by Yashar Kemal
A trap had snapped shut upon them. They would never be able to break loose. The milling crowds of a moment ago were thinning out, the street pedlars, the conjurors, the loudspeakers had disappeared and people were gradually taking themselves off home. And still the two of them wandered about helplessly, exposed, already holding their arms protectively over their heads against the rain of bullets they were expecting at any moment. In the end, Dursun Kemal dragged Zeynel to the wooden palisade he had once hidden behind and Zeynel wriggled through the hole. They emerged on to an empty muddy patch, crossed it and came to the old building where Dursun Kemal had been apprenticed to the cloth-printer. It was dim inside and empty by this time. There was only an aged janitor, sweeping the floor with a long-handled broom, and coming towards them as he swept.
‘It’s all right, Zeynel Abi,’ Dursun Kemal whispered. ‘That’s only Halo Misto, the best man in the world. You’ll see, he’ll brew some tea for us at once. He always does it for everyone, even for those who can’t pay.’
As the old man drew near, sweeping away, he lifted his thick grey eyebrows that almost hid his eyes and recognized Dursun Kemal.
‘Why, Dursun my child, where have you been?’ he cried lovingly. Then in a stricken tone: ‘Ah, my poor child, I’m so sorry. So they killed your mother? My poor poor child … Is there anyone like a mother, is there anything worse than to lose one’s mother? It’s like dying once yourself before you die … Come, let me make you some tea.’
With a wave of affection Zeynel looked at this boy whose mother had been killed, who had been clinging to him out of fear, yet risking death at his side. He leaned over and stroked the boy’s hair with a burning hand. Dursun Kemal’s eyes filled with tears. He huddled up to Zeynel and hugged him fiercely.
18
Fisher Selim tossed and turned in his bed and the bedsprings creaked and groaned under him. From outside came the muted sound of the sea and the whirring of insects in the night. Now and then a plane roared down into Yeşilköy Airport, but the last train from Halkali to Sirkeci had long trundled past. Out in the darkness, dogs were howling.
‘I’ll kill him this time, I will!’ Selim vowed. He had been saying this over and over again for the past few days now, trying to work himself up into believing he really would kill Halim Bey Veziroğlu.
The man was wicked, cruel, bloodthirsty, treacherous, the brains behind all the thieves and black-marketeers in the country … For long years he had directed the traffic in hashish, heroin and opium and invented a variety of ways and means of smuggling. He was ruthless, he stopped at nothing to attain his ends. Countless homes had been ruined by him, countless children orphaned. Veziroğlu was a surname he had adopted later on. Nobody knew his real name, nor where he came from. There were people who had known him when he operated a gang of thugs in the gambling dens of Beyoğlu, exacting as much protection money as he could. After a spell in jail, he married the daughter of the biggest manufacturer of heroin in Istanbul. And then it was as if Allah had given him a free rein. He donated millions to various political parties, while remaining above politics himself, and when any one of these parties came to power they did not forget his good services. For thirty years the name of Halim Bey Veziroğlu had hung over Istanbul like a pall of fear. He made fortunes and lost them too. Once he was forced to scuttle his ships laden with millions’ worth of contraband, another time to blow up his trucks filled with precious black-market goods. On another day he snapped up a large grounded freighter, flying under the Panamanian flag and full to the brim with smuggled cargo, for no more than the price of a motor car.
Over all the coasts of the Marmara and the Black Sea, he set up an iron network of police, gendarmes and gangsters, so that his ships could unload their cargoes of weapons, whisky, American cigarettes and electronic devices in perfect safety under the cover of night. If everyone in this country carries a gun at his waist nowadays, it is largely due to Halim Bey Veziroğlu. And if villages and homes are equipped with automatics and machine-guns the Turkish Republic owes it to him.
Halim Bey Veziroğlu never allowed anyone to pronounce his name without that distinctive ‘Bey’ in the middle and no one would have dared to do so. He was a close-fisted man who would haggle to the death over one kurush, yet at times spent his money lavishly. Especially when he was entertaining, no one could be more extravagantly generous. All Istanbul knew of Halim Bey Veziroğlu’s shady doings and only respected him the more for it. He was the most honoured guest in high society, admired by all, particularly women, and his name came up every day in connection with some scandal or other.
‘I shall kill him!’
Halim Bey Veziroğlu’s best quality was his ability to pick his men, to attach them to himself, to portion out his gains equally among them and also to protect the high-placed persons and the authorities with whom he dealt, to keep their identities secret, never to breathe their names to anyone. No one had ever been able to ferret out Halim Bey Veziroğlu’s contacts.
