The Time of Mute Swans

by Ece Temelkuran

  “Well, it was Zeki Müren who started wearing those weird costumes.”

  “But Zeki didn’t go and get himself a big pair of tits like Bülent.”

  They laughed. Dad got mad at them. That’s why he said we wanted to get out at the next corner.

  Dad told Şeref Abi where we lived and where he worked, but Şeref Abi won’t ever come. He wasn’t even listening.

  “Don’t go it alone,” Dad said.

  “I’m okay,” was all Uncle Şeref said.

  When we got to our neighborhood, the lanterns were burning. They’re going to build our house tonight. Mom’s smiling, and her cheeks are red. She’s been working all day moving bricks. The aunties always mix the plaster, and the big brothers from the university lay the bricks. Mom told Dad that they sang all day while they worked. When she smiled, sweat ran down her face. The neighbors brought bread and tomatoes. We had them for supper. Mom put a whole tomato in her mouth because she was working all day. She made lots of noise chewing it. She had another tomato in her hand when she told Dad where she wanted to put the toilet. Mom and Dad looked at the spot together in the light of the gas lanterns, tomato juice running down their hands. Mom’s hands are all red, but I think it’s the dust from the bricks, not the tomato juice. I’ve seen it many times before: when people build houses, their hands get red and their faces look like tomatoes.

  The revolutionary big brothers and sisters come in the morning. They stand with their hands on their hips except for when they point at the ground. They hold their tea glasses with two fingers and use their middle fingers to hold their cigarettes. They stand in a circle stirring their tea. Finally, they say, “Okay we’ll build this here and that there,” and their tea spoons stop moving. The spoons click against the glasses twice. Nobody makes a sound as they all stare for a while at the place the house will be built. That’s when they hold their glasses and think. Next, they drive sticks into the ground and stretch string between the sticks, showing the outline of the house. The big brothers and sisters put their empty glasses on a white tray with pictures of flowers. The glasses will be waiting there for them when they start digging. Everyone smiles as they carry bricks from the truck. They sweat and they smile. Kids like me eat bread and wait on the sidelines. They shout out to us when their hands are full:

  “Hey, come take off my hat for me…. Pick up that trowel and bring it here…. Get a rag and wipe the sweat off my face.”

  When you close your eyes and listen, there are all kinds of sounds: Ugh! Hey! Hold on, hold on. Come on, one more time. Wait! Give! Hold! Move! When the sounds turn into a song, you know the house is being built. At noontime, everyone squats on the ground and has their lunch, talking the whole time. Then they drink water. Lots of water.

  As soon as a wall is finished they put a picnic stove by it to make tea. The next morning, more walls go up and a roof gets put on top. When the house is finished, everyone comes to look at it, and they’re always surprised, as though they hadn’t built it themselves. “Look at that!” they say. “It turned out really well! We’ll add another room right over there when we have some more money.” The big brothers and sisters start joking around in the garden by the front door. Everyone watches them, like they’re watching a movie. Nobody understands their jokes, but they laugh anyway. Even the bricks seem to join in the laughter. After a short while, the big brothers and sisters stop laughing. They go back to stirring their tea. They start thinking again. There are other houses to build, other things to do. They get serious, and they make plans. And that’s how our house was built. With everybody laughing like a ripe tomato.

  Ayşe’s Outing with Dad

  “Pain doesn’t necessarily bring wisdom, Aydın. Do you know what I mean?”

  Those were Uncle Selahattin’s words. Then the birds sang like crazy.

  I went to the office with Dad because Grandma had to go to the doctor to get her blood sugar levels checked. Mom said, “The other day, she went to work with me. Today, she can go in with you.” I don’t like Dad’s office at all. There’s nothing there but a stapler. They don’t even have a paper puncher. Then Detective Nahit called my dad. “Let’s meet in Sakarya,” he said on the phone. “Then we’ll go to Selahattin’s bird shop.” Dad got upset.

  “Please, Detective. Let’s not get Selahattin mixed up in this if we can help it. You know how shaken up he gets.”

