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by Hakan Günday

  “You’re welcome. Two liras.”

  Both their smiles vanished.

  “Excuse me?” said the man.

  “The charge,” I said, “is two liras.”

  It was the woman’s turn to speak: “You charge for taking photos?”

  “Obviously.”

  “But you never told us!” he said.

  “You never asked,” I replied. “I thought you knew, so …”

  “How were we supposed to?” they grumbled, before the woman, not wanting such a ridiculous episode to stain their memory of the day, silenced him and thrust her hand into her bag:

  “All right, all right, whatever!”

  My treatment session seemed to be nearing its end as she dug into her sack-like bag for her wallet. As such, as the search practically stretched out over ten years all the way into a black hole, I had no idea where to hide. In the meantime the man shook his head as he probably cursed his mortgage, health insurance, education, and love for the woman—in short, all that he had—for standing in the way of his wasting a cheat like me on the spot. It was, of course, not the two liras that caused his loathing but rather my brash disregard of common courtesy that reminded him that he should trust no one. He was probably fuming about how he’d never have a moment’s peace in this world, and how everyone was lined up for the chance to screw him. In any case, we all stared at the same thing. The gaping mouth of the bag that was resolutely unwilling to wield the wallet. Then she suddenly looked up at the man. Naturally, so did I.

  “You don’t have it?”

  “No!” he said, since he couldn’t say, “No, for fuck’s sake!” And again in silence we watched the mouth of the bag. Standing there apprehensively was so embarrassing that I almost ran off at some point. But I had to endure. I’d been running for years. I wasn’t going anywhere this time. I had to calm down. I had to think of something to take me out of the moment. The lynching was the first thing to come to mind. I thought of the lynching. How good I’d felt engulfed in that crowd. The ease with which I’d touched people, fearlessly …

  “There you go!”

  The woman slapped the two liras into the palm of my hand like it was a ruler, before linking her arm with her boyfriend’s, saying, “Come on.” They walked off, quickly at first, then more slowly. I felt great watching them shrink. It wasn’t long, however, before my stomach was spinning like a drill pin. This time I was in an open enough space that I wouldn’t puke on myself. Still, out of habit, I cupped my hands. When I threw up, part of it landed on the two liras and part on the dusty paving stones of the square. Glancing around, I tried to holler but could only whisper:

  “Someone call the fire brigade!”

  I returned to the hotel and locked myself in. But that was no good. I still wasn’t safe. The attendant I’d walked past just now had greeted me in such a way that I’d known he meant, “I can go into your room any time I want!” I grabbed the chair with one short leg that betrayed me every time I sat down just like the stool in the shed, and propped it against the door. Then it dawned on me that this was no good either, since the door opened outward. There was only one remaining solution: locking myself in the bathroom.

  The cramped bathroom I’d constantly complained about since moving into the hotel, though always inwardly and never to reception, was finally to be of use. It was as big as a telephone booth, its door and three walls all within reach of the occupier. This time, however, I also noticed there was no key in the door. But I had no other choice if I wished to slow down my pulse.

  In one step I entered the bathroom and shut the door but couldn’t let go of the knob. Anyone could open it from the outside at any time. So I had one hand clutching the doorknob as though someone were trying to force it open and one hand against the mirror, not knowing where else to put it. Ten breaths later, when I was calm enough to look up, I met my own eyes. And just like I had for some time whenever I saw myself in the mirror, I started talking:

  “You want to get better? Do you really want to get better? What was it, your sickness? Inability to go out among people, is that it? Socializing, isn’t that what it’s called? Not being able to do that! Don’t you see it’s not something that’ll go away with something as stupid as you just did? You know what the real cure is? Let me tell you: socializing to the extreme! That’s the only way you can save yourself. So you have a sickness that makes you squirm like a worm in the depths of the earth, then what you do is you learn to fly! That’s the only way you can find middle ground! You have to balance your sickness! The only treatment for you is to lynch! There is no socializing on this planet more extreme than that! Are you listening? Don’t mention any of this to anyone. Now go out and find yourself a woman! Just kidding, you freak, don’t worry. Go inside and do some push-ups. Or wait, brush your teeth first. But don’t you let go of the door!”

  The lynching wouldn’t stop occupying my mind. I thought of and read about only it. As I did I became only more aware that it wasn’t just any old violent act. Lynching was more than the sum of a random multitude’s fists. It was a social fact! It was an act that had a role in social anthropology! In fact, it was formative! It was formative in the relationship between society and the individual, between the majority and the minority. It was a collective right! It was what Rousseau had referred to as direct democracy! It was everything! The American known as Charles Lynch, who made it possible to put a name to all this, was a genius! He may be remembered today as a barbarian, but the United States of America ruled the world by his law: the Law of Lynch!

  When I tired of reading, I’d train my eyes on the ceiling and contemplate … My room and I, we were inside a tiny glass sphere that the lynching had shaken up, dispatching fragments of thought off the floor. Inside the glass sphere, I watched my thoughts drift down like snow. After some time the whiteness engulfed me and a landscape emerged … a landscape at least as scientific as my article, The Power of Power.

