Noontime in Yenisehir

by Sevgi Soysal

  Günseli could not shake off her memories of Şahinler, the village where she had taught. It had a wooden schoolhouse which consisted of two parts. One side was a stable, and the other the school. The villagers had prepared a room for the teacher above the stable. “I didn’t get lonely much during the summer nights; they tied their horses up in the stable. But during the winter I’d cry as I listened to the sound of wolves’ howling.” Günseli’s room would fill up with the winter cold that seeped in through the gaps between the wooden boards. She still shivered when telling about those cold, frightening winter nights she spent all alone. “Şahinler was a tiny mountain village. Nobody ever passed through there during the winter. They got their winter supplies from town in the summer. A villager would bring me wood every morning. They even lit my stove until I finally learned how to do it myself.”

  “Weren’t you scared of those villagers, girl? That they’d come in in the middle of the night and rape you?” Şükran would ask. “No, they wouldn’t do that, they were good people. They were good people, but still, I was afraid. They always had respect for city dwellers, but they always considered me a stranger. They always kept me at a distance. I was a stranger, but at the same time something they wanted to emulate; it was weird like that. My room never seemed to heat up in the winter. The first winter it got really cold and so I stayed in the muhtar’s house. Even the gas in the lamp in my room froze. And so while I was staying at the muhtar’s, I woke up one morning and what should I see: all of the village women were gathered around my bed studying my hands and my fingers and this and that. You can’t possibly imagine how shocked and frightened I was. People rarely moved from the village to the city, so it’s a pretty insular place. But sometimes guys who’d gone to the city to work and ended up settling there would take a girl from the village in marriage. She’d be considered the luckiest girl in the world. The same as high society here. You know those slum houses we call gecekondu that we find so distasteful, well, a bride from Şahinler who moved to a house like that would be mighty impressed. Compared to my village, a gecekondu is paradise, paradise I tell you. As soon as anyone lands a place in Ankara, from that moment on the entire village would start using all sorts of excuses to go and stay with him. They’d pretend they had some disease that could only be treated in the city, or start looking for a job. And so then after a while, the guy who’d moved to the city would start getting peevish and looking for a way to cut his ties with the village.”

  “You know what a kolcu is? The kolcu’s the highest ranking man there.” “Were there a lot of trees there?” “It was a mountain village, smack in the middle of the forest—it was heaven.”

  One day, and this would only happen once in a blue moon, mind you, a kaymakam came to the village and talked and talked, and the villagers listened and listened. And then finally one of the villagers said, “Oh, Mister Kaymagam, if ya’d only studied a wee bit more, ya coulda been a kolcu!”

  Günseli had countless more stories like that. These are some of the more boring ones actually. But she had some racy ones too. She’d have Şükran and the other girls rolling on the floor with laughter. “I’m telling you girl, there wasn’t any sneaking around; you’d be shocked by the stories the village women told me.” So she could leave the village and come to Ankara, Günseli got engaged to a third lieutenant. The guy had a relative who worked at the Head Office of Spor Loto. He got her a job there. She even got the guy to pay off her compulsory teaching service. But at what cost? Later on they broke off the engagement. If you asked the girls, the third lieutenant had been scratching his itch with Günseli. And so, both giver and taker came away from the deal satisfied.

  In their waxing session the previous month, the wax had got stuck on Meral’s leg like glue. They nearly skinned the girl alive trying to get it off. As Meral screamed in pain, Günseli once again recalled the villagers. “Girl, I hear a scream and the first thing that comes to my mind is the village. One day I was playing ball with the kids in the playground when a gunshot rang out. And just what should I see? The kids are all lying on the ground. And there I am, screaming my lungs out, just like Meral. They told me later I yelled out that there was a bandit. I walked all the way around the school building three times. I ran out to the field. That’s where the gunfire was coming from. And then I saw her, this old woman holding a big gun. I lashed out, telling the old woman she’d shot the kids, goddamn her, and she immediately started crying. ‘Oh, my sweet girl, please don’t turn me in to the gendarme.’ I grabbed that old woman and took her straight to the gendarme station. I had the gendarme lock her up. They took the children to the city. All of them were fine. The buckshot barely grazed them. It turned out the old woman was known for taking shots at chickens who wandered into the fields. She shot any chicken that entered any field, regardless of who the chicken or the field belonged to. I’m telling you, even old hags abide by their own laws out there. And that’s just the beginning. The things I could tell you … There was a girl named Döndü. She was as beautiful as the actress Türkan Şoray. Her older brother caught her in the hay shed with her brother-in-law no less. He dragged the girl by her hair and threw her in the barn, locking her up next to the cattle. One night, there was a loud banging at my door. It was the muhtar and a few villagers. They were holding a lantern. “Miss Teacher, we’ve come to take you with us.”

