by Latife Tekin
That same night they wrote a concise letter to her grandfather’s village, the name of which Atiye could only half recall. Early the next morning they sent another tragic letter to the stationmaster’s office in the city where the man who fathered Atiye’s daughter had worked so many years ago. Several days later this letter was returned to them, and they received no response at all from the one they had sent to the village. After long days of waiting, Atiye blew her prayers about and went to bed, trying to find out from God in her dreams if the letter had ever reached its destination. But her dreams were only filled with camels chewing the cud, pearls and gold, trees ready to topple with all the fruit on their branches, and steaming hot streams. No information came to light on whether or not the letter had reached its destination. Although Atiye, urged on by her children, racked her brains for other clues, she couldn’t come up with anything new, apart from the fantastic tales she had heard in her childhood.
While Atiye provided no clues for her children, she offered her husband even more ammunition for his tongue. Huvat called her a liar and accused her of deluding her children with more of her lies every single day. ‘How could I possibly make up all these things?’ asked Atiye, suggesting that they write another long and tragic letter to her grandfather’s village: one to include the names she knew on her father’s side and on her mother’s side along with a detailed description of them all, or at least as much as she could recall. Once this had been done, filled with the thrill of expectation, she settled down to wait. Like everything else that Atiye had called up from the past, the letter was transformed into something enchanted. It was never returned, and no one ever knew if it had reached its destination. Like her brothers, sisters and daughter, it too had simply disappeared without a trace. It was then that Huvat declared that Atiye had gone senile. To mark his words, he left a finger-stamp on the wall, adding that Atiye would soon be spinning a lot more strange tales: maybe, for example, that she had sprung forth from the rocks along with the hot springs and that, lo and behold, those very rocks were her parents. The more Huvat raved, the more stubborn Atiye grew. Again and again she vowed that she would get information about her family line. She infuriated Huvat with her claim that her grandmother had received a fine education at medreses; that her ancestors included many such educated people and that she herself was descended from learned people. ‘You don’t say!’ Huvat snickered, laughing in her face.
Flustered by his laughter, Atiye commended her husband to Allah and made her vows. Then once again she started to pursue her past, which sparked memories that she couldn’t fully grasp, flashes of a childhood land of plenty, of her daughter and brothers and sisters. Her search sent her wandering from door to door with her queries. She knocked on the doors of fortune-tellers and hodjas and had them consult their books or contemplate mirrors and bowls of water. Was her daughter still alive? Where could her brothers and sisters be? Some described the path to her daughter while others hazarded guesses about what kind of place her brothers and sisters inhabited. But neither the descriptions nor the guesswork led Atiye to a reunion with her siblings or to her daughter, whom she had last seen sleeping in an iron cradle and had left with nothing more than a kiss on her brow. No light shone on her past. With only ten or fifteen names in her mind and her half-recollected childhood dreams, Atiye fell into a state of hopeless anticipation. She stopped taking food or drink, and as she raved on and on about her daughter, her brothers and sisters she became a sleepwalking puzzle.
After Atiye had become a puzzle, her children stopped paying any attention to her chatter. As they began once again to attend to their own affairs and dreams, they soon forgot all about the girl with the hairy serpent’s mark on her wrist. Atiye was left alone with her past, and, after a while, her own curiosity and longing began to wane. She stopped mentioning her daughter, her siblings, the hot springs and the woman on the camel that had been turned to stone. She started to use up the reprieve that Azrael had granted her on her children. She made Halit sit at her knees and told him that the divine rewards he had already reaped by dragging his black shalvar around were enough to gain him entrance into heaven. When she begged him to put away the shalvar and find himself a proper means of livelihood, Halit didn’t turn away from his mother’s wish this time. First he slipped out of his shalvar and shaved off his beard, relegating them to his book of memories. Then, after respectfully saying ‘Bismillah,’ he stowed away his green books. Finally, in accordance with his mother’s wishes, he found himself a nice job. Instead of a hodja, he became a birdman.
