And it was while he was walking along like this that he suddenly found himself back in the sunlight. The forest had vanished, and somehow – he had no idea how – he found himself standing at the side of the asphalt road that went from Silvan to the Malabadi Bridge. It was scorchingly hot, and standing before him, looking like the source of all that heat, was a tired blue minibus. It began to move away, and that was when he saw the battalion guardhouse on the other side of the road. There was a soldier on guard; his eyes were shaded by his helmet, but still Ziya could feel the hardness of his gaze. He didn’t see danger, this soldier. It was more as if someone had suddenly presented him with a hideous picture, leaving him with no choice but to kill that hideousness with his stare.
Then he waved. ‘What are doing, just standing there, you fool? Come when I call you.’
With a sinking heart, Ziya slowly crossed the road.
‘Put that bag on the ground,’ said the soldier coldly. ‘Open the zip!’
Ziya did as he was told.
His eyes fixed on the bag, the soldier said, ‘You think you’re coming to a five-star hotel, do you? Well, you can stick this up your cunt! Whatever we bring here, we carry on our backs!’
Ziya did not know what to think.
First the soldier poked through his laundry with the barrel of his rifle. In spite of himself, Ziya leaned over at this point, too, to watch the barrel of that rifle poking at his pants and socks and vests and pushing them from one side of the bag to the other.
‘What’s this?’ he asked, poking at the black plastic bag in the corner.
‘It’s my hair,’ Ziya said.
‘Your hair, is it? So tell me, boy,’ said the soldier in a mocking voice. ‘Where did you get your hair cut?’
‘In Diyarbakır.’
‘And then you didn’t have the heart to throw it away, so you asked the barber to give it back, and put it into this bag. Am I right?’
Ziya said nothing.
‘I’ve asked you a question, boy!’ the soldier roared. ‘Are you waiting for the sergeant major’s horse to fart?’
‘Yes, you’re right,’ said Ziya. ‘I didn’t have the heart to throw it away.’
‘I didn’t have the heart to throw it away, sir !’
‘I didn’t have the heart to throw it away, sir.’
‘So now. Take that hair of yours, and take it over to that dustbin on the other side of the road there, and toss it in. Now!’
Ziya rushed over to the bin, tossed his hair away, and came back.
The soldier was waiting for him. He seemed to have grown in stature. He was holding his rifle crossways.
‘Now pick up your bag and go inside,’ he said, in a voice so harsh it almost slapped him across the face.
Ziya did not want to pick up his bag just then. He wanted to kick it high in the air, and send it flying far away, to a place no one knew, but of course he did no such thing. He had no choice but to bend down slowly, pick up the bag, and walk on to the grey building between the trees.
‘Keep walking, oh bird of God!’ the soldier shouted after him. ‘Keep walking!’
Ziya shot a look over his shoulder. As far away as he was, the soldier in the guardhouse seemed even taller than before. And it seemed to Ziya as if he was no longer walking up and down the guardhouse’s concrete porch. He was walking up and down his own greatness.
All the way to the building, those words echoed painfully inside him. ‘Keep walking, oh bird of God!’ Then he caught sight of the men waiting to the left of the building, holding bags of all colours, and he crossed the large, sandy courtyard to join them. Actually, he did not join them, he kept himself slightly apart, but even so they pulled him into their silence. And there he stood at the edge of that crowd, with those hundreds of men waiting tensely, clutching their bags, looking as helpless as a flock of lost sparrows. They started telling people where they were from, and if there were five of them from the same city, they formed their own group, and talked amongst themselves. And little by little, these conversations spread, and as the scorching sun beat down on them, their voices rose and fell. Then a fat-legged, fat-assed sergeant appeared at the door of the grey building. Strutting down to stand before them, he raised his eyes to the sky and waited, unmoving, for all those voices to die down. The young men didn’t know how to read him, though, and so they continued talking, as casually as they could in such a situation. But that was when the sergeant let out a bellow that seemed to come from his eyes as well as his mouth. ‘Silence, you fools! Before you turn this place into a girls’ bathroom. Silence!’
The new recruits fell silent.