  Ancestor of man, the first primate to stand upright had, as he did so, given himself a concussion knocking his head on the thick branch of the tree next to him. Said concussion was genetically handed down from generation to generation and had two consequences that changed the course of humanity’s history.

  First of all, a large portion of the brain was rendered useless. Therefore man, as the descendants of that primate, had to make do with the remainder of the brain. The second consequence was: fear of environment, offset by his eating of a fruit he picked off the branch of a tree, forming the backbone of human existence.

  Naturally if this primate could have carried on on four feet like other animals, it would all be different. Since getting from one point to another on four feet increased the risk of getting raped on the way, however, it had no choice but to stand. It would still have been nice if he had looked up before doing so. Anyhow, thanks to this ancestor of ours, we were either idiots or cowards. In any case we couldn’t be blamed for anything. You could even say we’d made quite a bit of progress in a sense. After all, we could finally define the common fear that was a quintessential part of our identity.

  In truth, this fear was nothing more than a self-composed mayhem scenario cultivated by experience. It needed a name and Latin was required for credibility: Bellum omnium contra omnes. The omnipresent state of war! It was the worst possible scenario. It was therefore our true source of fear! Such it was that we scrambled to defend our lives with weapons, our virtue with clothing, and our property with walls … and if possible, to be born, live, and die without being seen or caught. For omnipresent war meant an apocalypse that would spare no one, and we knew this.

  Who would stop our neighbors, whose eyes never strayed from our wives and our money? Was there any reason they wouldn’t just assault us some night? On the other hand, how were we to ignore our neighbors’ wives and money just pleading with us to claim them? Who could put an end to our envy and prevent us from declaring war on everyone, and everyone from declaring war on us?

  As it contemplated such q
uestions, testaments to the fact that it had lost none of its animal savagery despite its ability to walk upright, humankind received a holy signal: the concept of singularity.

  It was actually not that holy a signal. It basically had to do with the number of stars that gave us life. The day we realized that the sun and the moon were each a separate celestial body and that the yellow thing that brought spring was one and the same, our minds immediately overflowed with the concept of singularity, being at least as skilled in mimicry as chimpanzees.

  Ultimately we toiled to make everything singular. Because that was the right way! One god, one leader, one state, one nation … but above all, one enemy!

  Singularity was a breakthrough, a miracle. By advocating the necessity of war against a single entity, we were able to banish the possibility of omnipresent war forever.

  Yes, lynching was a kind of battle. A battle the majority pitched against the minority. A battle against the singular. Like all else, this too was summed up in Latin: Bellum omnium contra unum.

  In any case, the war against one enemy brought families together first, then tribes, and then communities. And so it was that society, the lack of which was felt until its advent, was finally created.

  So who was the one enemy that would bring all these people together? What did it matter! Who cared! In war, the enemy was nameless! The enemy was the enemy! Once you knew the enemy’s name, you might also remember that he was human too and no longer be so cool-headed about venturing into war. History was rife with soldiers who didn’t know the names of the people, organizations, or nations they fought against! When all was said and done, the name of the singular enemy didn’t matter a bit. What mattered were the rewards to be reaped from the lynching of the enemy:

  Lynching meant unity. Unity meant no chaos. If there was no chaos, there could be commerce. With commerce came progress. And if there was progress, there could be more commerce! And then more progress! We could progress ourselves to death! We hadn’t stood upright in vain after all. We were ready to take huge leaps into the future, and that was awesome!

  A society on the trail of a common enemy never manifested divergence, inner conflict, or restlessness. It was so comforting to hate the same person or thing as the neighbor and his neighbor and his neighbor and the entire population! It was so assuring people could spill blood more harmoniously than ever before. The harmonious spilling of blood was what made a society. In fact, it was testament to the advancement and peacefulness of a society.

  For these reasons, developed countries of the present were those who’d been able to singularize their enemies long ago. In this way they were able to do away with their inner conflicts and unite against the common enemy. They also did everything they could to prevent regions they’d made a habit of exploiting from reaching a similar phase. They kept such regions in a state of perpetual, all-inclusive war so they would remain weak.

  As a result regions such as the Middle East, where a lynch culture had never developed properly, surfaced. Since unity in lynching never developed, a different lynching took place on every street. If they’d been able to open their eyes, they would have seen lynching for the uniting aspect it was in their religious culture in particular. Wasn’t the unified Stoning of the Devil of thousands in Mecca a perfect example of a lynch mob? Come, whoever you are,10 come and stone the devil! All they had to do was stop warring with one another and unite against a common enemy! To stop the pointless stoning of one another and come together for the one true great lynching! Just like the developed countries! Still, the people of the Middle East did the best they could … Lynching dictators when they managed, Western diplomats when they could get their hands on one, they strove to sow the seeds of a modern nation even if only on a local level.

  In the end lynching was in humankind’s blood. By nature it was everywhere: in the family, in the neighborhood, in society, in international relations, everywhere. Dozens of nations even came together daily to declare a common enemy. Thanks to this common enemy state, they had at least one thing to agree on and settled their daily negotiations with more ease.

