Istanbul, Istanbul

by Burhan Sonmez

  “Okay, get your breath back.”

  “When did you tie this cloth on me?” I asked, raising my left wrist.

  “Does it hurt? I had to tie it tightly.”

  “It’s not the bandage that hurts, it’s the wound.”

  “When they brought you in, your wrist was bleeding. I tore off my shirt sleeve and bandaged your arm. You were semiconscious, don’t you remember?”

  “The last thing I remember was the nail they hammered into me.”

  “What nail?”

  “They hammered a nail into my wrist.”

  “Into your wrist?”

  “Yes.”

  “Damn them! It’s unbelievable. What kind of people are they?”

  “People? They’re the real people, Uncle Küheylan. Haven’t you realized that yet? When God created nature and the earth and the sky, Satan laid his own claim on people, and fed them with fruit from the tree of knowledge. Once people had acquired knowledge they did what no other living thing had been able to do, they became aware of their existence. And the more aware they became of their existence, the more they admired it. They loved no one but themselves, not even God. The only reason for their attachment to God was their desire for life after death. They measured everything against their own existence. They trampled nature and exterminated living things. When the time came they would kill God too. That’s why evil had the upper hand in the world. I told the torturers that too. Satan’s bastards! They stuck needles in my ear. They poured some strange substance down it. It was boiling hot. They tried to bore into my brain. I struggled to stop myself from going mad, I tried to break free of my chains. I banged my head on the wall. When they ordered me to beg, I cursed. Sometimes I groaned, sometimes I roared with laughter. You’re people, I said, you’re the real people. Bloodcurdling screams I never thought I was capable of came out of my mouth. They stuck my head in water. They kept my mind alert to make sure I felt the pain properly. They worked like surgeons, craftsmen, butchers. They got into my blood vessels and unblocked the channels of pain. They did what being people required of them.”

  Uncle Küheylan was waiting with the morsel of bread between his finger and thumb.

  “Uncle Küheylan,” I said, “I didn’t join the revolutionaries, because they’ve got the wrong idea about people. They believe people are inclined to be good, that they can be saved from evil. They think selfishness and cruelty only occur in adverse conditions. They don’t see the hell people harbor in their souls, they’re not aware that people are clawing to turn the world into hell. Revolutionaries are squandering their lives by looking for truth in the wrong place. People can’t recover. People can’t be saved. The only way out is to run from people.”

  Uncle Küheylan eyed me with curiosity and pity. Like everyone else, he took me for an incurable eccentric. He listened to me patiently.

  “Is there anywhere left in the world that’s out of bounds to people, Uncle Küheylan? They ride in luxury jeeps, police cars, factory workers’ buses. They crowd into banks, schools, houses of worship. They invade cities and villages, mountains and forests. The Istanbul you love so much is theirs too. They lie and they assault. Not content with going everywhere, they worm their way inside us too. They usurp our bodies. Even if we manage to run away from people, how can we run away from ourselves? How can we save ourselves from ourselves? Instead of pondering this issue, revolutionaries and politicians, teachers and preachers talk interminably, deceiving themselves and everyone else. That’s why I respect the torturers. They don’t feel the need to lie. They don’t hide the truth. They don’t hesitate to embrace evil. I told them they were the most honorable people I knew. At that point they were carving my flesh to pieces, like they were dismembering a live animal in a slaughterhouse. I genuinely respect you, I said, you’re the same on the inside as you are on the outside. You are exactly as you seem. My words threw them into a rage, they lost control. They pounded the walls and smashed the windows. They screamed in pain. They slammed the door. They abandoned me chained to the wall, blindfolded, and left the room. Was it day or night? Was life in the outside world flowing at a fast or slow pace? Perhaps they had gone into a side room, perhaps they had grabbed the phone and called their wives, telling them they missed them. I’m so tired, they said. I had another nightmare, they said. I want to get drunk and go to sleep in your arms, they said. Their wives exuded affection. They were good wives, as they had been trained to be from childhood. At times like these they would speak softly, their hearts going out to their husbands. They would tell the man they loved that when he came home they would fling their arms around him, smother him with kisses, snuggle up to him and open their legs for him. They promised their man a body hot with desire. There was nothing else they could do. They didn’t know whether it was day or night outside either. Was life flowing at a fast or slow pace? Were the streets crowded or deserted? Once my interrogators had put the phone down, they fell silent. They wiped away their sweat. They crouched by the wall and smoked. They waited for their hearts to stop palpitating. Once their rage had subsided, they opened the door of the room where I was still tied up, and returned to my side with the exact same number of footsteps. They spoke with composure. Kamo, they said, you must tell us about the past. Kamo, they said, you must reveal the secrets of your past. I raised my head and, staring into the darkness under my blindfold, replied. Are you ready to listen to what’s beyond the past? While not even God can change the past but leaves us to confront it by ourselves, are you up to hearing more than that? Bastards from hell! Sons of bitches! They removed my chains, untied my blindfold. They made me sit in front of a mirror. They made me look at a face that looked like a corpse. We are the future, they said. Look in the mirror Kamo, you have no future, only a past, and you’re going to surrender that past to us, they said.

