If someone passed by the bottom of the tree, they might think that some bird up above was making the mess. A stork, for example, upset over all the empty nests. My poor stomach was heaving up the remains of last night’s dinner. Actually this new life is nothing but the remains of what was left of the life down on the ground. I was going to have a new life there, high up in that tree. I hated puking. It’s disgusting when people disgorge what’s inside them.
I almost fell to the ground but managed to grab hold of a branch at the last second. I wrapped my arms around it, wishing I’d had someone in life I could hug like that. Even my passion for balancing on a rope—the slacklining I mentioned—was something to which I could have held. Writing was like that as well, but I lost the competition. If it had been a passion for me, maybe I could’ve gone on, but it didn’t turn out that way. Perhaps I felt insulted. That’s what happens when you lose, when you’re disappointed and defeated. I was in no condition to pick myself back up and forge ahead, ax held high. In terms of writing, I mean. And when I say writing, I imagine it to involve dangers similar to those obviously involved in the act of running with an ax. Well, so be it. Everyone writes now. On Facebook, on Twitter, in emails, in their aspirations, whatever they set their sights on. We’re writing the story of our lives. I was cramping up. I was cramping up like my puking stomach.
Amy puked as well. Before she died. After she had a heart attack, when death was certain. I mean, she didn’t choke on her puke. The puke that her stomach heaved up in its final struggle didn’t even escape her mouth but remained trapped there within the cage of her teeth, which were clamped shut. It couldn’t even trickle out as a nasty-looking line of drool. When they found Amy, she was lying there as if asleep, her large lower jaw pressed tightly against her upper jaw. Her eyes were half-closed, like they always were when she was enjoying herself. Like the moments when she took flight. Her thin legs were clad in a pair of blue jeans, and she was wearing a sleeveless blue top, and her tattooed arms were spread out. She was lying on her back, and her hair, which looked like it had been tousled by the darkest of storms, was draped over her shoulders. That’s how Amy was lying there. As though fast asleep. As though she had found peace. As though she had, at long last, found everything she’d sought in life. There was a certain peacefulness in her expression. Or nothing at all. That’s how I had imagined it to be like, because when I first searched for pictures on Google, I was just thirteen years old. Much later I came across a photograph showing her gaunt body being carried out of her house. She was covered in a dusty pink sheet, looking like a tiny, empty package. And then an even thinner version of her being carried down a London street on a clattering stretcher to an ambulance. Farewell, Amy. I was so sorry to see you go. You sang beautiful songs for us. Maybe if this world had given you some peace, you would’ve kept singing, but it was good that you were saved from the troubles of this place. I hope you didn’t suffer when you died. And I hope that the life after this one is better. Maybe this world, this life, is hell. Maybe this world is the hell of another world. A writer once wrote something similar to that, a writer also imbued with that English culture that infused in you the blood to write those songs filled with emotion, a writer from the empire on which the sun never sets. To tell the truth, I’m just copy-pasting what that writer said, because somewhere someone is making a living by copy-pasting, staying alive because of it.
Perhaps the way to heaven really is death. Of course, we’re afraid when taking that first step toward the unknown, it’s quite natural and logical.
That’s why I puke. Because I’m afraid.
The things I wrote above, the parts about Amy . . . I wrote them on my Facebook page. I got replies like:
“That was wonderful. You’re such a great writer. You’re amazing . . .”
I’m not at a complete loss when it comes to writing. To tell the truth, I hadn’t taken part in the writing competition only for the sake of securing a scholarship for my final year. I wanted to write. But the jury, which included many of my classmates and teachers, didn’t find my novel worthy of an award. So was there anything special about the novel that won? There was. It was the kind of shit people liked. I don’t know exactly what that was, but something. Something shitty. Don’t expect too much of me. If I were stronger, I wouldn’t be the girl in the tree. I would be down there, among you.
My head hurts.
The night is cool and quiet.
