Istanbul, Istanbul

by Burhan Sonmez

  I hesitated, wondering how to proceed.

  “Was she old?” I asked.

  “She was older than my mother. The night the librarian aunty died a burglar broke into the library. When he saw there was nothing here but books, he stole the wall clock. Now we have no clock.”

  “When the new librarian arrives she’ll buy a clock and put it on the wall.”

  “The old clock was ten minutes fast. We’d got used to it.”

  “You can put the new one forward too.”

  “Forget about what’s outside, the librarian aunty used to say, forget about the time outside.”

  “And were you able to forget it?”

  “Sometimes.”

  I wanted to know how they managed it. Was it the stone walls dating back centuries, or the picture books, or the birds’ chirping, or the librarian that had made them forget time?

  “My name’s Kamo, what’s yours?” I said.

  “Kıvanç.”

  “Kıvanç, how far can you see with those glasses?”

  “You’re just like all the children, Kamo Ağbi,” she said. “You’re making fun of my glasses.”

  “No, I’m not making fun of you. I just wondered if you can see the stars in the sky at night.”

  “No, I can’t. The sky is so far away, it looks like mist. I look at stars in picture books. I scan the north on star charts and always manage to find the north star amongst all the others.”

  “When I was your age I was more interested in the south than the north. If you ask why it’s because the south made me think of descending. There was a well in our garden, and I spent my childhood playing beside it. When I said the word south, it made me think of the bottom of the well, the depths of the earth.”

  “But the library is one floor up. You need to climb up ten steps to get to the reading room.”

  “I’ve grown up, I’ve grown accustomed to upstairs places too. Do you like counting?”

  “Yes. I count steps, lines, windows. And I never forget.”

  “Kıvanç, who opens the library? Who supervises you?”

  “The attendant in the hamam next door opens and closes up. She leaves us alone. We study. We haven’t got up to any mischief since the librarian aunty died.”

  “Good girl. I’m going to study with you for a few days.”

  “This is a children’s library, Kamo Ağbi. What are you going to study?”

  “I’m doing some research. I’m going to check out the poetry books. What are you doing here, do you have homework?”

  “I come here every day after school. I wait for my mother to finish work and come and collect me. I study until she gets here.”

  Kıvanç slid off the bench. She put her rucksack on her back. She walked toward the steps. I went after her. I climbed the steps. There were several children in the one-roomed, square library, studying, their books and notebooks open. The walls were lined with shelves. Everywhere was neat and tidy. The tables were clean. Apart from the marks left on the dome when the rain leaked in, there were no stains anywhere. Kıvanç sat at a table near the window. She indicated that I should sit on the chair next to hers. I glanced at the shelves. Ignoring the science, history, and geography books, I located the poetry books. I picked a stack of them. I sat on the chair that Kıvanç had pointed out. Taking paper and a pen out of my pocket, I put them beside the poetry books. I could see the circular mark left by the stolen clock on the opposite wall. The rusty nail above the mark hung there devoid of purpose.

  That day I had the double pleasure of reading the poems of elderly poets missing their childhood and the pleasure of studying with children. I assimilated the silence. I turned the pages one by one. I went from one book to another. I jotted down brief notes on the pages in front of me until Kıvanç, who was looking out of the window, packed her things away. It was only then I realized that it was evening. I followed Kıvanç down the stairs. I watched her hug her mother who had entered through the courtyard gate.

  “Kamo Ağbi,” said Kıvanç, “this is my mother.”

  Seeing the paper and pen in my hands, her mother took me for a teacher. “I’m pleased to meet you, hoca,” she said, holding out her hand.

  “Pleased to meet you too,” I said. I shook her hand. “You have a very intelligent daughter. Kıvanç is the most studious child here.”

  “Thank you.”

  Mother and daughter left, hand in hand.

  Outside I heard her mother say to Kıvanç, “I’ve got a surprise for you.”