  Then we went to Sakarya. It has a stand named “Picnic.” “Picnic” means eating a sandwich standing in the street. Everyone seems happy because the air smells like grilled sandwiches, and it’s nice. What’s more, when you squint all kinds of colors swim in front of your eyes. That’s what I was doing while we stood there waiting for Uncle Detective. Dad starting talking to me about the people passing. He always does that.

  “Look, Ayşe. Look at the people’s hands. They’re telling each other how they ran away. You know, those games they play in the streets. They’re letting each other know which streets they took. See that guy over there! He’s making a chopping motion. That means he ran in a straight line. And that one over there making a kind of sideways scoop with his right hand? He’s showing how he rounded a corner. It’s kind of funny, isn’t it?”

  I say yes right away just so Dad will keep talking.

  “Your mom gets mad at me, Ayşe, because those guys are out playing in the streets but we’re not doing anything.”

  “Dad, is that because we’re scared?”

  “Do you think we’re scared?”

  “But Mom gets scared too, doesn’t she?”

  Dad laughed.

  “You’ll have to ask her. When she’s all on her own, she might get a little scared.”

  I already asked Mom, but I’m not going to tell Dad.

  Uncle Detective came. He’s got a denim jacket. When he walks, his head wobbles from side to side. He and Dad stood and talked for a bit.

  “I didn’t feel like going inside without you, Detective. Selahattin’s always so quiet, you don’t know what to do.”

  “Cihan was a good friend of yours, but he’s Selahattin’s brother. Don’t you think he has a right to know how the investigation is going?”

  “Well yes, but … Oh, I don’t know, Detective. It’s like Selahattin died too. Or lost the will to live. Like so many others in this country. Now they stay out of sight in their stationery shops, in their photo ID shops, or, like Selahattin, in their bird shops. Do you realize how many leftists have lost their jobs, are scraping by selling pots and pans and chandeliers?”

  “Aydın, I don’t know anything about all that. It’s my job to catch people and arrest them. That’s all.”

  “You should spare a thought for the walking dead, too, Detective.”

  “Speaking of which, shall we take a little walk first?”

  They took big steps, so I ran. I had to run extra fast when they forgot all about me. Mom never forgets me, but Dad does.

  “Detective, every time I visit Selahattin Abi, I feel terrible, but then I remember some of the things that happened and I can’t help laughing. After Cihan was killed, the photo of him they picked for their posters showed him at his most serious and scowling. He’d have been so mad if he’d seen it! ‘Where on earth did those dopes dig up that photo?’ he’d have said.”

  “Everyone who knew Cihan said he was a lot of fun.”

  “Boy, was he ever! Another thing that would have made Cihan mad was their chanting ‘Cihans never die!’ at his funeral. ‘What do you mean, never die?’ he’d have said. ‘As you can see, those bastards killed me. I’ll be six feet under in a couple minutes.’”

  Dad laughed, but down into his shirt. When grown-ups do a sad-laugh, that’s what they do. Uncle Detective clapped him on the back a couple of times. Dad’s fun friends all died a long time ago.

  “Uncle Detective, do you know Detective Columbo?”

  They stopped and laughed. But then Uncle Detective tugged at his mustache and forgot all about me again.

  “Before we step inside the
shop, let me give you a quick update. Aydın Abi, we found a new eyewitness, an old lady in Bahçelievler who lives next door to where Cihan and his friends were living—Oh, hello Selahattin Abi. I hope you don’t mind us showing up unannounced like this.”

  Uncle Selahattin always gives me a piece of chewing gum. His shop smells like bird’s wing dust. That dust is all over the place, you see. And it smells like roasted chickpeas, but chickpeas forgotten in the bottom of the cupboard. Uncle Selahattin looked at me one way, and at Dad a different way. He didn’t look at Uncle Detective at all. Even so, Uncle Detective kept talking really fast.

  “Aydın Abi, let me finish and go. Selahattin Abi, we’ve had a new lead in the case, in Cihan’s homicide.”

  All at once, Uncle Selahattin seemed to grow smaller. Dad squeezed his legs together on the chair, like he had to pee.

  “Detective,” Uncle Selahattin said. He turned to Dad and said, “Aydın.”

  The birds started singing.

