Reckless

by Hasan Ali Toptas

  ‘If only none of this had ever happened,’ said Ziya in a mournful voice.

  Then he stood up and made his excuses, saying he was feeling ill. Kâzım stood up with him. After blowing his nose again, he wiped the tears off his cheek with the back of his hand.

  ‘Are you going to stay here in this village?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Ziya said. ‘In fact, I have to stay. How could I ever leave, if it meant leaving Kenan’s mother in the lurch, not to mention his sister, and his nephew, and his uncle?’

  Kâzım looked at him in anguish.

  ‘I’ll pay you back your money,’ said Ziya. ‘Tomorrow’s Tuesday, isn’t it? I can take the Ovaköy minibus to town and withdraw the money from the bank.’

  Kâzım nodded.

  The next morning Ziya woke up early and rushed down to the village meydan. Off he went to town in the Ovaköy minibus. But he did not see the forests they passed through, or the hills, or the curves, or the pure waters running under the stone bridges. He did not even see the town. Instead of waiting for the Ovaköy minibus, he rushed back in a taxi at midday. The moment he arrived back in the village, he walked underneath the nettle tree and went straight into Kâzım’s house to give him the money. This time he did not pause to knock on the door. He just turned the handle and opened the door and looked straight over at the sedir on the left-hand side of the courtyard. And there he saw Kâzım, sitting in just the same place as the day before. At the foot of the bench were two bald chickens wandering amongst their own feathers. As soon as they had greeted each other, Ziya handed him the money he’d withdrawn from the bank. Kâzım didn’t count the notes. He just put them into his pocket, looking ashamed, and took in a deep breath.

  ‘So you’re determined to stay here in the village,’ he said, looking straight into Ziya’s eyes.

  Ziya couldn’t understand why he was asking this question for the second day in a row.

  ‘Look,’ said Kâzım. ‘You can count me as your elder brother. And so now I am going to ask you to listen to me. There have been terrible rumours going around the village. And they’re not the sorts of rumours that will just go away of their own accord . . . No one talks of anything else in our two coffeehouses. How can I put it? From the crack of dawn till midnight, they simmer away like kettles. And they’re all about you, these rumours . . . Let me put it this way. There’s no knowing where these rumours will go, or what they’ll lead to. If I were you, I wouldn’t wait until tomorrow. I’d leave this village today!’

  Ziya froze in shock.

  ‘I don’t understand. What are these rumours about?’

  ‘All sorts of things,’ Kâzım said. ‘Every day it’s something different. I have no idea where they come from, or who got them started. How could Kenan have died from just a knife wound? He must have been poisoned. That’s one thing they’ve been saying. And if it was you who poisoned him, then Nefise must have been the reason. You’d had your eye on her since the day you arrived.’

  ‘I can’t believe this,’ said Ziya, almost talking to himself. ‘Where did all this come from?’

  ‘And also,’ said Kâzım, lowering his voice as he bowed his head, ‘there’s something else going around with all these rumours, but let’s leave it there. I can’t bring myself to say it.’

  ‘What is it?’ Ziya asked angrily.

  ‘No,’ said Kâzım, as his eyes slipped away. ‘I can’t tell you. But let me say this much. It has to do with Besim. With you and Besim both.’

  Ziya’s head began to swim. For a time he just stared at Kâzım. He had no idea what to say, what to do. Then, very slowly, he stood up. Passing between the two bald chickens, he headed for the door. Once outside, he walked towards the meydan, but he did not hear any voices coming from the houses or the courtyards, nor did he see anyone he passed. His mind was fixed on the things Kâzım had told him. The more he thought about them, the faster his feet went. It was those fast feet of his that got him back to the barn so suddenly that day. And as soon as he got there, he plopped himself down on the bench and stared in despair at that shadow on the mountaintop, until night fell.

  Remembering that it was time to take Uncle Cevval his food, he stood up and went back into the village. His plan was to go into Kenan’s house and pick up the copper tray and leave, so that he could spare Cevriye Hanım from hearing what Kâzım had told him.

  But Cevriye Hanım was waiting for him in the courtyard. She was still wearing the headband on her forehead. She was looking very distant. He could almost see clouds crossing her face.