  I lit a cigarette. Taking a drag, I blew the smoke into the air. I left the library with a feeling of contentment I hadn’t experienced for a long time. The street was deserted. The lights were on in the Çinili Mosque on the left and the Çinili Hamam on the right. The days were getting shorter, it got dark early. The colors of the evening quickly encircled the houses. The autumn wind blew the washing on the balconies skyward. Kıvanç, who padded beside her mother like a contented cat, looked up at the balconies as she walked. She tried to see everything she could through her thick glasses. When she turned her head to look at the far end of the road, she decided to play a game for the rest of the way. She let go of her mother’s hand and started running. The scene looked like a painting I had seen somewhere years ago but had never forgotten. Yellow light shone onto black and white walls and the pavement. Naked branches of trees were elongating. Birds were poised on electrical wires like ornaments. Past the trees and the birds, a woman was waiting by an unlit lamp post. The woman stepped off the pavement and held out her arms, hugging Kıvanç, who ran into them. They remained locked together for some time, then they linked arms and spun like a windmill. Their skirts billowed out. This must be the surprise that Kıvanç’s mother had meant. Turning into three shadows, they all disappeared together at the end of the street.

  Once the street was empty again, when only the trees and the birds remained, I came back to my senses. I thought the woman who had thrown her arms around Kıvanç looked like Mahizer. She had been far away, the lamppost had not been lit and in the dark I sometimes mistook women for Mahizer. Although I was not certain, I tossed my cigarette away and raced after them. I looked down side roads on street corners, trying to work out where they had turned. I glanced at every window in the apartments that had their lights on, right until I reached the main road at the end of the street. Once I had hit the two-way traffic and the throngs of people on the main road, I realized I had lost them. I turned back down the same road, scrutinizing the same streets and the same windows. That night I walked up and down that road over and over again. I felt cold, I felt tired. When I met Kıvanç in the library courtyard the following afternoon, I couldn’t hide the exhaustion on my face.

  I was sitting on the bench. Kıvanç entered through the courtyard gate, her hair in plaits, and came and sat next to me. She chatted to me as though I were her classmate from year three.

  “Why do you look so tired?” she asked.

  “I worked until very late last night,” I said.

  “I have to work too, I have a lot of homework today.”

  “Do you want me to help you?”

  “Would you really?”

  “If you want me to, of course.”

  “Yes please.”

  “It’s a deal.”

  “If I finish my homework I’m going to the cinema tonight.”

  “That’s nice, is your mother taking you?”

  “Yasemin Abla’s taking me. My mother has to work the night shift tonight.”

  “Who’s Yasemin Abla? Is she a relative?”

  “No, she’s my mother’s friend. She arrived yesterday, and she’s staying with us tonight.”

  “Was that the surprise your mother was talking about yesterday?”

  “Yes, Yasemin Abla comes and spends time with me now and then.”

  “What do you do together? Do you play house?”

  “We play house, we play hide and seek, we play cat keepers.”

  “And then you sleep together
. . .”

  “We sleep snuggled up together.”

  “Look, I’ve got a surprise for you too.”

  I took a bar of chocolate out of my pocket. I put it in Kıvanç’s tiny hand. Her green eyes dilated, the transparent lenses of her thick glasses turned green.

  I didn’t read any poems that day, I spent it doing Kıvanç’s homework. I ate some of the chocolate she shared with me. I helped her write a story in her notebook and to draw a picture of a mountain, a lamb, and a tree. I gave her small clues to the answers of a ten-question test. Before we had finished her homework I realized that the daylight streaming in through the window was beginning to fade. Excusing myself, I stood up. I left a bit earlier than the day before. I smiled goodbye to the children, whose stares were now familiar to me. All the children sat facing the clock. Even when it wasn’t there they were dependent on it. Counting myself as one of them and going by the time on the nonexistent clock, I descended the ten steps with the sound of ticking in my ears. I went out of the courtyard gate, which was ajar. Crossing the road with large strides, I entered the courtyard of the mosque on the opposite side. I sat on a stool alongside feeble old men, and waited for evening.

