Yasemın Aydinoğlu - Istanbul Noir

A few hours later everyone had calmed down, the gawkers had dispersed. The smell of ashes and moldy walls gradually replaced the scent of pot. I was in my bunk before the clock even struck 10. I lay down and took a deep breath. I thought about that look on his face that said, Now I’m fucked, as I told him the story. If that man gets a wink of sleep tonight, I thought, my name ain’t Ahmet.

The ward was completely shrouded in darkness before midnight. The sounds of sleeping men, of snoring, wheezing, teeth grinding, and the scent of polyester shirts reeking of sweat mingled in the air.

I woke up early the next day. I looked for Sinan, but he wasn’t in bed. I walked through the bunks, checked the bathrooms upstairs, but he was nowhere to be found. I went out into the courtyard. There he was, facing the ward door. Three men stood before him, with their backs to me. They’d cornered him. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The three guys from the night before were in Sinan’s face. Man, I was just looking to mess with him a bit... How could this be? Or were his suspicions actually right? I pretended to be pacing along the wall, and got as close to them as I could. First I heard them laughing, so I guessed it wasn’t anything serious after all. Clearly the leader was talking, and the others were throwing in some laughs for support. But Sinan just stood there, cowering before them. He couldn’t leave, and he couldn’t make them shut up. He kept puffing on his cigarette, stoking his lungs full of cold air and smoke. The big one spoke up again.

“Ain’t nobody in Bomonti ain’t poked that chick, and you tryin’ to elope with her like she’s some eighteen-year-old virgin.”

(Sinan remains silent.)

“Dude, you fucking idiot, you go messing with some guy you know nothing about for some three-penny whore?”

(Again, nothing.)

“They didn’t teach you back in the army, huh? Khaki outfit, boots, everybody equal, until the day you get your discharge papers. On that day, some guys put on their leather jackets and leave. And other guys, scum like you, they put on ragged-ass jackets all torn at the seams... Now go on and do your paces, and quit bitin’ off more than your runt mouth can chew!”

(Sinan swallows, his eyes wide and rolling.)

“Who do you think you are, trying to stab a man, you fucking piece of shit!”

He didn’t even lower his voice when he saw me approaching. I walked right by them. I followed the wall and dove back inside the ward. They dispersed after me. The other two guys were laughing and cussing left and right.

I didn’t go near Sinan all day. He didn’t talk at all; he didn’t eat; he didn’t go out to the courtyard. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t sad. So what was his deal? He didn’t have the usual fever blister popping out of his lip. And he didn’t seem like a man waiting for his manifest destiny either. He was cold, motionless, as if all the nerves had been ripped out of him. Was it the comfort of simply knowing what’s to come?

Toward evening it started snowing. The men out in the courtyard headed back into the ward, taking cover from the sudden onslaught of slush. I left the crowd and chaos behind and walked up to him.

“What were those guys talking about?” I asked.

No response. He wouldn’t talk. He’d erased me, completely. The Sinan who constantly rattled on to me about all his suspicions had been replaced by this mute dupe. I had no idea what he was thinking. What the fuck was going on? He didn’t talk, not that evening, not that night. I was dying to find out. But that was Sinan. When he shut down, even his fucking maker couldn’t rouse him out of it. I didn’t press him any further. The bastard could stew in his own juices for all I cared.

When I woke abruptly early the next morning, I felt like I was about to come. I found myself trying to suffocate the rod beneath my waist, between a pillow clenched between my legs and the rough texture of the cotton mattress. On the verge of explosion, I got up and went to the bathroom. (When I was new to the ward, Sinan had followed me to the dimly lit bathroom a few times.)

It was still pitch black in most of the ward. It took awhile for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, with just a tiny sliver of light seeping in from under the door. As I walked down between the bunks, I glanced at Sinan’s bed, but he wasn’t there. It was 3 in the morning; all of the doors were locked. Where could he be? I walked toward the stairs leading up to the toilets. When I got to the bathroom door, I heard voices; scuffling and struggling. Slowly, I pushed the door open. There was a pool of blood between the sinks and stalls in their pinkish-yellow glow. I saw the legs of a man, trembling, sprawled out in the pool of blood. The upper half of his body was in one of the stalls. One of his slippers had come off, the other was still on his foot. When I saw his shirt, which had soaked up the blood to the color of rotten cherry, I recognized the broadly checkered design. It was the big guy, the group leader. I took another step inside. Then, above him, I saw Sinan.

He was all over the guy like a spider. He was so agile, stabbing the guy with a shiv, in the neck, in the stomach, all over. The man was nothing but a pulp of muscle and nerves by then. A thin blanket was wrapped tightly around his head. It seemed he’d taken the first hit to the jugular and spurted blood all over the walls. Sinan was rabid, his attention focused entirely upon his prey like some nocturnal animal. He stuck the shiv into the now motionless body a few more times. Then he looked up at the door and saw me.

I took one step back, but I couldn’t take the second. I couldn’t move. I leaned against the wall. He wasn’t at all surprised to see me. He stood up and walked through the pool of blood to the sink. The ice-cold water that ran over his hands and arms was red at first; he rubbed his fingers together until it gradually turned pink, then transparent. He removed his undershirt, now stained with blood. Naked from the waist up, he walked up to me. Then, without a word, and without looking me in the face, he moved straight past me. He was calm, invigorated. And he remained so as he headed out the door and down the stairs. I tried with all my might to move. Finally, I managed to walk down the stairs, silently. It was the longest journey I’d ever taken in that tiny ward. Each step sent a shudder through my body, like a guillotine blow to the neck. I couldn’t control my breathing. It was as if my joints had hardened, like all the spaces between my bones were filled with concrete. I struggled to find my way through the darkness. My eyes were popping out of my head, like somebody pumped up on too much shit. I walked by his bed. He was lying there, under the covers, calm as could be. I reached my bunk. Suddenly the damn bunk that I despised waking up in every morning had become the safest shelter. I was surrounded by the noise of snoring. I didn’t make a sound. The moment I did, one of those shivs would go splat through my neck. I lay down. And stayed there, motionless.

The next morning they took a count. They removed the body of the big guy. It took at least seven or eight of them to lug it down the stairs. An investigation ensued. Nobody was allowed out of the ward until noon. At noon, Sinan went to the door. He’d hurriedly gathered his dirty underwear and placed them in a bag. He said he was going to the Turkish bath. They let him. They never suspected him since he didn’t have any friends, and there was no way he could take out such a big guy.

I would never be his equal. I never talked with him, never approached him again, and never during the night did I look his way... and I never made the mistake of ever, ever getting a wink of sleep.