  “Why?” “You’re going to act as a witness. Döndü’s family’s going to sentence her.” We went to the barn, with me still uncertain about what exactly was going on. Döndü lay on the ground, nearly passed out, her hair all a mess, with this sad look in her eyes. They’d beat the brother-in-law up real bad too, he was standing up though, his face covered in blood. Before I even had a chance to ask what was going on, the muhtar explained everything. The girl’s family was saying she was no longer pure, that she had to be sentenced, that they should set up a court and throw the hussy off a cliff. The muhtar heard about the sentencing bit and called on me to come and talk to the girl’s father and older brother, thinking I might be able to change their minds. I pleaded with them for an hour. But the father and son wouldn’t give an inch. And the village’s muhtar, and the elders, they all just waited to hear whatever verdict came out of the father’s and son’s mouths, as if there was no such thing as actual laws in this country. If I’d let ’em have their way, they would’ve tossed her off a cliff, just like that. The gendarme would’ve arrived in the morning to work things out, but by then the girl would’ve been long dead. Finally I put the fear of God in the muhtar, telling him they’ll do this to you and that to you, and that I’d have him put on trial for being an accomplice to the crime. That lit a fire under him, and so he pleaded with the family all the more passionately. Everyone else was still backing the father and son. Anyway, the decision was left to the village tribunal. Finally, the entire village stoned the girl in the middle of the village square—based on the tribunal’s verdict. The girl ended up almost worse off than she would’ve been if they’d pushed her off a cliff. The gendarme got wind of it and intervened in time, otherwise she would’ve died for sure. The whole village just went mad, rabid. Especially the old hags, they didn’t show an ounce of pity, didn’t once say anything about her also being one of God’s creatures … I’ll never forget that girl’s dark eyes.”

  “Why are you looking at yourself in the mirror like that, all forlorn?”

  Şükran was startled by the sound of Ahmet’s voice.

  “No reason. I just felt bad for Döndü.”

  “Which Döndü?”

  “You know Günseli, sweetheart, well, the Döndü in the village where she taught … She was caught fooling around in the barn you see and …”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “You men are all like that, you don’t think of anything but your own pleasure.”

  “Now where did that come from, girl? This Döndü, now she … I’m going to start swearing because of you, God help me. I don’t know who the hell the girl is. So what if she g
ot caught, what’s it to me? What do I have to do with any of it?”

  “But of course you would say that! You men are only concerned with getting your nasty desires out of your system. Her father and brother wanted to throw her off a cliff, ’cause she’s damaged goods …”

  “It’s a matter of honor, it’s nobody’s business.”

  “But of course, and so why don’t they throw the bloke off the cliff, huh?”

  “He’s a man … If the girl doesn’t bother to protect her honor, why should he?”

  “Oh, right, I get it, I get it. Of course that’s your reaction, it would be a mistake to expect anything less!”

  Ahmet didn’t like what was happening. Oh no, he didn’t like it at all. This unsavory little tiff—out of nowhere!—was not working to his advantage. He tried to smooth things over.

  “Şükran!”

  Şükran frowned.

  “What is it?”

  “Şükran, girl, red really suits you, you know.”

  “Really?”

  Şükran softened up. How could she not? She was crazy about Ahmet. Ahmet was a good-looking guy. Other girls were mad with jealousy, she was sure. But the blockhead, the only thing he thinks about is … But then he wouldn’t marry me, never in a million years. Şükran was confused.

  “Ahmet?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you think Günseli’s still a virgin?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “I just wondered!”

  “Better you start thinking about me than wondering about her. We’ve been hanging out for how many months now, but not once have you—”

  “Enough … Watch your mouth!”

  “Is Günseli stupid like you? No way, she doesn’t play around. Goodness knows how many times she’s done it already.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Girl, we can tell whether or not a girl is a virgin from ten meters away.”

  “So you mean she’s not a virgin?”

  “Her maidenhead’s been through some serious devaluation.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Guy talk. You know how money’s devalued when you exchange it, well, that’s what it means, she’s been exchanged a few times too many.”

  “If you only heard the stories Günseli tells … Look, one day a boy went out into the forest to gather kindling. These two young men from the village followed him and then they, you know, and so then the villagers went after the young men, beat the crap out of them, and then tied them onto the back of a donkey. They completely humiliated those guys there in the village square.”

  “I really got to meet this Günseli, up close and personal!”

  “Why?”

