I looked down at the cover.
“I’ve read this already. And in any case, I didn’t come here to read.”
I couldn’t understand why Yunus was so interested in me. Sure, someone trying to live in the treetops is bound to arouse some interest, but the way that he persisted in his efforts to help me was unsettling. Admittedly, I liked the way that he looked up at me, the expression on his face. It made me feel like I was his master in a way—at last I’d found my own slave. Love enslaves others or it is a slave itself. Granted, it can happen when you’re equals as well, but in such cases, outside powers step in to meddle. Breath is needed to stir it to flames.
“I thought you might get bored, so I wanted to bring you something to read. Of course, I could’ve brought you a book of mine, but then I thought of this one. It never occurred to me that you might’ve read it.”
“That’s poignant. But you see, I’m up here for two reasons: poignant things and the fact that I want nothing to do with this shit we call life.”
“How’s your knee?”
I wanted to tell Yunus to stop trying to change the subject, but I couldn’t bring myself to say the words.
“Do you need the bandages and peroxide back?”
“No, you keep them.”
We gazed at each other for a moment. He seemed childish and naive as he stood there, insisting on helping me, clearly unsure of what he should do next.
“What are you gawking at?” I asked.
The fact of the matter was that I was acting just like any other ordinary girl. No one could outdo me when it came to playing roles, and it pains me to think about that lousy side of my personality. I was nothing more than a despicable actor, the lowest of the low!
He said, “You surprise me, that’s all.”
“Go on being surprised. It’s good for you. Helps you pull yourself together.”
I could hear people talking in the depths of the park, which made me wonder how crowded it would get when summer rolled around. Now that it was September, not so many people came around except for the snuggling couples strolling along the paths farther up the way.
“If you keep looking up at me like that, someone’s bound to notice and come over to see what’s in the tree.”
As I said that, I got to my feet as if I were going to suddenly take flight like Peter Pan, standing in the fork of the branches of that plane tree where, just the day before, I’d been too scared to lean back against a bough. Holding on with two hands, I was suspended there in those branches that thrust up into the sky. I felt something moving within the tree beneath my hands and the soles of my feet: the pulsing of veins, a gently stirring life, a shifting, a heart beating in the center of the trunk, lungs breathing in and out. Do not confuse what I just said for the rustling of the tree’s leaves in the light breeze. It was something else—the tree truly was a living being. That’s why the revolt broke out in the first place.
“Wait here,” Yunus said, and then he dashed off.
I wanted him to stay a little longer. I liked his calm, complacent ways. If I was afraid of being seen, I could’ve gone back to the wall where Yunus and I could continue our light squabbles—which, I must admit, were a bit one-sided. I decided to hoist up my backpack, the zipper of which was open. When he’d put the book into my bag, I saw the title on the cover from my perch high up in the tree, maybe thirty meters up. I watched as Yunus sped away, and then I went back to my hiding place. At the very least, in a single day I’d come to know those three intertwined trees and the birds and insects that inhabited them. A plane tree, a eucalyptus, and a laurel. A laurel that was born of a laurel that was an oak and looked nothing like a laurel. And let’s not forget about the pine that so graciously shared the bounty of its nuts with me. It was impossible to know how old they were or who had actually planted them—even their graves were most likely already long gone, ground to little more than pebbles over time. But the trees still stood. And the wall too. Humans were the frailest of all, but strangely, it was they who brought the most harm to nature. Because the weak tyrannize others. They are cowards.
“Tyrants are afraid.”
That’s what I had scrawled on walls and streets with spray paint during the days of the revolt.
“Girl, you are such an idiot.”
“Didn’t your mother feed you well when you were a kid?”
“No, I bet they dropped her on her head when she was a baby. That’s why she’s like this.”
“Derin, this girl’s not right, I’m telling you!”
“The moron . . . She thinks that she can be a writer!”
“What could this girl, who put such a stupid sentence on a wall, possibly write? She says it would be a novel if she explained it.”
“Well, if I did write a book, wouldn’t you read it out of curiosity? At least just to see what it was about?”
“What an imbecile! Now she’s all riled up.”
