by Hakan Günday
“Deal,” I said.
He tried his luck a final time:
“Want a woman?”
Once again, I laughed … “From now on, I’m an apple, Babar. What would I do with a woman?”
“Well, there you go! I’ll get you a woman so she can bite you!”
“Forget it!” I said. “Wouldn’t want to get anyone kicked out of paradise!”
He didn’t get this either, but he laughed. This was why I liked salesmen. Life was always a breeze with them and not everything had to mean something. Right then I thought of all the people who cashed in their lives like poker chips for a chance to get into heaven. “Let them all wear down the gates to heaven,” I thought. Personally I wouldn’t go somewhere I was kicked out of. Ever! I wasn’t that audacious. Not that audacious! Not anymore …
We’d arrived at the hotel. The hotel, owned by one of Babar’s countless fake uncles, was so decrepit it was leaning against the buildings on either side to stay upright. Babar, however, saw something else:
“What d’you think? Like a palace, isn’t it?”
It was my turn to pretend I understood. It was the least I could do. Along with Babar, I beheld the palace that wasn’t there.
“Yes!” I said. “An absolute palace!”
The place all those people had come from, passing through the reservoir in Kandalı to get to the West, that was where I was now: the East. In the Peshawar region on the Afghanistan border, the Pakistani army clashed with the Taliban, the blood of the casualties spilling into the Bara River. Bara went on to spill into the Kabul, which went on to dry out on its way to other rivers. Then whatever was left of the desert spilled into the Indian Ocean. Considering how many of the world’s battlefields were situated next to rivers, the oceans must be filled with fish that fed on human blood. And I sat on the lawn of my hotel and fed on one of them.
The truck Babar arranged for me was due any minute. I was trying to replenish myself before the long journey ahead. Even the migrating birds had changed their route due to the smoke billowing out of Peshawar. So we would pass through the border at a point farther south to head toward Kandahar. There would be no apples in the bed of the truck … just me and some artillery … according to Babar, several crates of Kalashnikov rifles awaited their owners in Afghanistan. They must be giddy with anticipation. I was sure they were eager as children, waiting for the moment they would get to pick up their Kalashnikovs and fire at everything that moved. After all, a Kalashnikov was never merely a Kalashnikov!
First of all, it was a component of the Mozambique flag since 1983. For a weapon, being featured in a country flag was quite an accomplishment. But then there was also this: so many nations in recent history had been manufactured in labs by the United Kingdom, the USA and at one time the USSR, that I imagined coming up with a unique flag for each one must have posed a problem in itself. In fact, I was also sure that these three nation manufacturers had established Flag Design Departments for Nations Designed and filled them with graphic designers. Drawing lines on a map didn’t a nation make! You also had to sit around to produce common history and culture as its glue. And design a flag based on it! All that took labor. And when it was Mozambique’s turn, due to work overload, the designers had had an eclipse in creativity and drawn out the first flag that came to their minds, ending the matter … Yes, there was also this possibility! Could Pakistan’s flag have come out of one of those departments as well? After all, I was in a country that hadn’t existed until yesterday. A land known as India … Really, the situation was quite simple: this was a place people were snatched up and knocked into one another like eggs. This was where The World Egg Wars were held. That was the reason for the overpowering stink! For rotten eggs smelled like blood. Or that was just my olfactory hallucination …
Half an hour later, a murderer walked onto the hotel’s lawn. It was the first time I saw him, of course, but his murders were manifest even in his gait. He looked like Yadigar. Our eyes met.
“Babar?” I said.
“Babar!” he said.
Taking along four bottles of water from the hotel, I followed the murderer. He took me to the truck Babar had referred to as “a palace!” I did lay eyes on one this time. There was a palace among the hundreds of inscriptions and images painted on the vault in oils. The picture of a palace …
Despite expecting to go inside the vault, the murderer indicated for me to sit next to him. I’d paid Babar double what he asked. Perhaps that was what earned me the privilege of traveling first class! I opened the door of the truck, which was the same brand as Ahad’s but a much older model, and climbed in. As a child I used to open both doors of our truck and stand in front of it to look. It resembled the face of a giant. A face with doors for ears … Now I rode the face of another giant, onward.