  ‘I came for Uncle Cevval’s food,’ Ziya said.

  Cevriye Hanım looked down and swallowed.

  ‘There are rumours going around the village, my child. So I am going to ask you to stay away from Cevval. We’ll look after him ourselves.’

  Ziya had no idea what to say. He felt almost concussed.

  He had no choice but to go back to the barn after that. Collapsing on the bench, he gazed at the mountains humming in the darkness, and for hours he cried his heart out.

  When he woke up the next morning, Ziya had no desire for breakfast. Without so much as a glance at the kitchen door, he walked out of the barn. The sun had just peeped over the mountaintops, and there were great dazzling rods of greenish light flowing down from that nameless shadow, down and down, flowing as far as the sheep pens on the plain. That’s why the tops of poplars lining the sheep pens were each shining like lighthouses. He stopped for a moment to look at all this, and then he went through the gap in the hedge. Turning right, he walked distracted and dishevelled towards the cemetery, which was knee deep in grass, and in the midst of all this greenery were enormous thorn bushes. And now and again, he could hear birds chirping in the branches of the almond tree, pecking at the silence, almost. Making his way slowly over the uneven ground, Ziya at last found Kenan’s grave. After looking at it for some time, he sat down next to it, putting his hand on the gravestone. What he wanted to do just then was to bare his heart, tell Kenan the whole story, from start to finish, but he didn’t do this. Instead he kept his lips sealed. After giving up on the idea of talking to Kenan, he thought about the world where his friend was now. He hoped that he’d found the peace there that this world had never given him.

  ‘Oh, Kenan,’ he said then. ‘Do you remember that dream you told me? There was a knock on the door one day, and there before you was yourself as an old man. But to think that the only place you’ve ever seen yourself as an old man was in your dreams . . .’

  And suddenly he raised his head. He looked around him. Because he could hear Hayati of Acıpayam calling to him again, from that outhouse behind Seyrantepe. Osmaaaan, my fine young man, how many months has it been since you last had roast meat? He could hear that voice floating over the graves, to lose itself amongst the waving grass and the thorn bushes. So for a time Ziya sat there, pricking up his ears in case the voice came back. As he sat there, he wondered if his mind might be playing tricks on him. Then, remembering the gravestone he’d seen the day Kenan died, he stood up and headed tensely towards the cemetery gate. As he walked, he kept turning his head, studying each gravestone, looking for Hayati’s name.

  ‘And just look at where we have to wash. In all honesty. Not even a dog would want to wash in there!’

  Hearing Hayati’s voice again, Ziya stopped. Shivering, he looked around him.

  ‘If you had a speck of that shit they call money, do you think you’d be wasting away here in God’s desert, my fine young man? Osman, my fine young blade, are you there?’

  He stopped in front of an old almond tree. It had dried up; its trunk was covered with honey-coloured sap. His eyes nearly fell out of their sockets, because there, on the gravestone before him, were the words: Private Hayati Bulut. The grave that should have been in Acıpayam, in Denizli, was here in front of him. Thinking he must be dreaming, Ziya took a few apprehensive steps to touch the gravestone. He passed his hands over it, half fearing that if he touched it too hard it might go flying out
of this world. When he turned around, he suddenly saw the name Macit Karakaş on another gravestone seven or eight feet ahead of him, and the name Ercüment Şahiner on another. Without knowing what he was doing, he walked first towards one, and then the other, but he couldn’t reach either. Because now, before his eyes, there was a blur he recognised as Binnaz Hanım’s round cheeks. Am I losing my mind? he asked himself. Frightened now, he hobbled over to the cemetery gate. And as he hurried over that uneven ground, giving no thought to the bones whitening beneath it, he saw first Veli Sarı’s name on a gravestone, and then Halime Çil’s name, and then, on another gravestone, he saw the name of the clerk from the neighbouring company, Sergeant Rasim Benli. And that was when Ziya cried out, Dear God, what are these people doing here, or is Hulki Dede right, is the world really only a few pastures wide? Dry-mouthed and half-crazed and gasping for breath, he rushed back to the barn.

