An elderly man stopped and stood before them. “Hû, greetings, companions of holiness . . .” He brought his hand to his heart and forehead and recited a couplet by Shaykh Galip:Mind you minister to yourself, chosen of the worldly realm Mankind, you’re the apple of the eye of the living
In a deep and sonorous voice, as if feeling the surface of a bas-relief, he recited the letters and the syllables, exposing the full force of their intensity. As if he had no other concern besides being understood, being heard and understood, he bore no particular style of expression, no specific poetic flare. The effect was more stunning because he was at a remove from all variety of proselytizing, or even calling. He just left them face-to-face with a truth before vanishing; and this truth was a truth that described their torment. But was it only theirs? No, near and far, it constituted the torment of the world. This couplet was the first instance of a signpost within the night – and all previous nights – within the webbing they traced, the dark and labyrinthine catacomb that they couldn’t manage to escape.
The doctor: “Fine, but he’s no Bektashi, he’s a Mevlevî . . .”
“No, he’s a Bektashi. I’ve spoken to him often. Many nights İhsan, myself, and he have commiserated over rakı together . . . He’s Bektashi through and through; he recites beautiful strains of verse, and he’s particularly fond of this couplet. One day he’d said to me, ‘The sole reality is this: One ought to hold humanity in high regard. We ought to sense this regard within us without effort.’ In his opinion, this was more important than love . . . In short, he’s one who displays respect toward others and humanity ...”
“He has respect for humanity . . . In that case, he’s completely mad.” Then he abruptly changed his tone. He gazed at the houses that appeared pale next to the handlike objects illuminated by a feeble light, at the lot overgrown with weeds, and at the face of his companion, whose fatigue could just be discerned. A rooster, fluttering its wings somewhere above them, emptied its radiance into the night like an elixir of molten rubies and agate concealed within its being.
“The East,” he said, “my beloved East... From without, it appears lazy, foolish, helpless, and impoverished . . . But from within, it has resolved never to be deceived . . . What could be more beautiful? When will we learn to satisfy people from within? When will we understand the meaning of the phrase, ‘Mind you minister to yourself ’?”
“Does the East even comprehend this?”
“Whether it does or doesn’t, it’s conveyed the idea, hasn’t it, my son?”
V
The small, stray girl spared from sacrifice had seemingly arrived just in the nick of time to turn on the light. As soon as Mümtaz entered behind the doctor, he saw the objects that he’d left an hour ago again in the same position within the illumination of the mirror, with the same blithe invulnerability of an hour before, pleased to simply be themselves, gathered and glimmering. Oh, the way these objects simply wait, as if for an opportunity to leave us . . .
The world exists even without me. It exists on its own. It persists. I’m a small trace of this persistence . . . But I exist, and I find the strength to persevere in the consciousness of continuity ... Through that continuity, I move from my genesis toward eternity ...
With the demeanor of a man pleading for grace from tyranny, Mümtaz looked about. For he knew that he wouldn’t persist eternally, and perhaps this minute, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps a few days hence, one day his presence within this continuity would cease and be usurped by other presences, and he knew he wouldn’t be the way he’d been in the past, and he wouldn’t sense the same shudders, and furthermore whether or not he would shudder. Eternity was a nebulous light into which his intellect at times shone. And not even to such a great depth. Only to a part of his being that fleetingly shifted toward the arcane. Meanwhile, reality amounted to this stone foyer that he perceived in a glance through his doubled existence and, as always, through his past; it amounted to the stairs he climbed, and İhsan’s room, whose staleness – comprised of the odor of medicines, sweat, and illness – he sensed before even entering; yes, reality was the suffering present there. Other unseen realities also existed that he couldn’t sense with his flesh yet that stabbed and twisted into him like a knife: Nuran’s disposition of a solitary lily in the white nightgown that they’d selected together; the tree branches that spilled over the garden walls of the house; the stunted fig tree that all but came to life on moonlit nights; the small chinar before the door; the nocturnes through which he passed; and the small table and chairs where he so longed to sit with her and have morning tea – a table whose cloth, left in place instead of gathered up, made the possibility of this pleasure more tangible . . .