“Come on, Pembe!”
I’d shot some paint into both Pembe’s and Derin’s hair, and they’d spray-painted my sweatshirt in retaliation. During the course of our little spray-paint war, Derin’s legs ended up getting painted black. I’d decided that I was going to take out my revenge on the wall, and I came up with some good lines. We even tweeted one of them, which read, “Liberté Égalité Beyoncé!”
It was retweeted 1,356 times, and I suddenly had 1,056 followers.
Pembe didn’t bother washing out the paint I’d sprayed on her hair.
“It brings out the color in my cheeks,” she said.
Two years later, they both had ombré highlights done before setting off on that journey from which they would never return.
“Why not?” they said. “We got excited about the idea.”
“What exactly is ombré? Your readers may not be familiar with the term.” The main character in my novel had ombré highlights, and Özlem Hanım, our bigoted, zealously patriotic literature teacher, had asked me that question in that piercing voice of hers with perfect diction. I’m telling you, that woman was off her rocker. Inspired by the character in my book, Pembe and Derin went to a beauty salon to get highlights. Honey blond for Pembe and platinum blond for Derin.
“We look like idiots, don’t we . . .”
Derin kept saying that as she leaned down to look at her hair in the side mirrors of cars parked along the street.
“I don’t know,” Pembe said, pursing her lips. Tossing her hair with a titter, she added, “It’s not bad. A change, at least.”
“But it’s weird that both of us got it done.”
“Well, ladies, you can get ombré for free at the coiffure d’état!”
We laughed all the way down to the bus stops by the seaside in Kadıköy, where I saw them off. Still not quite comfortable with her hair, Derin had tied it into a bun, even though, back at the salon, she’d been the one who kept taking selfies of her hair pulled into tiny foil-wrapped bundles.
It was a pleasant summer day as they waved goodbye. As usual, the Kadıköy promenade was bustling with people, and the sea was glinting silvery in the sunlight. I was planning on taking a ferry to the other side of the city. Before leaving, we’d had a “farewell beer” at a place in the heart of Kadıköy. A beer to wish them a good trip.
“Yeah, but now we’re going to have to pee like crazy.”
Derin had my iPod with her, but we hadn’t transferred over the songs that I had on my computer because there wasn’t enough time. There was never enough time. “So many things to learn, so many songs to sing, so many men to make love with.” Those were Pembe’s clichés. As for me, I had Derin’s iPod. “iPod” is such a great word; for some reason I like it even better than the word “seedpod,” after which it was named. I came across the surprise they’d prepared for me when I was on the ferry. The saps had made a song for me. They knew I was upset that I couldn’t go with them, but if I had gone, I’d be dead. Who knows, maybe I’m dead now.
What else can I do but think about the past? If you
want to move forward in life, you can’t dwell on the past, and that’s precisely why I’m here—because I couldn’t go on. If I was certain that I’d lose my memory if I fell from this tree, I’d let myself plummet to the earth in an instant.
“Hey, can you come over here? I brought you something to eat.”
“I don’t even know what your name is.”
And that’s how I found out that his name was Yunus.
I was back to my spot in the laurel, feeling so heavy in my heart after thinking about the last day I spent with Derin and Pembe that I couldn’t even remember how I’d gotten there. It was as if I’d walked on air. In that state of melancholy, I was distracted, so when Yunus whispered his name, I thought it was the cooing of a bird. Or maybe it was because my grandma told me that, when doves cooed, they were saying, “Yusufçuk, yusufçuk.” You see, I thought that he’d said his name was Yusuf.
“I love the sound of doves cooing,” my grandma would say.
We used to sit in the backyard with its greenery shrouded in shadows.
“It’s a good thing we didn’t have a balcony built off of the living room. This way, we can come out here to get some fresh air. That developer was hung up on the idea of the place having a balcony . . . Still, he wouldn’t give us an apartment with a view. If he had, we would’ve had a real balcony, one with a breeze. And Istanbul would’ve been spread out before us. Then again, we’ve got our Istanbul now. It screwed us in the ass. But if we had a view, we would’ve looked out over the palace of fairies. Watched the passenger ferries going back and forth.”
