The Sea-Crossed Fisherman

by Yashar Kemal

  For some time after that I did not come across Selim. I had never been to his house, but I enquired and found it, a cottage painted chestnut brown, nestling under a mass of ivy and dog rose and with a porch all along the front. Near the door was an ancient Roman or Byzantine stone, inscribed with an unfamiliar script and embossed with a strange flower.

  I knocked on the door, but there was no sign of life inside. A young girl popped her head out of the house next door. ‘Abi,’ she said, ‘if you’re looking for Fisher Selim, he hasn’t been home for days now.’

  ‘Where can he have gone to?’

  ‘Oh, it’s often like that with him.’ The girl spoke with a pleasant immigrant accent. ‘Sometimes he’s away for months on end, sailing the seas. What d’you want him for?’

  ‘I’m just a friend.’

  She stared and smiled. ‘So he does have friends,’ she murmured, then blushed and hung her head.

  ‘Yes, I’m one of them.’

  ‘I’m so glad,’ she blurted out. ‘You know, they say Zeynel’s going to kill him. That’s why he stays away.’

  ‘No one’s going to kill him,’ I reassured her.

  ‘Some people say he’s in love with a fish that he follows from sea to sea.’

  ‘Oh, that was long ago …’

  ‘But they’re saying it now.’ She made a face. ‘What do people want with this man?’

  ‘Who knows …? Tell me, what’s your name?’

  ‘Nebile.’

  ‘Well, Nebile, will you tell Fisher Selim I came to see him?’

  ‘He doesn’t speak to anyone. How can I tell him?’

  ‘Doesn’t he?’

  ‘He’s a good man, though,’ she added. ‘He looks straight at you, clean and clear.’

  ‘He says everything with his eyes. Good, kind things …’

  ‘That’s true,’ Nebile said, pleased.

  As I left I heard her playing Ali Riza Binboğa’s latest record on her gramophone.

  Three days later I ran into Fisher Selim down by the Florya summer houses. ‘Well!’ I exclaimed. ‘You quite vanished into thin air. I asked after you.’

  ‘The girl told me. Thank you.’ He waved a hand towards the sea. ‘I just can’t find him. Inside out I’ve turned this Marmara Sea. Nothing, nothing, nothing …’

  ‘Where can he have got to?’ I did not dare suggest that someone else might have caught him.

  ‘I won’t give up. I need him badly. Where can he be hiding, the son-of-a-bitch?’

  ‘Well, the sea is very deep,’ I ventured.

  ‘Swordfish never lie near the sea bottom. That’s their misfortune, the poor buggers. For the past twenty years they’ve been harpooned by every man jack that came along. They don’t know how to hide. But this one does. That’s why he’s the only one left.’

  ‘He’s cunning.’

  ‘Yes. Who knows how many harpoons he’s got away with, how many hooks he’s flattened out …’

  ‘Is he so large?’

  ‘Large!’ Fisher Selim became excited. ‘What do you mean? Six or seven hundred kilos he’ll be weighing, I can swear to that. And then I’ll be able to do what I’ve always wanted.’

  What that was I didn’t dare ask. Our friendship had prospered because I never put questions to him, or only those I knew he wanted me to ask. We walked on in silence.

  ‘I’ll find him yet,’ he said at last.

  ‘Sure you will.’

  ‘Tomorrow, then. Before the early-morning ezan.’

  ‘Three o’clock again?’

  ‘Right.’

  The dolphin, Fisher Selim’s friend, the huge dolphin and his family could have made him rich, as rich as Harun al-Rashid, had he been the man he now was, bitter, with his back turned to the world. Selim is not really a heartless man, full of hate and rancour, but he can take umbrage, not only against man and beast, but against the sea and sky and nature itself. He cannot help himself. He’s been known to be angry at the sky when heavy rain prevented him from putting out to sea and then not to lift his head, not even on those bright-blue May nights, tingling with millions of stars. Why, he can be cross with the sea too, never giving it a look, not even when its briny smell drives him mad with longing.

