One of the girls in the group lunged and punched me in the eye. That was the last thing I was expecting. So there I was, reeling from the blow, even though I hadn’t said anything to bring it on. The Gossip Queen didn’t even bother doing it herself.
They later offered up a defense for their actions in the headmaster’s office. Which, of course, was a pack of lies. Grandma, I was infirm of purpose that day. “Infirm,” I said. After “desire,” that is the bitterest six-letter word in the language. My eye was throbbing so badly that I thought it might pop right out of its socket. It had already started swelling up. When the nurse came rushing in, the gravity of the situation became apparent when I pulled my hand away from my eye, and her exclamation of surprise ensured that I was at least partly in the right. That nurse had been working at the school for years, and I’m sure she’d seen all kinds of things, but even she was surprised by the sight of my face, as she’d probably never come across something of the like at such a “proper” French school.
At that moment, who should walk into the office but another one of our fabulous literature teachers, Melike Hanım. It’s just like the old saying goes—right, Grandma? “The blind man asked God for an eye, and God gave him two.”
The end result: thanks to Melike Hanım’s confirmation of certain facts, the situation turned in my favor, which was only just. She explained that the Gossip Queen’s fondness for spreading rumors had gotten her friends into no small amount of trouble. In the process, she may have stolen the limelight from the directress of the school, but justice was served. “This shouldn’t be taken lightly,” she added. “Just look at the poor girl’s face.”
“I have proof,” I said proudly, “that what she’s been saying about me is nothing but lies and slander.”
She asked, “Sweetie, what slander are you talking about?”
Brushing aside the headmaster’s exclamation “You girls carry around your phones at school?!”—in fact what I said was, “I always keep it on silent mode”—I started showing them the pictures on my phone.
Thanks to the iPhone 5 that my aunt had given to me on my birthday, everything came to light, including our performances of Duck, Death and the Tulip. In fact, there really wasn’t a problem. What I mean to say is that, if I hadn’t been punched in the eye, there wouldn’t have been a problem. While there was a bit of an uproar when the mother of the girl who clobbered me showed up at the school and said, “THAT girl is the problem. My daughter didn’t mean to get violent”—yeah, right!—ultimately, she was suspended and then expelled when my aunt stepped in and threw her weight around.
You see, my aunt came to the school for my sake.
I can remember it as if it was yesterday because it was New Year’s Eve.
We were in the courtyard. It was snowing, and we were all rather excited about the fact that we’d enter the New Year on a snowy night. Suffice to say that my aunt was wearing a pair of her invariably pristine Isabel Marant boots, an exquisite Vivienne Westwood coat, perfectly snug Diesel jeans, and a beige Massimo Dutti sweater that gracefully accentuated the swaying of her breasts, not to mention the honey-blond highlights in her hair. A simplicity and beauty that didn’t need to clamor for attention. That’s the allure she possessed, which I mentioned before. She was a beautiful woman, and she was even more beautiful that day because she showed up at the school for me. Gazing at my bandaged eye with pity, she took my face in her hands—a face that, in her words, was as “gaunt as a skull”—and tried to offer me a ray of hope: “Next year is going to bring us happiness and joy.”
However, starting from that sliver of 2013, the year 2014 went through with its plan of wreaking havoc: my aunt had been fired from the newspaper that very day. At the time, she seemed to take it in stride, but as I suggested earlier, I don’t think that was the case at all. After knocking back two glasses of whiskey at the bar of the Divan Hotel, she calmed down to a certain extent and went to my school. The fact that she got fired, which indeed was difficult for her to accept, would have to wait until evening for further discussion. She had planned on meeting her co-workers from the evening paper at the meyhane Asmalı Cavit or, if not there, at Yakup. I asked, “Is it a farewell dinner?” Yet again her eyes flashed like diamonds. She stroked my face with a soft hand and replied, “Let’s say it’s a sending-off celebration.”
Snowflakes were falling on her hair, which would never again be pampered with such natural highlights, as the hairdresser who had done them was quite expensive. Initially, she thought she’d be able to get by with her severance pay if she spent it carefully, but going to EBİL Hair & Beyond in Bebek was going to be out of the question, as was being a journalist again.
What else was there?
We stood there as the snowflakes drifted down, gently swirled by the wind. Who knows, perhaps we’re still standing there on that street. Contrary to what we generally think, maybe time doesn’t simply proceed forward in a linear fashion. It could even be something that is trapped within itself.
After my aunt left, Pembe and Derin showed up. They were wearing North Face jackets, as if the things were passed out for free by the Red Crescent aid society. Because it was snowing in the courtyard, we had one of those moments of adolescent joy, throwing our arms around each other and jumping up and down. Then we turned our faces skyward and opened our mouths as the thick flakes of snow kept coming down. The anti-riot trucks and tear gas hadn’t been able to dampen our joy. But that was it, and nothing more. Everything was quietly changing deep down, but we were completely blind to that fact.