Heaven only knows how he hit upon such an idea, but, picking up an enormous net in one hand and a white bush in the other, Halit took on the appearance of a goldfinch hunter with forty years’ experience. ‘Please son,’ Atiye pleaded, ‘don’t heap any more troubles on me.’ Halit picked up his net, bush and birdlime, however, and set out, claiming that if he caught three goldfinches a day he could set up his own shop in less than a month and make lots of money surrounded by birdsong. When he came home he twittered and warbled like a bird and soon had all the walls decked out with cages. When he took one away, he brought another back with him. Magnanimously he gave a bird to each person in the household but looked after all of them himself. Some he kept for breeding while he separated other pairs and left them to screech. He sometimes turned his face to them, puckering his lips and burbling. He soon expanded his business and became a member in good standing of the Bird-Lovers Association. One day he arrived home accompanied by an elderly lady with hat and gloves wearing a fur-collared coat and carrying an umbrella. Halit called her ‘Mother’ and offered her the best seat. Then he scurried about the house, removing the birds from their cages one by one and placing them in his ‘mother’s hands. The lady kissed each of the birds on the beak. Atiye, who had long ago forgotten how to laugh, now suddenly burst into nervous giggles. While she was still giggling, the lady took her leave, escorted by Halit, who led her by the arm down the stairs. When he came back up he strutted vainly around the house and said, ‘Well, now you’ve seen your son.’
Halit went about boasting that he fed his birds forty eggs a day, and each and every morning took his banded goldfinch to the coffee-house, where Akçalı people would meet. His fellow villagers pinned the nickname ‘Banded Halit’ on him, but their joking didn’t bother him. Whether in the coffee-house or on the streets, the goldfinch was always with him. Finally Huvat broke his oath that he would never meddle in anybody else’s business, and Atiye, who had never taken kindly to the birds consuming forty eggs a day, joined forces with her husband against Halit. ‘We don’t want those birds in this house,’ they stated firmly. Halit argued and pleaded but couldn’t budge his parents an inch. Atiye made it clear to her son that she would wring the birds’ necks, despite her own numbered days on earth, if he tried her patience any further. Huvat added that he refused to share the same house with birds that didn’t shut their beaks before the lights went out but trilled on from dawn to midnight, competing with each other in bouts of endless twittering. If they didn’t go, he himself would move out. Halit argued that the birds had brought good fortune to the household. Thanks to the birds, Seyit’s limp had disappeared, Zekiye’s endless chatter was drowned out and Dirmit no longer felt the need to bring stuff such as clay home. But his words fell on deaf ears. In a final appeal to his mother, he pointed to Nuǧber, saying that birds were a good omen for those girls whose marriage prospects never seemed to flourish. But Atiye, knowing full well that her daughter’s suitor would soon come and find her, told Halit that it was useless to go on. ‘All these grey birds are going,’ she stated flatly.
Halit explained that he didn’t have enough birds to set up shop at the present, and begged his parents for patience and a little more time. Atiye gave her son only two more days, decreeing that if the birds weren’t gone by evening of the second day, tough luck for them, they’d no longer be breathing. Then, picking up her beads, she muttered prayers against the birds and glowered at the cages. Mean
while, Halit boiled forty eggs in a big pot. Then, sighing and wiping his eyes, he placed the eggs before the birds, cleaned up their droppings and replaced their water. As Atiye watched her son hovering around the cages, her heart softened a bit and she told him that he could keep his banded singing goldfinch at home. But Halit prepared the goldfinch to leave anyway, lamenting that just to see it would upset him and remind him of the others. Early the next morning, he pulled a van up to the door and took the birds away and sold them. Returning in the evening, bereft of bird or cage, he sat silently and fixed his gaze on the blank walls.
