Reckless

by Hasan Ali Toptas

  Ziya, meanwhile, was drinking as much as ever, of course. And when he staggered back to the dormitory late each night, he fell asleep the moment his head hit the pillow. This is how he was able to escape the barbed wire and the trenches and the observation towers and the minefields and the guardhouses, and their nightly concert, and their numbing silences. And Telhamut’s nine mud-brick houses, and the dormitory in which he slept, as he slipped off like a leaf down a river to another world that carried the sour stink of cologne. And that was where he was one night, with only two months of his military service left to go, when an agitated Resul shook him awake.

  ‘Come on, man! Wake up. The commander’s waiting for you outside! Get yourself armed and get out there,’ he said.

  Exhausted and still half asleep, Ziya looked around him. Then he jumped up and fastened his cartridge belt and ran outside with his rifle in his hands. He found the commander standing in the darkness with his hands on his hips, and looking rather pleased. To his right stood two watchmen holding their rifles crossways, and on his left stood Resul and Yusuf the cook.

  ‘And now we have our clerk,’ he said, as soon as he saw Ziya. ‘Come over here. Look. We’ve brought in a live smuggler.’

  Ziya looked in the direction the commander was pointing, and there, tied with rope to the base of one of the columns at the front of the building, was a broad-shouldered man the size of a wrestler. He was wearing black shalwar trousers, this man, and a grey T-shirt that emphasised the thickness of his neck. From time to time he’d look up to stare straight in the commander’s eyes and then he’d begin to speak, as rapidly as a machine gun. He was speaking Arabic, so no one could understand a thing he said, of course, beyond the three names he kept repeating – Muhammed, Ali and Mensur. The commander narrowed his eyes as they darted between the soldiers and the man tied to the column, and from time to time he shook his head, as if to say, ‘Just look at what I managed to drag in.’

  Then he turned to Resul. Pointing into the darkness in the direction of the mud-brick houses, he said, ‘Go and find someone over there who can translate for this animal.’

  Resul rushed away, rifle in hand, and once he had loped across the barbed-wire fence there was no more to him than a pair of pounding feet.

  ‘Look here,’ the commander said to Ziya. ‘You’re the clerk so you should know. Has a smuggler ever been brought in alive on this border?’

  ‘I’ve never heard of one, sir,’ Ziya replied.

  The commander fixed his eyes on the man tied to the column, shaking his head as vigorously as if he’d been the one to answer his question. Then Resul came out into the night again, huffing and puffing and bringing with him a middle-aged railroad worker. But he wasn’t good enough for the commander. He looked him over as if he was about to give him a thrashing, and then he said, ‘No, not this one. Go back and find the stationmaster. Tell him to come here at once!’

  And so Resul went back and woke up the stationmaster, who quickly got dressed. Ten minutes later, he was standing breathlessly in front of the commander. Seeing him, the commander said, ‘Now that’s more like it,’ as if it were the man’s uniform that would enable him to translate the prisoner’s words correctly and in the right spirit. Then he pointed at the man tied to the column and in a menacing voice, he said, ‘Ask this bugger where he hid the goods he was trying to take over, and how many others he had with him.’

  The captive’s face brightened when he saw that the stationmaster could speak Arabic, and his eyes shone like gold dust. When he was giving his answers, he almost forgot he was tied to the column and tried to stand up.

  ‘What is he saying?’ barked the commander.

  ‘He’s not a smuggler,’ said the stationmaster. ‘He says he’s a dervish, going by the name of Mensur.’

  ‘What the . . .?’ the commander cried. ‘So he says he’s a dervish?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the stationmaster. ‘He says he’s a dervish. According to what he says, he left his village this evening to attend a wedding in another village. To sate his appetite and his mind, he says. But it was so dark that he mistook the lights of Telhamut for this village, and so he crossed over the border into Turkey without even knowing it.’

  ‘Is he trying to pull my leg?’ the commander growled. ‘Does he think he can pull my leg?’

  The stationmaster bowed his head, as if he had somehow committed a crime.

