by Latife Tekin
Once he had become a Know-It-All, Halit took on a pleasant disposition. He grew passionately fond of listening to people’s troubles and offering them advice. Wherever he happened to be, he looked all those he could collar right in the face and, as if he were holding a mirror, read out what he was able to see within them. For some he found a star in the sky and for others he looked into the future by reading their palms. By spicing up his talks with Bektaşi anecdotes, poems and proverbs that he had committed to memory, he made his words so enticing that his listeners couldn’t get enough of them. And so he became a second Sümbül Agha, who once upon a time had travelled from village to village and was amusing and lovable in word and deed. Anyone who now listened to Halit was struck by the urge to pray for Sümbül Agha’s soul.
While her elder brother went about enlightening his fellow villagers, Dirmit had moved on from such questions as ‘Why don’t I go off and see men?’ Now she tried to imagine what she might be if she were living somewhere else. ‘What if I were a sparkle perched right on top of the stars, or a bird flitting along from rooftop to rooftop and branch to branch?’ she pondered, letting her thoughts spin out of control and become more and more strange. One day, as she sat alone in a corner looking at Atiye, she asked herself, ‘Now who is this woman?’ Then, turning her eyes on her elder brother and Zekiye, she thought, ‘And who’re they?’ Growing frightened, Dirmit found that the more she looked the less she knew any of these people. As she tried to shake off her thoughts, she bit her tongue and felt about her body to see if she was all right. She moved over to Atiye’s side, leant against her and said, ‘Mother girl!’ But nothing worked. No matter what she did, she couldn’t change back to her old way of thinking. At night she would open her eyes and sit up in bed. ‘I wish the moon would turn to water, so I could drink it!’ she would sometimes brood. ‘If only I could drink it and be gulped back into the sky!’ she yearned, leaning her head against the window. She reflected for a long while only on the moon and the stars. Then she put them behind her and dived into the past. She listened to the squeak of the water pump and the rustle of the rose petals, while djinns and fairy girls gambolled before her eyes. ‘If only I’d stayed back in the village!’ she thought as she conjured up Bayraktar, her teachers, Ömer, Memet the Architect, who had built himself a storeroom and put a window into it, and Elmas Bride. They all merged into a warming glow that filled her and then faded back into the darkness. It struck Dirmit that if she were to go back to the village where she had once run about yelling and shouting, knowing each and every stable and rooftop, as well as all the rosebushes in the gardens, she could no longer find her way. The thought left her grief-stricken.
She concluded that each day that had come and gone was for her a bird never to be caught, one that had finally flown out of sight and been transformed into a little black dot. Furthermore, she discovered that the darkness that enclosed her when she shut her eyes was nothing but all these little black dots. So she started to play ‘Black Dots’. First she closed her eyes, then she picked one out and asked it a question: ‘Dot, what are you? Dot, where are you?’ ‘I’m Nuǧber Dudu,’ the dot would call back to Dirmit. ‘I’m by the tandır oven.’ So Dirmit went over to sit by Nuǧber Dudu, who peeled an apple and ate the flesh. ‘The substance is here,’ she declared. Then she gave the peels to Dirmit, who ate them. ‘Go away, Dot!’ she commanded. When it was gone, another came. ‘What are you? Where are you?’ Dirmit said once more. ‘I’m water pump,’ the dot replied, ‘connected to a deep well in Akçalı!’ Dirmit lost her breath, and her eyes filled with tears. ‘Have you forgotten about me, Dirmit girl?’ the water pump asked. ‘No, never!’ said Dirmit and hugged it. She spoke about the birdie-bird plant, her school and what her family had been doing. Then she read out her poems, said that she was a young girl now and poured out her heart for a long while, complaining about Atiye, who was always kicking up a fuss about her. With that she sent the water pump away. As it faded out, in came Neighing Boy, who at once dropped his pants and stood before Dirmit. Frightened, she sent him back.
Dirmit picked one dot after another out of the darkness and she was soon consumed by the Black Dot game. During meals, in bed, on the street or on the rooftop, she sent one black dot away then picked out another one. She had long conversations with some and heated quarrels with others. Some she questioned and others she wept over. Dirmit never stopped to think about what would happen to her if she continued to chase after the black dots. It never entered her head that her mother’s heart was troubled by all she had done, even when in full possession of her senses, and that if she lost them she would be troubling her mother even more. Instead, without a thought for anyone else, she sent her mind off in pursuit of the black dots. And as she drove herself out of her wits for the sake of a little black dot, she finally reached the point where she was left without any at all.