  The dolphin too, so staunch and friendly, could be touchy at times, like all warm-hearted creatures. The sea, the vast ocean, is touchy too. Only let it be provoked and it won’t let anyone get a whiff of its fish or shrimps or lobsters. Yet it can be generous as well, relenting in the end, taking pity on people and pouring forth all the fish in its secret hideaways. Some days the dolphin, in a bad mood, would take himself off as far as possible from Fisher Selim, right up to the Çanakkale Strait, so as not to be tempted, not to be drawn back by his longing for his friend. But then, when Selim was angry, sulking, in a temper, it was something to see the dolphin performing all sorts of clowneries around the boat, trying to draw Selim out of his black mood, to make him laugh, the dolphin himself chuckling aloud like a human being. A strange phenomenon it was indeed, this relationship between the dolphin and Selim. The dolphin would find the finest nests of red mullet, lobsters and shrimps, and would then lead Selim to them. Selim’s boat would overflow with the choicest fish, and when he went to sell his catch at the fish market the other fishermen would turn green with envy. And all the while Selim was hoarding money. He did not keep it in any bank. No, his hoard was elsewhere, growing steadily until the day when … Stingy, Fisher Selim? Niggardly? Well, when that day came people would see how generous he could be … For years now he had been hinting at something, yet no one had been able to discover what it was.

  It was strange indeed that a man like Fisher Selim who had seen the world should scrimp and stint so … Why, in his youth there’d been none to match him in the taverns of Kumkapi for throwing a dagger, dancing the lezginka or singing in the weird tongue no one understood. In one single night he’d spend a whole year’s earnings, standing his friends to raki or wine as though it was water, helping the sick and the poor. When Fisher Selim’s handsome figure with the fiery moustache rounded the corner, the silver-nielloed Circassian dagger and the ivory-handled Nagant revolver stuck into his red sash, all the folks of Kumkapi – Turks, Kurds, Armenians, Circassians, Georgians, gypsies – one and all would rise and stand at attention before him. But something happened, something that made Fisher Selim angry, and he never set foot in Kumkapi again. Without him Kumkapi lost all its kudos. It was never the same again, not until Blind Agop set up his small fish restaurant there. And even then, according to Blind Agop, who himself had only one eye, Kumkapi was half blind after Fisher Selim went away. Blind Agop had no truck with customers who came just to eat and drink. He was not in this world simply to cook fish and serve raki to such boors. What he wanted was friendly talk, warm comradeship, otherwise you might as well push off … Blind Agop was a habitué of the horse races, betting to win or lose, no matter. He loved horses, and even more loved talking about them. He also bred roosters. He kept twenty-three pure-stock Denizli roosters in the courtyard of the Kumkapi Armenian Church. And friends brought the best fighting cocks from all over Anatolia to match them with his own. What had the Armenian priest to say about all these goings-on in his churchyard, what could he say, that good man, God’s own beloved creature, when his churchyard, usually empty on Sundays but for Mad Serkis and a few old crones, was suddenly livened up by Agop’s world champion cocks? Why, the Armenian Patriarch should have given Agop a medal for this service!

  Yes, Fisher Selim never set foot in Kumkapi again. He broke off all relations with the fishermen there and went to settle in Menekşe. But here too people turned out to be false, double-tongued, smiling to his face and talking behind his back. And so Selim gave up. He made a shell for himself and retired into it. Now and again he would drop in at the coffee-house and watch the others, sometimes amused, more often pained, disheartened by their perverseness, pondering on why they were like that, so bent on making a hell of this lovely world around them. Human beings are g
enerous at heart, bright like the sea, like the sky, like a fresh fragrant flower, alive, soaring with gladness and hope. Why do they snuff these feelings out? Why, oh, why do they drain themselves of joy and love? Why, oh, why have they grown so sad, so gloomy, so lonely? Why all this killing, all this destruction? The human being is pliant, kind, sensitive, loving … Then, why the anger, the rancour, the hate? Why when one is sated must a hundred thousand go hungry? And how can the one who is sated feel secure under all those watching angry eyes, how can he be so callous?

  How can there exist a man like Skipper Laz Dursun? Who instilled such wickedness into him? Why did he and the other fishermen kill all the dolphins of the Marmara Sea? Without even realizing they were cutting off their own daily bread … For, as the dolphins roamed the Marmara in shoals, leaping and frolicking gaily, boon companions to birds and sailors, they stirred up the fish from the depths and herded them to the shores, so that in those times the catch was bountiful and the people of Istanbul could buy tunny for ten kurush and not, as now, a hundred lira the pair. The fish too were fatter, tastier. Something had happened to the Marmara with the extermination of the dolphins.

