Shadowless

by Hasan Ali Toptas

  Nuri could not recall what time he had woken up – only that he had opened his eyes to find himself inside a great marble mansion. The lights on the ceiling sparkled like rainbows, and lining the walls were lamps, and candles. But they kept licking up at each other; they served not to spread light but to conjure up an illusion. The memory of a lost era, perhaps, or a future not yet released from the past. Nuri, meanwhile, was dancing in their midst, shaking the bells on his fingers . . . He was alone in this mansion, but once again he could hear fabric rustling and invisible creatures breathing. Nuri knew they were watching him dance, because every once in a while, when he shook his bells, they would applaud.

  Then Nuri began to wonder how he was able to dance for so long without stopping; especially as he didn’t know how to dance. Even at his own wedding, under the tired, pleading eyes of the zurna player, he had only just managed a few claps of the hand. He thought then that those invisible creatures might know nothing of dance. Perhaps they thought he was dancing every time he moved.

  Then suddenly it was all clear to him. Suddenly it all made sense. He wasn’t dancing, he was winnowing. He was reaping the harvest with his scythe, or riding a donkey, cutting firewood, sitting on the soil watching the sun . . . At that same moment, he remembered the village. ‘This means,’ he said, ‘that everything I have lived through has been a dance. It means that whatever a man does is a part of a dance . . . It means that I was dancing in the village; when I beat my children, made love to my wife, killed an ailing sheep, gathered fruit, brought children into the world, buried my dead, ploughed the soil, watched a bird, shaved the villagers or said hello, voted for the muhtar, sat in the coffeehouse . . .’

  The day broke and the lights in the great marble mansion switched off one by one until nothing remained apart from the flickering candles, dying oil lamps, and Nuri’s jingling bells . . . At that moment, he was struck by a thought . . . ‘If I stop,’ he said, ‘if I shake these bells one last time, and stop, what would happen? Would I begin to see my invisible spectators? Would I suddenly see everything? What would I become? Would I die?’ When a thought strikes a man, he is already halfway down the road to a new place; he is, at least, no longer where he was, and there is no turning back. For those who turn back leave a part of themselves behind. Nuri tore the bells off his fingers, tossing them away like clipped fingernails. Rushing to the window, he was met by the scorching sun. Then, the houses . . . The streets were clogged with human and animal skeletons; the houses with spiders’ webs. On the rooftops were blanched bird bones, their dust scattered by the wind. The streets were deserted; nothing drew breath. The stink was appalling. It rose in waves of heat, like smoke.

  Nuri went outside. He wandered a while among the piles of shredded plastic bags and the floods of prayer beads. Goats’ hooves attached themselves to his feet, then rabbit tails, fezzes and cat skeletons. How long he had searched for succour in that fearsome valley of death, how far he had travelled across that ocean of stinking rubbish, Nuri could not say. He just kept walking . . . He kept walking because he could still see that mirror, held aloft by those birds. He was sure that when he reached them, he would find himself at last – and save himself. The birds, meanwhile, kept flapping their wings. They kept flying. Far away they flew, as a thousand and one visions sparkled in the mirror. They could already see where they were going, these birds. They were already there, in the mirror they held aloft . . .

  Later, Nuri saw himself on a vast plain. Then suddenly he was entering a forest; a green colossus seemed to grow before his eyes. He could hear snakes hissing as they slid between the pines: there was a strange rustling, and stirrings that the eye couldn’t catch. Where to go? How to escape the green incubus? Just then, at the point where the darkness swallowed up the pines, he saw a man. A man who was tired and spent. He carried a sack on his back. His nose was moist from grumbling. He kept his eyes on the ground, and the lower his face fell, the more it looked as if it would fall away altogether, to strip his real face bare.

  ‘Your tea’s gone cold, muhtar,’ said Nuri.

  The muhtar startled. He swung to look at Nuri, who was sitting on his right. Nuri was holding his head in his hands, and giggling.

  Unable to fathom why this man could be giggling, the muhtar fixed him with a fierce stare. Then he gave up, to stare at the desk before him. And once again, he got a shock.

  There was no tea.

