Reckless

by Hasan Ali Toptas

  Holding his flatbread to his mouth, Kenan smiled.

  ‘With all the bad things going on around it, you’re going to worry about this now? Wouldn’t most people agree with you anyway?’

  Rather than answer, Ziya looked over at the barbed wire beyond the almond trees, and for a moment each and every one of the Silvan children seemed to flare up and glitter with all the possibilities of life on the other side. After that, he couldn’t take his eyes off them for the longest time. It was almost as if his soul had flown over the fence, to hover over those black-eyed, black-haired children and their swinging baskets.

  ‘If you ask me, you shouldn’t let anything worry you,’ whispered Kenan. ‘I say we just buckle down and hope for the best and finish our military service and leave. And anyway, we don’t have much choice, as you know.’

  Ziya nodded slowly in agreement. But then, in a harsh voice, he said, ‘I hate the food. I hate that mess hall. And most of all, I hate that kitchen. I never want to see it again.’

  Kenan raised his head and looked quickly up at the sky. He closed one eye, moving his lips very slightly. His face still raised up, he told Ziya that according to his calculations, they’d have one more week of mess duty while they were here, and that would be in two months’ time.

  The next time he was on mess duty, Ziya was very tense. He kept trying to lose himself in the crowd, and every time the mess sergeant issued an order, he watched what those around him were doing and silently did the same. Until lunchtime, they worked in that room whose walls were thick with the stink of old oil; furiously they peeled onions and potatoes, and chopped up the meat; they sifted through sack loads of lentils; they washed vegetables in the long sinks, and cleaned the hall; over and over, they mopped the blackened concrete floor. Then, with giant spoons, they ladled the food into lidded metal pots. Just before lunch was served, they threw the sacks of bread over their shoulders, and each squad went to its own company’s mess hall. Fearing that something might go wrong in the commotion of passing out the food buckets, and land him with another problem, Ziya chose to pick up one of the sacks of bread. When they had filed in with all the others in the squad, those carrying the sacks went from table to table, leaving a ration of bread at each place. Ziya was making his way towards a table in the corner when the mess sergeant gestured to him from the door. ‘You!’ he said. ‘Look here! Now!’ When Ziya had turned around, he said, ‘You know that you’re to leave two rations of bread at each place on that table. Don’t you?’

  And at that moment, the Ziya who had spent the day being so very meek gave birth to a new Ziya, almost. This new Ziya stared back at the sergeant, as if he was about to bite him.

  ‘What are you looking at, boy? Didn’t you understand what I just said?’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ said the newborn Ziya. ‘Why should I give the people at this table a double ration?’

  ‘Because that’s where your sergeants sit,’ muttered the mess sergeant. ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t know that, oh bird of God.’

  Ziya said nothing. Returning to the tables, he started with the one in the corner, putting down a single ration of bread at each place.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing, boy?’ yelled the mess sergeant.

  His face was red with anger.

  ‘I did what needed to be done,’ said Ziya. ‘Do these sergeants have a different God from ours? Why should they have two rations of bread, when we get only one?’

  Not believing what he’d just heard, the sergeant opened his arms, as if in prayer, and stood there, wide-eyed. Then he sprang into action, fairly flying across the hall, and without so much as a by your leave, he did a right hook and then a left hook, punching Ziya in the face. He punched him so hard that the jugs and trays on the tables all rattled. And Ziya swung this way and that, grabbing at the edge of the table to keep from falling.

  ‘Stand at attention,’ yelled the sergeant. ‘Stand at attention, you son of a whore!’

  Ziya promptly stood at attention, but his stare was the same. It was almost as if it was his clenched teeth staring, and not his eyes. He stared with all the force of the thoughts racing through his mind, and each one was fiercer and more violent than the last.

  And the sergeant stood a few paces back, glaring at Ziya as if he could read those thoughts.

  Then he jabbed his forefinger at the mess hall’s concrete floor, jabbed it as fast as if he was thrusting a bayonet. ‘Get down, oh bird of God,’ he yelled. ‘Get down and take the belly-crawl position.’

