İSTANBUL
İSTANBUL
Published 2016 in Great Britain by Telegram
Published by arrangement with OR Books LLC, New York
2016 © Burhan Sönmez
ISBN 978-1-84659-205-8
eISBN 978-1-84659-206-5
Burhan Sönmez has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade
or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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İSTANBUL
İSTANBUL
BURHAN
SÖNMEZ
Translated from the Turkish by
ÜMIT HUSSEIN
TELEGRAM
CHAPTERS
1ST
DAY Told by the Student Demirtay
THE IRON GATE
2ND
DAY Told by the Doctor
THE WHITE DOG
3RD
DAY Told by Kamo the Barber
THE WALL
4TH
DAY Told by Uncle Küheylan
THE HUNGRY WOLF
5TH
DAY Told by the Student Demirtay
THE NIGHT LIGHTS
6TH
DAY Told by the Doctor
THE BIRD OF TIME
7TH
DAY Told by the Student Demirtay
THE POCKET WATCH
8TH
DAY Told by the Doctor
THE KNIFELIKE SKYSCRAPERS
9TH
DAY Told by Kamo the Barber
THE POEM OF ALL POEMS
10TH
DAY Told by Uncle Küheylan
YELLOW LAUGHTER
Glossary
1ST DAY
Told by the Student Demirtay
THE IRON GATE
“It’s actually a long story but I’ll be brief,” I said. “No one had ever seen so much snow in Istanbul. When the two nuns left Saint George’s Hospital in Karaköy in the dead of night to go to the Church of Saint Anthony of Padua to break the bad news, there were scores of dead birds under the eaves. That April, ice cracked the Judas tree flowers, while the razor-sharp wind bit the stray dogs. Have you ever known it to snow in April, Doctor? It’s actually a long story but I’ll be brief. One of the nuns sliding and stumbling in the blizzard was young, the other old. When they had almost reached the Galata Tower the young nun said to her companion, a man has been following us all the way up the hill. The older nun said there could only be one reason why a man would follow them in a storm in the pitch darkness.”
When I heard the sound of the iron gate in the distance I stopped telling my story and looked at the Doctor.
It was cold in our cell. While I was telling the Doctor my story, Kamo the Barber lay curled on the bare concrete floor. We had no covers, we warmed ourselves by huddling together, like puppies. Because time had stood still for several days we had no idea if it was day or night. We knew what pain was, every day we relived the horror that clamped our hearts as we were led away to be tortured. In that short interval where we braced ourselves for pain, humans and animals, the sane and the mad, angels and demons were all the same. As the grating of the iron gate echoed through the corridor, Kamo the Barber sat up. “They’re coming for me,” he said.
I got up, went to the cell door and peered through the small grille. As I tried to make out who was coming from the direction of the iron gate, my face was illuminated by the light in the corridor. I couldn’t see anyone, they were probably waiting at the entrance. The light dazzled me and I blinked. I glanced at the cell opposite, wondering whether the young girl they had shoved in there today like a wounded animal was dead or alive.
When the sounds in the corridor grew faint I sat down again and placed my feet on top of the Doctor’s and Kamo the Barber’s. We pressed our bare feet closer together for warmth, and kept our hot breath near one another’s faces. Waiting too was an art. We listened wordlessly to the muffled clinking and rattling from the other side of the wall.
The Doctor had been in the cell for two weeks when they threw me in with him. I was a mess of blood. When I came to the next day, I saw he hadn’t stopped at cleaning my wounds, he had covered me with his jacket as well. Every day, different interrogation teams marched us away blindfolded and brought us back hours later, semiconscious. But Kamo the Barber had been waiting for three days. Since he had been inside they had neither taken him away for interrogation nor mentioned his name.
At first the cell, measuring one by two meters, had seemed small, but we had grown used to it. The floor and the walls were concrete, the door was of gray iron. It was bare inside. We sat on the floor. When our legs grew numb we stood up and paced around the cell. Sometimes when we raised our heads at the sound of a scream in the distance we examined one another’s faces in the dim light that filtered in from the corridor. We passed the time sleeping or talking. We were permanently cold and growing thinner by the day.
Again we heard the rusty grating of the iron gate. The interrogators were leaving without taking anyone. We listened, waiting, to be certain. The sounds died out when the door closed, leaving the corridor deserted. “The motherfuckers didn’t take me, they left without taking anyone,” said Kamo the Barber between deep breaths. Raising his head, he gazed at the dark ceiling, then curled up and lay down on the floor.
The Doctor told me to go on with my story.
Just as I was launching into my tale with, “The two nuns, in the thick of the snow . . . ,” Kamo the Barber suddenly gripped my arm. “Listen kid, can’t you change that story and tell us something decent? It’s fucking frigid in here as it is, isn’t it bad enough freezing on this concrete, without having to tell stories of snow and blizzards as well?”
Did Kamo see us as his friends or his enemies? Was he angry because we told him he had been ranting in his sleep for the past three days? Is that why he glared at us with such contempt? If they took him away blindfolded and ripped his flesh to ribbons, if they hanged him for hours with his arms outstretched, he might learn to trust us. For now he had to make do with tolerating our words and our beaten bodies. The Doctor held his shoulder gently. “Sleep well, Kamo,” he said, coaxing him to lie down again.