Halit was a changed man when he arrived home that night with his pockets full of the cash from the sale of the birds. He became chilly towards his home and family, failing to turn up in the evening and nowhere to be seen the following morning. For many days Zekiye wept as she kept a watch for his return. At last she grew tired of waiting and started repeating stubbornly, ‘I’m sick at heart. I’m going back to Dizgeme and my father.’ Seyit went in search of Halit and finally brought him home. Atiye sat down beside her son. ‘Just what is your problem, man?’ she asked. ‘Ah,’ Halit sighed, and confessed that his trouble lay deep within. Struck suddenly by an ache, Atiye explained to him that nothing could be done for those who kept their troubles hidden deep inside, but some remedy could be found if they brought them out in the open. Then, after much prodding, she at last pried the words from his mouth: he felt as cold as ice towards Zekiye. Atiye struck her knee. ‘Just go stark raving mad, will you, son?’ Atiye said, her hand still on her knee as she gaped at Halit. Finally, collecting her thoughts, she begged and pleaded, heaping praise upon her daughter-in-law. Halit lamented that he couldn’t stick to a job because he had been betrothed before his moustache was fully grown. He further informed his mother that all his feeling for Zekiye had just gone away – poof. He could hardly stand to look at her. When he did he felt the strength drain out of his legs. ‘So what’ll the poor girl do now?’ Atiye groaned. Zekiye never stopped talking, Halit complained, plus she knew nothing except carpet weaving, and her face never lit up in a smile. As Atiye listened to her son she began to see his problem more clearly and heaped curses upon Huvat, as many as the beads she ran through her fingers, for having brought these two ignorant youngsters together in marriage. After that she started dolling Zekiye up and threatening Halit. If he refused to bed his wife she would never forgive him. She boiled donkey’s tongue and chopped it into his food and smoked out the whole house burning black pepper every other day. But Halit’s mood worsened and he froze out Zekiye completely. Then, swearing never to set foot in the house again while Zekiye was there, he stormed out. With Zekiye’s eyes brimming with tears as she watched her husband walk out on her, Huvat once more disowned his son. With hanging head and her son cradled in her arms, Zekiye withdrew to a corner. So instead of one castaway soul in the house, there were now two.
One day, as Zekiye wandered about, spilling huge tears, Mahmut came home with a box of oyster shells under his arm and a prickly haired boy at his side. He announced that henceforth he would be making and selling night lamps. He asked Atiye for a place in the corner to set up a work table and told everyone to be nice to the prickly haired boy. Happy to have her son there in front of her eyes, Atiye gave them permission, and Mahmut set up his work table that very day. After spreading out the oyster shells, the wires and the glue, he set to work. First he made a lamp for their own home so that those who, like Dirmit, were sometimes nudged and prodded from sleep wouldn’t be so frightened. Then, when he noticed Nuǧber sighing as she looked at the lamp, he made one for her too. Nuǧber immediately took the lamp and stashed it away as a part of her dowry. Having now made two lamps, Mahmut found the work easy and, wiping the sweat from his brow, he lined up the lamps one by one. As Atiye watched her son work until his eyes reddened and ached, she started to pray for him. Then one day, buoyed up by his mother’s prayers, Mahmut set forth to sell his lamps. Sales went well for one or two days but then dropped off, plunging Mahmut into deep thought. He felt so deeply troubled that he couldn’t even glance at his work table. Pained at seeing her son in such a fix, Atiye stopped praying for the dead and for two days recited forty Yasin prayers for each of the lamps. While she prayed, Mahmut decided it would be better if he tried to sell the lamps after dark, so he lowered his prices slightly and started up his nightly sales. As he knelt beside the stall, the prickly haired boy pitched their product to passers-by: ‘Oyster-shell night lamps. Handmade fireflies!’ he sang out at the top of his voice until midnight, claiming that there was no equal to lamps blessed with forty Yasin prayers for warding off curses. Finally it dawned on Mahmut that the devil must have got into everybody, which was why no one came near the Yasin-blessed lamps. He brooded darkly, his face in his hands, but couldn’t bring himself to throw the lamps away. At last he turned to the prickly haired boy and proposed that since the park was so dark and scary to pass through at night they should take the lamps there and hang them on the tree branches. The prickly haired boy shied away at first, but Mahmut finally sold him on the idea. Gathering up the lamps in his arms, he followed Mahmut as he climbed up the horse chestnut trees and propped a lamp on the forked branch of each one. After hanging others on the rails of the swings, Mahmut placed the biggest and best lamp of all right on top of the watchman’s hut. No sooner had he jumped down from the roof than his eyes bloomed with seven colours of light. As he leant against the watchman’s hut and narrowed his eyes, light showered over his head and rained upon his lashes, his hands and his whole body. The light gushed from the trees, washing the whole park clean and reflecting into the sky. And it was way up there that Mahmut and the watchman’s hut flew until they at last settled down on top of a big cloud.