He owned a number of factories in various branches of industry, two farms, one in Adana, the other in Izmir, and partnerships in several enterprises. He had long ago renounced his other shady activities. One day he cut himself off from them as though with the stroke of a knife. Or maybe it had not happened as quickly as people thought. Maybe he had done it gradually year by year, eliminating one traffic after another until he himself must have been surprised to find that his former illicit dealings had stopped completely.
And now, for the past few years he had stepped up his purchases of land. This was his hobby, his passion. He could not hear of a good tract of land for sale without snapping it up on the spot.
‘The man must be done away with, the world cleansed of his filthy presence …’
Halim Bey Veziroğlu also had a predilection for very young girls. Each year he had to have a certain number of girls, eighteen or nineteen years old, neither younger nor older, to deflower. Among his countless business preoccupations, that was his only relaxation. Is that too much for such a man to ask? Why, Istanbul was full of girls ready to give up their maidenhood to Halim Bey Veziroğlu, who always rewarded them bountifully …
At least once a month, either by land in his motor car or by sea in his motor launch, he would cover both shores of the Bosphorus and purchase whatever mansion or empty plot struck his fancy. He rarely haggled over the price, but if the owner refused to sell, ah, then it was the turn of firearms to talk … Once, he had set his mind on the courtyard of a mosque because he liked the plane trees there, and it was all his men could do to make him renounce his project. After all, it was good money he was paying. He could have bought the mosque itself if he wanted and these people could go and build themselves another mosque on top of Kandilli hill, which was a much grander spot for a mosque …
Thus Halim Bey Veziroğlu acquired the choicest land on the Bosphorus and the Islands, in Pendik and Yakacik, and even as far afield as Yalova, Kumburgaz and Tekirdag. And from Antalya, Marmaris or Bodrum on the Mediterranean, to şile, Akçakoca or Amasra on the Black Sea there was no place that escaped him. The land he bought for fifty thousand today would be worth ten million three years hence, or sometimes even thirty or forty million. He would sell only a tiny fraction of these lots and then buy some more, which again brought in a thousandfold a few years later.
‘I shall kill him, kill him! He’s bought up the whole earth, that man! Why, he owns enough land to build large cities! But that tract is mine. It was I who planted those trees on it years ago, I who toiled on it. Where was he then? I’m going to build my house on that land. She wanted this of me … There, she said, in Çengelköy, under that plane tree … She’s been waiting all this time for me … Enough! I’ve grown old. I’m long past my prime. And she … She? No, she’s just the same. Women don’t age, they remain fresh as the sea. The sea doesn’t grow old, nor the sky, the clouds, the stars … Only human beings wither and die …. I shall kill him if he doesn’t give me my land. I’ll shoot him straight in the for
ehead. If a chit of a child like Zeynel can fell that mountain of a man, surely I can kill Halim Bey Veziroğlu? Who cares if he’s got the authorities, the police, the gangsters behind him? I’ll kill him, cut him to pieces. I’ll do it if it costs me my life. I’ll take that miserable puny life of his …’
He tossed heavily in his bed and gnashed his teeth. ‘What’s this!’ he cried aloud. ‘What I’ve had to put up with from this man! Each year I go to him with a whole bagful of money and what does he say? “Ohhooo, is that all you’ve brought, esteemed Selim Bey? You couldn’t buy three square metres of my land with that money. No, no, I’m not refusing to sell, it’s simply that your money’s not enough. Last year? Ah, my friend, land prices are twenty-eight times higher now. Yes, indeed. I’m sorry, dear Selim Bey …”’
That sallow, elongated face, repulsive, porous, sagging … Those eyes … The eyes of a sheep that has been bled to death …
‘Enough! I’m going to kill you, to rid Istanbul of your tyranny, to take revenge for all those homes you’ve destroyed. I’m going to kill you, kill, kill …’
They’re all his, the woods and valleys and streams of the Bosphorus, all Halim Bey Veziroğlu’s, the age-old plane trees. He’s going to cut them down, uproot the woods, level the valleys, dry up the brooks and fountains. A ravaging fire, an ill wind blowing over Istanbul, this Halim Bey Veziroğlu, turning into a hurricane. Filling the lovely shores and wooded valleys of the Bosphorus with ugly apartment blocks of a hundred or two hundred flats … And the waters of the Bosphorus will be strewn with refuse from these buildings and, like the Golden Horn, the Bosphorus will become nothing better than a stinking swampy marsh.