  “From the stories she tells, I bet she’s loose.”

  “There’s no talking to you.”

  “I was just kidding, girl.”

  “Alright, alright. In one of the villages neighboring Günseli’s village they have this pit called God’s Command. The villagers themselves try anyone who commits a crime and then throw them in the pit if they’re guilty.”

  “Would you like another sandwich?”

  “No. I’m trying to tell you something. But you never listen. Besides, you just want to—”

  “I asked because I don’t want you going hungry. Is there anything wrong with that?”

  “I don’t want one. I’m getting fat. Just look at me.”

  “Şükran?”

  “What?”

  “What’s up with you today? You’re awfully hot under the collar. What’s on your mind?”

  They would have these weddings, Günseli had said, that were like funerals. Nobody spoke a word. They transported the bride to the groom’s house as if carrying a corpse—no instruments, no songs. In one of the villages, they would immediately punish anyone who got a little boisterous or even cracked a smile. “After a wedding like that,” she had explained, “I aged a thousand years, it was as if I’d been buried alive six feet below the ground. I couldn’t stay there a minute longer, I had to get to Ankara; at that point, if they’d told me I’d had to register as a whore at one of the brothels in Bentderesi to do so, I would have been more than willing …”

  Ahmet elbowed Şükran.

  “Hey, I’m asking you a question.”

  “What? Oh, right. I’m upset. Of course I’m upset. Am I wrong to be upset? What’s going to happen to me? My auntie’s boy saw us together. My dad’s wearing a long face all the time. And my mom yammers on and on about how rather than contributing to the household, I spend all my money on clothes and makeup so that I can look pretty for some punk bastard …”

  “What business is it of theirs what you do with your money?”

  “Riiight, what business is it of theirs? And I suppose it’s also none of their business that I’m hanging out with you, right?”

  “So don’t!”

  Şükran looked at Ahmet sidelong, hurt and resentful. The prick, he knows I won’t leave him …

  “The devil tells me I oughta just agree to marry one of the guys who’s already asked for my hand and get it over with.”

  “So do it!”

  Şükran glared at Ahmet. She would have given him a good flogging with her eyes just then, if only that were possible. The swine! You’re gonna run around with me, have a good time, feel me up, and if it were up to you, do everything under then sun, and then some random guy’s gonna strut over like a pasha and take my hand. ’Cause we’re all just a pack of idiots. You wanna dirty the laundry and let someone else wash it. Şükran’s rage was swelling by the second … I should just abandon this asshole in the middle of the street …

  Ahmet was by now aware of the fact that he had upset the apple cart. Why go getting on her nerves when he could wrap her around his finger? Was that any way to win over a girl?

  “Şükran?”

  “Yes?”

  “Girl, look, I mean, if I were in the position to marry, I mean, I wouldn’t think twice, you know that, but what with military service and this and that …”

  “What’s ‘this and that’?”

  “Oh, c’mon, don’t go ruining my day already by making me talk about these things.”

  Suddenly he paused. He grabbed Şükran’s hand and squeezed it. Şükran quivered ever so slightly. Ahmet was certain that he had won Şükran over again.

  “Şükran, girl, I’m crazy about you.”

  …. …. .

  Again, he paused. This time he put his arm around Şükran’s shoulders and gave her another gentle squeeze. Again she quivered.

  “Şükran?”

  …. …. .

  “Shall we go to the basement again?”

  Şükran didn’t respond. They crossed the street at Kızılay and arrived at The Big Store over by the square. After walking past the dolmuş stop and down the road built for the vehicles transporting merchandise, they came to the basement of The Big Store.

  Çetin, a friend of Ahmet’s from the neighborhood, was the watchman at The Big Store’s warehouse during the day. He was a student at the Academy of Economics and Commercial Sciences. Whenever Ahmet was in a pinch, such as now, he let Ahmet in. Ahmet banged his keychain against the iron rails of the warehouse. A few moments later, Çetin opened the door. He talked with Ahmet without even looking at Şükran, ignoring her very existence. Male friends do not look at the women their buddies seduce.

  “What’s up? Did you manage to take care of that cloth business at Sümerbank?”

  “Sure did. You’ll get your hundred lira cut.”

  “Let me see the cloth first.”

  They didn’t talk for long. Çetin sat down at the desk located in the center of the warehouse. Ahmet and Şükran walked to the back of the warehouse, their steps revealing a familiarity with the locale. After shoving aside some boxes of Piyale macaroni, Fay dishwashing soap and Omo detergent to make room, they sat down on the floor. Ahmet immediately leaned over and squeezed Şükran’s breast.