  “Listen—”

  The birds want to get away. They sound like they’re hurt really bad. They’re singing like crazy, so loud I can only hear some of what Uncle Selahattin is saying.

  “I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know anything about the case. Say what you want about me. Call me a disgrace who doesn’t give a damn about his brother…. I can’t believe you’re making me say this!”

  Uncle Detective looked ashamed. Uncle Selahattin lit a cigarette. Grown-ups smoke when they’re sad. They were standing there not saying anything when a lady came in. She reminded me of Auntie Jale.

  “I wonder if you’ve got any nightingales?”

  Uncle Selahattin didn’t look at her. “No!”

  “But there’s one right over there. I can see it!”

  The birds were singing like crazy. Uncle Selahattin was scaring me.

  “What the hell do you need a bird for?”

  “Are you nuts or what?”

  Uncle Detective smiled to himself. Then Uncle Selahattin waved his cigarette and made a sound like a laugh.

  “Just leave me alone, lady!”

  Dad was smiling too, but he pretended he was wiping his mustache so nobody would see. The birds finally stopped singing, and Uncle Selahattin forgave everyone.

  “Guys, I beg your pardon.”

  “No, we beg yours,” Uncle Detective said. But Uncle Selahattin spoke to my dad, not him.

  “Pain doesn’t necessarily bring wisdom, Aydın. Do you know what I mean?”

  Uncle Selahattin puffed on his cigarette so hard that it burned down halfway.

  “Cihan’s friends come here from time to time, asking if there is anything they can do. They say they’ll never forget him, that they named their sons after him, that they’ll do this and they’ll do that. Why don’t they go and have another child and bring it up right? What do we do when a forest burns down? We go out and plant new trees, don’t we, Detective? What the hell else can we do!”

  “Brother,” Dad said, but I don’t think Uncle Selahattin heard. He started talking.

  “Listen. In Swan Park, there are three trees onto which they carved the names Deniz, Yusuf, and Hüseyin. The three sacrificial lambs of our generation. What they forgot was that those trees were going to grow tall and those three names were going to be so high up nobody would be able to see them anymore. People find comfort in vowing they’ll never forget. But Cihan’s friends will remember other things, not the things we’re trying not to forget. Aydın, it’s life we remember, not death. Harping on someone’s death means you might as well be dead, too. Do you know what I mean, Detective?”

  Uncle Selahattin looked at me. Sometimes, everyone looks like they pity me. I wonder if I’m pitiful?

  Uncle Detective started talking really fast again.

  “Selahattin Abi, we found another eyewitness. A woman who says she heard four people talking about Cihan’s building and his apartment number. She’s afraid, but we’ll get her to talk.”

  “Detective, are you even listening to me? I don’t give a damn! I’m angry with myself for being alive. Don’t take it personally. Please. It’s just that I can’t take it anymore. Here I am in this shop, with all these birds …”

  Uncle Selahattin looked like he was going to cry. I was embarrassed for him. I turned around and went straight to the back of the shop to give the birds some seeds. Dad tried to change the subject. I knew what he was doing.

  “Hey, Selahattin Abi. What’s this? What are you doing with this diagram and these papers? You haven’t started operating on your birds, have you?”

  “Oh, that. A friend from the Department of Veterinary Medicine left that here. I guess he forgot it. They’ve got some plans for the swans in the park.”

  The swans! What are they going to do to the swans? Uncle Detective has a radio that pops and crackles sometimes. He stepped outside when it started doing that.

  “What are they going to do to the swans?”

  “The martial law commander of Ankara—I can’t remember the bastard’s name—took one of the swans from the park and put it in his garden.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “With all the commotion these days, I guess nobody cared. Anyway, the swan decided it didn’t like its new home and tried to fly back to the park.”

  Dad laughed.

  “Well, what do you expect? It’s an Ankara swan, a revolutionary swan.”

  They kept talking, but I followed Uncle Detective outside. I was so curious about that radio. Terrible men talk in it. It’s not like a normal radio. It never plays music. And Uncle Detective smells funny, a smell I can’t put a name to. But it’s a scary smell. Like … like … It was only when Dad took my hand that I realized he’d come outside. Dad looked at Uncle Detective but didn’t say anything. Uncle Detective started talking really fast again.

