On that sunny but bitterly cold winter day in 1975, she took her daughter’s hand, and they walked down from Sultanahmet to Cağaloğlu and headed in the direction of Sirkeci. I imagined that my grandma bit her lip to stop herself from crying and squeezed my aunt’s hand as they proceeded down the hill, and in my mind’s eye I could see my aunt’s small feet getting tripped up and the new coats they were wearing, coats that Rudolf had bought for them that winter.
When the American showed up at her door to ask, “There must be some reason for this,” my grandma decided that the only way out was to be coarse and contemptible, so she played the role of the quarrelsome woman: “Fuck off!”
Boom.
The door closed.
The American never came back.
He went to Galatasaray High School, where my father was studying as a boarding student at the time, to bid him farewell. He gave my father some books. Then he opened a bank account for the children, into which he put a small amount of money, slipped the bankbook under the door, and left.
He left for good.
The money in the account was enough to ensure that the kids were able to go on with their studies comfortably and have everything they needed.
That’s why snowy days bear such memories for my family. Whenever it snowed, my grandma would start feeling uneasy, as if at any moment someone might come knocking on the door and take away all that was dear to her. On that winter’s day, my grandma beat my aunt, still bearing that grudge in her heart.
Aunt Hülya also has a particular memory about the snowy days of 1987: She lost one of her boots in the snow. As she was running around playing, somehow one of her boots slipped off her foot and they weren’t able to find it, even after the snow melted. A few weeks later, she saw a street dog gnawing on it. She described the sadness she felt that day: “For me, it felt like that dog was chewing on a part of me, not on my boot.”
When I opened my eyes, it was morning. But there was something strange going on. The last I could remember, I’d been on the roof of the Tiled Pavilion, among the domes, snuggled up with Yunus. I awoke, however, curled up in my nest. I had no recollection of going back there. Even more strangely, yes definitely more strangely, everything was blanketed in snow. The branches, leaves, grass, the top of the wall, the benches, everything. Some places were covered in more snow, others in less. Only the protective branches of the laurel tree had prevented me from being covered in snow too. All the same, there were gleaming snowflakes and slivers of ice on my fur coat. Things were happening that I could not wrap my mind around.
But why?
I closed my eyes again.
22
CHANGE LOCATION
When I opened my eyes, I was on the roof of the Tiled Pavilion. Where you last saw me. Yunus was asleep next to me, his mouth open, lightly snoring ever so sweetly. The packages and containers of everything we’d eaten and drunk the night before were on the roof, the empty beer cans and tiny bottles of liquor clinking against each other in the wind. A yellow plastic bag filled by the breeze fluttered, announcing its freedom, but it couldn’t fly off because it was weighed down by a few empty bottles. Sometimes it’s good to focus your thoughts on such silly things. The small, the mundane, have the power to heal.
Yunus opened his eyes.
“I woke up from a snowy dream,” I said.
He looked at me blankly for a moment, probably thinking that he was dreaming. Then his spirit and body were reunited.
“I—I was dreaming,” he said. But his voice trembled. He scowled. “I saw my mom. Maybe because I was telling you about her.”
“How was she?”
“Not well. First, I dreamt about the moment she died. The service bus was filling up with water. They were trying to open the doors, but they couldn’t. I remember thinking, ‘So this is where she died.’ There were no windows. It was like a shipping container. Like a can. When I was a kid, I’d never imagined such things. That the poor can die such deaths. That such deaths are the only fitting way for the poor to die.”
Yunus’s eyes were glazed over.
“Then my mom came home. Her clothes were all wet. It was night and everyone was asleep. I was pretty young. The age I was when she died. I hugged her, tears in my eyes. I thought it was my tears that were making us all wet.”
I snuggled up closer to him. A single gleaming tear fell from one of his beautiful eyes and rolled down the bony features of his face.
As we kissed and held each other tightly, the sun rose a little higher in the sky. The alarm on Yunus’s phone went off and the call to prayer rang out all at once from the mosques.
“Do you usually wake up so early?”
“It’s the only way I can make it to work on time.”
After sitting up and getting to his feet, he sniffed himself.
“If we’re not freshly showered when we go to work, the manager gets upset. She even docks our paychecks.”
“Let’s go then, so you can take care of that.”
“Did you realize that you talked all night? I’ve never met anyone who likes to explain things so much.”
“I am the psychiatrist of youth. The psychologist of our generation.”
“Don’t say things like that. I don’t understand what you mean. I didn’t go to a good school like you.”
“I don’t fit the profile of the school I go to at all. At least, I try not to. School’s ridiculous!”
“In what way?”
“In every way. For example, one of our literature teachers got fired because a poem about female sexuality was published in the student newspaper.”
“That’s silly.”
“The people who fired that teacher hire male strippers for the parties they hold after the graduation ceremonies are over. Can you even imagine it? Then they boot that teacher just because a poem had the word ‘vagina’ in it.”
We gathered up all our things and the garbage on the roof, just like a pair of lovers would do when they leave their spot on the beach . . . A couple who lounges in daily conversation, a couple who loves and is used to being around each other. But we were on the roof of a summer palace built in 1472.
