by Hakan Günday
But there was a problem with my story. A location problem … My story was so simple that we could actually start shooting right away. In fact, it was so silly that Maxine could have taken it for contemporary art and marketed it as video art elsewhere. But unfortunately the story took place in Cappadocia. A boy rented a hot air balloon and took a tour of the area like an ordinary tourist. But soon he accosted the man who operated the balloon by a knife to his throat, saying, “Let’s go!” Basically the boy hijacked the balloon.
But then of course the man said, “Where are we going?”
And the boy looked pensively into the distance and said, “I don’t know … wherever it is we’ll happen to fall!” and the story ended. I’d never seen Cappadocia. All I’d seen was a picture in the paper. A photo in which dozens of balloons hovered over the fairy chimneys4 … but we weren’t in Cappadocia and there was no way of getting our hands on a balloon!
So Harmin said, “Write the rest! Think!”
“Okay,” I said. “Here’s what we do then … The boy travels all the way here, and the balloon falls somewhere around here! You can be the balloon guy! Let’s say the boy and the balloon guy befriended each other on the way.”
“Nice!” said Harmin. “Then?”
For a while I thought with my hand on my chin and then blurted out all the nonsense brewing in my head.
“Then Dordor shows up! He’s the owner of the balloon! He has a guy with him, maybe. They followed us and want their balloon back. They’re searching for us in the woods. Then one day …”
I was out of batteries.
“What, one day?” asked Harmin. “What happens one day?”
Right then I thought of Harmin’s boat. And all those illegal immigrants …
“One day, they run into each other in the woods and start talking. So the two parties sit down and talk. The owner of the balloon figures out that the balloon is no longer, that it’s damaged. He’s really upset. The boy says that he shouldn’t be upset because if they pick up the journey where it was left off, all together, he’ll forget everything and all his troubles will be over. The man is so impressed that the four of them join forces and hijack a boat to set out to sea. How’s that?”
“Incredible!” said Harmin. “Perfect!”
But of course I was just getting started!
“Then they meet other people and persuade them to join the journey. And all together they hijack a plane. Then they find a bunch of other people and join them as well. In fact, they keep joining everyone they run into so finally they’re millions and they keep moving. The journey never ends! No one stops! They just keep going. Then everyone in the world joins them, and billions of people carry on with the journey side by side. There’s no problem because they’re all going in the same direction. And since they all have one goal, just to keep going, they don’t even fight or war among themselves! Just think of it, billions of people, side by side, walking in the same direction!”
Harmin, for whom all this was conjured up as much as it was for me, asked:
“So where are they going?”
“They’re all going somewhere else!”
“I thought they were all side by side, going in the same direction?”
“They are! They’re all walking side by side! But of course in the end they die. Because they’re traveling all their lives. That’s why they’re all going to a different place. Wherever they’re supposed to die, that’s where they’re going!”
Laughing, Harmin hugged me … then, saying, “Okay, for now, let’s just shoot the part up to the boat. The rest you can do when you’re grown!” he’d called Maxine.
And so we shot the film … We shot in a single day the forest confrontation and boat hijacking scenes of that story of a colossal journey starting with a boy’s leaving and going on to encompass all humankind. At the end Maxime handed me a tape and said the only Turkish word he’d learned all day:
“Tamam?”
“Tamam!” I said.
And Maxime turned to look at Harmin. It was time to start the documentary. Harmin nodded at him and turned to me.
“Go on,” he said, “straight home! Dordor will drop you off. Happy birthday!”
On the way back, I couldn’t get an answer out of Dordor about what was to happen to Maxime no matter how many times I asked. Some months later, however, I found out from Harmin as he was ranting at the stars: they’d sent Maxime back where he’d come from. Not to France but to Iraq. They’d tied the man up and stuck him in a sixteen-wheeler and never seen him again. When I asked if that meant he’d been killed, Harmin had replied, “No. He’s probably been traded off …”
“What does that mean?” I’d asked and he’d told me.