  From my vantage point at the courtyard gate I observed several women and children in the street; when I spied Kıvanç too, skipping happily outside, I stood up. Hiding in the shadows, I followed her. I knew she would run down the same road and go to the same unlit spot where her Yasemin Abla had waited for her yesterday. I maintained a good distance between us. I was close enough to be able to see them easily but far enough for them not to notice me. When Kıvanç had advanced a bit further, the woman beside the unlit lamppost stepped out and threw her arms around her. She was wearing the same coat as yesterday. It was my wife Mahizer, in all her glory. She was here, with her pink lips and large eyes. I leaned against a wall and observed them. I watched them embracing long and hard, feeling each other’s warmth, nuzzling one another.

  I knew that Mahizer had become a revolutionary after she had left me, that she lived in secret hideouts and constantly changed her name. So, her latest name was Yasemin. What a waste. Just as a flower opens oblivious of its own beauty, and a leaf falls unaware of death, my wife Mahizer lived oblivious of herself. She didn’t know that she became a fairy in her sleep, that she cast magical incense on the sheets. She didn’t know, but I did. Because she did not, I kept the image of her beauty alive in my mind for her. If I had come across the question “What is beauty?” whilst doing homework in the library today, I would have drawn a picture of Mahizer and written: “Unattainable beauty or love is like knowing what water is but going without it.” That was my case. I knew what water was, but I was deprived of it. I could see Mahizer but I lived without her. I cursed time, Istanbul, and people, I hated everyone.

  Leaving the narrow streets behind us we came out onto a main road, with them walking ahead and I following behind. We got into two taxis, one behind the other, and went to Bahariye Street. There we each had a toasted sandwich, then went in to watch a film I had not even seen the poster for. They sat at the front, I sat in a seat in the back row, near the door. I tried to remember when Mahizer and I had last gone to the cinema together. Throughout the film I looked at them as much as at the screen. While they were engrossed in the film I became lost in dreams of the old days. When we went out the weather had turned cold. The biting wind was more like winter frost than an autumn breeze. We walked in the crowd. We bought hot chestnuts from the street vendors. We looked in the shop windows. We got into two separate taxis and returned to our street. They stopped in front of a building with a green door, I got out at the next corner. I hid by a wall in the shadows and waited for the man in the gray raincoat who had been following Mahizer for hours.

  A short man had been trailing Mahizer and Kıvanç since they had met. He had raised the lapels of his gray raincoat to give him an air of mystery, like the detectives in foreign movies. He too had got into a taxi, entered the cinema, and browsed in shop windows. Too busy chain-smoking and surveying the area, he hadn’t realized I was following him. At the end of the evening he turned back down the same road. As he got out of the taxi he lit yet another cigarette. He strode toward the green door of the building. He slowed down and peered inside. He jotted a quick note on a piece of paper he took from his pocket. His work done, he raised his lapels once again and crossed the road. He entered an abandoned plot behind a low wall. The plot was dark. I went after him, and saw that he was waiting by a tree surrounded by darkness. I approached him and asked him for a light. He took his lighter from his pocket. When, after several attempts, he eventually managed to ignite the lighter, he brought it close to my face. No sooner had he seen me than his free hand flew to his waist. I was too quick for him; brandishing my steel knife, I held it against his throat. I hit his knees and made him get down on the ground. I confiscated the gun tucked inside his belt.

  “Who are you?” I said. “Who are you following? Whose wife are you trying to snare?” Once the man had got over his initial shock he pulled himself together. “I am the state,” he said, in a tone that exuded confidence, “if you don’t let me go you’ll regret it.” I punched him in the face, knocking him onto his back. I pressed my knee down on his chest. “You are the son of Satan, a bastard of the state!” I said. Still unsated, I landed him another punch. He emitted some indistinct grunts that may have been curses or pleading. His puny body squirmed right and left. The harder I pressed the more he tried to wrench his chest free of my knee. He groaned in agony as his ribs broke. I felt his repugnant breath on my face. “Do you know what you are?” I said. “I’ll tell you something you won’t understand. My wife Mahizer is truth, you’re a shadow out to destroy her. The shadow of the truth is worthless. Whereas anything that delivers the truth from worthlessness and recreates it is a beautiful poem. But what about you? You’re the enemy of the truth.”