  Ziya got down as ordered, taking the belly-crawl position, and when the sergeant gave the order, he soundlessly wriggled his way amongst the tables. At that point, the company came marching back from the training ground, singing the Eskişehir March, and a few minutes later, they had all piled into the mess hall. When they came inside and saw Ziya crawling on the floor, they stopped short, of course. Instead of sitting down, they formed a huddled queue along the wall. And that was when the sergeant changed his tune, very suddenly. He flashed a bright smile, as if to diminish everyone and everything in sight, and then, for a few moments, he turned that smile on Ziya, and as he did so, it blackened, sending out sparks. Over and over, he yelled, ‘Keep crawling, you son of a whore. Keep crawling like the dog you are, until that doggy mind of yours is back in your doggy head!’ And each time he yelled out these words, he glared at the crowd that had backed against the wall, so that this would be a lesson to them.

  No one made a peep, of course; with tired eyes, they watched Ziya crawl across the floor.

  And so it was that Ziya crawled back and forth and back and forth across the mess-hall floor that day, under exactly 180 pairs of eyes. He felt nothing. It was as if all his senses had shut down, and there was nothing left to him but flesh and bone and a khaki uniform. So as not to further delay the company that was soon to return to the training ground, the sergeant finally told Ziya to stand up. And then he said, ‘Now finish what you left half done. Go and put another ration of bread at each place on that table.’

  Ziya gathered the strength that had got him back on his feet. He walked wearily over to the table where the sergeants were to sit, and he put an extra ration of bread at each place.

  Then he turned around and, keeping his eyes on the ground, looking at no one, he shuffled outside. Here he passed amongst the rifles that were laid out on the ground and made his way towards the almond trees, and sat down next to the barbed wire, turning his back to the children so that they couldn’t see him, and putting his head on his knees, he began to sob. Kenan came running out right behind him, but he couldn’t find a thing to say. Or rather, he shied away from saying anything, for fear of saying something that might make it even worse. Instead he waited seven or eight paces away, cigarette in hand, watching Ziya’s shoulders shaking as he kept his face down, and cried his heart out under the almond trees. When the sobs began to abate, just a little, he sat up straight, took out his cigarettes, and with trembling hands, he lit one. And that was when Kenan came over; without saying a word, without even asking if Ziya minded, he crouched down next to him. He had no idea what to say, anyway. There were so many things he wanted to say, so many words swirling through his mind, but he couldn’t find a way to extract enough of them for a sentence. That was why they didn’t speak for some time. They just sat there, smoking their cigarettes, and staring at the ground.

  After a long while, Kenan said, ‘Don’t be upset. What’s done is done. There’s nothing we can do about it.’

  ‘How can I not be upset?’ said Ziya. He took a deep breath. ‘As you can see, every evil comes to find me. Yes, it’s true. Every evil comes to find me, and no matter how hard I try to stop it happening, I can’t. Honestly. I have no idea why this keeps happening. For God’s sake, Kenan. Tell me, please! Is there some sort of mark on me I can’t see? A cloud maybe? Or a light? Do I look the same as everyone else, when I’m seen from a distance? Or not? Please, could you tell me? Am I dressed in khaki right now, like you, and all our friends
over there?’

  Kenan looked shocked.

  Measuring his words carefully, he murmured, ‘What a thing to say.’

  ‘I just don’t know,’ Ziya continued. ‘It’s something I have no power over. I just think there is some sort of sign on me, to guide all kinds of evil to me. It might even be a sign too small for the human eye to see, but as I just said, it could also be some sort of light, some sort of shadow.’

  ‘What a thing to say,’ said Kenan once again. ‘Are you serious, or is this a joke?’

  ‘Do I look like I’m in the mood for jokes?’ said Ziya. ‘I’m serious. I meant it.’

  Kenan just stared at him, shocked.

  Ziya looked as if he was about to cry again. His eyes sparkled with quivering tears.