Once she had lost her wits, Dirmit had no way of telling who was who. Often she would roll her eyes, then fasten them on her family and ask: ‘Who’re you people?’ ‘It’s not us she’s seeing!’ Atiye reasoned, believing that they all appeared to Dirmit in disguise and with different faces. Every now and then she would go up to Dirmit and tell her how she had given birth to her and how, when she heard a voice coming out of her belly, she had fainted in fear and collapsed over the sieve. ‘I’m your mother, good-for-nothing!’ she said, trying to bring her daughter to her senses. However, the more Atiye grumbled and clung to her the more lost and distant Dirmit became until she finally turned into something like a sleepwalker. Soon she started to think in reverse. When Atiye admonished, ‘A girl’s a girl if she tells her troubles to her mother!’ Dirmit took this to mean, ‘A girl’s a girl if she keeps her troubles to herself!’
Then Atiye’s worst fears were realized as Dirmit started to hear voices from the street. Early one morning the street cried out to Dirmit. ‘Run away and come to me!’ it urged. Stunned at first, Dirmit was soon drawn out by the spell of the voice that beckoned her. Taking short steps, she crept along the sides of walls into streets that grew ever longer and wider. Buildings rose higher and higher until they at last touched the clouds. Feeling ashamed for having given in to the pull of the voice, Dirmit returned fearfully home and was unable to explain either why she had run away or what she had been looking for. No sooner had she arrived than Atiye attacked her. ‘Now I’ll tell you why you ran away from home!’ she raged, grabbing Dirmit by the hair and dragging her into the middle of the room, where she laid into her, half with words and half with blows. ‘Forget those poems! They’re not your mother and father,’ she later implored her daughter, who had lost her wits in her passion for poetry. As Atiye pleaded with her daughter, Zekiye twisted her fingers around the tensely stretched warp lines of the carpet and improvised a lament:
‘On Dizgeme’s peaks, unmelted ice was I,
A slim girl sown with beauty spots was I,
A bright, shining face with huge eyes.’
Atiye stopped her begging and turned to Zekiye. ‘Ahh,’ she sighed deeply, forgetting all the advice she had just given to her daughter. Then, in a thin, quivering voice she began a response to her daughter-in-law:
‘A pearl hung from your neck, may your every tear be,
A bird that sails in the sky, may your dark fate be.
Don’t lament, be easy, oh bride-daughter of mine.
Ply the weft gently, oh bride-daughter of mine.
My heart skips and leaps into my mouth.’
With her mother and sister-in-law trading laments, Dirmit forgot her recent beating and started to sing her own response:
‘Once a djinned girl, now an ash-breasted bird am I,
Stretching out my wings deep in the Akçalı sky,
Onto frail grass I fall, to the prickly star I fly.
Oh star, laments are pursuing me.
Oh star, there’s fear in my every fancy.
Oh hide me away, dearest star.’
While mother-in-law and daughter-in-law were
conversing in laments, Huvat had grown tired of waiting in the village and sent word with travellers that, if Zekiye didn’t turn up soon, he was coming back. ‘He’s so restless you’d think his feet were getting soaked!’ Atiye grumbled. Then she started to look for someone to accompany Zekiye to the village. Meanwhile, the second Sümbül Agha was searching for a way to pack Zekiye off to the village for good. First he argued that such a long journey would be too much for little Seyit. Then he devised a plan to dispatch Zekiye on her own and quickly send word to Huvat to bring him back to the city before Zekiye reached the village. Finding no one there to bring her back, she would have to stay. Halit was so pleased with his little scheme that he casually hinted at it to Atiye, who responded by spitting in the face of a son who could sin so fearlessly. Not even an infidel, she swore, would come up with so devious a scheme. Turning away from Halit, Atiye informed Zekiye of his plan. ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t go!’ she said, and Zekiye turned pale as ash. ‘But I miss the village,’ she whined, sticking stubbornly to her belief that if she took little Seyit along with her Halit would then be obliged to come and fetch her. But Halit swore that he would never let his wife go off with their son. As Atiye shuttled back and forth between her daughter-in-law and her son, first listening to Zekiye’s laments and then to Halit’s cursing and swearing, she grew so flustered that she didn’t know what to say to either of them. When she finally decided upon Halit as the guilty party, however, she made up her mind to hand the little boy over to Zekiye and spirit them away. ‘Now this is the way to lay a snare,’ she said to herself as she sent Zekiye and Seyit flying like birds to the village.
