by Hakan Günday
I would usually be standing when I started. It was important to be standing. For they would tend to be on the floor and early on this discrepancy in our heights would let them know who was boss. Another crucial detail was the instantaneous start. It had to be sudden! Bursting out in out-of-the-blue hollering, when they least expected it! Even better, looking at them with a childlike smile right before hollering, which petrified them even more.
Then I’d kneel and bring my face close to theirs. I loved doing that. Peering very closely at someone when only I knew the next move. Violating personal space, that minimum expanse based on interpersonal respect, was a terrific feeling! At first they would avoid looking at me and turn their gaze away but, having to eventually wipe the spittle that was spewing out of my mouth onto their forehead or cheek, would be forced to make eye contact with me through their fingers, even if for a moment. And in that moment, I never saw them. I’d be aware that right in front of me were a pair of eyes, a nose, a mouth, and a person at least twenty years my senior, but I wouldn’t comprehend.
That’s what I mean when I say that none of it felt real. Only I was real. Just me. This was clearly proof that I wasn’t quite sound in those years. But mental health wasn’t a prerequisite for my line of work. It was enough that my five senses and muscles functioned adequately. I cleaned the sewer! And if this was my job, I had to become god of the sewers! And that’s what I did … I did so many things I’d rather never have to remember, when the only chance I have of forgetting is to tell … What’s more, I did those things so I’d never have to remember other things … But trying to live today as a way of forgetting yesterday proved to be useless. Quite the contrary … the unforgettables that I yearned to forget quadrupled in number. Turns out that one needed to forget about tomorrow in the first place … forget so completely that one could believe that every dawn meant a new sun … forget so utterly that every sighting of the sun was surely the first and the last. Forget well enough to say, “I believe today’s is a bit wider!” or “Yesterday’s sun was more oval shaped, wasn’t it?” Forget enough to live every day as if it were one’s first … And to holler: “Which religion doesn’t have déjà vu? I’ll take that one!” And to be silent: Where there’s no resurrection, that’s where I’m going to be …
When I first laid eyes on Dordor and Harmin, who’d ended up doing one of the world’s most detestable jobs when they ought to have been explorers like Juan Ponce de Léon or James Cook, I knew right away that they were nothing like my father or any of the other people in the fabric of crime in which I was only a stitch. Even though I was only nine years old. But their way of conversing and their manners, along with the stories they told, made me associate them with the adventurers in the children’s books I’d just begun to read at that time. A pair of adventurers from an era when piracy didn’t yet entail gnawing hungrily on a freight ship off the shore of Nigeria …
Although they’d sampled the salt of at least four oceans, besieged by nothing but the horizon, they had somehow gotten stuck in the handful of water that was the Aegean. Perhaps they’d dropped by in passing and, having come by the opportunity for easy money, wasted years of their lives between Greece and Turkey, all the while saying, “One last time, then we’re done!” I had the best times of my life on the Dordor and Harmin when their day off coincided with one on which my father wanted to get rid of me. Yes, the boats had been named after their captains. Obviously these were monikers. They’d each picked a noise made by their boats and put them into words. Dordor was named Dordor because his boat made a “dordor-ing” noise! Maybe it was because I never learned their real names that they reminded me so much of the seamen in the books.
Especially during the months of spring, they’d come in the mornings and whisk me away, take me on either the Dordor or the Harmin, and bring me back to my father only after dark. Both liked to read. They always kept books on their boats. Both smoked constantly. Not that I had any inkling at that age that what they were smoking wasn’t tobacco. From morning till night they inhaled a mix of ashen marijuana smoke and cloudy sea air and were either completely quiet or talked as much as if they’d lived a thousand lives. They were the ones who taught me to swim. They taught me to dive, to use the spear gun, everything about the sea’s underside and surface. They were a year apart. Dordor was older. Their families were in Istanbul. In Heybeliada. But they never saw them. Perhaps because they’d run away from home years ago. Over some hard feelings or other … if Dordor brought it up, Harmin would wave it off. If one asked, “I wonder how Mother’s doing?” the other would snap, “Like Father, I bet!” and that would be that.
