After reading my novel, Monsieur Pierre had offered that commentary, which I never really understood.
Pembe said, “You idiot, what is it you don’t get? He’s saying that you picked up on your own frequency and went with it. You wrote the story of that girl’s life and became her, but we know that you’re really not her, that the character you created is someone else.”
“Like seriously, how did you write that? I mean, how can someone write such a book?”
“I just close myself off to everything and stumble upon a new world.”
Ha ha ha ha haaaa!
True, they were making fun of me, and later I laughed about it too, but that’s just the way it was.
Monsieur Pierre offered us a piece of advice: “If you’re going to touch the hearts of others, it has to come from the heart.” That shouldn’t come as a surprise, because he was a big fan of Yunus Emre and Goethe. I immediately typed what he said into the notes file on my iPhone, because unlike Derin and Pembe, I didn’t like using notebooks. When we were deciding what to take to the children in the war-torn east, we opted for more stationery than toys, and those gifts of ours all survived the explosion that tore apart the bus. What a deplorable state of affairs: Human lives can be cut short so easily, while the things they bring into the world survive. You can bury a plastic bottle in the earth and after two hundred years it’ll still be there, but people are nothing like that. My grandma would say such things as she looked out at the houses along the streets: “The people who built these houses, even the carpenter who made those shutters and the needleworker who sewed those thick velvet curtains, are all dead now, but the things they made are still here among us in this life, and when we die, they’ll go on existing. Sad, isn’t it?”
“All things ephemeral are allegoric in their very nature.” That was one of the big statements I made in my novel. The winner of the writing competition wasn’t just going to win a scholarship but also get their novel published. Özlem Hanım had personally spoken with some publishers to make the arrangements. If my book had been published, that sentence was going to be its crowning jewel.
“Did you come up with that?”
Who else would ask such a question but cock-mouth Özlem Hanım? I don’t think I need to say that she suffered from a complex.
That question was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I stormed out of the classroom.
After all that had happened, I wanted my mother to go to my school and talk to everyone, starting with the administrators, and including Derin’s father as she walked through the gate.
“They broke my daughter’s heart. That’s why I’m here, to give them hell for what they did to her. Did she do anything wrong? She sat down and wrote. She thought and she imagined. Is that such a crime?”
Derin’s father might have replied, “It is a crime.”
“Emine’s father”—that’s what he would’ve preferred to be called.
Things really had reached such a low: Thinking was a crime. Writing was an even worse crime, because it spread that infirmity known as thinking.
Then my mother would talk to the administrators and, lastly, Özlem Hanım.
“You can tell her that she writes badly, but make sure you phrase it kindly.”
My sole desire was for my mother to bare her claws like a lion or a tiger and tear to pieces the people who dared hurt her one and only daughter, snarling like a wounded beast and frightening them. Even street cats do that for their kittens. Why shouldn’t my mother?
She didn’t say anything.
She didn’t go to my school to explain how they’d broken her daughter’s heart. Why? Because in those days she was mired in her feelings of humiliation. She had experienced in all their profundity the two feelings that are the foundation of life: love and humiliation. The source of that shame was a story far bigger than the one about love. We discover who we really are through others, which is why we are better at understanding other people than ourselves. It’s just like being a doctor; no one can peer into themselves to diagnose their own illnesses, so we must leave that to someone else. And that is precisely why I said that we are all, in fact, other people’s stories. Yet, while no one can tell their own story, if another tells it, it will be lacking in some way. So everyone must tell their own stories, staring into the mirror and talking to themselves if need be.
To my great surprise, I also found a mirror in the pocket of the fur coat. Naturally, I wondered if it might be a sign in support of my approach to storytelling. It was a miracle that the small mirror was still hidden away there because the pockets were so torn, so I took it to mean I was going to stay hidden as well.
The laurel tree swayed in the wind.
In the faint light of the park lamps that trickled through the leaves, I observed my shadowy face in the mirror for a while, unable to turn away my gaze. I marveled at how, not so long before, I’d been wanting a mirror; if God exists, he’d heard me for once. I drank some water, thinking that I’d be in a difficult position if I got ill up in the treetops. Do birds get sick? I was on the verge of falling asleep. When the tree swayed again, I realized that I was the cause, as I was tossing around in the warm fur coat like I’d done in my bed at home. No longer would I spend cold, sleepless nights, shivering high up in the branches, and that was enough to make me happy. But was it really enough?
Monsieur Pierre sent me a message on Facebook, saying that he was going back to France because of what had happened at Gezi Park.
“I cannot bear to see what’s happening any longer. As a foreigner, I can’t look on as if I don’t care. So many young people are getting killed. The death of just one person is cause enough to revolt, and yet so many are dying. There’s simply too much suffering.”
He sent that message to me, Derin, and Pembe as he was leaving the country.
And in a subsequent message, he wrote to me, “Yesterday I was thinking about the time I’ve spent in Istanbul, and your book came to mind. In my opinion, your novel is a powerful manifestation of brutal anger, steely logic, and keen intellect. Please keep writing.”