  I dwelled on all this and could see everything. I could see especially clearly why it was a dozen men against one person in the legal method of execution that was the firing squad. In fact now, in the words of Martin Luther King: I had a dream!

  In that dream, beings from outer space came to our planet and all the world’s nations united in alien lynching to live in peace and kinship!

  And if lynching could bring about world peace, it could definitely cure my sickness! All I had to do was switch sides. I’d felt like the one being lynched all these years! Now I’d cease being targeted by the mob and join it instead. I would cease to be the common enemy and instead become a rabid, esteemed member of the society that foamed in the exultation of hunting the common enemy down.

  All these thoughts got me so worked up that I bolted from the bed, knocking my head against the painting on the wall. It hurt but I paid it no heed. What did I have to lose except my cowardice and the tiny usable portion of my brain?

  However, looming before me almost as large as the room was a problem that needed solving. Yes, my redemption lay in lynching, but where to find it?

  According to the anchorwoman who must’ve been resurrected after death by bleach, this had been the biggest assault of its kind in years. It looked like there was no point in remaining in this city. I couldn’t wait years for another lynching to take place. I couldn’t expect to luck out the same way twice in a row. So, since the lynching wasn’t coming to me, I’d go to it. How, then? How did one catch up with a lynching before it even happened? They didn’t abide by a schedule! Or did they? Maybe they did.

  After all, I’d spent my whole life seeing various mouths on TV utter the words, “These are pre-organized acts by obscure dark forces,” in reference to the lynchings that took place in various parts of the country. If that were true, it meant that someone went around organizing lynchings as if they were concerts, setting up a whole show. So how could I get to those dark forces? Could I myself even conceivably become a dark force someday? Was there hope for me in that regard?

  First I had to make a list. The probable lynch list. I must spread out a world map and mark all the places where lynching was a probability. For that I had to study the lynch histories of nations and cities and find out if the societal conflicts that gave rise to lynchings still prevailed or not.

  The incident three days ago that had brought a city back to the Middle Ages, even if only for half an hour, was exceptional. The assault of an ex-convict was too specific a situation to be able to foresee in advance. Since I couldn’t very well keep track of the release dates of all the child rapists on Earth, the lynchings I had to concern myself with were of the political kind. The enlightening ground for all the world’s ignoramuses, the Internet, held all the information I needed.

  I spent the following week studying the political conflicts still prevalent in the world. But figuring out which one was a potential ground for a lynching was impossible. Still, something worth mentioning did take place that week when I watched this piece of news on TV: a few hundred Americans, gathered in their town’s largest avenue to welcome home soldiers returning from Afghanistan, attempted to lynch four Afghanis who wanted to protest the procession. This gave me an idea.

  Really, the person or group that was targeted in a lynching was always the most hated one. Only the tiniest spark was needed to set the lynch mob going. In the end, Americans assaulted Afghanis every day with their accusing stares, on the street, in the store, but waited for the right moment to actually try to lynch them. What I had to focus on, therefore, was hate.

  If I could figure out who hated whom, I’d also figure out where to go to lie in wait for the lynching. But it had to be hatred of a magnitude at which one took the mere existence of the other as an insult. So, who hated whom for merely existing? Why, racists and bigots, of course!

  When I researched the regions where these tw
o types of discrimination were at their most prevalent, I was presented with a most fantastic world tour. I’d struck a goldmine. The only things I needed were a passport and a few visas. I was going to be the world’s first lynch-tourism agency and customer. The world’s first lynch-tourist! It wasn’t too shabby for someone who hadn’t amounted to anything up till now. After all, just ten days ago, I’d been trying to seek solace in crushing people’s shadows. In fact, twenty-four years, five months, and thirteen days ago, I’d been crying just because I’d been born.

  A month had passed since the lynching incident, and I didn’t feel great at all. My condition had so declined that I had to write down the lines I’d have to utter throughout the day and memorize them. This way, when I said to the bellboy that brought my breakfast to the room, “Can I get another orange juice?” or the housekeeper, “You don’t have to clean the room today,” I avoided partaking in the exchange by reeling off sentences I’d committed to memory. Reciting words from heart protected me from having to make any decision during communication. It wasn’t me who spoke but rather my memory and vocal cords. Thanks to this method, I was able to feel somewhat as if I wasn’t present, which eased the pressure. When my lines were predetermined, I didn’t get flustered thinking about them and tried to exist without drawing any attention.

  It was actually quite similar to how a soldier crawls on the ground to advance under fire. In reality I’d never seen a soldier crawl except on TV. Speaking of which, due to the hotel owner’s cooperation with the district municipality, the Turkish Armed Forces showed up on my doorstep,11 but for whatever reason assumed my depravity was contagious. With a certificate of disability proving that I singlehandedly posed a threat to the entire army, I had them tell me, “Go putrefy on your own!” I was all the more assured I could crawl more discreetly than any soldier in any army in the world. In every sense of the word …