And this was why the extra hundred bullets that they included in their statement that day was not enough to meet the deficit at Seyrantepe Station. So from time to time, in an arrangement with the other stations in the area, they put flash suppressors down a few barrels to make those rifles sound like Kalashnikovs, and in the space of three weeks, they staged two fake skirmishes, claiming afterwards that it was thanks to their quick response that they had been able to drive back a group of smugglers who had been trying to sneak across the border with their horses, and when they went back to the station to make their statements, they claimed to have used far more bullets than could fit into a pouch.
Because they were new, the sergeant took Kenan and Ziya aside to issue a stern warning. ‘If you say a word about this to anyone, I’ll make sure you suffer,’ he said.
They both promised to say nothing.
They were, in any event, living in a daze, out there on the border, and in no shape to think about such things. Kenan was having nightmares, every time he lay down to sleep. He would wake up in a sweat at noon each day, and sit up on his bunk to scratch himself, and then he would tiptoe over to the door, trying not to wake anyone as he went, and then he would flit outside, like a shadow. Ziya would find him sitting under the almond tree, next to the graves, his face all screwed up and on the verge of tears. And then he would crouch down gently on the grass next to him, of course, and the two of them would stay there for a long time, gazing out at the border and the railroad and the lands of Syria beyond it. Sometimes, when they were sitting out there, they’d see the battered carriages of the Toros Express rolling down the tracks, and it was almost as if it was afraid to break the hush reigning over that border, because it wouldn’t sound its whistle even once, as it slithered across the earth like a dusty old snake towards Ceylanpınar or Gaziantep. As it faded into the skyline, the silence it left behind was hard to bear, and so, too, was the naked earth that filled it. And that was when Kenan would go pale, and let his shoulders sink a little lower. And he would get up suddenly, and leave Ziya where he was, and go behind the station to write his fiancée a letter. Or he would stay where he was, and take a deep breath, and say, ‘This really is the land that God fucked over. Just look at it. We don’t even have a little shop where we can go to buy matches.’
Sometimes, after looking long and hard at the dryness of the earth surrounding them, Kenan would begin to tell Ziya how beautiful his village was. For instance, one day he talked about the red-pine forest that wrapped itself around the village, while its depths throbbed and thundered. Another time, he spoke of the scent of thyme that floated down the slopes to lap against the courtyard gates. He spoke of the crystal-clear springs and brooks that wound through the forest, bubbling gently as they went. He spoke of the vineyards, and the orchards, and all the different types of fruit you could find in them, and the clacking grouse, and everywhere you looked, there were beds and beds of fragrant flowers, sparkling all the colours of the rainbow. He described all this in such detail, and with such pleasure, that Ziya could almost see Kenan’s village, there before his eyes. This cheered them both. Even the light in their eyes would change, and their expressions, too: you could see in them the lively intensity that only the hopeful can enjoy. But as soon as they stopped talking about that village, the joy would drain from their faces. And that was when Kenan would feel worse than before; he would stand up, saying that he needed to go get more sleep. Scraping his boots against the earth like a dark and weary ghost, he would make his way back to the dormitory.
He tried not to show it, but Ziya was just as miserable, really. He walked around looking tired and spent with no idea what to do. Not every day, but every other day, he would return from guard duty in the morning and draw a bucket of water from the well, and then he’d gather up some scrub and make a fire with it, and when it was hot, he would set about trying to wash himself in that wooden outhouse. The outhouse was so narrow that there was hardly room to bend down to the bucket to scoop water with his tin can, let alone stand up. And also, whenever Ziya headed into that stinking place with his steaming bucket of water, some of the others would, without fail, need to go to the toilet urgently, and they would stand there, four or five paces away, shouting, ‘Hurry up, man, or we’ll shit our pants.’ Hearing them shout like that, and seeing them through the blackened planks, he’d have to jump back into his clothes and come out, of course. Once he’d taken a little too long to pull himself together and get out of there. Hayati of Acıpayam was one of those standing outside, writhing in his white jockey shorts; now and again he would snap their elastic, and every time he did that, his eyes would bulge as he glared furiously at the door and ground his teeth. When he saw Ziya coming out, the anger went to his voice, and without meaning to, he cried, ‘Why does it have to be every other day, every other day? What are you scrubbing in there, a cunt?’