  Nobody remembers what year it was, that accursed year when dolphin oil became a precious commodity. Foreigners were eager to buy it and one drop was worth a gram of gold. Fishermen flowed into the Marmara from everywhere, the Black Sea, the Aegean, even the Mediterranean, and soon a fierce hunt was on, more like a wholesale massacre … The cries of the dolphins still echo over the Marmara, the shrieking as they were caught-harpooned, dynamited or shot dead.

  A few fishermen, like Fisher Selim, Lame Hasan and Skipper Sultan, pleaded with the others. ‘Stop this killing,’ they said. ‘It’s your own livelihood you’re cutting off; we’ll all die of hunger if there are no more dolphins.’ But who listened! They only laughed. So Fisher Selim and his friends went to the Vali and put the matter to him. ‘Save the Marmara, our sea, our bread, from these stupid vandals,’ they said. ‘Indeed?’ the Vali said. ‘Drying up the sea, are they?’ He was looking at them queerly as though at creatures from some other, unknown world. ‘So,’ he repeated airily, ‘they’re drying up the sea … We shall look into the matter.’ And he bent down over the papers on his desk. They waited uncertainly in that huge room which had once been the seat of grand viziers. Then a policeman signalled to them that the audience was over.

  Next, they sent telegrams to the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister, to their representatives in the National Assembly, but with no result at all, not even an answer. In the end, discouraged, they gave up.

  Only Selim would not give up. For days on end he talked and argued: ‘Don’t do this. There are so many other fish in the sea. The dolphin is like a human being, it is human. To kill it is worse than killing a man. Why, it is even holy – it protected our Prophet Jonah and kept him in its belly for forty days and forty nights …’ And he always ended up with the same words: ‘You’ll anger the sea, you’ll make her cross with all of us. After the wrong we’ve done her she’ll never give us even a tiny sprat … She’ll be cross with us …’

  It was then that people gave him that nickname: Sea-Crossed Selim.

  ‘Who’s that again?’

  ‘Who would it be! Sea-Crossed Selim!’

  ‘The one who’ll have the sea crashing over our heads.’

  ‘The one who says the sea is drying up!’

  ‘The man who’s lost his heart to a dolphin!’

  ‘Who’s fallen in love with a dolphin and made a mate of him …’

  ‘Copulating with a fish!’

  ‘Sea-Crossed Selim!’

  All along the shores of the Marmara Sea dolphins were being boiled in huge cauldrons and greasy clouds of smoke rose from every beach and cove. The sea itself smelled of burnt fish oil and all the land around, the trees and flowers, even the houses and people were impregnated with that same smell. Dead dolphins in hundreds strewed the waterside, waiting to be hacked up and thrown into the cauldrons. The oil thus obtained was scooped into barrels that were loaded on to foreign freighters anchored off Haydarpaşa or the Bosphorus.

  Fisher Selim realized at last that all his efforts were in vain. Now his sole concern was how to protect his own family of dolphins, how to save them from this frightful carnage. He could not very well tie them to his boat. Sooner or later the five of them would fall into the hands of some fisherman or other. Each morning Selim would put out to sea, his heart in his mouth, and when he caught sight of his family, bounding over to him from afar, he would almost faint with relief.

  One night, the sudden thought came to him that he might as well catch his own dolphins himself rather than let some bastard of a fisherman make oil out of them. The idea tormented him all night through, and when the next morning he saw them swimming joyously towards him from Büyükada Island, raising white foam over the sea, he reviled himself for the wicked thought. And that day, all day long, he talked to his dolphin, told him everything, and the dolphin spoke to him too, but what could the poor fish do? Sooner or later, he was bound to be caught … And when they separated in the evening Fisher Selim saw two tears in his dolphin’s eyes. Yes, the dolphin was weeping, Selim could swear to it, and he too wept. It was as if they both knew the fate that awaited them.

  There and then, he made up his mind to tackle all the fishermen, one by one. He would describe to them his own dolphin, the round black mark on his back, the broken tip of the right fin, the tail that was not upright like the others’ but quite flat, and he would ask them not to hurt him or his family. He would plead with those dogs, those greedy low-down wretches who had the curse of God on them … He would do this for the sake of his family.

  He started off at Pendik and the cluster of smallish islands around Tavşan Island, but there were no cauldrons boiling there. Then he made for the Gulf of Gemlik, and from a long way off he could see the smoke rising to the sky. He cast anchor in a small cove and rowed over in the dinghy to the group of men on the shore. Fifteen or twenty large dolphins lay there on the rocks. There were deep dark holes in their heads where the bullets had hit them.