They read Jack London. But not the Jack Londons I used to read. Theirs were different. They preferred the novels of Jack London that I was to discover years later, in which every White Fang rotted and fell out one by one … I wished night would never fall. That it would never get dark and they’d never have to take me back. That we could stay at sea forever! Drop anchor anywhere we liked, fall into the water wherever we pleased! Neither had ever gotten married. No woman could have shared that watery life. They were no older than thirty. Two overgrown juvenile delinquents. Two overgrown water plants … flowers, after Felat’s fashion.
They were the only ones I could ever tell … the only ones … what one of the immigrants did to me back when there was no reservoir and the immigrants were being held in the shed … or, to be more accurate, what he did while the others watched and did nothing …
It wasn’t just the innocents that left the countries of their birth. It wasn’t just those fleeing from bad men … The bad men themselves also fled! Our shed also accommodated criminals who were wanted in their own countries and set to serve sentences of who knows how many years. Thieves, murderers, rapists, and child molesters … and I had to be alone with them …
I was ten. The age when I’d had the idea of selling the water. I held out my hand for the money. He held my hand and pulled me toward him. The other laughed. They all got lumps in one cheek. As if they were holding eggs inside their mouths. I thought they must be ill. Turns out it was khat. Khat, that Yemeni shit. Shit that also had a Latin name: catha edulis. A type of amphetamine. The kind that one can’t stop chewing on all day … I tried to run. I tried to get away, to shout, to bite, to hurt him. I couldn’t. I tried to disappear. Like a magical kid. I tried to be blind and deaf. I tried not to understand what was happening to me. I couldn’t. There were red rivers in his eyes. He pulled up my pants and zipped them. He buttoned the button and put the money in my pocket. I tried to think of other things. I couldn’t. I tried to cry, to run off crying, to find my father, tell my father everything. I couldn’t. It might have been because I was selling the water. Because Father might be mad if he found out … He pushed a wad of grass into my mouth. It wasn’t an egg in his mouth, I saw then. He chewed and his eyes got even redder. I chewed and nothing happened.
The prints stayed on my forehead half the day. His fingerprints. I waited for them to disappear. They didn’t. They sank into my skin and bled into my forehead. I tried to sit down for two days and couldn’t. Then in secret I bled …
How ever did I tell Dordor and Harmin, how was I even able? Maybe I didn’t know what I was saying. Perhaps I was simply raving … They both listened. They exchanged glances and said nothing. The only thing they did was to not take me back that night, telling Father I was to stay on the boat. I stayed there three days, in fact.
When it was time to leave, the men in the shed came out of the back of truck and, walking right past me and staring at me the whole time, got on Dordor’s boat. Then Dordor and Harmin returned the following morning with an empty boat, just like always. Aruz called my father the same day and told him that the goods hadn’t been delivered to Greece. Not knowing how to reply, my father asked Dordor, who in turn said:
“We killed them all. Whatever we owe you, we’ll pay.”
My father was once again at a loss for words because neither Dordor nor Harmin told him why t
hey did it. They were both seaman enough to be able to keep a secret. I wonder to this day why they didn’t tell my father the truth. Probably because they knew it wouldn’t make any difference. Maybe it was because they didn’t even trust their own father!
When Aruz received the news, he said, “This is the last time! The first and the last! I won’t excuse this kind of thing ever again! Tell them to send the money!”
