Dawn

by Selahattin Demirtas

  Tell me, Nergis, in what way shall I love you?

  If you like, we can leave the university each day hand in hand. We’ll be inseparable, like a pair of doves. Everyone will envy us. In the face of our love, all other couples will quarrel and break up. I’ll call you “sweetheart” and you’ll call me “darling.” Two souls fused as one, we’ll move in together, finally ending the torture of having to sleep apart. Our walls will be decorated with the poems I’ve penned for you. Our every moment together will be straight out of a fairy tale. We’ll never tire of gazing into each other’s eyes, and the most intoxicating scent in the world will be that of your skin. We’ll live our lives as if the country’s entire population were comprised of just us two. Then one day you’ll learn that the number is actually three. You’ll find out I’ve been sending presents to a girl named Ceyda. When you first hear about it, you won’t believe it; it couldn’t possibly be true, I would never do such a thing. But then, finally, for one reason or another, you do believe it. You’ll be devastated. You won’t leave the house for weeks. You’ll lose faith in everyone, in humanity itself. You’ll be disgusted by the mere thought of me. As I make my swift descent into the cold waters of the Bosphorus, you’ll read the letter I’ve left behind for you. And as you read it, you’ll drown in your tears. You’ll learn that Ceyda is my sister and only then will you understand just how much I loved you. You’ll come to my grave bearing a bouquet of wildflowers. And on my headstone will be written: IS THAT YOU, NERGIS?

  So tell me now, Nergis, just how shall I love you?

  If you like, our love can rise from the sacred foundation of labor and hard-earned sweat. As we rush from one protest to the next, your sweat and mine will become one. As our dedication to the struggle grows stronger, so shall our passion for each other. We’ll march hand in hand down the glorious path of revolution, discovering each other anew every single day. Put to the test in ruthless interrogations, our love will become twice-tempered steel. We’ll play our part in shaping a future that champions the downtrodden. We’ll forge love through labor and freedom through resistance. Courage and sacrifice will be the sole laws of our rebel lives. Then, one day, you’ll break under torture and tell them where I’m hiding. One morning, before the sun’s rays have even struck the red star upon my forehead, they’ll raid the house and put a bullet through my skull. Then they’ll find the letter I’ve left for you. And you’ll drown in your tears as you read it and only then will you understand just how much I loved you. You’ll come to my grave bearing a bouquet of wildflowers. And on my headstone will be written: IS THAT YOU AGAIN, NERGIS?

  I can love you, Nergis, just tell me how!

  For instance, our humble relationship could be undone by a single well-rolled joint. From then on, we’ll know that whenever things get us down, all we need to do is light up. We’ll embrace the bohemian life and that, Nergis, will be our demise. We’ll work as bartenders, you and I, just to pay for our weed. We’ll rail against inequality and injustice, if only as an excuse to roll another one. Every day we’ll break a new taboo, stocking up on free love as we go. We’ll neither count the days that pass nor dream about ways to spend the future. We’ll savor each moment without measuring its worth in dollars. We’ll curse not at the fact that in Alaçatı one measly lahmacun costs fifty lira, but that it finds a buyer at that price. Olympos, now that’ll be our spot. Then one day, while home alone, I’ll lose it, this time completely. “Screw this shitty life,” I’ll say, and head out for a drink. After downing my fourteenth beer, I’ll start a fight. The bar’s owner will end up stabbing me. And in my pocket they’ll find a letter addressed to you. As you read it…but wait, you know this part already. On my headstone will be written: ARE YOU FOR REAL, NERGIS?

  And while all these scenarios were passing through my mind, I saw Nergis walking toward me and felt my knees grow weak as she came closer. Fortunately, I was sitting, so I didn’t fall down. As she walked past, she didn’t look directly at me, but she did glance in my direction. Though I’m certain her eyes were searching for me, she didn’t see me. Her smile is with me still.

  I wasn’t always like this, it’s not at all what you think. Everything bad that’s happened to me has happened because of my love for a woman called Semra.

  Semra appeared before me on a narrow street in the old marketplace full of the smell of spices and textiles. The second she saw me, she froze on the spot. As did I. For a few moments we conversed only with our eyes. The noisy street seemed to fall away, as if everyone else had disappeared and it was just the two of us alone. She hadn’t changed at all and was every bit as enchanting as she had been all those years ago. At first, we hesitated. We could have pretended not to have noticed each other, just kept on walking to avoid opening those old wounds. Perhaps then we would have felt only a faint ache, one that would have faded by the time we reached the end of the street, turning at most into a pained smile as we went our separate ways. But that’s not what happened. Instead, we walked toward each other and stood face-to-face, right in front of the barrels of red chili paste. The smell of that paste made my nose burn and I felt my eyes water from the pain. I held back my tears, afraid that she might read them the wrong way. And perhaps it was the chili paste that made her eyes well up, too, turning their green into the color of honey.