But there were other realities. Things he’d never seen, of whose existence he was uncertain, that he sensed had settled into him in light of recent events, infecting him. Telegraph operators conveyed breaking news from one office to another while thinking of their wives, children, and homes; typesetters aligned letters and type with scorched fingers; housewives roamed through their houses aimlessly, feeling as if they’d forgotten something, opening, for maybe the twentieth time, the luggage they’d prepared, yet unable to add anything useful or new that would help confront the unknown; they did nothing but abandon broken smiles, pitiful prayers, and the grasp of their fingers before letting the suitcase close yet again . . . Train whistles, songs of separation ... These, too, played within him like a knife blade. No, he wasn’t in the realm of the eternal but of the worldly. The world resided in everybody. A world that existed at times in a corner of our beings, at times as a single soul in totality, at times a world we forgot about during our workaday lives, though we carried it with us, in our very blood; a world that, like it or not, we sensed in the weight of this evening upon our shoulders. And beneath this burden, beside the patient, the wrestler’s physique of the physician seemed slightly diminished.
İhsan was a little better, but he was dazed. On the taut skin of his forehead were drops of perspiration that seemed foreign to it, giving the impression that he couldn’t relax. By the looks of his chest, which appeared more puffed out and powerful under the force of his respiration, and his sweaty ruddy face, rather than a sick man, he resembled a swimmer who’d just vanquished the waves that he’d been struggling against for hours, and now waited for his pulse to return to normal where he sat resting on the shore. Had he actually vanquished them, however? His face resided in such an eerie region of remoteness. The worst of all possible prognoses resurfaced in Mümtaz’s mind.
“The good lady saved the patient just in the nick of time ... I’d guessed as much besides. There was no recourse but to increase the sulfamide dosage. Now I’m going to prescribe eight sulfamide capsules. And we’ll closely monitor the results. In addition we’ll need a bit of syrup and another heart medication. Mümtaz, I’m afraid we’re going to have to trouble you again.”
From the forest of a life of fragments, İhsan looked at Mümtaz as if to say, “And where did you find this specimen?” Then he extended his hand to hold the physician’s and uttered perhaps his first words of the night: “What d’you say, doctor? Will it happen? Will they proceed with this madness?”
The physician immediately answered his patient: “You concentrate on getting well!” Though his eyes said, “I share your concern!”
VI
Once out on the street, Mümtaz found himself more relieved than on his prior excursion. Almost no trace remained of the thoughts that had made his head swell. Strangely, he walked with a sprightly spring that he’d never before felt. He seemed not to be bound by the laws of gravity. If I had wings, I could fly. He was astounded by this state: such a stark contrast to the gravity of the circumstances in which he found himself. For he still saw everything just the way it was. Perhaps war would begin this very night. İhsan’s condition was still serious. He’d progressed so far down the passageway between life and death that his return would be difficult. Nuran was to leave this morning and her depa
rture meant devastation. With her absence, everything would end. All these realities that had been pressing down on him only an hour ago now felt like distant events unrelated to him or his own world. He regarded them all from beyond the threshold of death.
He felt at ease. I wonder why? I’m so prone to contemplation, my thoughts form knots inside me and keep me pacing till morning. Why is it that now I can’t think of anything? But even this thought wasn’t enough to overwhelm him. Or am I not in this realm of existence? Have I left the world? Or maybe the world has left me? Why not? Like any old liquid emptying from a container ... Despite this, he was aware of the task at hand. He knew the route that he would take, and he hurried to bring İhsan’s medicine back as soon as possible; furthermore, his mind recorded everything it encountered with a lucidity that seemed improbable even to him.
The landscape was ensconced in shadows as if the retaining wall holding brightness at bay had cracked in an unspecified locale. Grasses glimmered in the illusion of a greenish patina sprayed over them. The surroundings pulsated.