  “Uncle Küheylan, the face I saw in the mirror was crushed, filthy, ravaged. Blood was oozing from one of its ears and pus from the other. One of its eyes was open, the other closed. Its eyebrows were slit. Its lips were split. Spit drooled from its mouth. It didn’t look human. We’re familiar with the mirror’s glass, Uncle Küheylan. We know the wood or metal that the frame is made of, its flowered or glittery carvings. But what about the inside? Can we ever be familiar with the void in the depths of the mirror? Can we ever conceive of the magic contained in its layers? The mirror was like the well I used to lean over and stare into for hours when I was a child. Its sides were visible, but a dark vortex spun in its center. I was trapped in that vortex. My breathing was labored. The pain in my chest oppressed me like a rock. I coughed uncontrollably. My lungs felt as though they were being ripped out. I wondered what I was supposed to do now. Should I smash the mirror beside me, or should I break the neck of one of the interrogators standing next to it? I squealed with childlike delight and burst out laughing. It was as though I were in the hall of mirrors at the fun fair. I ignored the pain in my chest. My laughter became raucous, resonating throughout the room.”

  As though in an attempt to silence me, Uncle Küheylan reached over and dropped the morsel of chewed-up bread inside my lower lip.

  “Eat that as well,” he said, “you need it.”

  The stench of mold overpowered my nasal cavity. I felt sick. I retched. I took the bread out of my mouth.

  “I can’t do it, I can’t swallow it,” I said.

  “Okay, let’s take a break.”

  “Then I saw Zinê Sevda there.”

  “Zinê Sevda? In the interrogation room?”

  I knew Uncle Küheylan would brighten up at the sound of her name.