My reply was crisp and to the point: “Monsieur Pierre, I destroyed everything that I’ve ever written. I don’t think I’ll ever write again.”
As though asking me to reconsider, he asked, “Pourquoi?”
Why, why, Grandpa’s in the rye!
“My reasons for not wanting to write are very similar to why you decided to leave this place.”
“Pourquoi?”
“Isn’t that reason enough?”
“Pourquoi?”
Fed up, I thought of writing, “You and your pourquoi can fuck off back to France!”
“You don’t have to be leading a crowd of protesters to be a hero. When there’s a bloodbath going on in your country, the greatest form of heroism and rebellion is to sit down at your desk every morning and write.”
I didn’t have a ready answer for him. Little by little I was losing all that was dear to me. Rather, all those people and things were being taken from me. In light of that, I couldn’t help but think: Is giving up on writing really such a big deal?
13
MESSAGES
On September 20—a Sunday—I found myself in a hotel room. Here’s how it happened: Yunus called out to me from the top of the fire escape. No, he didn’t exactly call out. It was more of a strange whistle, an excited chirping of sorts, summoning me. Peering over the top of the wall, I asked, “What is it?”
I knew I was in for a surprise. Ever since the day Yunus had so heroically appeared on the top of the wall with the fur coat, he made a habit of never showing up at the same place twice. But he kept bringing me food, which I hauled up into the trees, using my slacklining strap like a kind of primitive cable car. Sometimes we’d chat, he sitting atop the fire escape as I perched on the wall. He stopped by every day, except on the days when he wasn’t working, announcing his arrival with a whistle that I immediately picked up among the incessant cries and caws of the birds. In th
ose days, it seemed like there were more birds in the world than people. Or, perhaps, all the fowl of the city had suddenly decided to take up residence like me in the treetops of the park. A park filled with birds of all kinds, but devoid of people.
“It’s seasonal,” Yunus said. “People come in waves in the summertime.”
The park still seemed to be the sultan’s garden. In spirit, I mean. No one was around.
“They pack the trams to get here.”
“Are you a public enemy or something?”
“I’m the enemy of wicked, selfish people.”
He spoke those words while seated on the other side of the railing of the fire escape, looking like a man in a cage. People think that they are free. But that isn’t really the case, because being free does not mean being able to do whatever you please. In my opinion, we don’t really understand the concept of freedom. We don’t have to be locked up to be imprisoned. In fact, we can be in a state of imprisonment even as we go around, visiting the places we want to see. It’s all in our minds. The entire world is a figment of our imaginations.
Perhaps, in that world in my mind, people existed outside my isolated corner of the park, where I spent my days among the branches of three particular trees. One night, however, a young woman wearing a headscarf showed up with her lover and I watched as they passionately kissed. It was dark at that hour. I heard her say that she’d lied to her family, telling them that she had to work overtime. Her lover said, “Let’s go to the hotel. The same one as last time.” Which meant they’d done it before. Stayed at a hotel. And everything that suggested. I doubt, however, that they went to the expensive boutique hotel where Yunus worked. Everything she was wearing looked cheap, from her long overcoat to her shoes with buckles, and her purse as well. It was a deliberate kind of cheapness. Pembe knew a lot about such things. She’d been the person to ask about clothes, fashion trends, and being stylish even when wearing knockoffs. And, of course, there was my aunt Hülya as well. I couldn’t help but wonder why that young woman in the park was wearing a headscarf. So that she could be free? She could go out and return home at any hour of the night, and she’d probably acquired other forms of freedom that few women enjoy, all because she covered her hair. But if she was wearing a headscarf out of religious conviction, I’ve done her a great injustice by pigeonholing her so. As we all know, however, the world is full of injustice, and everyone gets their share of it. It’s inevitable.
“But,” she said, “it’s so embarrassing. I mean, the way that the guy at the front desk looks at me . . .”
“Why?” her lover asked disappointedly. Why, indeed? Are men ashamed of us?
He had a close-cropped mustache that seemed capable of movement completely independent of his upper lip. Every ounce of his attention was focused on her: one hand was stroking her breasts while the other was caressing her thighs, and he was trying to work his nose past the folds of her headscarf so he could kiss her neck.
“Girl, you turn me on so much. I just might give it to you right here and now.”
“You’re crazy! Someone could see us.”
“Who? There’s no one around.”
“I came here so we could talk. And now you’re at it again.”
“I know you want it too.”
“Enough already! You said that you were going to get divorced this summer. Well, summer’s come and gone.”
“I’m going to talk to my wife when she comes back from her hometown.”
“She isn’t back yet? School’s already started.”
“Well, she did come back . . . But if she hadn’t, I would’ve taken you back to my place again . . .”
“I can only hope that your neighbors saw us and tell your wife.”
“Who cares about the neighbors? But if I hadn’t deleted those pics from your Facebook page, everyone would’ve known.”
“As if anyone would’ve seen them! But I do wonder if your wife and I have any mutual friends . . .”
“If only Facebook knew how sneaky you women are!”
As the mustachioed lover leaned in, he murmured, “You sure put on a show, but you don’t put out . . .”