  “Hey, watch it, you
’re hurting me, ouch!”

  “Are ya givin’ it up or not? You are, right? I swear I’m about to explode, c’mon!”

  “Why should I give myself to you? Let your sister do it.”

  Ahmet shoved Şükran. She fell backwards. Boxes of Piyale, Omo, and Fay came tumbling down on top of her.

  “You beast! I shouldn’t be surprised. Why are you shoving me?”

  “Don’t mention my sister again.”

  “And why not? As if I don’t have a big brother too. Since you’re so good at keeping a watch over your sister’s honor, well you should know that I have two big buff brothers myself!”

  “I know that.”

  “Well then? Your sister’s an innocent little lamb and I’m a whore then, right? What if you saw your sister here, like this?”

  “Look here, girl, you’re trying my patience. I told you not to mention my sister.”

  “Well, you can’t stop me. I’ll mention her all I like. As if I don’t know the shit she’s up to …”

  Ahmet slapped Şükran. She began to cry. Ahmet suddenly realized that he’d gone too far. He cupped his face in his hands. He was upset. He’d ruined everything again. And my pants are all dirty now from this floor. Dumbass, you dumbass, what did you expect? I spent a fortune trying to hoodwink the hussy. Now show me the empty pockets you’ve got to show for it. I could’ve bought that purple sweater I saw in the shop window for that much money. And now the little trollop’s playing the honor card. The girl’s been turning tricks all over the neighborhood since she was just a kid. Murat told me all about it, in mouthwatering detail. The cow. She thinks I’m going to ask for her hand? Are you the type of gal a man marries, for God’s sake? Do I look like the kind of dimwit who would marry a girl willing to come down to the basement of The Big Store with a boyfriend she barely knows?

  Şükran, now standing, brushed the dirt off her skirt. She’d broken one of her nails. The pig, but then what did I expect. Just ’cause you took me to the cinema three times, bought me a few sandwiches and some cake, and took me to Gençlik Park, now you’re going to make me pay for the service, right here, right now? He’ll sleep with me, and then go marry one of his sister’s snotty-nosed girlfriends. Well, I won’t do it. He can sleep with them. And even if I were to sleep with him, it wouldn’t be in a place like this, the dark, damp, cold basement of The Big Store. Who does he think he is? I haven’t fallen that far. If I were going to be a whore, I’d do it right. In the movies, even the most villainous men take the girl to a motel at least, or a luxury hotel or something, and they dance, and drink, and even, sometimes they eat expensive meals, get furs and jewelry, or whatever … It’d end up costing him more if he went to a brothel. The shameless brute. No good will ever come of this guy. Günseli told me so, many times. That girl knows what she’s talking about. Even she made sure her fiance brought her to Ankara before she took the bait. Of course, that girl’s lived, it’s not for naught that she tells me any man who’s constantly looking at his reflection in shop windows isn’t husband material. If you lose your heart to somebody, fine, have a good time, but whatever you do, don’t take it seriously, whatever a guy like that wants to do to you, you do the same to him, have fun with him, seduce him, and then walk right past him without so much as a hello, do that and see how he goes raving mad, his masculinity going straight to his head, and he might even try to shoot you out of jealousy. That Günseli, she’s a smart one, knows what she’s talking about. Şükran looked at Ahmet again. But I love him, I love him, what can I do? I know damn well that no good will ever come of this scoundrel, why would I follow him down here otherwise? Ahmet enters her dreams, her crazy, crazy dreams. But ah … a mad, gushing heat ran through her body. She took another look at Ahmet out of the corner of her eye, sizing him up once again. The spitting image of Alain Delon, God so help me. An exact copy. She wiped away her tears. Her eyes had softened—now the look in them was one of having been offended. If the boy had any luck, he’d be famous all over Europe, and then of course he wouldn’t give me the time of day. So why was she rebuffing him? Hadn’t she come down here of her own accord, on her own two feet? If he didn’t make me feel all tingly inside all the time, then of course I’d be able to flirt properly and take things slowly, just like the next girl! Her brother had always told her that the heavier the gold, the greater its worth, the coyer the girl, the better husband material she’d catch. But now tell that to my heart! I’m scared to death that Ahmet won’t call me. If I knew that he’d never call me again unless … Then I would …right now … Goddamn honor, it’s a curse, one that girls like me have to worry about. Look at Elizabeth Taylor. I bet she didn’t snag five husbands by being coy. If I had furs, diamonds, cars, worldwide fame like that, he’d be dying to have just two words with me, let alone my hand in marriage. The dirty bastard, he’d go so far as to pimp me out, just so he could take the credit for my worth.