  12

  Although much time had passed, the apprentice had still not returned with the razor blades. The man in the chair had begun to lose patience. Every two seconds, he turned his soapy face to glare at the road. But aside from honking vehicles of various colours, there was nothing to see. For reasons unknown, the crowds thronging the streets had thinned and thinned, until they’d vanished altogether.

  ‘In the old days, you never put blades into a razor,’ said the man in the chair. ‘You’d sharpen steel instead.’

  The barber said nothing. He was sitting in the next chair like a new customer, waiting his turn. From time to time, he’d glance into the mirror. He was exceedingly calm; he seemed even to have forgotten that his apprentice had gone off to buy razor blades. Had I asked, he’d most certainly claim to have no memory of it.

  ‘Or else,’ continued the man in the chair, ‘there’d be a belt at the corner of the counter and the razors would be sharpened on that . . .’

  The barber stayed silent. So silent, in fact, that the man in the chair decided to do the same. He kept looking out at the road, and each time he did, he heaved a sigh. Then a weight fell over him. Leaning back in his chair, he began, very slowly, to click his dungeon beads, one by one. But this didn’t last. The space between the clicks grew longer, and then longer still, until, at last, there was no clicking at all.

  My eyes met the barber’s. At that moment, it seemed to me that we were both thinking the same thing.

  ‘Is he asleep?’ I whispered.

  ‘I think he is,’ said the barber, ‘but not here.’

  13

  Musa Dede had his wooden leg stretched out like a plank from an old ox-cart: he was sitting in a dark alcove, with his beard in his lap. The muhtar waited outside, next to the sheaves of corn, until he could hear the sage’s voice. Then he entered his shadowy domain, feeling his way past the sacks of wheat, as Musa Dede watched.

  ‘Have you heard?’ asked the muhtar.

  ‘Yes,’ said Musa Dede, ‘I have. Güvercin’s gone missing.’

  Placing his hands on his knees, the muhtar stared into Musa Dede’s cavernous eyes.

  ‘I came for your wise counsel,’ he said in a faltering voice.

  ‘From a blind man in his nineties?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you’re that desperate, are you?’

  The muhtar opened his arms.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’m desperate, desperately desperate.’

  Musa Dede muttered something to himself, something unintelligible. He kept stroking his beard, as if it had somehow absorbed the muhtar’s desperation.

  ‘So. What do you think happened to Güvercin the Dove?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ said the muhtar. ‘She either went off of her own accord, or she was kidnapped. I’ve sent Mustafa and Ramazan off to the neighbouring villages to make enquiries.’

  Musa Dede smiled. It bothered the muhtar, this smile. He couldn’t begin to read it.

  ‘Have you ever heard of Fatma of the Mirrors?’

  ‘I know the name,’ replied the muhtar. ‘I heard her mentioned when I was just a boy.’

  Musa Dede fell silent, as his face grew steadily darker.

  ‘Fatma of the Mirrors,’ he murmured at long last, in a faraway voice, ‘Fatma of the Mirrors is a bird. It could well be that Güvercin is herself now inside that selfsame mirror.’

  The muhtar was at a loss for words. He stared at Musa Dede, trying to decide whether or not the man had gone senile. But he could not.

