Dear Shameless Death

by Latife Tekin

  Dirmit was never again the same. She fluttered about like a bird and turned and tossed in her bed. Blowing prayers, muttering over prayer beads, weeping at her bedside: nothing worked. Huvat called a doctor, who prescribed numerous boxes of tablets and two sets of injections. Atiye gave her shots from the big red vials and pills that looked like red lentils. Dirmit was soon back on her feet, recovered, but her good habits stayed in her sickbed while she set off to pick up some new, bad ones. Sometimes she disappeared into the bathroom with Nuǧber’s and Zekiye’s high heels and stayed in there for ages. At others she sneaked off with Nuǧber’s nylon tights or Zekiye’s strapped nightie tucked over her tummy. Never asking herself why her mother had scared her so much, she went to places that had been forbidden to her and talked to people she had been told to avoid. Both in and out of the household she behaved like a different person, totally ignoring all advice. If Atiye tried to open her mouth, she would be bombarded with a thousand words from her daughter, so she kept her mouth shut and blamed Dirmit’s change on illness. ‘She must’ve become touched in the head somehow,’ she thought to herself as she pounded her knees. Meanwhile, Dirmit became friends with a girl called Aysun, who wore skirts that stopped two hand-spans above the knees and a straw hat trimmed with tulle and artificial cherries. Dirmit put Aysun above her mother and forgot all about home and family.

  Atiye could find no way to keep her daughter from seeing Aysun. Every time Dirmit came home, Atiye gave her an ‘Aysun beating’. Every time Dirmit went running after Aysun, Atiye chanted ‘Aysun curses’ behind her. Even so, Dirmit cut off the hemlines on her skirts, taking them up two hand-spans like Aysun’s. She also popped a huge wad of chewing gum in her mouth, like Aysun, and whistled after boys in the street. Never stopping to ask herself why she should tag along whenever Aysun went to the park to show off to the boys, Dirmit would follow her around and behave just like her. Once Atiye realized that she couldn’t stop Dirmit, she decided to play the sweet mother to her. She stopped all her cursing and beating and started whispering advice very nicely into Dirmit’s ear. She brought all their conversations around to the subject of what happened to girls who tried to see boys, or who didn’t listen to their mothers and went wherever boys asked them to go. Trying to scare Dirmit even further away from any sort of dealings with boys, she explained how girls could be tricked into drinking a syrup that made them swoon and how, if they kissed boys, they would come down with a headache that lasted for the rest of their lives. On top of that, they would lose all their teeth, and their flesh would wither into scales. However, after Aysun taught her that girls’ teeth didn’t drop out, nor did their flesh dry up in scales if they kissed boys, Dirmit threw Atiye’s lies back in her face and poured scorn on her further words of warning.

  During the time Dirmit became a shameless bird like Aysun, fluttering her wings about on the street, Huvat pronounced that none of his children would ever look after him in old age. So he set off to feather a soft, warm bed for himself in Allah’s compassionate embrace. He took to attending the collective prayers that were held by the black-bearded hodja, convinced that he would be duly rewarded if he accepted the hodja’s call to follow him wherever he went. Ignoring mud and rain, Huvat made the rounds of the mosques on the heels of the black-bearded hodja, who had pointed him down Allah’s path. And after he returned home, he reported all that he had heard. When Atiye grumbled, ‘Enough! The children are sick up to here with all this!’ Huvat looked upon her as an infidel and continued to perform his fatherly duties relentlessly. He passed on to them everything he’d heard at the prayer meetings and declared that if he didn’t he’d bear the burden of their sins. Having freed himself of the responsibility of fatherhood that Allah had placed upon him by shifting it all onto the backs of his children, he felt as light as a bird.

