Reckless

by Hasan Ali Toptas

  Ziya already knew it from his father’s letters, but the commander had yet to tell him that they came from the same town; when Ziya stepped into his office, the commander would give him a warm look, as if he could see Ebecik and Hacı Veli, standing there before him, but then he would pull himself together, so fast you might think he feared being caught in the commission of a crime, as his gaze turned to his uniform. Or perhaps, when Ziya stepped into his office, Ebecik and Hacı Veli stuck their heads in with him, and began to harangue him in whispers. Maybe that was why, if there were many documents to sign, he’d say, ‘Go and wait outside,’ in a very cold voice. When his work was done, he would hop into his open-topped jeep and speed off to Telhamut, eyes glued to the road, and no one would see him until noon the next day.

  If there were no more documents to prepare, and no more messages from the exchange for him to transmit to the company by phone, Ziya would usually go out to the garden after the commander left. Because it was forbidden to go into the market, he would spend hours walking up and down that dry garden, with its stone walls and its arbour in the far corner. And while he was walking up and down, he could hear the horse carriages and the minibuses passing down the road on the other side, and sometimes he could hear women and children talking. And later, the aroma of that bread they cooked on their stovetops would float over with their voices, and doors opening and shutting, and curtains fluttering, and the red echoes of peppers hanging in strings from the frames of distant windows. And late in the afternoon, a little old man with his long hair growing into his beard would appear at the foot of the garden, a gaggle of children in his wake. Taking no offence as the giggling children pelted him with bottle caps, he would jump over the wall, this old man, and shuffle in his plastic slippers to the rubbish bins next to the kitchen door. Taking out the plastic bag in his pocket, he would fill it with leftovers. After seeing this ragged old man a few times, Ziya grew curious, and asked the cooks who he was.

  ‘His name is Yabu,’ one of the cooks told him. ‘He’s the only person in Ceylanpınar who is able to go in and out of this place without first seeking permission. Yade used to come too, but now he’s dead.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Ziya, as he shook his head.

  ‘If you want to know about Yabu, you should ask Seyfettin in the exchange,’ said the cook, lowering his voice as if to pass on a big secret. ‘He’s the one who knows him best. And the things he’ll tell you. They boggle the mind.’

  Ziya went straight upstairs, and down to the end of the corridor next to his office, and here he found Seyfettin, lost in thought and smoking a cigarette at the front of the telephone exchange. He asked him about Yabu.

  ‘He’s one of life’s sad stories,’ said Seyfettin, taking a long drag from his cigarette. ‘He comes here every day for leftovers, and that’s all he has to eat. This is nothing new; it’s been going on for a long time. Many years ago, on a hot summer’s day, his wife was here, too, and she died right next to those rubbish bins. No one ever asks Yabu what he’s doing there, or why he’s going through the army’s rubbish – we all close our eyes to it. Even the commander. Well, if he came in past the guards, waving his arms around, then maybe they’d have to ask, but he prefers to come over the wall, every time. He must have developed a taste for it.’

  Seyfettin fell silent.

  ‘Is that all?’ Ziya asked.

  ‘There’s more,’ said Seyfettin. ‘But I’m not sure how to tell you right now . . . Yabu’s not the kind of person you can describe just like that. Because he’s a story. A story like you’ve never heard.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, he’s a story. Yabu is a story, through and through.’

  Ziya gave Seyfettin a blank look.

  This seemed to make Seyfettin uneasy, and so he turned to look out the window, in the direction of Syria and the town of Ras al-Ayn; they could hear its donkeys braying and its horses neighing, and for a while they listened to those sounds floating over the border.

  ‘It’s a story I myself read many years ago, in a book,’ he said.

  ‘What story is that?’ Ziya asked.

  ‘Didn’t I just tell you, that Yabu was a story? Have you already forgotten?’

