“Aren’t you going to tell me why you were crying?”
I’d already moved past his question. That wasn’t so hard, because I was faced with something rather bizarre and magical. It was far more interesting than the fact that I’d been crying.
“What are you sitting on? Is it a fur coat? Or some creature that whisked you here?”
“It must be something like that. Otherwise, how else would I have made my way up here? Earlier today, I was at the top of the fire escape, feeling so scared that I was shaking from head to foot.”
“How can you be so open about your weaknesses?”
“I don’t know. Guess I’ve always been that way. Maybe from birth.”
“I have to disagree. We learn things like that from the world around us.”
Now he was the one trying to change the subject, as if he could make it vanish like a dolphin—which is what his name meant—disappearing beneath the waves. Pointing to the fur coat, he said, “I found this in the lost and found locker, so I decided to bring it to you.”
Yunus was preparing to offer up his spoils. Pressing his feet tightly against each side of the wall, he managed to scoot his skinny frame forward, and then he spread open the arms of the coat.
“For two years, no one showed up to claim it, and none of the hotel workers took it home for themselves. It was just lying there, forgotten. I figured you might get cold at night, so I decided to bring it to you.”
“Thanks, but how did you get up on the wall? I know you were scared.”
“You’re really stuck on that point, aren’t you?”
“That’s the reason why I’m here. Because I tend to be obsessive. Because there are certain things I can’t seem to get out of my head or my heart.”
“Some things settle into our thoughts and feelings because that is the very place they need to be. That’s why you can’t get rid of them. They exist to be remembered, as they are the bedrock of our stories and that which we call life.”
“Are you going to tell me why you’re afraid of heights?”
“Aren’t you afraid of anything?”
“Yes, but I asked you first.”
“Now you sound like a schoolgirl.”
“Which school did you go to?”
“Just a regular high school. Those days are behind me now. And honestly, the girls there weren’t anything like you. They’d come to this park just to make out with their boyfriends, not live up in the trees. Most of them are salesgirls now. Two of them even work at the hotel as chambermaids.”
“Now you’re dodging the question. Or maybe it would be better to say you’re stalling for time.”
“You really are obsessive.”
It’s always annoying when other people speak of your faults. Truths can be like clouds that pass in front of the sun, blocking out its warm rays. That’s what happened to me. So I was obsessive. Was that his point?
“But it was fine when you made fun of my fear of heights. Right?”
We were sitting on the top of the wall, facing each other. The time had come for confessions:
“I was crying because two of my friends were killed. Don’t ask me why or how it happened. At least not until I’m ready to talk about it. That’s why I’m here, because I got tired of people asking me questions.”
I liked the way that Yunus listened to me so attentively.
He also had a confession to make:
“I’ve been afraid of heights since I was a kid. One day, some plainclothes cops took my older brother away. In my neighborhood, when the cops come for you, no one ever sees you again. I loved my brother more than anything else in the world. One of our neighbors told me that the cops had taken him toward the park. ‘They took him over to the sports center. Go tell your parents.’ Both my mom and dad worked at a textile plant, so they weren’t around. I ran after my brother. I ran as fast as I could because I didn’t want to lose him. When I got closer, I saw the cops taking him toward the sports center. To get there, I had to climb over the rear wall. I knew how because sometimes we’d sneak in to watch the games. That’s also where the police would take people when they did sweeps of the neighborhood, arresting people left and right, and they’d interrogate them there. And once I started climbing the wall, I could see him. One of the cops hit my brother over the head with the butt of his pistol and then another got in his face, baring his teeth. I could tell that my brother was scared, as the color had drained from his face. The cop kept hitting my brother in the head but slowly, as if it was a play. When he pressed the barrel of his gun against my brother’s temple, I shouted, ‘Stop!’ I saw that my brother was crying. ‘Stop!’ His eyes were squeezed shut as the tears ran down his cheeks. The cops looked up at me, and so did my brother. That’s when I lost my grip. I fell from a height that was about the same as the roof of the sports center. It all happened in the blink of an eye. Even I didn’t realize at first what had happened. It broke my heart to see my brother in such a state, and I panicked, thinking that the cops were going to kill him. I lost my grip and fell, face-first. As I fell, I was afraid. I was afraid of the pain that I was going to feel. And it did hurt. It hurt just as much as I thought it would, as I was sure that my body would be pulverized. When we imagine things, creating them in our minds, we feel the pain they have the potential to inflict ten times over. I felt my cheek and rib cage smack the ground, and then the pain washed over my body in odd convulsions. The feeling was more intense than anything I’d ever experienced. It’s difficult to describe. Then I felt thick warm blood oozing out of my mouth and nose. My eyes were open, and I could hear the world around me. My brother was running toward me, calling out my name, the tears now pouring down his face. Just like you were crying a few minutes ago. You know how dry branches snap when you step on them? Well, when someone cries because they’re overcome by a profound feeling of grief and sorrow, that same sound arises within them. My brother knelt beside me, and I saw the cops walking up as well with slow, spiderlike steps. My vision started going blurry. Not like a mist had descended over the world, but as if everything was suddenly damp, steamed up, covered in an oily, sticky film. I heard the police say to my brother, ‘Don’t move him.’ And then it all started going dark. I remember thinking, ‘They want to help me,’ even though just moments earlier one of the cops had his gun to my brother’s head. I heard a cop mutter, ‘Great, now they’re going to pin this on us!’ I thought, Pin what on them? Another one said, ‘How old can this kid be?’ Much later, I saw that cop on a crowded street in Istanbul with a boy about my age, probably his son. I felt a needling pain run from my ear to the top of my head. When I opened my eyes again, I was in the hospital. That’s when the real trouble started. That summer, my kidneys started acting up, and one of them stopped working altogether. My mom was crushed. She couldn’t stop crying. It’s always mothers who suffer the most. But I went on living, with one heart and one kidney.”