And then this sergeant launched into a never-ending speech. One short, cold sentence after another. What they had to do. How they were to behave. And then, after glancing at his watch, he ordered them to line up two by two, no matter what size they were. At once! No one knew what to do when they heard that, so some went running right and left, some stayed put, some backed up until they bumped into someone, and there were even some who pulled the person next to them by the arm, as if they were having a fight. Meanwhile the sergeant just stood there looking sternly at his watch. After a minute had passed, he turned back to the building, taking this crowd with him, to lead them down a gloomy corridor with grey double doors on either side, while he strutted and swayed as affably as if he were leading those behind him to inherit the earth. But by now the new recruits were wary of speaking too loudly, and that’s why they looked around them carefully before exchanging whispers. And soon these whispers had melted into their footsteps, creating an odd noise that the corridor seemed to compress, making it sound more menacing than it really was. And that was when one of the doors along the corridor cracked open, and out came a huge, frowning, buttoned-up sergeant, and no sooner had he come out than he set upon the crowd, kicking and beating all who stood in his way with a ferocity that knew no bounds. And all the while he bellowed, ‘Who do they think they are, these shameless louts! You think you can make noise like that in here? You think we’ll put up with noise like that?’ When he heard the commotion, the sergeant at the front came back, of course. Jumping up as high as he could, he set about beating up anyone in his reach. And with all this confusion, it wasn’t long before everyone was getting hit, even the silent and defeated ones who were cowering in the middle. Those not yet inside had no idea what had caused this uproar, which ended as suddenly as it had begun; they just stood there craning their necks, trying to see over the other recruits’ shoulders.
In the face of all this, even those who had escaped a beating felt angry, but no one wished to invite trouble on their very first day, so no one spoke. Ziya said nothing either. He just went into the depot, purple-faced, and when it was his turn, he picked up his uniform, went up to the dormitory on the third floor and, as quickly as he could, he got dressed. Putting the clothes he’d brought with him into a white plastic bag, he handed it to the orderlies who were waiting at the door and would post them back to his father. Then off he strode towards the stairs, and he was just about to head down when he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror to the left, and what he saw shocked him. Because the man staring out at him, with his clown costume and his cap pulled down over his ears, seemed like someone else altogether. Especially those trousers, which looked like sacks, and those huge combat boots, and that expression of surprise on his face – here was a clown who could make you laugh until you cried. And that was why Ziya didn’t look at him too long. To keep from looking, he fairly flew down those concrete steps.
Early the next morning, they assembled on the field that ran alongside the mess hall, and here they learned that a squad was made up of ten men, which with the leader made eleven. Four squads made a platoon, and four platoons made a company. After they were told all this, they were told to step out of line to make new lines. And in this new line, they took account of differences in size, of course. They shuffled the recruits about, keeping some in the squads where they were and moving others. The stub-nos
ed sergeant in charge of Ziya’s platoon was more particular about this business than the other sergeants. He would stand to one side and close one eye and give each squad a long, hard look, calculating and recalculating every last millimetre of difference, and then he’d race around, saying, no, that’s not the right place for you, boy, not the right place at all, and he’d change them around. And then he’d race around again, anxiously inspecting the whole platoon. And then he came up to Ziya. ‘This is not the right place for you,’ he said. And he pulled him by the arm and put him into the second row of the second squad, and then, for a moment, he just stood there, giving him a very odd look.
‘Why did he look at you like that?’ asked the dark and scrawny man in the third row.
‘I don’t know,’ said Ziya.
‘My name is Kenan,’ said the man in a soft voice.
Ziya told him his name.
The ones in the first row had no interest in them; they just jutted out their chins, casting sidelong glances. It was as if they had done their military service many times over and were just back this time to watch. They would look around the yard as if they owned it, and then grimace, and then do that odd thing with their chins again, jutting them in the air.
Once the companies had been formed, and lined up neatly, the company commander emerged from the mess hall, two stars sparkling on each shoulder. With measured steps, he went to stand before them, and, propping his hands on his haunches, he delivered a long speech. In a haughty voice, he spoke to them of discipline, and responsibility, and equipment, and weapons, and honour, and how even newborn orphans had the right to a cap of water, and then, in a voice clouded by reproach, he spoke of the nation’s noble lands, and he named the various conspiracies threatening national integrity, and he located their centres of operation, both at home and abroad. And then he went on to speak of their sacred duty to the nation, and of failing that duty, and of loyalty to the army. And then, leaning lightly to one side, in the manner of a great hero, he spoke most solemnly about glorious chapters of history, and of the victories that had been written in gold in those pages, and of the illustrious generals who had won those victories, whereupon he turned his head once more, to speak again about the importance of discipline. Opening his arms wide, as if to embrace the entire company, he exclaimed, ‘Welcome to the prophet’s hearth, my children, let us see what you have in you! Take care not to shame our forefathers in their graves, or your mothers and fathers, or me!’
And with those words, they embarked on their three months of training.