  Ziya stood up angrily and was about to leave the telephone exchange when he turned around suddenly at the door. ‘Is this some sort of joke?’ he asked reproachfully.

  For a moment Seyfettin just looked at him, saying nothing.

  Then he said, ‘I swear to you, what I’m saying is true. And in the story I read, Yabu even had a daughter named Gazel, and she set out one night on horseback, to be married in that Syrian town we can see just out the window there – Ras al-Ayn. If you don’t believe me, you can ask Yabu yourself.’

  ‘What was the name of this book you read?’

  ‘That’s what I can’t remember.’

  ‘Who wrote it?’

  ‘Sadly I don’t remember the author’s name either.’ Opening his arms, Seyfettin added: ‘His name didn’t seem much like an author’s name. Which goes to say that – as far as I remember – he wasn’t well-known, this author.’

  ‘All right, then,’ said Ziya, and he left.

  Late the next afternoon, Ziya left his typewriter and went down to the garden, hoping to see Yabu. And soon he saw him, walking between the lane’s mud-brick walls, and trailed by the usual gaggle of children. And then, as those children pelted him with bottle caps that seemed not to offend him, he clutched the wall and straddled it and hurled himself into the garden like a dirty, hairy sack. And that was when Ziya walked towards him, very slowly, and gently.

  ‘Baba,’ he said, and his voice was as gentle as the look on his face. ‘May I ask you something?’

  Yabu looked at him in silence, his eyes caught.

  ‘Ask me.’

  ‘Do you have a daughter named Gazel?’ Ziya asked.

  Yabu slowly bowed his head, and swallowed.

  In a stern voice, he said, ‘This is not a question anyone should ever ask, my child.’

  And then, without another look at Ziya, he went shuffling in his plastic slippers towards the rubbish bins next to the kitchen door.

  Ziya felt so bad about asking the question that he died a thousand deaths, of course. He felt so bad he even stayed away from the garden for a few days; instead, when he had finished his work, he would stand next to the typewriter, gazing through the window at the town of Ras al-Ayn, smoking one cigarette after another. And they had at long last completed the new company headquarters, whereupon he left Ceylanpınar for good, anyway, in the truck carrying the contents of his office, which passed in front of Mezartepe, Seyrantepe, Ege and Boztepe stations on its way to Telhamut. And so it was that he left Yabu behind him, along with the aroma of hot bread floating from those earthen-roofed houses, ringing with the voices of women and children, and fluttering curtains, and strings of red peppers, and the creaking, clacking horse carts. And what took their place, of course, was the bare and yellow sun-baked earth, stretching mournfully as far as the eye could see.

  When they reached Telhamut, with those clouds of dust pursuing them, Kenan came running up to greet him. Once the commander was out of sight they embraced each other. Then and there, they brought each other up to date. Together they unloaded the metal cabinets and tables and dossiers and carried them over to the new building, which was all on one level, with an entrance flanked by columns. Across from this building was a prefabricated guardhouse that looked just like Seyrantepe, and twenty-five paces beyond, on the other side of a barbed-wire fence, was a white flagpole and a rusty water pump. Just a bit below all this, on the other side of the train tracks, was a little station, and a hamlet made up of nine whitewashed houses, each one lower than the last. This was why there had to be a gap in the minefield behind the new building, before it continued on to Akçakale in parallel with the train tracks. Whichever direction it was coming from the Toros Express always slowed down when pulling into this station. It crept down the tracks like a tired
old reptile, almost, hissing faintly, but never sounding its whistle. There was no stopping it, either, unless the commander had ordered it to do so; it would creep on quietly down the tracks, watched only by the handful of children playing in front of the mud-brick houses and the stationmaster standing guard, towards Ceylanpınar, or Akçakale. And before long, it would be lost inside the yellow earth’s humming.