“How old were you at the time?”
Yunus pursed his lips and thought for a few seconds. “Probably ten or so? My mom was still around, so I guess I must’ve been about that age.”
The topic of his mother seemed to be an open wound, so I didn’t push the issue. But I did wonder what happened to his brother. When I asked, he said, “He wound up joining a rebel group.”
“Which one?”
Yunus looked around nervously, as if even the leaves of the trees were listening.
“Forget about it,” I said. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“No, it’s not that . . . I just don’t know where you stand on things like this. I’m afraid you’ll get upset and stop talking to me. That would be the end of our little meetings.”
“You’re right. That scares me too. Disagreeing with the people I like, finding out that they have hearts of stone. But don’t misunderstand me. I’m not talking about love or anything. I mean ideals and politics. Matters of conscience.”
“I know what you mean. My brother joined that group to get revenge for all the wo
men, children, and young people like us who’ve been killed.”
“It’s a messy situation . . . Don’t get me wrong when I say this, but sometimes the state has a longer reach when it comes to things like that. I mean, it can get others to do its dirty work, don’t you think?”
“Sure, it’s possible. That makes sense.”
“The best way is to get organized, like we did, out of a sense of protesting and love. For the east of the country, for the west of the country, for life, for humanity . . . All in the name of equality, fraternity, freedom, and justice.”
Stirred up by what I’d said, Yunus finished my sentence for me. Shaking his fist at the emptiness below, he clenched his teeth and jutted out his jaw. What he said next came out in a single breath, as if he was trying to purge it from his thoughts and heart. He practically spit the words: “Not too long ago, my brother had another brush with death. Some people from his group were going to stage an attack on the courthouse.”
I couldn’t believe what he’d said. “You mean your brother was going to be one of them? The ones who took the public prosecutor hostage and—”
Yunus pressed his finger to his lips. I felt like I was standing face-to-face with a sunken-cheeked Jesus, his face shrouded in flickering shadows as he sought to silence one of his apostles who was about to say, “I don’t think I believe in God.”
“They didn’t kill the prosecutor. They all got killed at the same time.”
“But is that really what happened?”
His face fell as if his worst fears had come true.
Quickly, I added, “I don’t blame you in the least. Neither the kidnappers nor the prosecutor should’ve been killed. But like everything else, there’s so much we don’t know. The whole story is veiled in darkness.”
“Are you sure you understood what I was trying to say?”
For some reason, his voice sounded dubbed when he spoke those words. Yet the glimmer in his eyes was indescribably beautiful as he said, syllable by syllable, “They did not shoot the public prosecutor.”
“Yes, I know. They all got shot together. I feel bad for them, and for their families too. I feel bad for all of them. I saw on the news that the public prosecutor had a son. They’d taken him to a soccer game. Such a sad-looking boy . . .” Unable to stop myself, I started crying again. “The young people who died were like that. Everyone who died was. Very innocent, good people. The best people in the world died. They were all young, so very, very young.”
I spoke as if I were as old as the trees, as old as the wall. Nothing on the face of the earth could’ve been as old as me. “They were just kids. Most of the people who died were just kids. I kept looking at their faces, thinking that being so innocent was a kind of valor in itself.”
“How did your friends die?”
Sobs shook my body. Deep within me, I heard a sound like the one Yunus had described: the sound of a dry branch snapping under your foot. Grief, sorrow, and sadness gushed forth. I hadn’t cried that much when I found out that my friends had been killed. I couldn’t. All those tears had been pent up but were now set free.
“It was a suicide bomber. They were blown up on a beautiful morning. The last time I saw them, they were all smiles and laughter as they held up their fingers, flashing the victory sign.”
“It’s such a shame. Such a terrible, terrible shame.”
“We were together when Gezi broke out. When I got hurt, they were the ones who carried me. What was the deal with that chandelier? Pembe was hilarious. She said, ‘Just look at the damn chandelier—it’s lighting up the whole frigging world.’”
Yunus smiled. I went on. It made me feel good to make people smile and laugh.
“When the doctors were stitching up the gash in my head, the girls kept on saying things like that to distract me. Derin said at one point, ‘God, I’m not coming to your arms. I’m going toward the light . . . The light of the chandelier.’
“It was like a star, a planet, a sun. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I was filled with this gentle feeling. And then I saw you. Then again, maybe you didn’t see me and I didn’t see you.”
