by Latife Tekin
‘I’ve missed Elmas so much, water pump!’
‘She’s missed you too, Dirmit girl.’
‘Who did she say that to?’
‘To the finely falling snow.’
The more Dirmit pined for Elmas, the more she rid herself of fears and doubts. She shook off her feelings of guilt and crept secretly back to Elmas and hugged her.
Once again the water pump froze from the mid-winter cold. Early every morning Dirmit poured hot water over the pump’s muzzle, rubbed its arm and chest and cleaned up its little pool. But the pump had lost its tongue. All the same, for days Dirmit trod tirelessly down to see the pump, leant into its ear and shouted as loud as she could. She put her hand into its muzzle and tried to bend its arm joints. Finally the pump could no longer hold back its tears. When Dirmit noticed them trickling down its throat, she realized how sad the pump was that it couldn’t talk to her. She dried up its tears with her sleeves, stroked its face, arm and belly, then left. At night she felt so sad that she couldn’t look at the pump anymore, and when she passed by she wouldn’t even turn her head that way. She held it all inside and waited for the snow to melt and winter to end. She also waited, without telling anyone, for an aeroplane to visit the village that winter. As days passed, she was happy to think that the water pump would eventually thaw out, but was sorry that still no plane had come to perch over Akçalı.
Ever since Atiye had pointed up to an aeroplane and said, ‘Look there, good-for-nothing, that’s commonist!’ Dirmit had tried hard, but in vain, to figure out the connection. All the same, she had linked the teacher to the aeroplane. Whenever she heard thunder, Dirmit would rush out onto the veranda, shading her eyes with her hand, and. search the sky for her teacher. And whenever a plane flew over the village Dirmit’s feet tugged her over to the schoolhouse, where she found herself standing amid the mouldy smelling desks. While the village children set up a swing in the old sheepfold or played hide-and-seek in the mangers, Dirmit cradled her notebook against her tummy and, without Atiye knowing it, plodded her way through the snow to school. That winter no teacher came to the village. But when the snows had just begun to melt, and steam from the soil rose towards the sky, a plane with huge wings cruised low over the fields, then roared off, flipping over and heading across the rooftops. Houses shook and swayed from the noise, pigeons flapped off in fright and children started to cry. The plane circled up high, then looped the loop down towards the fields, before rising over the roofs again with its nose in the air. Villagers who came out to see it felt their hearts leap up into their mouths and were left awestruck when the plane finally flew off.
Towards evening that day, word spread throughout the village that the future son-in-law of Hacı Talip, a wealthy man from the neighbouring town, was a pilot. From time to time he flew over the villages in the area to show off to his bride-to-be. When the women heard this they struck their breasts, gazed at the sky and prayed fervently for the day when Allah would unite the couple. And from then on, whenever a plane flew overhead, they would exultantly announce to anyone who hadn’t seen or heard it cutting through the clouds: ‘Our son-in-law’s been to visit the village!’ Dirmit became even more confused when she saw the people looking up at the plane and sighing pitifully, ‘May Allah unite them,’ each time it flew over the village. She had no idea who or what to believe. But, after a while, news spread that Hacı Talip’s son-in-law also was a ‘commonist’, and the villagers started cursing and shutting themselves up in their houses after every fly-past. Dirmit was left utterly confounded. She paced about and thought hard, more and more intrigued about where the plane came from and where it went, how it could stay up in the sky and produce that baffling noise, and how both it and the teacher had come to be ‘commonist’. On top of all that, now she was hearing that the plane was the son-in-law, and the son-in-law was ‘commonist’. When all her hard thinking came to nothing, she finally decided that both the ‘commonist’ and the aeroplane must be djinns after all.
