‘Mensur,’ said Mensur.
Ziya, who had raised the bottle to his lips, looked at him through the glass.
‘Mensur,’ said Mensur once again.
Putting the bottle back on the step, Ziya said, ‘Oh, I see. I understand. You want to know my name, don’t you?’
Mensur smiled.
‘Ziya,’ said Ziya. ‘My name is Ziya.’
‘Ziya,’ Mensur repeated and he smiled.
Then the two fell silent. They sat in darkness, breathing in and breathing out. Now and again, a whoop would rise up from one of the trenches nearby. But it sounded as if it was coming from the bottom of a well. And as it soared through the night, it brought with it the scent of grass.
Later on in the night, when he went out on patrol, the commander stopped by to check on them three times. He would slip out of the night, shiny as a fox, and slip back in. In the morning, he released Mensur from the base of the column and, without tying him up again, took him to Ceylanpınar to hand him over to the Syrian officials who had come to fetch him from Ras al-Ayn. From then on, whenever he looked at the base of that column outside their building, Ziya saw an empty space as wide as Mensur’s shoulders. As he came or went, he could not stop himself from looking.
On the day he was discharged, he looked one last time into that empty space. Then he walked quickly past the flagpole and into the station. Many years earlier, two soldiers boarding a minibus in Ceylanpınar had been shot by the relatives of smugglers who died in a skirmish, and since that day, they’d sent all soldiers away by train when they were discharged. They’d stop the train that always slowed down when coming into the station, never blowing its whistle, and after they’d piled the soldiers in, the train would move on, stealthy as a snake, towards Gaziantep.
‘May it soon be over, sir soldier,’ said the stationmaster.
‘Thank you,’ said Ziya. ‘And goodbye.’
He climbed into the carriage just in front of him and found himself a seat on the right-hand side. The stationmaster stared up at him enviously, as if to say, ‘You’ve escaped now, but we’ll be stuck here for God only knows how long, and without any hope of a discharge.’
And then the Toros Express began to move, and before long, they’d left the station behind with those nine mud-brick houses. Because he could still see the minefield when he looked out the window, and the barbed-wire fence, and the dirt track, and the prefabricated guardhouses perched on their little hills, Ziya could still not believe he’d been discharged. He was still expecting the train to stop at any moment, so they could recall him, and that was why he leaned back in his seat and kept his anxious eyes on his fellow passengers. As the train moved on, and people started getting up to go to the toilet or visit other carriages, he began to feel less tense, and with time he began to relax, just a little.
Later on, while he was dozing in his seat, Ziya had a curious dream. In this dream he was still on the Toros Express, and sitting in the same seat, but awake. He knew it was a dream, too, but when he looked out the window he could see the Harran Plain passing by. But then, little by little, things began to change. And before long, where there had been only barbed-wire fences and minefields and observation towers and guardhouses perched on little hills, there were now bright-green trees, spurting from the ground, almost – rising higher and higher still, to touch the sky. And before long, he could see cliffs in the distance, and hills sparkling with flowers, and rushing between those hills there were streams and brooks that looked like watery shadows, and floating above all this were white clouds that looked nothing like the clouds of the Harran Plain. And that was when the Toros Express blew its whistle for the first time, and when he heard it Ziya jumped. And then, thinking this must be the whistle ending his military service, he smiled.
In the middle of a forest, the train slowed down for some reason and, just as Ziya was asking himself why, it stopped. And there they stayed for some time, sinking into nature and a hush that rustled with the leaves. The other passengers hardly seemed to notice; they carried on as if the train was still clacking down the tracks. They looked out of the window or watched the children playing in the aisles or chain-smoked.
Then suddenly two conductors and the train engineer burst into the carriage and made a beeline for Ziya. He was wearing a cap, this engineer, and the hair beneath it was white, and his ears were as large as soup ladles. His face was covered with lines, each one deeper than the last. And just then he looked as if he had been alive for thousands of years, with only his uniform to prove his existence.
‘So go ahead,’ this engineer said to him. ‘We stopped here in the middle of nowhere so that you could get off.’
And Ziya showed no surprise. He rose from his seat. The engineer followed him to the door and there he stayed, bending down to fix him with his green-flecked eyes.
