The Time of Mute Swans

by Ece Temelkuran

  “Okay, brother.”

  “How many magazines have we sold, Hüseyin?”

  “Um …”

  “Never mind. We’ll talk about the magazine and the poster later. Hüseyin?”

  “What?”

  “This will all be over in a couple of months. There are three or four neighborhoods left in Ankara that we don’t control. It’ll be over soon. We’ll do our mourning then, not now.”

  “Okay, brother.”

  “There’s one more thing, Hüseyin. I need you to listen good. I know the news about Turgay—”

  “I’m listening.”

  “After the Çorum Massacre, we’re expecting more assassinations. We’ve decided to provide protection for some writers and intellectuals. If you’ve got any level-headed guys in your neighborhood who could help us out—”

  “Who are we going to protect?”

  “We’re asking around. Those who agree will get close protection. Those who don’t will be protected from a distance, and won’t even realize what we’re doing.”

  “Okay, brother.”

  “Hüseyin. Don’t go it alone. This is no time to go it alone.”

  Revolutionaries don’t go it alone. That’s something bad, like being “opportunist.” It means thinking only about yourself. If you stay all alone you get sad, like Uncle Şeref. Now, because Hüseyin Abi is sad, I can’t go and look at the swans. That would make me an opportunist. But I can look at them from far away. I can look a little. From far away. Bahri Abi left us. There were two other big brothers with him. He doesn’t it go it alone.

  Right when they left, two men came up. They chased one of the swans. I know those men. They were in the van with Uncle Şeref. I didn’t tell Hüseyin Abi that I knew them. Maybe that’s a secret too.

  “Catch it! Catch it!”

  “It’s huge!”

  “Grab its wing. Don’t screw up again.”

  “I couldn’t help it! If that brat hadn’t started yelling, we’d have caught it! Hey, the commander only wanted one more. Why are you chasing after that one? I’ve got hold of this one. Come on, let’s take it away. People are going to kick up a fuss if we go after a second one. You heard what the commander said. One at a time!”

  Hüseyin Abi was like me, talking in a dream. He looked at the swans. He looked at the men. When he talked, it was to the air in front of him, not to me.

  “Ali, there was a composer named Tchaikovsky. You’ll learn about him when you grow up. He wrote a ballet called “Swan Lake.” Turgay Abi loved it. You know, Turgay Abi could play the guitar too. He was so smart. Smarter than the rest of us. But in thousands of years of human history he had the bad luck to end up in a civil war. Now the magazine people are going to argue about whether he should be called a martyr. If you slip through the cracks, are you a martyr? Turgay Abi was a physicist, and totally opposed to guns and violence. But when I first introduced him to Bahri Abi, he said he could pull off the perfect heist. Bahri Abi was furious. ‘We’re organizing for our survival,’ he said. ‘We’re not crooks! Oh, by the way, Turgay, what do you know about grilled sheep’s intestines and egg and onion sandwiches?’ We all burst out laughing, but within five days Turgay Abi had become an expert on both of those foods. After three days in Beşevler Square studying our kokoreç and gobit vendors, he went up to Bahri Abi, report in hand, and said: ‘You know, I was thinking, if we redesigned the vending carts like I sketched here, and if we added a few more items to the menu, the ones I’ve listed here, we could increase daily profits from five thousand lira to eight thousand lira.’ That’s when Bahri Abi nicknamed him ‘Turgay the Intestine Researcher.’ Turgay wore glasses with a missing lens, and when he poked his finger in through the empty frame and scratched at his eyelid you knew he was about to blurt out some bright idea: ‘You know, I was thinking, the highest cost in the citrus business down south is labor. If we got our people to do the picking and we pre-purchased the harvest in the summer months, we could sell it at a nice profit in Ankara come winter, especially considering we have our guys in the wholesale market hall.’ He’d put down a book by Spinoza or some such and start scribbling calculations on a slip of paper about our souvenir sellers in Kuşadası. He laughed a lot, Ali. He always carried a sandwich wafer in his jacket pocket. He’d give one to a girl and walk away saying, ‘If a wafer won’t make a girl happy, nothing will.’ Damn you, Turgay! Don’t forget any of this Ali. Remember it all. Never forget any of it!”

  I asked Hüseyin something, but I guess he didn’t hear me.

