And, after all, Hatay is one of the oldest cuisines in the world.
ASUMAN, LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE!
The shudder of the bus woke me. I was sitting a couple of rows behind the driver. It was two in the morning and most of the other passengers were asleep. We were trundling up a hill, right behind a truck. I closed my eyes, hoping to doze off again, and when I opened them again a few minutes later, we were still traveling at the same speed, a steady two meters behind that same truck. Other cars were flying past us, yet our driver seemed strangely content to sit back and enjoy the ride. I needed to find out why. Quietly, I crept up to the front.
“What are we still doing behind this truck, Captain?” I asked, speaking into his ear. “Is something the matter?”
He raised his eyes to look at me in the rearview mirror. “Not at all. We’re just cruising along, taking in the view. You got a problem with that?” he replied.
“No, no, I was just wondering. I mean, all these cars are passing us by—”
“Make yourself comfortable,” he said, nodding toward the fold-down steward’s seat next to him.
I hesitated.
“You a student, son?” he asked.
“Yes, I’m studying law at Ankara University,” I replied as I sat down.
“Nice. Good school.”
“Yeah, I suppose,” I said with a hint of pride.
“Look at that, son,” said the driver with a nod. “You see that?”
I looked out the windshield. It was impossible not to see the massive truck right there in front of us.
“Look closely,” he said. “What do you see?”
“What? What do you mean?”
“The woman!”
I looked again. Right there, on the back of the truck, were two pictures of a woman. Or, to be more precise, there were two identical images plastered across the back doors, mirroring each other, the sort you’d see on almost every truck on the road.
“What about her?” I asked.
“That’s Asuman!” he replied.
“You mean her name is Asuman?”
“Yes,” he said, sighing. “I know that woman. In fact, I know her very well.”
I smiled. “You see those same pictures on the back of just about every truck.”
“True,” he said. “They’ve got all kinds of pictures, but they’re not all Asuman.”
“Maybe,” I replied. “I never paid them much attention.”
“Me neither. Not till I met Asuman, that is.”
“Are you telling me that you actually know this woman?”
“We met in a bar in Istanbul. About six years ago.”
“Are you serious? You must be joking.”
He gave me a look, picked up his pack of cigarettes, and held it out to me. I hesitated.
“Go on, take one,” he said.
And so I did. He took one, too, and hung it from the corner of his mouth. The middle of his mustache was stained from a lifetime of smoking. He lit his cigarette and passed me the lighter. He took a long drag and thick smoke billowed from his nostrils, filling the bus. After cracking open his window, he settled himself in his seat and prepared to tell me the story of Asuman. I sat back and tried to look interested. It wasn’t as if I’d be getting back to sleep soon, anyway.
“When a job took me to Istanbul, I’d sometimes go out to a bar in the evening,” he began. He inhaled deeply on his cigarette, his eyes still fixed on Asuman. “That’s where I first saw her, onstage at a bar in Aksaray. My God, could she sing! And you won’t believe it, but I’m telling you, it was love at first sight. Just like in the movies. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. And I caught her eye, too. Anyway, I’ll keep it short—I went up to her afterward and introduced myself. She told me her name was Asuman. And then she shook my hand. It was like someone had handed me a red-hot coal: My entire body burst into flames. I told myself, ‘Fahri, man, you’re in deep shit now.’ Nobody knows you better than you know yourself, right? I felt my heart twinge. I said to her, ‘Let’s get out of here.’ She told me to come back the next day, but I said I’d be on the road. She asked if I was a truck driver. ‘Bus driver,’ I replied. She asked where I was headed and I told her, Diyarbakır. ‘Ah well,’ she said, ‘next time then, Captain.’ I didn’t want to come on too strong, so I left it at that. A week or so later, I got another job driving to Istanbul. I have no idea how I even got there—my head was in the clouds and my heart was ablaze.”
He took another drag on his cigarette and exhaled a plume of smoke into which his entire head disappeared. Cleaning his ear with the pinkie of the same hand that held his cigarette, he continued with his story.
