“Okay.”
“Four?”
“No.”
“I can do it on paper. We don’t learn to take away the big numbers until second grade, I think. Right, Ali?”
That night we went to Samim Abi’s house. Ali wanted to go out on the terrace this time. He sat next to Samim Abi and kept looking at him. “I need to understand something,” he’d told me. He’s going to tell me later what it is. He’s got something hidden in his pocket, and he’s going to tell me about that, too. But later. Samim Abi is talking to Dad.
“Comăneci’s really letting us down this year. It looks like she’ll have to share some gold medals with the Russians. Here in Turkey, they’ll blame her performance on Socialism, of course.”
“Nothing gets them as excited as the end of Socialism. Have you seen the headlines about Poland? They’re thrilled there’s a labor strike going on in a socialist country.”
“Yet not a word about all the strikes right here in Turkey.”
“Exactly. Hürriyet put it right on the front page: ‘Labor Unrest Grips Poland.’”
“You should see the cartoon in this week’s Gırgır. A union leader says, ‘We’re holding our next strike in Poland so we can make the news.’”
Dad and Samim Abi are laughing a lot tonight.
—
Hüseyin Abi left his Ibelo here, so maybe he’s friends with Samim Abi. They both tug on their mustaches when they listen. And when Samim Abi stops talking, his eyes look like Hüseyin’s. I’m watching him, but I’m trying to listen to Ayşe’s mom and Ayla Abla, too. They’re looking at the newspaper and being serious.
“It’s the most amazing photo. It almost looks she’s posing.”
“That’s no pose, Sevgi Abla. All I can say is, good for her! Pulling out a gun and stopping traffic right in the middle of Istanbul. That takes guts. We’ve reached a fork in the road. From now on—”
“For goodness sake, Ayla! How many times have we said that? A fork in the road, indeed!”
“This time is different. It’s going to get rocky. Everyone knows a coup’s on the way. Some are going to bend, others are going to fight back. There are two camps. It’s reached the point where you have to choose one or the other.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Ayla. Mind if I use the bathroom?”
“Give me a second, would you? Let me check first.”
—
That’s what happens when you’re a guest. They want to check the bathroom, so they make you wait in the hallway the first time you need to pee. And that’s why, when I followed Mom, I heard her yell to Ayla Abla.
“It looks like you still haven’t opened up that spare room.”
“Mom, it is too. It is open. Right, Ayla Abla?”
Mom looked at me. And then Ayla Abla came out of the bathroom and looked at me. It was such a weird look that I ran back to the terrace.
Ayla Abla talked all night. Mom didn’t say anything. Dad kept looking at Mom; Ali kept looking at Samim Abi. Maybe Ali got scared. I saw him stick his hand in his pocket and play with his strings.
—
Samim Abi pats me on the head and pulls me against his leg just like Hüseyin Abi. I can tell he’s one of us. The others don’t know it, but I do. Maybe Samim Abi knows I’m one of us, too. I stuck my hand in my pocket and flicked the lighter, click click, so he’d know. He didn’t hear it. He was talking to Ayşe’s dad.
“Aydın Abi, did you read that column in Tercüman by … now what was his name?”
“First the detective, now you! I don’t understand how you can stomach those papers.”
“All the papers are delivered to us at TRT. And I think we should know what the other side is saying. Anyway, this columnist wrote that Kemal Türker was a Marxist, so it would be a sin to perform prayers at his funeral. Go figure!”
“Ugh! Some things never change. I remember what a friend of mine, a law student, did. Erol was his name. Erol Abi.”
“What happened?”
“The body of an activist was delivered to Erol’s home village for burial. It was summer, and Erol was there. Well, can you guess what happened? The local imam starts muttering about how he won’t lead the funeral prayers for a ‘godless anarchist.’ Erol looked at the imam and said, ‘Get out of the way. I’ll do it.’ Nobody thought he’d be able to, but he did.”
“Why can’t we come up with our own funeral rites, something for revolutionaries?”
Samim Abi patted me on the head. “I hear you and Ayşe are going to the Memorial Tomb tomorrow.” I didn’t say anything, but I clicked the lighter a couple of times. Why can’t he hear it? I don’t want to do it too loud. Because it’s only for him. “If Atatürk had worked something out with Lenin back during the War of Liberation, nudged us a bit closer to Russia, we wouldn’t be in such deep shit today. Ali, I want you to say something for me when you’re standing in front of Atatürk’s tomb, a message from your Samim Abi. Tell Mustafa Kemal: ‘Samam Abi sends his respects, but you left the job unfinished!’”
