The more I walk, the drier my lips get. I pass a crowd waiting for the bus. The crowd reeks, almost of death, and I turn the other way to avoid the smell. A huge, frowning eyebrow of hairy bodies. Just yesterday, this place was totally different. How can this be? I’m searching for a woman who’s looking to go somewhere. With me, without me, it doesn’t matter anymore. I’m growing tired, starting to feel strangled. It’s like the oxygen’s being sucked out of the air.
I want to go home, to run into some girl, any girl, from my neighborhood. With a tram full of guys, I go up to Beyazıt Plaza. The Istanbul University dorms are up here. There must be some female students around. Some of them must be out getting a bite to eat, cramming with friends at a café, preparing for the next day’s exam.
Walking along the plaza, my disappointment only grows. There isn’t a single female student. It’s like I’m on a film set. Like this is Candid Camera, and somebody somewhere is watching me and laughing his ass off. But this is too much. Nobody deserves this. I continue along my way, like a radar beam, beneath the harsh lights of shops selling meatballs, grilled sandwiches, and döner. I swiftly pass the hole in the wall that sells tripe soup—slim chance of seeing a woman in there—and try to find the girl who works in the next shop, selling colorful jewelry and posters of landscapes. She looks you in the face when she talks, makes you happy you’re alive. Every time I stop by her shop, I do my best to charm her. My speech becomes more refined, my laughter takes on a different tone. Not because I expect anything from her. But because she gives me the energy to make it through the rest of the day.
But when I reach the shop, what I find hits me with the force of a fist to the face. The girl has been replaced by a beady-eyed brute who’s clearly let the place go to seed. He’s removed all those bright pictures of Istanbul, which the girl had taken such great pains to display, and carelessly stacked them behind his chair, turning the charming little store into an ugly warehouse. Disgusted, I turn and leave, the memory of the bead girl trailing after me, morphing into a hundred other men unable to forget her smile, suffocating their longing in cigarette smoke.
I’m looking for a woman, any woman. I couldn’t care less about sex. I just want to pass a woman on the street. Sevim Teyze’s café comes to mind. I think of going there, to chat with Sevim Teyze, to relax and have some tasty pastries and coffee. But what I really need is to hear the sound of her sweet, soothing voice.
Drenched in sweat, I reach what should be Sevim Teyze’s café. I don’t recognize a thing, and it sends a chill down my spine. I look at the flower pot next to the door, there in its rightful place, but it has a wad of phlegm in it. And two cigarette butts. Some guy with sausage-shaped fingers is manning the counter. As I walk through the door, I wish with all my might that everything would snap back to normal then and there. But it doesn’t. I approach Sausage Fingers, in fear.
“Isn’t Sevim Teyze in?”
“Who’s that?”
“The owner of this place.”
“I’m the owner of this place!” His answer comes crashing down on me. He tells me he’s been there for years, that he doesn’t know anything about any teyze, and that he has no desire to either. The woman was here just yesterday, I am absolutely certain of it. Sweat’s pouring out of me as I look around, and this other world is sucking me in deeper and deeper. The cute wooden chairs have been replaced by dirty white ghosts of cheap plastic. The tiny lamps with the soft lights are gone. There are glass vinegar holders smudged with fingerprints on the tables. I want to lift those fingerprints and track down everyone responsible. This place has become just like all the others. Those sausage fingers can’t be bothered with delicate matters; they are busy stuffing baloney in a shoe-sized piece of bread.
I rush back outside. I walk toward the gate of Beyazıt Mosque and Çınaraltı. But that spacious plaza now stifles me. The huge plane tree, once a cool oasis where you could enjoy your tea in the open air, has turned black, its dry leaves crackling, dead and withered. A stiff pigeon falls to the ground in front of me. In a panic, I look around for a delicate hand, but all I can see are hairy knuckles, dirty nails, and callused fists gripping the dainty tulip glasses.