Seen from above, the young woman’s head looked like a delicious piece of fruit. Although she weakly protested, she turned her face to the side, letting the man kiss her neck. I could see that her eyes were closed. Lust, that lascivious nectar! With her pale oval face, tiny crimson mouth, thin eyebrows, and upturned nose, she looked like she’d stepped out of an Ottoman miniature. I wondered if she’d see me if she opened her eyes or if I’d concealed myself so masterfully in the darkness that I was completely hidden from sight. I heard the young woman moan with longing as her mustachioed lover buried his face in her neck like a vampire sucking every last drop of her blood. The expression on the young woman’s face, which was framed by her light pink headscarf, betrayed all those instincts particular to human nature, but, as I mentioned, when I looked at her, all I could think of was a juicy piece of fruit.
Her lover pulled back from that corner of heaven, suddenly filled with suspicion. “So, are you saying the neighbors saw you? Did you leave something at my place to show that you’d been there? Or maybe you’ve been posting things about us on social media. Is that it?”
Gone was his romance, replaced by a desire to interrogate her. His mustache now looked like a long dash that was incapable of twitching despite the gravity of the situation.
“Why, are you scared?”
Her face disappeared from sight.
“No,” he said, shrugging.
My guess was that his wife and children were waiting for him at home, and at the end of the night, he’d go back as if nothing had ever happened. When he stepped through the door of his immaculate apartment, his wife would hold out a pair of house slippers for him.
“Just a minute, kids, I need to wash up first. My hands are filthy.”
Truly, what is the filth of the world? Not that forbidden love that dirtied his hands? Hands that smelled of his lover’s crotch, fingers he sniffed while going home on the Metrobus, sinful hands. He couldn’t stroke his children’s hair with those hands. Seeing as he couldn’t simply lop them off, it only seemed fitting that he should reassess the coordinates of his life as a devout man. In my opinion, at least. Not everything happens as God wills. Religion had escaped from the bottle. A bottle of water from the Well of Zamzam! You, sir, have very wicked intentions.
The two of them were still murmuring to each other, but I was losing interest. My mind now turned to thoughts of the video of a young woman wearing a headscarf who’d been attacked on the street. I’d watched the video on Twitter, where I lived my second life. The footage of her fainting out of fear had been recorded by a security camera. I was so upset about what happened that I even reposted the video with a hashtag. How can we better look out for our sisters who wear headscarves? Why is it that, in our society, such attacks on women are so common?
As the young woman down below went on playing coy with her lover, the greenery surrounding them glowed even greener in the fluorescent light of the park lamps. I kept thinking about something the man had said: “Who’s going to see us?”
“I will!” I said to myself.
I wanted to prove that I still existed and that, even up in my perch, I was going on with my life despite the actions of our murderous state and all those worthless imbeciles, as well as the ravages inflicted upon us by our warped society and the injustices so prevalent in our day and age. At least, that’s how I felt at the moment.
No longer was I troubled by the prospect of being condemned to a life of thinking about the past up there in that nest that I now called home, curled up in the warmth of my fur coat like a baby waiting to be born. I spent much of my time just looking around, and when I wanted to have some fun, I’d juggle a few pine cones or gaze into my mirror, letting my thoughts drift to the past. When the painful times in our lives are transformed into memories, they are beautified in the process, just like how coal become
s diamonds. I know that I’ve said something along those lines already. In fact, I’m quite aware of what I have and haven’t said. In the course of that damn writing competition, I was told that my novel resembled a series of tweets, which led me to break down in tears and run out of the classroom. Cock-mouth Özlem Hanım had said, “You’re probably going to get angry with me, but I’m telling you this for your own good. Of course, you’re going to keep writing. That’s how it is, like life. You go on with it. The act of writing is like giving up control and going with the flow.”
“Teacher, how do you know that? Do you write too?”
“Have you ever had anything published?”
I was so lucky to have those friends of mine. But now they’re gone.
What we really wanted to ask was, “Have you ever taken hold of a cock?” The beer hall. Thick-cut, greasy fried potatoes. Evaluating the events of the day. Laughter. An old guy wearing a hand-knit sweater raising his mug to us, saying how wonderful it is to be surrounded by young and beautiful people.
“I’ve written quite a bit, but I’ve never thought of trying to get anything published.”
“My mom keeps a diary too.”
“Pembe, the things I write aren’t like that.”
I wish that Pembe’s mother had published her journals. The memoirs of the Beauty of Bağdat Street would outsell everything else on the market. Everything that comes from the heart has an innate value that is both literary and long-lasting. At any rate, that’s how it should be.
If anyone aside from your mother says to you, “I’m telling you this for your own good,” you can be sure that whatever they’re going to say is most certainly not in your best interests, so don’t listen to a word of it. Parents lament the fact that their own lives are passing by as they look after their children or they try to take comfort in their successes. In the end, however, it doesn’t really matter because either way it’s a burden, a constant act of cruelty. But that’s not the issue at hand here. What Özlem Hanım had told me “for my own good” put me in a difficult position vis-à-vis my rival.
The Girl in the Tree Page 15