  Why is it, I wonder, that spicy foods make our eyes water? There must be a scientific explanation. If only I’d known it at that moment, I could have used it as a conversation starter. Instead, I had no idea what to say. It was as if all words had been erased from my mind. From within the din of the marketplace I heard her say hello. Actually, it was so noisy that I didn’t hear it, I just read the word on her lips.

  “Hello,” I said back, adding, “It’s almost too much to bear.”

  “Yes, it is,” she responded, looking at the chili paste.

  Sheets of awning had been tied up to protect the market stands from the elements. Yet a sliver of sunshine had managed to slip through a crack and find its way down to her light brown hair; it was here that this ray of light completed a journey that had lasted millions of years. Who could have known when it set out all that time ago that it would turn the rest of my life upside down? As if we hadn’t split up two years earlier, as if we were there that day shopping together, my hand went, of its own accord, straight for her hair, to brush aside that ray of sunshine.

  “Don’t,” she said, but her voice reached my ears too late. I had already gathered all of the sun from her hair. A hand gripped my wrist. Both of us turned to look at its owner.

  “Don’t,” my beloved called out, at the other man this time. The busy marketplace was punctured by a wail of pain. I didn’t see her lips, but the sound pierced my ears. My beloved threw herself upon my bloodied body. And then came another sound. Her hair covered my face, its brown stained red with blood. A drop of honey fell from her eyes and onto my lips. The smell of blood mixed with the scent of spices, and the bustle of the marketplace gave way to pandemonium. You might think me coldhearted from the way I’m telling you all this. But the truth is, I, too, surrendered my soul that day. When my beloved departed, she took my life with her. It was her sad expression that dealt the fatal blow. My grave rests in Semra’s bloodshot eyes, hers beneath a tree in the village. Her smile is with me still.

  Everything bad that’s happened to us has happened because of love. And now I live with a bullet in my head, a gift from Semra’s brother. My mind comes and goes, but most of the time, it just goes. Every pretty smile I see takes me back to Semra. I no longer have the strength to keep tabs on the lives squandered for the sake of a smile. So, please, don’t look at me like that. It’s not what you think.

  GREETINGS TO THOSE DARK EYES

  It was six a.m. when the alarm clock rang. Hüseyin turned it off and climbed down from the top bunk, using his foot to nudge his bunkmate, Cemal, awake. He and Cemal were childhood friends. They were from the same village and had gone to
school together until the end of third grade. Hüseyin had dropped out after that while Cemal stayed on for an extra year. This was why, every so often, Cemal would treat Hüseyin like an uneducated fool.

  The moment his feet touched the floor, Hüseyin remembered that there was something special about that day. It marked the end of their fifteen months at the construction site—week after week of twelve-hour days that seemed to last a lifetime, and night after night with barely a wink of sleep. It had been a year and a half since they had left the village in the hope of finding work. The first three months they spent in Istanbul, scraping by as day laborers, until finally they had the good fortune of landing a job on this site. At first, the manager was reluctant to take them on at all, since they were only sixteen years old. In the end, though, he saw the advantage of hiring them: He’d be able to get away with paying them lower wages and avoid social security altogether. And so Hüseyin and Cemal became two of the eight children working there. They weren’t the only illegal laborers. Of the sixty workers, only twenty-six had social security; the rest had agreed to go without. Being a child was hard enough as it was. Harder yet to be a child laborer. But for Hüseyin, the hardest thing of all was the ache he felt for Berfin, the girl he had left behind in his village.

  That morning they left the dormitory, with its acrid smell of sweat, and headed to the canteen, where they gulped down their lukewarm soup. But instead of walking straight to the construction site, as they had done every day for the past fifteen months, they made their way to the accountant’s office to collect all those months’ worth of wages that were owed to them. Here, they joined a long line of despondent, exhausted workers. They would take their money and head back to Istanbul to look for more work.

  Hüseyin’s love for Berfin was as innocent as he was, and as precarious as his job. Since leaving the village, he had written her two secret love letters. Actually, he couldn’t address the letters to Berfin herself, so he had sent them to his sister, Zeliha. She’s a smart girl, that Zeliha, she’ll be sure to let Berfin know, he had thought. Even though Berfin’s name was nowhere to be found in the letters, Zeliha was bound to figure it out and tell Berfin how much he missed her. But there was no mention of him missing anyone in the letters, either. He had made sure to keep everything as vague as possible so that no one caught on. He had put all his faith in that one line at the end of each letter: “I send my greetings to those dark eyes.” But then everyone in the village had dark eyes—none as dark as Berfin’s though. In fact, he had asked Cemal to write the letters, Cemal being the educated man that he was. When both letters went unanswered, he regretted his own lack of education even more.

  A commotion broke out at the front of the weary line, rousing Hüseyin from his gloomy thoughts. He and Cemal exchanged looks. The news traveled down the line in a series of whispers until eventually it reached them: the accountant was nowhere to be found. Everyone had an opinion, some prediction about what would happen next. These workers, who had been toiling day and night for fifteen months without a word of complaint, were now muttering among themselves, as though on the brink of revolt. The wait dragged on for what felt like months. Then their angry voices faded to a tense silence.