An unbearable stench reaches my nose; it’s coming from the Sahaflar Gate, the antique book bazaar. The used book stands have lost their exquisite, yellowish scent and now reek of dead mice. The windows are full of books bound in black. There are no names on the books. They’re a monotone, monochrome choir cloaked in black. I lean closer to the window, straining to find a name, and the choir breaks out in a ghastly chant. I am searching for the name of a woman, but the books have no authors, male or female.
I leave the Sahaflar Gate, desperate to forget what it is I’ve been looking for. A crowd has gathered next to the street in a commotion of ear-piercing cries and police sirens. There is a man on the ground, bleeding to death. Blood gushes from his throat. Everybody is busy telling everybody else what happened while the man lies there dying. I hear them say that the man was stabbed over a girl, and I become delirious with hope. I couldn’t care less about the man who’s been stabbed—I want to see the girl, to see the girl and put an end to this nightmare. I stare into the police car, hoping to see her. Surely they would take her into custody, into safety. But there is no girl. Not in the car, not anywhere.
I hear whispers in the crowd: Two men were out on the town. One man made a remark about the other man’s girlfriend, and got stabbed in return. He said she was “beautiful.” Perhaps what they call his girlfriend is not what I envision. Perhaps he is in love not with a girl, but with a piece of fabric—a piece of fabric that he airs out every once in a while, before putting it back in the closet.
My mother—I need to find her. I rush down the narrow empty road leading from behind the university toward my home. I want to believe that this will all be over soon, that girls on their way to class will fill the plaza in droves the next day. Without a doubt, I would embrace every single one of them. I imagine a horseman storming through the grandiose gate of Istanbul University to read aloud some imperial decree, explaining the reasons for this temporary calamity and apologizing for any inconvenience.
I make my way home, convinced that tomorrow I’ll be back to yesterday and everything will be fine. My father is sitting in the living room in his underwear, cleaning his nails with a pocketknife. I have never seen my father in his underwear, nor have I ever seen him with a pocketknife. He burps loudly, his eyes glued to the TV screen. This can’t be our home; it must be another catacomb of my nightmare. My flesh is creeping as I try to find my mother. But then I change my mind and decide to wait. I don’t have the courage to look for her. I’m too afraid of what I won’t find. My father mills about like a bear marking his territory. He claims to be looking for an ashtray. His black socks are hanging from the couch.
I have to find her. I check the kitchen, but my mother is nowhere to be found. My suspicion snowballs into an avalanche.
“Did Mom go to bed, Dad?”
“What did you say?”
I repeat my question.
“What’s the matter with you, boy?” he says, his eyes glazed over.
I insist on an answer. He seems to feel sorry for me. He looks me straight in the eye, and talks to me like I’m suffering from some kind of amnesia or something.
“You never had a mother,” he says. “You know that. She never was. She never could be.”
Don’t say that, Dad! Don’t talk like that! Don’t think like that!
He doesn’t explain. He just stares at me as if to say that I should know that there is no such “thing.” The glint from his knife stabs me in the eye, blinding me. And so I listen, straining to hear the sound of my mother—a word, any word that’s been captured in the walls, a scream still hanging from the curtains. I want to grab onto it before it flies away, caress it, shelter it in my ear. But I can’t hear a thing, except for the grunting of the man pretending to be my father. I’m looking for my home. I leave, distraught and angry. I
wait on the street until sunrise. To witness the return to normalcy.
Morning comes, but the darkness doesn’t leave, it only fades to gray. Dark gray. Walking through the pungently male clusters of students on the plaza, I start to abandon all hope. I enter the Covered Bazaar. It’s like a scene out of One Thousand and One Nights. I’m the main character in a bad fairy tale. I want to succumb to the beckoning young buck apprentices and buy a pair of alvar, not as a souvenir but to wear in earnest. I want to buy a tesbih, not as decoration but to click in my hand. I want to wander into the Oriental Café and get hooked on a hookah. I wander through the labyrinth of the bazaar, hoping to get lost, when one of the arched entrances catches my eye. It’s completely black, a hole leading to nowhere. I delve inside, wishing for the worst, hoping to hit rock bottom.