  “Hüseyin Abi, are remembering and not forgetting the same thing?”

  Hüseyin Abi went to the restroom. I looked at the swans. The men chased a swan. The swan didn’t make a sound. None.

  Alone with Grandma

  “When troubles arise …”

  “Ah! Do you hear that, Ayşe? I turned it on just in time!”

  In our house, we have a bottle of almond liqueur and Grandma pours out a little bit. Later, she pours a little more. I eat a little dab of hazelnut cocoa spread, and then a little more. Until it becomes a whole lot. Mom and Dad went over to Samim’s apartment, leaving me alone with Grandma. She turned on the radio and sat down in her slip, “all nice and cool.” Grandma has long, thin boobs. She pulled out one of Mom’s cigarettes and lit it, but she doesn’t smoke like my mom. She kissed the cigarette with a puff puff. That’s when the song started playing on the radio.

  Grandma did another puff puff on her cigarette. She poured some more almond liqueur, looked at me, and laughed. “Let me give me you a little bit,” she said. She filled a teeny glass. Then she said, “Hold it like this, with your pinkie cocked.” I sat down at the table next to her.

  “Take tiny sips, Ayşe.”

  Grandma has a scrapbook. She opened it up.

  “What do you think of this, Ayşe? I’d got as far as, The leaf does not fall, the tree casts it forth / The spirit perseveres, the body wastes away. Then I added, If you do not come to me, the world shall turn and bring you. I suppose these verses are in memory of bygone days and of your grandfather, İlyas Bey. I wonder if you’ll bother to read any of this when you grow up.”

  She laughed to herself. It kind of scared me. There was something strange in her laugh. Grandma’s a little tipsy now, and I can see bloody threads in her eyes.

  “I’ve collected so much for you in this scrapbook, Ayşe. Comical clippings, poems, holiday congratulations, all kinds of things to help you remember that these days weren’t always filled with gloom and doom.”

  Grandma really has filled up that scrapbook with all sorts of things from newspapers and magazines. They don’t smell like paper, though. They smell like her hands. Like talcum powder and börek. I sniffed them.

  “You enjoyed having Ali over the other day, didn’t you, sweetie? He’s a clever little thing, sitting there so serious with an encyclopedia or a book. And so well-behaved, too. It’s obvious his mother has given him a modern upbringing. Bravo to her! I’ll ask Sevgi to tell her to bring her boy around from time to time. You two can become friends. And the Sugar Feast is coming up. Jale Hanım calls it ‘Eid.’ I should sew him some clothes so the poor boy has something nice for the holidays.”

  Grandma should sew Ali a shirt. I think he only has one.

  “Ayşe, why don’t we take Ali to the Citadel one day soon? Perhaps we can visit the museum as well. Would you like that, sweetie? And I need to stop by Cavit Bey’s to get some more vanishing cream. Ah, Cavit Bey! He’s still a fine-looking man in his beautifully pressed trousers and his spotless white lab coat. And he’s so jolly he makes you forget all your worries. The last time I saw him was in the winter. I was wearing my best wool skirt, and when I stepped through the door he called out, ‘Oh, I think my heart just skipped a beat. For a moment, I thought Sophia Loren was stepping into my shop. Welcome, Nejla Hanım!’ Can you believe it? The silly goose!”

  Grandma laughed so hard her head went back and her boobs went forward. Then she sat like she always does, with th
at hump on her back.

  “Your mother thinks Cavit Bey’s creams don’t work, but every time I see Jale Hanım she says, ‘My word, Nejla Hanım, your cheeks are as smooth as a baby’s bottom.’ Well, it’s all thanks to Cavit Bey’s vanishing cream.”

  I’m getting a little scared because one of Grandma’s straps slipped down. Pull it back up, quick! Her boob mustn’t show. And if Grandma falls, I won’t be able to pick her up. I’m taking tiny sips but my mouth feels sticky. Grandma isn’t talking to me like I’m little, but like I’m a grown-up. It’s scary.

  “Back in ’63, a passenger plane collided midair with a military aircraft over Ulus, killing dozens of people out shopping, and many more got badly burned. Some of the survivors used Cavit Bey’s special creams and—would you believe it?—none of them ended up with scars on their faces! Sevgi doesn’t know anything about that. A whole generation recognized the burn scars on one another’s faces. They’d whisper to each other, ‘The plane collision, right?’ It always came up when marriages were being arranged: ‘She doesn’t have any burn marks on her face, does she? No? Well that’s a relief.’ Ah, those were the days!”