“No one had ever seen such heat in Istanbul,” I started again. “It’s actually a long story but I’ll be brief. When the two nuns came out of Saint George’s Hospital in Karaköy in the dead of night to go to the Church of Saint Anthony of Padua to break the good news, there were scores of birds chirping happily under the eaves. The buds on the Judas trees were about to burst into bloom in the middle of winter, the stray dogs to melt and evaporate in the heat. Have you ever known it to be as scorching as the desert in the dead of winter, Doctor? It’s actually a long story but I’ll be brief. One of the nuns staggering in the intense heat was young, the other old. When they had almost reached the Galata Tower the young nun said to her companion, a man has been following us all the way up the hill. The older nun said there could only be one reason why a man would follow them in a deserted street in the dark: rape. They ascended the hill with their hearts in their mouths. Not a soul was in sight. The sudden heat wave had made everyone rush to Galata Bridge and bask on the shore
s of the Golden Horn, and now that it was late at night the streets were deserted. The young nun said, the man is getting closer, he’ll have caught up with us before we get to the top. Then let’s run, said the older nun. Their long skirts and cumbersome habits notwithstanding, they sprinted past sign painters, music sellers, and bookshops. All the shops were closed. Looking behind her, the young nun said, the man is running too. They were already out of breath, sweat streaming down their backs. The older nun said, let’s separate before he catches up with us, that way at least one of us will get away. Each of them ran into a different street, with no idea of what would befall them. As the young nun dashed to and fro through the streets she thought she had better stop looking behind her. Remembering the Bible story, she fixed her gaze on the narrow streets to avoid sharing the fate of those who stopped for one last glimpse of the city from the distance. She ran in the darkness, constantly changing direction. Those who had said today was cursed were right. The mediums who took the heat wave in the middle of winter to be a portent of disaster had spoken on television, the neighborhood idiots had spent the entire day beating tins. Realizing after a while that she could only hear the echo of her own footsteps, the young nun slowed down at a corner. As she leaned against a wall in an unfamiliar street, it dawned on her that she was lost. The streets were deserted. Accompanied by a dog gamboling under her feet, she crept along very slowly, following the line of the walls. It’s actually a long story but I’ll be brief. When the young nun eventually reached the Church of Saint Anthony of Padua she found out that the other nun had not returned. She lost no time in relating her misfortunes, throwing the church into an uproar. Just as a search party was about to go out to look for the older nun, the gate opened and in she rushed, out of breath, her hair disheveled. She sank onto a stool, took several deep breaths, and drank two cups of water. Unable to contain her curiosity, the young nun demanded to know what had happened. The older nun said, I ran from one street to another, but I couldn’t shake the man off. Eventually I realized there was no escape. The young nun asked, so what did you do? I stopped at a corner, when I stopped the man stopped too. And then what happened? I lifted my skirt up. And then what? The man pulled his pants down. And then? I started running again. And then what happened? It’s obvious. A woman with her skirt up can run faster than a man with his pants down.”
Still lying on the floor, Kamo the Barber started laughing. That was the first time we had seen him laugh. His body rocked gently, as though he were frolicking with weird and wonderful creatures in his dreams. I repeated my last sentence. “A woman with her skirt up can run faster than a man with his pants down.” When Kamo the Barber started to roar with laughter I leaned over to cover his mouth. Suddenly he opened his eyes and stared at me. If the guards heard us they would either beat us or punish us by making us stand up lined against the wall for several hours. That wasn’t how we wanted to spend the time remaining before our next torture session.
Kamo the Barber sat up and leaned against the wall. As he took deep breaths his face turned serious and reverted to its usual expression. He was like a drunk who had stumbled into a ditch the night before and woken up with no idea where he was.
“Today I dreamt I was burning,” he said. “I was in the lowest circle of hell, they were taking sticks from everyone else’s fire and using them to stoke mine. But damn it, I was still cold. The other sinners were screaming, my eardrums burst and healed a thousand times over. The fire kept getting bigger and bigger but I couldn’t burn hard enough. You weren’t there, I searched every face, but there was no sign of a doctor or a student. I craved more fire, crying out and begging, like an animal going to the slaughter. The wealthy, the preachers, the bad poets, and cold-hearted mothers burning in front of me stared at me through the flames. The wound in my heart wouldn’t burn and turn to ash, my memory refused to melt into oblivion. Despite the fire that was turning metal to liquid, I could still recall my cursed past. Repent, they said. But was that enough? Were your souls saved when you repented? All you inmates of hell! Bastards! I was just an ordinary barber, who brought food home and liked reading books, but didn’t have any children. Toward the end of the time when everything in our lives went awry, my wife didn’t reproach me. I wanted her to, but she begrudged me even her curses. When I was drunk I told her what I thought when I was sober; one night I stood in front of her and said I’m a poor wretch. I waited for her to humiliate me and shout at me. I searched for a scornful look, but as my wife turned away I saw that the only expression on her face was one of sadness. The worst thing about a woman is that she’s always better than you. My mother included. You think I’m weird for saying these things, but I don’t care.”
