You see, I was afraid that he would alert others to my presence in the tree. I was also mad at him for spoiling my peace of mind. For a while we just looked at each other. It was clear that he was more excited about this turn of events than I was; in the glow of the lamps in the garden, I could see the curiosity in his expression, but he also seemed unsure of what he should do—even though I was the one up in the tree, not him. It occurred to me that he might be afraid I’d fall. Hoping the gesture would stop him from doing anything rash, I pressed my finger against my lips. Much later, he told me that it worked.
When I saw him go back into the hotel, I immediately set about unstrapping myself from the tree, as I was more afraid of being caught there than falling to the ground. After putting the straps into my backpack, I got to my feet for the first time—that is, if we don’t count the imaginary scenarios I played out in my mind. My feet were numb. As I stood there barefoot on one of the plane tree’s thick branches, I kept thinking that I needed to find a more secluded tree. I also thought that, since I didn’t fall out of the tree as I stood there, barely able to feel my feet, there was little chance I would actually fall to the ground after all. Just then, I realized that the park wasn’t so dark. It was strange; I could even see the grime between my toes. In the city, there are always lights. High up in the tree, the light made its way among the branches, bathing me in its dim glow. That dirty light that made the stars invisible was like the never-ending cycle of good and evil in life.
I had an impulse to start walking along the branch as if I was just a foot or two off the ground, like I’d done in the past when I was slacklining. Closing my eyes in the hope that it would allay my fears, I almost took a step, but then I changed my mind. I didn’t feel prepared for such balancing acts yet. The only way I could bring myself to move around at that height was on all fours, my arms wrapped around the branch and with a strap lashing me to the tree like a mountain climber. As I started slithering along the gnarled branch like a snake, thinking that I’d be less visible that way, I heard the same voice call out, “Do you need any help?”
I couldn’t understand it. I mean, I’d seen him go inside, so why did he come back out?
Later he would tell me that they’d called him inside to do something. He was wearing a funny-looking red jacket with silvery epaulets and matching trousers with a stripe down the side, and on his head was a squat, pointed hat, the most laughable part of his getup. His outfit reminded me of what you’d see monkeys wearing at a circus. As a bellboy, he sometimes had to lug around suitcases that were almost as big as him and certainly heavier. To move them, he used a wheeled cart that he nicknamed Tayyo, but he still struggled to load the massive bags onto it. As he later said, he often thought to himself, “What the hell are these people carrying around in their luggage?”
One time he saw what was in one of those suitcases: a person. But dead. In other words, a corpse. The suitcase belonged to an English couple. Perhaps I’ll tell you that strange story at some point.
I started to get the feeling that he wouldn’t bring me any harm.
That night, he didn’t have to deal with much luggage. All he did was put a rather fancy-looking small suitcase into the trunk of a taxi that was bound for the airport. Then he ran back so he could go on watching me.
Much later, he would say, “I thought I was dreaming. You just don’t expect to see a girl sitting high up in the branches of a tree.”
No, it wasn’t a dream. It was real. During our first encounter, I didn’t say a word to him—I just vanished into the darkness of night like a wild animal. I crept and crawled along the branch of that huge plane tree until it started bending under my weight, and then I leapt into the arms of an old eucalyptus. From there, I made my way to a laurel, where I found an abandoned stork’s nest. Tucked away deep in the branches, the nest looked for all the world like a cradle. I felt around inside it, deciding in the end that its tightly woven frame could bear my weight.
That was the second miracle of the night: among the branches of that tree, a bed for the night.
Yunus would ask, “And what about me?”
That was his name: Yunus. There wasn’t a trace of sarcasm, wickedness, or greed in the way he looked at me. When he laughed or grinned, he was as adorable as a monkey. He was like an angel. Over time, I would come to love him and feel a deep compassion for him. I’d never seen such a glimmer in someone’s eyes. His teeth and mouth were beautiful, even if I did compare him to a monkey when I said that he was cute when he laughed . . . If my aunt could have seen him, she would’ve conceded that here was a man who had a lovelier smile than her handsome developer. He had short hair and a charmingly soft red beard, which I must admit was a bit sparse. The hotel had asked him to grow a beard as part of his job. It was about image, they said. The manager was a Scottish man who had his own particular sexual preferences. Love of all kinds is a fine thing, but one day the manager pinched Yunus’s cheek and said, “Come to my place tonight.” It turned out that he did that to a lot of the employees. When the manager quit—rather, when he was forced to quit—Yunus shaved off his slight beard. The owner of the hotel said to him, “What have you done?” Yunus replied, “He made a laughingstock of us all for his idea of an image. I made tons of money for that queer!”
People can be so unsympathetic in the face of difference.
Yunus would say, “I didn’t like it when he stroked my cheek, that’s all.”
“Well, maybe he couldn’t stop himself. You should take that into consideration.”
“He tried to kiss one of the guys working in the kitchen!”
“So he was full of love! Why are you making such a big deal about it?”
I didn’t mean to start off by describing Yunus like that, but that’s just the way it happened. He was handsome. He told me that a Belgian tourist had tried to get him into bed. And she succeeded, literally climbing on top of him.