  The other strap just slipped down. I don’t want to see Grandma’s boobs!

  “And in 1960, when a woman watching the public hanging of the Adana Monster in Samanpazarı Square nearly had a miscarriage, it was Cavit Bey who saved her baby. They hanged that monster for murder, but these days the streets are full of killers and nobody calls them monsters…. Back then, some women claimed that his mentholated hemorrhoid cream worked wonders for dark circles under the eye. I’ve never had that problem, though, so I wouldn’t know.”

  Grandma stroked her cheek and ran her fingers through her hair. Like that singer, Ajda Pekkan.

  “I haven’t stopped by to see Cavit Bey for ever so long. He must be wondering why. He’d never come out and admit it, though. Nobody tells anyone anything anymore. Sevgi certainly doesn’t. She thought those letters of hers were a secret. I know she took them away so Aydın wouldn’t see them. The other night she came home a little drunk. Something’s going on with her, but I can’t come out and ask her, now can I? She doesn’t pay enough attention to her little girl, but she’ll bite my head off if I say anything. At this rate, the poor girl’s not going to have any memories of her mother.”

  I’m right here, Grandma! Stop talking like I’m not here!

  “Aydın always keeps his feelings bottled up, and Sevgi is so aloof, so high and mighty with him. If she treated him with a little tenderness, he’d be over the moon, but she always holds back. Who knows? Maybe it’s better that way. They say one loves and one is loved. She’s got her husband wrapped around her little finger. Not that it does her any good. All she wants is for him to be miserable. Nothing he does is ever quite good enough for her. It’s been that way for years. As though she wasn’t the one who wanted to get married, the one who ran into Aydın’s arms the minute she got of prison. Well, she’s the daughter of an officer and he’s the son of a worker, and he’s always going to fall short, no matter how many handsprings he does to impress her. As a relationship begins, so it continues. He’s so attentive to her fears and phobias, though. I know my daughter through and through. She holds her head high and puts on a brave face, but she’s a bit of a coward at heart. Yet she bosses Aydın around, asking why he didn’t do this or that. Why doesn’t she do it herself? If she didn’t have a husband, she wouldn’t be able to be so demanding. Try doing that when you’re single. Try getting mad and telling someone to leave you alone when you’re already all alone. She treats Aydın badly, but she’ll stick with him through thick and thin. Not that he realizes that. I think he’s terrified she’ll leave him one day. Like I said, maybe it’s better that way. What do I know? I think I’ll pour myself another glass.”

  Grandma has completely forgotten me. This isn’t funny anymore. I feel like Mom and Dad will never come home.

  “Look at this one! After Parliament voted to give a medal to Özcan Tekgül, the belly dancer, one of the opposition MPs introduced a motion asking where they planned to pin it. Well, he did have a point! Anyway, in an interview she said, ‘Pin it to my heart.’ I’ll cut that out and paste it in the scrapbook. It’ll make you laugh one day. In this article, it says that an MP from the Justice Party has a lion chained in his garden. He claims a female admirer from Africa gave it to him! We’ll keep that too.”

  Grandma doesn’t look at me at all. I think I’m going to cry. She’s trying to stand up.

  “Nobody tells anyone anything anymore. Oh, my word! I feel a bit dizzy.”

  The tears come.

  “Ayşe! What’s the matter? I can’t bear to see you so upset! Here, let me give you a kiss. Ayşe! What’s come over you?

  Grandma pulled up the straps of her slip. The doorbell rang. Mom and Dad have finally come home.

  What Happens at a Funeral?

  I wasn’t going to go to the funeral with my mom today, but she took me with her because she couldn’t find anyone to look after me. The aunties filled the bus. The women made Auntie Seher their “chief” for the day—but the real chief is Hüseyin Abi. Also on the bus was our Laz neighbor, Nuran Abla. Auntie Seher sounded mad when she talked to Nuran Abla.

  “Now listen here, Nuran. You insisted on coming with us, but this funeral will be different. I hope it’s not too much for you.”

  “What do you mean, different? Communists bury their dead too, don’t they?”