Dordor paid Aruz for the six heads lost during delivery, and Aruz then returned it to their relatives. One of them, however, the oldest one who watched, was from a clan in Libya. A clan that was a regular in other trafficking services of the PKK as well. Since Aruz was under the impression he could talk his way around anyone at any time, he didn’t take the situation seriously at first and said the ship had sunk. On Aruz’s orders, Dordor even sunk the Dordor a week later. But the Greeks, hoping to blackball the PKK on a drug deal they had going with the Libyans, downright poured salt into the wound by claiming the boat was in great shape and couldn’t possibly have sunk. This created a complication that was beyond Aruz’s control and in the realm of other trafficking deals. Aruz tried to withstand the pressure for as long as he could, but that turned out to be only four years. When he saw that diplomacy was no longer enough and that the issue was getting too dangerous, Aruz called Dordor one night to say:
“I like you both … We’ve done business for years now … but I’m at my last straw here. Now … decide. You or him? One of you is enough.”
He was asking them which one of them to kill. He was a businessman after all. He had in mind to keep doing business with the one who survived. I don’t know how they made the choice. Actually, I have an idea … One night four days before Aruz’s men showed up with their knives, as we sat on the boat, Dordor had taken a drag off his joint and looked up at the stars, and then spoken:
“You know what we used to do? When a tour boat or something went by, we’d wave at it. Then we’d check out who was waving back … how many of them were chicks and all that. Sometimes it was only dudes waved back. And we’d say, man, even from this far away, the broads can tell we’re not much to look at … We’d do odds and evens over the ones who waved …”
Maybe that was how they decided who would die. Or perhaps Dordor never told Harmin about his conversation with Aruz and kept all the short straws to himself … He had continued:
“You know that inn with the two doors, the one the minstrel Aşık Veysel speaks of? That’s the reason for the constant draught in this life! That’s the reason I’m always cold. Guess I might as well go and shut a door.”
He went and shut the door behind him. He was stabbed sixty-six times and photographs of his corpse taken to be sent to Libya. The photographs were taken from angles that clearly showed the stab wounds. That was the order. Because the bastard had been sixty-six years old at the time he watched me get fucked, and at the time he died.
Some of it father told me. Some Harmin related to me. I started to say, “Why didn’t you run!” but Harmin laughed. I couldn’t think of a thing to say. It was all because of me … I would have apologized, but I said nothing. Harmin himself left soon after anyway. To shut his own door. Only his books were left behind. He left them all to me. Then there was only me. And all those corpses …
Were you in any way affected by being molested at the age of ten, Gaza?
Who’re you? Just kidding! Of course not.
Are you sure?
It’s not like this kind of thing only happened to me!
Yeah, but still …
Let me tell you a secret! No one knows … but all ten-year-olds get molested.
Are you serious?
Yes!
Then what happens?
They turn eleven.
Well, how come no one else remembers but you?
Because it’s healthy!
What’s healthy?
Rape is. You know the stages kids have to pass through? For a healthy development? Rape is one of them. That’s why no one remembers. If there’s something you can’t remember, you can bet it’s something healthy!
But you remember.
Because you keep reminding me, fucker!
You’re just fooling yourself, Gaza.
You don’t say. Of course I’m fooling myself. Have got any other choice?
Obviously you’ve been affected by that molester. You’ve been affected plenty. Please admit it.
Fine, I admit it. But only because you said please.
Thank you … how do you feel now, then?
Same as always.
Which is?
Like khat!
I beg your pardon?
Like I’ve been chewed up! Like I’m being chewed on. Like I might be chewed on any minute now, that’s how I feel.
Then there’s only one thing you have to do …
What’s that?
Have yourself spat out.
How?
Cause pain.
To who?
Whoever’s mouth you’re in, that’s who.
But he’s dead. Dordor and Harmin killed him.
The dead can’t chew, Gaza.
They damn well can.
Believe me, they can’t. Some other mouth is chewing you.
There is no other mouth.
There is … the shed.
The shed! Don’t be ridiculous! Whose mouth is that then?
You father’s … Ahad’s mouth.
Never thought of it that way.
It’s my job to think, Gaza. Not yours.
What’s my job, then?
To kill me.
