“We’ll find a way to meet,” I said.
“Of course.” Still, his expression was full of despair.
“I’m sure there’s a way onto the roof from Sırça Palace or somewhere else. If not, you’ll learn how to climb the trees. I could pull you up using a rope. There must be a way.”
The weak smile he offered made it obvious that all my suggestions sounded impossible. As was my habit, I pressed him: “Well, couldn’t you do it? You’ll find a way to get up into the trees, just as I did.”
“Couldn’t you find a way to come down from the trees?”
After a pause, he said what was really on his mind: “What good is it doing you to be here? Okay, I know that you have emotional reasons for wanting to be up in the trees. I believe you, and you have every right to be here, but . . .”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“The problem is that I love you. That I’m so in love with you.”
“I’m in love too. I’m in love with you. I fell more deeply in love with you than I ever expected.”
“Then come with me and let’s make this work.”
“It doesn’t work that way. I’m the Girl in the Tree. Did you forget that?”
Like all people who are desperate, Yunus lashed out with a meaningless question, almost bellowing, “Fine, but why?!”
“Why, why, Grandpa’s in the rye!” He didn’t even grin when I said that. In fact, he frowned, as though calling on me to be serious. “Yunus, because—life gets in the way of being able to speak of life. Here, I’m far from life, so I’m able to do that.”
If I’d been in his position, I would’ve asked, “Is it really necessary to do that up here?”
Instead, he said, tears in his eyes, “Life exists so that it can be lived, not explained. Otherwise, it’s not life at all.”
He reached out and stroked my cheek.
“Love, remember the good days. Come down with me from the trees. Live with me. So many wonderful days await us, and there will always be more to come. Let’s go through life together, in love, in happiness.”
How could I not want to live with him? If my grandma hadn’t sold Pretty Willy and my father hadn’t made off with Seaside Leisure, what more could I want than to hang those paintings on the wall of our home and life a live of joy?
Even the birds stopped chirruping for a moment. They roosted and flew in silence.
Reaching into his pocket, Yunus pulled out a small bag, which he held out to me. “I brought these for you. I called your mother as well. But she didn’t answer. Another woman picked up the phone. She said her name’s Hülya and that she’s your other aunt.”
After my uncle-in-law played the song “And You, Leyla?” for my aunt Hülya, he played her another romantic track, this one a number about the silences between lovers titled “Hülya.” I forgot to mention that detail. Or did I? In either case, my mind skipped back and forward, like the cheap MP3 player that the doorman who was afraid of going to the military carried in his pocket. And then it stopped.
If my aunt Hülya answered my mother’s phone, that meant she had probably gone through her messages and so on. Which, in turn, might mean that she was staying with my mother, looking after her. Truth be told, both my grandma and Aunt Hülya tried to take care of us. Don’t be misled by the way Aunt Hülya refused to pay the café bill my mother palmed off on her. She just didn’t like that it was an imposition after the fact. It actually marked the starting point of the “secret” assistance that began to come in. Envelopes of money slipped under the door, packages of meat delivered by the butcher’s apprentice. Although I should note that the second time such a delivery of meat arrived, my aunt—the other one, my father’s sister—happened to be at our place, and she sent the apprentice away, saying, “We don’t need their charity.” So away went the cutlets, lamb chops, steaks, and ground meat. In fact, we were hardly getting any protein at all in those days and we did need it. Just a week or two earlier, my aunt had happily devoured one of those steaks, not knowing where it had come from. She had a strange naivete, as do many good-hearted people. My mother was like that too, as was Yunus.
As I took the bag from Yunus, I asked, unable to conceal the sadness in my voice, “So, this is it? Now we go our separate ways?”
At first, he refused to say yes or no.
Just as I was thinking, Fine, let’s put our separation in there between the dried nuts and sanitary pads, Yunus said firmly, “No. We could never be strangers to each other . . .”