Halit looked everywhere in the house, but when he couldn’t find Seyit he leapt at his mother, his hand raised to strike. ‘May your hand never find gainful work again!’ Atiye cursed, and Halit rushed out, slamming the door behind him. Collapsing on the divan, Atiye wept for hours, tears streaming down her face as if pins had been stuck in her eyes. ‘Stop it, girl!’ Dirmit pleaded when she grew tired of holding Atiye’s hands. ‘You’re going to start me crying, too.’ As she wiped the tears from her mother’s face, they seeped in and swelled up inside her, drop by drop, until finally she left her mother’s side and doubled over on the other divan. ‘What business is this of yours, girl?’ Atiye said, moving over to Dirmit’s side. But the more Atiye begged her to stop her weeping the more Dirmit thrashed about in her sobbing fit. ‘Why shouldn’t it be my business, girl?’ she sobbed, and stood up, pressing her head against the window-pane. As Dirmit stared out at the street through dripping eyelashes, the street waved to her. ‘Run away and come to me!’ it shouted. Dirmit shrugged it off sulkily, but the street persisted, now in very soft whispers. ‘Come on! Come on!’ Dirmit pressed her hands tightly over her ears to block out the voice of the street, but then the street held up before her a huge black curtain. Pulling it open and drawing it shut, the street revealed to Dirmit white birds swirling about over the sea, trees with their branches sweeping the ground in the wind, a dusty cloud of pollen, walls covered in coloured posters and people laughing and walking about on the streets. Dirmit stared and stared unblinking at the curtain that kept on opening and closing before her, and a grin spread out across her face. Finally she got up and opened the window. ‘Wait a minute, I’m coming!’ she shouted, and the street curved into a smile. Dirmit had no sooner stepped out onto the street with her arms outstretched than Halit’s words, as well as Atiye’s, stopped humming in her ears, and she cheered up. As the street grew longer or shorter, spangling itself in little black cobblestones or flattening into an asphalt mat, it led Dirmit to the seashore, where white birds were circling. Dirmit perched on a huge rock and stared out at the sea, her eyes darting back and forth between the birds and the choppy water. First she took the sea into herself and then she let the sea take her into it. Her heart leapt into her mouth in elation as the sea rose inside her, and shivered in fear as the sea swallowed her up.
So Dirmit gave herself up to the waters, just as her father had done. No matter where she went, she always felt their pull inside her. Every time she came home she shuddered in fear that she might never go out again. As her fears grew even greater, she could not stay indoors anymore. Shouting and screaming, she threw open the doors and hurried off to the rock at the seaside. At nightfall the sea flashed its sparks into her eyes and drove her back home. Each night, after she returned home, Dirmit sulked at the sea, but the following morning she rushed off to make up with it again. While Dirmit embraced the sea, breathing it in and making peace with it, Atiye stood watch all day long by the window, like an eagle owl, keeping a lookout for her daughter. One minute she cried and the next she prayed to God to plant an awful fear in her daughter’s heart that would keep her from going out. Even as Atiye prayed, however, Dirmit lost all fear of her. Who was it that always hovered about her: her mother or a stranger? She couldn’t tell. At night she wrote poems that she recited to the sea in the day. She disowned her mother, brothers and her father and made the streets her home. The trees, walls, clouds and houses became her brothers, the sea her mother and the sky her father.