As I was thinking about those things, I realized that I hadn’t asked the question that had been burning in my mind since I woke up: “What did I talk about all night?”
“Beautiful stories that took place on snowy days.”
I was glad to hear that. Because the things I talked about were good and pleasant, in spite of everything, and because I was still of sound mind. Also because I was in reality, not a dream, and still alive. Despite everything, I was still alive. I was in a strange place, but at least I was still among the living. I’d cut off all ties with the world, but I hadn’t died. Vexed, anxious? No problem! Unfaltering perseverance! I see no issues with the fulfillment of needs. Don’t ask about the outburst of self-confidence. Here I’d been searching for the love of my life on the ground, and I found him in the sky! I mean, I was about to say, what business did I have in that world where I still hadn’t gotten my fill of defeats after all that time?
Those were all wonderful things, but all the same I couldn’t stop myself from pausing to gaze wistfully at the city spread out before me, the city where I was born and grew up. I felt like I was sitting in the garden of Cihangir Mosque, looking at the palace of fairies, my grandma beside me. We had some sunflower seeds we picked up at the corner shop, along with some sparkling water.
“Grandma, do you know what I’m thinking about?”
“No, tell me.”
“As I sit here looking at the city, I wish that everything belonging to this day and age would collapse and fall to ruin, and then everything would become overgrown by weeds. That’s what I’m thinking about.”
“You sound just like those anarchists your father used to hang out with in high school! Now look, they’ve put you into a real classy school. A school for ladies. So don’t take after me and let your mouth become a hotbed of cussing—they signed you up ther
e so you wouldn’t become a foulmouthed slut. Now, come to your senses, and stop talking crazy.”
The panorama that spread out before me and that I was gathering into myself—that’s how it was—made me remember, feel, and think of so many things, and I told Yunus about all of them. He laughed so hard that he doubled over. He was so sweet in the morning, tired eyes and all.
“I wish that I could remember things like you,” he said. “Because life isn’t what we experience. It’s how we remember it.”
23
NOW FOLLOWING YOUR PAGE
Walking back along the top of the wall proved difficult. Returning to the branch upon which I had been perching proved difficult as well. Yunus froze up. I held him in my arms like a baby. We inched our way along the wall. For a while, he closed his eyes. It really was that hard.
“Think of me as a blind person,” he said. “Imagine me that way. Because that’s how it seems to me now.”
I had to. Otherwise, we never would’ve made it back to the ladder leading down to the fire escape. He’d left my clothes there, the ones he’d washed. There was a package of crackers, a bottle of water, and some candy in the bag too. When we got to the ladder, I saw that the surveillance camera was now pointed in a completely different direction. Pointed at nothing, in fact. A chill went down my spine.
“Yunus, did you do that?”
“Yes.”
“So, is everything solved now?”
“Thanks for walking me back.”
And then he turned to leave. His eyes seemed to be dazzled by the light, squinting. Something was amiss—but what?
“Do your best to keep hidden as much as you can,” he said. “Don’t let anyone see you.”
I didn’t know Yunus’s father, but I imagined that’s how he would’ve talked. “Do your best to . . .” sounds like the kind of language a parent would use, doesn’t it?
After propping the ladder up against the wall of the hotel, he locked the door leading to the fire escape and bounded down the stairs with a surprising burst of energy, unconsciously leaving behind the echoes of his steps.
I wondered what he hadn’t told me.
All the same, I didn’t dwell too much on his warning. Guess what I did next, as if the “I” who’d been told to keep a low profile wasn’t actually me. I washed myself off.
It was still early in the morning, and the sprinklers in the park were spraying away full force. One sprinkler in particular caught my attention, because instead of watering the grass, it was squirting directly at the branch of an oak tree. I went and sat on that branch. You might even say I perched there. First, I let myself get soaked in my clothes, and then I peeled them off. The water came as a cold shock, but I was banking on the possibility that it would be a hot day—an act of sheer stubbornness in the face of the oncoming autumn. I felt a childish joy as the water rushed over me. I closed my eyes and opened my mouth. Raising my arms like a monkey, I scrubbed my armpits, and then I rinsed out my hair. That may have been the most liberated thing I’d ever done in my life until that point.
The only other time I’d been so free was during the protests. At Gezi. In the park.
Clambering back onto the wall, I wrung out my clothes and then laid them out to dry. At least now I could put on my own clothes again, now that they were clean. I pulled my hair into a dripping ponytail. Who does the sun shine upon?
It always made me laugh when my grandma would say to one of her cats, “Hey, Pussy!” Kicking out the American hadn’t been as easy as she’d described it. “I could never abandon these cats,” she said. “I couldn’t even leave the vegetable dealer. I couldn’t stab him with a bread knife. I couldn’t kill him and then bury his body in the garden.”
So, why did she tell me all those things on her deathbed?
When people are alive, they shouldn’t hold in their anger or feelings of animosity, nor should they bite their tongues, because like a stone lashed to your foot, such things will drag you down until you drown. I stretched out on top of the wall. The rays of the sun warmed my bare feet, hands, face, and damp hair. I said to myself, “There’s a way to deal with everything.” But when people are alive, they cannot think that way. They poison life. Now I seemed to be dead. When people realize that there’s a way to deal with everything, it’s too late. They’re dying.