I was unsure of how I should interpret his wording, when he could’ve simply said, “We’ll never be apart.”
Getting to know one another is more important than falling in love. I have no doubt about that. And I wasn’t blind to the possibility that, in our case, the fact that Yunus and I had met was more important than the burning love I felt for him. As my grandma was fond of saying, “Passionate love is like perfume. In no time at all it wafts away. What really matters is that when two people come together, they grow accustomed to one another, build up a feeling of mutual love, share their secrets, and spend time together.”
That was one of those rare proclamations of hers that didn’t include any swearing.
Yunus and I were sitting on a thick branch high up in that tree, facing each other. We were a miracle. I thought that if I tried to put that moment into words, I might get excited, lose my balance, and fall to the ground, so I held my tongue. Love and passion have the power to dispel all your fears. That came out sounding like an advertisement for a reliable brand of medicine you’d find at a pharmacy, but all the same it’s true.
And people never forget those they love. Take the case of my grandma. She never forgot. Not the American or the archaeologist. Especially not the American. One day, when I was at her place, she told me to turn up the volume on the television. At that moment, her parrot started squawking shrilly, and she silenced it with a well-aimed house slipper. There was an old film on, in which Ajda Pekkan was singing and dancing. She seemed immortal, untouched by the passing years, but of course her extraordinary ability to resist aging has nothing to do with the topic at hand, so let’s move on to the song she was singing as if for my grandma. It was a song about lovers who’d grown apart, about wanting to go back to the way things were.
My grandma was listening intently to the song, enveloped in a sentimentality that I’d never seen in her before. Afterward, she’d gone into the kitchen and started chopping some onions as a way to hide the fact that she’d been crying. Grandma, don’t you know that kids notice everything?
One day, as we were passing through the garden of Cihangir Mosque as a shortcut to Kumrulu, we saw a man sitting on a bench who seemed like he was dressed up as Clint Eastwood. It didn’t take long for me to figure out who he was (by the way, if you ask me, Clint Eastwood and Marianne Faithfull would be a great love combo). He turned in our direction, looking at us long and hard, at which point my grandma tightened her grip on my arm and rushed home, practically dragging me behind her. Soon after, the doorbell rang.
“Grandma, someone’s at the door. Don’t you hear it?”
“Oh, I hear it all right. Son of a whore’s pimp. I’m not going to open it.”
We could see the weary Clint on the cheap plastic screen of the video camera system. When he narrowed his eyes in what appeared to be pain, the wrinkles on his forehead deepened. He didn’t persist for an inordinate amount of time, but he did pause and linger in the entryway for a bit longer. Clint had played out the role of his life, but when I say “role,” don’t get the wrong idea. The American really was in pain, and he’d come to see my grandma one last time.
And what did she do?
She ran away.
And what did he do?
He left a letter at the informal outdoor cat shelter my grandma ran. It was a kind of cat neighborhood with bowls of water and food and cardboard cat houses (soon after, the municipal police would get an earful from my grandma as they tore the place down). So anyways, as
I was saying, the American left a letter for her there.
“Peri Hanım, I think this is for you?”
One of the local cat lovers had come upon the letter and was now holding it out to my grandma. Perihan Hanım snatched the letter from her hand like a cat lashing out with its claws. Her reading glasses happened to be hanging around her neck, so she read the letter on the spot. If she hadn’t had them with her, she would’ve had no recourse but to ask for my help. Naturally, whether she’d let anyone else read the letter would’ve depended on what she thought it might say and in how much detail. But that’s beside the point, because she read it herself, and was ready to reply at once.
“Do you have a pen?”
Those cat lovers carry around all sorts of things. After rummaging through her purse, producing, among other things, a flashlight, a lighter, a phone, cigarettes, keys, and chewing gum, at last she pulled out a pen.
“Here you are, Perihan Hanım.”