  Early one morning he made his ablutions and went trailing after the hodja with the long black beard. He attended prayers at a huge mosque far away and listened to a long sermon that the hodja finished by requesting that everyone who loved Allah follow him to the mosque by the sea with the two minarets. Huvat joined the crowd and came to the place where all those who loved Allah had been called upon to go. He couldn’t help but weep when he saw so many others there, both young and old, some with beards down to their waists, who had found the true path. As he was sniffling and wiping the tears from his eyes, somebody came up and handed him a sheaf of green leaflets, while somebody else pinned a small strip of paper to his collar. After blowing his prayers on the leaflets, he stuffed them in his pocket and set out to find the black-bearded hodja in the crowd. Instead he came upon Bald Bahı from Akçalı, and, as he grasped him by the arm, there arose from the crowd a roar, turning into a collective scream of ‘Allah! Allah!’ that soared up to the sky. Leaving the front of the mosque, the crowd began to march up the hill.

  Taking a firmer grip on Bald Bahı’s arm and shouting along with the others, Huvat reached the top of the hill, where suddenly their crowd lunged into an opposing one. Benign-looking hodjas with long beards turned rabid as they joined battle with the youths. Becoming more like seven-headed dragons, the hodjas in their baggy black shalvars snatched up sticks as long as their beards and in unison started chanting ‘Death! Death!’ Huvat lost Bald Bahı in the boiling crowd and didn’t know who to turn to or which way to run. ‘In the event that I die,’ he said, murmuring a prayer for God’s benediction. Then, holding on tightly to his hat, he slipped with difficulty out of the crowd and found himself facing a big building with plate-glass walls. As he glanced around, confused about which direction to take, he saw the black-bearded hodja running towards the back of the building and started to follow him. Squatting on the ground behind the building he beheld the group of bearded hodjas who had just been shouting, ‘Strike! Kill!’

  Turning back in fear, he walked quickly towards the hill that he had just climbed and, once out of the crowd, took a deep breath. He had no sooner put on his hat than he heard yelling behind him. He turned his head to see a crowd of youths marching straight at him and then he was suddenly pushed to the ground. The youths dragged Huvat into a stone building and down narrow corridors that opened at last onto a big hall. A young man with an injured face stepped forwards and spat in Huvat’s face. Another one felt his clothes and threw in his face the green leaflets which Huvat had prayed over and stuffed in his pocket. Yet another one jerked away the felt hat that Huvat was trying to put on and flung it on the floor. Indignant, Huvat bent over to pick up his hat, but the young man crushed the hat under his foot as he shoved Huvat away. Another young man stood firmly before Huvat and started to question him. He listened incredulously to Huvat’s replies and said, ‘Uncle, do you have any children who are receiving an education?’ ‘Yes,’ replied Huvat tersely, ‘unless they turn out to be bastards like you.’ When he felt the hard slap on his face, Huvat forgot his fear and hurled himself at the young man who had struck him. The others held Huvat back, pinning him to the wall while they had a few quiet words among themselves. They eventually appointed a youth, about the same age as Seyit, to lead Huvat by the arm down the corridors. The young man warned Huvat never again to follow the hodjas or to put green leaflets in his pocket and then march up the hill. At the end of his lecture, he said, ‘Now get on home, Uncle.’

  Sweating and trembling, Huvat arrived home at about midnight. With a long sigh, he collapsed on the divan. After a while he collected himself and said, ‘You came close to losing your father, you know, but Allah looked kindly upon you.’ Nuǧber quickly brought him a glass of water, and Seyit wiped away his sweat with a towel. Standing nearby, Atiye demanded, ‘Man, why don’t you tell us what really happened?’ Huvat launched into a breathless account, but, before he had even finished, Seyit cut in sharply: ‘An old codger like you, just look at the way you’ve been carrying on!’ Fingering her prayer beads, Atiye let fly curses against the black-bearded hodja, her scathing imprecations sparing neither his mouth nor his face nor the hairs of his beard.