“But the chandelier was there. It saw us.”
Both of us laughed when he said that. If I’d had my phone, I would’ve posted it to my timeline. Being alive is actually a lot like being online. Take the case of Derin and Pembe. They’re not online anymore.
“If they were still alive, they would’ve said something similar. We would’ve had so many things to laugh about together. You and the three of us.”
“You can relive such moments thousands and thousands of times. You’ll be with them until the end of your days, and they’ll live on with you. You only really die when there isn’t a single person left on the earth who remembers you.”
We fell silent. It always made me feel uneasy when two people having a conversation stop talking. I was always the first one to break the silence.
“The light of the chandelier made me feel warm inside. I wish that I could’ve stayed in that moment forever, bathed in that light.”
“It’s not time that passes with love, but light. I just thought of that. It’s from a poem.”
Rays of light were showering down upon us. I’d like to add a “practically” to that statement to make it punchier. The branches of laurel, eucalyptus, and plane trees were intertwined above where we were sitting, but the beams of the sun found their way through. The light was the yellowest of yellows, caressing us with a gentle warmth. It was autumn.
I could tell that Yunus, who was wearing a simple shirt and trousers, had finished his shift and was going home by the way that he made a decisive move to get up, as graceful as the leaves rustling in the breeze. His body was extraordinarily beautiful, as lithesome as the branch of a tree, and in my opinion, just as smooth and flawless. I’d never seen him naked, but I had no doubt that’s how it was. His skin was as sleek and soft as the trunk of a plane tree, and I wondered if he too had a thin layer of bark that covered his rippling body.
How do people know when they’re falling in love?
Fate had surprises in store for me, things that I’d never encountered in the world below but found high up in the treetops.
“I’m going to leave now, but I don’t want you to see me fall.”
“Meaning that you’re leaving but don’t know exactly how you’re going to go, right? You found yourself on the top of the wall, but now you’re not sure how you got here. You need all your courage, but it seems to have left you. Am I right?”
I know—I was acting like a child. I called out in the direction of our little forest: “Bravery, o where have you gone?”
“Now you’re making fun of me again.”
“Hang on, let me help you. Forget your fear and cross over this way.”
“Actually, it’s not that hard. I’m going to reach out as far as I can and then, like Spider-Man, grab hold of the railing and make a blind leap. In the worst-case scenario, I’ll end up hanging from the fire escape.”
Yunus and I were about a meter apart. As I stood up on the wall to help him, I could smell the body odor that had been stirred up by my sudden movement. I smelled like something rotten. At the very least, my clothes were getting ripe. I felt embarrassed. I could see how that scenario was going to play out: As I went on living in the trees, my fingernails were going to grow out, my hair was going to become unkempt, and I was possibly going to become infested with lice. At the same time, my eyebrows would grow bushy and my legs would get as hairy as a yeti’s, and eventually I’d be a jungle girl, casting off all vestiges of humanity. I had to ask myself: Isn’t that why I was there in the first place? To become something other than what I was? Maybe even part and parcel of the trees themselves? I realize that I’ve explained all this in the most naive and foolish of terms. That’s another reason why I lost the writing competition: I just don’t have a knack for spinning off elaborate sentences.
“Do you really think you’re going to win the hearts of readers by
saying things like that?”
The person directing that question to me was none other than Özlem Hanım. She’d read something I’d written out loud. “What do you think about the range of your vocabulary in your writing?”
Some of the students in the classroom tittered behind cupped hands. You can cry all you want, but laughter is forbidden. That’s the first rule of a fascist education system. Cry, but don’t laugh.
“You jump from one topic to another, and it’s hard to tell what you’re really talking about. You shouldn’t pour out your thoughts or your inner world. There’s one thing you have to always bear in mind: your readers.”
“Maybe she’s writing for skanks like us.”
“Derin! Get out of my classroom this instant!”
“Sorry, Teacher, when we use ‘skank,’ it just means regular people. Sorry if I caused any offense.”
“Derin, I told you to get out! Wait for me at the door of the headmaster’s office.”
Flicking the Faber 0.5 pen she’d been twirling over the rows of desks, Derin got to her feet. As if it had lost its bearings, the pen first flew forward and then, breaking all the rules of physics, it flew back, only to swing in the other direction. Whenever things like that happened, an abnormal hush would fall over the classroom. Silence is the hallmark of fascism, while boisterousness signals good cheer. Although silence can be an aspect of peace of mind, it has its own particular sounds. And that wasn’t the sound of a tranquil silence—it was the silent sound of fear. The silence of cowards who wet themselves. The silence of those girls who’d say in the school bathroom, “I was so scared that she was going to send me to the headmaster’s office!” The response: “Honey, if you hadn’t done anything wrong, why didn’t you stand up for yourself?” In fascism, everyone gets their turn. There’s no escaping it. The purpose of fascism is to call you to account for your actions. Life is filled with things for which we can be called to account. Fascism functions by calling us to account for everything because that is what it was designed to do.
“You drag out the story too much. The dialogues are clichéd, overly simple, and devoid of meaning.”
The Girl in the Tree Page 12