“I suppose you didn’t resist much.”
“You don’t understand. It wasn’t like that at all.”
I wonder if Yunus made it possible for me to live in that tree. If it weren’t for him, I know it would’ve been much more difficult.
One time, as we spoke of that night when we first saw each other, barely visible in the gloom, he would ask, “Well, wasn’t I one of the miracles that happened to you?” Some other time, I’ll tell you about that at length. But now I’m exhausted. All that excitement and fear wore me out. I just want to curl up in that stork’s nest and go to sleep. Still, I should finish telling the story that I started:
Yunus would ask again, “Wasn’t seeing me that night a miracle?” Not because he was being spoiled or insistent, but out of sheer naivete and the goodness of his heart. And I would look into his eyes as if I was trying to remember a dream. Then those mysterious words fell from my lips: “I had seen you before.”
But where had I seen Yunus?
Time is a key, not a remedy. With it, you can delve into the past and unlock doors that open onto rooms filled with things you couldn’t otherwise remember.
At the time, however, as I spent my first night in the tree, I was more excited about settling into the stork’s nest than making the acquaintance of a young bellboy whose name I didn’t yet know.
“Maybe this is all a dream,” I said to myself, resting my head on my backpack. I was feeling uneasy. How many of you have slept in a stork’s nest? One by one, the twigs were crackling beneath me as the nest gauged my weight, the sound quietly echoing in the silence of the park. I was afraid. I had already felt enough fear that night, so much that I needn’t be afraid of falling. That’s what I told myself, saying that, even if I did fall, I’d held out for as long as I could.
I was 159 centimeters tall, but I always said that I was 160. In the nest, I curled up as tightly as I could: 79 centimeters. Small enough to fit into a suitcase. If I tucked my head down a bit more, 75 centimeters. Maybe 70 centimeters, if I really tried. My knees were pulled up to my chest. My mother once
read “Thumbelina” to me. That tiny girl had a crib made of a polished walnut shell. Her mattress was woven violets, and for a blanket, she had a rose petal. “Just like me,” I said, my heart aching. As my eyes filled with tears, the sprinklers down below suddenly stopped and the lights in the park went off. At last I was shrouded in the darkness I had so desired. I heard a few birds as they flitted from tree to tree, probably watching me. Slowly I let myself drift off. I had been so tense, so very, very tense . . . But now I was as supple as water flowing into an earthenware bowl. I thought of my mother. If I remember correctly, I was going to tell you about her, right? As you may have noticed, what I really want is for people to like me. That’s why I’ve always tried to satisfy your curiosity. Sure, I mentioned my mother and then told you about Yunus. But you see, I was filled with such pity. For her, I mean. My mother. Because, like everyone else, I loved my mother more than anyone.
5
BLOCK
I don’t know if I slept through the night or not.
Time and time again I have asked myself that question.
Am I dreaming, or am I really curled up in a stork’s nest?
I thought of my mother. Naturally she’d be worried about me.
“Let her worry,” I muttered, my voice laced with a bitterness and vengefulness unbecoming a daughter who loves her mother. The thing is, she was so preoccupied with herself it made me wonder if she had ever really been a mother to me at all.
My grandma would say, “What do you expect her to do? She’s got enough problems to deal with.”
“And just what problems are those?” my aunt would ask.
As a journalist, she always asked the right questions.
Indeed, what problems did she have? I started to ask myself that quite often. When my mother and father got married, they were in love. But that’s not what I want to tell you about. I’m thinking more about the days when she went from door to door, trying to find work. In those times—I guess I was around six years old—just about everyone was out of a job, including my aunt and my father. He had quit working at the Archaeology Museum, and later he picked up work as a tour guide. Then he was taken on by a publisher that put out books about archaeology, and at one point he organized someone’s personal collection, for which he made a small fortune, enough to last him two years. Around that time, my mother landed a job. In terms of their working lives, both of my parents were pretty unstable. Eventually, my mother was let go, as a result of which my family really hit rock bottom. My grandma died in March of 2013, which meant that she was spared having to see her children sink into poverty. Of course, Amy’s death had nothing to do with the problems my family was facing. At the end of December in 2013—well, let’s say the start of 2014—my aunt got fired as well. My mother had been out of work for a while by that time, and it pained me to see her struggling to find a place that would hire her. She’d take the underground to the district of Levent, where she’d go from clinic to clinic, walking streets she came to know like the back of her hand as she trod up and down their length, streets that for the most part were named after flowers. The neighborhood was desolate—it was as if no one actually lived or worked in those fancy villas surrounded by manicured gardens and high walls. There wasn’t a trace of life. My mother was feeling dejected and beaten down in those days, but when she had the chance at an interview, her heart would fill with hope again, one last hope, and she’d be excited as she walked through the office door, feeling—as they’re so fond of saying in interview lingo—“motivated.” There is nothing more humiliating, degrading, and dehumanizing than trying, without success, to find work.
It’s difficult to talk about my mother. Writing about her is even harder.