The roads were so bad that a drive of four hours became eight before we arrived at the city of Multan. The murderer and I didn’t speak once the entire way there. We entered the city at nighttime and pulled into a gas station. Actually it was more of a shack than a gas station, ready to scoot off and hunker down elsewhere at any moment. In front was a gas pump. Since we hadn’t stopped at any of the more convincing gas stations we’d passed by many times on the way, we must be somewhere with utmost geopolitical significance!
Turning to me, the murderer inclined his head slightly and cupped his cheek with his hand. “We sleep here,” he meant to say.
I nodded. But even as I was trying to figure out where we were supposed to sleep, he had the tailgate down, beckoning to me.
So I spent the night sleeping in the bed of a truck, in between crates full of Kalashnikov rifles, with a murderer. At first I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep, but then I dwelled on it until I nodded off.
I dreamed that there was an earthquake and a hand roamed over my face. A small hand …
That kind of touch would normally make me nauseated, but I felt nothing. No ache bombs went off on various points in my body, nor did my pulse quicken.
“Just a dream, sadly,” I said and opened my eyes. I laughed. For the owner of the roaming hand stood right beside me and stared at me with huge eyes. It was a child around five. A boy with a shaved head … He had one hand on my brow and the other over my mouth. Right then I also knew the reason for the earthquake in my dream. We were in motion. I’d been sleeping so deeply I hadn’t been aware of anything! When in fact people surrounded me and we were already on our way! That makeshift gas station really was a stop after all! A stop for collecting people … The women and men sitting on the Kalashnikov crates watched me, the bumpy road making them rattle. Who knows for how long? I sat up quickly. Smiled. Very few of them returned it. So, who were these people? Were we going to Afghanistan together? Seemed like it. My business there was evident but where were these people going? Right then I thought of the seasonal workers in Kandalı. “Maybe they’re going to find work,” I thought. After all, someone had to work in the opium fields that wielded the harvest anticipated eagerly by the whole world! These people right here must be that someone …
Unlike ours, the vault of the truck was open. That is to say, a tarp stretched over iron arches fixed on either side covered the top. I could see the road over the tailgate. The tarp that was supposed to go over that part hadn’t been drawn down for the moment. We were apparently legal in the region we were currently in. There was no need to hide.
I noticed that we diverged from the main road. A while later we were making way over a flat plain with just a pair of tire tracks for a road. About a half hour passed before I glimpsed cottages made of stones and dirt. We must have entered a village. Several children that appeared to materialize out of nowhere started to chase us. The truck slowed down, and the fastest of the children grabbed the chain hanging off the tailgate and hoisted himself up. The boy, ten years old at most, found his footing some place on the outside the truck and braced himself by putting his arms over the tailgate. Stuck to the lumbering truck like a barnacle, he grinned at us,
displaying the four teeth in his mouth. I might have been the only one who grinned back at him. The others didn’t really care. The truck stopped.
I heard the murderer’s door open and close. Then he came and shooed away the child that still clung to the tailgate. The boy quickly vanished behind it, grinning even as he ran. The murderer slid open the latches on either side to lower the tailgate and our eyes met. He acknowledged me with a nod, then turned and yelled. From where I was, I couldn’t see who he was calling to. A few minutes later, however, I saw and understood all …
A woman and man approached the truck. They were both young. Then all of a sudden dozens of people were surging around them. Perhaps the entire village … they kissed and hugged everyone. The elderly cried, the children laughed and cavorted. I couldn’t make sense of it at first but then it hit me like lightning. They were making farewells in such a way that I knew they would never see one another again. The people around me weren’t going to Afghanistan to work but much farther away. I could see now! I was among the embarkers, at the point from which they embarked. I was at the beginning of the road! I was at the start point of the great journey starting in Pakistan and ending heaven-knows-where in Europe. It was all unfolding right in front of my eyes. I was in the place that the people—who we had picked up from the sixteen-wheeler in Derçisu, held in the reservoir, and handed over to the boats—had left for a better life.