Ziya apologised but Hayati was in too much of a rush to hear him, and even when he was inside, doing his business, he kept ranting. ‘You can’t clean things every day in conditions like this, my dear friend. There’s such a thing as common sense. Here we are, living in these jerry-built huts without bathrooms, without toilets, and what am I supposed to say to these half-witted bastards who are condemned to shaving in front of that mirror we’ve hung from the almond tree? Which of us deserves this miserable life we’re living? And anyway, I’ve been here now for thirteen months, and I’ve done time in every station in the company, and I’ve met each and every one of the men working in them, but I haven’t seen a single rich boy, or a single man who’s ever picked up a book. And if there is a single slave of God who can tell me otherwise, let him speak. Every night, we lay our lives on the line, guarding that border, and if there’s fog in the morning, we wait there until it’s cleared, and then, when they drag us back,well . . . just look at this food they give us, you’d need a thousand witnesses to find just one man who’d call it food! And then there’s our drinking water, or rather, the stale green water we have to pull from the well every day, that we share with the snakes and the frogs and the bloodsuckers and the bugs. And then there’s this place where we have to wash. Let’s face it. Not even a dog would want to wash in there! Soldiers who aren’t posted to the border – they do guard duty two hours a week, tops. And all of them, all of them, get to wash themselves in sparkling tiled bathrooms. And you can be sure they don’t have to pour water over their heads from tin cans, like we do. And what about those letters we spend so much time writing? After pouring all our dreams into them and all our desperate longing, and signing them with our secret tears, who do we give them to? The drivers! And then what do they do? Well, they grab them away from us and toss them into the glove compartment or the pocket in the door, with all that white lead dust. When it comes time for them to post them, well only God knows what happens then! Osman! Just tell me, my fine young man! How many months has it been since you ate roasted meat? And OK, how long since you enjoyed a plate of stewed fruit? How long has it been since you had a chance to walk down a lane, or an avenue? Tell me now, so that these clouds can hear you! Go on, tell me, so that those two lost souls in those graves can hear you, too! Who would spend a day in this godforsaken place, if they had any money at all? Tell me, my fine young blade. Osman, are you still there?’
‘I’m still here,’ said Osman of Selçuk, as he swung from side to side, ‘but you’d better hurry up, my friend! If you don’t stop wagging your tongue like that and get down to business, I’m going to shit my pants!’
‘I’m right, though, aren’t I?’ cried Hayati, like a voice from beyond. ‘If I’m not right, you just go ahead and tell me, right to my face! But let me tell you, your tongue would burn if you did, and God would strike you down, turn you into a crooked old man!
‘I’m that already, you idiot!’ Osman of Selçuk craned his neck as far as it would go. ‘Come on now. Time to get out.’
And then he couldn’t stop himself. Turning towards Syria, and forgetting all the men trying to slee
p in the dormitory, Osman raised his fist and bellowed, ‘Fuck off, you fucking village! Fuck off!’
And when Hayati emerged from the outhouse, Osman managed to get himself in there before anyone else.
It was a calm and beaming Hayati who came to Ziya’s side then, and instead of asking him if he had caused him offence, he just looked into his eyes and apologised. And Ziya apologised to him again, and then the two of them stood there together for a time, exchanging wry smiles. They smiled as if they had somehow managed to discuss everything that needed to be discussed without either saying a word, and come to an understanding. After that they went to bed, but Ziya couldn’t get to sleep; he kept rearranging his pillow, and rolling over. And as he was lying there with his eyes closed, he kept thinking about those shadows he had shot at on his nineteenth day on the border, and wondering if any of them had taken his bullets. And then, even after so much time had passed, he could hear that gunfire, echoing in his ears, as loud as it had done that night, and after that, there was no going to sleep. And that was why he was so very tired when he went off on guard duty that night; he was paired up with Serdar of Velimeşe in Çorlu, at D-4, which was the furthest east of Seyrantepe’s stations.
