Hayala’s voice grows darker, like the night in the song. The song starts off well, but then the fast shift in certain lines causes slight cracks. It ruins the rhythm. Hayala’s voice isn’t powerful enough to camouflage the crack. With a bit of work the song could flow smoothly. The shifts could slow down to reflect the footsteps of someone roaming the streets alone at night. That way Hayala’s voice would flow more smoothly too. Is this one of Hayala’s songs, or did I sing it? I take a packet of cigarettes out of my pocket. I light up and lean back. I consider the difference between listening to a song and singing it. I capture every reverberation on the stage, I listen to each individual instrument. I notice that Effendi, who is on the keyboards on the left, is looking at me. As his fingers wander over the keys, his head is turned towards where I’m sitting. He stares, as though he can see me in the shadows. His expression is one of curiosity and disbelief. He gazes unblinkingly. How did he manage to see me at that table tucked away out of sight on the top floor? Perhaps the match I struck lit up my face. His fingers continue to wander over the keys as he watches me. He knows exactly where they are in the song. Just like he knows exactly where I am. What does he want from me? I’m not the man he used to have in his life. He doesn’t understand that. He wants me to chat with him, to spend my sleepless nights with him. To pour my heart out to him. To embrace his friendship. And, once I find my old identity again, to feel beholden to him. Like he feels beholden to me. He thinks of that as kindness. He doesn’t realize that when he sometimes asks Bek to say hello to me, it’s not peace he’s sending me, but anxiety. I am not the me who reconciled him with life. And he doesn’t hold the key that will undo my locks (so who does hold it?). I look away. I bow my head and lean against the wall. I put my glasses back on. I pull my beret down over my forehead. I take a deep drag on my cigarette and blow out the smoke. I draw a veil of smoke over my face. Enclosed in the smoke, I’m like a ship drifting in an unknown corner of the ocean, shrouded by the mist. No one can find me. The world orbits around itself, just as I orbit around myself. One day when the end of time comes, I will blend into the night, swallowed up in the droning that we are all a part of, and vanish. Nobody remembers anyone. I don’t remember. Where is the harm in that? That’s what all the lyrics and melodies of songs are about. Hayala goes back to the microphone. She goes on with the song: You’re a drifter all alone in the street of night / You loved like crazy / No one asked you ’bout loving / You’re a drifter all alone in the street of night / You got a rose, you got a heart / No one asked you ’bout the rose, ’bout the heart / You’re a drifter all alone in the street of night / As you were dying slowly you cried / No one asked you ’bout dying / You’re a drifter all alone in the street of night / If they’d asked ya’ you wouldn’t’ve died in this world / If they’d asked ya’ you wouldn’t’ve died in this world / You’re a drifter all alone in the street of night / You’re a drifter all alone in the street of night.
Hayala lifts the guitar neck and touches the strings one last time. She ends the song on a subdued note. She waits in the spotlight. There are raised bottles and glasses amid cries of bravo. Hayala nods her head to the crowd. She makes everyone feel that although the song has ended there are still people drifting all alone in the street of night. Good evening my friends, she says. Here we are, back together again after the holidays. Some of us aren’t with us today because they’re taking extra holiday. Boratin’s not here, but don’t worry, before you know it he’ll be the one talking to you at this mike. Thank you for your hearty applause, we’ll pass it on to him. We started the evening with one of Boratin’s songs, and we’ll continue with another song he wrote. Hayala takes a step back from the microphone and clutches the guitar neck again. She rocks on her right foot. She sways back and forth. Boratin switches off. He puts his head in his hands. Why, he keeps repeating to himself. He wants to know why he composed the song like that. He’s not surprised about the song being his, but about why he left those small flaws in such a beautiful song. He puts his hands over his ears. He doesn’t want to hear any more. Just now while he was listening to the song, he had pictured himself beside Hayala and Bek. He had almost believed that he could play with them, that he would be able to go back on stage one day. He had felt bold. Now he feels disheartened, he is losing his will. He doesn’t want to watch them anymore. He decides that he won’t, after all, spend the whole evening here and then go backstage to see his friends. He remains on the second floor of the bar, like a corpse hanging on a hook. If he listens to his mind, hanging on a hook like a corpse is bad. If he listens to his heart, as long as he is breathing he doesn’t care about anything. Which of them should he believe, his mind or his heart? He can’t find the happiness that the young people around him are feeling and that music once used to give him. If he is going to find that happiness here one night, then this is not that night. Boratin stands up. He steps out of the shadows and stands in the full glare of the light. He takes one last look at Effendi. He senses him as distant as a faded star, but as close as a shooting star flying towards him. He raises the collar of his jacket. He bows his head. He glides through the growing crowd like a ghost. He walks quickly down the stairs and goes out through the same door he came in. He slips away from the noise and the smells. In the middle of the street he stops and looks up. The sky has clouded over. The moon has hidden her face. The wind is blowing. The side streets are lined with scraps of paper and leaves.