  “Yes,” I said. “When I picked up the mirror and brought it down on one of the interrogators’ faces they all went for me. They vented all their rage on me. All their carefully designed torture techniques went out of the window, they pounded me until I was unconscious. I have no idea how much time passed. They doused me with cold water. When I came to I was shivering on the concrete. My body felt heavy. A smoke screen covered my only good ey
e, the world looked hazy. I could only distinguish shadows. A table. A chair. Several people standing up. A long wall. Opposite me, at the end of the wall, two thick columns. A body suspended between the two columns. To discern whose body it was I would either have to go closer, or get rid of the smoke in my eye. I rubbed my eye and wiped away the blood around it. I raised my head from the ground and looked in front of me again. A woman was suspended from a metal line between the two columns. Her two outstretched arms were tied to the metal line, while the rest of her body hung down. She could barely move her head. She was naked. Her breasts were bleeding. The cuts that started at her shoulders trickled down her stomach, groin, and legs, leaving a red streak behind them. It was obvious that the interrogators were trying to force me to give in to them, appealing to my sense of compassion by torturing someone in front of me yet again. They took me for someone who gives in to compassion. I rubbed my eye again. I stretched my neck to get a better look. I realized that the person hanging like a crucified saint was Zinê Sevda. She was light. Like a delicate leaf on an autumn tree, she was a long way from the ground and close to the heavens. The ropes on her arms didn’t prevent her from falling down, they stopped her from ascending to heaven. Was this the same thin girl who had knelt in front of our cell a few days ago, heedless of all the interrogators in the corridor? Was this woman suspended in the air Zinê Sevda, who had remained motionless despite being kicked and beaten? She recognized me. She raised her head a bit higher. Her one good eye dilated. The edge of her lip twitched. She attempted a smile. It wasn’t long before all her strength had gone and her head fell to her chest again. I couldn’t tear my gaze away from her. I wasn’t embarrassed by her nakedness, or my own. I knew the interrogators were trying to possess our emotions before our bodies. I placed my hands on the floor and, concentrating all my strength on my arms, I straightened up. I knelt. I wiped the sweat from my forehead and the bloodstains that went from my cheek down to my neck. I was as erect as a statue. Immobile. The corridor was silent. The only audible sound was the blood that had run down the length of Zinê Sevda’s body and was dripping from her toes onto the floor. I waited there on my knees, just as a statue waits in the sun or the rain or the snow. The interrogators grunted. They cursed irritably. They realized I was reenacting Zinê Sevda’s gesture of solidarity when she had knelt in our corridor a few days ago. They leaned over me. They dragged me to the back wall by the hair. They placed my shoulders and my arm on a plank. They took a long, thin nail that glinted like a light and poised it on my left wrist. They drove it in with a heavy hammer. I felt as though they were driving the hammer into my brain, not my wrist. I groaned. Tears gushed from my open and my closed eye. I admire you, I said to the interrogators. You do what no one else can, you make what’s inside reflect outside exactly as it is. Before smashing the prisoners’ souls, you smash your own open like a pomegranate and scatter them all around. They took their hands off me. They withdrew and exchanged looks. They had no other choice but to continue. They took another nail out of the box. They poised it above my other wrist. They raised the hammer in the air. At that point I could hardly breathe, my eye closed. I blacked out. The last question that crossed my mind before I fainted was this: Did they suspend Zinê Sevda in the air in front of me to make me talk, or were they crucifying me and driving glinting nails into my wrist in her presence as a ploy to make her surrender?”

  Uncle Küheylan touched my good wrist, wrapping his fingers around it. He kissed it as though kissing bread. He touched it to his forehead. He closed his eyes. He waited, my wrist still on his forehead. He moaned with the humility of one of the rare people who values suffering. He needn’t have. I could deal with my own suffering, he should stick to worrying about his. I tried to yank my wrist away, he wouldn’t allow it. I tried again. He gripped my wrist with his large hands, keeping it on his forehead until I coughed. When he realized I had not stopped coughing he raised his head. He placed my wrist on the floor, as gingerly as if it were a baby sparrow. He held my shoulders. He held up my body, which had flopped over to one side, and leaned my back against the wall. He picked up a piece of cloth from the floor and wiped the blood oozing from my mouth. I think it must have been the other sleeve from his shirt. He cleaned my forehead and my neck. He poured the last few drops of water onto the cloth and wet my lips with it.

  As my head spun, the beating in my jugular vein was not the sound of my heart but the sound of time. Of time that had returned from the past, crashed against the breakwater of the future and abandoned me there to my fate. I could not keep up with its pace. It would swell and then subside. It revolved between an instant and infinity. It snatched my wife Mahizer away from me, taking her far away, etching her name on my jugular vein so I would feel it with every breath I took. Time wanted me to laugh at the past on the one hand and cry for the future on the other.