I stopped clicking the lighter. Everybody was laughing too loud for Samim Abi to hear it.
—
Ali ran inside to the couch, so I followed him. Mom looked over at us and said, “We embarrassed them.” Dad said, “Sometimes I wonder how they see the world, with a child’s perspective.” Ayla Abla said, “They see it a lot more clearly than we do, I guarantee it.” Then Samim Abi said something about “the children of a country alone and apart,” but I didn’t hear it all. Later, they took us home and put us in bed. Me and Ali fell asleep on the sofa, but when we got in bed we didn’t sleep right away. We could hear the police station, and we got up and looked. A man was yelling but like he was crying. He cried and yelled for the longest time. Me and Ali listened:
“O! Turkish Youth! Your first duty is to preserve and to defend Turkish Independence and the Turkish Republic forever. This is the very foundation of your existence and your future … Youth of Turkey’s future! … You will find the strength you need in your noble blood.”
Ali got a little mad at me. He said, “I told you! Tomorrow they might ask us to say ‘Turkish Youth.’ Because Atatürk said it first, and we’re visiting him.” When I fell asleep again, the man was still yelling. Or maybe the words were stuck in my head.
—
When me and Ayşe were walking to the Memorial Tomb, our shoes kept getting in between the stones. Just like the encyclopedia said. It was worse for Ayşe’s grandma. She was wearing high heels. We kept our eyes on the ground so we didn’t fall. Everybody else was looking down, too. Ayşe brought her laugh box with her, but she dropped it. Twice. Maybe she broke it. Her grandma acted like a teacher giving us a lesson.
“Children, it was Atatürk who saved our country from the enemy. Oops! There goes my shoe again. I nearly broke the heel off that time. He and his comrades in arms liberated our nation—oh, dear. Not again. I’m surprised nobody’s twisted their ankle. I should have remembered to wear my shoes with the crepe soles. I’d forgotten how bad this road is. Why couldn’t they have a nice paved road?”
“Are Atatürk’s dead soldier friends buried here too?”
“My boy, Atatürk isn’t buried. He’s been ‘entombed.’ And no, his comrades are not here.”
“You mean Atatürk’s all alone? He shouldn’t be alone!”
“Ali, look at the lions. Would you like to climb on top of one?”
—
Me and Ali don’t want to get on top of the lions. Some other kids do, but we think the lions are spooky. They’ve got big eyes and open mouths. What if they came to life? And anyway, we want to get there, to Atatürk. It’s a long, long road, and we can’t run, not on these stones. Grandma didn’t tell us if we should be happy or sad. On November 10, we’re always sad, because Atatürk died. But on April 23, we’re always happy, because Atatürk gave us “Children’s Day.” We get to dance in stadiums and wear folk costumes and everyone says, “Atatürk will live forever in our hearts.” But today’s not Novemb
er 10 or April 23, so how should we be?
—
This is such a big place. I closed my eyes, and I was trying to figure out how many houses could fit here, when the music started. It’s not our national anthem, “Independence March.” I know almost all of that by heart. It starts: “Fear not; For the crimson banner that proudly ripples in this glorious dawn shall not fade.” This music is different, sad. Everybody stops. So do we. But nobody sings. Everybody is dressed in nice clothes, like on Bairam or Children’s Day. Here, maybe it’s National Bairam every single day. We stand there, but not like revolutionaries, like soldiers. I remember this one time at a meeting in the neighborhood. We were all standing and Hüseyin Abi was saying, “The War of Liberation was a popular uprising against imperialism. Mustafa Kemal was one of its leaders….” But there aren’t any revolutionaries here, only rich people in nice clothes. The kids aren’t from the slums. They all have clean shoes. Maybe that’s why Hüseyin Abi cleaned the mud off his shoes before he left?