Kamo the Barber stroked his beard, turning his face toward the light coming from the grille. Independently of his not having been able to wash for three days, it was obvious from his filthy hair, his long nails, and the stench of rancid dough that accompanied him on the first day, that he shied away from water even when he was outside. I had got used to the Doctor’s smell and grown quite protective of my own. Kamo’s smell kept imposing itself, like the foreboding of ill omen oppressing his soul. Now, after a three-day silence, there was no stopping him.
“I met my wife on the first day I opened my barbershop with a sign saying ‘Kamo the Barber’ on the window. Her brother was about to start school and she had brought him in for a haircut. I asked the boy his name and introduced myself: My name is Kamil, but everyone calls me Kamo. Okay, Kamo Ağbi, said the boy. I asked him riddles and told him funny stories about school. When I asked her, my future wife, watching us from where she sat in a corner, told me she had just finished secondary school and now worked at home as a seamstress. She averted her eyes from me and looked at the photograph of the Maiden’s Tower on the wall, the basil under it, the mirror with the blue frame, the razor blades and scissors. When I held out some of the cologne that I rubbed on the boy’s hair to her, she opened her hand and closed her eyes as she raised her small palm to her nose and inhaled. At that moment I dreamed it was me she saw under her eyelids, I wanted no eyes but those to ever touch me again for as long as I lived. As my wife was leaving the shop, wearing lemon scented cologne and her flower print dress, I stood in the doorway and watched her depart. I hadn’t asked her name. She was Mahizer, who had entered my life with her small hands, and whom I thought would never leave it.
“That night I returned to the old well. There was a well in the back garden of the house where I had grown up in the neighborhood of Menekşe. When I was alone I would lean over the top of the well and stare down into the darkness below. I never realized the day had ended, I never remembered there was another world that had no connection with the well. Darkness was serenity, it was sacred. I grew drunk on the smell of damp, I was dizzy with pleasure. Whenever anyone said I looked like my father, whom I had never met, or my mother called me by my father’s name, Kamil, instead of Kamo, I would run to the well, panting. As I filled my lungs with air in the darkness I would lean right down into the well and fantasize about plunging in. I wanted to break free from my mother, my father, and my childhood. Motherfuckers! My mother’s fiancé had made her pregnant then committed suicide, she had had me, even though it meant being disowned by her family, and named me after her fiancé. Even when I was old enough to start playing outside, I remember she would sometimes hold me to her breast, put her nipple in my mouth and cry. I tasted my mother’s tears instead of milk. I would close my eyes and count on my fingers, repeating to myself again and again that it would soon be over. One night as it was growing dark my mother found me leaning into the well and yanked my arm to pull me out. Just then the stone she was standing on suddenly slipped. I can still hear her scream as she fell in. It was midnight when they took her body out of the well. After my mother’s death I went to live in Darüşşafaka orphanage, and fell asleep spinning daydreams in dormitories where everyone told their own interminable life story.”
Kamo scrutinized us to see whether we were
listening to his tale.
“During my engagement to Mahizer I gave her novels and poetry books. Our literature teacher at school used to say that everyone had their own language, and that you could understand some with flowers and others with books. Mahizer would cut out patterns at home and sew dresses, sometimes she would write poems on small scraps of paper and give them to her brother to bring to me. I used to keep her poems in my barbershop, in a box in the bottom drawer, with the perfumed soaps. The business was doing well, with the number of regular customers growing constantly. One day one of my customers, a journalist who had come in for a haircut and left with a big smile, was shot as he went out of the door. The two assailants ran to the journalist lying on the ground and, after firing another shot into his head, shouted, you either love or you leave, pal! The next day a large crowd gathered on the still-bloodstained street to pay tribute to the journalist. I joined them, in honor of the haircut, and went to the funeral. I had no faith in politics, the only political person I had ever felt close to was Hayattin Hoca, my literature teacher at school. Although he never mentioned politics we used to find socialist journals poking out of his files. My skepticism was absolute, how could politics, made up of people, change the world? Anyone who claimed that kindness would save society and make it happy didn’t know anything about people. They acted as though selfishness didn’t exist, the motherfuckers! The basis of human nature was self interest, greed, and rivalry. When I said these things my customers protested and argued hotly to try and make me change my mind. How can a poetry lover think such things, said one of my customers, as he waited his turn. He stood beside the mirror and read out loud several verses from Les Fleurs du Mal that I had put there. The violence showed no signs of abating, we heard people in neighboring streets getting shot. Once a young customer of mine rushed into my barbershop in a terrible state and asked me to hide his gun before the police caught him. I may have occasionally helped someone out, but that didn’t mean I gave a damn about politics. The only existence for me was saving up to buy a house, fathering children, and spending my nights with Mahizer. But somehow Mahizer couldn’t get pregnant. When we went to a doctor in the second year of our marriage we found out it was me who couldn’t have children.
Istanbul, Istanbul Page 1