It’s easy enough to get into Halim Bey Veziroğlu’s presence and to shoot the dog, but how to get away afterwards? Maybe it can be done … Just screw up your courage, cast away all doubt, believe it in your very heart, tell yourself this: I can’t live on if he doesn’t die … It’s death for me as long as he’s alive. And with that conviction take your gun and go and face him. Don’t worry about the rest …
Fisher Selim got out of bed in the grey dawn. He dressed and, taking a cake of soap, went down to the public fountain. Holding his head under the streaming water, he soaped his hair and vigorously washed his face, neck and ears. Then, sprinkling water to right and left, he ran back to his shanty, dried himself, donned his jacket and combed his hair and moustache in front of the old mottled mirror. After this he made straight for the coffee-house where a few sleepy men were already sitting and drinking tea. He bought some cheese and a warm loaf of bread from Tahsin the grocer, sat down at a table outside, ordered his tea and began to eat his breakfast.
A gentle south wind was blowing and the mountains of Bursa on the opposite shore seemed so near you could hold out your arm and touch them.
Fisher Selim was growing impatient. It was Mahmut he was waiting for. He kept repeating to himself, ‘I’ll kill him. I must. He’s a bloody murderer. The hand that strikes him will be blessed. He’s a defiler of poor young girls, he’s a monster, he must be killed. Whoever kills him will have earned his place in Paradise …’
His right leg swinging up and down frenziedly, his hand flying back and forth from the table to his mouth, he was lashing himself into a mad fury. In no time he had finished his breakfast. He ordered another tea, downed it at one go, then asked for another. Again and again the coffee-house keeper filled his glass. At last he rose, flung some money on the table and walked over to the Seagull Casino. Still no sign of Mahmut … He swerved back to the coffee-house, his anger mounting, then back to the Casino, up and down at a mad pace, oblivious of passing cars and trucks and of the screeching gulls swooping above him, until he heard Mahmut’s laughter coming from the coffee-house. He rushed in and grabbed his arm. Mahmut was just starting to drink his tea. The hot tea spilled all over him.
‘Get up!’ Fisher Selim hissed. ‘Quick, I’ve got something to tell you. Quick, quick, quick …’ He was trembling all over. Alarmed, Mahmut followed him out and off they rushed, down the Florya road, past the presidential summer residence, until they reached the Yeşilköy highway.
‘Listen,’ Fisher Selim said, ‘I’ve made a solemn vow. I’m going to kill that Halim Bey Veziroğlu. “Here’s the money,” I’ll say, “give me my land,” and if he doesn’t I’ll shoot him down, there and then, bang bang bang.’ His mouth was awry and his eyes bulged. He was trembling.
Mahmut’s hearty laughter startled him. ‘You could never kill anyone, my good honest friend!’
‘I will!’ Fisher Selim howled, incensed. ‘I’ll kill him, I will!’ Round and round Mahmut he rushed, thrashing his arms, stamping his feet, trying to make Mahmut believe him, while the other only smiled calmly and repeated, ‘You can’t kill a man, Selim, never.’ Over and over Selim swore that he would kill Halim Bey Veziroğlu, but Mahmut was unimpressed. ‘Never, Selim, not you. You wouldn’t even crush an ant.’
‘So that’s what you think?’ Selim lunged at him, his hand raised to strike. Mahmut was young, he ducked quickly and dashed to the other side of the railway tracks.
‘What do I care?’ he shouted resentfully. ‘Kill him, then. Let’s see you do it!’
The next few days and nights Fisher Selim spent making up a whole lot of tales about Halim Bey Veziroğlu’s crimes, strengthening his resolve to kill him. Then he approached Mahmut again, a little diffidently this time. ‘Listen, Mahmut,’ he said, looking him straight in the eye, ‘I’m going to kill him.’
Mahmut met his gaze calmly. ‘You can’t kill a man, Fisher Selim,’ he stated and laughed.
Selim’s life was nothing but one long torment now. He could not sleep, he could not go fishing, he could not keep still.
That Halim Bey Veziroğlu, wasn’t it he who, when threatened with exposure by one of the girls he had defiled, a young beauty only nineteen, had strangled her and thrown her body into the sea like a dog’s? Wasn’t it he who had had Ibrahim the smuggler shot in Beyoğlu because he had said he was sick of the business and wanted nothing more to do with his dirty dealings? And, what’s more, when Halim Bey Veziroğlu himself was about to be arrested, hadn’t he had the police chief leading the investigation kicked out of his job and hounded from place to place?