When I was signing up for the writing competition, in response to that ludicrous question “How would you go about writing a novel?” I’d said, “Well, you have to start off with your deepest feelings. The characters don’t have to be anything like yourself as the writer. And as for the story, it doesn’t really have to be based on anything you yourself have experienced. What the characters really do is give voice to our emotions, to the things that have had a profound impact on us. Writing is like looking in a mirror, but the face we see there isn’t our own. What we write doesn’t actually belong to us as the author. Rather, it comes from the depths of our being.”
Cocking an eyebrow, our literature teacher asked, “Tell me, is that really what you think?”
Meaning, “Moron! You couldn’t be more wrong!”
Trying to shift my approach, I hoped to offer up a stronger line of thinking: “I’m just saying that our feelings and experiences do provide us with material that we can use, but . . .”
For the most part, I had zero self-confidence—that is, except when I was writing. As I think always happens to writers, I became another person as I wrote. It gave me courage. And now, here I am at the top of a tree, bolstered by my newfound bravery. But in life, I was nothing. I don’t know how I’m going to tell you about my mother; it’s as if her story is my own. However, I am her daughter, and I was aware of what was happening when she set out on those tragic adventures to find work. Like everyone, she’d had better years, years that seemed to glimmer like a star, but those weren’t the times when she married my father and brought me into the world. No, they came later, much later. When she fell in love. The winds of that passion stirred her to life.
Things happened when I was around five or six years old that marked a turning point in her life. Before, she’d been a stay-at-home mom who was subjected to my father’s constant verbal abuse. I know that isn’t a very elegant way of putting it, but it’s the truth. How can I dress up the pain of a hurt heart? I want to tell it like it really was: for years, my father had been treating her with the bitterest contempt for some unknown reason, which is precisely why I used that rather unpleasant term to describe the situation: verbal abuse. So let’s make do with it and move on. Those years, many of the details of which have slipped through the cracks of my memory, were terrible. That’s all I know for sure. I’ve tried time and time again to recall them, but I can’t. I think that when we’re one, two years old, there are only emotions, scents, and sounds—nothing more.
As for the times that I can remember from my childhood: My mother was irritable, always on edge, and she made me suffer for the frustration she felt in her unhappy marriage. I’m pretty sure that she felt bad for doing so, but I don’t think she knew what else to do. Instead of talking to me, she shouted, her body shaking like she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and she hit me whenever she got the urge. I may not have bled or gotten bruised, but those blows rained down, usually landing on my head and back. Her hands were like the hands of a diligent housewife fluffing up a pillow with dogged determination. What frightened me the most was when she’d clench her teeth in anger, because I knew what I was in for next: her tiny fists pounding on my head as if it were a door that refused to open. One time I snapped, “There’s no one in there!” Out of confusion, she stopped hitting me for a moment. I calmly went on: “There’s no one in my head.” I never cried or shouted. When my mother beat me, I’d let myself sink into a ponderous quietness; like I said, I think that’s why I sometimes forget to write the two s’s in the word. I’d try to convince myself in the depths of that silence that my mother wasn’t actually beating me but making a cry for help. She was, in fact, a proud, strong woman who found herself in an unbearable situation. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that she, in fact, suffered far worse than me. She loved my father very much. Sure, he may not have physically beat her—if that can be any kind of consolation—but the way he treated her was even more abusive than that. He ignored her. He was glum. He insulted her and jeered at her. He always did just what he wanted, spending all his time with his friends. He was stingy with his money. He acted like a man who has never grown out of adolescence and cannot let go of his mother. And do you know the worst thing about it? Everyone loved him. It’s always like that: men feel tha
t it is their right to be loved just because they’re men. That will never change. My mother was unhappy and worn out by it all. I’ve been told that, when I started going to nursery school, she went back to work, but even that didn’t bring her out of her depression. She wouldn’t even cook for me, so she fed me with a baby bottle—even though I was three years old at the time. I lost a lot of weight that summer. At the time, my aunt and grandma were living on one of Istanbul’s islands, so they weren’t around to look out for me.
My father was still working at the Archaeology Museum at the time, and while he didn’t make much, at least he had a regular salary. He was the one who paid for my kindergarten. Well, that’s what he thought. Whenever the day came for him to make the payment, he’d get irritated, and once he said that he wasn’t going to pay it anymore. My mother started crying, covering her face with her hands like a child. The truth of the matter was that my mother’s sister was secretly paying the tuition, and the amount that he’d give my mother wasn’t actually very much. Still, it made it possible for her to go to her favorite café to have a cup of fresh-brewed coffee and a dessert, and after that get a manicure and a pedicure. If she had any money left over, she’d ask the cleaning woman to come over to our place.
In the morning, she’d drop me off at school without preparing breakfast for me first, and while they offered breakfast there, we couldn’t afford it, so I’d sit and watch my teacher and some of the children eat. The other kids—the ones who’d eaten at home—would already be playing. Out of pity, my teacher would slip me a slice of toast with jam, which I’d devour. I don’t know why my mother sent me to school hungry. Maybe she just couldn’t get herself out of bed at that hour of the morning. One time, my feet got eaten up by mosquitoes and I scratched the bites so much they started bleeding. After cleaning the wounds, my teachers bandaged them up.
The Girl in the Tree Page 5