  On the day when Uncle Küheylan told us there was a world in the sky where we were reflected and where we each had our double, I raised my head and saw a rainy, crowded, bustling Istanbul in the darkness. I heard the sound of the street vendors, the roar of the car engines that inhale exhaust fumes in heavy traffic, and the bells signaling the end of the working day. Istanbul, which extended from one end of the sky to the other, engulfed men and women, pulverized, then vomited them. Everywhere there was the stench of rotting meat. Everyone regarded everyone else as a stranger, no one spoke to anyone. Because people are like the cities where they live, they would wake up feeling cheerful one morning, and troubled the next. They worked from morning till evening and from evening till morning. They had accepted death and were prepared for everything, except coming face to face with the truth in their hearts. They flowed in the streets like a muddy stream, congregating in the squares when they tired. I too had a double amongst those people. My double, who walked alone in the crowd, tied a thin scarf around her neck. She was as much a reflection of me as a reversed image in a mirror. I was a man, she was a woman. I was troubled, she was serene. I was ugly, she was beautiful. I was evil, she was good. I was Kamo the Barber, she was my wife Mahizer. When we met we fit into a single shadow. We read poems that bound us to one another. Thanks to those poems, we invented our own private language within languages. We communicated in that language that no one understood, we joked, we made love. Even in our sleep we wanted to dream of a poem and start the next day with it. But time didn’t allow our language to take root and bond with the earth. That bitch time.

  When Mahizer abandoned me and left home, in the beginning it wasn’t her I sought, but the poem of all poems.

  The language I learned from my mother wasn’t enough. I had grown up with my mother’s language, memorized names, grown to know objects and people by their names. I assumed the information of language was the information of truth, and prepared myself for an existence like everyone else’s. I spoke with a few words, and remained silent with the same number of words in my head. I had not invented language, my mother had given birth to me inside it. Until the day when, leafing through some notebooks in my mother’s drawer, I found a series of handwritten poems, I had believed I wouldn’t be able to step outside of that language. The poems written in faded ink were my father’s. It was the first time I had seen his signature and his handwriting. Although my father used words I knew in his poems, he changed the sounds, giving the letters a new significance. He invented meanings that no one had thought of before. Like Lokman Hekim in his quest for the elixir of immortality, he was seeking the pure language of existence. He would make the stars descend from the sky and replace them with the stars of poetry. He swore that poetry and love had both suckled milk from the breast of death. He would open the curtain a crack and with his hand wipe the condensation from the window that opened out onto the truth. Like animals that are hunted one by one, he belonged to a species of poets that was becoming extinct. He died before I was born, but he left me a priceless inheritance. With his poems he saved me from the quicksand of desire. Desire was life’s new God. Like God, it tr
ied to reach all places and control all things. It knew no limits. Whereas God was false. Desire was the repetition of that falsity. When you added people’s falsity to that, life became unbearable. Who was there, apart from poets, who could break that vicious circle? Who was there left, apart from poets, who spoke in the language of death and who promised people the infinity of truth rather than the boundlessness of desire?

  I visited library after library, in the hope of finding the poets’ most beautiful poem and laying it at Mahizer’s feet. I pored over catalogues. I scoured series after series of journals and books in reading rooms. When the time came for children’s poems, I crossed over to the Asian side one sunny autumn day and went into the courtyard of the Çinili Children’s Library.

  Like my father’s lyrical poems, the library’s small courtyard was alive with the music of birdsong. The shade of the ivy evoked the sensation of peaceful slumber. A wooden bench with flaking paint stood at the point where the grass and the side wall met. I walked across the cobblestones and the grass. Sitting on the bench, I waited for the beads of sweat that had formed as I climbed up winding hills during the journey from the Üsküdar Quay to here to dry. Beyond the wall there was silence. Everywhere was deserted. Just as my eyes were about to close, the courtyard door opened. A little girl entered. She was wearing a school uniform and carrying a schoolbag and glanced, first at the steps going up to the library on the next floor, then at me. I wasn’t sure she was able to distinguish me through her thick glasses. She came and sat beside me.

  “Whose father are you?” she asked.

  “I’m not anybody’s father,” I said.

  “Then who have you come to collect?”

  “I haven’t come to collect anyone.”

  “In that case are you the new librarian?”

  “No. What happened to the old librarian, is he retiring?”

  “She’s dead.”