The Time of Mute Swans

by Ece Temelkuran

  Ayşe thinks it’s funny. She’s in stitches every time I do it. Well, at least someone in this house still knows how to laugh. Sevgi has been even more aloof ever since that phone call. I can’t really come right out and ask her why this Önder fellow is calling, now can I? Whenever I bring up the past, she always says the same thing:

  “Why didn’t you visit me in prison, Mother?”

  My husband had told me that the military would never mistreat their young prisoners, that our children were safer in prison that out on the streets, where they could fall under the influence of the communist rabble rousers.

  I would have visited Sevgi if my husband hadn’t said that. Or did I, too, secretly think she needed to learn her lesson? How were we supposed to know? We’d never even heard about torture back then. The torturing of young women. Who could imagine such a thing? How could we have known? And even if we had known….

  This Önder of hers must be an old friend from those days. Something’s up, or she wouldn’t keep it from Aydın. But if Aydın would only act like a man and be more protective of his wife. He should take her out from time to time. My husband was as stern as they come, but he’d still arrive at home once in a blue moon with a basket of Amasya apples or a couple of meringue cookies. “I know how much you love them,” he’d say, not realizing I didn’t, not really. To this day, I don’t know how he got it into his head that I loved apples and meringue cookies. Anyway, husbands and wives should try to please each other. My daughter and her husband never even smile at each other anymore. Maybe this socialism of theirs forbids flirting and romance, too. Socialism wants its followers to be drab and stern and prepared.

  Jale Hanım’s blotchy husband is supposedly devout, but she’s always all dolled up. If it weren’t for her, nobody would be talking about was happening on Dallas, who’s performing at the music hall, the latest fashions. But whenever Ayşe lets slip something she has heard at Jale Hanım’s, we both get scolded. Just the other night, when Ayşe put on the dress Jale Hanım had the tailor make out of some leftover satin from her evening gown, Aydın became furious when he saw his daughter decked out like a little bride.

  “Nejla Hanım, we’re not raising our daughter to be someone’s bride,” he said to me, all stiff and huffy. Sevgi said nothing and looked the other way. I guess she wanted Ayşe to learn a lesson. My, how that child sobbed herself to sleep that night. What was the big deal? She’s just like any other normal girl.

  If only Ayşe had a playmate. There aren’t any other children her age in our apartment building. If only she had a friend. Ah! Now I understand why that Nesrin Sipahi song has been running through my mind all day: The world shows no mercy and I have no true friends.

  Young people today don’t know what true friendship is. Jale Hanım is fine enough, but I’d never consider her a true friend. Bless her soul, there’s something a little vulgar about her. Whenever Sevgi demands an explanation for why I’ve been over at Jale Hanım’s, I tell her the fuse blew and I needed some copper wire. Jale Hanım’s daughter, Feride, popped down to the basement and fixed it in no time, I tell her.

  The last time I fibbed, Sevgi asked, “Does the fuse blow every single day, Mother?”

  “It blows every day, dear. Every day! The current is too strong in our flat. I have to keep it grounded. If I didn’t, we’d all be dead by now!”

  I’ve been feeling sleepy all morning. I wish noon would come so I could read to Ayşe from that book with the peaches and then have a long nap. When everyone goes off to Samim’s for a potluck dinner and some vodka, I’ll stay home and listen to the radio for a while. Maybe they’ll play Nesrin Sipahi, and I’ll flick though Weekend. I might even pour myself some almond liqueur! I’ll wear nothing but my slip, nice and cool. And I really should finish that poem I started the other day. I’m not at all happy with it so far. The leaf does not fall, the tree casts it forth / The spirit perseveres, the body wastes away. I wish it were evening and Sevgi and Aydın were home, safe and sound. How much longer is our country going to go without a president!

  Meet My Dad, Aydın Bakar

  This place is thick with cigarette smoke again. I wonder if the detective has come yet?

  “Welcome, Aydın Bey. The detective is waiting for you at the usual table. He’s already ordered a drink. Shall I get you a double?”