I stood and took the young woman’s hand to help her onto the truck bed. Then I took the man’s hand and hoisted him up … They were both crying. They also knew. They were aware they had no idea what the future held. They were taking the first steps toward darkness on a day like this, when the sun was so bright it practically lit up the insides of our mouths. Then I looked at their hands. At the small bags they held. I hadn’t noticed until then. The others also had small bags next to them, slouching this way and that. One middle-aged, bearded man only had a plastic bag … He was embarking on the trip of a lifetime with only a plastic bag … a plastic bag would suffice to begin everything over … Perhaps it held some food and when that was over, the bag would disappear too. He’d go wherever he was going with nothing. Without a thing to his name. He’d take only himself. And whatever remained on his mind … Waving off the young couple, men watched quietly while women sang a keening song in unison. It sounded like keening since both the singers and the audience were weeping. They must all be related. Their faces were nearly identical. Especially the kids. None had more than four teeth in their mouths.
The truck started up like an insult to their moment of farewell. It moved forward slowly. The elderly took a couple of steps and stopped, the middle-aged walked and then ran a bit, and the young trailed us as for as long as they could, waving. Once again the children were last to give up the chase … The young couple clung to the tailgate and waved for as long as they could before turning to us and sinking to the ground. They leaned against the tailgate and pulled their knees to their chests. All that remained was the insult of a rumbling engine and the sighs of the young woman and man …
Just then I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned my head and saw the little boy that had woken me up. Picking him up by the underarms so his little feet sailed in the air, I put him in my lap. Or he would have fallen … then I said:
“I’m sorry …”
Turning my head right and left, I tried to look each of the people in the face. They didn’t understand. I tried again.
“Forgive me.”
Then again …
“Forgive me for the awful things I did!”
And an apple bobbed in my sight. I turned and looked in the direction it came from. At who held it … It was plastic bag man. The man who was going to the other side of the world with just a plastic bag … he had an apple in his other hand too. He smiled. He must have assumed I was asking for food they could spare. I took the apple and bit. Then I gave it to the boy in my lap. At the same time it dawned on me that there really was a crate of apples among the Kalashnikovs. Not to transport, but to give to the immigrants as provisions … like the cheese and tomato sandwiches I had once prepared …
The boy and I bit into the apple alternately … taking turns. I sat in the center of the vault. I glanced around. Everyone held an apple. They were either biting or chewing. Except for the young couple that had freshly joined us … they were trying to get used to forgetting. They grieved for what they’d abandoned …
I turned to the man who’d handed me the apple. “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you for forgiving me.”
Not comprehending, he smiled. I tried again.
“I’m so glad you never knew me!”
Then again …
“I’m so glad you never set foot in my reservoir!”
And a smack landed on my cheek! A quick and tiny smack, delivered from a small hand. I’d neglected to hand the apple in my hand to the boy. It was his turn and he couldn’t wait! The smack and my consequent widened eyes and raised eyebrows had everyone laughing. At the top of their lungs! I laughed too. Even the young couple sitting across from me cracked a smile … Only the boy didn’t laugh, because his mouth was filled with apple. He’d delivered my punishment. He’d smacked me in the name of all the people whose lives I’d ruined and that was the end of it. Now the same hand trailed over the bruised veins in my arms. Making it better wherever he touched. I held a child shaman in my lap! From Islamabad to Kabul, spiritual guide to all smugglers! A child who knew and could do anything! I thought of Maxime. The French journalist … then I kissed the boy’s hand. Just like one ought to do upon meeting a little shaman …
We spent the night in a definitive void. In a field surrounded by stars reaching all the way down to the earth to light up the horizon on all four sides … It was as straight as if ironed flat by the daytime heat, as silent as if frozen by the nighttime chill.
