Reckless

by Hasan Ali Toptas

  ‘And what if we don’t manage to stay with our company or battalion?’ asked Kenan.

  Dede looked at Kenan sharply through his dusty eyelashes and then bowed his head.

  ‘You’re already in the shit,’ he said. ‘Once you go out there, you’ve really had it.’

  His words plunged them into silence. And then they got up to return, bewildered, to their work, of course. With long faces they picked up more stones, and carried them out in single file.

  Two days later the waif-like sergeant rushed over. ‘Put down your stones! Put down your stones!’ he said to the boys from Silvan. And he took them to the front of the main building. This time he ordered them to line up two by two, and there they waited motionless in the sun for twenty-five, thirty minutes. Finally a grim and fleshy sergeant major came outside; standing on the steps, he produced a piece of paper, and in a voice that sounded as if he had swallowed a microphone, he boomed, ‘Now listen to me carefully. I am going to read out the names of those who are to be sent to Suruç Company. You should step out of line if you hear your name and wait over there’. This sergeant major went on to read out the names of those to be sent to Akçakale and Viranşehir. When he had finished reading out the names, he rolled up the paper, and after giving his thigh a few nervous slaps, he said, ‘If you get a move on, you can make it to your companies by evening, so get going, now.’ With that, he hurried back into the building.

  They piled out of the gendarmerie in confusion, and after asking anyone they met for directions to the bus station, they set off for the city centre. Once they were there, they plunged into the crowd, and here they were obliged to divide up into three groups. And each group went off in a different direction, to wander amongst the buses and minibuses on the bays. Kenan and Ziya and a few of their friends headed first for the Viranşehir minibus. After the driver dozing at the wheel had told them what time he’d be leaving, they went together to the coffeehouse at the other end of the station, where they sat themselves down on its low straw chairs and drank a glass of tea each.

  ‘For a moment there, I was afraid they’d send us to different companies,’ said Kenan. ‘I’m glad we’ve both ended up with Viranşehir.’

  Ziya gave him a little nod. He tried to accompany it with a smile, but he just couldn’t manage it. He fixed his eyes on the tea glass before him and for a while he stayed very still, while he thought about the convicts’ terrifying stories.

  ‘We’ve landed in the same place, but our future is dark,’ he said, as he pushed his tea glass aside with the back of his hand. ‘God only knows what we can do.’

  Kenan said nothing. He stared fearfully into the tea glass in his cupped hands.

  Then they jumped up, fearing that they might have missed the bus. They rushed past the prayer-bead vendors and the rainbows they sent clicking around them. They wended their way amongst the sucuk vendors and lahmacun vendors, and through the clouds of sweat and smoke until they had reached the clapped-out minibus that would be taking them to Viranşehir. The other passengers had not yet arrived, and the driver was no longer at the wheel. There were patches of putty on the sides of the minibus. It looked like it had been sitting there, inert, for many thousands of years. Not knowing what else to do, Kenan and Ziya went to wait in the shade of a wall. Neither wanted to speak. They just stood there grimly, thinking about the stories the convicts had told them. They could still hear all the horrors that had echoes through the darkness of those stories: the bloodcurdling cries cutting through the hiss of gunfire, the whinnying horses, rearing up on their hind legs, and explosions. And each time they did so, the two men would cast their eyes to the ground in silence, and take a deep breath.

  It was hot as the fire Nimrod built to burn the Prophet Abraham.

  And then the shoeshine boy came up to them, his case swinging from his shoulder. Stopping two paces in front of them, he said, ‘Should I give them a shine, brother soldier?’

  At first neither of them heard the boy.

  That’s why they both looked down, as if their boots were speaking. ‘Should I give them a shine, brother soldier?’ the boy asked again.

  ‘Go away, son. Go away. We’re from faraway towns. If a crow squawks around here, we jump,’ said Kenan. Looking as if he were about to cry, Kenan flapped his arms, as if to shoo away a chicken.

  The boy turned away at once, and soon he and the case on his shoulder had vanished into the crowd.