We listened to the sounds of the sea, the most wondrous thing in the world. My grandma’s voice was echoing in the depths of my mind as I lay with my head in her lap. “That developer was flirting like crazy with your father’s sister, but in the end the bastard couldn’t say no to his own father. You know, he’d go around acting like a real tough guy, but he was as cowardly as a baby at its mother’s tit. So, what did he do? He married some girl his family thought was a better match, leaving your aunt in the lurch without her virginity. Of course, she fell into depression. It was so bad that, one morning, she was about to jump out the window upstairs. I was woken by the cooing of the doves and stopped her before she went through with it.”
When she told me that story, I was too young to ask what else had happened, but there was the magical sound of doves cooing in the background as she spoke. Even when I was that age, she trusted me enough to open up to me. Still, she didn’t tell me everything, so the rest was buried in darkness. What I’m getting at here is that the cooing of doves reminds me of my grandma. In the end, it was not so much my heart that convinced me to trust Yunus but the idea of the sound of doves. All the same, I couldn’t stop being prickly with him.
“You got over your fear of heights pretty quick.”
“What do you mean? I still haven’t.”
It was true. He was still afraid as he stood on the top step of the fire escape. He only had to take one more step to reach the wall, but he lingered there, like an adorable monkey in a cage, frozen in fear.
“If you tie yourself to the tree with that strap of yours and reach out to me, I can give you this.”
He was holding out a plastic bag. Even from my perch, I could feel its warmth and pick up its scent.
“Hold it out to me, I can reach it.”
“No way! You’ll lose your balance and fall.”
“Don’t you have anything else to do with your life? You’re always coming around here. Don’t worry, I won’t fall. Can’t you see I’ve already been up in these trees for a whole day now?”
“Yes, but you need to be careful.”
“Why do you think you can boss me around like you’re my father or something?”
“I don’t know. Guess I’ve always been that way.”
“Well, it’s nice that you’re at least aware of it.”
“I can’t stay much longer. My lunch hour’s about to end. So take this, but tie yourself to the tree first.”
“Just give it to me!”
I reached out and grabbed the bag from his hand. And as I was doing so, I just about fell. Yunus screamed. To be honest, I screamed as well, though I managed to cling to the edge of the wall like a tendril of ivy or a spider. If I hadn’t thrown my right leg over the other side, I would’ve fallen for sure. Whenever I actually believe in myself, everything goes to shit—that’s just how it is. But by making the slightest of movements, I slowly pulled myself back up with the ease of a lizard. Yunus looked at me wide-eyed.
“This time you’ve hurt your chin,” he said.
I reached up. Indeed, my chin was bleeding. I noticed that some of the food had spilled out of the bag, but I’d managed to keep hold of it as if it were the joy of my life.
“Is it a bad cut? Hopefully you won’t need stitches.”
When I pulled my hand from my chin, it was covered in blood. Yunus looked on with a frown.
“Are you kidding me? I’ve had four stitches in my head already. I think I’d know if I needed stitches for this.”
Bowing my head, I tried to show him where the stitches had been, but my hair had grown over the scar. I know the gesture was ridiculous, as we were more than a meter apart.
“Make sure,” I said, “that no one else from the hotel sees me. Those nutcases would call it in to the fire department or the cops.”
“Don’t worry. No one but me will see you.”
“Why are you always looking up at things? Because you’re afraid of heights?”
“That’s another story altogether. And anyone standing where I am right now would be afraid. How did you crack your head open?”
“Are you trying to ask me why I’m up here?”
“No, not at all. That’s none of my business. But there’s got to be a story about how you ended up having to get stitches.”
“Maybe that’s none of your business either. Did you think of that?”
“Fair enough. I take back my question.”
“It’s hard to tell you anything when I don’t know whose side you were on.”
“Side?”
“We ran down the hill from Taksim. There was tear gas. The police, water cannons. A real tussle. The next thing I knew, I woke up in the mosque with all the other people who’d been hurt.”
“Were you part of the protests?”
“Were you?”
“I got hurt that night too. They also carried me to the mosque.”