That’s what you always say. Please, stop saying that.
Fine … but only because you said please.
Thank you. How do you feel now, then?
Same as always.
Which is?
Like a paper frog.
There were two alternatives to transporting illegal immigrants: in the first, the goods, that is, the person, would be delivered to the recipient and do forced labor in that country in order to pay off their transportation fees. In the other, the recipient was the goods and would, in return for a one-time-only payment, be taken where he was going and left to his own devices! Since the world was changing, however, the first model was becoming more commonplace. The equilibrium of income between regions of the globe was fast approaching the ratio of life: no life between the earth and the moon, so compared to one side of the illegal immigrant transportation business, the other became fleshier and fleshier with each passing day. Another reason for this was its potential for even more profitable side-trades. The utilization of illegal immigrants as illegal laborers in the manufacture of illegal goods meant an extraordinary advantage in sustainable economy and sustainable evil. For even evil required a certain amount of effort to sustain it. You couldn’t expect human nature to do everything! Anyway …
The costs of illegal manufacture were lower even than exportation costs out of China. Because of this, in fact, so much profit was expected of the exchanges to be made in the target country that transportation, and in some cases even accommodation, were basically free, and illegal transportation services, also symbolically priced, were in the ascent. From Kabul to Marseille or Islamabad to Napoli, the free worker shuttles took off, shuttling back and forth between continents. This meant even more broken-nosed profiles passing through our shed. Those harboring dreams of freedom in the country they were headed to were replaced by those who had acquiesced to being put to work for years so they could save just enough for a cow per year and send it to their families. Of these half were aware of all this as they embarked on the journey, while the other half, oblivious to what was to come, imagined themselves to be on their way to get a piece of the pie. Illegal immigrant transportation had become indistinguishable from slave trade. When one examined the eminent techniques of the industry, violence came forward like the sun. Still, as it was too difficult to uphold the old, exhausting, and time-consuming traditions of receiving slaves in return for won ba
ttles or setting up markets for human auctions, the contemporary world had channeled its energies into that miraculous device, willpower. Though establishments that used traditional methods of violence and provided capital for the sex industry did still endure, the most powerful means of human trafficking was persuasion. This was of course also a type of violence, but at least when all was said and done, it didn’t leave as much of a mess.
Ultimately, the general behavior of those who came in and out of the shed suggested, besides the fear brought on by ambiguity and illegality, a docility loaded with dreams of cows—the average weight of which, by the way, is five hundred kilos. This entailed the emergence of a new breed of immigrants with even more of a slump to their shoulders, heads even more bowed in compliance, and in a positive correlation of poverty/compressibility, took up even less space in the shed, who carried their own rations for fear of having to pay for food, no longer talked to one another as much, and lastly, constantly made sly little plans. As a result, they weren’t much distinguishable from the slaves in ancient Egypt. We’d collectively gone back in time! After seeing that new breed, in fact, I never once again believed that the pyramids had been built by extraterrestrials. It didn’t take me long to realize that the pyramids had been built not by humans, but from humans. Long story short, and thanks to the support of the macroeconomy policies of G-8 and G-20 member nations, I was now G-1 and pharaoh of that seventy-two-square-meter shed. The only difference between me and the child pharaoh Tutankhamen was that I didn’t wear stupid makeup. Or a skirt … As a pharaoh, all I needed was money. Enough money to help build my pyramid! I was at the age, no, past the age to be stealing from my father! But there was no possible way I could make alterations to the shed without his knowledge. Therefore, first of all, I needed to persuade Ahad. He was on the phone in the arbor. With Aruz, of course. I waited patiently for them to shut up. Two months had passed since I’d gotten the news of Harmin’s demise at the hand of the parasites on the back of the hippopotamus he’d gone out to hunt. June, which I’d hated, since much like insects, the immigrants increased in number in the summer, had come around again, but this time I wasn’t so upset that school was out. I had my heart set on supremacy after all.