  Living in the village’s nine mud-brick houses were the railroad’s employees and their families, and their lives were as dry and impossible as the soldiers’. Like the soldiers, they had to live without streets and avenues, shops and markets, parks and gardens. They didn’t have a school, either, or a clinic. If they wanted to meet with friends and family on holidays or weekends, they wanted to go to Akçakale or Gaziantep or Ceylanpınar, they had to get permission from the commander. This was because the commander could at any time call out every last one of them, old and young, and line them up next to the well at the back, and do a roll-call. If anyone was missing, or if anyone had for any reason rubbed him up the wrong way, he had no qualms about giving them hell. Because the electricity ran from the State Battery Farm to the company headquarters, and from there to those mud-brick houses, he would, for example, cut off their electricity until they screwed their heads back on. And then the village itself would shudder, almost as if it was crying. A little shiver would pass across its earthen rooftops, and the grass around their walls would go yellow, sending faint reflections to swirl through the empty spaces around the well at the back, and while all this was going on, the village itself would move twenty-five or maybe even thirty paces closer to Syria. And then, amongst those faint reflections, you would just begin to see faces, some very pale faces, and as they took on substance, you would begin to see the windows these women were standing in, and the doorways. And then, clutching their children, or holding them in their arms, they would cross over to the company headquarters and stand in front of the commander’s office and, for hours on end, beg for mercy.

  Once, when the commander had gone on a rampage and cut off their electricity, the women brought a hollow-cheeked man with them to company headquarters. He was furious, this man; his Adam’s apple kept bobbing, and he kept grinding his teeth, until there were sparks flying from his eyes, almost. Later on, when he went up to the commander’s door, he could hold himself back no longer. In a trumpeting voice that shocked everyone, he said, ‘The milk we keep in our refrigerators will go off, you know! Can’t you take pity on the children? Why don’t you just admit it – what you’ve done is unjust!’

  That’s what this man bellowed. The commander was furious, of course, to be addressed in this tone of voice, and every vein in his neck bulged. Then he turned to the women waiting outside the door and waved them away like so many mosquitoes, saying, ‘Go away now. Go away.’ And off they went, looking over their shoulders as they crossed over to their houses to wait next to the well at the back. And that was when the commander fell upon this man, hollering, ‘I spit on your fate, you dog and son of a dog!’ and punching him smack in the face. Shocked by this turn of events, the little man just stood there, red-faced and staring blankly. On the commander’s orders, the cook from the guard station and one of the drivers then tied this man to the flagpole, stripping him from the waist up. Then the commander picked up his cartridge belt and went up to him, and laid into him, pelting him with a string of unspeakable curses as he beat him to a pulp. The man’s eyes opened wide each time the cartridge belt landed; they swayed and they clouded, they churned and they shook, until tears were shooting out of them into two straight lines, but the commander kept on going. Every time he hit the man, the women at the well would shake, too, moaning uyyy, uyyy, tiny little moans that called to mind a saz playing in the wind. At last the commander hollered, ‘Untie this dog,’ and threw his cartridge belt on the ground. He hurried off to his jeep and off he went in a cloud of dust back to Ceylanpınar.

  Having watched all this from his office window, Ziya now stood up and went down to the canteen that had opened the previous month. It had less to offer than a village grocery shop, this canteen: cologne, envelopes, paper, ballpoint pens, razors, shaving cream, a few brands of cigarettes and biscuits, and that was it. When Ziya walked in, he found the manager, Resul of Lüleburgaz, standing at the window, watching them pick up the man they had untied from the flagpole and carry him over to the mud-brick houses.

  ‘Those poor people,’ he said, when he saw Ziya coming in. ‘And what a shame that there’s nowhere to go, to put in a complaint about this commander!’

  ‘Such a shame,’ said Ziya, and he took a deep breath.

  Lowering himself into the chair behind the table, Resul fixed his eyes on the train tracks, while he let his thoughts wander.