This was the hour when the dawn tuned its instruments. Soon the empyrean of Creation would be remade. In the foyers of houses, and in rooms, the first morning lights were lit. In the murky weather these lights fostered the artificial glow of the stage. A woman opened a window, her half-naked body stretched against the fading night, and straightened her hair, her arms bare. A dog slowly rose from where it had slept and ran toward Mümtaz, the morning sojourner, but just when it came close, it changed its mind and darted on to the base of a saint’s türbe where candles burned behind a shut window. A milkman, comfortably seated cross-legged above the copper ewers that he’d hung on either side of his mare, passed beside him at a near gallop. In the distance a car horn sounded.
Mümtaz observed it all as the sky gradually changed hue. But there was a difference in his perception. It didn’t resemble the quotidian contact our senses made with their surroundings. It was rather like discovering these external objects and gestures within himself.
A clutch of crows broke away from the trees in the courtyard of the Şehzade Mosque. With sharp caws and metallic fluttering, they passed overhead. The scent of fresh bread from the bakery engulfed the entire street. The laborers who’d been repairing the rails were now before the mosque. The acetylene still burned, extending toward the lavish Rembrandt-like gilded dusk; between the molten radiance and the encompassing darkness, faces, hands, and bodies, each by shades, were transfigured. Mümtaz, a second time, watched in awe the movements of hands and the concentration of faces.
Our neighborhood . . . His entire childhood ran toward him from this road and the surrounding streets. To have a neighborhood, a home, a routine, and friends, to live with them and to die among them ... One way or another, this future-oriented life structure that he’d prepared for himself did not coalesce around him. Besides, he couldn’t see any of his ideas to completion. Material things, all artifacts, existed of their own accord. They gave rise to an inkling, like an echo, before others usurped their places. However oppressive, he longed to lose himself in the passageways of an idea.
As he passed through the Vezneciler district, he sensed that the scenery had grown lighter. When he arrived in Beyazıt, a commotion had begun in the coffeehouses on the causeway. The chairs were still stacked together inside, but the opportunistic garçons had prepared a couple of tables for early morning clientele. When one of them caught sight of Mümtaz, overjoyed he said, “Welcome, Mümtaz, good sir, the tea is presently steeping.” But this sudden flashback to university exam mornings didn’t arouse any reaction in Mümtaz. With a hand gesture, he indicated something approximating haste. The morning commuters on the side of the road that headed to Aksaray and the calls of newspaper hawkers and sesame simit and pastry sellers had begun to erect the city’s morning. Mümtaz looked in the direction of the mosque. A covey of pigeons floated toward the ground before ascending again. I wonder what it was that startled them? forgetting the que s-tion as soon as it had been posed. Yet he could still trace the persistence of his thoughts – at the very least through their absences. This doesn’t constitute lack of possibility but maybe apathy. I wonder if I’m indifferent toward all things in this way? Will I ever again be able to reconstitute the world within myself? Will memories ever again speak through me? Or am I growing delirious while yet in complete control of my senses? Before my own eyes, like this . . .
The metal shutters of the after-hours pharmacy were still shut. A woman banged on the shutters and frequently stood on tiptoe to glance through the peephole. She held a prescription that she’d evidently crumpled up on her way here. She was exhausted and destitute.
Frequently she said, “Allah,” and again peered within on tiptoe, as if wanting to glide inside.
The pharmacist finally arrived. Both of them extended their prescriptions at the same time. Mümtaz received the medicine. He performed all of this with exceeding efficiency, like a man who didn’t want to lose a second’s time.
The situation actually necessitated this. The part of him that procured the medicine was lucid. It didn’t falter. Beyond that, his entire mental faculty labored between two extremes in the vacillation of one on the verge of slipping into narcosis; his mind had become a bewildering apparatus that adapted to its environment instantaneously, and after perceiving its object, immediately let it go. What’s happening to me? It was certain that a shroud existed between him and the world that he hadn’t noticed before. Something translucent, which permitted exceptional focus, separated him from the world.