She laid out the letter and wrote at the bottom, “Farewell, my love.” I was thinking, For God’s sake, is that really the right thing to say to your lover from days of yore who now has cancer, your erstwhile common-law husband? But she deemed it appropriate, because deep down she was still thinking about how easily the American had given up on her. If only he’d come to the apartment again. If only he hadn’t slid his bankbook under the door all those years ago. In those days, my grandma had often wept as she lingered in the kitchen, the one place she could be alone, and the hem of her apron was always damp from wiping away her tears. My aunt could snap, “Mom, stop blowing your nose on your apron!” till she was blue in the face. But she wasn’t blowing her nose; she was wiping away her tears. If the American had divorced his wife and come back to her, saying, “Peri, even if you try to kill me, I won’t go. Look at the state I’m in, Perihan!” would she have sent him away? Cold composure is an illness that afflicts many Westerners. The American had been infected as well, as the result of accepting everything that happened in his life with cool equanimity.
My grandma placed the letter back where it had been found, not even thinking about whether the woman who’d discovered it would get curious and have a peek for herself. Don’t ever be afraid of people who love cats. Cat lovers will never bring you any harm. Being an animal lover is one thing, but being a cat lover involves an entirely different range of factors. Cat lovers are honest. They don’t do people wrong. Isn’t it true that someone who would try to save the life of a cat would do just about anything for the sake of this thing we call life? There’s not an ounce of wicked intent in such efforts. It’s 100 percent organic.
That’s it.
That’s it, and nothing more.
Grandma, would you believe that I was afraid Yunus would speak those words?
“Farewell, my love.”
Yunus sensed that I was scared. He sensed that I’d stopped talking because I was upset. Now it was time for him to say something that would cast off my sorrow.
“I won’t ever leave you. I’m going to come back. Don’t you worry, okay? I’ll be back here before you know it.”
“Come back. What would I do without you?” I broke down in tears. We hugged each other and kissed. Before leaving, he warned me again: “Those security guards got fired too. Out of curiosity they might come here and search the park, so be careful. One of them has a BB gun. On the holidays, he takes it down to the seaside so people can pay to shoot at the balloons he sets up.”
That explained why I kept seeing leaves full of holes. Had I told you about that? No, I don’t think so.
In that case, maybe what I’d thought were dreams weren’t really dreams at all. Maybe I’d picked up on some external forces that gave me visions of those bullies throwing rocks at me when I was up in my perch. They may not have spotted me, but still they threw rocks up into the branches, fired random shots into the leaves, snooped around, stood under the trees talking, pissed on the wall, and then left.
Could all that have really happened?
Yunus said, and said, and said, “I’m going to come back, don’t worry,” and I watched him moving along the branches through the leaves and then clambering onto the wall. At one point I caught sight of his blue DeFacto jacket in the distance, but soon enough that vanished from sight too. He was gone. I wondered if he really would come back, as he’d said he would.
33
EXIT
I stopped caring about my personal hygiene. I didn’t clean my ass, no longer using laurel leaves to wipe up after taking a crap. Only once when it seemed to be hurting from being so filthy did I sprinkle on a little water, and after a few swipes with a leaf, it was fine. But I stank. Badly. All I had to do was scratch at my skin and the stench would burst forth. Mind you, none of that had anything to do with being scared—I was malodorous, pure and simple, not maladapted to my environment. Much to the contrary. Smile, friends. Smile. But was I really finding the solution to everything? I wondered if I would be able to go on living in the treetops if Yunus didn’t come. But when I first found myself there, in the middle of the night on September 14, 2015, I didn’t have anything and I didn’t have Yunus in my life. All I had was the belief that I could cling to life despite everything that had happened.
But I have to admit that Yunus saved my life. If it hadn’t been for him, would I have been able to stay up there for so long? Did I ever truly ask myself that question? Or was I too scared? Maybe I could’ve eaten leaves and twigs, or the leftovers of crows. I could’ve filched food from the hotel. By stalking the people who came to the park, I could’ve found just the right moment to leap down, wrench the doner kebabs from their hands, and run off. Would I have done that? Yes, I would have.