  ‘Fatma of the Mirrors is a bird,’ Musa Dede said once
again. ‘I don’t know her either . . . I’ve never set eyes on her. Even so, I can still see her eyes. Dark as molasses they are. Round as two cups. Because she left behind her eyes, you know. And she left them behind a cabin. They must have torn it down by now. It was just below the cliffs. No one ever went in there. No one could have. Was it cursed, or was it sacred? I have no idea. It may well have been both . . . Because, as rumour had it, Fatma of the Mirrors was both whore and saint. During the War of Independence, whole battalions of soldiers on the run found solace between her legs. Some had fled the army; others were heading back; others still were on their way to joining the brigands; whatever took them up into the mountains on a cold evening, they warmed their hands on her breasts. She was their mother, their wife, their sister, and their confidante. Because she fled with the deserters, and accompanied the captured, died with the dying . . . She even had a legendary tryst with the golden-toothed Soldier Hamdi . . . Soldier Hamdi, who could do alone what an entire company might struggle to achieve . . . To make him a pair of sandals, you’d need an entire ox-skin, if not more. If he went to a wedding, the cooks would despair . . . Because Soldier Hamdi could devour entire mountains of pilaf with his two hands, and bolt down stewed fruit by the cupful. He’d walk down the street clutching his stomach as if it were a big fat drum . . . But as it happened, Fatma’s feminine charms were more talked about than Hamdi’s girth. If they spoke of Hamdi once, they spoke of Fatma a hundred times over. So it turned into a bit of a competition; knowingly or not, people were goading them on. And soon they were homing in on each other: now and again, here and there, they would let it be known that one of these days, there’d be a showdown. And finally, that day arrived. It might have been on a deserted street, and it might have been in a crowd, but the two came face to face. Fatma of the Mirrors throws him a skittish glance. Soldier Hamdi twirls his moustache and smiles, but behind that smile is a silken dagger . . . Then suddenly – and who is to know who took whom – they end up shut away in that cabin. Meanwhile, the village waits, and waits, in anxious anticipation. What goes on inside will forever remain a secret. They could be fighting or they could be making love. From time to time, they can be heard screaming, pleading, laughing. But still no one dares approach the door of that house. Because the man they call Soldier Hamdi is trouble made flesh; he could break every bone in a man’s body. And then what? Either you curled up in a corner and died, or you went from door to door, begging for a crumb of bread. Then one day, they saw Fatma in the orchard, covered in sweat. Her buttocks wobbled as she limped. And that was the last time anyone saw Fatma. There were those who said that she had retired to a migrants’ village, to live as a penitent, rising from her prayer rug only to retrieve her prayer beads. Others said that she was carried off by angels, on account of her fine service to the nation during the War of Independence. Perhaps she was up there with the Lord, reclining on a green divan . . . Wherever she went, the fact was she had given comfort to many dozens of soldiers who had gone back to the front to fight with even greater ardour, filled as they were with memories of the warmth and beauty of the nation they had left behind. And also, the shepherds found Soldier Hamdi in the cabin. He was lying on his cloak. Still wearing his army boots. His face still locked in the moment of triumph . . . They loaded him on their backs and returned him to the village. They laid out his stiff body before his nine wives and their army of children. And then two soldiers swooped in from somewhere. They asked the villagers to tell them where Hamdi was. Don’t hide him from us, they said. Meanwhile, Hamdi was laid out in that courtyard: dead. Well, he might be dead, but he was still a deserter. The muhtar of the day got a horse-cart ready for the soldiers, and off they went with Hamdi, in that cart pulled by two horses that whinnied just as skittishly as Fatma . . . A few months passed, and a letter arrived, announcing that Hamdi had been killed at the front. Everyone was shocked, of course. Everyone became very confused about Hamdi. And I myself am confused to this day. If Hamdi is the Hamdi who died at the front, then who was the Hamdi who succumbed to Fatma’s fatal charms? . . . Or was that Hamdi no more than a reflection caught in Fatma’s mirror – a reflection, no less, of Hamdi at the front? And where did Fatma go, where did she spend the rest of her life, where did she die? My friend, I cannot for the life of me answer these questions . . . Not even after all these years. And now, if you like, I can ask you another question. This Hamdi had a courtyard full of children, born of his nine wives . . . Where are they now? I wonder. Who are they? What do you think?’

  The muhtar rose slowly. And then he left, leaving Musa Dede’s question unanswered. When he reached the courtyard, he was shaking, and muttering, ‘Damnation! Damnation!’

  14

  The muhtar’s wife looked up when she heard his footsteps.

  ‘Is it you?’ she asked, while making it clear she had no need for an answer. ‘You look like you’ve come back from the dead,’ she added. ‘Is there no news of Güvercin?’

  At that moment the courtyard gate creaked. They turned to look. It was the watchman. Panting heavily, he ran up to the muhtar.

  ‘What’s the news?’ asked the muhtar.

  ‘We’ve had a sighting!’

  ‘Do you mean to say you’ve found Güvercin?’ the woman asked.

  ‘You stay out of this,’ said the muhtar. ‘Go back inside.’

  He walked to the gate and the watchman followed.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘At home, sitting by the window.’

