Dawn
Page 10
From the local airport, just outside of town, he would fly to Istanbul, and from there on to America. The morning of his departure, he asked his friend Bawer, who was driving him to the airport, to stop at the cemetery on the way. He had gathered some wildflowers from the garden, which he now placed on as many graves as he could. The last of his flowers he laid upon two graves that stood side by side. With a heavy heart and a note of pride in his voice, he murmured, “May you rest in peace.” On the headstones were engraved the names of his father, Ahmet Tunç, and his uncle, Mehmet Tunç.
At the airport, Bawer gave the doctor a long hug.
“Have a safe trip, Bêkes,” he said. “Take in all the sights you can. You’re traveling for all of us, you know.”
Bêkes had never been short of people who cared for him. He had grown up as a child of the people and had always been surrounded by so much love that it drew a striking contrast with his name—Bêkes, “the orphan.” As Bêkes the doctor waved goodbye to his friend, the scorching Cizre sun reached its peak, marking yet another day of this new life on the banks of the Tigris.
NOTES
The Turkish language is peppered with various forms of address, for which direct equivalents rarely exist in English: Bacı, meaning “sister,” is often used by men in left-wing groups to address their female comrades. Abi, meaning “older brother,” and abla, meaning “older sister,” are also frequently used to address a man or a woman more senior in age, indicating both respect and familiarity. Amca, meaning “maternal uncle,” is also a familiar form of address for an older man, while teyze, meaning “maternal aunt,” is the equivalent for a woman. Ana, meaning “mother,” can be used together with the proper name as a form of address, indicating both respect and familiarity. Baba means “father.” Bey/Hanım are the equivalents of Mr./Mrs. and are used with the person’s first name; their usage denotes a more formal relationship. Usta, “master,” is a form of address used for craftsmen or people who are skilled at their trade.
Seher
Seher: The name Seher means “dawn.” When asked by the Cumhuriyet newspaper, in an interview conducted from prison, why he had chosen “Seher” as the name for the main character in the title story of the book, Selahattin Demirtaş said, “Dawn marks the first moments when light emerges from darkness. Dawn represents hope, revives itself anew each day. Darkness thinks itself eternal, and just as it believes it has defeated the light, dawn deals the first blow. This is the moment that brings an end to darkness and marks the beginning of light.”
bayram: This refers to either of the two main Muslim festivals—Eid al-Fitr (in Turkish Şeker Bayramı, or Ramazan Bayramı, the Festival of Sweets or Ramadan Festival), a three-day festival to mark the end of the month of Ramadan, or Eid al-Adha (in Turkish Kurban Bayramı, Sacrifice Festival), a four-day festival in honor of Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son to Allah. As well as being important religious festivals, these bayrams are major public holidays in Turkey.
Adana/Çukurova: A major city in south-central Anatolia, Adana is the largest city in the Çukurova region, the fertile agricultural heartland of Turkey and an area closely associated with the works of Nobel-nominated author and human rights activist Yaşar Kemal (1923–2015).
Nazan the Cleaning Lady
Ankara/Mamak: Ankara is the capital city of Turkey, located in the region of central Anatolia. Mamak is a metropolitan district of the capital and home to the infamous Mamak Military Prison.
gecekondu: Literally meaning “put up at night,” a gecekondu is a dwelling erected illegally overnight on empty land on the outskirts of cities.
Madımak: Also known as the Sivas Massacre, this refers to the murder of thirty-five artists and intellectuals, mostly Alevis, a religious minority, who burned to death when right-wing nationalists set fire to the Madımak Hotel where they were staying while in Sivas for a festival in 1993.
Kızılay Square: The main public square in Ankara. The name Kızılay (Red Crescent) was given to the square when the headquarters of the Turkish Red Crescent was built there. The square has since been renamed twice, first to Hürriyet Meydanı (Liberty Square), after the military coup of 1960, and later to 15 Temmuz Kızılay Milli İrade Meydanı (July 15 Kızılay National Will Square), after the attempted coup that took place on July 15, 2016. Despite these name changes, the public continues to refer to it as simply Kızılay. Located in the center of Ankara, it is the main gathering point for protests in the city.
It’s Not What You Think
Karlıova: A district in the Bingöl province in eastern Anatolia.
Alaçatı: A traditional town on the Aegean coast, Alaçatı has in recent years developed into a popular and upmarket tourist destination.
lahmacun: Sometimes referred to as “Turkish pizza,” this is a food made of thin dough topped with spicy ground meat and served with parsley and lemon.
Olympos: An ancient Lycian city on the Mediterranean coast of southwest Turkey, Olympos is now a popular tourist destination and known as a bohemian hangout.
Greetings to Those Dark Eyes
Muş: A province in the majority-Kurdish region of eastern Anatolia.
“My darling girl, don’t let anyone harm you, not even a single eyelash. Be strong,”: In July 2015, Çilem Doğan was arrested for killing her husband, who had been trying to force her into prostitution. In response to the letters of solidarity she received while in prison, Doğan wrote: “May not a single of your eyelashes fall to the ground,” a line that became a mantra for the feminist movement in Turkey.
Edirne F-Type High-Security Prison: The prison in which the author, Selahattin Demirtaş, was interned at the time of writing this book. The decision to incarcerate him in a prison approximately 1,700 kilometers (1,056 miles) from his home in Diyarbakır has been criticized as a deliberate form of additional punishment for both Demirtaş and his family.
