Hasan Toptas - Reckless

Ziya had no idea what to do.

‘So you are making a complaint, or not?’ asked the sergeant.

‘No,’ said Ziya. He paused to swallow. ‘No, I’m not.’

Then he stood up and washed his hands and face in the sink that the sergeant indicated and went outside.

That evening, while sitting under the almond trees, eating the boiled eggs and green onions that he’d bought from the children of Silvan, Ziya turned to Kenan and whispered, ‘Do you see how it is, then? They beat us in broad daylight, and we can’t do a thing.’

‘If you ask me, that sergeant used all his wiles to talk you out of it,’ said Kenan, quickly swallowing his food. ‘Who knows? Maybe it wouldn’t have turned out like he said.’

‘I have no way of knowing,’ said Ziya. ‘Really I don’t. All I know is this: if I’d complained, that commander would have given me no peace. And anyway, the case would have gone on for years, and as that sergeant at headquarters said, there’s no way of knowing how it would have turned out. So in one way, at least, it’s good that it ended like this. Let’s just get through our military service as quickly as we can and then get out. I don’t know if you noticed, but the lieutenant called me an ox, and the commander who beat me up today called me an animal. The officer at headquarters called me a dog. That is not just an insult to humanity, but to animals.’

Holding his flatbread to his mouth, Kenan smiled.

‘With all the bad things going on around it, you’re going to worry about this now? Wouldn’t most people agree with you anyway?’

Rather than answer, Ziya looked over at the barbed wire beyond the almond trees, and for a moment each and every one of the Silvan children seemed to flare up and glitter with all the possibilities of life on the other side. After that, he couldn’t take his eyes off them for the longest time. It was almost as if his soul had flown over the fence, to hover over those black-eyed, black-haired children and their swinging baskets.

‘If you ask me, you shouldn’t let anything worry you,’ whispered Kenan. ‘I say we just buckle down and hope for the best and finish our military service and leave. And anyway, we don’t have much choice, as you know.’

Ziya nodded slowly in agreement. But then, in a harsh voice, he said, ‘I hate the food. I hate that mess hall. And most of all, I hate that kitchen. I never want to see it again.’

Kenan raised his head and looked quickly up at the sky. He closed one eye, moving his lips very slightly. His face still raised up, he told Ziya that according to his calculations, they’d have one more week of mess duty while they were here, and that would be in two months’ time.

The next time he was on mess duty, Ziya was very tense. He kept trying to lose himself in the crowd, and every time the mess sergeant issued an order, he watched what those around him were doing and silently did the same. Until lunchtime, they worked in that room whose walls were thick with the stink of old oil; furiously they peeled onions and potatoes, and chopped up the meat; they sifted through sack loads of lentils; they washed vegetables in the long sinks, and cleaned the hall; over and over, they mopped the blackened concrete floor. Then, with giant spoons, they ladled the food into lidded metal pots. Just before lunch was served, they threw the sacks of bread over their shoulders, and each squad went to its own company’s mess hall. Fearing that something might go wrong in the commotion of passing out the food buckets, and land him with another problem, Ziya chose to pick up one of the sacks of bread. When they had filed in with all the others in the squad, those carrying the sacks went from table to table, leaving a ration of bread at each place. Ziya was making his way towards a table in the corner when the mess sergeant gestured to him from the door. ‘You!’ he said. ‘Look here! Now!’ When Ziya had turned around, he said, ‘You know that you’re to leave two rations of bread at each place on that table. Don’t you?’

And at that moment, the Ziya who had spent the day being so very meek gave birth to a new Ziya, almost. This new Ziya stared back at the sergeant, as if he was about to bite him.

‘What are you looking at, boy? Didn’t you understand what I just said?’

‘No, I didn’t,’ said the newborn Ziya. ‘Why should I give the people at this table a double ration?’

‘Because that’s where your sergeants sit,’ muttered the mess sergeant. ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t know that, oh bird of God.’

Ziya said nothing. Returning to the tables, he started with the one in the corner, putting down a single ration of bread at each place.

‘What do you think you’re doing, boy?’ yelled the mess sergeant.

His face was red with anger.

‘I did what needed to be done,’ said Ziya. ‘Do these sergeants have a different God from ours? Why should they have two rations of bread, when we get only one?’

Not believing what he’d just heard, the sergeant opened his arms, as if in prayer, and stood there, wide-eyed. Then he sprang into action, fairly flying across the hall, and without so much as a by your leave, he did a right hook and then a left hook, punching Ziya in the face. He punched him so hard that the jugs and trays on the tables all rattled. And Ziya swung this way and that, grabbing at the edge of the table to keep from falling.

‘Stand at attention,’ yelled the sergeant. ‘Stand at attention, you son of a whore!’

Ziya promptly stood at attention, but his stare was the same. It was almost as if it was his clenched teeth staring, and not his eyes. He stared with all the force of the thoughts racing through his mind, and each one was fiercer and more violent than the last.

And the sergeant stood a few paces back, glaring at Ziya as if he could read those thoughts.

Then he jabbed his forefinger at the mess hall’s concrete floor, jabbed it as fast as if he was thrusting a bayonet. ‘Get down, oh bird of God,’ he yelled. ‘Get down and take the belly-crawl position.’

Ziya got down as ordered, taking the belly-crawl position, and when the sergeant gave the order, he soundlessly wriggled his way amongst the tables. At that point, the company came marching back from the training ground, singing the Eskişehir March, and a few minutes later, they had all piled into the mess hall. When they came inside and saw Ziya crawling on the floor, they stopped short, of course. Instead of sitting down, they formed a huddled queue along the wall. And that was when the sergeant changed his tune, very suddenly. He flashed a bright smile, as if to diminish everyone and everything in sight, and then, for a few moments, he turned that smile on Ziya, and as he did so, it blackened, sending out sparks. Over and over, he yelled, ‘Keep crawling, you son of a whore. Keep crawling like the dog you are, until that doggy mind of yours is back in your doggy head!’ And each time he yelled out these words, he glared at the crowd that had backed against the wall, so that this would be a lesson to them.

No one made a peep, of course; with tired eyes, they watched Ziya crawl across the floor.

And so it was that Ziya crawled back and forth and back and forth across the mess-hall floor that day, under exactly 180 pairs of eyes. He felt nothing. It was as if all his senses had shut down, and there was nothing left to him but flesh and bone and a khaki uniform. So as not to further delay the company that was soon to return to the training ground, the sergeant finally told Ziya to stand up. And then he said, ‘Now finish what you left half done. Go and put another ration of bread at each place on that table.’

Ziya gathered the strength that had got him back on his feet. He walked wearily over to the table where the sergeants were to sit, and he put an extra ration of bread at each place.