  “Get me a rakı, but don’t set a place for me. We’re going out to dinner tonight. I won’t be staying long.”

  “Let me give you a hand. You’re all weighed down. I can carry something for you. What’s that? Report on Deaths in Turkey and Their Causes. What’s that all about, Aydın Bey? Is the state making you whitewash the murders it commits?”

  “I’ll keep that binder, Reşit. Just take this box off my hands, would you? Please put it somewhere safe and don’t let me forget it when I leave.”

  I can see Nahit biting his nails over at our table. What kind of detective bites his nails? It must be something important or he wouldn’t have wanted to meet up on such short notice.

  “Aydın Abi! I’m over here. Good to see you. How’s it going?”

  “I’m exhausted, Nahit. I’ve been carrying a box around ever since I left the office.”

  “A box of what?”

  “A chandelier, Nahit. A chandelier.”

  “What for? You can’t even get lightbulbs these days.”

  “A friend of mine is one of the experts fired by our beloved Nationalist Front government. He’s selling chandeliers now. He has a master’s from Harvard, but you know what it’s like. He’s been replaced by a fascist. They stuck him right in my office.”

  “So you’ve done it again, huh?”

  “Nahit, what else could I do? He and his wife just had a baby.”

  “Last week you bought a set of duvet covers, and the week before that a set of steel pans. Do you think you can subsidize the whole Turkish Left by buying all that junk?”

  “And do you think you can make a difference by catching the odd killer?”

  I tried to smile, but couldn’t. I could see Nahit was in a foul mood, too.

  “Are you reading that disgusting newspaper again, Nahit? Please don’t bring that crap in here.”

  “Look at this column here.”

  “Please don’t, Nahit. I deal with those kinds of guys at work every day, wondering when one of them will stab me in the hallway.”

  “I was looking at something Necip Fazıl wrote: ‘Ode to the Grey Wolf.’ And to think they have this crap on TV every day! Listen to this. ‘You, the scourge of the communist, the terror of the godless, the horror of the stateless, the dread of the dishonorable—’”

  “Please, Nahit. Spare me.”

  “Just listen for a couple more lines. You haven’t heard anything yet. It calls on the Grey Wolves to—”

  “Nahit, do you read this to torture yourself or what?”

  “It’s my job to monitor right-wing terror organizations, and this is the kind of thing they read for inspiration.”

  “I know that. But I can’t bear it.”

  “And not only that, the bastards write letters to each other in this paper. Look, they have a column called ‘From One Grey Wolf to Another.’”

  “It sounds like some kind of lonely hearts column for fascists.”

  “Things have really heated up since those left-wing militants killed Gün Sazak. The fascists are out for revenge. They say they’re going to make the sky crash down on the communists. I’ve got to monitor what they’re up to.”

  “Put that paper down for a minute. Why did you want to see me today? Has something happened?”

  “Yes, it has. But you looked so bummed out. What’s the matter?”

  “Bummed out! You sound like one of those American wannabes.”

  I immediately regretted having snapped at him. He shrugged it off, but I could tell I’d hurt his feelings. I decided to change the subject.

  “I heard a pack of Samsun costs fifty lira on the black market now. Is that true, detective?”


  He fixed me with a stern but sympathetic look, as though he were about to grill a suspect he knew was innocent.

  “What’s bothering you, Aydın?”

  “I don’t know what to do, Nahit. I really don’t. Our tea man at work, Hasan Efendi … he lives in the shanty town in Rambling Gardens. Anyway, his house burned down. To be more precise, his house was burned down. He says the Grey Wolves did it. I know he and his family are left-wingers.”

  “I’ll investigate it if you want. We’ll find out who did it.”

  “Investigate what? His house has been torched. Now his family’s homeless. And I was already saddled with this damn chandelier. I didn’t haven’t anything to spare, couldn’t give him a cent. I guess that’s what’s been bothering me. And he told me a story about a well—”

  “Let’s not get into—”

  “What do you think’s at the root of all this, Nahit?”

  “The root of all what?”