But no sooner had Dirmit reached this conclusion than the devil took hold of her thoughts. Dirmit knew that, whenever they wanted to, djinns rose up from their homes, which lay seven layers beneath the earth and, without being seen, mixed with humans: sleeping in the same bed as them, eating with the same spoon and drinking from the same cup. She therefore reasoned that her teacher, too, whom she had decided was a djinn, must also be living in Akçalı and going up to the school every day unseen by anyone. She’d also heard that djinns could only be seen when someone pissed on them or poured boiling water on their feet, or when people stepped over the threshold or went to bed without saying the prayer prelude, the besmele, or when they mentioned Allah’s name in the toilet. Dirmit concluded that the only way she could see her teacher was by getting him angry. Once she had made up her mind about that, she set forth and, without saying the besmele, pissed on every doorstep, into every ash heap and at the foot of every wall she could think of in the village. If the djinns rose up from their homes seven layers under the earth, she calculated, they would have to come out through ant holes, molehills and cracks in the ground. So she built fires at different places and boiled water, which she poured down all the holes and cracks. To get the djinns really angry, she threw stones into the wells from morning to night. Then she tore out strands of her own hair and left them beside the wells for the djinns to collect and thus report to her teacher that she was out looking for him.
People began to fear that Dirmit would bring some misfortune down on the village, so whenever they saw her coming near their garden walls they threw stones and curses at her. Then they met together and complained to Atiye, warning her to keep her daughter at her side and to ask a hodja to blow prayers over her. But Atiye left Dirmit alone. She had long been aware that it was no good to pressure her since that would lead her once and for all into the world of the djinns. Nevertheless, as she walked about the house she kept a hand over her heart, afraid that some evil might befall Dirmit. Then she started following Dirmit around secretly to find out what she was up to. After a while, however, she grew tired of trailing her through the fields and went home, letting her be. Meanwhile, try as she might, Dirmit never got to see her teacher. She abandoned the ant holes and molehills to wander around the schoolhouse instead. First she poured boiling water between the mouldy smelling desks, underneath the blackboard and in front of the doors and the gates of the schoolhouse. Then she pissed all along the walls of the schoolyard and sat down on the wall to wait for her teacher. At last she saw a dark presence moving about inside the school. As soon as she fixed her eyes on it, the shadow came over to one of the broken windows and leapt out into the schoolyard. Screaming and crying, Dirmit raced home, where she recounted breathlessly to Atiye how a djinn with black clothes and a black hood had leapt from the school building, stripped off his trousers and chased her all the way into the village. Atiye listened in silence, then, throwing a shawl over her head, she called upon her next-door neighbour, Kamer Woman. Kamer Woman asked Dirmit to repeat what she had seen before revealing that this djinn was known locally as ‘Neighing Boy’. He inhabited a wooded hilltop by the side of the road to Kahveci village and, on occasion, visited the neighbouring villages, stopping women on the pathway but remaining invisible to the men. Having said this, Kamer Woman went out to report it all to the village.
In the narrow alley, lined with walnut trees, just down the road from the stream, Neighing Boy first appeared to Corporal Durdu’s daughter Aygül, who was old enough to be a bride. Neighing like a horse, he stopped her dead in her tracks. Then he stripped off his trousers and stood facing her. Screaming, Aygül rushed back to the stream and, with an ashen face, told every passer-by that Neighing Boy had affronted her. Panic reigned in the village. Women and girls could no longer go to the stream, the fields or the vineyards. Men emerged from their lounges to stand by the walls for collective prayer and to recite the Allahüla.
Neighing Boy knew every prayer by heart, and whenever people used prayer to drive him
away he would repeat the prayer to escape its effects. Then, once he had broken through the prayer barrier, he could roam about just as he pleased. But there was one small part of the Allahüla that he couldn’t recite properly, a few words that he could never get his tongue around. Unable to thrash his way through the Allahüla, he would have to flee, cursing, and could only return when the prayer’s effects had worn off. For days the Allahüla was recited ceaselessly in Akçalı. Finally Neighing Boy grew tired of waiting on the slope by the village for people to finish muttering the prayer. He no longer stopped women and girls and dropped his trousers. However, he was so angry with the villagers that he didn’t return to his place on the wooded hilltop near Kahveci village. Instead, he settled in the rocks behind Akçalı’s vineyards. From then on, the young girls in the village didn’t dare to go there to henna their hands or collect rock gum, and the women couldn’t visit the vineyards on their own. They cursed the place and named it ‘Neighing Boy’s Rocks’.