My arms and legs had become surprisingly powerful. But my fingernails and toenails were stuffed with grime, and my hands were as black as those of a coal seller’s apprentice. Once in a while I’d catch myself looking at my hands with concern. The visible traces of the transformation I was undergoing . . . Maybe my mirror was lying to me, but my face seemed to be changing too. I was becoming a wild animal. My legs, armpits, groin, and eyebrows were all forests in their own right. I considered the possibility that I would never bathe again. Never be able to bathe again. I wasn’t about to go leaping from rooftop to rooftop in the direction of the bathhouse. I hadn’t gone to the park to become filthy, but rather to cleanse myself. Even though I was physically dirty, spiritually I was purer than ever.
I had remained quite well hidden for a very long time, but I wasn’t sure how long I’d be able to keep it up. The managers at the hotel were on high alert. Since it was inconceivable to them that a young woman could be living in the treetops in the park, they were on the lookout for your run-of-the-mill type of robbery. That suspicion drove them to cut off all access to the top of the wall. But hadn’t anyone ever run the risk of trying to clamber up the trees? Why the lack of allure? Why had only I and the baron with his perch seriously entertained the notion, going so far as to put it into practice? Were we the strange ones, or were you? Had the world been unable to come to terms with us, or had we been unable to come to terms with it?
Neither my telephone nor my social media accounts held any attraction for me anymore. I’d grown accustomed to a life of being on my own, waiting, tarrying, looking around, sleeping, waking up, doing nothing, and scratching myself—yes, even scratching had become a pastime. I didn’t dream of food or fancy drinks. It had been easy to turn my back on the world. But I knew that if Yunus didn’t come back, it could prove to be difficult. At least for a while. But then I would get used to his absence too.
I asked myself if I would weep and grieve if Yunus didn’t come back.
The only activity into which I threw myself wholeheartedly was keeping track of the days. Whether ten years had passed or a hundred, I wanted to be able to tell Yunus precisely how much time had gone by. I knew I could do it. Time seemed to be the key. It seemed that through time I could assimilate to the trees. I would become one of them, and for hu
ndreds of years I would stand rooted among their ranks. Who knows—perhaps when we die, that is the fate awaiting us! We become soil and, driven by the wind, go where we ultimately are destined to be.
One day, I hung upside down from one of the trees like a bat. The next day, I ate some rather strange-looking fruit growing on another tree, but I didn’t get sick, not even a stomachache. I frequented the chestnut trees. Thanks to them, I could stuff myself to the gills. I knew that over time I’d be saved from a life of hiding myself away in that corner of the park. Just as I’d struck upon the idea of gathering up chestnuts for later, I’d figure out how to bind the whole park to myself so that its entirety would become my domain. Since I had no intention whatsoever of descending from the trees, they could call in the fire department anytime they wanted, but it wouldn’t make any difference. What ladder could reach me? Would a fireman even dare approach? If they shot me with a tranquilizer dart like they do to animals, I’d probably fall to my death, and they’d be responsible. What would they say to my mother then? “Well, she shouldn’t have been up there at the top of that tree”? I wasn’t alone. At least not yet.
Of course, I was trying to console myself by saying such things.
In these lands, only evil and tyranny are embraced, while goodness and beauty are buried the instant they arise, and all the while, intolerance flourishes.
I began to wonder if, over time, people would start coming to the park to see me, just as they would flock to see a strange bird. Would they respect my presence in the park and my desire to stay there? Could the equality, fraternity, and freedom you can’t find in the world below exist up in the treetops?
I focused my gaze on the branches and leaves, and I think I stayed that way for a fairly long time.
Yunus finally showed up.
I whispered the date to myself: “On October 9, 2015, a Friday, Yunus came back.”
But this time, he didn’t come along the branches of the trees.
The Girl in the Tree Page 34
