Ziya smiled faintly.
Before Binnaz Hanım could launch into another monologue, he jumped to his feet. Scooping up the key from the table that stood between them, he went a few steps closer and stretched out his hand.
A smile spread across Binnaz Hanım’s face.
Catching a glimpse of the city in her eyes, he shivered.
‘I’d better be off,’ he said. ‘Let me say my goodbyes.’
‘You’re leaving the city, aren’t you?’ Binnaz Hanım now said. ‘You’re going far away.’
‘How do you know that?’ Ziya gasped.
‘I know,’ said Binnaz Hanım, ‘I know, yes. Actually, I know everything about my tenants. If I’m going to wander around an apartment building as big as this one, filled with scores of families and a few single men and women too – well, I need to have all the facts at my fingertips. If I didn’t, God forbid, I’d lose the thread. Just because the people in this place step outside to face the world in clean, ironed clothes, swinging their fine handbags, and glittering with jewellery, just because they greet each other so nicely and smile and chatter so sweetly, don’t you think for a moment they are as they seem. Behind each civilised façade you’ll find lives of a different order. You’ll find lives that are foul smelling and loveless, lives that decay a little bit more each day until they fall from the mortice. Some load their possessions on to trucks, you know. Vanish into the night without paying the rent; others run off with their neighbours’ money, jewellery and credit cards. Some turn out to be child molesters, hunting darkly for fresh prey. Some use their apartments as drug depots, some get carted off to the police station once a week. Dragged off by their arms and legs, though who knows why, and these are only the things that happen in broad daylight. Behind closed doors, there are worse things going on. Unspeakable things. Deeds so awful that I can only hope they remain between me and the archives of the state. The long and the short of it is that – whichever way you look at it – I need to know everything my tenants are up to. As you can see, there is no other option . . . And it’s no small thing – it costs me serious money and effort, of course. All the information I acquire, I store with great care in confidential dossiers, over in the corner. The only person but me who ever sees them is my little gazelle here. She helps me compile them, and – as she’s so young and inexperienced – the whole thing leaves her in a constant state of shock. That most amiable and genteel of gentlemen; that loveliest of old ladies, whose eyes are brimming with tears; that creature so chaste and so morally upstanding that you cannot imagine him leaving so much as a speck of ash on a barbecue; that delicate youth; and that old man whose soft heart breaks at the sight of a wounded kitten – oh yes, they all shock her, when she sees the tricks they’re up to. The word shock doesn’t begin to describe it – what she sees in these dossiers shakes the very foundations of her heart and mind. Sometimes she’ll put one file down on her lap and stare into the distance, as her face goes pale; sometimes, when she’s listening to a recording, she has to press the button to stop the tape, and then she paces the room, wild-eyed with terror, and as she flutters this way and that she lets out that odd cry of hers. “Hiiii! Hiiii!” I cannot begin to describe how this saddens me. More than that, I’m worried that my girl will lose all faith in life itself, and all because of what she now knows. Yes, that’s what I’m most afraid of, but however much I think about it, I cannot imagine any other way. If my little gazelle here didn’t help me, I could never get it all filed – not by myself, anyway. Not at my age, in my condition. It simply wouldn’t be possible. And nowhere on earth could I find another girl like her – a girl who knows how to keep her mouth shut. In any event, I’ve known for months from your dossier that you were going to leave the city. As I knew you wouldn’t leave without paying, I didn’t see the need to undertake a detailed investigation. As I’ve already said, you’ve had enough of the hustle and bustle of the city, and now you’re going far away, to bask in the joys of nature. A place where you can hear your own heartbeat, touch the leaves, the insects, the grass and the stones. Isn’t that what your heart desires?’
‘It is, but it’s very strange,’ said Ziya, looking puzzled. ‘It’s not possible that you know all this.’
Binnaz Hanım said nothing. As she rose from her chair she became a ghost again, a jowly, troubled ghost whose eyes never blinked as they stared into the distance.
‘You can’t possibly know that,’ Ziya repeated. ‘I’ve only told one friend where I’m going, and he lives on the other side of the city. Really, how do you know all this?’
‘We live in an era, Ziya Bey, where this should not surprise us,’ Binnaz Hanım said, raising up her hands.
In a softer voice, she added, ‘And then, if you talk to yourself about it afterwards, it’s child’s play. Pure child’s play.’
For a moment, Ziya stood there, stunned.
Then he turned to head for the door.
Binnaz Hanım followed close behind.
One after the other, they entered the narrow, gloomy anteroom. No sooner had he set foot inside than Ziya heard paper rustling on the other side of the wall. Unable to stop himself, he turned to Binnaz Hanım. ‘That’s paper rustling, isn’t it?’
‘That hard-working girl of mine must be seeing to the new dossiers,’ said Binnaz Hanım.
They continued into the corridor whose walls were lined with green tapestries. It seemed, as they walked through it (Ziya first and Binnaz Hanım close behind), as if it might never end, until they reached the door.