“So, anyway, I went back to that bar, and this time we left together, stopped at some late-night soup joint. And we hit it off—like a house on fire, I tell you. She’d taken quite a shine to me, too, and so there we were, talking and talking, pouring our hearts out to each other. I ended up staying at her place that night, but I had to head back to Diyarbakır the next afternoon. Anyway, to cut a long story short, things carried on like this for about a year. Whenever a job took me to Istanbul, I’d stay with her, till finally I asked her to come with me to Diyarbakır. ‘I’ll rent you an apartment and you can take it easy, you won’t have to work anymore.’ Those were my exact words.”
“Come on, Captain,” I interrupted. “This whole thing sounds like some sentimental Turkish melodrama if you ask me.”
He shook his head gently and smiled. “Fine, I won’t bother telling you the rest then.”
“No, no, I’m sorry. I just meant that it sounds like the plot of a soap opera,” I said.
“Well, let me tell you, son, that’s exactly what it was like,” he replied.
He picked up the handset next to him and called the steward. Sleepy-eyed, the man shuffled over. “Bring us two coffees and make them strong,” the driver ordered. “And don’t sleep on the job,” he chided. “Go check on the passengers.” Our coffees arrived straightaway.
“So anyway, son, I wrecked my own home for Asuman, left the wife and all three kids. I rented an apartment for her in Diyarbakır and we got an imam to do what was necessary. A religious ceremony, if you catch my drift. I didn’t divorce the old wife, not officially, and—with God as my witness—I still made sure she was looked after, sent her money every month as a kind of alimony. Anyway, I won’t bore you with the details. In the end it didn’t work out: Asuman left me. One day I got home and everything was gone, she’d cleared the whole place out. The only thing she left was a note. It said, ‘I’ve taken the furniture as alimony. Don’t try to find me. Asuman.’ That night I stayed in a hotel. In the morning I bought a bunch of flowers and took them to the wife. God knows, my old lady’s not one to hold a grudge, I thought to myself. And, besides, she knows how these things go. She took the flowers and whacked me over the head with them, cursing the day I was born. She did have a point though. I thought she just needed some time and that sooner or later she’d come around. But, boy, was I wrong about that. She divorced me as quick as she could, leaving me all alone again, like the fool that I was.”
Eyes fixed on the back of the truck, he let out a deep sigh.
“Asuman, look what you’ve done! You wrecked my home, you ruined me. Asuman, Asuman, Asuman….So that’s how it is, son, that’s the story of Asuman.” Motioning again toward the truck, he continued, “She used to model every now and then. That there is a photo from one of her shoots. I even have the original. And whenever I see it on a truck I just pull in behind and tag along for as long as I can. Luckily there aren’t many pictures of her out there, otherwise I swear I’d never get anywhere,” he said. He turned to give me a bitter smile.
“Isn’t driving like this a little dangerous, Captain?” I said. “You drifted off into your own world when you were telling that story, even closed your eyes sometimes.”
“Don’t you worry, son, I’v
e got it all under control. But you know how it is—you always close your eyes when you dream of something. That way, no one sees your dreams. And when you close your eyes, you hide them even from yourself. Because the real you is actually the person in your dreams.”
“What can I say, Captain, I’m speechless.” (I wanted to add, “Your Asuman may as well have quoted Nietzsche: ‘After you discovered me, it was no great feat to find me. The problem now is how to lose me,’ ” but I thought better of it.) “You’re a bus driver, though, all these people’s lives are in your hands. You really ought to be careful, God forbid something should happen.”
“Of course,” he replied. “That goes without saying, but sometimes I get to thinking—there are so many ways to die: you could burn, you could drown, you could fall; your death could be slow and painful or perfectly ordinary; you might die a hero or for no reason at all. And all that’s true for living as well as dying. Strange, isn’t it?” he mused.
“You’re an odd man, Captain,” I said. “And by odd I mean interesting.”
I turned again to look at Asuman. She was lying on her side, gazing seductively at the camera, her elbow propped up on a cushion, her cheek resting on her hand, her face fully made-up. That Asuman, she’s a piece of work, I thought. Turning back to the driver, I was met with a mischievous grin.
