“Hey, our bus is leaving now, gotta run. We’ll call when we get there.”
“You’re blowing me off?”
“Fine, we’ll send you a selfie.”
“I want some pizzazz! Dance for me!”
I waited, but the selfie never came. All they sent was a text saying, Take care :X, so I didn’t push our banter. To tell the truth, I wrote message after message, only to erase them all. I think I blabbed something like, “Right, so you’re heading off on your big mission!”
And then, “You guys are a real pair of Florence Nightingales! Bring your toys, go play.”
That message was the last thing that Pembe and Derin wrote to me: “Take care.” As if they sensed they were going to die.
Derin had posted a tweet saying, “Almost there. Right around the corner!” with a picture of the bus and the other young people on the same trip. Pembe retweeted it, so of course I immediately liked and retweeted her message. I thought of adding a joke, something lame like, “Go driver, go!” but changed my mind. Then my father’s sister called me, as we shared the same life on Twitter.
“Why didn’t you go with your friends?”
“I didn’t want to leave my mom alone for so long.”
“What kind of an excuse is that?!”
That summer, my mother had slipped into a deep depression. It was so bad that she could barely drag herself out of bed. As for my aunt, she had been out of the city for a while. When she lost her job, she eventually found work as the director of human relations at a municipal office run by a political party she had some connections with, so she put her place in Istanbul up for rent. She’d called from the office landline.
I said, “There aren’t always answers to the questions we have in life. Some of them should go unanswered . . .” It was actually a bit about Pembe and a bit about Derin. But that’s not what I said to my aunt. I didn’t say anything at all. I found a way to get her off the phone by saying that someone was at the door. “Might be the Realtor.” But it wasn’t. It was a guy from the electric company delivering a notice stating that our electricity was going to get shut off because we hadn’t paid the bill. We were left in darkness before all the others.
When I’m sad, there’s this thing inside me that physically aches, as if I breathed in the sadness and it stays there, throbbing. In a way, that’s a description of how spiritual pain is transformed into a soreness in the body. Then your eyes fill with tears. And when that happens, the violence of the pain dies down, even if just a little, but then the aching in your heart shatters into more pieces, multiplying with each tear. I know that I haven’t explained this very well. Or perhaps you’re thinking that now only because I brought it up. People are like that—the words of one person become like the wind. Still, I was able to describe the pain because I experienced it myself. I don’t ever want to lose a loved one, a close friend, ever again. That’s why I didn’t want to get to know Yunus or fall in love with him. All the same, such things are beyond your control. Yunus, whom I thought I could keep at a distance by sitting in my perch, looked hurt. Even if I didn’t know him, I got the feeling that I’d broken his heart when he was only looking out for my well-being. That’s why I called out to him as he started to walk away, not because I was really that thirsty or hungry.
“Stop!” I said.
He stopped.
“Hang on, I’ll take what you’ve brought.”
7
UNFOLLOW
It worked: I lowered my backpack down with my slackline strap and then pulled it back up with the crackers and water inside. Still, at the last moment, I panicked, thinking that Yunus could be some kind of lunatic and that he might try to pull me down by the strap, so I lashed it to a tree branch and said, “Put them in my bag.”
Somehow, it was like an exchange. The excitement I felt was genuine, but still I was afraid of that young man who wanted to help me. I didn’t trust him, and all those feelings nearly made me tumble from the tree. I lost my balance and scratched my arm on the nest as I tried to keep myself from falling. Even though he wasn’t trying to make me fall, I almost lost my footing anyways.
As I was pulling up the backpack, I said, “Now scram—or else.” The heft of the bag pleased me. Of course, I knew that my threat was empty. It was as if we were playing a game of sorts, and over time, that’s how it would really become.
Looking up, Yunus squinted at me as the morning light streamed through the branches of the tree.
“What are you waiting for? Go on!”