  No sooner had he done so than the passengers appeared. They rushed in from all directions, their baggy trousers flapping, and piled into the minibus.

  When they reached the Viranşehir Company, it was still as hot as it had been in Urfa: the single-storey prefabricated building lined up on that great plain sizzled and swayed as if they’d been thrown into a flaming vat of oil. Sitting in the sun on the sandy field between the buildings was a two-wheeled water tanker; some soldiers had gathered around it and were taking turns drinking from the tap. First the new arrivals went up to these gasping soldiers, whose lips and tongues were parched from the heat, and asked where they should go. Pointed in the right direction, they raced across the field, and one by one they printed out and signed their names on a paper that burned to the touch. But after that, no one paid them the least attention. No one told them what to do, or what not to do. And so they waited with those who had come before them, wondering if they were being punished, wondering what they had done. For days and days they waited in the sun. Finally, on the thirteenth day, a sergeant lined them up. After pacing from one end of the line to the other, he asked, ‘Does anyone here know how to type?’

  ‘I do,’ said Ziya.

  They waited for the sergeant to ask if there were any tailors amongst them, or barbers, or anything else he might wish to know, but that was it. ‘Come with me, then,’ he said, and he took Ziya off to the building next to the mess hall. He took him into Room S-1, which was tiny, and filled with metal cabinets, sat him down in front of a typewriter and gave him a typing sample. Trying not to show his excitement at being spared the watchtower on the border, Ziya typed up the sample, pulled it out, and handed it to the sergeant who was waiting beside him. The sergeant gave it a long inspection, searching for mistakes. Then he said, ‘Fine, you’re the person we’re looking for. Congratulations. You’ll be the company’s S-1 clerk.’

  Ziya did not get up from the typewriter once that day. He carried on typing the documents the sergeant gave him, and that was why he did not see Kenan again until he walked into the dimly lit mess hall that evening. All day he’d been elated at the thought of being spared the watchtower on the border, but when he went over to Kenan’s table and sat down across from him, he suddenly felt ashamed, as if he’d done something wrong. He felt so ashamed that he hardly knew how to hold himself, or where to look, or what to say.

  ‘Come on now. Congratulations. You’ve managed to escape, at least,’ Kenan said, as he made an effort to smile.

  Ziya’s face burned.

  ‘It’s just luck,’ he said quietly.

  The next morning he raced off to his typewriter as soon as he had finished breakfast. He opened the window, picked up a cloth and dusted off the desk, and gladly went to work. Twenty-five or thirty minutes later, the sergeant arrived, and he was very happy to see Ziya there typing away, of course. Then he sat down on one of the chairs lining the wall, threw one leg over the other, and, without so much as a good morning, he asked, ‘How old are you?’ And Ziya told him he was twenty and a half years old. He said this without pausing to think or make a calculation, and neither did he give any indication of an ulterior motive: he simply said the first words that came into his head, as if he were breathing them. And the sergeant burst out laughing. He laughed so much he almost burst his sides. So he got up. Clutching his belly, he spun around, and his belly swayed this way and that. He went out the door, still laughing. ‘So he’s twenty and a half, ha, ha. He’s twenty and a half. Ha, ha!’ Ziya sat there stunned, as he listened to the laughter bouncing down the corridor.
He was still sitting there when the sergeant returned, throwing open the door. Then, as he left again, he threw back his head, as his mouth lost its shape. Ziya listened to the laughter. Ha, ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha. Then suddenly he was back with two other sergeants, and as he laughed, he kept pointing at Ziya, now with one hand, and now with the other, as if he were watching a naughty monkey at a zoo. As if he were reporting some sort of miracle. Ask him yourself, he said. He really is twenty and a half. Twenty and a half! That’s how old he is! While all this was going on, Ziya tried to keep his cool, but he couldn’t quite manage it. And before long he was lost in confusion.

