“Demirtay, you’re getting more and more like my father, you ask difficult questions just like he did,” said Uncle Küheylan.
“It’s too late, Uncle Küheylan.”
“Why?”
“It’s too late,” repeated Demirtay, shrugging.
Had Demirtay been the same in the outside world? Was he assailed by pessimism as he wandered amongst billboards, coffeehouses, and beggars? As everything in the street underwent continuous metamorphoses and forms all became confused, perhaps his inner world too was confused. He was cheerful and pessimistic at the same time. He grew melancholy whilst laughing, he stopped in the middle of an animated conversation and lapsed into silence. “It’s too late.” Did he know what it was too late for?
“Demirtay,” I interrupted, “as you have not rejected my answer, I presume you accept that I’ve solved the riddle.”
“To tell you the truth, Doctor, I’m more interested in the plane crash than the riddle.”
“Do you know about that plane crash?”
“Yes, a friend of my mother’s was on that plane. They were supposed to be meeting the next day. My mother was going to give her a novel she had just read. She couldn’t believe it when she heard about the accident. She waited for days, hoping for good news.”
“What did your mother do with the book?”
Demirtay bowed his head and stared at his feet for a while. It was clear that he felt the cold more with each passing day. Whichever way he turned, his body ached. His movements were slowing down, the light in his large eyes was growing dimmer. Neither talking nor staying silent did any good.
“I don’t know,” he said, without raising his head. “She must have left it in the bookcase. I never asked her.”
“If I were you I would have wanted to know about that book.”
“Doctor, it’s not the book I’m thinking about right now, it’s the passengers. I thought everyone on the plane had died, I didn’t realize there was a survivor.”
He was curious about the woman who had survived the plane crash, but couldn’t bring himself to ask if that part of the story was true. In here people understood concepts, but couldn’t be sure what they referred to. They thought they had seen light, water, and a wall for the first time. Every sound meant something different. Someone whose mind was overflowing with questions eyed even his own hands with suspicion. He couldn’t understand why stories that were left open at one end were closed at the other. Wasn’t Istanbul the same too, living as she did, both above and underground? Demirtay, who had had to endure pain in order to discover that, could not ask, “What is the truth?”
“I wish my mother knew that,” he said. “One person’s surviving a crash where everyone was presumed dead would have given her a shred of optimism to cling to. It would have helped her deal with her grief better than all those cigarettes she smoked on the nights when it recurred. Raising me by herself was already a big enough burden for her. She worked as a tea lady in a firm. She wanted me to study and have a life that was different from hers. She would go to bed after me and leave at the same time as me in the mornings. At the bus stop, as she gazed at the billboard that changed weekly, in some adverts she would see her dream holiday resort, and in others the beautiful home that would one day be ours. She gushed excitedly about the life we would lead in the future. At weekends she would go and clean houses in distant neighborhoods so she could save money. Everyone had their own neighborhood. The rich and the poor, east and west supporters, those with strong and weak accents had all convened in different neighborhoods. Those who used to feel uneasy about going to bed with a full stomach when their neighbor was hungry had found the solution, they moved to another neighborhood. There were smaller Istanbuls within Istanbul, the hungry and the well-fed were a long way away from each other. As the day was ending on one side of the city, the other side was preparing for the fun to start. As one side was waking up to go to work, the other side had just gone to bed. Everyone was in their own Istanbul, living with people just like themselves. The view they saw when they looked out at the sea was different too. As my mother rushed from one job to the other, dreaming of moving out of our house and our neighborhood and regularly updating our television and fridge, she believed that my future would be different from hers. She didn’t know that I didn’t believe it. Doctor, did I ever tell you that story? They asked Cinderella why she had fallen in love with the prince. That was the only destiny the tale offered me, she replied. The life in our neighborhood didn’t offer us any other destiny either. Every family dreamed of the same thing, but they all ran up against the same dead end and got stuck. Nobody asked why. Neither did I, until I read the books given to me by the older boys we used to play football with on the empty plot.”