  After that night I started singing the song of the steel knives more frequently; in one week I rescued my wife from three separate shadows. My wife Mahizer was naïve. All the while she thought she knew the world and could change it she wasn’t aware of my presence that was just a scream away. She roamed the streets of Istanbul with no idea of what lurked behind her. She shuttled back and forth between the two sides of the Bosphorus. She waited at bus stops, sat in cafés, wandered around libraries. Whenever the person she was meeting failed to arrive at the appointment she went away feeling anxious. She stayed in damp houses with moss-covered roofs in rundown areas of Üsküdar, Laleli, Hisarüstü. She went to bed late, and got up early. She looked after the plants and children in the houses where she stayed. When, one evening, she went to the street that housed the Çinili Children’s Library and hugged Kıvanç again, it gave me as much pleasure as it did them.

  Mahizer spent that night at Kıvanç’s house and didn’t go out the next day. She had looked tired and unwell for the past few days, her face had appeared thin. She needed to take care of herself and rest. I was glad that she was spending at least one day at home. I decided to go to the library and read poems while she was at home giving herself a break. I bought a bar of chocolate from the corner shop. Slowly I walked up the street, of which I was now a part. I waited for Kıvanç in the library courtyard. Before long Kıvanç opened the gate and burst into the courtyard wearing her broad smile.

  “Where have you been for so many days? I was worried about you!” she said.

  “I went to other libraries,” I said.

  “Yasemin Abla was worried too.”

  “Yasemin Abla? About who?”

  “Who do you think, you of course.”

  “Does she know me? I mean, that I come here . . .”

  “Of course. I told her.”

  “When?”

  “You know we went to the cinema last week, well that night I talked about you. I told her you’d helped me with my homework.”

  “She’s known for a week . . .”

  “Yes.”

  “What did sh
e say?”

  “She said she knows you, that she loves you.”

  “She said she loves me? Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “What else did she say?”

  “Last night she wrote you a letter. She put it in my bag so I could give it to you. Look, here it is.”

  I took the sealed envelope. I examined it front and back. Not knowing what to do, I fidgeted with it for several minutes. As all kinds of possibilities, good and bad, raced through my head, I noticed that Kıvanç was eyeing me with a teasing smile. I smiled back. I stroked her head.

  “You’re the prettiest girl in this library,” I said.

  “Today I have to write a poem for homework, will you help me?” she said.

  “I have to go soon, do you think you can do your homework by yourself today?”

  “Okay.”

  “Go on, up you go, start writing your poem.”

  “Okay, Kamo Ağbi.”

  “May the muses smile on your pen, Kıvanç.”

  “Thank you . . . but haven’t you forgotten something?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Haven’t you got a surprise for me today?”

  “I nearly forgot. I bought this for you.”

  “Chocolate! Thank you, Kamo Ağbi. I love chocolate surprises.”

  As I watched Kıvanç climbing up the stairs and going into the reading room, I realized that my hands that were holding the letter were sweating.

  I opened the envelope. I stared at the single page filled on both sides with Mahizer’s pearl-like handwriting. Love, it said, pain, wounds, and memory, it said. She lined up familiar words one after the other, creating a whirlpool in each one. She wrote regret, tears, anger, separation, tears, regret, forgetting, forgiving, destiny, death, loneliness, destiny, regret, tears, and forgetting, over and over again, repeating what she had already said a few sentences later. She used near for far, life for death, union for separation, and vice versa. In another time and place I knew what those words meant, but now I couldn’t understand what Mahizer was saying. Her language was nothing like either my mother’s or my father’s. It made meaning meaningless. Like a flock of birds that takes flight in a panic, her words were all jumbled together. She broke the wing of each word by driving it into the wing of the one beside it. She destroyed what had made us what we were in the past, and with it, any chances of opening the door to the future. I want to be forgotten, she said. Inside this huge city, I feel as though I’m imprisoned in one room. Although I love you, our past is our destiny, Kamo, we cannot escape our past, she said.