  ‘I was just thinking,’ he said then. ‘If one of those people got on the train to go and make a complaint against this commander, they’d never be able to show their face here again. They’d have to take their whole family with them, even. If they didn’t . . . I swear there’d be hell to pay from that commander, he’d kill them all and toss their bodies into the minefield. And then he’d say they’d been shot while crossing over the border, and get away with it!’

  Ziya sat down across from him.

  ‘Would he really do that?’ he asked softly.

  ‘He would, I swear,’ said Resul, nodding. ‘When the engineers at the State Battery Farm drink rakı, he hands them weapons, this man, and sends them off to be ambushed. And off they go to dig in, on their little drunken pattering feet. If they end up getting shot in a skirmish, then all this commander has to do to make them look like smugglers is pick them up and throw them into the minefield. He’s not about to say he gave these civilians weapons and set them up to be ambushed. Is he?’

  ‘I just don’t know,’ Ziya mumbled.

  Then he turned his head to look out at the mud-brick houses. One of the women at the well was tending to the man, who still seemed to be unconscious. She was cleaning his eyes and face with water. Another woman in a white headscarf was standing next to the well, with her hand on the crank. As the sun beat down on her, she remained perfectly still.

  ‘Can I offer you anything? Would you like something to drink?’ Resul asked suddenly.

  ‘Could I have some tea?’ Ziya asked.

  Resul reached under the table and took out a bottle, poured some of its cloudy white liquid into a glass and pushed it slowly across the table. ‘Go on, give it a try.’

  Ziya raised it to his lips without giving it much thought, but as soon as he tasted it, his face changed. Smacking his lips, he took another sip.

  ‘It’s my own creation,’ said Resul, smiling faintly. ‘Cologne, lemon powder, and water. What do you think?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Ziya, and he took another sip.

  ‘If you don’t like it, there’s a bar just over there, down that street,’ said Resul. ‘You can go there and find any drink you want.’

  Ziya pretended not to have heard Resul’s teasing words. He carried on drinking, as he looked out at the mud-brick houses.

  ‘These commanders are all the same,’ Resul said then. ‘There’s a commander in the next company over, for example. He loves watching soldiers’ caps fly off! That’s his nickname, even. Capflyer. He knows all about it, and he loves it. He hasn’t been past here for some time, so you can expect him any time. He’s sure to be coming by soon, no question about it, you’ll see. If you hear a roaring laugh suddenly, and a gun going off, be warned. Capflyer is back. He never travels solo. He always has his clerk sitting up front with him in his jeep, and following close behind is always one of those little trucks. And in the back, he’ll have his detail of bodyguards, huge grinning dimwits with lolling tongues, and they all have their fingers on the trigger. If you want to live, my advice is to hide the moment you see him coming. Because if anyone’s so foolish as to walk past him, and it happens to take his fancy, he’ll immediately pick up his gun, and order that man to stop fifteen metres away fro
m him, and order him to raise the visor on his cap. And then, as you may have guessed by now, he’ll pick up his gun and with a single shot, he’ll send that cap flying, right up into the air . . . and then, to top it all off, he has to celebrate, he has to split his sides laughing that maddening laugh of his. If that was all he did, then fine! But no, he also has to start swinging his gun around, and shooting off in all directions, without even looking through the barrel. He’s not much to look at – he’s stocky, and he has a fat ass and a head like a basket, but in spite of all that, he’s surprisingly quick off the mark, this Capflyer. Fast as a flea, you might say! I said this already, but just make sure you don’t catch his eye. Just hide as fast as you can. That’s what everyone does, anyway, along the seventy- or eighty-mile stretch between his headquarters and Ceylanpınar. Most especially the guards in the watchtower – they won’t even poke up their heads. Because they’re already seven or eight metres high, and that means they don’t even need to raise their visors: if the fancy takes him, Capflyer pulls his gun from its holster and sends their caps flying from the top of a moving jeep! A few months ago, they took two heads at Seyrantepe. You heard about that, didn’t you?’