The ones who had an estimable citizenship and profession, such as Maxime, were taken to the hostage market in the Middle East to be sold. The place referred to as the tradeoff hostage market was probably a reservoir somewhere off the map, just like ours. In that reservoir would have been people from all the capes stuck into the Middle East like noses. Germans, Brits, Frenchmen, and Americans were the most popular, needless to say. Then some organization would show up and buy someone from the hostage market to blackmail whatever state the hostage was a citizen of.
This way, an organization that had a beef with say, France, would declare that they held a French citizen and journalist and start reeling off their demands. In a market that was set up to supply hostages for this kind of tradeoff, journalists in particular were extremely valuable. As a matter of fact, rates in the hostage market were in constant flux just like they were in the stock market in relation to changes in international politics, but some citizenships’ worth never decreased. Such as American citizenship …
However, the one thing that could really turn this market on its head was an Israeli hostage! Now that was an extraordinarily valuable tradeoff! A true gem! In fact, it was such a gem that in return for a single Israeli citizen—and even more preferable if it was a soldier—it would be possible to have fifteen hundred Palestinian captives returned. Fifteen hundred lives in return for one! But then it was the Israelis’ problem what to do with that life, of course. For once his life had such a high value, he had foregone his right to go into depression or become a pacifist!
Just as a boy, and it could have been me, who had been sent to the city for an education by an entire eagerly expectant town that had raised money for that purpose no longer had the right to play hooky, so the Israeli no longer had the luxury of becoming an alcoholic, becoming sick because he didn’t take care of himself, protesting against a single governmental decision, or in broader terms, wasting his life away. After all, if your life equaled 1,500 lives, you couldn’t even consider suicide.
Though he was no Israeli soldier, as a journalist whose market worth was nothing you could turn your nose up at, who knows where Maxime was now? Maybe no buyer had yet showed up, and he was still waiting at the hostage market. Maybe the French state had already conducted a clandestine bargain and pulled their citizen out to Paris … I’d never know. I hope he’s fine, I thought.
Then I opened my eyes and rewatched my film … not the one on tape. For at first I wasn’t able watch the film that was on tape, although I’d been squirming with curiosity. Nor had I been able to go into the city or ask someone to help. Dordor and Harmin were staying in Greece for a while. So they weren’t able to help, either. Then I’d discovered something. The existence of another film!
Whenever I picked the tape up, the day of the shooting would unravel in front of my eyes, and I was able to watch everything we did frame by frame, even to pause or rewind or fast forward it. It got so that after a while, I didn’t even have to touch or look at the tape. Lowering my eyelids like a pair of tiny silver screens, I could watch the movie whenever I wanted. The more time that passed, the less I cared about what was on the tape. I even thought that maybe not seeing it would be for the best. After all, the movie that circled around in my head didn’t have a single flaw. That was t
he way I preferred to remember it. And every time I did, I thanked them all. Dordor, Harmin, Maxime, the burglars, all of them …
Neither movie on the tape nor the one in my head had titles. Even my story didn’t have a title. Well, now seemed like a good time to find one. But right then I felt something rubbing against my left hand.
I was so startled that I tore off the shawl wrapped around my face and flicked the lighter to see what was touching me. And saw them … hundreds of larvae packed inside a hole they’d carved into a bare back just to my left. Gathered into a mass, they were tearing into that back. Some of them slid off and rolled toward me.
Then I looked to my right. And saw that a leg there was in the same state. I started to scream. I tried to lift the body to my back and place it to my left. However, since its legs were wedged between the rock and other bodies, it wouldn’t budge. There was nothing I could do. I started to grab up as many clothes and as much fabric as I could. I yanked off everything I could grab hold of. The same larvae emerged from underneath every piece of fabric. They were eating holes into every body they could get at and squirming around as they feasted.
