere. It had to do with another kind of decay.

  The decay I could tell from a glance was the one that happened aboveground. I knew all about the decay that began when a person was still breathing, with mold forming over the heart or brain. That was as far as I’d been able to progress in the classes life had thrust me into by the scruff of my neck. I didn’t know anything further.

  What’s more, the last class I’d had was on burying the dead. That was as far as I knew. Burying and moving on. Nothing beyond. Beyond that was a huge mystery. Wasn’t it the same for everyone anyway? Who cared what happened to his mother, his father, his lover, his brother, after they’d been buried? Once they were in the ground, who cared what became of those bodies he’d loved and even worshiped? All the ordinary people of the world and I, all we knew about was the part up to the burial. Maybe we even sometimes said, “Now the insects will eat them.”

  Really, everyone should be cremated! That was what should be done! At least then we’d know what happened after death. “One becomes ash and scatters,” we’d say, and no one would contradict us.

  But below ground was at least as complicated as above. It was at least as colossal a mystery as above. I hated nature! Everything eating everything else! I hated that the entire cycle was sustained by everything eating everything else. Wasn’t there some other way? Any other choice? Was this the almighty and faultless nature everyone spoke of? Whatever or whomever it was that had created this nature, what kind of a sadist did you have to be to say, “I’m going to set up such a system that everyone will go bumping one another off just to stay alive!” All those animals eating one another, all those people eating everything, all those bugs eating the bodies, all the other bugs eating those bugs …