  There was a silence.

  ‘Fine, then,’ the commander said finally. ‘Go back to your house!’

  As Mensur watched him go, he swallowed hard.

  The commander stayed there in front of the building all night long, pacing back and forth in front of Mensur like a bird of prey, stopping every so often to shake his head and touch the gun on his hip. And Mensur just sat there watching him, wide-eyed.

  At sunrise the commander opened up the tarpaulin at the back of one of the trucks parked next to the flagpole, and ordered his men to put Mensur inside it. And so they untied that huge man and hurled him into the back of that truck. After winding four ropes around his wrists and ankles, they tied him to the side hooks in a way that would keep him standing. Mensur remained silent while they did all this, and he took no interest in the soldiers who were tying him up. Instead he braced his huge shoulders, and fixed his eyes on the commander. They were huge, these eyes. And luminous, and bewildered. Meanwhile, the commander just stood there, a few paces away from the truck. Every so often, he would shake his head. And each time he did so, he changed a bit more, until he had left behind the fair-skinned man who had found the border so distressing, and who had never once raised his voice, let alone a finger. Suddenly he was a different man, bursting with anger.

  By now the soldiers had finished knotting the ropes. One by one they jumped off the back of the truck.

  ‘You two,’ said the commander, pointing at Resul and Ziya. ‘Get back there with the smuggler! Don’t take your eyes off him for a single second!’

  Resul and Ziya did as they were told; climbing straight into the back of the truck, they sat down on either side of Mensur, holding their rifles crossways.

  Then the commander jumped into the front of the truck, and soon they were speeding off towards Ceylanpınar, leaving clouds of dust in their wake. And there was Mensur, standing upright in the middle of the back of the truck, breathing heavily through flared nostrils as his huge body swayed from side to side. Each time he righted himself, he would, without willing it, stare straight into his guards’ eyes. And each time he did this, Resul and Ziya would quickly look away, as nervously as if they’d been caught red-handed. So nervously, they didn’t know where to look. Seeing the state they were in, Mensur made them more nervous still by looking down at his feet with the faintest of smiles. Then he turned to the right to look at Syria, and for a long time he gazed at its fields and its hills and the one-storey mud-brick houses in its distant villages. He was still looking at Syria as the truck left the road running alongside the barbed wire and climbed up the little hill to Mezartepe. When he saw the truck approaching, the cook adjusted his rifle. He went to the side of the building and stood at attention.

  ‘Bring everyone out,’ said the commander, as he stepped down from the truck.

  The cook ran off to the dormitory to wake up the sleeping men. Bewildered, they pulled on their clothes and came out to the front of the building.

  ‘Look,’ said the commander. ‘I caught this smuggler alive last night!’

  Their eyes still fogged with sleep, the soldiers looked into the back of the truck. And as they did so, the commander looked at how they looked. And then, with a great deal of swaggering, he told them how they had seen something moving in the grass that night, while out on patrol, and how they had swept it with the searchlight, and bam, there was Mensur, blinking like a rabbit, and though he had made every effort to escape, they had pounced on him and, after a mighty struggle, taken him captive. The soldiers were lined up and standing at attention. They listened, wide-eyed, to the comman
der’s every word. Mensur listened, too, even though he knew no Turkish, and every once in a while he would allow himself a gentle smile, as if he had understood what the commander was saying, and found it greatly exaggerated. On the commander’s order, the soldiers stopped standing at attention and walked around the sides of the truck, to get a closer look at Mensur. The commander, meanwhile, kept his distance, going into the shade at the side of the stone wall, and lighting up a cigarette, and looking out at the view through his own billowing smoke.