“Don’t mess with me.”
“I’m serious. I was hit in the stomach with a tear gas canister.”
Excitedly, Yunus pulled up the shirt of his uniform to show me his stomach. There was a weaving, winding scar with five or six stitch marks. It looked like a worm trying to crawl into his belly button.
“I’ve got another one on my calf. My friend’s chin was busted by the cops too.”
“Well, I got my head cracked open.”
“When were you born?”
“Ninety-eight. You?”
“Ninety-seven.”
“So, you were only sixteen at the time?!”
“Yep. But the people from our neighborhood are used to that kind of thing. When the riots broke out and we heard that people were dying, we rushed out.”
“I was there before it all happened. When they started cutting down trees and burning people’s tents. They burned mine too . . . My friend Pembe was inside at the time. The poor girl nearly burned up.”
A walkie-talkie in Yunus’s pocket suddenly crackled to life. “Yunus, where the hell are you? We’ve some bags to haul.”
Pulling out the radio in a panic, he replied, “I’ll be right there, sir.” Then he turned to me and said, “I’ve got to go.”
“But you haven’t eaten anything.”
“Your story filled me up. It’s been nice meeting you.”
He stood there waiting for me to tell him my name. But I had a new one.
“My name,” I said, “is the Girl in the Tree.”
Before turning to go, he dryly replied, “Very well, Girl in the Tree. We’ll talk later.”
His departure was nothing short of a racket. Feet booming on the stairs, he ran as quickly as he could, and even as he ran across the gardens, his footsteps echoed up to my perch. A man was waiting for him in front of the hotel. When Yunus rounded the corner, I heard the man say, “Yunus, where the fuck have you been?”
“I just went out for a little walk. To get some air, you know.”
“Screw your walks. You’re just slacking off. There’s a whole busload of people waiting for you. Get going!”
I watched as his red uniform disappeared into the vibrant greens of the well-kept garden of the hotel. He looked like a tiny, bright stain that slowly shrinks until it’s gone from sight. I was still on top of the wall at the time, my chin bleeding just as my knee had done, which made me think that the sole purpose of the wall’s existence was to bring me harm. My battle was with the wall, not with the trees. They hadn’t hurt me in the least.
I made my way back to the stork’s nest, which I’d started to think of as home. It may as well have been, as I always left my backpack there. With a smile, I pulled out the copy of The Baron in the Trees and set it aside before pouring some peroxide on a bandage to clean the cut on my chin. Admittedly, it was strange that I’d been wounded twice in a single day, but what was stranger was that, even though I didn’t yet have a mirror, it was like I was sitting across from myself, watching myself clean the wound, as if I were sitting there looking back at myself. The overwhelming oddness of it all was that the me who was wiping away the blood sensed what was happening and hesitated. Suddenly feeling scared and unnerved, I dropped the bottle of peroxide. I watched the bottle as it fell like a white pigeon doing flips in the air.
My wounds ached.
I sat cross-legged in the nest like a child sitting in a small round tub, waiting for a bath. The dark green leaves of the laurel tree hung above, reminding me of an umbrella. I looked inside the bag Yunus had brought. There was a shiny plastic container that had spilled its contents: some rice, meatballs, fried potatoes, and for dessert, pastry rolls in syrup with cream, but half of the food was now on the ground somewhere. After putting what was left back into the container, I was pleased to find that the ayran hadn’t leaked out from its cup. My plastic fork was at the ready. Even though I was starving, I ate with slow deliberateness, thinking it best to treat the meal as a banquet of sorts. The wet wipes were another pleasant surprise, as I could use them to scrub down my armpits and ass, even if just a little—that was the best I’d be able to do up in the treetops in terms of hygiene. My only other option was washing with leaves on the off chance it rained. I was a mess, but I knew I shouldn’t care. Otherwise, what was I doing there in the first place? Why had I left home, where my mother had an enormous showerhead installed in the bathroom? I told myself that I’d get used to it in time. “Look,” I said, “you’ve done the hardest part, which was climbing up the tree and staying here.” I smiled.
The Girl in the Tree Page 9
