by Asli Erdogan
In the beginning, I heard a gasping, stifled outcry… It stopped abruptly. Starting again, it turned into a wail — I could barely discern words within it. Then it turned into a sharp scream that wouldn’t stop… Louder, resonant, echoing everywhere and in everything. A scream that pushed me back against the walls, into the furthest depths of darkness. With each passing moment, it felt more familiar yet no less alien, more intimate yet no less remote… As if the stones were trembling all around me, yelling, wallowing in agony. It wasn’t clear whether the voice belonged to a living being, to a human or a creature much more innocent? To a body being strangled, or to the soul itself or to the Sphinx falling into man’s abyss? The voice cuts out my heart with a dagger, hurls me to the nocturnal shores of terror, to the giant relentless waves coming from the deepest seas, destroying and drowning everything in their path and returning it back to the deepest seas.
Then, I recognized your voice, my own voice coming from you. How strange! What frightened me most was that you might cry, beg, collapse. You did none of these. As if death were some kind of overly dramatic end — a literary device kept on reserve for me. But you stood fast, suspended in the middle of a sentence where the dawn never arrives. The glow of your eyes the color of ash — the dull glow left by an extinguished star, by a cane shattered over bones, a rifle aimed at the ribcage. You lit the last candle of your strength and offered it to the break of day.
Perhaps even this stone world wouldn’t with-stand your cry much longer, your cry that swallows everyone and everything. It would crumble like a thin membrane, and, before it’s my turn, become what it has been all along: ashes and dust. Before it’s my turn… In the crashing storm confusing the earth and the sky, scattering my few remaining belongings to and fro — rags, broken syllables, letters — I had to quickly collect myself, save whatever I could, whatever was left of me. Won’t be easy. I had to grasp onto my life, roll back the years in twos and threes, like threading a spool, and find a quiet heart to hide them in. With hurried steps back, from one beginning to the next, from daybreak to sunset, from memory to memory, from stone to stone… When it’s my turn.
If I had a companion with me, I would have sown and gathered up the grains of the past, harvesting and offering them to him. I would have begged him to hold my hands, to let me rest my head on his chest and leave it there without saying a word. Won’t be easy. I would have begged, cried, collapsed. Begged him to kill me, but to refuse to let me die; I would have cried and collapsed. If only I could look into a pair of eyes in the firmament, the all-seeing, all-forgiving dome of the sky, if I could hear the beating of a pair of wings, if only the wind could blow into the quiet corners, if only a leaf or a blade of grass were to appear among the stones to convince me of life’s eternity…
Then, I recognized your voice, the voice of the nobody embodied in you. Thread by thread I weaved you from solitude, from my soul that they unraveled thread by thread, I gave you my name. Take it, please. Take this from ME. Before daybreak you will betray me three times. The first two times, you won’t even know it… Until then you will wait here resting your head on your knees, among the screams, the curses, the stifled moans, the cries. As the braids in your hair come loose one by one. It will be hard. As in the dreams of stones, the lacerated bleeding stones. Are you ready to fly? I don’t know. STRIP NAKED! Shed this body readily, your human condition wrought with shame, sorrow, pride, hope, and pain, from this vain anticipation you call my life, from all the magnificent words…
You thanked the stars, then died alone, mercilessly alone, and when the morning eclipsed the stars and your head fell in one swift motion, it was you who halted the night. You did it for all of us. You spread your wings much too early, on the first step of the stone stairs to the sky, opening one wing to the light, one to the darkness. You lit the last candle of your strength, perhaps with a smile, offering it to the dawn. In that moment, a star was reborn. You left your eyes with me so that I can see life as a miracle.
Sooner or later the night would come to an end, a dawn this world has never seen would break. Sooner or later the door would open, the litany of hours, of skies, of deserts in the skies would begin. Until then, I would be here awaiting my turn, blackened by boot scars, collapsing into a sleepless night with my head resting on my knees. I would wait for a story that has long forgotten me to come to its end… Wrapping myself in your fate, like retreating into the safety of a cocoon, I would wait for the time when I would take up the cry you left behind. The silence you left me with your last silent cry. Are you ready to fly? No, I’m not.
Who then was that voice that spoke with me, in my night? That spoke for all of us? Died for no one?
Your head had fallen. Covered in the wads of tissue they had plastered to your wounds, it was as if you had arrived at some strange blossoming. Your eyes were like two solitary stars concealed among the branches. You left them with me. I parted the branches one by one. Parted them for days and nights, for years. By the time I had finished, you were already long gone.
THE DEAD
“They killed the angel. Up there, they took him to the fifth floor…”
“On his battered body, burn marks, fingerprint bruises, bootprints…”
“I heard that he wanted it. That he even begged, pleading, Kill me, let me die.”