  Just as he was passing through the gap in the hedge, a huge brute blocked his way. ‘Do you feel no shame?’ he said. ‘Doing that with a child that age?’ Swinging his club, he brought it down with all his strength on Ziya’s head. Ziya fell to the ground, bleeding and in shock. After the huge brute had struck him once again, he struggled to his feet and began to run down towards the plain, to the poplars. The brute pointed after him. ‘He’s running away, boys! He’s running away!’ And a few more men carrying clubs came out from behind the hedge, and together they all raced after him. Still not believing that this was really happening, Ziya kept glancing over his shoulder. When he saw they had grown in number, he gathered together what strength he had left and increased his speed. In spite of these efforts, he was captured by Numan next to the sheep pens. And when he was captured, he got another blow in the head amongst those rocks that were the size of fists. He fell to his knees for a moment. Escaping from Numan’s hands, he went racing through the brambles; bent over double, running for his life, he headed for the mountains.

  When he reached the oak forest, he felt half dead, and that was why he sat down behind a rock for a while, to catch his breath. As he sat there, panting, he slowly craned his neck to look down at the crowd of men below. Twenty-five or thirty men in front, all holding clubs, and scattered behind them, another fifteen or twenty people holding things he couldn’t quite see, and they were all climbing up the hill. As he looked at them, he thought, ‘They can’t all be coming after me, surely the ones at the back have come out to stop those crazed brutes in the front.’ He even looked to see if he could find anyone amongst them who looked like Hulki Dede, but he couldn’t.

  Then he got up and, so as not to be caught by the people still streaming up the slopes, he hurried out of the oak wood to run as fast as he could into the red-pine forest. Soon he had run all the way up to the nameless shadow at the top of the mountain and saw it was a ramshackle old hut, but by now he lacked the strength to walk a single step. So he crawled to a rock just outside it. He curled up at the foot of this rock and waited, quiet as a rabbit. His forehead, his cheeks, his shirt, his collar; they were all drenched in blood. But now he began to drift off to sleep. His eyelids grew heavy; his soul, too. And soon sleep had softened his aching head wounds, even. But he could still hear the voices of the men coming after him so his terror grew and grew. What if they caught up with him? He could hear their footsteps coming right up to the edge of the pines. Sometimes he even thought he could see the men’s faces, blackened with anger, and whenever he did, he curled up closer to the rock. Then he remembered something Binnaz Hanım had said. He who wishes to pray should also carry a stone to throw. Remembering those words, and thinking how bad it would be if he fell asleep, he walked twenty-five or thirty metres, until he’d reached the hut. He was bent over double by the time he got there. Dirt and dust, from top to toe. He could barely stand. That’s why he lifted his hand and pounded so hard on the door. And the wooden door echoed back.

  I got up and pulled it open.

  He burst into the room and threw his arms around me. Together we shut the door and limped slowly away from the window. Outside there were men running back and forth, shouting.

  ‘They’re looking for me,’ he said in a faint, dull voice.

  I whispered gently into his ear. ‘I know.’

  He lifted his head to look into my eyes. It was almost as if he didn’t believe he was right there beside me, with his hand on my shoulder, and talking.

  ‘Come,’ I said. ‘Let’s watch through the window.’

  ‘They might look in and see me,’ he said in a shaky voice.

  ‘They can’t,’ I said. ‘You can see out through these windows, but you can’t see from the outside in.’

  ‘Like sleep that has holes in it,’ he whispered.

  I said nothing.

  We went over to the window. The voices outside were getting a lot louder. It was just about possible to hear what the men were shouting to each other. Then suddenly they were there right in front of us, these men. One in front, and the others behind him, all bearing clubs. The man in front was Cabbar, and his face was red from anger. Red as a pomegranate. His hair flew wildly around his face. His shirt tails had come out of his trousers.

  Seeing them, Ziya said, ‘You’re not going to hand me over, are you, if they come to the door?’

  ‘They won’t come to the door,’ I said.

  He glanced at me suspiciously. Then he collapsed on to the divan next to the window. Curled up into a ball. And stared outside.