The night that Amy died wasn’t like that. London was probably cool, but Istanbul was quite the opposite. I know that I’m a bit off in how I say things at times. It’s because of my grandma. If you said to her, “Women’s speech should be like poetry,” she’d reply, “Screw that!” Followed by, “Why, so that the boys’ll like it?” I told the women at my aunt’s NGO about my grandma’s approach to the matter. They laughed, saying, “Speak for your own self, not for anyone else, especially not for a man.”
When I got home, I told my grandma what the women had told me. “Well, they’re right,” she said.
I was confused. Everything that came out of my grandma’s mouth was a swear word. A levelheaded friend of my aunt who would drop by our place made the following diagnosis: It was a sickness. I mean, what my grandma had. An invisible sickness. And invisible illnesses exist either in our heads or buried deep within our souls, what we could term “the ghost.” My grandma’s mind was fine. Which meant that perhaps her soul really was afflicted. I wished that it were possible to take X-rays or MRIs of such sicknesses so we could see them.
Like, “Look, you can see it here. You have a neurosis. That dark area there . . .”
My grandma was stricken with an invisible illness that flowed with pus when she swore. Once she said to my aunt’s ex-husband, “Why do you go around acting like some big shot with his cock slung over his shoulder?”
That sentence was even included in the divorce proceedings. And that was why my aunt lost their house when they split up, even though they’d bought it together. While the law, per EU regulations, states “properties bought during marriage are common properties,” he got the whole place. The law always takes sides. They brought me to the trial because no one was free to look after me at the time. My other grandma and aunt, the ones on my mother’s side, couldn’t look after me because they had gotten involved in some strange secret women’s meetings—goddamn my politically minded uncle, may he rot in hell—but I’ll talk about that later. So in the end, they weren’t at home. As if they ever were at all, in any sense.
The judge asked, “And what about this child?”
Meaning me. While I wasn’t the daughter of the couple getting divorced at the time, I would be that child when my parents got divorced later. But there was more. There was so much more to come—everything, you might say. There was the start of those fine days and Amy’s songs.
“We’ve got no time,” my uncle said, “for a kid. My wife’s too busy with work for womanly things. I’m lucky to get a plate of food once in a while.”
At which point my grandma caused a stir in the courtroom by snorting in disgust.
The judge asked, “What does this woman do for work?” Meaning, my aunt.
My grandma cut in: “Did you say ‘this woman’? First of all, you should learn how to speak respectfully to the people who come to you for justice.”
As a result of this interruption, my aunt was unable to reply, “I’m a journalist.” True, my uncle was also a journalist. But not like my aunt. Eventually it would come to light just what kind of journalist he was. Pro-government. A sellout. At the time, the lines hadn’t been drawn yet. Still, the judge was a representative of the political will that was on the horizon.
My uncle had listed my grandma as one of the reasons he wanted to get divorced. The judge ate it up.
“What can I do?” my grandma said. “My mouth’s a hotbed of cussing—that’s just the way it is.”
Afterward, we got on the underground in Şişli near the courthouse and started heading toward
Taksim. The underground was new at the time. For us, being in the depths of the earth was like a blessing. But in those days everyone was talking about whether transportation should be aboveground, saying that life in the city could be worked around it. At school they made us read an article in Le Monde about it, which is why it stuck in my mind.
Shaking her head, my grandma was saying, “I’m the reason that prick of a judge gave him the house . . .”
“No, Mom,” my aunt said, “he knew whose side I’m on. That’s why he made that decision. It was all political.”