  ‘And you’ve been keeping watch, I take it? Any activity?’

  ‘Nothing at all. Unless you count sitting.’

  ‘Even people who spend the whole day sitting do things. You must have seen something.’

  ‘Well, yes. I saw a pile of paper.’

  ‘What sort of paper?’

  The watchman stretched out his arm. He was trying to give some sense of what he’d seen, but he got confused, wondering how exactly to describe paper, so he ended up tracing a strange shape in the air.

  ‘Paper,’ he said, swallowing.

  ‘Don’t forget to make a note of that,’ the muhtar said. ‘Store it away, somewhere in that head of yours!’

  The watchman nodded.

  As they walked back to the village square, the light began to fade. From the cliffs came the sound of bells; as they stood at their courtyard gates, waiting for their herds to come home, the women of the village chattered amongst themselves. The muhtar and the watchman fell silent, without quite knowing why. Forgetting each other, they gazed up at the cliffs. The muhtar stepped into his office, looking perplexed.

  ‘Did you see what I saw?’ he asked in a whisper.

  ‘I don’t think I did,’ the watchman replied.

  ‘We just walked through the village, but not a single person acknowledged our presence!’

  The watchman didn’t know what to say. Mystified by the muhtar’s words, he concentrated instead on the village square. Flocks of sheep were flowing in from all sides, kicking up clouds of dust and smoke. A few squealing children were running after the sheep, and trying to mount them.

  ‘Did you ever meet Soldier Hamdi?’ asked the muhtar.

  ‘I’ve heard of him.’

  ‘What was he known for?’

  ‘A handlebar moustache.’

  The muhtar smiled. He wasn’t in the mood to smile, but he couldn’t help himself. The absurd thought crossed his mind that the watchman’s answers had been scripted many years ago.

  ‘So that’s what you say he was known for? A handlebar moustache?’

  The watchman nodded. Still smiling, the muhtar gave him a long hard look. The man had no moustache of any kind.

  ‘All right, then,’ he said. ‘Let me ask you something else. If Hamdi the Soldier really did take nine women to bed every night of his life, then it would not be unreasonable to assume that this scoundrel with the handlebar moustache left behind a few children. Haven’t you ever wondered who they are?’

  The watchman’s mouth fell open. It ha
d never occurred to him to wonder about Soldier Hamdi’s children. For a time he didn’t move. Then he turned towards the houses fast melting into the darkness, studying each door and window in turn.

  ‘They’re here,’ said the muhtar.

  They arrived on two horses. Against the dark night, their racing forms fluttered like white butterflies. They were galloping into the wind. The closer they came, the more distant the echo of their hammering hooves. Caught between the approaching image and the receding thunder, the two spectral horses seemed to be galloping on the spot. Hours later, they stopped outside the muhtar’s office.

  ‘Speak,’ said the muhtar.

  ‘We’ve looked everywhere,’ said the two shadows, but they stayed on their horses.

  ‘And?’

  ‘No one’s seen or heard from her.’

  The muhtar dismissed them with a peremptory wave of the hand. The horses wheeled around, giving off the scent of hot sweat, and soon they were lost to the darkness and the distant lamplight. The muhtar was left wondering how they could have returned with this news, only to gallop off again. ‘It’s like a dream,’ he told himself, ‘it’s as if they were never here. Perhaps they never were. Perhaps I imagined them, or saw them in a dream. Only one thing is certain. That wasn’t Ramazan and Mustafa we just saw . . .’

  The watchman was still standing there, staring into the darkness. When he spoke, he took the muhtar by surprise. ‘Güvercin is lost, too,’ he said with a heavy sigh, ‘like Hamdi’s children . . .’

  ‘Shut your mouth,’ murmured the muhtar, ‘don’t tell me she’s lost! And we don’t even know if Hamdi had any!’

  They fell quiet for a moment. The watchman was losing his bearings.

  ‘Maybe you’re not even here!’ said the muhtar. He was losing his temper.

  The watchman was even more confused now. He touched his rifle with his right palm; it was cold. He took a deep breath. He tried to summon the strength to question his own existence, but this seemed too silly, and he could not help but smile. The muhtar was not amused.