  “All this hatred. It’s spinning out of control. I mean, what makes two men in the same socioeconomic class, both of them at the bottom of the heap—”

  “Well, you’re a lot better at political analysis than I am, but—”

  “Political analysis! All I know is that there’s a curse on this country. Sometimes I feel like we’re being made to pay for something, some original sin. I look back at our history. There was the coup in ’71, when they hanged so many of our kids. But that wasn’t the first time it happened. So, I go further back, to the ’30s, the early days of the republic, when so many people were executed. But that wasn’t when it started either. Perhaps, I say to myself, things first went downhill when the Ottomans moved out of tents and into palaces. You know, when the early Ottomans first began seizing young boys in Balkan villages to put them into the service of the sultan. Some of those orphaned boys later rose to high positions of power, ran the state even. Perhaps those boys’ mothers cursed us way back then. Or could it be that—”

  “Hold that thought for a second. A friend of mine just stepped through the door. A rookie journalist. Timur! Out on the beat, are you? What’s with the raincoat on a sunny summer day? Who do you think you are? Columbo? Aydın, Timur covers criminal cases for Cumhuriyet. He’s all bundled up so nobody knows he’s packing. Don’t worry. He’s one of us.”

  Panting, the young man named Timur placed his hands on the table and shouted: “All hell’s broken loose! They’re trying to avenge Gün Sazak!”

  Everyone in the meyhane was looking at us.

  “Shit! Sorry for not introducing you. Timur, this is Aydın. He’s a demographer from State Planning. Aydın, mark my words, this Gün Sazak business is going to be the breaking point.”

  Timur wasn’t going to give Nahit a chance to sit, that much was clear.

  “Nahit Abi, I was wondering if you could point me to one of your guys dealing with left-wing terrorism. Are there any leads on who killed Gün Sazak?”

  Nahit downed the last of his rakı, grabbed his cigarettes and lighter, and motioned for Timur to follow him.

  “Aydın, let’s get together again soon. We found a new witness in that case you were wondering about.”

  I changed the subject to stop Nahit from blabbing about it in front of the journalist.

  “Have you heard anything about Liberation, Timur? That’s my neighborhood.”

  “Things are going to heat up in Liberation tonight. The Grey Wolves have already set up an interrogation room in their dorm. I heard they kidnapped some leftist kids in Liberation Park and took them there. And if the leftists from the Political Science Department decide to retaliate … well, it’s going to be one hell of a night.”

  “Damn it! We live right between the dorm and the department.”

  I’d better get home before dark. The strings securing the box are digging into my hand. At the entrance to Liberation Park, two young guys wearing suits have stopped a family with four kids. The family look like they’ve just arrived from some village. There’s no way they could have known that the park was under the control of the Grey Wolves. One of the young guys gets up in the face of the father, who must be in his forties.

  “Where are you from? Are you a leftie?”

  “No, brother. I swear it!”

  “Show me your ID. Are you a commie?”

  The pregnant woman pulls her children closer as one of them starts crying. The girl looks like she’s about Ayşe’s age. I wonder if I should get involved. The principal of Liberation High School tried to help someone the other day and that’s when they nabbed him. Then he was tortured for days. The village mother is still trying to gather her children close, and she’s hitting one of them. Typical response to oppression in this country. Bullies are never confronted; the weak are bullied.

  These strings are really cutting into my hand. I wonder if Sevgi got home safely?

  UNIT 2

  This Is My Neighborhood

  The Akgün Family

  RAMBLING GARDENS, ANKARA

  “I think it’s flying. Is it flying, Ali? Pull in the line a little. Then we’ll know for sure.”

  I pull in the line like Hüseyin Abi says. It cuts at my palms. Does that mean the kite’s flying? I think I can hear it: flap, flap, flap.

  There’s so much noise in the garden of our burned-down house. Black ashes rise into the air as the girls sing and dance. They’re having another fake engagement party. The fake bride-to-be has green eyes. She’s pretty.

  I wonder if the kite’s flying?