My grandma was incapable of holding back the torrent of swearing inside her. On the way to Taksim, she told us about how her mouth came to be a “hotbed of cussing,” as she described it:
She was born in Cihangir and grew up there in the same house as her mother, her mother’s mother, her mother’s mother’s mother, and maybe even her mother’s mother’s mother’s mother—who knows how far the list goes back. In 1987, they made a deal with a developer to have their rickety wooden two-story house torn down and replaced with an apartment building, in exchange for which they would get three apartments. Actually, no one knew why at the time, but first my grandma traded the plot of land for another on the same street. We were living in one of the sixty-five-square-meter apartments that came out of the deal. The ones on the upper floors had views, so before the roof was installed, we would go up to the top of the building with our picnic stove and teapot, and take in the views of the historic peninsula. My grandma hadn’t chosen any of the apartments with views because that would’ve meant that she could only get two of them, and she wanted to make sure that her children would have places of their own. That’s what she said. But if she hadn’t traded the plot of land because of the injustices carried out on Kumrulu Street, each of the three kids would’ve ended up with an apartment with a view. Streets, like life, are full of injustice. My father and aunt asked my grandma again and again, “Why did you trade the land?” They even asked the neighbor: “Why did she trade land with you? Was she in debt to you?” As the story goes, the neighbor was as forthcoming as a tight rosebud. Secrets are bombs that slam into homes. I’m saying this—not my father, not my mother, not my aunt, and certainly not my grandma. Secrets, as I said, are bombs that crash into homes. But that’s all for now on that.
My grandma’s innate stubbornness drove her to negotiate with the developer—in her words, she haggled “cheek by jowl”—to get at least one apartment with a view, but she couldn’t get him to budge. The reason that her mouth was a hotbed of cussing, of course, had nothing to do with her altercation with the developer. The neighborhood of Cihangir got its name when Süleyman the Magnificent’s hunchbacked son died of grief and the sultan built a mosque there in his memory, as well as in an attempt to bring order to the area, which was renowned for being a den of vice. But his efforts were in vain, and the neighborhood plunged even deeper into debauchery, its rows of houses populated by the city’s prostitutes who lived and died there.
Once the developers had set their sights on our house and started digging up the foundation, they found a gravestone with an inscription. Some things are inescapable—they came and told us about it. My father cleaned up the gravestone and, after having a thick piece of glass cut for it, turned it into a coffee table for the living room. My grandma would say, “If it wasn’t the gravestone of a whore, he’d be hexed for sure.” It’s strange how all that can remain of a person’s life is a slab of stone.
All her life my grandma looked after the neighborhood cats, and as soon as she stepped outside, they would follow her around. Perhaps some of you are thinking that I can’t bring myself to explain why she swore all the time. That may be true. In her words, “That’s just how I express myself.” She even cussed out the cats, and when she stroked the heads of her own cats, she swore at them too. But as a timid eighteen-year-old girl playing the oud and singing in Beyoğlu’s tavernas, swearing had been a way of defending herself. Everyone was afraid of that girl who swore up a storm. Maybe that’s one reason why I started swearing as soon as I clambered up the tree. Fear me! And love me because you fear me. Love against your will. Love grudgingly. Because if you love something, it thrives. If you hate something, it dies. That was the story of my grandma’s life. A bonding force, eccentric. Raw, unexplained, lacking . . . I don’t know if I’ve been able to get across what I mean, so I hope I’ll have enough time to relate everything. When I first got here, I was so disoriented I thought this was a dream. Maybe that’s why.
I climbed up the plane tree closest to the wall separating the old palace from the park.
It was as if there was nowhere left for me to go in the world. Not a single place. I was overcome by a feeling of uneasiness. Actually, since I was a child, maybe since I was born, I’ve never really been able to find any peace of mind. About an hour ago I had a nervous breakdown and rushed out into the street, barely aware of what I was doing. And then I found myself here. A feeling of victory surged through me. I hadn’t been defeated, meaning it was still possible for me to win, to survive. So, you should understand why I have so much to say. You see, being able to speak is proof that you’re still alive. To put it a better way, as I mentioned before: it was as if I’d found a way to die before actually dying. You wouldn’t believe how easy it was to climb this giant plane tree. It was as easy as walking down the street . . .