I began wrapping myself up. My feet, legs, torso, arms, neck … I assumed that was the only way I’d be able to protect myself. Maybe they wouldn’t touch me but eat through all the bodies around me, clearing my way to escape. But I wasn’t in any state to think about that now. I was so horrified by what I’d seen that my only defense was wrapping myself in fabrics like a mummy. Screaming as I did! The only parts left exposed were my hands and face. I left a sliver open in the shawl near my eyes and mouth as I wrapped it tightly around my head, and then stopped. I had to do something about my hands. So that nothing could get at me. Neither those larvae, nor anything else. At that moment, if I could have, I’d have chopped off my hands just because they were exposed. For there wasn’t a single shred of fabric left behind that I could use.
I wept. With every thought of the possibility of something, dead or alive, touching me, my heart tried to climb out of my mouth and, being unable, lodged in my throat and choked me. All I could do was flail my hands. So that not a single fly could land on them, nor anything touch them.
I couldn’t stay in the dark any longer. I had to see everything so I could shield myself. But that was impossible. I had to quit flailing and flick the lighter to be able to do that. I couldn’t. I just kept flailing. A while later I sensed that I was able to see into the darkness. For now I knew everything. I could see where the larvae accumulated and carved holes on each body and hear the sounds they made as they did. I could hear and see every single thing. Neither the darkness nor the fabric stuffed up my nose could prevent it.
Because I could smell them too. All five senses had opened like floodgates, drenching me in life. I could also see my hands that I held at chest level, waving at the ends of my wrists like five-fingered corpses. There was nowhere to run. Even the darkness was no longer safe because I could see everything I shouldn’t have to see as sharply as though I were some nocturnal animal. I could see them with my eyes closed. It was as if my eyelids had been punctured!
I held my breath in final desperation. So that maybe I might calm down. That didn’t work either. So I tried again. Perhaps I just needed to hold it longer. At least that’s what I thought. I started counting the seconds. Not being able to hold out longer, I released my breath, then took another and held that in. I counted! Then released again. Held it. Counted. Repeated for maybe an hour. At the same time I kept flailing continuously. Finally, a white spot appeared in front of my eyes. And it all happened at once. First the spot expanded into a snow-white screen, engulfing me like a fishnet thrown on top of me, trapping me.
That was when my pulse slowed down, and I opened my eyes. I was in a tunnel. A tunnel with brownish-pink walls. I was inside my bowels! Then everything was white again, and I opened my eyes on a million lines.
They were reminiscent of the white lines appearing on a pitch-black sky when lightning struck. A thousand of them flashed out of the same kernel and into a thousand other kernels. A thousand lines in turn flashed out of those kernels and scattered to other kernels. I was watching a gigantic cobweb that contained a million centers. What was more, it was three-dimensional. I was inside my brain. Inside a nerve cell … I didn’t have to put this into words to be aware of it. I just knew that I was there. I could go anywhere inside my body. It wasn’t actually moving. I was already inside the body. All I had to do was focus on a part of it and open my eyes, and whichever part of my body it was I wished to see materialized in front of me. It didn’t surprise me one bit. It felt natural that I should be able to see inside my body. As if it were something every creature on the face of the Earth was able to do at will, to watch the blood flow through their veins …
On that day, I wanted so badly to get away from the bodies around me and the larvae tearing them apart that I hid inside my body for lack of anywhere else to run and could see everything when I opened my eyes. It wasn’t a hallucination. For up until that day, I hadn’t even known that the tissues and organs I saw inside my body even existed. I knew neither their names nor their functions nor their forms. It couldn’t have been my imagination because I didn’t know about them. Still I was able to see them all. In fact, years later when I got interested in human anatomy, the first images I looked at weren’t unfamiliar to me at all. Because that day, I closed my eyes to the outside world and opened them on the inside. I was the biggest proof that one could have complete awareness of oneself and one’s body. It was all a matter of breathing. My prize from a breathing game I’d discovered by chance. A prize that enabled me to feel and see every corner of my body from my internal organs to my very cells … and I hadn’t had to look at the watch. I could hear the seconds go by like my second pulse and count the minutes and hours with no difficulty at all. Neither I nor my story nor my movie needed a title. I was time …
I was inside my body for approximately two hundred hours. I spent those thousands of minutes studying my liver, bones, stomach acids, and everything else that was underneath my skin. I flowed through my bloodstream, pounded inside my heart, and dissolved along with my fat and then my muscles because I hadn’t had anything to eat.