  “Don’t get angry with me, brother. What can I do? It’s my job. Do you think I want to upset Selahattin Abi? I’ve got to catch whoever did it. I’ll go out of my mind if I don’t catch somebody, anybody.”

  Uncle Detective put his hands on his hips and bowed his head. When Dad is talking with other men, I sometimes look up at their chins and their whiskers and at that thing like a ball that moves up and down in their throats. It makes me forget to listen to what they’re saying.

  The auntie who came into the bird shop is going into the aquarium shop. Fish don’t shiver in the winter, so you don’t need to put them on the radiator. If you do put a fish tank on the radiator, the fish die. But God doesn’t punish children who put their fish tanks on the radiator, because they were just trying to make it warmer for the fish and they didn’t know any better.

  Ali’s Outing in Swan Park

  “What are you saying, Bahri Abi! Not our Turgay? The Turgay from Middle Eastern Technical University?”

  We’re in Swan Park. Hüseyin Abi lets go of my hand and puts his in his pocket. Maybe he keeps string in his pockets like me. His chief just came to meet him. Hüseyin Abi brought some pots. I know what’s inside of them. But I mustn’t tell. I mustn’t tell. When his chief, Bahri Abi, says, “We’ve lost Turgay,” the pots Hüseyin Abi is holding in one of his hands start going clank, clank.

  “Chill out, Hüseyin! Put those pots down.”

  Hüseyin Abi puts the pots on the ground and they go quiet. Now Hüseyin Abi has both hands in his pockets.

  “Are the pieces in the pots, Hüseyin?”

  “Brother, you promised Turgay wouldn’t get mixed up with guns. So how’d he get shot?”

  “Chill, Hüseyin. Chill.”

  Hüseyin Abi is shrinking. This is my first time in Swan Park. We were going to look at the swans. I love those birds. They don’t make any noise.

  Bahri Abi picks up the pots and says, “Let’s go get some tea. It’s not like you think.”

  They ordered me a soda. I don’t like soda, but that’s what they always get kids. Hüseyin Abi kept stirring his tea. On and on, without stopping. He can’t hear the spoon going clink clink agains
t the glass. If he could, he’d stop stirring. Bahri Abi takes the spoon from Hüseyin Abi’s hand and puts it on the saucer. He leans closer to the table.

  “Hüseyin, Turgay didn’t get mixed up with any guns. That’s not what happened.”

  Hüseyin Abi looked over at me. Like I was dead. It was the same look he gave me when he pulled me out of the well. That time I vomited black. People do that sometimes. They look at me like I’m dead.

  “Hüseyin, have you calmed down? I’m going to tell you once. Then I’m out of here. I’ve got to meet the guys who are taking those pieces to Dikmen.”

  “Okay, brother. I’m listening.”

  “Nobody killed Turgay. It was suicide.”

  Suicide is when you kill yourself. It was like Hüseyin’s face curled up and hid in his mustache.

  “Hüseyin, are you listening to me? A few days ago, they arrested Turgay out on the street. A special team has begun operations in Ankara. I’ve been hearing about them for a while. They’re something else. Professional. I don’t know what they did to him. He was detained for three days. Then they let him go. He went home and killed himself. That’s all we know.”

  “Bahri Abi—”

  “Hüseyin, I need you to decide if we should have posters at his funeral. This is complicated. You know, as a suicide … Talk to the guys at the university and decide. Do we write that he was a ‘martyr to the revolution,’ or not? Now, moving along …”

  Bahri Abi rested his hand on top of the pots. That meant he wanted to know what was inside.

  “There’s a Port-Said. It jams sometimes. And there’s a 14-caliber and a STEN.”

  “Okay. We’ve also got a couple of automatics arriving from another neighborhood. I need you to go and pick them up from a friend in Liberation. You’re expected there.”

  “Okay, brother.”

  “Have you told everyone in the neighborhood? These are on loan. Get a couple of shots off at the opposite neighborhood. I’ll get them in a couple of weeks. Just let the fascists know you’ve got automatics so they don’t mess with you. If you need the automatics later, you can take them back and use them on night watch.”