A Letter to the Prison Letter-Reading Committee
İlhami Algör: Born in 1955 in Suriçi, Istanbul, Algör is the author of several novellas in Turkish, as well as a nonfiction book about the 1938 massacre of the local population of Dersim, a city in eastern Turkey from which his family hails. His work features the recurrent question “What is the point/issue?”—a purposefully vague and philosophical question that usually goes unanswered, representing the ever-changing, elusive nature of “the point/issue” at hand.
Arif Sağ: Born in 1945 in Aşkale, Erzurum, Sağ is an Alevi singer and a bağlama (a traditional string instrument) virtuoso. He also served as a member of parliament for the Social Democratic Populist Party from 1987 to 1991. He survived the 1993 Sivas Massacre (see “Madımak” in “Nazan the Cleaning Lady”).
Diyarbakır: One of the largest cities in the majority-Kurdish region of southeastern Anatolia, Diyarbakır is the author’s hometown.
“the co-leadership system didn’t yet exist back then, of course”: The Peoples’ Democratic Party, to which the author belongs, follows a dual-leadership system, with all positions of leadership filled by two people: one male, one female.
Kebab Halabi
Kebab Halabi: Halabi, taken from the Arabic, denotes an origin from Aleppo (Halab) in Syria. Kebab Halabi is the name of a dish—a lamb kebab served with tomato sauce and Aleppo pepper. The original Turkish title of this story (“Halep Ezmesi,” translating literally as “Aleppo Puree”) does not appear to be an actual dish but instead lends itself to interpretation.
Hatay: Also known as Antakya (ancient Antioch), Hatay is a historically multicultural city located in the Mediterranean region, close to the Turkish-Syrian border.
künefe: A baked dessert made of layers of shredded wheat soaked in syrup and filled with a soft, unsalted cheese.
As Lonely as History
The book titles mentioned in this story are lines taken from the poetry of Murathan Mungan, a prominent contemporary
poet, author, and playwright. An outspoken advocate for human rights, Mungan was born in Istanbul; his family hails from Mardin in southeastern Turkey.
Isparta: A province in southwestern Turkey, approximately 150 kilometers (93 miles) north of Antalya, famous for its rose cultivation.
Finike: A district in the Antalya Province, located on the Mediterranean coast in southern Turkey.
Beyoğlu: A district on the European side of Istanbul, Beyoğlu is a popular area for shopping and nightlife.
Fikirtepe: The neighborhood of Fikirtepe, which is located in the district of Kadıköy on the Asian side of Istanbul, has been a particularly controversial urban renewal site in recent years. Urban renewal in Istanbul began after the Marmara earthquake of 1999, presumably to ensure that all buildings are earthquake-proof. However, the process has been criticized because it effectively displaces local residents while filling the pockets of contractors and construction companies.
A Magnificent Ending
The sociopolitical developments in this story, set in the near future, are a reflection of the political goals of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, to which the author belongs.
The main character in this story, Bêkes, is based on a real person of the same name. During the military curfew on the city of Cizre (a majority-Kurdish town and district in southeastern Anatolia, on the Turkish border with Syria) in 2015–16, Bêkes’s father and uncle were among the many killed when security forces stormed the basements in which hundreds were sheltering from the fighting. The name literally means “he who has no one”—an orphan—and was given to him by his father before he died.
Bêkes’s father, Orhan Tunç, and uncle, Mehmet Tunç (co-chair of the Cizre People’s Assembly), were buried in the Nalaro Cemetery in the district of Şırnak, rather than in their hometown of Cizre, due to the ongoing blockade there. They were interred in a mass burial along with twenty-eight others who were killed during the blockade. A few months after the burial, there were reports that the area around the cemetery had come under attack by state forces and that the cemetery and its environs were damaged by fire. Unlike the Islamic tradition of wrapping the bodies in a shroud for burial, many of the bodies were buried in coffins so that families could later have them exhumed and reinterred in Cizre. From the story we can assume that the cemetery mentioned is in Cizre and that the bodies have therefore been moved.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in 1973, SELAHATTIN DEMIRTAŞ is a Zaza-Kurdish politician and former co-leader of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) in Turkey. He began his political career as a human rights lawyer and helped transform the HDP into a more inclusive party, with an emphasis on progressive values, feminism, and LGBTQ rights. He passionately believes in the liberal, democratic future of Turkey. Imprisoned since November 2016, Demirtaş ran for president in 2014, and again in 2018, conducting his campaign from his prison cell. Written from a maximum-security prison in Edirne, where he is still being held, Dawn is his first work of fiction.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATORS
Originally from Ohio, Amy Spangler moved to Turkey in 1999, where she has lived ever since. She is co-founder of AnatoliaLit Agency. Her published book translations include The City in Crimson Cloak by Asli Erdogan and Noontime in Yenişehir by Sevgi Soysal, and she is the co-editor and co-translator of Istanbul Noir.
* * *
Kate Ferguson moved to Istanbul in 2007 after completing an MA in interpreting studies. She has since translated a number of nonfiction books and reports on issues of human rights. She is also one of the translators of Hah! by Birgül Oğuz, the result of a collaborative translation at the Cunda International Workshop for Translators of Turkish Literature. She currently works as an instructor in the Department of Translation and Interpretation Studies at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul.
What’s next on
your reading list?
Discover your next
great read!
Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.
Sign up now.