As a snowflake that had landed on my nose started to melt, it become one with a tear that was rolling down my cheek. Now we’ve moved forward in time, and I’m making it snow for you on September 28. Why didn’t that dream ever come to an end? Annoyed by that sense of unease, I shifted in the stork’s nest. The park really was buried in snow. I could say that a thousand times because it was true. Everyone has a memory of a moment in which they would like to remain forever. No past, no future. Just that moment. The world is nothing more than a husk out there, beyond us, and yet it acts like a husk, protecting us and embracing us with all our faults. And that world is buried in snow.
My mind is sound. I have not gone mad.
I’m not saying that I don’t have any mental problems, but who of us doesn’t? Can we say that one person is mentally healthier than another? I’m quite certain that the moment in which I found myself was a dream and that it was not real. As I said, I remember what reality was until that day. Then the sickness in my mind suddenly leapt into my neurons and everything became complicated. But just for a moment. At least, that’s my opinion on the matter.
At one point, I heard cheerful cries coming from the direction of the park, and soon after, two girls dressed in blue appeared among the trees. They may have been as old as me, but their outfits made them look like overgrown little girls. As they went on with their snowball fight, they nearly came up to the foot of the wall. They were panting, and I could see their heaving chests, as well as the steam of their breath. As you may have guessed, it was Derin and Pembe. Before I go on to describe their matching outfits, I should mention something: just that year, they had dressed up as the twin girls in The Shining at a costume party and won a prize. If you haven’t heard of the movie, it’s a horror flick. Set in a hotel. A kid on a tricycle. Dead girls. Jack Nicholson. An ax. A bathroom door. The kid Danny, a medium who talks with his fingers.
In trying to look like the twins who confront Danny, Derin and Pembe had braided their hair and put on dresses that were tied around the waist, and they were wearing knee-high white socks. I think it was pure genius. Not the movie and the book it was based on, but their choice of costumes. For the party, I had dressed up like Amy, and as a result, I was one of twelve other Amys. But there was a difference—I had tattoos. Exactly the same as the ones that Amy had.
“How did you get those tattoos done?”
“You’re not even eighteen yet!”
�
�Didn’t the tattooist ask for a letter of permission from your mom?”
“The tattooist was a loaded addict who didn’t give a damn if someone had their parents’ permission or not. He was totally out of it.”
In a nutshell: thanks to my tattoos, I edged close to the lead at the costume party. While it was true that my tattoos were a bit oily and hazy under a layer of Bepanthol, so be it. They were there, and they were real. Hold on to your hat, there’s more: there was a photograph of the three of us, with me standing between the twins from The Shining, my arms over their shoulders, and it was published in the gossip supplement of the newspaper Hürriyet with the heading: “High School Youths Get Dressed Up.”
That pair who’d been having the snowball fight were now standing under my tree asking, “Hey, what are you doing up there?”
The way they asked made it seem like they knew who I was.
“Did you forget about me?”
I wasn’t hesitant at all about revealing myself up in the tree, leaning out over the edge of the nest where I’d been hiding, nor was I shy about speaking to them. All the same, they looked at me blankly, just as the twins looked at Danny as he pedaled his tricycle around inside the hotel. Just as they’d done to me at the costume party.
“We don’t even know who you are.”
They said that at exactly the same time. But I woke up before I had time to remind them what my name was. A beam of light that had found its way through the dense branches of the laurel tree stabbed straight into my eyes like a sword shot forth from the sun. I knew I had to believe that it was only a dream.
27
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Plane, oak, beech, poplar, silver birch, horse chestnut, alder, dogwood, cotoneaster, cedar, pine, eucalyptus. That day I did something rather out of the ordinary: I counted all the trees in the park, one by one. For the first time since we’d stayed up until dawn on the roof of the Tiled Pavilion, I ventured far from my stork’s nest, my laurel, my first love the plane tree, the eucalyptus that reached out to me with its silky branches, and the pine tree, whose cones filled my belly with their nuts. I now had full confidence in my strength. Even when doing the famous surfing move while slacklining, I didn’t ever come close to plummeting to the ground. I was flexible. My sense of balance couldn’t have been better. Unbalanced in mind, but balanced in body. Accepting yourself for what you are has its merits. At least, it should.
Gülhane was very different from Maçka Park. Even since Gezi, it had changed. Although it was home to some of the most splendorous trees in all of Istanbul, and in times past had been the palace’s magnificent garden, it was now refuge for the lost and losers of the city. The despairing, the downcast, the flawed, and people who’d lost their aims and goals in life went there, along with the embittered, the penniless, the wretched, the lonely, and those who were waiting and those who were fleeing from something. People went there with envelopes containing X-rays from the Çapa, Cerrahpaşa, and Haseki hospitals as if the photographs were decrees of death, along with others who had found out that cancer was ripping through their bodies like wildfire. The streetcar, which passed by with a bloodcurdling screech, now deposited at the park’s gates all the deadbeats of the city, even though its capacity to take them in had already long been filled. The trees were tall, yet the visitors were too weary and worn out to even raise their heads to look up at them. After a while, I came to realize that I could make my way through the trees without having to fear that I’d be spotted. One particularly destitute-looking man did, in fact, see me. He was quickly walking toward the gate that led to the street where the streetcar passed by, and he didn’t even stop to marvel at the strangeness of the scene he’d witnessed. Hardly taking his eyes from his destination, he merely glanced back and then proceeded on his way. I presumed that he was a bit simpleminded, so hurt that he was blind to the world around him, or crazy. Or all three.