From the first day, Ziya hated the food they made there: for there was no taste to it, and every plate and dish was ringed with oil that slopped about like petrol. And that was why he and Kenan and several others stayed away from the mess hall. They just couldn’t get used to it. But it wasn’t easy, going to the canteen for biscuits or cakes. Because no one stood in line there. It was always mobbed – a great khaki crowd pressing against the glass, pushing and shoving, and in the end, hardly anyone could buy anything. And then the soldier in charge of the canteen had such a hard time taking orders in all that commotion that he was always getting them wrong, and in the end he would just stand there, his arms upraised, like some picture pasted to the wall. Ziya joined that crowd just once, and from then on he never went back to it during mealtimes. And after that, he and Kenan would go out to the barbed wire behind the almond trees at mealtimes. Because at mealtimes, the other side was full of children from Silvan, swinging their straw baskets, selling boiled eggs, green onions, and flatbread. And sometimes they’d bring out yoghurt in muslin-covered wooden buckets and pewter or copper pots that still carried the warmth of their homes. They would lift them over the barbed wire, and in voices so dark they seemed to scrape your very insides, they would say, ‘Would you like some yoghurt, sir soldier? Would you like some yoghurt?’ And the more they asked, the higher their voices. That was because the sergeants came out sometimes, to tell them they weren’t allowed to sell anything, and then to beat them up. But the children would run away so fast and if their plastic shoes flew off their feet, they just left them there, lying in the grass. After they’d been chased away like that, fear would keep them away for a few days, and for a few days, quite a few soldiers would go hungry. But then one warm morning, their little faces would appear again across the barbed-wire fence, and once again they’d be calling out in those husky voices of theirs, selling boiled eggs, green onions, and flatbread.
Except that they never came to the barbed-wire fence at breakfast time, these children: when the company straggled back from their morning exercise session in one great cloud of sweat, these soldiers had no choice but to file into the mess hall to drink their tea – or their soup, if that was what they were serving that day. Each morning, after callisthenics, they would set their rifles down on the field and strip to the waist, to walk back and forth with the sergeants leading them, and then, when their muscles had heated up a little, they would turn towards the Malabadi Bridge, singing folk songs as they ran, and as soon as they caught up with their instructors, they made a great arc, turning towards the Koçaş mountains, to run lap after lap in the training ground at the foot of those blue-grey cliffs, and then they would run back, by the same route, arriving in an exhausted state outside the mess hall, where they’d left their rifles. The mess squad would already have laid out their soups or teas, with a piece of bread to one side. When everyone had piled inside, their sweat would steam it up, of course; and as they sat in that narrow, low-ceilinged room, they would struggle to breathe. After breakfast, they would walk in quick time back to the training field at the foot of the Koçaş mountains, singing marching songs as they went. When they got there, they would line up and wait for the second lieutenant to inspect their company; planting his hands on his hips, he would walk back and forth, nodding now and again, as if agreeing to whatever his invisible companion was telling him, and then he would stop abruptly, and turn on his heels, and then he’d subject his men to a long, hard stare, while his expression grew steadily stranger. As if he was not just inspecting them for himself, but for the company command, and all the other commanders, in the name of the nation, and all that was inside it, as well as outside it, and probably even in the name of its enemies and friends.
Then he would look down, this lieutenant, and smile slyly, and when he raised his head again, he would bark: ‘Yes, I can see that you all shaved last night, you all shaved last night, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, sir, we shaved last night,’ the men would reply.
The lieutenant would be overjoyed to hear this answer, and his sly smile would stretch so wide as to take in all the other companies, and the training field, too.
Then the lieutenant would lean back slightly and bellow: ‘Bravo! You managed to shave, like every other idiot bachelor in the world, and every man idiotic enough to get married!’
He would say this with great delight each morning, as if it was the greatest punchline in the world.
It pained Ziya to see how much pleasure this miserable lieutenant took from laughing at the helpless soldiers lined up before him, and because he was afraid this man might read his feelings, he stood at attention, averting his eyes. At the same time, it seemed to him that this man was hiding in the shadow of the metal star on each of his shoulders; that he should choose such a simple way to ridicule the men lined up before him was proof that he was wretched and afraid. So when the training began, he couldn’t stop himself from looking at this lieutenant whenever the opportunity arose. The lieutenant would step away from the sergeants drilling them and watch them from a distance; planting his hands on his hips he would stroll around the edges of the field, giving every impression of entertaining deep thoughts, and every once in a while, he would allow himself a sly smile; but never for long. Or rather, it was never long before the lieutenant’s spirits plunged. And that was when he fell into a strange displeasure, this lieutenant; unable to shake it off, he would stop in his tracks. Arms akimbo, he would look m
ore closely at the men in the field, and looking more closely he would spot a number of faults. Whereupon his hands would rise from his hips to fly through the air like angry arrows, of course, as he called each wrongdoer to account. This one had his cap crooked. That one had fallen to the ground in the required way but had stood up incorrectly. And that one over there was holding his rifle like a shepherd’s musket, and when he thrust his bayonet forward, he had failed to keep to the rhythm of the chant: Strike! Lion! Mehmet! Strike! One by one, he laid into them. Showing no mercy. He kicked them with all his strength, actually. Kicked them and punched them, until they were bleeding from the nose and the mouth, and then he would relax and say, ‘Ohh,’ a very deep ‘Ohhhh,’ and, putting his hands back on his hips, he would walk away, very slowly, with a spring to his step.
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