  After Mensur had been put on display there like a circus animal for a good half hour, they moved on to Seyrantepe, and then Ege, and then Boztepe, Telhamut, and Yıldıran. When this last show ended, Ziya assumed they would be heading back, but that didn’t happen. Instead they headed west to enter the next company’s territory, and to visit each of its guardhouses. And soon they had followed the road along the barbed-wire fence to the other edge of this territory, and in the early evening they arrived in front of the stone building that with its high walls and crenellations looked so much like a little desert fort. Capflyer came zipping out, faster than a flea. After shaking hands with the commander, he went to give Mensur a long, hard look. Then he gathered together all the soldiers in the company headquarters, so that they could all walk around the truck whispering, and viewing Mensur from different angles. And of course the commander told his story again, in some detail. This was how they’d closed in on him. This was how he’d twisted his arm. This was how he’d grabbed him by the nape of his neck. The soldiers were still walking around the truck looking at Mensur as they listened. And the more Capflyer heard, the more he warmed to the story, and every so often he’d gaze up at the sky open-mouthed and slap his legs and let out a peal of laughter.

  But Mensur had not said one thing while they paraded him around like this. He’d just stared back at them, with those large, shining and bewildered eyes. And every time the commander told how he’d taken him captive, Mensur would smile faintly, just as he had back at Mezartepe. But here at the neighbouring company’s headquarters he’d stopped smiling. He’d had no food or water all day and that had sapped his strength. His head was bent forward, and he was having trouble breathing. From time to time, he made a strange little mewing sound, even. All day long, his great body had been swaying from one side of that truck to the other, and the ropes around his wrists had chafed so that now there were bloody strips of skin dangling from his arms. These strips of skin were as worn as shreds of leather rising up from an eternity in the cool depths of the River Tigris. Just as that river snakes out to fill the Harran Plain, so these shreds of skin snaked into their hearts, because somehow they knew: that plain, and with it, the world, was beyond their reach. And that was why Ziya couldn’t bear to look at them. He just shivered, and looked elsewhere. Mensur wasn’t looking at him or Resul any more either. Resting his forehead on his wrists, he looked down at the dust blowing across the truck floor.

  When they at last left the neighbouring company’s headquarters to return to Telhamut, Mensur was still watching the dust blow across that truck floor.

  Ziya climbed over the ropes to speak to Resul. In a soft voice he said, ‘Do you know what? The devil says . . .’

  ‘Shut up,’ said Resul. ‘Don’t you go telling me what the devil said. We’re just following his orders, so we don’t fail our military service!’

  Ziya stared into Resul’s eyes.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ asked Resul. ‘How many months do you have behind you already? Eighteen. Am I right?’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Ziya. ‘I have eighteen months behind me. I’m out in two months, as you know.’

  ‘So all right. Do you want to fail your military service at this late date, and have to start all over?’

  ‘Who’d want that? Of course I don’t.’

  ‘Then don’t pay any attention to what the devil said!’

  Ziya went back to his place. Leaning against the side of the truck, he turned his head to look far, far away.

  When they returned exhausted to Telhamut, the commander stepped down and gave Mensur a good once-over, and then he had him tied up to the column again. He ordered Resul and Ziya to guard him. Waving his forefinger, making circles in the air, he said, ‘And don’t let him out of your sight. If he escapes, there’ll be hell to pay!’

  And that was when Ziya could bear it no longer. Standing at attention, he said, ‘This man has had nothing to eat or drink since yesterday, sir. Can we give him some food?’

  Stunned, the commander gave Ziya a good long look. Then he said, ‘Just listen to this scoundrel. Just listen to this scoundrel.’ Without another word, the commander pounced on Ziya. First a right hook, then a left. When he heard those punches ringing in the air, Mensur raised up his head. But he paid no attention to Ziya as he lost his balance, instead fixing his glittering eyes on the commander.

  ‘The last commander told me quite a few things about you, but I didn’t believe him. But now I see that he knew what he was talking about. There’s no brain in that head of yours. There really isn’t!’

  Ziya said nothing.

  The commander turned to Resul. ‘You look at me, canteen man. You’re free to go. Go to the dormitory and get some sleep. This prick here will be solely responsible for this man tonight!’

  ‘Yes, sir!’ said Resul.

  When the commander had left in his jeep for Ceylanpınar, Ziya collapsed on to a step three paces away from Mensur, and for a time he just sat there in silence.