“He could have escaped, could have flown away if he’d wanted to. It was his choice. He came to live among us.”
“His wings were broken. Broken on the hook, they hung him on the hook again, frail as he was, just like that…”
“He snatched a guard’s rifle, I heard. But he put the barrel to his own head. He didn’t know how to shoot, anyway!”
“If he wanted, he could have flown away, he chose to stay with us…”
“But he didn’t!”
The Laughter
A. never finished his story; the rings of hell are more twisted than a human life. Days passed, seasons were born anew, but he continued to trace circles that widened and contracted in the orbit of the stone building. He walked and walked, until he collapsed to the pavement from exhaustion. On the worn pathways of his life, on its nocturnal shores… He curled into a ball before doors that remained forever closed to him, in puddles of mud and piss, shivering in the cold… He talked and talked… Regardless of time, place, of the living and unliving, laughing randomly, fitfully… Sometimes he would fall down laughing, collect himself, then start laughing again, laughing until he was seized with spasms. He couldn’t find anyone who’d listen. Perhaps the person who could hear his story, lend it meaning, complete it, was trapped forever inside the stone building. That’s why A. learned to speak with the dead, with the birds, the wind… Sometimes, I’d catch him staring intently at the trash, looking for something long lost, something he knew was lost to him, something that had left no trace even among the castoffs and scattered waste of the world. Sometimes on an avenue, in the late morning, unaware that the day had already begun for other humans, lying on the pavement in front of a pudding vendor or an ice-cream peddler, like a statue that had fallen from its pedestal, motionless, sleeping… It seemed like he wasn’t even breathing, as still as death, his fists always closed tight, as if he was hiding something, warming his last crust of bread or remnant of a dream in his palms… They would throw a bucket of water on him to wake him up and chase him away. He would return to the same avenue at night, sit in front of a glowing shop window, and turn from his view of the infinite void, of his absolute freedom to let his gaze wander among the faces of the people. Like a ship leaving the harbor with all of its lights dimmed… He would hum a melody out of the corner of his mouth while he swayed to its rhythm, gently moving his shoulders, keeping the beat with his restless fingers. This voice, rising, halting, starting up again in another key, this dance that recalls a scarecrow swaying in the wind, the crystal darkness of his eyes shining like a moonlit desert — it was all so terrible! As if the skin of life had been peeled back from end to end, revealing the muscles, viscera, bon
es. The passers-by steered well clear of him, making a wide arc, and the halo of loneliness surrounding him grew darker and more dense, rendering him more and more invisible. Sometimes, when the time was right, he would smash the windows with one kick, climb into the display case, and pose like a Santa, a sultan, or a sünnet boy all dressed up in a general’s costume, or like any mannequin he set his eyes on. He would take their clothes, wrap them around his head or neck, throw them over his back like a cloak, and rehearse like a thespian for his performance. Dignified as a prince returning from exile, he would sit on his magnificent throne among the garments and shards of glass, and begin his address to the people. As if he had finally decided to expose a secret, to put it where it belonged, in public view. His eyes blinded by the dazzling lights, he would begin that strange, formless narrative — his stark tale… A tale born of nothing — born of hungry hallucinations, the secrets of the stone, quietly closing wounds, the tale that had been erased at his birth… Not because he wanted to tell it, but because his tale had to finally take on a voice, words, a body. Then and there, among the bright colors, the soft fabrics, the flickering neon letters, the velvet curtains, the brand names: “Here, finally. They assigned me this place. In this hollowed-out world — luminous stars strewn everywhere — sweet-tempered stars —” he would say impatiently, hopelessly, knowing that he was running out of time. He would derive lofty — and unanticipated — inspiration from the mannequins, their naked bodies and fully attentive faces perfectly static, like brick walls. “One person is not enough to fill this world,” he would continue, “there is a place for everyone. Come and see it for yourselves! The window is open. But I am the leading man. Am I everyman? I’m a common hero. I’ve sucked breast milk. And, can you tell, this is my stage voice.” Then everyone would recognize A. who had crossed over the border between the seen and the unseen. A brief pause, a bewildered cry or laugh, and then he would carry on, full of disgust and pity. Weary of this cruel, primal spectacle of misery, weary of a destiny that evoked farce more than tragedy… At times, a child would watch him closely or try to imitate him, and that’s when A. would become ecstatic, prancing back and forth among the broken glass in the mud-splattered display window. “This is your favorite place, isn’t it? Your refuge!” Tracing a giant circle with his index finger, he started from his chest and then pointed to the shop-window, bringing it suddenly to life, then to the crowded streets, the distant watch towers of the city, on to the sky, his finger returning to point at his heart like a loaded gun. “I know this is your favorite place. But this is no place for humans anymore.” “He left his eyes with me!” he would suddenly scream, with all the strength he could muster. Panting as if he were choking on his own voice, as if he was trying to swallow a stone lodged in his throat. He would grab at his chest as if trying to dig out his heart, the heart that had dragged him down these desolate roads; and struggling to be heard, above all, by his heart, his voice would ring out: “Don’t be afraid, I should have told myself. Don’t be afraid, you won’t die. Be patient, all of you, I’ll die soon enough.” Suddenly, he would realize that he was too late. He was too late for consolation. His voice gradually quieted, his thoughts became confused, and his shoulders slumped as he disappeared into a hazy halo that seemed to emanate from within. But he stayed upright and resumed his tale — that nobody quite understood — caught in the eternal gaze of eyeless mannequins the color of human skin, a gaze that rendered even Time utterly vulnerable. He would address the audience using the night’s darkest words: “Who was there? Who emerged from the shadows and stood still? Who escaped, flew away with his one wing… Crimson flowers blossomed made of wads and wads of tissue, among the thick web of branches. You’d think the roots were in the earth, but they were in the sky. That’s where we all come from.” Holding a tired, bloodied heart — or perhaps a word, a breath or a wing — hidden between his palms, he would break it, like crushing lice between his fingernails. “They slit the moon in two as well, but it always comes back together.”