A few hours later, they began to hear those cries ringing through the black night, echoing from station to station. Whoooop! Whooooop! Then he and Serdar got up to go on patrol. Pulling down their caps and slinging the rifles over their shoulders, they went off in their opposite directions. That night it seemed darker than ever before, and heavier, and with that extra dark and extra weight came a silence that even those whoops couldn’t budge. Back in the trench, Ziya was just about to take his piece of bread from his pocket when that silence slowly began to alter in texture. When the wind first swept in from the other edge of night, it brought with it a hissing, swishing sound that might have come from the empty spaces it was seeping through, or from the flatness of the grass it swept across. It travelled out in waves, and the wider it spread, the fainter it became, and soon it was lost. And then it returned, but this time there was no swish or hiss: it sounded like a whisper, an old, cracked, crumbling, half-forgotten whisper.
Just then, there was a crackle of gunfire to the west of Seyrantepe. Serdar and Ziya both jumped, turning to look in the direction of the gunfire. As they did so, they heard some angry Kalashnikovs joining in with their G-3 infantry rifles, and suddenly there were hundreds of bullets flying through the night. Amid all this gunfire, they could hear whinnying horses racing in all directions, and also shrieks, each one different than the one before, and each one more desperate.
‘I can’t be sure,’ said Serdar. ‘But that sounded like a herd of sheep. If that’s what it was, this is going to turn out badly. Very badly.’
They stuck their heads out of the trench, both of them, to look anxiously in the direction of the skirmish. They were still shooting up tracers from time to time: they would go up and up, drawing a thin red line across the night sky, and then, very suddenly, they would vanish.
‘Shouldn’t we go over there to help them?’ asked Ziya in a trembling voice.
‘Haven’t you learned anything in the past three months?’ said Serdar, strengthening his hold on his rifle. ‘It’s a crime to leave your station. They’ll have seen the tracers. Don’t worry – they’ll be out there with reinforcements soon enough. And anyway. What if the smugglers are making all that noise to the west, just so that they could box us in over there, and pass over to the east?’
‘You’re right,’ murmured Ziya.
And there they stayed till morning, trying to protect their territory, and watching the fire-fight to the west with growing trepidation. Whenever there was gunfire, the jeeps and trucks in the field behind them would sweep the night with their searchlights, of course. Later on, a truckload of soldiers from Viranşehir joined them, together with two panzer tanks, but in the end it was not possible to stop this flock of sheep crossing like a flood of dirty wool from Turkey into Syria. As soon as there was light in the sky, they went pouring out of border control and the stations to look over to the place where the skirmish had happened. The scene that met their eyes was heart-wrenching: seventy sheep in all, lying dead on the dirt path, and in no man’s land, and the minefield, and the railroad. There were wounded sheep amongst them, legs twitching as they took their last breaths. Two or three paces from the barbed wire, lying amongst the empty shells, were two horses whose bellies were riddled with bullet holes, and two men lying side by side. They were both wearing black shalwar trousers, and their scarves had been pulled off their heads. It had been Hayati of Acıpayam and Veysel Hoca in the trench just in front of them; Veysel Hoca was leaning on the wall, motionless and staring up at the sky, and letting out a light moan now and then, but it was Hayati, curled around his rifle, who’d been hit in his chest, and he had been dead for some time.
Veysel Hoca had been hit in the shoulder, and when the soldiers from the company came to collect him, they lifted him up much too roughly. They put him into an open jeep and took him to Urfa to be examined.
All the soldiers came running in from the Seyrantepe stations, wanting to see Hayati, and no one more than Osman of Selçuk, but the sergeant opened his arms to keep them from getting too close. In an anguished, ropy voice, he said, ‘Stand back, my friends. I beg of you, stand back.’ At these words, the men stood back, and there they waited, in tears. The only one who went in to look at Hayati close up was the commander; kneeling next to his head, he straightened Hayati’s cap, and then he bent down, so that the men wouldn’t see him cry.