  Resul was still standing in front of the building. ‘You shouldn’t hang around here,’ said Ziya. ‘Go fetch me a bottle of poison, why don’t you, and then go to bed.’

  Resul ran off to the canteen, returning with a bottle from his secret cache.

  ‘Let’s guard him together,’ said Resul. ‘How’s the commander ever going to find out?’

  ‘No,’ said Ziya. ‘We’re in enough trouble as it is. And anyway, as you know, the last commander toughened me up. I can take it.’

  Resul gave up and went off to the dormitory.

  And then it was just the two of them. Mensur at the base of the column, and Ziya, sitting across from him. And once again, the night took hold of the mud-brick houses across the tracks and pulled them in. And now the handle of the well had vanished, too, and all he could hear was a child here and there, calling through the night. And then these sounds vanished, too, as a silence seeped in to press down on them. And that was when Ziya turned his head to give Mensur a good, long look. His head had fallen to his chest. There was nothing left to him but his hulking shadow.

  ‘Mensur,’ Ziya called.

  Mensur raised his head.

  ‘I know,’ Ziya said, ‘you can’t understand a word I say. But never mind. I’m still saying it. I’m going to get you some food. OK?’

  He bunched up his fingers and made as if to eat. Then he pointed at Mensur.

  ‘So now,’ he said, ‘I’m going. OK? To get you some food.’

  Mensur smiled faintly.

  ‘But you have to keep quiet,’ Ziya said. ‘Sit just the way you are until I get back. Whatever you do, don’t untie those ropes and run away.’

  This time Mensur looked at him blankly.

  So Ziya made as if to untie the imaginary ropes around his wrists. Then he waved both his hands, looked into Mensur’s eyes, and in a gentle voice he said, ‘No untying these ropes.’ And then, enunciating each word clearly, he said, ‘Stay here. Keep quiet. Wait. I’ll be back.’

  Then he stood up and raced off to the kitchen. He put two bowls of bulgur pilaf on to a tray, and a few slices of bread, and hurried back.

  Squatting next to Mansur, he said, ‘Hey, how are you going to eat this now?’

  They stared at each other through the darkness.

  ‘No,’ said Ziya, still flummoxed. ‘No, I’m not untying you. You’d try to escape, and I could never hold you back, you’re too big. And I don’t want to shoot at you. So this is what’s going to happen. I’m going to feed you.�
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  He filled a spoon with bulgur pilaf and put it into Mensur’s mouth.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ he said. ‘It’s all I could find in the kitchen.’

  He gave him another big spoonful.

  ‘I couldn’t let you go hungry,’ he said, as he pulled back the spoon. ‘You’ve come here from another country. You count as a guest. Don’t you think? Whether they know you or not, everyone in this country can count you as a guest.’

  He gave him another spoonful.

  ‘And it’s not just the people. Every animal in this country can count you as a guest, as well. And every plant. Every fruit tree, and poplar, and every worm and every bird, and every insect . . .’

  Suddenly Mensur stopped eating. He nodded, and smiled.

  ‘Or do you actually speak Turkish?’ Ziya asked.

  Mensur looked at him blankly.

  Ziya went back to feeding him pilaf.

  ‘Try to eat faster,’ Ziya said. ‘I don’t want the commander catching me.’

  And Mansur began to eat faster, almost as if he understood. He began to chew faster, and then he started swallowing the pilaf without chewing. And Ziya watched him eat, offering him a bite of bread now and again. Then Ziya took the tray back to the guardhouse kitchen and returned with a pitcher of water. As he gulped down the water, Mensur gave Ziya the warmest of smiles, and then he nodded, vigorously. And Ziya nodded, too. Just a little. Then he got up and took the pitcher to his office, so that no one could see it. After that he sat down on the step three paces away from Mensur and began drinking his poison.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Ziya. ‘But this I cannot share.’

  Mensur smiled gently.

  ‘So let me say it now,’ said Ziya. ‘If that commander comes back, I’m going to toss this bottle into the night, on to those tracks over there. If I do that, don’t get frightened.’