Demirtay leaned across and picked up the plastic water bottle. He took two sips and carried on.
“In Istanbul bread and freedom were two desires that demanded that one be the slave of the other. You either sacrificed your freedom for bread, or you renounced bread for the sake of freedom. It was impossible to earn both at the same time. The young people in the neighborhood wanted to change that destiny; standing in the shadow of the brightly lit billboards, they dreamed of a new future. As I read the books they gave me I thought: How can a new future be possible when the whole of Istanbul is infested with sores? Streets were packed with cars and plots were packed with buildings. Cranes and metal piers were replacing melancholy trees. Like the number of beggars, the number of birds that struggled to find food was increasing. I read incessantly, trying to make sense of this city that my mother, my teachers, and my friends were so attached to.”
Demirtay’s voice, which had sounded hoarse when he had woken up, was growing softer. “My mother couldn’t keep up with the flow of the city, she was exhausted from overwork. When she spoke of her childhood she said that life didn’t use to change so quickly in the past. In those days, she used to say, innovation came gradually. We incorporated it into our lives little by little. Innovation used to excite but not confuse us. We knew what we would encounter the next day. Is that the way it is now? Innovations come quickly and go just as quickly. They’re wiped out of our lives without any possibility of getting old. They leave no traces nor memories behind them. Before we have had a chance to adapt to one innovation a new one has already taken its place. But people have a limit. We walk faster than tortoises and run slower than hares. Our minds and feelings have a limit too. We march ahead of tradition and fall behind innovation. This discrepancy that puts a strain on the balance is what breaks the scale inside us. New is not the continuation of old, because there is no old. Everything becomes waste. Permanence is forgotten. Forming ties is losing credibility. Like refuse tips, hearts too are filled with waste. This pace exhausted my mother. She would go to sleep at night with sadness and fill her days with dreams. What else could she do? She was at a loss as to how to make a life all by herself in the midst of all the chaos in Istanbul, what else could she hold on to but dreams?”
Demirtay didn’t like being alone. He was afraid of staying in the cell by himself, and was happy when there were more of us. He missed train stations, dilapidated ferries, and bustling avenues where everyone bumped into everyone else as they walked. The beauty of the city lay in its crowds: Everywhere was filled with people, noise, and lights. An existence that was rendered calm in one street roared into life in another. Metal was blended into concrete, steel was plated with glass. Istanbul’s people resembled her too. She was born of earth, fire, water, and breath. She was as hard as steel and as fragile as glass. In the city people breathed life into the alchemy to which so many adventurers of the past had devoted their lives. Not prepared to settle for what already existed, they went off in pursuit of mindblowing innovations. They joined together fire and water, love and hate. Finding nature repulsive, they added evil to good in order to change it. They bought lies with money, decorated their houses with plastic flowers, injected their skin with silicone. They awoke every morning with the hope o
f seeing a more appealing face in the mirror. In Istanbul, alchemy started with oneself.
Demirtay’s mother was strong and weak, fast and slow, hopeful and pessimistic. She didn’t know how she managed to carry all that baggage at once. She tried to keep up with the sunset, adverts, and car horns. She was afraid of memories. Memories reminded her that the good times were in the past. The city was devastated. Life was sterile. People were degenerate. Each day was worse than the day before. Like everyone submerged in loneliness, she too liked novels with happy endings. In novels she found the integrity that didn’t exist at home, at work, and in the street. She tied together the conflicting ends of her soul. One side of her soul was steel, another glass, one side was tears, another rage.