15
As I leave The Golden Horn Bar and retrace my steps along the same streets, I feel as though I have come to a new city. Entering each street from the other end is like looking into a mirror. Buildings face the opposite direction. Lines on shadows grow darker. What is distant grows closer and what is close grows distant. The echo of footsteps on the cobblestones is different. Those who try entering from the opposite end of a street they always enter from the same end pause, just as I do. Some undergo a complete change. A man who returns home from this end empty-handed and long-faced appears from the other end of the street the following day with his arms full of toys and flowers. A girl who has quarreled with her lover here turns up at the other end of the street the next day, smiling and reconciled. The wind is blowing hard, lashing at my back. There’s no one waiting for me, I’m in no hurry to get anywhere. I walk from one street to another, at a leisurely pace. I stop at the yellow traffic light on a street corner. Everywhere is deserted. Not a car or a pedestrian in sight. The yellow light is on for me. I wait. The traffic light stays stuck at yellow, like the stopped clock in the clock tower. I have no idea how long I’ll have to wait. Is the yellow light merely the forerunner of the green or red light, or does it shine in its own right? It’s suspended between continuing and stopping, existence and nonexistence. It detains me on the deserted side of the city, all alone in the middle of the night. I can’t say how long I remain standing at that crossroads where the winds intersect. Time works slowly during the night. A middle-aged man walks past me, equally slowly. Once he has staggered drunkenly to the other side of the street, he stops and stares at me. He thinks I’m out of my mind. He shakes his head sadly and keeps going. I cross over too. Plunging into the dimly lit streets, I walk close to the walls, trying to shield myself from the wind’s whip. I hear noises coming from behind drawn curtains. A woman singing, the howl of a wolf, a horse’s hooves beating the ground. The sound of televisions being turned up and down.
I arrive at a square. I look all around me. I ask a street peddler selling chicken and rice for directions to Beyoğlu. Pointing to the street on the left, he says, I take it you’re a stranger here, and asks where I’m from. I tell him I’m no stranger, I’m from Istanbul. I buy a portion of chicken and rice and eat it standing up. The peddler’s wavy hair and handlebar mustache give him the self-assured air of someone who emerged from the sea two thousand years ago and from the steppe a thousand years ago, and has never left this square since. He casts his old shadow, that even he doesn’t heed, on the new era. I know a lot about people
, he says, you’re not from here, I can tell by the way you keep gazing around you. I repeat that I’m no stranger to Istanbul, that I just took the wrong road and got lost. People don’t have the same perception of direction at night as they do during the day. A voice inside me says I should stick to main roads at night. Even if I get lost on a main road I’ll still know the way home. That becomes even clearer to me once I get to Beyoğlu. The illuminated crowd carries me off, sweeping me from one wave to the next, dragging me to back streets, then bringing me back and depositing me at the main road again. All streets have a bit of the texture of a main road in them. People too are all alike. Predatory eyes scan the area. Everyone stands at the ready, equally intent on either hunting for or becoming prey. They live the night as though it were day. They grow drunk on light. Even when they sneak into dark crannies to make love, they carry a little shred of light in their sweat. I feel dizzy. I lean against an abandoned telephone booth with shattered glass. Surrounded by the stench of stale urine, I wait for my dizziness to pass. I examine the flyers on the wall. Song lyrics, ads for concerts, and the names of soccer teams printed in black and white. I make out the picture of the last Ottoman sultan on torn posters. His face has been sprayed with the anarchists’ A. I know what the capital A inside a circle means, but I don’t know what posters of the sultan from a bygone era are doing pasted all along the street. I need to get away from the smell of urine and sit down and rest for a while. All the outside tables of the cafés are taken. I walk slowly, in the hope of finding a free table. A group of young people sitting at a table smile at me and say, Hello. Hello, I say. Boratin Bey, they say, we saw you perform a few months ago, will you join us? There are five of them. Two men and three women. They look a few years younger than me. I sit with them. Instead of drinking