They also cursed Atiye’s little girl, Dirmit. They concluded that it was she who had brought the djinn down on the village. Dirmit had wandered around without saying a besmele as she pissed on the djinns’ feet and faces. She had scalded them by pouring boiling water all over the place. And she had filled up all the wells in the village by flinging stones into them. Her actions had incurred the djinns’ wrath and caused them finally to bring in Neighing Boy as their representative to plague the village. Beating on Atiye’s door, the villagers reminded her that Dirmit had once been indelibly marked down by Djinnman Memet. They used this as an excuse to warn Atiye: ‘Either hitch her up to a post and keep her at home, or pack her up with you and leave the village.’
‘Oh, Dirmit girl, Dirmit girl!’
‘Water pump, please don’t cry.’
‘How can I not, Dirmit girl?
‘Rosebuds dropped off before they could bloom this spring.
They said there once was a sleepless one,
There was one who kept watch over us,
Her heart beating fast.
She gathered our petals
That faded and fell, one by one,
Holding them close in her bosom.
We branched and leafed for her, in the gardens of Akçalı.
We budded for her and blossomed for her.
Before dawn came she ran to us,
Crossing the waterways and jumping over walls.
She hasn’t come this spring though we’ve waited long.’
‘Oh, water pump! Oh, water pump!’
‘Dirmit girl, please don’t cry.’
That spring Dirmit couldn’t take a single step outside the double wing-gate of her house because of pressure from the villagers. But Atiye ignored their advice, fearing that, if she tied up Dirmit again, the girl would fall seriously ill once more. She let her wander freely about the house and garden but always kept a close eye on her. Then, as she grew more anxious about Dirmit’s frequent visits to the water pump and the conversations she had with it, she soon forbade those visits. Deprived of the water pump’s company, Dirmit tried all day long to distract herself, piling up tiny pebbles here and there in the garden and making little houses out of them. Atiye wasn’t bothered when Dirmit stacked the pebbles or lined them up side by side. It was only when Dirmit started to chat with the pebbles, keeping them at her side during meals and taking them to bed with her, that she also became nervous about them. Believing that Dirmit was building homes for the djinns and moving about the house in their company, filling the whole place with djinns, Atiye snatched the pebbles from Dirmit’s hand and threw them out in the garden. She forbade Dirmit to play with pebbles, to build houses from them or even to lay hands on them. So Dirmit found another way to distract herself. She spent all day leaping off the high wooden veranda onto a pile of dry weeds in the garden below. Shouting, she ran up the veranda stairs and threw herself down onto the weeds. At first Atiye didn’t say much. She was only upset because the weeds were strewn about the garden. But the devil crept gradually into her thoughts, and she began to believe that the djinns were helping Dirmit as she jumped off the veranda. If not, why didn’t she break a bone when she leapt from so high up? Atiye now forbade Dirmit from running up on the veranda and jumping off. As a further precaution against any momentary lapse on her own part if Dirmit decided to hold hands with the djinns again and plummet from the porch, Atiye took up the pitchfork and shifted the pile of weeds to the bottom of the opposite wall.