  Then suddenly the sergeant stopped laughing. With the back of his hand, and with a certain agitation, he wiped the tears from his eyes. When the other sergeants had left the room, he walked to the window, plunged his hands into his pockets, and for a time he stared out at the sandy field and the water tanker.

  And then, without so much as turning to face him, he said, ‘That’s all for now, my ram. I’m giving you the rest of the day off. Go outside, and spend a little time with your friends.’

  ‘All right,’ said Ziya, and he left the room.

  Still in confusion, he went to find Kenan. The two sat down in the shade of those ovens they called buildings. And there they sat, for three long hours, talking anxiously about what had just happened, and smoking one cigarette after another. The field on which the camp stood had no trees, so by now everyone else was sitting in the shade of the buildings; it was one long line of heads and knees and stretched-out legs, hiding from the sun while wreaths of smoke swirled over them. And with so many people crowded there together, time simply forgot how to move. And when it did, it seemed almost to become a second source of heat. It was almost as if time itself was beating down on them. Just then, an order came for them to line up outside the mess hall, and they all stood up, rushing like bent little shadows to the front of the building. A sergeant had planted himself at the mess-hall door. And while he waited for the men to arrive, he kept turning his head to catch what the corporal behind him was saying.

  And now they were all standing in front of the officers. They hadn’t bothered to line up.

  ‘My friends,’ said the sergeant, walking towards them. ‘I have put up the lists on that window over there. Each of you should look and see what platoon you’ve been assigned to. You are to report to Ceylanpınar by nightfall.’

  There was some rustling in the crowd.

  ‘Quiet!’ barked the sergeant. ‘I haven’t finished speaking. Now listen to me carefully. When you get to Ceylanpınar, you are to go straight to the mobile gendarmerie unit. The first and second platoons are stationed there. The third platoon should wait there to be picked up. In the meantime, don’t think you can slip off home just because there’s no officer there watching over you. The police will pick you up before you’re halfway there, and then you’ll have failed your military service, and all for nothing. But if there’s still an idiot out there who wants to slip off home, don’t hold them back! Let them go! So now find out where you’re going. Hurry up!’

  There followed a lot of pushing and shoving, as they cast their large eyes over the lists. But when they did find their names, they didn’t move, they just stood there staring, as if by doing so they might release the miracle that would save them from the border. Finally Kenan and Ziya moved forward. Standing on tiptoes, side by side at the back of the crowd, they scanned the lists.

  ‘Oh, no. Oh, no,’ said Ziya when he found his name. ‘Look what I’ve done. Just a few words that came out wrong, and now I’m doomed!’

  ‘Don’t take it too hard,’ said Kenan, trying to console him. ‘All this means is that you were never fated to stay at headquarters.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right,’ Ziya murmured.

  Then they put the field and the battalion behind them; boarding one of the minibuses they found waiting for them in Viranşehir meydan, they headed for Ceylanpınar. For an hour they passed through a dry and copper-coloured wasteland, accompanied all the way by a low moan that seemed not to come from the road so much as the depths of the bus itself; and all around them was a yellow glow pushing against a sky that seemed to grow before their eyes; now and again they caught sight of a bird in the far distance, or a bush they could barely see, or a shape that was almost certainly a tree. On entering Ceylanpınar, they were met by a procession of earthen-roofed shacks, most of which looked as if they’d been built in a day. And with them came their courtyards, of course, and the trees in those courtyards, and the laundry hanging out to dry, and the dusty clouds of children, and a garish spattering of distant and disconnected noises that, as they died away, seemed more like silence. Lurching across the potholes in the asphalt road, they arrived at a sharp bend and, hitting the brakes, the driver called out: ‘So, boys, the gendarmerie is on our right, and the mobile unit on our left, so are you getting out, or what?’ No one moved, except to look at the little single-storey guardhouse on their right and the grey two-storey building on their left. No one got out. And this was how they all came to alight at the village marketplace instead; here they filed into a long, narrow restaurant whose walls were lined with pictures of the Kaaba Stone; after filling their stomachs to a Ferdi Tayfur song, they made their weary way back to the buildings on the sharp bend.