“You’re studying to be a lawyer, are you?”
“That’s the plan,” I said.
“Mashallah! You are one bright spark,” he replied sarcastically. “God help the man who hires you.”
“What do you mean by that, Captain?”
“Look, son,” he said, smiling. “You probably slept through it, but the bus broke down a while ago and we hitched ourselves to this truck in front of us. They’re going to tow us to the top of Mount Gavur. Take a look out front and you’ll see the towrope.”
I didn’t want to believe him. I leaned forward and looked out; sure enough, there was the rope. Asuman really was towing us along. I was embarrassed to have fallen for his tall tale. “Stop the bus, damn it,” I wanted to say, “I’m getting off!” But there was nothing I could do; I had fallen for it hook, line, and sinker. The driver had a smirk on his face, or so it seemed to me. He called the steward back over.
“Show the boy back to his seat,” he said. “And give him some cologne, it’ll help him come to his senses.”
“Well done, you had me there, Captain,” I mumbled as I returned to my seat. To make matters worse, the steward really did bring over the cologne and sprinkled a few drops onto my hands.
“You’ll get over it, abi,” he said, with a wide grin. I saw the driver looking at me in the rearview mirror, a smile still on his face.
Many years passed. But I recognized him the moment he stepped into my office: Captain Fahri. I ushered him in and ordered us tea. He was graying at the temples and his bushy mustache had gone completely yellow. He was thinner than before and stooped a little. He didn’t recognize me, but that was no surprise; it had been such a long time since we’d last seen each other. Besides, he was in no state to recognize anybody; his son, a university student, had been arrested for taking part in a demonstration. For two months he’d been searching in vain for a lawyer willing to take the case. A friend of his had recommended me.
“All right,” I said, “let me take a look at the file. Come back again tomorrow and we’ll talk.” He stood and clasped my hand, his head bowed. I bowed mine, too, and then saw him out.
I took on his son’s case; four months later he was released and then acquitted. Soon after, the two of them turned up at the office to thank me, bearing flowers and chocolate.
“Why wouldn’t you let me pay you?” he asked.
“You don’t remember me, do you, Fahri Abi?” I said.
He fixed his eyes on me intently, trying to place me. “Beg your pardon,” he said. “Where should I know you from?”
“From Asuman.”
He froze, staring at me in astonishment. The smile that spread across his face soon turned to laughter, and he stood up and hugged me.
“My, my! But remember what I said to you that day?”
“What was that, Fahri Abi?”
“Didn’t I say that you’d be a great man, that anyone who hired you should count his lucky stars? Didn’t I?”
“Of course you did, Fahri Abi, of course you did.”
Fahri was delighted and from that moment on we were like two long-lost friends reunited at last. “The two of us go back a long way,” he told his son, before launching into the tale of the bus journey, fortunately skipping over the embarrassing details. The pair stood up and I saw them to the door. Just as they were leaving, I called out to him, “Fahri Abi.”
“Yes, son?”
I took a bottle of cologne from the secretary’s desk and sprinkled a few drops into his outstretched hands.
“You’ll get over it, abi!” I said.
He gave me a warm smile.
“I hear you, son,” he said. “Now it’s my turn to repay the favor. The question is, how?” And with a shake of his head, he closed the door.
SETTLING SCORES
It was 1981. I was eight, my brother, Nurettin, was nine. That was a tough year for us both. A brutal military coup had taken place just a few months earlier. We weren’t aware of what that meant yet. But, anyway, Mother, this has nothing to do with what I want to say to you.