  Hüseyin Abi is good at building things. He goes to the Technical University and he’s going to be an engineer. Not just anyone gets to go to that university. Only the guys and girls who wear green leftist parkas. I heard Hüseyin Abi say he wanted to cheer me up after my house burned down. That’s why he made me a kite out of red paper.

  I can’t see the kite because the big sisters are dancing in the lantern lights so the big brothers can meet out in the back garden. And anyway, the power has been cut again, so the streetlights are dark. Tomorrow morning I’m going to tell everyone how Hüseyin Abi made me a kite and we flew it at night. I hope I can get all the words out and speak fast, like everyone else.

  Hüseyin Abi reaches out and feels the line, real quick. He’s in a hurry. When the electricity comes back on the fake engagement party will end. The girls will take off their dresses and be wearing jeans. The secret meeting will be over. Everything will stop when the lights come on. The guys call out from the backyard:

  “Hüseyin! We’re starting!”

  “I’m coming,” Hüseyin Abi says. They can’t have the meeting without him. He’s the chief of the neighborhood cell.

  “Ali, I know you can’t see anything right now. The kite was flying, but it must have got tangled in something.”

  I can’t answer right away. It’s not that I’m retarded. I’m “introverted.” That’s what the dede from the village told my mother. He called me a “serious boy” and said they should let me be. The dede is such a wise old man that everyone listens to him, even my mother and father.

  “Ali …”

  Hüseyin Abi tugged the line. He swallowed, making the lumpy thing on the front of his throat go up and down.

  “We’re going to have to cut it loose. It got stuck somewhere. We’ll never find it in the dark.”

  Now nobody will believe me when I tell them in the morning that we flew a kite. What if Gökhan says it was just one of my dreams! I can’t tell Hüseyin Abi not to cut it. I can’t even ask him if it really flew.

  They’re calling Hüseyin Abi again.

  “Hüseyin! They can’t keep dragging out the engagement party. The fascists will bust in on us if we don’t hurry.”

  Hüseyin Abi pulled out a switchblade and cut the line. The string in my hand went limp and died.

  “We’ll make another one, don’t worry.”

  Hüseyin Abi is playing with his mustache, his hand on his hip, his body bent like a question mark. He pats me on the head and grabs me by the shoulder
, pulling me against his leg.

  “Revolutionaries don’t let little things like this upset them. Don’t pout. We’ll do it again. We can always do it again.”

  When I wouldn’t let go, he sliced through the line so he could take the ball of string. I was left with a piece of string in my hand. It was light as air and all I had left. My favorite book burned up in the fire. The Paul Street Boys. Ernő Nemecsek burned up, too.

  “Come on, I’ll take you over to the meeting with me.”

  My school uniform burned up. I can’t go to school or to the library. I can’t look at The Wonderland of Knowledge encyclopedia set.

  “You’re eight years old now. You’ve grown up. You got circumcised last week, you and all those other boys. You’re not a kid anymore.”

  I put the piece of string in my pocket. The left one. I’ve got my other strings in the other pocket. I’ve got a list in that pocket too, a list nobody should see. My head got all heavy again. But I’m going to the meeting with all the revolutionary big brothers. Hüseyin Abi is still playing with his mustache.

  “If you’re like this because your house burned down, don’t be sad. We’ll all pitch in and build a new one. Some of my friends from the university will come too. We’ll do it together. Don’t look so sad! What’s a house anyway? It won’t take more than a day to build a new one.”

  We walked past the giant pot in the front yard. They’re cooking bulgur. Enough to feed everyone. The water I got must be gone. The container is lying on its side. I got so tired carrying the water down the hill from the fountain and then up the hill to our house. It was only enough to make tea. The girls are carrying the tea over to the guys in the back yard. I can see their jeans under their skirts. They shouldn’t let anyone see. They mustn’t. They’re revolutionaries. The TV sits in the dirt against the fridge. Uncle Laz saved them both. But the cords are all white, like they’re dead. As dead as my strings.

  Mom’s sitting cross-legged on the ground, her head in her hands. A couple of the aunties are rubbing her shoulders. The aunties talk so much, especially when someone is sad. They keep talking and talking. I listen to them.