“My mother believed in books,” said Demirtay. He looked at us as though trying to work out whether we believed in them too. “Some nights when she became engrossed in a novel and forgot all about me, or when she smoked more cigarettes than usual, I wondered whether there might be a new wound in her heart. I didn’t ask, and she didn’t tell me. She was like a child struggling underwater, fighting to come up to the surface for air. She didn’t drown, but neither was she able to come up to the surface for air. She rebuked this city that was built on calculations instead of on dreams. She thought Istanbul looked like a fancy book cover. The decorations and patterns on the outside deceived people, distancing them from the truth that was inside. Sometimes, I would ask childishly: Mommy, why do you work so much? Demirtay, she would say, I want to buy a house so that in the future you can live in comfort. I can’t give you a good life now, but I’m striving to make sure you’ll be happy in years to come. Don’t think the future is a long way away, actually it’s around the corner. When you read about the lives in books you’ll understand it better. Whenever my mother spoke that way I would listen faithfully. It was from her that I learned to believe in books.”
“Does your mother know they’ve caught you?” I asked.
“No. I haven’t seen her for months. I haven’t been back to my neighborhood because they’re looking for me.”
“Why, Demirtay?” I asked. “You could have seen her after work, in the busiest part of the street, without anyone noticing.”
“I thought about it, Doctor. I was tempted to try it a few times but I always changed my mind at the last moment. They might have been following her.”
My son used to come and see me in secret. Sometimes in the thick of a crowd, sometimes he would sneak into a dark street corner and touch my arm. He would adapt his pace to match mine and walk with me. As I listened to Demirtay I felt fortunate. When I thought about those who had been waiting a long time for their sons and daughters, or even those who had received news of their deaths, I realized I belonged to the happy minority. I had found my son and had him admitted into the hospital. I had delivered him into safe hands.
“Demirtay,” I said, “I used to have a colleague with whom I worked for many years. His adolescent daughter left home and joined a group of revolutionaries. One day he heard that his daughter had been shot, and that her friends had buried her in secret. He found out where her grave was. He had a marble gravestone made. He had a picture of a ship engraved on it. It was the picture on the cover of the Illustrated Book of Istanbul he had read with his daughter when she was a child. He went every week and spoke to his daughter buried under the earth. He read her sections from the Illustrated Book of Istanbul. He told her about domes that sparkled like stars, streets that curved like rivers, buildings that tapered like spears. One day his daughter’s friends arrived and said there had been a mistake. A different friend rests here, your daughter is in a graveyard on the other side of Bosphorus, they said. My colleague didn’t sleep that night. Nor the next. On the third night he went and lay by the usual grave. He awoke at daybreak. He looked up at Venus. He listened to the wind in the cypress trees. He dug his hand in and took a handful of earth from the grave. He smelled it. He threw it up in the air. He watched the wind scatter the earth and blow it away. I’m the owner of this grave, he said to himself, I’ve grown fond of it and it of me. He fell to his knees and wept. He believed that if he left that grave, his daughter in a different grave and all the other dead would be left with no one to care about them. My colleague continued to visit that grave regularly. He took the Illustrated Book of Istanbul with him, read stories from it and described pictures. Do you know what made me think of that incident? I think your mother did the same thing. She read the book that she was planning to give her friend to the Istanbul Sea, where the plane had crashed, and maybe once she had finished reading it, she let it drift away in the sea.”
“Doctor,” said Demirtay, looking anxious, “that’s the second time you’ve told a sad story. What’s the matter with you? Before you used to advise us not to talk about death and suffering in here.”
When I thought about it I realized he was right. “I’m not aware I’m doing it. That means I must lose control sometimes,” I said.
Demirtay was trying to warm his hands with his breath; I touched his forehead to check his temperature. I took his pulse. There was no flesh left under his skin, just bone. He shivered constantly. His temperature had risen. I told him to lean back. I raised his feet slowly and placed them on my knees. The skin on the soles of his feet was a mass of cuts and red, pink, and white welts. He was lifeless. I cupped his toes in the palms of my hands, as though swaddling them with cotton wool. I tried to warm him.
He dissolved into giggles.
“What’s up?” I said.
“That tickles.”
“Good, at least you can laugh.”
“Do I have to laugh?”