Next Dirmit turned to the radio. When Atiye observed her sitting from morning until midnight fiddling with it, she heaved a deep sigh of relief to see her daughter indoors. Dirmit sat by the radio for days, fooling around with it and growing more and more curious. Then she fell into the odd habit of pacing to and fro between the radio and the veranda, from which she watched the shadows of the walls and trees. Once more Atiye grew anxious. ‘Why do you keep going out on the veranda every two seconds, good-for-nothing. What’re you after?’ she demanded. ‘Nothing!’ Dirmit replied. Shrugging off Atiye’s questions, she continued to rush from radio to veranda and back again, enraging her mother even more. Finally she started to sit out on the veranda and only came back in to turn on the radio after the shadow of the tree had fallen over the water pump. At first Atiye was too scared to interfere with Dirmit’s radio-sitting, but as she watched her daughter turning on the radio and listening to the same thing every day after sitting out on the porch, she really began to get frightened. But no matter how hard she watched Dirmit or coaxed her with sweet words like ‘My darling little hennaed girl’ she couldn’t fathom how Dirmit was able to switch on the radio at exactly the right time each day and know precisely what would be on. Then, growing more and more frightened, Atiye started to suspect that the djinns were communicating with Dirmit. So one night, while Dirmit was sleeping, she got out of bed and hid the radio in the hayloft. In addition, she banned her daughter from sitting out on the porch. For days Dirmit followed her around. ‘I could tell by the shadows, honest!’ she said again and again, but Atiye didn’t believe her. On hearing Dirmit mention shadows, she grew even more nervous. ‘Did the shadows also inform you that I was going to lock you up in the storeroom?’ she asked and then did just that. At night she took Dirmit out of the storeroom, put her to bed, then kept a close eye on her until she had fallen asleep. The next day Atiye returned her to the storeroom and locked her in again. ‘Let me out of here,’ Dirmit sobbed. Weary at last of crying, she would creep over to the pile of bulgur and fall asleep on top of it. When she awoke she would stand at the window, shouting out to the pedlar or whoever else happened to pass by. She would cry so much that the spit dried up in her mouth and her eyes ran out of tears. Finally she broke out in a rash from sleeping on the bulgur, and scabby little swellings spread over her entire body.
After she had fallen ill, Atiye took her out of the storeroom, but Dirmit moaned and kicked anyone who came near her. The one particular person she saw as an enemy, however, was Atiye. If her mother drew near, Dirmit grabbed her hair, scratched her face and hands and bit her. Atiye pummelled her knees in despair, thinking that she herself must appear as a djinn to Dirmit. So she left her daughter’s side and stayed clear of her until Dirmit had settled down and felt better. Nuǧber, also frightened, withdrew from Dirmit. Worried that her youngest son might also catch Dirmit’s djinn, Atiye warned little Mahmut away from his sister too. Thus the duty of looking after Dirmit during her illness fell to Zekiye. At first Dirmit kicked her too and tore out her hair, but each time she did so, she would see big tears rolling down her auntie’s cheeks, moving her to pity. When Dirmit saw Zekiye press her hand on her breast as she pointed at her, she took this not as a sign of fear but as a sign of her auntie’s love for her. After that Dirmit let Zekiye come near her and started to talk to her in sign language. In this manner she was able to open up, recover and get back onto her feet. But even then she refused to talk to her mother. Atiye attempted to win Dirmit back by giving her a free rein to play in the garden and even t
o go out beyond the wing-gate. But Dirmit had lost all her friends because she was now known in the village as the djinned girl and people wouldn’t let their children play with her. Even worse, she could no longer walk about in the village on her own. Wherever she passed and whenever she paused, people threw stones at her. When children saw her coming, they turned in the opposite direction. Women came running to complain to Atiye whenever Dirmit tramped by their doors or up to the stream. In the gardens, men stopped her and turned her away. So Dirmit headed back home, hurling stones at all the doors along the way. Atiye began to feel sorry for her and once more placed the radio set in front of her and let her play with the pebbles and talk to the water pump. But she could do nothing to win back her daughter’s heart. Dirmit spoke to the water pump, the pigeons and the chickens but not to Atiye. And while Dirmit refused to talk to Atiye, her sister and brother wouldn’t talk to Dirmit because they were afraid of catching the djinn from her. Out of the entire household, Dirmit talked only to Zekiye, who, as a sister-in-law, didn’t feel herself in a position to reproach Dirmit with her djinn. And in response to Dirmit’s words Zekiye nodded her head, flashed her eyes, raised or lowered her eyebrows, made numerous signs with her hands, sat down, stood up, bent down or dropped onto her knees.