  ‘What’s this writing all about?’ asked Kenan.

  Ziya turned his head to look: painted in red letters on the wall he saw the words: Belik is a murderer.

  ‘I have no idea,’ he said. ‘When we were passing through Diyarbakır, I saw Freedom for the Kurds on some walls and the name Mehdi Zana, too, and these I understood, but this one – I have no idea.’

  Kenan turned back to give the wall a second look.

  They saw the same slogan on a few other walls on their way to the sharp bend, and each time Kenan and Ziya could not stop themselves from looking.

  On walking inside that big and menacing grey building, they were all thinking of the stories those convicts had told them, and when they looked around them, it was with the same distracted air they had seen in those convicts. A hump-backed sergeant came rushing down in some agitation when he saw them standing there; he pulled out the men who’d been assigned to the second platoon and lined them up, after which he strolled back and forth in front of them, hands on hips. Then he stopped. In a hoarse nasal voice, he asked, ‘Do any of you know how to type?’

  ‘I do,’ said Ziya.

  The sergeant’s eyes lit up when he heard that. He asked Ziya where he was from.

  ‘I’m from Aydın,’ Ziya replied.

  ‘It’s your lucky day,’ said the sergeant. ‘The company commander is from Aydın, too.’

  They all turned to look at Ziya, as if seeing him for the first time.

  Then this sergeant said, ‘Follow me,’ and led them down a gloomy, high-ceilinged corridor to the company commander’s office. One by one they stepped into his office, walked up to his steel table, and saluted. The commander had not yet raised his head; he was gazing icily at the yellow onion-skin documents he was still busy signing. Grimacing strangely, he held his pen in the air with one hand, while with the other he was scratching his crotch. And whenever he did that, it almost seemed as if he wanted to look down there, too, but he never did; instead he’d venture to look all the more solemn as he carried on signing. When he’d signed the last document, he’d put it face down on top of all the others, and finally raise his head to take a good look at the soldier standing before him. In a stern voice he’d say, ‘Well, then. Identify yourself.’ And then, without missing a beat, the soldier would identify himself. When it came to Ziya’s turn, he took one step forward and said, ‘Ziya Kül, son of Mehmet, born in 1958, in Aydın, at your service, sir!’

  The commander shifted slightly in his chair. And then, making as if it were a coincidence that he had shifted, he gave his balls another good scratch. In a stern voice he asked Ziya which part of Aydın he was from. And what district, and what town. And then, glancing up at
the ceiling, he said, ‘Hmmm. So you live next door to Veli Sarı, also known as Hacı Veli. Don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Ziya.

  ‘Good,’ said the commander. ‘So now tell me. Is Halime Çil still alive?’

  Ziya just stared at him.

  ‘Don’t tell me you don’t know Ebecik?’ The commander raised his hand in consternation.

  ‘Yes, sir. Of course I know her. And yes, she’s still alive.’

  As he said those words, he saw Hacı Veli. He strolled around Hacı Veli’s house, and as he did, he suddenly saw Ebecik, and after she had looked at him for a good long while, she cleared her throat.

  ‘Are you from our town, sir?’ asked Ziya.

  The commander shifted again in his seat. Glaring at his hands, he placed them on the edge of his desk. ‘Son of a donkey! Know your place. I’m the one who asks the questions round here!’

  Hearing his answer, Ziya turned deep purple.

  ‘Get out!’ bellowed the commander. He lowered his head as he pointed to the door. ‘All of you, get out!’

  And that was when Ziya caught sight of the brass nameplate standing there on its wooden base: First Lieutenant Necdet Belik. That stopped him in his tracks, but only for a moment. Then he raced out of the room with all the others. The sergeant stood waiting at the door, and when they were all out, he stepped inside, but he didn’t stay in there long; two minutes later, he was out again, and from the look on his face you would have thought he’d just been punched. He turned around to give Ziya a mournful look. ‘He won’t agree to your staying on here as a clerk.’