“Nothing,” he said, slinging his backpack onto his shoulder. As he walked away, I watched him and then glanced around to make sure no one had seen what had just transpired. My guess was that he’d worked the night shift and was on his way home. I liked the way he walked. There was something diffident about his gait.
I undid the zipper of my bag and then opened one of the packages of crackers. At first, I was stuffing them into my mouth, but then thought better of it. Wouldn’t it be better to save some for later? After all, it might be my last meal. Then I took a drink of water, but stopped myself, wondering if it might be something else, laced with some kind of acid, perhaps. For a moment, my fears turned the water to acid in my mouth, and I spit it out. After pouring a little on my hand, I became convinced that it really was water, so I took a few more sips. Ha, so I’d convinced myself it was safe! As I drank, I realized that I was dying of thirst. Water was going to be a problem, because at some point I’d have to pee, though I had imagined a solution for that. So that’s how matters stood. But how would I fill my belly? I came up with an idea:
There was a pine tree next to the laurel I’d slept in the night before, and that meant there would be pine nuts. I shimmied across and ate my fill of nuts till the sun was straight overhead, shelling them as well as a bird. Then I had to stop because some moron with his friends in the middle of the park yelled, “Hey, there’s something in that tree! Is it some kind of monkey?”
I had no choice but to quickly make my way to another tree in the most secluded spot in the park and wait for them to leave. My arboreal life, which was just getting started, was under threat of being revealed and brought to ruin. The best option seemed to be to hide out amid some branches overhanging the wall, but one of them broke. If I hadn’t regained my balance with the nimbleness of a tightrope walker, I would have plummeted to the ground. The branch itself did fall.
One of the young men said to his two friends, “I swear to you, I saw something.”
“You sure it wasn’t a bird?” lisped another.
“No way, man. I’d say it was a monkey, but monkeys don’t wear jackets.”
The three of them stopped to look up into the branches of the trees, expecting to see some movement or at least something more convincing than a falling branch. In the end, they got bored and started to leave.
I realized that, from then on, I’d have to be more careful, even when hiding out among the branches at the farthest end of the park. Or maybe, I thought, I should only move around at night.
“Ha ha, it was Batgirl!”
Slapping their friend on the back of the neck as they teased him for imagining things, they walked off. I watched them, thinking I was more mature than them. Still, the revolt that had happened two years earlier had taught me not to be too judgmental about people.
So what the hell, there I was, hiding from men, hiding because I had to! When I lived among the people on the ground, I was the one chasing after men. Well, some of them. Okay, just one. Yes, I have a shoddy love story too. Okay, had one. But what I had couldn’t really be called true love.
I scraped my knee during my attempt to hide out above the palace wall, and now it was bleeding. I glanced down at the trickle of blood.
Then I heard Yunus call out to me from somewhere that seemed to be near the foot of the wall. I realized he was back on the other side of the wall in the garden of the hotel.
“Didn’t you go home?” I asked.
“No, I only came t
o the park before to check on you. We’re not allowed to leave the grounds in our uniforms, so I changed clothes first.”
“What’s the deal . . . are there two of you or what?”
He laughed. “You’re right, in a way. I work a double shift, both day and night. Admittedly, it’s not normal.”
There was a fire escape that snaked between the wall and the hotel. A hideous construction, really; it was like a crutch that had been wedged under the eaves of that elegant, fine building.
When Yunus realized that I was actually on top of the wall now, he scampered up the steps, then frowned when he saw that I was bleeding.
“What did you do to your knee?”
“Some guys in the park saw me—or they saw something, so I decided to hide in the branches here, thinking they wouldn’t be able to spot me. But then I slipped and scraped my knee. I almost fell when a branch broke under me.”
“I don’t know how you’re going to live up there in those trees . . .”
I liked the way that he talked to me; he seemed to know me better than myself. And I liked that I’d decided to live up in the trees. But he’d made his statement and was already turning around to leave.
“What? You can’t stand the sight of blood?”