And while he cried, Kenan was standing still next to Ziya, tears brimming in his eyes.
‘Do you know what?’ he said. ‘None of this seems real.’
‘Not to me, either,’ Ziya said.
Then he turned around and looked at the two horses lying on the other side of the barbed wire, and the two men in shalwar trousers lying next to them. A soldier from the company was standing guard, with his rifle held crossways, but he had his back to them, and was looking at Hayati.
Later on that day, before Hayati departed for the village of Acıpayam in Denizli in his flag-covered coffin, the commander reassigned most of the men at Seyrantepe Station, sending some to Yıldıran and Mezartepe, and others to Boztepe, and quite a large number to Telhamut, but Ziya was not amongst them. That was why, when the rest of them loaded their belongings on to the back of the truck and climbed in after them, it was only the two of them standing there, Ziya and the sergeant. And once the truck was out of sight, they walked over to the two unclaimed soldiers lying there in their graves; as flashes of light spun out from the mirror that was hanging from the branch of the almond tree, they stood side by side in the grass and looked down at the border, and at the station where Hayati had given his life.
‘After the truck drops off all your friends, it will drop other soldiers off here,’ said the sergeant, in a voice so low he was almost speaking to himself. ‘And also, the commander is moving me to Yıldıran Outpost, so as soon as this other sergeant comes to replace me, I’ll be leaving.’
‘So why did he leave me here?’ Ziya asked.
‘You’re going back to Ceylanpınar, to work with the clerk,’ the sergeant told him. ‘That’s what the commander said.’
And so it was that Ziya climbed up into the passenger seat of a small truck that came for him that evening, and returned to the big, grey building in Ceylanpınar; his first stop was the munitions depot, where he turned in his rifle, his canteen, his cartridge box, his charger and his bullets. The next morning, he sat down in front of a typewriter on the second floor, so that the humpbacked clerk who was to be discharged three weeks later could teach him which document was to be drawn up when, and how.
Everything had changed so fast: for him at least, the grinding hell of life on the border had suddenly given way to a story to be lived through documents on a desk. And even more important, he was the one who was shaping this story: he would wake up early to take the reports
coming in from the outposts by phone; if there’d been an incident, he would take down the names of the guards who had given a rough account to their sergeants and determine how many bullets they had used, and then he would sit down at the table and roll some yellow onion skin into that creaking typewriter and begin typing at once. At such and such a time, gendarme X and gendarme Y, who were standing guard in such and such a station, under the command of such and such an outpost, itself under the command of this company, spotted intruders passing over from Syria to Turkey, and after warning them three times, and telling them to stop, the intruders answered with gunfire, whereupon a skirmish started, of which the outcome was as follows . . . this was how these stories went, making no mention of the well water, or the lice, or the wooden outhouse, or the water they had to scoop up with a tin can and pour over their heads when trying to wash themselves, or the mosquitoes, or the pieces of bread they ate in the middle of the night, in their trenches, or the letters they sent home, never knowing if they got there, or the fear, or the melancholy, or the flavourless food. Not a mention of any of this, of course. After completing a summary report that left out even the shadow of the truth, the time came to sketch out the incident itself. First he would draw a double line down the full length of the page, to indicate the route of the railroad that divided Turkey from Syria. Then he would draw another line and mark it with crosses at intervals to indicate the barbed-wire fence, and next to that he would indicate the sand track with a broken line, and in the empty space between this and the railroad he would write m i n e f i e l d, taking care to leave spaces between the letters. And if any smugglers had died in the skirmish, they were shown as stick figures lying in this minefield, or the sand track. Sometimes he had to include dead horses and dead sheep and bales of tea in these sketches. But if, say, ten bales of tea had been seized, only two or three or four would be surrendered to customs; the rest would most certainly be distributed to the guardhouses so that the soldiers could have their fill of tea. This was why Ziya almost never had to sketch in those little tea chests. And this was how he finished off those documents, which he would then put into their dossier, and take down to the commander’s office, to have them signed.
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