  Cemal had also forgotten to include a return address in the letters. What’s worse, he had forgotten to write Zeliha’s full address on the envelopes. The lack of reply kept Hüseyin up at night. Despite slaving away for twelve hours every day, he couldn’t fall asleep. One night, lying awake on his bunk, he had written “Berfin” on the ceiling in ballpoint pen. Even in the dark, her name was visible. And while plastering the walls at the construction site, he would use his trowel to write “Berfin” again and again, smoothing it back over each time. Seeing Hüseyin in this lovesick state drove Cemal crazy. He tried to console him, lift his spirits, but it was no good. Eventually, he resorted to swearing at Hüseyin, once even tried to beat some sense into him. But Hüseyin would simply ignore him and go on with his daydreams.

  Hüseyin’s thoughts returned to the village, to the conversations he’d had with Berfin when they met up in secret. She had made it through the fifth grade before being taken out of school. That was more than enough education for a girl. And besides, it would soon be time for her to marry. Being a child in a tiny village in Muş was hard enough as it was. Even harder to be a girl. Harder still to be a child bride. Berfin, though, was a wild rose who never bowed to pressure. She refused to let her family marry her off and would cause a fuss each time they tried. Besides, she was secretly in love with Hüseyin. But she also had her sights set higher. Much higher, in fact. She had hinted at this to Hüseyin himself, had even spoken of leaving the village. It wasn’t for nothing that his love was so intense, so consuming, and yet so hopeless. Hüseyin hadn’t shared this with anyone, not even Cemal.

  The foreman emerged from the site office, causing a stir down the line. He walked up to the men and calmly declared, “You can collect all your wages from headquarters in Istanbul.” His words were met first with stunned silence, then with a rumble of dissatisfaction. The foreman turned to leave but stopped.

  “The bus leaves in ten,” he announced. “Any questions?” Again the workers responded with silence, then bowed their heads and fell out of line, dragging their feet toward the rusty old minibus that would take them to the city. A feeling of unease, and a profound sense of sorrow, took root in Hüseyin’s heart.

  If there was one other person in the world who thought of Berfin with the same sorrow, the same intense longing as Hüseyin, it was Berfin’s mother. Two weeks after Hüseyin had left the village, Berfin disappeared. “My darling girl, don’t let anyone harm you, not even a single eyelash. Be strong,” she silently implored when her daughter failed to return home. And since that day, during morning prayers, she would turn her eyes to the heavens and pray for her wayward daughter, for her Berfin.

  As the workers’ minibus rolled slowly through the mud, Hüseyin turned to take one last look out the rear window at the finished building, the one they had built. A sign now hung above the entrance: EDIRNE F-TYPE HIGH-SECURITY PRISON. Cemal, too, turned and saw the same thing. Their eyes met. And then, as though caught red-handed, they averted their gaze in shame. The rusty old minibus left the work site for the highway, gathering speed, whisking the workers, registered and unregistered, young and old alike, away from their dreary pasts. As they sped along toward an uncertain future, Cemal rained down silent curses on Hüseyin and that damn sign, while Hüseyin sent his silent greetings to those dark eyes.

  A LETTER TO THE PRISON

  LETTER-READING COMMITTEE

  Dear Committee,

  I’m writing you this letter from a high-security prison cell. “Why?” you might ask. Well, because I’m in prison, if you must know. So now you’re probably thinking, Yes, we’re fully aware of that. The question is: Why on earth are you writing to us? We’re going blind from reading all your letters as it is. And that’s exactly why I’m writing to you. For pity’s sake, what kind of career have you people chosen for yourselves? You sit around all day reading letters written by a bunch of strangers. What sort of life is that? And to think they even pay you for it. (Indeed, they do—the grand sum of 2,060 lira a month!) But that’s not the point here. To be honest, I’m not quite sure what the point is. (Now, these last sentences have been “borrowed” from an İlhami Algör story; I hope that won’t be cause for you to redact them.)

  But I digress, so let me cut to the chase. I keep getting requests from people on the outside (at least they think they’re on the outside) for just one more story. I’ve told them it’s best if I keep my correspondence brief from now on, that the members of the letter-reading committee are already at their wit’s end. The poor things are working their fingers to the bone because of me, and for what? Besides, I tell them, it’s not as if I’m a real writer or anything. But, of course, when you grow up in a house like mine, with a musician for a mother and a wordsmith for a father,
you can’t help but pick up a thing or two.

  Let me explain: As children, we woke each morning to the sound of our mother playing the piano. Our house had two rooms. We children all slept together in one of them, the same room where our mother kept her piano. Every morning, without fail, she’d sit down and bang away at the keys, bless her heart. Believe me, the sound still rings in my ears to this day. When we were a bit older, she said to me, “Son, are you an idiot? What piano? It’s a sewing machine, for God’s sake! I use it to make some money on the side.” But to our ears it was music, and that’s what matters, right?