As he was skipping down the stairs, Yunus didn’t even bother to answer.
8
ADD TO FAVORITES LIST
Then he returned with some hydrogen peroxide and bandages.
I said, “If you are trying to come on to me, don’t waste your time.”
“It’s not like that at all. I just want to help. And I’m seeing someone, anyways.”
I must confess that I was disappointed when he said that.
“You can use these to clean up that cut,” he said.
I watched as the blood started to dry. For like the 187th time, I swatted away a fly that kept trying to land on my cut knee. As I shooed it away, I said, “You cheeky little bastard!” I saw Yunus’s face fall and realized he thought I’d said it to him. Since he was standing on the top step of the stairs, with one big step he could’ve joined me on the top of the wall, but he refused to go any farther. At the time, I thought he was afraid of getting his uniform dirty, but I later found out he was afraid of heights.
The knees of my pants were pretty torn up, and I thought maybe I’d fractured my foot in the fall, but it was starting to feel better. The plastic bottle of peroxide was cold, but I poured lots onto the cut and cleaned it up. As Yunus made his way back down the stairs, I called out, “Thanks!”
He didn’t turn around to say anything in return.
I wasn’t sure if it was a good or bad thing that I’d met him that way. I often wondered how I would manage and what would happen to me if I was alone. Don’t judge me; you too would think it over a million times if you were in my position.
We always have the strength to deal with whatever comes up in our lives. After bandaging my knee, I lashed the extra bandages and peroxide to my waist so that I could take them back to the nest, where my backpack was. I’m incapable of living in the moment because I constantly think one step ahead, meaning that my mind is never really at ease. I wish that I could express all these emotions in a better way to you, but this is the best I can do. Also, I have a tendency to try everything again and again.
Why am I here?
I know that was the question I should have been asking at the very beginning, but people aren’t aware of the true scope of the situation they’re in until much later.
“Just stop and take a look around,” I said to myself.
So I sat there on the wall and gazed at my surroundings. The reason is simple: Everything starts with seeing. Watching. Looking. My father told me that the wall between the park and palace was as original as Hagia Sophia. “Nothing,” he said, “has ever changed about it. More importantly, it was built by prisoners working to earn their freedom.” The mortar, he told me, had been mixed with egg whites. And there I was, sitting on that ancient wall, gripping its stones, feeling as if all of time and the history of the city were right there under my hands. The place I’ve been referring to as the hotel was built on the palace grounds as a grand residence, but when? Maybe in the seventeenth century? A massive air conditioner had been installed at the corner of the fire escape, but most of the rooms’ windows were open and some had curtains, which were a brown fabric, probably cotton, billowing out like hair tousled by the wind.
Along the top of the wall were dappled shadows, and the leaves of the laurel tree were glowing in the sunlight. And then there were the birds, singing ever so beautifully. It was warm up there on the top of the wall. I pressed my thighs against its warm stones. The branches of the laurel tree surrounded me on all sides, and I stroked their soft leaves, reveling in their scent. I turned my face up to the sun, stretching my neck out longer and longer like a tortoise peeking out of its shell, and just sat there for a while.
That day must have been September 15, my first full day spent in the treetops. My knee ached and I was suddenly afraid that someone would spot me. That is one of the “normal” emotional states from which I suffer, though I would like nothing more than to be easygoing and carefree. If I’d had my phone, I would’ve taken a selfie up there on the wall. Maybe it would’ve been easier for me to come to terms with and understand myself that way, as it was impossible for me to see the expression on my face, but I wasn’t about to go in search of a pond to gaze at myself like Narcissus. True, I could have asked Yunus to bring me a mirror or a phone, but what need was there? The realization that I didn’t need anything filled me with melancholy. I’d given up on everything, lost everything. So perhaps it would have been better for me just to be alone with myself. Everyone I’d loved had given up too and lost everything. And then what? They died. I glanced up at the roof of the hotel, the tiles of which were an unusually bright red. If anyone looked out the window of their room, they would’ve had to really crane their necks to see me. I decided that people should look up into the sky of Istanbul to see what’s there. Was there anyone like that? Yunus, perhaps. For a moment, I felt divine, like I was up above everyone and everything, way up in the sky.