—
“If only we’d got an earlier start,” Grandma says. “Now the sun’s right overhead.” We’re “standing at attention.” It goes on and on. Grandma’s sweating. She can’t get a handkerchief out of her handbag. A drop of sweat is running down her chin. Even the kids littler than me are standing still. A soldier yells, “At ease!” That means we can move and talk. We can’t move if nobody else is. They’ll think we don’t love Atatürk, and everybody loves Atatürk.
—
In front of the museum, the sun is bright and yellow. Inside, the floor is shiny, like glass. Important places always have shiny floors. The people going in look like shadows. Thin, black, quiet. It seems dark inside, in the beginning. Then you can see all the faces. There’s a big hall, and a man is talking to lots of people, all close together. The man’s excited, and he’s saying something real important. Nobody talks. They listen.
“… and Atatürk declared, ‘You can strip me of all my awards, but this silver medal I shall never return. For along with this silver medal I carry on my chest the blood of the 250,000 martyred in the Battle of Gallipoli.’”
—
I wonder where they keep the medals of the dead soldiers? The man doesn’t say anything about them. He’s talking so loud, and he’s rocking back and forth on his feet. Sometimes, when I’m reciting a poem at school, I do that too. Rock back and forth. Maybe he can’t remember all the words. And he’s sweating a lot. There was a girl who came to our class from a special home. She had white hair and white eyelashes, and when she recited “SaBuHa” this one time, she yelled like this, and her face got red and the veins came out on her neck.
—
The man’s still talking, but so is everyone else now. It’s too noisy! I took Ayşe’s hand. She’ll go anywhere if you take her hand. We ran down the big hall. Her grandma was looking at medals. We went to another place, with photos.
—
Ali held my hand. There are pictures of serious men on the wall in the hall. I can’t tell if they have good hearts or bad hearts. All of them are old. Most of them are pashas. Ali’s making me run now. There are lights on the floor in the hall, and we’re trying to catch them with our feet. Thump thump we go, on and on, the only ones running. Ali takes me to a corner with no people. I know why. It’s quiet there. “Here they are!” he whispers. He’s looking at pictures. He can read the things written under them. They’re old photos, and they’re hard to see. Small and fuzzy. And they’re of women, not men. Ali still reads them out loud to me, though.
—
“Sergeant Halime, from Kastamonu. Look Ayşe, this one is just like Gökhan’s granny. She waved a shovel at the police. Then the police hit her on the head and she fell and hit her head again, on the ground. Now, she gets all mixed up. For ‘bread’ she says ‘bird,’ and for ‘water’ she says ‘car.’ Havva and her mother, Zehra Hanım. They’re wearing black sheets on their heads, just like Nuran Abla used to do. Now she wears headscarves, and they’re never black. They’re red and yellow and green. Her husband hit her because she wore so many colors. But then, after Hüseyin Abi and Birgül Abla talked to him, he never hit her again. Now they’re revolutionaries, too. When Nuran Abla went to her first funeral the police hit her, but she didn’t cry, not once. On the bus, she even laughed. Corporal Nezahat. This one looks just like Birgül Abla. She has dark eyes and her hair sticks to her cheek, especially when she laughs. Your hair does that, too, Ayşe. Hatice Hatun, from Adana. When’s there a protest, all the women in the neighborhood do that, you know, stick out their chins and close their mouths hard. And she’s holding her rifle just like Auntie Seher did that one night. She went up on the roof for guard duty because there wasn’t a man to do it. Senem Ayşe. She’s named Ayşe too! From Maraş. Look at them! I swear it, that’s just how the big sisters from the university sit. I wonder if the women in the pictures killed anyone? The men did, because they’re pashas. But these women were helping Atatürk, too. Maybe they killed lots of enemies. Ayşe! That one looks like my mom. Doesn’t she?”
—
Ali yelled. His eyes got big. He never does that. Something happened to him. He’s talking, and I think he’s not going to stop. He can’t stop. He wants me to read this one myself. I think I can, if I go slow, but he wants me to go fast.
“Er-zu-rum-lu Ka-ra Fat-ma.”
“Well, doesn’t she? The same face, the same eyes.”
Ali’s so excited he’s jumping up and down. Or maybe he has to pee.
“They put all the revolutionaries in the corner. All together.”
He stuck his hand in his pocket and went click click.
Strings don’t click.
“What have you got in your pocket, Ali?”