While Dirmit was busy disowning everything except the streets and her poems, Seyit returned home from the army, his teeth no longer gleaming. On the day of his return he questioned Dirmit. ‘It seems you’ve been denying us all. Is that so, girl?’ he asked, and gave her a beating. Then he started to boast about his heavyweight fists and how well he had handled artillery. Taking a step back, Dirmit stared long and hard at Seyit’s face. ‘I’ve really missed you, man!’ she said, and walked over to sit beside him. Then, leaning over his ear, she asked him softly if he had written any poems while he was in the army. But Seyit silenced her, declaring that he hadn’t lost his wits like her and his elder brother. ‘My poetry is the company,’ he said, fixing his eyes on the ceiling. Then, as if he had seen something up there, he immediately got up and walked out. After Seyit had left, Atiye came over to Dirmit’s side. ‘Your wits just keep coming and going, don’t they, girl?’ she said. ‘My wits are with me all the time,’ Dirmit flung back at her, scowling. But Atiye was so happy that Dirmit had recognized Seyit that she left her alone. ‘Oh Lord, make her recognize me, too!’ she prayed to Allah as she settled back in a corner.
Seyit had headed straight for the coffee-house to find Halit. Once there, he immediately asked Halit to tell him what had happened to Dirmit in his absence. Seyit accused his brother of letting their little sister run free in the streets and of doing nothing to stop her. Halit said that he had followed her a couple of times and had seen her wandering about with her head down like a weary colt. Then he swore that she hadn’t been up to any mischief and warned Seyit not to be too hard on her. But Seyit argued that Halit was too easygoing and hadn’t been looking after his own. Halit snapped that he was looking after his own but that he saw no reason to pester Dirmit. ‘What more reason did you need, man?’ Seyit retorted as he turned away from Halit and went back home. ‘Come here, girl,’ he called out to Dirmit upon his arrival, and made her sit by his knee. He began by announcing that he was going to talk to her nicely. Then he swore he would solve any of her problems, but she had to give him straight answers and not be scared. ‘I don’t have any problems!’ Dirmit replied. But Seyit wouldn’t let up. Atiye interrupted Seyit to remind him that Dirmit was a good-for-nothing who could be hard-headed and simply clam up. Seyit made a sign, sending Atiye out of the room. Then he turned back to Dirmit. ‘You wouldn’t have the hots for somebody, would you, girl?’ he asked. After waiting a few moments he stood up. ‘All right then,’ he exclaimed. Then he banned her from writing poetry and going out into the street.
Frozen to her seat, Dirmit felt her shoulders collapse suddenly as if they had been struck. Her sagging shoulders, the kilim on the floor, the divans, the window-panes and the walls all revolted her. Atiye came flying in like a bird and showered blessings on her son for coming home at last to deal with this daughter of hers who had lost her fear. ‘Oh, what a relief!’ she s
ighed as she settled back in a corner and thumbed her prayer beads. Suddenly Dirmit fell face down on the kilim and remained lying there until midnight. Every now and then Seyit came over and knelt beside her, and Atiye laid aside her beads to pour kind words into her ear. Finally she said, ‘Just lie there forever then!’ and spread a quilt over her. When everyone was sound asleep, Dirmit gently shook off the quilt. Tiptoeing through the room, she opened the door to the landing and crept silently into the toilet. There she wrote a long letter to Seyit, which she folded up and laid beside his bed. Then she slipped back in her own bed, where she lay wide-awake and motionless until Seyit came over to her in the morning and threw back the quilt. Holding the letter, he directed Dirmit to sit down before him.
First he signalled Atiye and Halit to step out on the landing. Then he said to Dirmit that he would read the letter back to her and she had better listen carefully to what she had written. When he finished be asked, ‘Now, what is it you’re saying here? Is it “I will write poetry”?’ Dirmit looked down at the floor in silence. ‘Don’t you have a mouth, girl?’ Seyit asked sharply. Then he demanded to know why she wouldn’t just use her mouth to say whatever she wanted to say. Dirmit remained still as stone and stared silently at the floor. Seyit grabbed her shoulders and shook her angrily. Fixing her eyes on Seyit’s, Dirmit opened her mouth and screamed as hard as she could. But nothing came out. ‘Have you lost your voice, girl?’ Seyit asked as he removed his hands from her shoulders. A thin ribbon of tears ran down both of Dirmit’s cheeks. Seyit rushed out to get Atiye and Halit, and Atiye marched in asking, ‘What’s she written?’ Halit ran to pick up the letter and read through it greedily. Then, scowling at Seyit, he flung the letter to one side as Atiye bent over it. Meanwhile, Halit had knelt beside Dirmit and began whispering in her ear. ‘Get up and write your poetry, girl!’ Dirmit heard him say. Her mouth curved softly into a smile, and her eyes dropped two salty poems onto her lips.