He stayed there, watching, as Ziya moved away from the tracks to go deep into the forest. After the dry air and empty spaces of the Harran Plain, it opened his heart to be walking through such a forest. Each step he took was lighter than the last. The path flew like feathers beneath his feet. He could climb the slopes in a single breath, and soon he was deep inside a great green realm in which the air itself sang. And now he had crossed over a few more hills, and reached the red pines. As he walked the sun would peep through the branches only to vanish yet again. He walked on into a night, a garish night that rippled with so much moisture that it sometimes felt as wide as a lake. And if all its lights flashed at once, it could blind you.
And then suddenly he was in an oak forest, where the greys curled into the browns, and the browns into the yellows, while the greens bled red. Passing through the oak forest, he entered a pasture ringed by juniper bushes, and that was when he saw the dirt road below, and the sheep pens, and the poplars marking their edges, and, just beyond them, the little barn.
6
The Debt
When Numan came inside, Cabbar was sitting beneath the almond tree in the courtyard, smoking a cigarette.
‘Come in,’ he said, from within the billowing smoke. ‘Come in, so we can see you.’
Numan came quietly across the courtyard and sat down next to his elder brother, and at once he lit up. Then he just sat there, glowering at his cigarette. Hating the world and everyone in it. The anger and resentment that defined his every movement had also seeped into his eyes, erasing the world, replacing it with a dark and silent emptiness that grew steadily harsher.
‘What’s come over you?’ asked Cabbar. ‘What’s put you in such a state?’
Breathing through his nose, he said, ‘I had that dream again.’
‘So?’
‘It’s a warning. I’ve had it twice. There’s something in it, something terrible.’
Cabbar stubbed out his cigarette and lit another.
The voice floating out of the smoke said, ‘So it’s the same dream, is it? Exactly the same dream as the one before?’
‘Last time I saw them in Nefise’s room, as you know,’ said Numan. ‘They weren’t there this time. There were making love under the mulberry tree in the courtyard. Passionately. Savagely. Breathing so heavily that the whole courtyard was quaking.’
Cabbar looked blankly into Numan’s face, as if he could not see him.
‘But at the end of the day,’ Cabbar said finally, ‘it’s just a dream. So don’t get it into your head that you can go around telling everyone you meet. Some things get worse when you spread the word, as you know. If a rumour gets started about a brother and a sister having relations, it could end very badly. Once it got going, there’d be no stopping it. What’s more – it’s not what I would expect from either Kenan or Nefise. Do you hear me?’
Numan stared cowering into the distance.
‘You just can’t get over this girl, can you? How many years has this been going on now?’ asked Cabbar. ‘It’s always Nefise, Nefise. God protect us! If you keep this up, you’re going to drive yourself mad. We did everything we could. Think how many tim
es we sent over the matchmaker. Think of all the men of consequence we sent after her, to promise jewels and dowries and property and God knows what else, but we couldn’t make it happen, and we never shall. Above all, the girl doesn’t want it.’
‘Because she has relations with her brother,’ said Numan. ‘I’ve had two warnings.’
Again Cabbar reprimanded him. ‘Don’t you ever say that again. Secret relations give way to true love, as you know. If there was a fire, we’d see the smoke pouring out the door as well as the chimney.’
‘But where exactly would that smoke come from?’ said Numan. ‘Have you forgotten that Kenan is sterile?’
Cabbar said nothing. He just turned his head to look into the distance. Then he jumped to his feet, as if he intended to race out of the courtyard then and there. Instead he began to pace up and down, with a cigarette between his lips. Now and again he muttered something in a hoarse voice that got lost in the smoke. Numan picked a piece of string off the ground and, without quite knowing what he was doing, began to unravel it from both sides. His fingers were still tingling with the warmth of his dream. And that was why they had only to graze against one of his eyelids for Nefise to strip off her clothes again, wild with desire: now she was stretching out on that mattress beneath the mulberry tree. Now she had raised those ivory-white legs of hers, and now she was drawing such lovely little circles in the air that he could almost see the bicycle pedals beneath those perfect feet. And all the while, she was sighing and moaning and beckoning and misting up the whole courtyard. Then Kenan appeared, moaning softly as he pushed himself between her parted legs, and thrust himself into Nefise’s hidden depths. In and out he went, in and out, while every hair on her head fizzled and sparked. As if, at any moment, she might burst into flame. Gaping in ecstasy, Kenan’s face had lost shape. Still moaning, he kept riding her hard. And as he did, he shook those hips that were pinned beneath him, of course – and those breasts, those shoulders, those sighs.