Aside from that, nothing happened.
Thanks to my red nylon slacklining strap and turnbuckles, I was free to roam the park as I pleased, which helped me pull myself together. I was stronger up there than I’d been in the world below, but most importantly, my expeditions drove from my thoughts—even if only a little—that snowy dream I’d had about Pembe and Derin.
But a question remained: How far could I mentally distance myself from them? It was as if they’d completely burned up and their ashes had been shoved down my throat, and, as a result, the two of them had taken over my body as their own and I couldn’t cast them out. I even had a dream about that. Or should I call it a nightmare?
After the explosion, their social media accounts were trashed. I didn’t tell you that story about them dressing up as the twins in The Shining or me going to the costume party dressed as Amy for nothing. Later, the tabloids killed me as well, but that’s another story for another time. And let’s not forget about the teacher who’d been fired: piss, penis, crap, vagina . . . Melike Hanım later saw me in the neighborhood of Beşiktaş and threw her arms around me, saying, “I thought that you’d gone with your friends. I thought you’d been killed too.”
“No, I didn’t go.”
“How come?”
If you recall, my aunt had asked me the same question, since she knew I’d been planning on taking part in the trip. We met up with a group of people we’d come across during Gezi (they were the ones making posts about the trip on Facebook) at Külüstür Pub in Beşiktaş. Beforehand, we’d been exchanging messages with them, since we wanted to go along. But were the “Shot-Put Girls” of Dame de Sion just wrapped up in the excitement of it all or were their intentions sincere? I’d thought that we were going to be put to the test, but I was wrong. Anyone who wanted to join was welcome. They were worried, however, about certain “leaks” they’d heard about.
“What kind of leaks?”
“The kind made by citizen informants.”
One of the guys in the group said that. He was from the town of Samsun on the Black Sea coast and was studying sociology in Istanbul.
“We want to go there and help them create a life for themselves that will give us hope.”
“We want to be useful.”
“After all, we were part of the Gezi protests. Sometimes we laughed, and sometimes we paid the price for our actions through suffering and loss. For example, my aunt—she’s a journalist—lost her job.”
A guy who was wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Ali İsmail, who had been killed during the protests, asked, “Which newspaper?” I told him. And of course, I added, “But my aunt is all about freedom and democracy. She’s a really dedicated woman.”
“I know, I know. Your aunt wrote some great pieces in the mainstream media.”
Later, the girls told me that I grinned from ear to ear when he said that.
We ordered another round of small glasses of beer, because when you order a big glass, the beer gets warm. It was the beginning of July, and the date for the trip was drawing near. After we left the pub, we talked in detail about what we were going to take to the kids out east. There was going to be a meeting, and we talked about the day, the hour, the agenda . . .
From Beşiktaş we headed up to Akaretler along the very same street where we’d protested a few years ago. In those days, we’d Snapchatted, tweeted, and Facebooked our experiences. Was there a form of social media we hadn’t used? Now we were walking up the steep road as if we were trudging along the surface of the moon. It felt as though our backpacks were trying to pull us back down the hill.
“Why are we going? For that matter, why are we going with them? Are we just high school chicks in their eyes? Did the fact that we said we wanted to go confuse them? Or is it just me who got that impression? Doing things like this is what they’re all about. It’s their life. Are we really like them?”
We were going to Derin’s place in Nişantaşı. Her family lived in a tiny apartment on a lane below Ihlamur Street. Her mother gathered up the garbage from the neighboring apartment build
ings and mopped their stairs. As for her father, you already know about him. Their only success in life was their daughter Derin, who had an older sister, but there’s no need to dwell on her. For some reason, what I’d said had gotten on Derin’s nerves: “What the hell are you talking about?”
“People are holding out against the government in a part of the country we hardly even knew existed. Sure, they gave us hope. We didn’t want their city to fall to the state’s troops. We wanted them to resist, just like we’d done in Gezi. But their situation is different. Are we like them? I mean, do we have the same profile? If we go, won’t we be doing them an injustice? This isn’t a costume party. It’s nothing like setting up a tent in Gezi Park, and we can’t think of it as something that will lighten the burden on our consciences. It’s not like we can pop into H&M and pick up some green Peshmerga camouflage to wear to school. If you’ve got a bit of pluck, you could sport some khakis and a kaffiyeh, but you know as well as me that, in this damn country, even students wearing the Kurdish pushi have been arrested. It’s not like that for those organizers. They’re always there, wholeheartedly. It’s their life. But our place is here.”
“This isn’t about us versus them. We’re not after some idea of marginality.”
“Of course not, because we’re already marginalized as it is. But their issues are different, nothing like ours. Do you see what I’m saying?”
The Girl in the Tree Page 30