Like typical Turks, the owners of the hotel had turned the rear garden into a small dump. Sure, it wasn’t filled with the kind of garbage that would stink and draw flies, but there was a pile of useless junk down there: a refrigerator, a rusty grill, chairs with broken legs. All useless! Let me confess: my grandma would read books to me. Her own books, outdated novels. Some of the words I learned from them are keepsakes for me. Yes, that’s it! Keepsakes, the most precious kind.
I thought that Yunus would bring me anything I wanted.
But it seemed to me that someone up on that wall didn’t need anything in life. Was I wrong? No, I wasn’t. Not at all.
9
LIKE
Yunus brought something that made me double over in laughter: Calvino’s book The Baron in the Trees. It had been tightly wrapped and was sheathed in a clear plastic bag, meaning that he’d bought it new for me. He stood under the stork’s nest, calling up to me. Thinking that it might be the guy who thought he’d seen a monkey, I peered down through the twigs of the nest. When I saw that it was Yunus, I smiled. My grandma used to tell me about how they’d peek out through the lattice windows of their old wooden house to watch the handsome young men walking down the street. She was born in 1937. Her mother was thirty-seven years old when she gave birth to her, which in those years was considered quite late, and I’m told that she too would go on and on about the handsome men of Istanbul in 1915. You see, she grew up in the very same house. Then again, the war was raging at the time, so not many men were strolling about on the streets. Still, she would stare outside to find out what men really were like, even scrutinizing the tips of their mustaches. There was a mountain of difference between how I peered down at Yunus like my grandma looking out through the windows and how I said, “What, you again?” When Pembe wanted to emphasize a contrast, she’d say, “Ther
e are mountains of difference and then there are Uludağ Mountains of difference.” That’s because her family was from Bursa, near Uludağ. Even though they worked in textiles, they still objected to her name. Maybe because they wanted to be bourgeois or high society? I don’t know.
I have no intention of going anywhere with this. I’d like to dwell on just two or three things, but just like I climbed the plane tree, clambered over to the eucalyptus tree, and then settled into the nest hidden in the laurel tree, it’s not working.
I said to Yunus, “Well, at least you didn’t bring me a copy of Tarzan.”
And then, unable to stop myself, I burst out laughing, which again hurt his feelings. That was his destiny. If Pembe and Derin were still around, I’d tell them all about it. I couldn’t understand why he was being so persistent. After I lowered my backpack on the strap, he put the book inside and said, “Now pull it up.” I felt like one of those women in Cihangir who still lower a basket on a rope down to one of the few neighborhood stores still left to do their shopping. Before going through the rope routine, they’d shout down to the shop to get the grocer’s attention. One time my grandma laid into one of those women, pulling on her rope like an enraged bell ringer, saying, “Fuck your shopping! Enough already! Just call out once. Don’t scream your damn head off!”
“You crazy woman! That’s what you are. Crazy Perihan!”
My grandma yanked harder on the rope, nearly pulling the woman out of the window. Eventually, new tenants moved into those apartments, and when they want something from the grocer, they call him on the phone. He doesn’t take orders online. The wannabe bourgeois character in a sappy Turkish comedy film—Derin would say, “Just like us!”—also yanked on the rope of a basket being lowered to a shop, but pulled so hard that she really did tug the woman out of the window. We’d gone to see the movie while skipping school one day.
“Why are you trying so hard to fit in at this school?”
Pembe, Derin, and I had a quick conversation while waiting to get punished in the headmaster’s office. Back then, I’d already read the book that Yunus brought to me. Even if we plunged into the depths of snide girl chat, we still had a certain refinement.
The Girl in the Tree Page 8