beer, like they do, I order mineral water. I’m giving my liver a rest today, I say. I ask what they do. They’re at university. They come here on weekends. They’re into music and cinema. All three women have a pendant of the letter A I saw on the anarchists’ posters around their necks. I don’t have anything around my neck. I don’t wear rings. I didn’t notice any jewelry among my possessions at home. I don’t even wear a watch. If I did have a pendant I’d probably choose the letter B. B for blues. I’d leave my top two buttons undone so everyone could see it. I’d wear it on stage. I’d wear it to bed. I’d put my hand on my chest in the dark and trace the curves of the B with my fingers. Then one night I’d take off the pendant, hold it tightly in the palm of my hand, and leap into the waters of the Bosphorus. I’d consign the B to the seabed, among the cold seaweed. When I rose back up to the surface I wouldn’t remember what I had left there. The B would be no different from other letters. All the letters would become the same. Silently. What is that A on those posters, I ask. I mean, why is it sprayed on the face of a sultan who lived a hundred years ago? They burst out laughing. They think I’ve just made a funny joke. You’re right, they say, the man is the head of state now, but he’s got the mentality of someone from a hundred years ago. That’s why we sprayed his head. Was it you who did that? Yes, during last week’s protests. And most of the graffiti in the other streets is ours too. The young friends clink their beers in triumph. I too raise my bottle of mineral water. I realize I’ve mixed up time again, that this time I mistook a living person for someone from the past. I take another look at the posters on the wall. I try to work out whether politicians bring the past to the present day, or whether they take the present back to the past. I wonder why they have to resort to violence and lies to do that. If they just let people get on with their little lives in peace then it would never even occur to anyone to step out of the circle of the past. Even if everyone forgot most things, they would still live in the circle of the past. I look at the people wandering in the street. They remember things from a year ago, ten years ago. They don’t carry an agonizing void inside their heads. When they become desperate they lie to themselves. They cry, they get angry, they sulk. When they eventually calm down they make peace with themselves. Then they look at me pityingly. Don’t look at me in that pitying way, I say. Why would we look at you with pity, they say. Boratin Bey, why did you say that? Damn! I’m saying things I shouldn’t. The words in my mind spill out of my mouth. I don’t know what I’m doing. I try to wriggle my way out of my gaffe. What I mean, I say, is that I wasn’t here when you were spraying those posters last week, I couldn’t help you. So you mustn’t blame me. My explanation satisfies my companions. The woman beside me, wearing a blue dress, puts her hand over mine. Boratin Bey, she says, let’s meet in this street for the next protest and spray the whole place together, okay? Okay, I say, and add, it’s ridiculous for a politician in this day and age to think he’s a sultan. Sometimes I think I’m someone else too, but I don’t go around telling everyone and making a laughingstock of myself. You’re right, says the woman, there are times when we all feel that way. But we don’t force other people, we don’t lock them up inside our beliefs. Otherwise our dream would become someone else’s nightmare. The gentleness in the woman’s voice could keep me at this table all night. She could convince me of inconceivable things and give me a new past. It’s turned cold, shall we go to a warm bar somewhere and listen to some music? We walk side by side, like old friends, strolling through the streets. We pass shop windows adorned with garters and posters scrawled with writing. We go down a street smelling of vomit and walk through a luminous door. We sit down at a table. The waiter heads straight for me. Welcome Boratin Bey, he says, it’s so good to see you here. What will you drink? We order beer and mineral water. We glance around at the other tables. We listen to the rock song that the band on stage is playing. We gradually slip away from the crowd around us and turn back to each other. Despite the noise, we manage to make ourselves heard. We talk about songs and books. If the live music keeps playing we may well make the night, that we began with the letter A, last right to the letter Z. When we are on our third drink the music ends. My friends look as though they intend to stay till dawn. I feel tired. I thank them for the lovely evening. I stand up. They stand up with me and hug me in turn, as if we have been friends all our lives.