‘Forget that stupid dream,’ said Cabbar.
Numan looked up.
‘A delusion like this can do a man in,’ Cabbar continued. ‘And anyway, if you really believed that what you saw in your dream were true, you’d realise that you had to give up on this girl at once. Don’t you see? When as far as I can see, you still haven’t given up on her. You can’t stop thinking of her, and you need to come up with a reason why she won’t have you, and when you can’t find one, then, well, that mind of yours invents one for you. That’s why you need to put this dream right out of your mind, do you understand? Nefise is a virgin with no stains on her reputation.’
‘All right, then,’ said Numan, and now he looked ashamed.
Then suddenly he noticed the piece of string in his hands; he cast it to the ground as if it were a worm.
‘Listen,’ he said then, turning back to Cabbar. ‘I’ve just thought of something. There may be one more thing we need to try.’
‘Don’t you go saying we should kidnap her or anything. I won’t stand for it.’
‘No,’ said Cabbar. ‘I’m not saying we should kidnap her.’
‘Then what are you proposing?’
‘What I’m thinking is that if anyone can solve this problem for us, it’s Ziya Bey. Nefise and the rest of them consider him a member of the family. They have a great deal of respect for him. You know this. If he can speak for us, they won’t turn us down. Don’t you agree?’
Cupping his hands, Cabbar fell silent. As he let his thoughts wander, he looked out over the wall, almost as if he thought he might see the edge of the village, and the vineyards, and Ziya in his barn.
‘They wouldn’t turn us down,’ Numan said again. ‘There’s no way they would go against it, if we had him speaking for us. If Ziya Bey sat down with Nefise and Kenan and their mother and spoke to them for just a few minutes, we’d have an agreement. I’m sure of it. Who knows? Maybe it was fate who sent Ziya to us. I think we should go out there and tell him the whole story in detail – how it all started, and what happened next, and on from there. We can ask him to help us, and if necessary, we can beg him.’
Cabbar gave him an odd look.
‘Don’t get me wrong,’ Numan pleaded. ‘When I said we could beg him, I meant me, not you. I’d whine like a dog for Nefise if I had to. And I’d beg everyone I met, not just Ziya Bey. But one thing is clear: fate sent this man to us, to resolve this matter that’s been left hanging for so many years now.’
Cabbar went and sat back down next to Numan. He looked tired, and he was breathing heavily.
‘You’ve convinced me,’ he said slowly. ‘It’s true – they really do consider him a member of the family. Let’s hope he’s a man of compassion.’
‘He’s a good person,’ said Numan, in a voice that had more confidence than he did. ‘If we tell our story in a way that does us justice, he’ll understand, I think. Please, big brother. Could we go right now and speak with this man? Hey. What do you say?’
‘All right,’ said Cabbar. ‘There’s nothing else we can do, so let’s go out there and talk to him.’
With that, the two brothers stood up. Lit up by hope, and puffing on their cigarettes, they set off for the barn. They had hardly passed through the courtyard gate, though, before Cabbar started in on his warnings. ‘Whatever you do, don’t go telling him about that dream of yours.’ Numan, who kept adjusting his collar as if they were on their way to pick up Nefise herself, promised not to breathe a word of it. He had come out of his funk and turned into a big, smiling child. He kept walking too fast and then, when he noticed it, slowing down, and every time he did that, he’d give his brother another sidelong look. Every once in a while an urge came over him to skip over a branch, or a cowpat, or a bramble or a tuft of grass, but his brother’s presence made him shy, and he held himself back. He skipped over them in his mind, instead, as an imagined breeze pushed him forward, lightening his step, and sending him ahead of his brother yet again.