And the shanties? When they were set up on that waste land, did it belong to Halim Bey Veziroğlu then? He bought it later for a song, a huge district with hundreds of dwellings, and had the demolition squads sent up. And when the settlers refused to leave, when they lay down in front of the bulldozers, the police ordered the bulldozers to proceed and raze the houses to the ground … Many children and old people were crushed to death under the rubble. Thousands of settlers marched up to meet the bulldozers, shouting, but the place had been encircled by panzers which opened fire on the crowd, turning this squatters’ district into a battlefield, leaving many dead. And so Halim Bey Veziroğlu came into possession of a vast tract of land. It is empty now, ringed in with barbed wire, waiting for the apartment blocks that are to be built on it. And the settlers have dispersed to different parts of Istanbul and are erecting new shanties, which the bulldozers will knock down again. They never tire of building, nor the others of demolishing.
Halim Bey Veziroğlu is steeped from head to foot in the blood of the poor.
‘I must kill him! And I will! Just let him refuse me my land, just let him …’
‘You kill a man? You couldn’t even kill an insect …’
Fisher Selim had never been able to lay hands on Bald Dursun, yet even today if he should happen to meet him, that bloodthirsty murderer who had shot his family of dolphins, pumping black holes in their heads, he would fill his mouth with bullets. And who had brought those Italian ships here and made them drop anchor in front of Haydarpaşa, who indeed – this he had learnt much later – but one of Veziroğlu’s associates, that hulking fellow who laughed not with his face but with his paunch. Skipper Bald Dursun had got all his boats and Mausers from him.
Many of the evils fermenting in I
stanbul, throughout Turkey, stem from these men. Lift a stone – whether it be on the slaughter of dolphins, the destruction of the shanties, drugs, arms dealing – and you will find them underneath. And Halim Bey Veziroğlu is connected by his fingertips, as with an electric current, to them all.
How they sobbed, the dolphins, when the bullets hit them in the head, like babies, how they hurled themselves into the sky, writhing, bending, tracing arcs in the air, splashing back into the sea, staining the blue water with red blood, their white bellies upturned, floating on the waves … Hundreds of dolphins fleeing, pursued, shot the instant they showed their heads above the water … Not a single dolphin has ever been seen since, neither in the Marmara nor in the Black Sea. But in the old days … Ah, then … How they gambolled along beside passing ships, racing them in a whirlwind of joy, their blue backs flashing in the sun, while overhead followed thousands of seagulls, wing to wing, screeching gleefully …
He has severed the sea’s life-giving artery, this Halim Bey Veziroğlu, drained it of its lifeblood.
Fisher Selim’s long-pent-up rancour was flaring up again, spreading through his heart like poison. After so many years, he had discovered the source of all these evils. Halim Bey Veziroğlu. He must kill him, this man who had done him such a wrong, who had robbed him of his happiness. He would kill him, yes, and make good his escape to Uzunyayla. His mother must be very old now … As he entered the village, young girls and lads would come to greet him, playing the accordion, singing Caucasian songs, dancing the lezginka. That was the Circassian custom, whether here or back in the Caucasus. Guests of importance were welcomed with songs and dances and afterwards a big feast would be given in their honour. That’s how it would be for Fisher Selim too. The young people would not know him … Uzunyayla is a long, flat, highland pasture, blanketed with fresh green grass as far as the eye can see, lovely as a calm sea … And from afar the green turns to sky blue … On this plateau the sun is serene in the sky, the springs are limpid, shining bright, filled with red-flecked fish. On the edge of the plateau are the snow-capped Binboga, the Thousand Bulls Mountains, and the winds that blow from there carry the scent of pine … Of pine and marjoram and thyme, of wild mint and flowering rowan. And when the rowan trees are in flower they are bent under the weight of the bees swarming over them. The people of Uzunyayla, whether Circassian, Kurdish or Turcoman, never give up anyone who asks for asylum. It was as well that things had turned out like this. Otherwise Fisher Selim would never to his dying day have returned to his homeland. His body, like a dog’s, would have been thrown into a grave with none of the old ceremonial keening, the long, harrowing lamentations resounding from the village to the Binboga Mountains. In a sudden storm the vision rolled before his eyes. Halim Bey Veziroğlu steeped in blood, issuing orders to the police, to the soldiers, to everyone … Kill the shanty people … Bulldozers, tanks, panzers converging on the houses, people crushed, screaming, blood spreading over the blue sea, writhing bloodstained dolphins, water spurting blood-red, plane trees, houses, long yellow tresses, mossy bubbling springs, clear and bright, full of trout, herds of white horses flowing with tails held high over the green plateau … All in a jumble, the Marmara Sea, the fishnets, the blustering lodos wind, whirling, reeling in an angry dream …