From then on, as the park held up a mirror to the sky each night, Mahmut forgot about the branches laden with lamps and began to sell newspapers with the prickly haired boy. As he made his rounds through the ferries and coffee-houses, he was suddenly possessed by a passion for the guitar. Forgetting all about sleep and good sense, he babbled on and on about the guitar. Every evening when he came home, he stuffed all his earnings into a box on his lap so that he could get one. At last he handed over his box full of cash in exchange for a secondhand guitar and gave up all thoughts of work. As Zekiye paced about weeping for Halit, Mahmut strummed doleful tunes. The very sight of him wagging his head about and swooning over his guitar with his tongue hanging out so angered Atiye that she wouldn’t even look at him. ‘May the devil cast his eye on you instead,’ she prayed, her eyes shut. For days afterwards she blocked her ears and whispered to herself, ‘patience, patience,’ as she counted off her prayer beads. But at last she exploded. ‘This is the last thing we need, man!’ she spat out as she snatched the guitar away from Mahmut and threw him out of the room. But Mahmut was deaf when Atiye pleaded, ‘Oh Lord, take this boy’s guitar!’ Coming straight back in, he grabbed his guitar and once more started picking and belting out tunes. He painted the guitar’s neck and face in all the colours of the rainbow and stuck eggshells inside it to raise the volume. ‘Just watch. I’ll make this thing sing like a nightingale!’ he said as he strummed on, dancing around Atiye, Huvat, broken-hearted Zekiye and the ever-vigilant Nuǧber. Every time Huvat got up to bang the guitar over his head, Mahmut patiently re-tuned it. Then, looking Huvat straight in the eye, he hugged it close and started to pick away. It didn’t matter to him if everybody was asleep or engaged in conversation. He went right on playing.
Each day he set off with his guitar and came home later, bearing some strange object. On all four walls he hung up boxing gloves and posters of weeping women or laughing men, and scrawled between them messages, hearts and strange symbols. Now the birdcages were replaced by ‘idols’. Each time Atiye stood to pray, after first offering the proper salutation, she would stop and heap curses upon her son’s head for having covered the walls with these idols. She blew her prayers over the posters as she ripped them to pieces and, with soapy water, scrubbed off the
writings. But Mahmut went even further, letting his hair grow down his shoulders, which caused djinns to rush up in a temper to Huvat’s head. Huvat declared that he must have committed some terrible offence for him to be afflicted with a son like Mahmut and wept with rage, stopping every now and then to plead with his son. However, defying his father’s tears and pleadings, Mahmut picked up his guitar, and, stomping his foot to keep the beat, played on.
At last Mahmut drove Atiye into her bed, where from the first day of illness she fixed her eyes on the guitar as she began to fade away without saying a word. Huvat went off in search of Halit after Atiye swore that she would hang onto her spirit with all her might so she wouldn’t die before her son arrived. As all her children crowded around her bedside, she started to cry. Then, stopping and fixing her gaze on the guitar hanging on the wall, she pointed at the eggshell-filled instrument and declared, ‘That’s the reason I’m the way I am.’ ‘Are you trying to kill the woman, man?’ Halit said angrily. Then, locking his eyes on Zekiye, he took down the guitar and smashed it on the floor, breaking it in two.
Even though the guitar had been silenced and along with it her reason for dying, Atiye’s condition still did not improve. ‘The bed’s holding me back!’ she moaned, taking advantage of Halit’s return, and wouldn’t get up. Each time she dropped off to sleep, she jerked awake with a scream. Calling Halit to her side, she wept and revealed to him that whenever she fell asleep she saw Halit walking down a dark path. She feared that he would get into trouble if he didn’t come home. She pleaded with her son to do anything he liked after she was dead and gone, but not to deny her this wish while she still lived. So at last Halit returned home, but he made the very walls weep since each time he looked at Zekiye he banged his head against them. Moreover, he refused to speak to anyone.