&nbs
p; Meanwhile, Huvat was greatly distressed about his hat, complaining that he had only worn it once, and, even before he had a chance to enjoy it, they had thrown it down and trampled on it. The more he railed, the more aggrieved he felt over his brand new hat, and the more his fury grew. ‘I’ll be damned if I don’t go and get my hat back from those bastards!’ he fumed. ‘Go and get yourself killed,’ Seyit grumbled, ‘and then you can have peace, and so can we!’ Huvat swore up and down that if anyone tried to kill him he would flatten that man against the wall. He also declared that he would have no trouble in finding his hat, because he had been in charge of the insulation of the school where they had dragged him and so he knew the building like the palm of his hand. ‘Don’t worry yourself about it,’ Seyit replied soothingly, ‘I’ll buy you a new hat.’ But he couldn’t quench the fire that was consuming Huvat. ‘I don’t want a new hat,’ Huvat shot back, and, when Atiye said ‘Man, what if it had been your life you had lost instead?’ he laid into her. Fearing that Huvat might start a big row over the hat, Atiye made signs to Seyit indicating that Huvat was not in his right mind and to leave him be.

  Quickly bringing out Huvat’s bed, she spread it before him and with soothing words laid him down. Soon Huvat was asleep, breathing softly. In his dream he felt his hat fly off his head and watched the wind whirling it about. With a feverish heart he chased the hat as first it dropped down and then took off again, finally landing in the middle of a huge crowd, where screams rose as clubs pounded people’s backs, hands and faces. Huvat plunged into the crowd after his hat and cut a swathe through it, shouting, ‘My hat! My hat!’ As his hat flew out of his reach and perched here and there on different people’s heads, Huvat awoke with a troubled heart. Feeling all about his bed and body, he breathed deeply and again shut his eyes. When he had the same dream again, however, he began to toss and turn in his bed. And then he started to have the dream while he was awake. For days he never stopped seeing his hat. He also felt outraged about the hodjas who had first rallied the others into following them and then run off to hide behind the building with the plate-glass walls. So he stopped talking to the black-bearded hodja and going to the mosque.

  From then on, Huvat began to grow suspicious of everything and everybody. He laid aside the green books to which he had attached such great hopes and, even though he picked them up again later on, he never recited from them in the same pleasurable, melodious way as before. Then, troubled and confused, he finally cast his green books aside once more and sat by the window, lost in dark thoughts. So much thinking affected Huvat in strange ways. He began to look for hidden motives behind everything and to attribute anything that happened in the household to sinister forces. At first, Atiye thought Huvat’s condition was only temporary, but soon found out that she was mistaken. Suddenly and inexplicably, Huvat’s attitude towards Atiye darkened, and he started to tell everyone that he suspected she might do him some harm.

  Atiye called Seyit aside and asked him to take his father to a doctor to have his body and head examined thoroughly. After working hard to persuade his father that it was necessary, Seyit finally managed to get Huvat to a doctor, who examined him closely and prescribed a course of injections and a box of tablets. However, Huvat would not allow Atiye to give him the injections. ‘Get me somebody else,’ he insisted, so Seyit found him another person to administer injections that didn’t do him a bit of good anyway. Huvat now grew hostile towards Seyit, claiming that one of his eyes was clouded and that his head was ablaze. Atiye believed more and more that her husband had lost his mind, since he was now informing anyone who visited them that Seyit was trying to kill him with the injections. She couldn’t help thinking that it would be better if her husband were to leave this world rather than go on raving in public.

  While Atiye implored Azrael to seize her husband’s soul, Huvat’s suspicions grew even greater. He started to think that Dirmit might have joined a gang at school, a view he freely shared with any Akçalı people who came to visit. It was with the greatest difficulty that Atiye managed to convince him that only by a great leap of his imagination could his daughter have become a juvenile gang member. Then Huvat started going on about Zerefşan Hanım, whose mother was from the palace and whom Atiye had known from her fortune-telling days and respected more highly than a sister. Huvat claimed that she only came round to see him and that she had winked twice and made signs at him. Although Atiye tried in vain to make her husband see that Zerefşan Hanım was only a simple soul with no malice in her heart who visited them purely out of boredom, Huvat knocked on her door and invited her out to tea. Crying and dabbing her eyes with a faded, pinked silk handkerchief, Zerefşan Hanım, showed up at Atiye’s door. ‘I’d always thought of him as an elder brother,’ she complained to Atiye, who angrily disclosed Huvat’s latest antics to her children. Resenting the conspiratorial smiles and mocking undertone with which they would occasionally ask their father where he was planning to take Zerefşan Hanım, Huvat refused to speak to anyone in the household, his mood towards Atiye darkening even more because she had ratted on him.