“Yes, we must laugh. Otherwise we’ll be in trouble with Uncle Küheylan for telling sad stories. He’s already giving us stern looks.”
“In that case I’ll tell you a joke.”
Had Demirtay thought of a new joke, or was he going to tell us one of his old ones?
“What joke?” I said.
“The polar bear joke.”
“What polar bear joke?”
“The baby polar bear.”
“Go on, tell us.”
Demirtay, who had surrendered his feet to the palms of my hands, started.
“In the land of the north the ground was ice, the mountains were ice, the very air they breathed was ice. The baby polar bear snuggled up to its mother and buried itself in her long, warm fur. Mommy, said the baby polar bear, are you my real mommy? The mother bear was surprised. Of course I am darling, she said. Okay, was your mommy a polar bear too? Yes, my mommy was a polar bear too. What about your daddy? He was a polar bear too. The baby polar bear walked away from its mother and went to its father. This time it snuggled up to his warm fur. Daddy, said the baby polar bear, are you my real daddy? Yes, said its father. The questions went on as before. And was your daddy a polar bear too? Yes. And was your mommy a polar bear too? Yes. It’s actually a long story, but I’ll be brief. Once the baby polar bear had got the answers it was expecting, it stomped off angrily and stood up on the ice. Why am I always so cold then, it shouted.”
We laughed in whispers. If we didn’t control our voices they might travel over the walls, all the way to the world aboveground.
“Why am I so cold then,” said Demirtay. Demirtay repeated his own words and, like a child who has run all the way back from a long distance, he continued, panting. “I’m always cold as well. It’s as though I have blocks of ice inside my flesh instead of bones. Why am I the one who feels the cold the most in this cell?”
On cue, I said, “You’re a baby polar bear.”
“I must be.”
The sound of the iron gate opening wiped the smile off our faces. We strained to hear the voices that spilled out into the corridor.
In the dark, vampires that suck young girls’ blood returned to their cave, wolves that devoured children in the woods entered through the iron gate. An overpowering smell assailed our nostrils. It was as though we had fallen down a well in the deser
t and were waiting for a camel train following the stars to come and rescue us. We dreamed of opening our eyes one morning somewhere far away from here and waking up on warm sand dunes where we couldn’t hear the iron gate. We were as helpless as a ship tossed on the waves in a storm. Each of us thought we were the only surviving crew member of a sunken ship, but we were afraid of sharing the fate of the dead seamen.
We waited, completely immobile. We listened to the sounds outside. They opened and closed the door of one of the cells at the top of the corridor. Then they moved on to the rear corridor. They banged noisily on the door of another cell. They hooted with drunken laughter. They sang a song with words we couldn’t make out. They turned back in high spirits. They came close to us, their footsteps echoing on the walls. There were a lot of them. Their grunting and their stench were overwhelming. They stopped in front of our cell. Instead of ours they opened the door of the opposite cell. They dumped Zinê Sevda inside. They swore at her. They insulted her. They slammed the door. They burst out in frenzied laughter, like inmates in a psychiatric hospital.
Demirtay got up and walked slowly to the grille. He glanced over at the opposite cell. Turning to us he said, “Zinê Sevda isn’t at the grille.”
“She’s only just come back. She’ll need a few minutes before she can stand up.”
Demirtay wasn’t aware that he was standing barefoot on the freezing concrete. “I’ll wait here,” he said.
It wouldn’t be the last time.
Life in the cell was repeating itself. As the darkness slowly circled above us, our words described the same person, traversed the same city, clung to the same hope. But we still began each day with enthusiasm, in the hope that today would be different. We stared at each other as though meeting for the first time. When we realized that our dreams, as well as our suffering, renewed themselves, we lapsed into momentary silence. If happiness was limited, could unhappiness have no limit? If laughter was limited, could suffering have no limit? Every day we invented new pretexts for laughing, once we sensed that our laughter too renewed itself, we realized we had reached a new threshold.
Istanbul, Istanbul Page 17