Suddenly, I find myself in one of those movie theaters that shows the karate flicks with the porn interludes. The place reeks of semen. The floor is sticky. I see a sliver of light in the distance. I run, my feet clinging to the gunk on the floor. The insidious goo rises and rises, until I’m in the stuff all the way up to my knees. My whole body throbs. I’m in terrible pain. I finally make it out. I reach the light.
I’m on the ferry, sitting next to my friend and that boring guy, who’s still talking. I look outside; everything seems normal. I watch the brunette woman across from me licking her ice cream with gusto, another girl down the row courting the boy next to her. I now realize just how wrapped up I’ve been in whatever it is that boring guy’s been saying. I’ve been hostage to his drivel for a full half hour, the cramp in my stomach growing more and more crippling the longer I listen.
He talks like he’s seen, done, knows it all. He has a small store where he sells religious books. I try to envision the bookstore. It smells of rose oil, and men dressed in alvar, men from another century.
“The people are waking up, though, slowly but surely,” he says.
“Waking up to what? The benefits of literacy?” I ask.
He leans back and smiles. He’s so sure of himself, it’s repulsive.
“That too,” he replies, “but what I really meant was that they are waking up to the fact that they are living in sin. The most remarkable thing about it is that they can’t see just how immersed in sin they themselves really are, how this sickness has infected them—and so they need to be told. They have to be taught a lesson.” They can’t fathom the consequences of skimpy skirts, he claims.
“What kind of a state is this anyway?” he scoffs. “They tax believers, use the money to open rakı factories, support the meyhanes, ban the headscarf. It’s ridiculous. But now they’re finally being taught a lesson, if only they could open their eyes and see it for what it is.”
He holds up the newspaper: the Gölcük earthquake. Thirty thousand deaths—crushed bodies, crushed hopes, a country in mourning. But for him, the tragedy is a punishment. “Punishment by God,” he says.
So he means to say that tens of thousands of people had forsaken their religion, had reaped what they had sewn. According to him, Istanbul was next—the sinners were being weeded out. This guy built his happiness on the ruins of thousands, on the despair of millions.
“It’s not just about the veil,” he says. “Covering your head is not enough. Every one of those who perished in the quake were people gone astray, people who abandoned their religion.”
I have to get out of here.
The man turns to me, about to deliver the darkest chapter of his sermon. But I stand up, leaving him speechless. He is looking not in my eyes but at the seat of my pants now. Finally, a real savior appears. A girl I know from work. She nods in greeting, and I respond—I’ve never been so happy to see anyone in my entire life.
We reach Yenikapı. Outside, I see men with hands like ropes.
PART IV
GRIEF & GRIEVANCES
ORDINARY FACTS
BY RIZA KIRAÇ
4th Levent
At the funeral, together with my brother’s comrades, I raised my left fist into the air, I yelled out slogans, and I sang marches.
When my brother’s corpse, the three bullet holes in his body plugged with cotton balls, was brought into the mosque, I, like everyone else, fell silent. Rather than join the congregation as they performed the funeral namaz, I stood proudly in the corner with the young comrades.
Following the namaz, the coffin was lifted onto shoulders once again and everyone walked to the cemetery. Two neighborhood women stood on either side of my mother, their arms linked in hers, trying to hold her up.
I was walking next to Haldun Abi. Every now and then he’d put his hand on my shoulder, keeping me next to him. Everyone was crying, everyone but me. I just couldn’t. Not because I didn’t love my brother, I loved him dearly. I would have done anything for him. He wasn’t just my brother, he was a father to me too.
Seeing that I wasn’t crying, Haldun Abi said to me, “Your brother would be proud of you, the way you’re standing tall.”
After we’d buried my brother, every day for a month, my mother walked all the way to Sanayi Mahallesi—the “industrial” neighborhood—to visit his grave. For the first two weeks I went with her, so she wouldn’t be alone. And for the next few days after that, I’d go to the cemetery after school and walk back with her. She just stood there in front of his grave, sobbing silently. Every once in a while, she’d reach down with her cracked and callused hands and caress the earth, as if touching her son’s skin.