Ziya was sitting outside the barn, staring at the mountains. His eyes were fixed on a blurry shadow that seemed to have come out of nowhere; he had, at least, never seen it there before. One side of it looked like a jutting cliff, and the other like a crooked old roof. If he looked at it too long, it became a slowly expanding clump of dark earth. He couldn’t tell if it was near or very far away, because the shivering brown mass hovering above the oak forest might have been just beyond it or many kilometres further on, rising from the mists of the red-pine forests. It seemed to be moving, but too slowly for the eye to apprehend. And every time it moved, it drew closer, only to recede.
When he heard Cabbar and Numan coming through the vineyard, Ziya turned his head.
‘Selamünaleykum,’ said Cabbar, as he struggled to catch his breath. ‘Would you mind if we came to visit?’
‘You’re very welcome,’ said Ziya. ‘Please, sit down.’
When the introductions were over, they all sat down on the bench that ran along the wall. Cabbar crossed his legs. Numan shrank into himself, as if to protect himself from the cold. He put his hands between his knees.
‘Thanks so much for coming,’ said Ziya. ‘Until now only Kenan and Besim have been out here. So you’re my first visitors.’
Embarrassed, Cabbar smiled faintly.
Then, for a time, they chatted about nothing and everything. When this interlude came to an end, Ziya got up to brew them some tea, but Cabbar put his hand on his arm and stopped him.
Then he said, ‘Ziya Bey, we have a problem, and we’ve come here to talk it through with you, if you permit.’
Ziya looked at him in surprise.
‘Yes,’ said Cabbar. ‘We came to talk it through with you, because only you can help us solve it. To tell the truth, we see no other way forward. And so we have come to take refuge in your mercy and wisdom. I’m not sure quite how to put it now . . . except to say that my brother Numan here has been head over heels in love with Kenan’s sister Nefise since he was this high. Isn’t that true, boy?’
&nbs
p; ‘It’s true,’ said Numan, as he nodded.
‘So there you have it. Since he was this high, my brother has been singing for Nefise, going to sleep for Nefise, and getting up in the morning for Nefise. There’s no need to beat around the bush. They grew up, these two, and they blossomed, and at last they reached the marrying age. And we got up and consulted with a few wise old men, and then, with God’s blessing, we went over to Kenan’s house with our offer. We went, but we got nowhere. Whatever we did, whatever we said, whatever brook we drew from, we were refused. Let’s throw in some gold coins, we said, and a dozen plaited bracelets, but still the answer was no. We offered to cover all the wedding costs, and buy all the furniture. No, they said. We offered to sign over five dönüms of marshland to Nefise. Again, they said no. And on top of all this, I swear to God, we offered to build a two-storey house at the very top of the village, for the couple to live in, once they were married, but still they refused us. Every time we came with a new offer, they found some way to turn us down. And then, after all that, they upped and said that the girl didn’t want it. The girl had no feelings for my brother. And shut the door! We were dumbstruck, just dumbstruck. We were at our wit’s end, Ziya Bey. We had nowhere to turn, and it was driving us to distraction. This boy here was close to losing his mind, even. He’d just sit there, arms limp, staring across at Nefise’s house. Like a little bird stranded in its nest. His eyes looked like boiled eggs that had just been peeled, and when we saw that we said to ourselves, dear God, we’ve lost him. What I’m trying to say is that the whole family was in tatters. But in the end, we decided to keep trying, of course. We kept going back. Sometimes we sent other men in to argue our case, and each time we did so, we offered them more. But in time, the whole thing went sour. What I mean to say is that we pressed too hard, and the day came when Nefise’s family cut off relations entirely. There we were, trying to join our families, and suddenly we were on the brink of becoming enemies. And so that’s where our two families have been now for quite some time, Kenan especially. If he sees us coming, he hangs his head and changes direction. If he sees us inside a coffeehouse, he won’t come in. He just peers inside and if he sees us, he rushes right off. As I just said, we’ve been teetering on that bitter brink for some time now – we are this far from becoming outright enemies. And meanwhile, the children are getting older. Soon they’ll be too old. And so, in conclusion, we have come here to ask you to take on the delicate task of acting as our ambassador. If you agree, if you were willing to go to the family and recommend this union, you would bring us great happiness, Ziya Bey. Be aware that without your help, it will never come to be. Things will stay as they are. And as you know, there is no task more sacred than this. But that’s all I have to say. The rest lies with your conscience.’
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