  When Kenan saw this, he said, ‘Just put those thoughts out of your head. Why don’t we get up now? That’s what I think we should do. We have to go back to the mess hall now and take the pots to the kitchen, as you know. That fool of a mess sergeant is waiting for us to come back, and the last thing we want is another bust-up. So come on now. Get up!’

  Reluctantly stubbing out his cigarette, Ziya slowly rose to his feet.

  By the time they reached the mess hall, the others on mess duty had long since rolled up their sleeves to clear the tables. Kenan and Ziya joined them at once, and together they carried the pots to the kitchen, down the dirt road that ran alongside the water depot.

  ‘This will be the last time we see the kitchen,’ said Kenan, hoping to console his friend. ‘It’s our last stint. Two more weeks and we’ll be out of here.’

  Ziya said nothing. Weighed down with all those pots, he could do no more than give Kenan a sidelong look. But then he turned to the left, to look at the Koçaş mountains and the clumps of undergrowth between them and, very slowly, he breathed in.

  In the kitchen, Ziya remained silent. From the soulless way he washed the trays from the officers’ mess, you might have thought him a machine. Just then, one of the men doing the rinsing announced in a voice as bright and cheerful as running water that they would be doing the lottery that weekend. He went on to say that his source was solid. Looking over his shoulder so that he could look the others in the eye, he said, ‘There’s a sergeant at headquarters who comes from my part of the country. He was the one who told me.’

  Hearing the words that spelled the end of their training, they all perked up, of course. And then there was a short silence, a tense silence that flashed and glittered like those trays from the officers’ mess, as each one of them wondered where in the country he might be sent next. And then someone said that anyone from a rich family was bound to get preferential treatment and there followed a heated argument in that dim-lit kitchen that stank of oil and detergent. According to some, this piece of shit farce they called the lottery was a scam, pure and simple; they did it only so that they could say they had. ‘No sir! That’s not true,’ said others. There was no preferential treatment. They folded up those papers and put them into sacks or metal pots and then those lots were duly drawn in full view of the entire company, and so it was total nonsense to say that there was any trickery going on, because they would each be choosing their lot with their own hands, and that was why they would, in due course, each accept their fate. It was wrong to accuse the army – the pride of the nation – of resorting to preferential treatment, or trickery, and suspicious practices of any kind, without any proof; the lottery would be just, no doubt about that, because there was no difference between rich and poor here: beneath their khaki uniforms, they were all equal.

  But that is not how things turned out on the day. The ones who had, despite never once going beyond the barbed wire in all their time there, managed to have their uniforms altered for them on their second day, the ones who had spurted more money than a fountain does water, and managed to get through without a single sergeant kicking them; the ones the loudspeakers were forever calling to headquarters, if not to collect a doctor’s report, then to speak to their families on the phone, and who spent weeks lolling about the dormitory, watching the training ground through the window – somehow they all made it to the lottery, and somehow they all ended up with papers that said Gökçeada, Bergama, Istanbul, Akçakoca, Denizli or Izmir. Ziya’s paper said Urfa. Kenan went next. He put his hand into the black bag the sergeant was holding, pulled out a paper, and as soon as he had read it, he turned to Ziya. ‘Look,’ he said, in a strange but happy voice. ‘I got Urfa too.’

  For three months they had lived on the outskirts of Silvan, and never once had they seen the town. And the very next day, a big bus pulled up outside the guardhouse, to take thirty-five men off to Urfa, with the sergeant in tow.

  As the bus pulled away, Ziya murmured, ‘Did you see that? We didn’t say goodbye to Şehmuz.’

  ‘And who’s Şehmuz?’ asked Kenan.

  ‘The boy from Silvan. The boy at the barbed wire,’ Ziya said softly. He took a deep breath. ‘You know, the boy we bought our boiled eggs and green onions from.’

  Remembering him now, Kenan nodded gently.

  ‘We didn’t say goodbye,’ said Ziya once again. ‘After eating so much of his food. Shame on us.’

  With that he turned back to the window and for a long time, as the rocky land slipped past, he thought only about Şehmuz. He thought about him for so long that he could almost see him standing there on the other side of the barbed wire, shimmering in the wind and stretching out his little arms, his little black eyes receding into love.