“A lighter. An Ibelo lighter. It’s Hüseyin Abi’s. I wanted to give it to him, Ayşe. But he left. He’s fighting imperialism. I wish he was here. I wish he could see these pictures.”
Ali grabbed my hand. We ran toward the light. And when we were running, he yelled again.
“I didn’t think any of us were here. But we are. There are lots of us!”
—
“You children gave me such a fright. I thought I’d lost you. There will be no more running off like that. Once we’ve visited the tomb, we’re going straight home.”
—
Grandma’s heel broke off. She walks funny now. Me and Ali took her hands so we can go and see Atatürk. There are lots of lights there.
—
It’s so quiet here. Ayşe’s grandma is standing on one foot. “I can’t be expected to perch here like a magpie for much longer,” she says. “Let’s finish up and go.”
—
I asked Grandma what we were going to finish. And she said, “Perhaps we should recite al-Fatiha. But would that be appropriate?” So, when nobody said anything, I pushed the button. Ali said the laugh box was broken. But it wasn’t.
—
Ayşe’s grandma opened her mouth when the laughing started. It made me laugh. Ayşe laughed a lot. We both did. Her grandma tried to run out with us, but she can’t go fast, because of her heel.
—
We got outside. Grandma didn’t even get mad. She was scared. She thought the soldiers would get mad at her for letting us laugh. There was a soldier outside, and he didn’t move, even a teeny bit. He stood there like one of those stone lions. Then I looked up and saw it in giant letters behind him:
“Look Ali! It’s ‘O! Turkish Youth!’”
“I told you!”
“But we don’t have to say it. They wrote it in the stone. Nobody’s saying it.”
“The big brothers at the police station were saying it. You heard them. And then they got beat up because they didn’t know all the words by heart.”
The soldier’s eye moved. He was looking at Ali. We ran down the steps.
I begged Grandma to take us to Swan Park. I even cried. But she said no. “How can I go anywhere with a broken heel? We’ll go next week.” Me and Ali will wait.
When we got in the shared taxi, Ali went click click with his lighter again. “Did Hüseyin Abi give you that?” I asked him. “I found it at Samim Abi’s, but it’s Hüseyin’s,” he told me.
The other passengers were quiet mostly. Maybe because they were thinking about Atatürk. I did hear a man say to a woman that he wished the army would come and “save us.” He thought everyone needed to “fall into line” and only the army could “whip them into shape.”
Grandma sat with one shoe in her lap, trying to fix the heel. She was talking to herself, so everyone looked and smiled at her.
“It’s a bad omen! A bad omen!”
UNIT 11
The Great Turkish Nation
We Are a Compassionate People
“… and then some particles lose energy and slow before they drift outward and away from the swirling core. Detective, they form that which we call ‘order.’ They make up our buildings, our bridges, our banks, our systems, our lives, our marriages, and anything else in this world you could name!”
While Dad was talking, Detective Nahit chewed and chewed on his fingernails, and blinked and blinked. He bit his lip and said nothing. Then he spit out a piece of nail.
“Aydın Abi, I’m trying to tell you something important, but you’re blathering on about particles!”
I’m in the meyhane Dad always goes to. That’s because Mom’s taking Grandma to the doctor after work. She said she could get an appointment only in the evening, so me and Dad would have to eat out. She and Grandma handed me over to Dad in Kızılay Square. I love the meyhane. They make me meatballs and fried potatoes. And there’s this funny sign on the front door:
COME TO YOUR SENSES, AND ONLY THEN COME TO THE MEYHANE
BECOME PHILOSOPHICAL BEFORE COMING TO THIS HOUSE OF PHILOSOPHY
FOR THIS PATH IS FOR THOSE WHO HAVE PREVAILED AGAINST THEMSELVES
IF YOU ARE GREEN AND RAW, SEEK AMUSEMENT ELSEWHERE
Whenever I come here, Uncle Reşit, the meyhane man in the bowtie, always reads that sign out loud. Then everybody laughs. And that’s what they did this time, too, before they brought me meatballs and fried potatoes. Dad’s eating, but only foods you can spear with a fork and eat a little at a time, between drinks. If you’re drinking rakı, you’re not supposed to eat fast. It’s shameful. And you’re not supposed to talk loud, either. That’s why I can hardly hear Uncle Detective when he talks to Dad.
The Time of Mute Swans Page 22