‘You’re going there to pray, if you ask me,’ she said by way of farewell. ‘Really, that’s all I can think. To go far away and live in harmony with nature, to witness it, and to breathe that air – to my mind, that’s praying. I don’t know what you think, naturally.’
‘You may be right. All right, then. Goodbye,’ Ziya said, fearing the conversation might continue. ‘Good day.’
‘Goodbye,’ said Binnaz Hanım. ‘But don’t forget – he who wishes to pray should also carry a stone to throw.’
Ziya heard her, but instead of answering, he walked quickly towards the lift. As he walked, he felt he could see all the apartment block’s brown steel doors, all the plastic flowers adorning them, and the walls, the banisters, the doormats. He thought he could see Binnaz Hanım, though she had closed the door by now to pace the depths of her apartment. He thought he could see the city, and the foul smells arising from its depths. Then suddenly he saw Binnaz Hanım’s maid. Or rather, the girl stepped out of the lift with a handbag on her shoulder. Lifting her head, she peered up at him coyly through those wisps of hair. And then she moved on, without saying a word, leaving only a lovely scent in her wake.
Ziya made to turn his head to watch her go, but for some reason his head wouldn’t turn. And neither could he stop moving. It was, he thought, as if he’d surrendered to his own pace. It was a very strange breeze, he thought, sweeping him down the corridor. In no time he had reached the lift. He opened the door to step inside. But there was no inside. With terrifying speed, he went tumbling into nothingness. Into night without end.
2
The Dream
When he opened his eyes, it was darkness all around him, and his heart was pounding so fast as to burst from his chest. At first he struggled to understand where he was. He tried, between heartbeats, to stare out into the night. But now he noticed that his head was resting on a pillow. That calmed him down. He pulled himself up slowly, until he was sitting, drenched in sweat, feet dangling on the edge of his bed.
The air began to cool.
Feeling its caress on his skin, Ziya’s first thought was to stand up, get dressed, wash his hands and face. But he couldn’t get his body to obey him. There was still that strange weight pressing down on him, just like in the dream. And that was why he just sat there for about ten or fifteen minutes, head bowed, and perfectly still. Then he thought about the dream he’d just come out of. He thought about Binnaz Hanım, and what she’d said. And though he
could still hear the flow of her lament, he found his way through her words, and then a little way beyond them, to think about Kader, about the bookshop where he and Kader had spent so many long days, and about the small town where he’d spent his childhood. He imagined himself on a bicycle festooned with pinwheels and brightly coloured banners, and nylon ribbons flying in the wind. But while he was pedalling through the streets of his childhood, his mind slipped away, very suddenly, to the Syrian border. And then, just as suddenly, a shaft of light slipped in, and all at once there was the scent of oranges. The crunch of pomegranates. And there, stretched out before him, was an endless expanse of sun-scorched earth. Hill after parched hill, parading before his eyes. On each was a prefabricated guardhouse. Long tangles of barbed wire. Black-mouthed trenches. And watchtowers, screaming with rust as they stretched up into the sky. Knowing what he would find there, Ziya tried to turn his thoughts to something else, but it didn’t work. The Syrian border would not budge, not by a single millimetre. That field at the far edge of the Harran Plain swooped in so fast as to strike at the very heart of darkness, glowing yellow, restless and stripped bare. In its wake came the ribbons of red smoke, and the hum that turned into a roar, and the torrent of images, flowing fast and faster, but making no sense. The honking horns of the city he could now see: the hulking nightmare sitting at the edge of the minefield, sparkling with lies. And then, as if that weren’t enough, the bird from the dream flew in from who knows where. And just like in the dream it flapped about furiously, as if to take in its surroundings, lighting on the tip of a watchtower and peering down, as if to inspect it more closely, whereupon the bird began to drift gently through the scent of oranges into Ziya’s mind, but only for a moment. Only until the bird had settled on the roof of a guardhouse.
The bird fixed its beady eyes on the gravestones just beneath. It ruffled its wings, whirring like an aeroplane, but never taking off. Instead it settled itself in, and, pulling in its neck, began to coo. Over and over, hoarse and shrill, it called out to Syria, and Ziya could just about see the waves of sound, rippling outwards like smoke. It was almost as if this bird was saying something to these lands rendered alien by barbed wire. Or maybe it was just a sound, travelling from one side to the other. But now the bird was slowly turning towards the soldiers drawing water from the well in front of the guardhouse. None of the soldiers around the well had noticed the bird yet. They did not speak as they lowered the bucket, filled the bucket in the din of croaking frogs, and brought the bucket up again, poured the water into twenty-kilo canisters, and climbed down off the concrete platform to walk wearily into the distance in single file. They didn’t just look weary, these soldiers: they looked vacant, and painfully so. They were drained of all life. As if their souls were elsewhere, as if their bodies were passing the guardhouse of their own accord. As they went on their way, they tilted ever more precariously in the direction of their cannisters, and this gave them a curious sort of shuffle. Because of this shuffle, their clapped-out combat boots left little clouds of dust like baby’s breath in their wake.
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