  It was sunset by the time they reached the 123rd Mobile Gendarmerie Unit in Urfa. There was no time to get a sense of where they were. They spent a tense night in a large, grey-curtained dormitory that stank of sour sweat and strangers.

  In the morning a tiny slip of a sergeant took them down to the mess hall on the ground floor, and then, walking faster than the wind, he led them over to the main building. He did not tell them to line up when they got there. Instead he stared at them, as if he had some very bad news that he could not bring himself to put into words. Then he pulled himself together, as if in response to a secret sign, passed a hand over his face, and in a thin little voice, he said, ‘My friends, you are going to spend the next few days here putting up a building.’ With that he led them off to the construction site next door. The site was swarming with soldiers. Some were digging inside a huge pit several dönüms in area. Some were carrying metal rods that were five or six metres long. Some were tying metal rods together with wire, and others were carrying stones from behind the hill in single file. But the ones carrying the stones were different from the others; most of them had hair growing down to their beards, and they seemed old enough to be addressed as big brothers or uncles. Their uniforms were in poor condition. Some were ripped at the knees and elbows, some were missing buttons, some were so short you could see their calves. And on top of all that, the soldiers looked bewildered, as if they didn’t know where they were.

  ‘Our friends over there are convicts,’ the sergeant said, lowering his voice.

  With that, he turned to face his men. He stared at them as if they weren’t standing right next to them, but very far away.

  ‘And now you are going to go and carry stones with them,’ he said. ‘Off you go. Get started!’

  They lined up like the convicts and followed them behind the hill. Here there was a red pit, where a group of muscle-bound convicts was holding pickaxes, hacking up rocks, while another group of convicts crushed these rocks with a huge sledgehammer, and there was so much sweat running down their faces that you’d think that an invisible hand was looming over them, pouring water from a pitcher. During their few trips between this quarry and the pit that was to serve as the new building’s foundation, they kept themselves separate from the convicts, but soon they began to mingle. Once they had begun to mingle, the convicts began to talk now and again. And that was when they heard how these men had come to be in prison, and what horrors they had seen while serving on the border. And at the end of each stor
y, they thanked God for still being alive, and said how good it was to be in prison. And so they listened to these tales of dark nights made darker by explosions and the hiss of gunfire, and whinnying horses, and bloodcurdling cries, and herds of sheep, and bloodied tea crates lying next to people and animals who had been blown to bits, and the more they heard, the more frightened these Silvan boys became, of course. They became so frightened, in fact, that they said nothing all day long. They just looked at each other strangely, from the corners of their eyes.

  The next day a big-boned, white-haired convict who called himself Dede took it upon himself to give them some advice. Gathering them together during a meal break, he sat down, put his hands on his knees and let his fingers droop. Assuming a fatherly tone, he said, ‘So tell me. Did they beat you a lot during training?’ They all answered at once. They’d all had enough beatings to fill a truck, they said. To which this man who called himself Dede said, ‘Well from now on, it won’t be the commanders who’ll be giving you your worst beatings. It will be the conditions. This is one thing you should never forget.’ And he smiled bitterly as he shook his head.

  For a time he was silent. He looked down at the ground and swallowed.

  And then he said, ‘Now listen carefully to what I have to say. Most likely they’ll be dispatching you to your companies tomorrow. What I mean is, some of you will be going to Akçakale, and some to Viranşehir. Wherever they send you, you are fated to end up in the middle of hell, by which I mean one of those outposts along the border. So my advice to you while all this is going on is to do whatever you can to stay in the place where they’re sending you. For example, every once in a while they ask you questions. Are any of you tailors? Is anyone here a barber? And who here has worked in construction? So if you happen to have any talent whatsoever, or if you happen to be good at something, even just a little, for God’s sake, don’t be shy. Step right out with a confident look on your face and say, “Yes, I can do that.” Or say, “Yes, that was the work I did when I was a civilian.” To make a long story short, my advice to you is this: whatever you can do to stay with your company or your battalion, do it.’