  One of the men running through the pine forest turned to another and said, ‘I found him. I found him!’

  The men in the forest turned on their heels and all came racing towards the place the voice had come from. For a while, the pine trees’ lower branches swayed, the stones and the pine cones hit against each other as they rolled across the ground, the high grass rose and fell, and the blue sky pulled back, as if to escape from the grasp of the trees.

  ‘Come on, where’s that pimp?’ yelled Cabbar. Angrily swinging his club through the empty air, he shouted, ‘Where’s he got to now?’

  Numan was just behind him. Dark-faced. Grinding his teeth. Ready to kill every living soul in the world, and not just Ziya. The other villagers were standing at the ready, waiting for orders. Their anger seemed to be in their clubs, almost, and not themselves, as they swung them up and down through the air, sending tiny shivers through the forest.

  ‘So where is he?’ growled Cabbar. ‘Who was it that found that pimp? Who was it?’

  ‘I found him,’ said one of the villagers. ‘Look over here! Look! He’s lying curled up behind that rock!’

  Clubs in hands, they raced over to the rock the villager had pointed out to them. When they vanished inside the pit, Ziya turned to look at me, as if to say, they’re not going to find me.

  Then he turned his head again, to look outside.

  There followed a short silence. The forest had frozen inside its own silence, almost. The branches went stiff, and the leaves, and the colours and the scents. Then two men came out from behind the rock. One was holding Ziya by the arms, and the other by his legs. Slowly they carried him away. The other men looked surprised. As they followed on after him, they lowered their clubs.

  Ziya turned back to look at me.

  In shock, he cried, ‘They found me!’

  Glossary

  Agha (Ağa): An Ottoman era title generally associated with large land holdings. Rarely heard nowadays outside Turkey’s Southeast.

  Ayran: A water and yoghurt drink similar to buttermilk.

  Baba: Literally ‘father’. Also used as a honorific for older men or a term of friendly affection.

  Bey: A title given to the leader of a tribe, including the early Ottomans, which later became a military rank and polite way of addressing men, equivalent to the feminine ‘hanım’.

  Bismillah!: ‘In the name of God!’ Short for b-ismi-llāhir-rahmāni r-rahimi, ‘in the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful’. It is sometimes used as a battle cry.

  Bulgur: A
type of thick-grained wheat and the name of a dish made from it.

  Dede: Literally ‘grandfather’. Also used as a honorific for older men and as a religious title.

  Dervish (derviş): A member of an esoteric (tasavvuf or Sufi) group within Islam who chooses to devote his or her life to following signs of God’s will rather than their own. This often amounts to a vow of poverty.

  Divan: A type of long couch that rests on the floor.

  Djinn (Cin): Supernatural spirits in Islam sometimes rendered in English as ‘genie’. There are good, bad and mischievous djinn, and they are still very much part of Turkish folk mythology.

  Dönüm: An old unit of land, representing the amount that could be ploughed in a day. This varied from region to region according to custom and soil quality.

  Gözleme: A type of savoury pastry pancake, often filled with cheese, meat or potato.

  Hacı: One who has completed the hajj, the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca during the Feast of the Sacrifice (Eid al Adha, Turkish: Kurban Bayramı). Used as an honorific, denoting that its bearer is both successful enough to afford the journey and pious enough to go.

  Halay: A folk dance popular at weddings, in which the dancers link fingers or arms and dance in a line.

  Hanım: A polite title given to women. From an ancient feminisation of the word ‘khan’ as in Genghis (Nişanyan 2007).

  Harmandalı: A traditional dance of the Aegean region, in which dancers dance alone with their arms in the air.

  Halva: A type of crumbly sweet made from either semolina, flour or sesame seeds. In some parts of Turkey, flour halva is traditionally given out to guests at a funeral wake.

  Hoca: Literally ‘teacher’. Used in both religious and secular senses.

  Keşkek: A traditional wedding food made from beef and wheat.

  Kuruş: The smallest monetary unit in contemporary Turkey. 100 kuruş is equal to 1 lira. Ultimately derived from the Old Latin ‘denarius grossus’, like the English ‘groat’ (Nişanyan 2007).