We tried to sleep. There were some who succeeded. Others blinked in the darkness like flickering flames until daybreak. I was one of them. The little boy was curled up in his mother’s lap like a puppy, dreaming of goodness knows what …
Toward daybreak, I got off the truck and took a walk. Then I sprawled on the ground to watch the sun appear and the stars vanish. The sun that came up was so enormous it wasn’t like any I’d ever seen. Maybe it was a vagabond sun randomly dropping by on its way past the earth. A never before seen sun, a painter … It dawned for just us that morning and painted the sky purple first, then red. Once it was clear of the horizon and wholly visible, all that was left was the yellow earth reaching out in every direction and the pale blue of day. I thought of Cuma … then of myself … then I stood and returned to the truck sitting in the middle of the emptiness.
When I got to the vault, I saw that the sound sleepers and the wide-eyed ones had switched places. It was others’ turn to sleep. The remaining looked around with yawning eyelids. Now awake, the little boy chewed on a biscuit he was clutching. I met his mother’s eyes. I smiled. Surely she smiled back though I wasn’t able to see. Her face was covered with a black veil, leaving only her eyes exposed. The thieves who had said open sesame! in their fables said cover up, woman! in real life. We were in such a region of the world that each man thought he was Ali Baba, believing everyone else to be the forty thieves. Being told over and over had made the tale reality.
The murderer, who always looked alert despite the fact that there was no telling if he was able to get some shut-eye, said a few words to those with me and brought the tarp down over the tailgate. This created a curtain between the sun and us. Yet the vagabond sun persisted in leaking through the rips in the rough cloth to blind us.
The truck started up and we moved. Slowly at first … then, we picked up speed like a marathon runner coming into his rhythm. It was so jangly that I was sure we were traveling on a nonexistent road. We must be getting close to the border. In a blink I’d enter Cuma’s country …
“Not much left,” I said. “I’m coming!”
Then a gunshot rang out. Then anoth
er! And another! The people around me started screaming and the truck accelerated even more. We didn’t know who held those guns, but we were clearly in their crosshairs. Finally a bullet ripped through the tarp. By a gigantic stroke of luck, however, it didn’t hit anyone and left through another hole it opened in the tarp. Two more beams of light spilled into the vault. I sat up hastily and started shoving everyone I could get my hands on flat on the ground. The others, who’d been frozen in place, thus came to life and started sprawling. I knocked over two women and one man at a loss for what to do other than scream and pray, and no more people remained in the vault that were upright. Then I darted between two crates of weapons and tried to make myself as small as possible. We were now piled on top of one another and rocking as though in a cradle. The gunfire increased. I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. Either the bullets were being unloaded from a high spot overlooking the area or, worse, vehicles whose engines we couldn’t hear over the noise were trailing us. I sensed that we were slowing down. Was the murderer shot? But that would’ve sent the wheel careening and at that speed we would definitely have tipped or turned over! Finally we slowed down and stopped altogether. The gunfire ceased at once. I crawled to the tailgate and cracked the tarp open to peek out. I saw two pickup trucks. With armed men in their beds …
I heard the murderer’s door open and close hastily. He must’ve gotten out of the truck. Indeed, he entered my field of vision a few seconds later and faced the men he’d failed to outrun and lose. One of them got off the truck and started talking with the murderer. A few words were exchanged, and the murderer turned and walked toward us. Our eyes met as he unlatched the bolt near me. Hearing the sound of the bolts being opened, the people around me that had fallen silent when the truck stopped started yelling again. They didn’t want to confront the armed men. However, it was too late. The tailgate was down and the tarp had been raised. Everyone was in plain sight now. The murderer gestured for us to get out.