But could he even be separated from the world? Life is so sublime ... Living at this morning hour was a beautiful thing. Everything was beautiful, fresh, and harmonious. It greeted one with the pliancy of a smile, and Mümtaz had the conviction that at this hour he could tirelessly observe an acacia leaf, the face of a small animal, or a human hand in perpetuity. Because all of it, everything, was sublime. This light of subtlety was a symphony; there, in the mosque courtyard, its first rays danced like a woman disrobed. The fresh smell of simits, the haste of walking men, faces lost in thought were all beautiful. But he wasn’t able to focus fully on any one. At such an hour? Perhaps it’s because I find objects to be so beautiful that I’m able to divorce myself from life. Why shouldn’t this be the case? Because this sense of the sublime and within it the accompanying jubilation like an orchestra was no everyday experience. It resembled an epiphany of sorts. It was a variety of epiphany that could come only at the last possible instant, at the moment when the intellect cut off all contact with everything and became its hermetic self, the moment when it functioned in the most idealized way. It was a reality located at the edge of the abyss. The clarity within him could only suggest the lucidity of the previous moment.
“How strange! Nothing is connected to any other thing. I perceive everything as atomized,” he complained.
The man beside him answered, “Of course it doesn’t connect. Because what you’re seeing is nothing but unmediated reality.”
“But yesterday and the day before, didn’t I also see things this way? Wasn’t I perceiving reality? Hadn’t I always encountered it before?”
He sensed the presence of the man beside him, but he couldn’t look him in the face, though this didn’t seem unnatural.
“No . . . Because you’d been regarding your surroundings from the perspective of your identity. You were actually observing your own self. Neither life nor objects constitute a totality. Wholeness is a phantasy of the human mind.”
“All right then, don’t I have an identity?”
“No. That, my friend, is in my palm. If you don’t believe me, then take a look for yourself.”
He extended his palm toward Mümtaz’s face. A small, astounding being, a formation something like an exoskeleton or dermis that he didn’t recognize stirred in his palm with small contractions.
So, then, this is my identity! he thought. But he didn’t say anything. The man’s hand had stunned him.
&nbs
p; Mümtaz had never before seen such a beautiful thing. Neither crystal nor diamond could produce this inherent glow – a dull illumination reserved only for him. This light within the palm, this small crablike being, his own identity according to what he’d been told, opened and closed with little contractions like an artery and was silently functioning on its own.
Timidly he asked, “Aren’t you going to give it back to me?”
“What?”
Mümtaz indicated with the tip of his chin. “That, my identity. That thing you call my identity.”
“If you’d like, take it. Take it if you want to go back into the realm of experience,” and the hand again opened at the level of his chin, but this time Mümtaz’s eyes focused on the radiance of the hand itself. Mümtaz knew that the man standing beside him, despite the impossibility of such an occurrence, was none other than Suad. If the dead roam the streets like this, could life offer any pleasure? With a sidelong glance he slowly looked, as if to say, “Is it actually him?” Indeed, it was Suad. But how he’d been transformed! He was much bigger and more handsome, something like an enhanced Suad. He was even more sublime and exquisite than the Suad he’d dreamed of a few hours before. Even the smirk Mümtaz had observed on Suad’s face that day in the hall of the apartment, the grimace that vilified everything, life in its entirety, had now become an opulent smile, emerging from depths and illuminating mysterious planes of being. The wounds on his hands, neck, and face also sparkled. Cruel and sublime . . . He was suddenly shocked, and wringing his hands, he began to think: But what will I do now? He had to talk to Suad at all costs. But would he even be able to speak to such an exquisite and exalted Suad? I wonder if all the dead become sublime this way? He remembered how Suad had said that he was revolted by death and dying. He’s not only beautiful but powerful, too . . . Yes, he was mighty; some force within him flowed toward Mümtaz continually, attracting him. He would speak to him.
A Mind at Peace Page 45