In my 317th hour underneath the bodies, I felt hands roaming over me and only then came outside of my skin. I was on a stretcher when they undid the shawl wrapped around my face. It was the first time I had seen daylight in thirteen days and five hours.
Admittedly with difficulty, I managed to mumble that someone else might be alive under the wreck. Though I hadn’t heard the voice in a long time, I tried to explain how I’d heard someone yell, “More!” for hours, maybe days.
“Get him out as well,” I said. “Get More out as well!”
But they didn’t listen to me. The faces, which I couldn’t make out because they blended into the crystalline rays of the sun, would not answer. They merely carried me. Still, I obstinately repeated the one word that was on my mind, “More!” until I passed out. But they just wouldn’t get it … Neither whispering nor hollering it did any good. My bearers remained forever silent. But I tried! I said the word any way it was possible to say it. I even said it backward in case the world had turned upside down in my absence: “Ahad!”5
I heard voices. One smooth, the other hoarse. One young, the other old. The younger was asking:
“What do we do about the chief of police?”
“We need him. Don’t get him involved. Let the mayor handle it. The gendarmerie, too. Tell the prosecutor, we don’t need anyone implicated in this.”
“They’ve sent in journalists from all over. The entire lawn is filled with cameras … We have to make a statement.”
“Just say that an inquiry is under way and get on with it. Try to focus more on the kid instead. They won’t touch the rest with him in the picture. All that time, without food or water … a miracle. That’s what you say. Say it’s God’s miracle. Give their faith a kick.”
I opened my eye
s slightly, and from what I could see between my eyelashes, I was in a hospital room. There was an IV in my right arm. I counted four fat drops falling out of a glass bottle into a small, transparent box and from there into a slim pipe to mix into my blood. Then I turned my head in the direction of the voices and saw, through an open door, into the neighboring room. The owner of the elderly voice sat on the bed while his younger counterpart stood by. I could also see their faces. And I knew I’d seen them somewhere. I shut my eyes again just as the one standing turned his head to look at me. I let my eyelids drop and looked into the darkness and the photo that developed there. I’d figured out who they were: the governor and his errand boy … as sure as I was that I didn’t resemble anyone that could hear, lying there, they lowered their voices and started to whisper. I could no longer hear them.
I once again watched them with my eyes open a sliver, just enough that my eyelashes were still touching, when I felt that something was off. The old man and the young man seemed to have switched places. As if they’d traded identities. The errand boy had become the governor and the governor was committing orders to memory just as though he were an errand boy … but I remembered them both so clearly. I even remembered their exact stances, and even who was looking at whom, in that picture in the newspaper From Kandalı to the World. Yet what I was looking at from that hospital bed was telling me the exact opposite. Was it possible that I was this confused? I didn’t think so. Still it was enough to make me doubt everything I knew.
The young man stooped in front of the old one, nodding as he listened. Was it possible that I was misremembering my whole life? Even worse than that, did I seem to have everything backward inside my head? Could there be a world in which the errand boy was really the governor? If there were, did that mean Ender was Yadigar’s father? Or was it me who was Ahad? My heart picked up speed as I started to sweat.
It can’t be, I said to myself. I can’t be this far gone! But what if it is? No, no! I told myself I remembered correctly. I was just about to persuade myself when I saw the young man whom I knew to be the governor kiss the old man’s hand. There wasn’t a bayram6 coming up anytime soon. I was sure it wasn’t the morning of one, either. I no longer had any cause for doubt. Spending 317 hours in that hellhole had caused me to lose my mind. I started to weep. To scream … I started to swing my head this way and that and into whatever I could. A nurse, then an aide, came running. One held my shoulder while the other gave me a shot. Everything went dark as my voice went silent. I still didn’t stop screaming. Inside the darkness that enveloped me, I screamed and threw myself against walls, but everyone thought I was asleep.