  Fisher Selim recognized Skipper Teslim in the group. He was an old acquaintance from his drinking days at Kumkapi, but Selim had never spoken to him since then. Skipper Teslim was hurrying up to greet him. ‘Welcome, Selim. Welcome, my friend,’ he cried as he embraced him and led him to where a pot of coffee had been set to boil. They sat down on a flat rock. Skipper Teslim could hardly conceal his surprise, for Fisher Selim would rather die than seek anyone out like this. He handed him a cigarette, then fixed his own cigarette in a large amber holder, picked up an ember from the fire and lighted it. Selim did the same.

  ‘This is good business, Fisher Selim,’ Skipper Teslim said.

  ‘The dolphins are going to feather the nests of us poor fishermen. Those foreign freighters anchored in the port are ready to buy as much oil as you can offer them.’

  Selim said nothing.

  ‘If it wasn’t for this dolphin business,’ the Skipper continued, ‘I’d have been obliged to sell all my boats this year and try something other than fishing. Think, only the other day I sold fourteen barrels of oil and got more money for them than I earned in all my fishing days!’

  ‘But it’s not good business!’ Fisher Selim exploded. ‘The sea will be angry. The dolphins are the beauty of the sea. Allah will be angry. The dolphins are his beautiful handiwork. And the Prophet Muhammed will be angry … And the Prophet Jonah …. The seas will turn barren. The whole world will revile us.’

  ‘I know,’ Skipper Teslim sighed. ‘But if I don’t hunt them others will.’

  Five Mauser rifles were lined up against the cliff and magazines of cartridges lay about on the ground. Some deckhands were putting up a large tent. Others were hacking at the dolphins with big butcher’s cleavers and throwing the pieces into wide one-ton cauldrons. The strong penetrating odour of boiling fish stank in the nostrils.

  Skipper Teslim was a tall, hawk-nosed
man with a jutting Adam’s apple, sunken cheeks and lips that seemed to have been cut with a razor. ‘The whole of the Marmara Sea is like a battlefield now,’ he said. Then he saw Fisher Selim looking at the Mausers. ‘Those rifles,’ he went on, ‘I sold my new green boat to buy them. And I engaged one of those Kurds who can shoot a flying crane in the eye. We set out early in the morning. He lets fly without even taking aim, one, two, three, four, five …. In a couple of hours my three boats are packed full. Then there’s nothing left but to boil the fish and sell the oil.’ He laughed, showing his yellow, decayed teeth. ‘At this rate we’ll be able to buy apartment buildings in Istanbul, all of us Marmara fishermen …’

  ‘Not with Allah’s curse upon you!’ Fisher Selim leaped to his feet, clenching his fists. ‘Just you wait and see what’ll hit you in a couple of years! D’you think there’ll be any fish left in the Marmara once the dolphins are gone?’

  ‘I know … I know the Marmara won’t be the same without the dolphins, but …’

  Fisher Selim seized him by the collar. ‘Whoever kills my dolphin, my dolphin’s family …,’ he shouted. ‘There are five of them … I’ll make him wish he hadn’t been born. I’ll ask for blood! Blood for my blood.’

  The deck-hands had stopped working and were staring at them.

  ‘But Selim, my friend, for pity’s sake, how on earth am I to tell which are your dolphins?’

  Fisher Selim was stymied. How could he mention the black mark, the broken fin? Who’d wait to examine a fish when shooting at a distance and with a Mauser too?

  ‘That’s no excuse,’ he yelled as he rushed away. A deck-hand was waiting to help him push out in the dinghy. ‘These people are no longer human, Fisher Selim,’ he whispered. ‘They’ve gone mad.’

  Back in his boat Selim stood motionless, his eyes narrowed against the sun, his mind in a whirl. Suppose he had a Mauser rifle too, three deck-hands, a couple of cauldrons … Suppose he too joined in the hunt … Wouldn’t he make enough money in only a few months so to attain his heart’s desire? Anyway, the Marmara would be emptied of dolphins and sooner or later, whatever he did, his own family would be killed by these brutes. Take Skipper Teslim … He wasn’t a bad man, certainly not a brute … If a man’s business is fishing, then he has to kill whatever he finds in the sea, even if it is his own father. Well then Fisher Selim, here’s your chance. Will there ever be such a chance again in this accursed fishing trade? If you let this chance go by just because you say you want to be pure and human, then you’ll never attain your heart’s desire. Come Selim, don’t be soft …. You’re not getting any younger either, hey, Fisher Selim …