I was at the top of the tree, panting for breath. When I reached my perch, I felt like the trees embraced and protected me, taking me into their arms with an open heart in a way that my mother had never been able to do. The night was beautiful. The city lights, the sounds . . . When I say “sounds,” I mean the thrumming coming from deep down below.
The park was silent.
I hadn’t brought my phone with me. If I had, what difference would it have made? I hadn’t known that I was going to live in the top of a tree. The thought had never occurred to me. In fact, I hadn’t planned anything. It all just happened, like letting yourself be swept away by a current. I don’t mean to keep saying the same things, but that’s how it is, and in any case, nothing else comes to mind. Can’t the mind repeat itself again and again, like day turns into night which turns into day? Being alone and turned inward all my life matured me. But being overly mature is like what happens to a fruit that has over-ripened on the branch and starts to rot. I was rotting. My spirit was rotting. I was dying. Forgive me—I can’t quite put into words exactly what happened to me. My thoughts wander. You know how it is sometimes, stringing words together is such an exacting and difficult task. Isn’t that true for all of us?
If parents mistreat their children, all of life will conspire to mistreat them too. That includes other people, the world, and, if there is one, God. But don’t take that to mean my parents treated me badly. They did the best they could. They tried. I feel worse for them than for myself because life battered them a thousand times worse than me.
It was dark. There was a hotel on the other side of the wall, and at one point its air conditioner turned on, filling the night with its roar. In the distance I could see the silky deep blue of the calm sea. The leaves of the trees fluttered occasionally in such a way that you couldn’t help but think they were living creatures in their own right, as if it wasn’t the breeze setting them into motion. There weren’t any people in that part of the park. The automatic sprinklers for the grass would come on and go off, sending plumes of vapor into the air. I felt like a strange dampness, a humidity of sorts, was clinging to me. The air was neither cool nor hot.
Time passed so quickly high up in the trees . . . I closed my eyes and yet again found myself being carried off to a place between dream and reality. Either I fell asleep and dreamt or I was awake as all those things were happening.
I imagined trying to find a suitable branch I could use for peeing. Because, obviously, I would have to pull down my pants and then my underwear. I didn’t want to soil myself, you see. As if that wasn’t enough, I realized that I was starting to
smell sweaty, meaning I would have to find a place to wash up. Who knows, maybe I could’ve licked myself clean like a cat, but I didn’t want things to reach that point. Next, I found myself feeling as though I was accustomed to being up in the trees, moving fearlessly from tree to tree as if I’d been born up there—I surprised even myself. Like a bird flitting to another branch to perch. Like flying. Like smoke. Like something carried upward by the wind. I surmised that what was weighing me down like a stone was the unease I carried inside. But when I bounded fearlessly from tree to tree as if I had wings, I felt light. That feeling of lightness was wonderful. Everything was wonderful, so long as I couldn’t tell if it was real or imaginary. When I found myself back in the hollow at the top of the tree, I didn’t have to pee anymore. I wondered if I’d really peed down onto the thick canopy of the laurel tree below, or if I’d always been in the hollow of the tree and imagined it.
My red Toms were lying forlornly on the grass below like a symbol of all I’d loved and abandoned. At one point a small pack of street dogs came along and, snatching up the shoes in their jaws, ran off with them. Not a single trace was left of me.
2
SOME PEOPLE YOU MIGHT KNOW
On the night that Amy died, I ran down to my aunt’s place, apartment number 2 on the floor right below ours. She opened the door, cigarette in hand. The way her face emerged from the smoke was part of the melancholy of that night. Tears in my eyes, I threw my arms around her neck.
“Is something wrong?” she asked, emphasizing each syllable like swinging the knocker of a door.
She had a friend over, a woman who was a journalist like herself. Covering my face with my hands, I brushed past my aunt into the living room, sobbing uncontrollably. At first they thought that I’d had an argument with my mother, but then it all came to light. All night long they listened to Amy’s songs, and eventually I dozed off on the sofa.
The Girl in the Tree Page 3