We’d run out of sugar at home. We usually bought it by the kilo from the store downstairs, but buying it like that was more expensive. So on that day you sent us out to the wholesaler a kilometer from our house to buy five kilos. At the store five kilos of sugar came to 300 lira; wholesale it was 250. Nurettin and I went and bought the sugar with the 250 lira you’d given us. As I was the smaller one, it was my brother who carried the bag of sugar. He’d barely made it a few steps before he got tired and put it down. We took a break and then we each picked up one end of the bag and started carrying it together. After a few steps, exhausted, we placed it back down again. That bag of sugar was just too heavy for us. We gave in and walked over to the horse and cart parked at the side of the road. My brother told the driver where we lived and asked how much it would cost to take us there. The driver gave us a strange look and glanced over at the bag of sugar. “Fifty lira,” he said. We’d never even heard of such a thing as haggling, so we immediately agreed. We slung the bag of sugar onto the cart and then climbed on ourselves. The whole way home, we sat with our legs dangling over the side. Our apartment was on the fifth floor and the driver carried the bag of sugar up to our front door. He didn’t have much of a choice: We didn’t have any money on us, so he had to come up if he wanted to get paid.
When you answered the door, Mother, we told you what had happened. At first you thought it was a joke. You soon realized it wasn’t and went inside to get the money to pay the driver. We’d ended up spending just as much buying the sugar from the wholesaler as we would have if we’d bought it from the corner shop downstairs.
But what you didn’t realize at the time was that my brother and I were staunchly opposed to the monopolization of capital. We were advocates for the redistribution of wealth at a grassroots level. Rather than giving the entire 300 lira to the shopkeeper, we’d given 250 to the wholesaler and 50 to the driver. This was the first real action of our budding political movement. But you weren’t convinced and so the movement fell apart before it could even get going. It’s your fault that Turkey became a free market economy, and look where that got us. What a huge burden that must be for you to live with—huge!
And then there was the time you dished up some homemade yogurt into a tiffin box and told us to take it to our Hadji Grandpa’s. My brother and I took our time, dawdling our way through all four neighborhoods. It was afternoon by the time we got there and we were exhausted.
“You must be hungry,” our Hadji Grandma said and gave us some bread to eat, along with th
e yogurt we’d brought. We devoured the whole lot. Grandma washed out the tiffin box and gave it back to us; we took it and headed home.
“What kept you boys so long?” you asked us. We explained we were late because we’d had lunch at Grandma’s. You asked what we’d eaten and we told you we’d had yogurt.
“Please tell me it wasn’t the yogurt you’ve just taken them,” you said in disbelief.
“Of course it was,” we replied, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. For years after, you’d repeat this story to anyone who’d listen and have a good laugh at our expense. But I never saw anything unusual in what we’d done. Even if I couldn’t quite find a way to explain our actions, it always seemed perfectly logical to me. I’d put plenty of thought into this before, but it wasn’t until prison that I finally understood it. You sent Grandma and Grandpa the yogurt not because they needed it, but because you wanted to make them happy. And we had achieved that the moment we handed it to them. But what made them even happier was watching their darling grandsons wolf down that very same yogurt. Your reason for sending the yogurt was to create a single moment of happiness, but we doubled it. So, you see, it’s not fair! For the last thirty-six years you’ve all been laughing at us for no good reason, you big bullies!
That was also the year we got into the prayer-cap business. You’d sit at home and crochet prayer caps out of acrylic yarn, and Nurettin and I would go out and sell them. It’s true that business might not have been as brisk as we’d hoped, but there was a slump in the global prayer-cap market that year. You always blamed our pitiful sales on the marketing department, though. We, on the other hand, never once thought to question the flaws in the production process. The fashion that season was for finely woven, pastel-colored prayer caps. That was true at least for the hadji uncles’ segment of the market. You, though, insisted on crocheting thick caps in burgundy, khaki, black, and red. Really, Mother: When have you ever seen green and red prayer caps? But you kept on making them, anyway. We should have set up shop outside the Diyarbakır football stadium—who wouldn’t want a prayer cap in their team’s colors? Instead we were out there trying to peddle our wares in front of the Grand Mosque! We ended up selling most of the caps to Hadji Grandpa. Whenever business was slow, we’d head over to his store, where we’d be treated to wafer biscuits, and sell a couple of caps to boot. For the record, we sold at least twenty to your own father. And may I remind you, you only made twenty-five in total.
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