  For her part, Atiye made the most of Huvat’s low spirits to put a stop to his relentless demands for sex every other night. ‘You really must stop thinking about it,’ she reproached him. Huvat ignored her, however, staunchly insisting that as long as a man had enough strength to lift up a stone weighing one kilogram, it was Allah’s command that he should have intercourse. Yet because of the dim view he took of Atiye he vowed that he wouldn’t touch her, while at the same time complaining to God Almighty that his wife prevented him from fulfilling his marital duty and that, by opposing His command, she was forcing him to commit a sin. Not satisfied with beseeching God to let the responsibility fall on his wife, he also put pressure on her to accept her sin before God. Atiye was so fed up that she finally pacified him by saying, ‘I’m willing to take on the sin. Just leave me alone.’

  Thereafter, Atiye began to think that whatever Huvat ate or drank was a waste, while the time he spent on his prayer was all to the good. She soon looked for ways to persuade him to pick up his green books again. Sometimes she pleaded with him and, at others, dropped the green books into his lap. But, finally, having grown weary with her pursuit, she fell ill. She did not utter a word about death or the netherworld, yet she tossed about in her bed, waiting for her children to gather at her bedside and for Huvat to blow about his prayers from the green books. But no one budged. No one came over to hold her hand, to wipe away her sweat or to ask: ‘Is there anything you want?’ Certain that his wife, who had always found a way to beat Azrael, would once again recover, and doubtful even that she would ever die one day, Huvat blocked his ears to Atiye’s groans as she lay with her eyes fixed on the ceiling. He soothed his children’s hearts by swearing that Atiye would never die before she had first bound up his jaw and laid him out in his grave, while Atiye consigned Huvat to Allah’s hands for opposing her on the brink of death. On the evening of the second day, she called the whole household to her bedside with pitiable words. ‘I won’t come through this,’ she said as she looked into the faces of her children and her daughter-in-law. ‘I have no hope.’ One by one she signalled them to come and sit beside her and embrace her. Claiming that death had taken hold of her, she covered her mouth with her hands and buried her head in the breasts of her children and daughter-in-law. She remarked that her grandchild Seyit was still too small, her breath could yet be harmful to him, so she just touched him from a distance. With a slight flick of her hand, she dismissed Huvat from her side. After Huvat started to grumble resentfully, Atiye announced that her last wish was to have Huvat out of the room. When his son took him by the arm and pulled him towards the door, Huvat shook himself free. He left only after lambasting Atiye with a mouthful of threats.

  After Huvat had gone out, Atiye called on Azrael, who arrived and crouched down on her chest. ‘Take my life, oh Azrael!’ she shouted and closed her eyes. Then she opened her mouth wide and breathed deeply. In between her mutterings,
she shouted, ‘Take my life!’ every now and again until finally she opened her eyes and said, ‘I can’t give up my spirit.’ She told her children that she wouldn’t distress them by disclosing what she had learnt about Huvat while in God’s presence, even though she had promised God that she would. As a result, she said, she had incurred His wrath and was doomed to live longer but in the perpetual agony of death. Now Huvat was called back in and, after much pleading from his children, he came over and sat sullenly at Atiye’s side. Atiye revealed to her husband that, if he spent the rest of his life blowing his prayers about, minded his own business and devoted himself once more to his green books, God would forgive him. If not, God intended to cast Huvat into the flames of hell for having so thoughtlessly laid them aside.