Outside there is a biting frost. It’s late at night. I place my hands in my pockets and walk towards the main road. I notice there is a piece of paper in my pocket. I take it out and look at the telephone number the woman in the blue dress gave me. Numbers written in a fine hand, and a name. I throw the piece of paper into the first bin I find. A little further ahead I turn down a side street and head towards home. I drink water from a dilapidated fountain. I count the illuminated windows in the buildings. As I’m turning left at a small mosque, a voice in the darkness startles me. An elderly beggar sitting by a wall asks, Have you got any cigarettes son? You scared me, I say. All I want is one cigarette, he says. He’s huddled inside a blanket, at a section of the wall that’s shielded from the light. It’s as though he’s been sitting there for hours waiting for me to walk past. I take the cigarette packet out of my pocket and hand it to him. Keep the packet, I say. The whole packet? he says. Yes, I reply. Are you drunk? he says. No, I reply. Just then the early morning call to prayer rings out. The crows fly into the air. Several shadows coming from the end of the street enter the mosque. I crouch down beside the beggar. I take out my wallet, pull out the first note my fingers touch in the darkness, and give it to him. He doesn’t say anything as he takes the money. He waits for the muffled sound of the ezan pouring out of the speakers to finish. Only then does he say, God bless you. I can’t speak for God, I say, but I’ll be happy with just your blessing. Are you drunk? he repeats. No, I say, you can smell my breath if you like. He smells it. You’re right, he says. Does God ever help you? I say. Yes, he replies. In what way? I ask. Well, by sending you for a start, he says. He strokes his beard. I don’t have a beard, I say. Sometimes He sends you without a beard and sometimes with, he says, sometimes old and sometimes young, sometimes in the form of a woman and sometimes a man. All right, and who is it who sends you t
he cruel people, I say. He strokes his beard. That ungrateful wretch who’s supposed to be my brother, he says. Why? I ask. Cruelty doesn’t need a reason, he says. Would you say I believe in God? I ask. Don’t you know if you believe or not? he replies. No I don’t, I say. He strokes his beard. It makes no difference if you don’t believe, he says, you’re a good man. I hope you’re right, I say. Do you know what, he says, in the beginning God had something He needed to entrust. He offered it to the hills and the mountains. They hesitated to accept something so weighty, they were afraid. But humans were only too willing to get their hands on it. To tell you the truth, humans were ignorant even way back then, they were evil. They took on a load that was too heavy for them. They lied. They killed. They turned the world into a place of misery. And eventually they forgot what it was that God had entrusted to them. And now we have no idea who carries that forgotten entrusted thing. Maybe it’s you.
16
It’s not clear where the noises are coming from. From outside or from a dream? Boratin keeps his eyes closed. He tries to go back to sleep. When the sounds continue he sits up and gets out of bed. He goes into the living room. He sees Bek looking out the window. Welcome Bek, he says. Boratin, have you finally woken up? Yes, when did you get here? Two hours ago. Why didn’t you wake me up? I made so much noise that I figured if you didn’t wake up it must mean that you haven’t slept in a long time. You’re right, I’ve been sleeping in fits and starts for the past three days, but today I slept really soundly. Pointing at the tea glass he is holding, Bek says, Let me pour you some tea. Okay, and just out of interest, what time is it? Ten. Really, what are you doing here so early? I phoned first, but your mobile was switched off as usual. I phoned your landline, but you didn’t hear. So I just got up and came. I opened the door with the key you gave me. Bek breaks off and goes into the kitchen. He comes back holding a glass of tea. He hands it to Boratin. Boratin, I’ve come to give you some news. Someone you know has died. He was in the hospital for several months being treated for cancer. His funeral is today. Boratin looks at the tea glass in his hand. He knows the ceiling, the chandelier, and his own image are reflected in its water. But he can’t see any of them. There’s only a rippling shimmer. His dead friend’s image may be in the glass too, among the yellow and orange gleam. Who died, was he a relative or a friend? Your childhood friend. You hadn’t seen each other in years. You didn’t even know that he lived in Istanbul. Your sister told you he was in the hospital. You told me about it. We went to the hospital together. He was so happy to see you. After that you went to see him every week. Oh, then that’s terrible news Bek. Why is it terrible Boratin? Well, think about it, I went to see him regularly, it’s obvious that it made him happy to remember our shared past. Then all of a sudden the visits stopped, when I lost my memory I mean. Didn’t he wonder what was going on, didn’t he think I’d turned my back on him? No Boratin, it wasn’t like that. I went to see him in your place. I told him you’d gone abroad and that you’d be back once you’d finished what you were working on. Boratin sighs. Bek, he says, you even take care of my absence. You’re at the top of the list of what I have to believe in in my new life. Stop exaggerating Boratin, I’m the same old me and you’re the same old you. You just don’t realize it yet. Bek, you talk to me about my friend but you haven’t told me his name. I can’t decide whether I want to know it or not. He’s someone from the past, I mean he got left behind in the past and disappeared there. He’s not here in my present and he won’t be in my future either. What do you think I should do? I think you need to know his name. Okay then tell me, what was it? Zafir. Boratin stares into the tea glass in his hand. What can I do for Zafir now? There’s nothing you can do. You don’t even have to go to his funeral, they think you’re abroad. If you go you’re bound to meet relatives of his who know you, but you won’t be able to recognize anyone. You shouldn’t put yourself through that. But I still wanted to come and tell you. I thought if I didn’t you might get upset that I hadn’t told you at the time, once you found out later on. Boratin takes his first sip of tea. I want to go to the funeral, he says.
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