Swords of Ice
Page 13
Turcan had sent word that Halilhan was coming, so Hazmi was primed for the program. Slipping into a confident yet apparently off-hand style, he replied, ‘You’ve sure got some sweet-sounding ideas, but you must’ve heard that I’ve made a big shift to freedom, I’m in top gear all the time now, and though I’m afraid I can’t go into all the details. I’ll even give your Volvo a run for the money!’ he concluded.
After getting back into the junk business, Hazmi had picked up a beer-drinking habit. He proposed that they get a few bottles to lubricate their conversation. Sensing his brother’s competitive, contrary mood, Halilhan at first shied away from the idea. However, thinking that the only way to win his brother over was to see this matter through right to the end, he consented, saying, ‘I’ll always be ahead of you by one drink at least, no piss calls allowed!’
So, fuelled by oranges and warm bread, they faced each other in a sad and pitiless duel for the future of their lives. By the time the bakers overlooking the drinking bout had disappeared in a fog of flour, the arms of both Halilhan and Hazmi hung to their sides like lead weights. Hazmi tried to hold on even as his body was being swallowed up by light, but Halilhan was ahead now by something like three bottles. As the rain began to beat down with a vengeance, Hazmi started to choke and at last ran out of steam. Thirty-two to twenty-nine! The half-baked thief sank into his own burbling stream and became one with the splashing rain.
Although it was a pitch black midnight when they emerged from the bakery, they were a blaze of colour sky-high. When they reached the car, bumping against each other and giggling, Hazmi pushed Halilhan away and took off running. Halilhan revved up the engine to chase this brother of his who could never get enough of betting. He stomped so hard on the accelerator that Hazmi was left in his tracks, drugged by the sooty stench of exhaust fumes. His jacket, flapping in the tailwind of the car, covered his eyes like a menacing hand. No sooner had he dropped onto his knees, lost in the darkness, than the Volvo’s brake lights gleamed red.
To the tune of the chiming warning signal, Halilhan slammed the gears into reverse, backed-up all the way to Hazmi, and yanked him inside. As Hazmi passed out in the passenger seat, drooling and murmuring, Halilhan turned the Volvo toward the hill from which only the faintest outlines of the city could be made out.
What he wanted
a shadow
to fall on time
He felt the chill
of all that had happened
What he needed
the distance to balance
his fiendish estrangement
Without flashers
A parting
that would of itself
make him forget
Post Scriptum:
‘Writing! Faithful foe of the poor! I have used you to deepen even more the enigma of our ragged lives.’
Latife Tekin
(From the back cover of the editions of Buzdan Kılıçlar, published by Adam Yayınları in 1989 and Metis Yayınları.)
Acknowledgements
Saliha Paker and Mel Kenne would like to thank Latife Tekin and the participants of the Cunda International Workshop for Translators of Turkish Literature in 2006 and 2007 for all their help and support.
About the Author
Latife Tekin was born in 1957 in Karacafenck, in the Turkish province of Kayseri. She started writing the day after the coup d’etat in 1980. She is a major bestseller in Turkey. She is the author of Berji Kristin: Tales from the Garbage Hills, and Dear Shameless Death, available from Marion Boyars Publishers.
Saliha Paker is Professor of Translation Studies at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. She has published internationally on Ottoman and modern Turkish translation history. She also edited Ash Divan: The Selected Poems of Enis Batur and co-translated Latife Tekin’s Berji Kristin: Tales from the Garbage Hills and Dear Shameless Death.
Mel Kenne is a poet who teaches in the American Culture and Literature department at Kadir Has University in Istanbul. He has published three volumes of poetry and translated the work of a number of Latin American, Spanish and Turkish poets.
Copyright
First published in the Great Britain & the United States & Canada in 2007
by Marion Boyars Publishers
26 Parke Road
London SW13 9NG
www.marionboyars.co.uk
This ebook edition first published in 2014
All rights reserved
© Latife Tekin, 1989
This translation & introduction © Saliha Paker and Mel Kenne, 2001
Translated from the original Turkish edition, Buzdan Kiliçar, published in 1989 by Adam Yayinlari, Istanbul, by Saliha Paker and Mel Kenne
The moral rights of the author and translators of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All characters are fictional, and any resemblance to any persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–7145–2410–8
Also available from Marion Boyars Publishers
Berji Kristin
TALES FROM THE GARBAGE HILLS
BY LATIFE TEKIN
‘A small masterpiece of beauty’ The Women’s Review of Books
The cast-offs of modern urban society are driven out onto the edges of the city and left to make a life there for themselves. They are not, however, in any natural wilderness, but in a world of refuse and useless junk – a place which denies any form of sustainable life. Here, the unemployed, the homeless, the old and the bereft struggle to build shelters out of old tin cans, scavenge for food and fight against insuperable odds.
And yet somehow they survive: it seems that society thrives on the garbage hills because it has always been built on one. In this dark fairy tale full of scenes taken from what has increasingly become a way of life for many inhabitants on this planet, Latife Tekin has written a grim parable of human destiny.
Translated from the Turkish by Ruth Christie and Saliha Paker
ISBN: 978–0–7145–3011–6 • £7.95/$14.95
Also available from Marion Boyars Publishers
Dear Shameless Death
BY LATIFE TEKIN
‘Only comparable, in my experience, with Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude’ The Herald
‘Unforgettable… She has written down what before has never been written down’ John Berger
A strange, magical story of a young girl growing up in a modern Turkey, from her birth in a small rural village haunted by fairies and demons to her traumatic move to the big city. Based on her own childhood experiences, Latife Tekin’s literary debut marked a turning point in Turkish fiction.
Set against the pressures of a rapidly changing society, it concentrates on a daughter’s struggle against her overbearing mother. Fantastic and hallucinatory, Dear Shameless Death provides fascinating insights into what it means to be a woman growing up in Turkey today.
Translated by Saliha Paker and Mel Kenne
ISBN: 978–0–7145–3054–3 • £8.99
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