  “I’m not saying you shouldn’t come, but if fighting breaks out, stick close to me. I need to keep an eye on you and on Şükriye, with her bad leg.”

  My mom didn’t become the chief. Hüseyin Abi is staying with us, the guns are in our coal cellar, and they put the television in our house because that’s where everyone meets, but Mom still didn’t want to be the chief. She said it’s someone else’s turn. Because my uncle is dead.

  It’s so noisy on the bus. The aunties talk and talk. Auntie Seher sat next to Nuran Abla and looked her in the eye.

  “Nuran, you should be coming to the resistance meetings, like your husband. I know you like to stay in the background, but the neighborhood is yours as much as anyone else’s. And those girls from the university will teach you to read and write. You don’t know how to read, do you?”

  “No, sister.”

  Nuran Abla’s face is snow-white. Laz Hamit’s face is beet-red. He’s her son. I think she has a daughter, too, but I’ve never seen her. Nuran Abla’s son and her husband are fat, but she’s thin. She makes lots of bread and they eat it all. She does all the work, and that’s why her face is so white. She wears a headscarf, and that’s why she never talks. Nuran Abla is always scared. Auntie Seher fills up her seat and half of Nuran Abla’s seat while she’s talking. I think she’s “organizing” Nuran Abla. I once saw Hüseyin Abi doing organizing. He kept saying we had to “unite.”

  “Nuran, we’ll win if we unite. If we’re divided, they’ll break us. Do you remember what we did when the demolition team came? We put all our children in front of the bulldozer. And then what happened? They left without tearing down a single house. That’s how we win! United! If we all pitch in, there’s not a problem we can’t solve. Your problems are everyone’s problems, and ours are yours. And anyway, the fascists control only three of the neighborhoods in Ankara. We’ll finish this within the year.”

  “Sister, I’ve got a problem.”

  The bus stopped. The pretty girl stood up. I found out her name is Birgül. When she talks, her cheeks are even more beautiful. I’ve seen Hüseyin Abi petting her cheeks.

  “Ladies, don’t go off on your own at the funeral. Stay together and look out for each other. When the service is over, we’ll all take the bus back to the neighborhood. Don’t scatter if the police attack us.”

  Auntie Seher frowned.

  “What is it, Nuran? Tell me about your problem.”

  Just then, beautiful Birgül Abla started shouting out slogans so the other women would learn them.


  “We are many! We are united!”

  I hear everything. I can hear what Nuran Abla is saying to Auntie Seher.

  “… hard to tell you, sister.”

  “Go on, tell me. There’s a solution for every problem.”

  Beautiful Birgül Abla shouted again. Her hair falls in front of her cheek sometimes.

  “You’ll pay for the Çorum Massacre!”

  “… the thing is, down there, between her legs … it’s kind of stuck. We can’t say anything to her father. He’d only make her feel worse. She pees sideways. She’s just started school, and she holds it in until she gets home, crying all the way.”

  Auntie Nuran held the corner of her scarf over her mouth, but I could tell she was crying. Birgül Abla yelled again.

  “Revolution is the only path!”

  Nuran Abla wiped her eyes.

  “We can’t wait until the revolution happens.”

  “Don’t let it upset you, Nuran. We’ll find a solution. That’s what revolutionaries are for!”

  “I don’t know, sister. They guard at night, but I can’t tell the revolutionaries about my girl.”

  “Trust me. Don’t be scared. Don’t be ashamed. There’s no place for fear in a revolution.”

  I looked at my mom. She didn’t hear what Auntie Seher was saying because she was too busy chanting slogans. That girl is “stuck” down there. What does that mean?

  Hüseyin Abi got on the bus. A rifle! We were sitting by the back door, so he saw us first. He looked right at my mom.

  “Where’s that rifle from, Hüseyin? What happened to the other pieces? Did you take them out of the coal cellar?”

  “It’s been taken care of, sister. This one’s new. You and Seher Abla are responsible for these women. Birgül will help, too. Be careful.”

  “Hüseyin, wait a second. What’s the matter? You’re acting strange.”

  “We lost one of our comrades. I’ll tell you about it later.”

  Beautiful Birgül Abla’s got a sandwich wafer in her pocket. The end is sticking out. She didn’t give it to me. Hüseyin Abi would have.