The only thing I could do to console her was stand by her side. There was nothing else I could do; there was nothing I could say.
For several days after my brother’s funeral, my father came to the house to make sure we had everything we needed and to play host to those who came to offer their condolences. Later, he’d stop by after work and sit with us. We hardly spoke a word. Eventually, my father would get up and go, leaving us and our silence behind for his new, peaceful home, his urban, educated wife, and my stepsister.
The neighbors’ daughters would come over and light the furnace, sweep the house, cook us some food, and then go home. If it hadn’t been for them, it never would’ve occurred to my mother or me to light the furnace, or to eat, or to take care of any other trivial daily necessities. Those bites of food that we reluctantly put in our mouths at the dinner table remained stuck in our throats, day and night.
Once it was dark out and we’d turned the house lights on, we’d sometimes hear gunshots coming from down by the streams that flowed toward Kâıthane. When the sounds drew closer, to just a few streets over, I’d switch off the lights and sit my mother down on the floor.
The following day there would be another funeral, this time in Gültepe, or Yahya Kemal, or Çeliktepe. Again left fists would be raised and marches would be sung, or a crowd proclaiming Allahuekber would rain curses down upon the Communists.
One morning about two months after my brother’s death, I went to wake my mother up and I found her dead.
We buried her next to my brother. I stood before their graves and looked at the people around me, all of them poor, all of them hopeless, all of them angry, and all of them sick of what was happening—whatever it was.
There was no way I could stay in the house alone. How could an eleven-year-old boy live on his own in a rickety shanty?
We emptied out the house, gave our stuff to the neighbors. All I had left was a bird cage and a pair of canaries flitting around inside it. My father didn’t want the birds; he thought they brought bad luck. I placed the cage on my lap and sat in the center of the living room. My father gave in. We walked from the steep hill of Yahya Kemal to the Gültepe bus stop, the first stop of the line. There wasn’t a bus yet, so we waited. The bus eventually came, and we got on.
While everyone else was going back to their shanties after work, I was headed for a new home, an apartment. I was leaving behind the place where I had been born, the graves of my brother and mother, for another neighborhood, another street, another life, the home of a woman a
nd her daughter, neither of whom I knew. My father was carrying two small plastic sacks and my school bag, and I was carrying a cage with two canaries flapping around like crazy, frightened by all the noise.
The bus arrived at the Neyir stop, which lies at the intersection leading to Büyükdere Avenue. Some people called this the factory stop; some just called it Neyir after the textile factory on the corner.
We were listening to the news broadcast on the bus driver’s transistor radio. It was more like the newscaster was reading a list of names: those who’d died, those who’d been arrested; the prime minister, ministers of state, soldiers, the president …
I started looking out the window to escape the gloomy atmosphere of the bus; the workers were leaving the pharmaceutical, ceramic, lightbulb, and textile factories on the east side of Büyükdere Avenue and heading home. Behind the green hills of the west side were the villas of the rich and famous, and huge construction sites of apartment blocks in the making.
It was at that moment, at that corner, that I began crying.
For the first time in my life, I felt that something was changing, but I wasn’t sure what. I’d started sobbing when my father peered at me with a look of fear on his face that I’d never seen before.
“What’s wrong, Sadık?” he asked.
I couldn’t tell him; I didn’t know. It could hardly be a coincidence that the avenue dividing the rich from the poor, the luxurious apartment blocks from the shanties, the city from the village, had been named Büyükdere—the “large brook.” But I didn’t really know what that meant, so I banished all my confused thoughts to the dark recesses of my mind.
I was on the thirty-fifth floor of the skyscraper, facing the avenue. Between the city and me was a two-way mirror, separating the accused from the witness. But which of us was which, I couldn’t tell.
To my left was the factory stop, where I cried as a child, in its new guise: a main thoroughfare clogged with traffic, despite six lanes and an underpass at the intersection. And on my right, a mesmerizing Bosphorus view, enough to drive one to obsession.
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