In his borrowed kingdom, adorned with cloaks, epaulets and price-tags, he would pace across his life, from end to end, a life that was no less strange to him than it was to his spectators. He would struggle down the stone steps of memory, venture into tunnels no one had entered for a long time, search around in deserted rooms. At times, he would drop his story, lose it and thus arrive at his final place of refuge. And then his words would become entirely unintelligible. Returning to the universe that had sent him into exile, like a deity now, in a crown made of stars of his own night, he would become once more an accomplice to the crime of existence. He would take on all the lies of heaven and earth, all the murders, all the cries whose secrets he knew, he would lay claim to reality, to everything left behind by reality. But even reality couldn’t afford to claim him. The extravagant dream that manifested itself, that no one wanted, that no one else had dreamt, would suddenly come to an end when the police arrived and dragged A. away. But he knew no fear anymore. He would resist, yell, scream, insist that he was the ‘watchman’; he would complain of thieves, the thieves who had stolen his belongings, run off with his overcoat, his voice, his heart. But soon it was only muddy traces, an intense smell, and his dark laughter that remained in the jumbled shop window.
On the days that followed, at the translucent hour of dawn, I would see A. in front of the stone building; his shoelaces missing, his face black and blue, he had turned into a thick, impenetrable forest… He was calling to the birds, murmuring his song to the wind and the dead. Searching his hands for something, he could not remember what. His empty hands that had always managed to gather up and join the broken pieces of a life scarred into two unequal halves, pieces that would fall apart again every time. A. is a long, very long poem about human life. Long, unintelligible, unbroken… Perhaps interrupted by one misplaced verse, one hasty comma. A poem that no one understands or hears, thankfully, not even A. himself.
The Stories
Surely, the man was telling the truth. He had been wronged; something that belonged to him was snatched from his hand, and he was subjected to violence for no reason. His absentmindedness, his gentle demeanor had been exploited; his trust was broken — trust in the streets he called home, in the people on the streets, even in youth as the very embodiment of innocence.
“The other one has the wallet… I am sure. I saw it with my own eyes. They ran in opposite directions.”
He tried to mask his agitation, his anger, his strong, deep voice ringing with a metallic timbre through the crowded street. “Hurry! Don’t let him get away. This is serious!” On the tall side, well-built, middle-aged, he was a good-looking man, even if he carried some extra weight. His self-confident manner, his understated, elegant suit, the personal touch evident from his scarf to his boots, everything about him made it clear that while he didn’t belong in the back alleys, he was quite at home in them.
They stood on one of those dirty, noisy, brightly lit streets that had stopped being a back alley ten years ago by virtue of connecting two avenues. From one end to the other, the street was lined with döner stands, tobacco stores, nightclubs, beer halls (packed with customers standing at the bar, silently drinking and watching either the TV or the sidewalk), and then there were the new cafeterias with women in Yemeni headscarves kneading dough in the windows.
A restless Friday-night crowd, indifferent to the rain, flowed left and right, bodies bumping into one another, making way for one another as if in a narrow hallway. Despite the blinding abundance of light, the showy, shining storefronts on every corner, despite the dazzling commotion that seized the night and hurled it away, casting it back to the sky, the street still seemed to possess a certain shadowiness. A certain odor that even the smell of freshly baked pita couldn’t squelch, an odor that signaled a darkness waiting in ambush and evoked a sense of rot and decay… An essence of extinction, native to back alleys, oozing from the manholes, potholes and cracks…