Not moving a muscle, I lay there on top of that wall that was as old as the country itself. When I heard steps behind me, I raised my head and looked over. It was Yunus. His shift hadn’t started yet. He’d washed off in the personnel shower, had breakfast, put on his uniform, and realizing that he had some time to spare, decided to stop by to see me. He’d left as shaken and scared as a child, so when I saw him strolling along the top of the wall, I wondered where he’d gotten the courage. The silver threading of his red uniform glimmered in the gentle morning light. He was even wearing that funny conical hat. I hoped I wasn’t just having a bellboy dream.
“Why do you look so surprised?” he asked.
“Because not even an hour ago you were pretending to be a blind person, as that was the only way you could keep walking on top of the wall. So, what gives? Why so fearless now?”
“Don’t be so surprised. Even between two moments there’s always a certain amount of time.”
“Well, hell! We’re like a tragedy being staged as part of a school play.”
“Maybe we’re the heroes of our times.”
“That much is true.”
“I may not be able to leap from branch to branch like Tarzan like you can, but—”
“Tarzan? Do you realize that’s the last thing you should ever call a girl?”
I almost added “you prick,” but with great difficulty held myself back. “Tough girl” posturing is a disgusting thing. I was disgusted with myself. The truth of the matter, however, is that I wanted to be disgusted with myself. As always, Yunus replied with the utmost understanding and sweetness, perhaps because I was seeing him as a figment of my imagination, because I thought that the two of us were dreaming: “Should I have called you a monkey? It’s simple, really. I overcame my fear. I’ve done it before. On the night of the protests.”
He paused for a moment, as if he suddenly comprehended where he was. Ah, “comprehend”! Grandma, you can hear me, can’t you? Even if I’m not thinking about you, your words speak through me. I wish that I could put an emoji here of a laughing face with tears squirting out of its eyes.
Yunus was unafraid. As he said, he seemed to have gotten over his fear, and he was relishing the pleasure of that victory. He was practically chirruping.
“I think that the spirit of youth is like a pendulum, swinging back and forth. But it’s not that there’s no power pulling them toward the middle. There is such a power. It is the joy of freedom and life that every young person has been carrying around inside since birth. But when another power comes along and rips that out in its entirety, you feel like throwing yourself in another direction. Otherwise, being young is a wonderful thing. Still, there are the storms of adolescence. Aside from hope, there’s no port where you can seek refuge. But if I’m heading down a path toward a preposterous adult life, I’d rather fall from this wall to the ground and die. But that’s another issue altogether.”
Goodness and beauty had made him so diaphanous that it seemed as if all the light in the world were shining through him and spreading around us. Either that, or my head was still light from my cold shower in the sprinkler.
He walked over and sat down beside me.
“This is the second time I’ve seen you with wet hair. The first time I was quite captivated too.”
Meaning that, when it came to me, he remembered things. Moments that were special for him. As he buried his hands in the dampness of my hair, the sun shone down, bathing us in its warmth.
“If you want to talk to me again like you did last night, I’m ready to listen.”
Up in the trees and on that wall, a remnant of a conquest that supposedly transformed an era, I felt
like a cat that was bearing witness to the fact that human history hadn’t spiritually advanced a single iota despite the passage of time. And who wouldn’t feel like that while lying under the sun? That’s why I stretched and then, burrowing my head deeper into Yunus’s lap, started talking. Or thinking. Exploring my thoughts. Remembering. Or maybe all of them at once.
The only person my grandma wouldn’t let into her home was my mother’s father.
Why such antagonism?
In your opinion, why?
Perhaps because he was the neighbor who had stood watch at the door and hadn’t tried to stop or dissuade his friends from doing what they were doing to her?
“If he’d managed to get it up, maybe he too would’ve taken his turn. But he hadn’t been able to. Or I was in such a wretched state that he had no desire to touch me. Maybe that fucking prick was scared. Dervish son of a bitch! Swindling blacksmith.”
The last secret about our family had now been whispered. The genie was out of the bottle. That young man, who let the devil take the hindmost, had no idea at the time that he would be my mother’s father and, ultimately, my grandfather. Of the looters who ravaged the city on September 6 and 7, he was the useful idiot, the callous lout. When he came home, his father gave him a sound thrashing, saying, “What the hell were you doing with those thugs?”
Then he took his son to the Kadiri dervish lodge: “Repent and be a man!”
But we all know that you can’t raise children saying, “Do this, do that.” Over time, as you rail against them, they will internalize that voice of yours and make it their own. Ah, didactic education. Would you like a dose of that? “What do you have against my father?” my mother would ask, ever so naively.
Why would we want to have anything to do with your father, whose factory settings were off from the very beginning, that blacksmith grandfather of mine?
“Mind your own business. I’ll never forgive him. That bigot father of yours will never set foot in this house.”
“But, Perihan, Mother, it’s a bit disgraceful not letting him come in.”
The Girl in the Tree Page 26
