Latife Tekin - Berji Kristin - Tales from the Garbage Hills

The workers turned as white as the yoghurt; the refrigerator fumes got into their wide-open eyes, their throats were hoarse and torn from coughing, and their breathing was strangled. The manager said he would install a ventilation system in the factory for those affected and added he was organizing a new method of paying their wages.

That day the workers heard that when a man came on to the new wage-rate, he would become a ‘modern’ worker and would be rated not by seniority but according to output, skill and job commitment.

A little later a new creature called ‘The Regular Worker’ appeared in the factory. Workers were divided into ‘regulars’ and ‘irregulars’, and the regulars were paid more by the hour. The irregulars winced every time they were paid and heard the word ‘regular’; one of them rolled this word round his tongue and spat out the half that had passed into their slang as ‘regs’.

Workers, faster, faster move

Than the aeroplane above.

What if my hand gets caught and trapped

Before my foot can stop the press?

Your fingers will get crushed and torn,

A bloody mess!

Workers, faster, faster move

Than the aeroplane above.

Night and day, the ‘Work Faster’ song battered the ears of the men in the refrigerator factory. It was introduced by Mr. Izak’s new manager who had learned it in the country where he had been trained. The ten workers chosen as regulars began to earn more by the hour than the others; the regulars bent over their yoghurts, chatting and laughing, the others cursing and dawdling. Of the regulars, some were more regular than others and were paid even more by the hour. The more regulars finished their yoghurts fast and got back to the conveyor belt. The lesser regulars who earned less by the hour lined up after them. The irregulars, their heads bent over their yoghurt bowls, looked up and their eyes met. They began to talk. ‘May the yoghurt stick in the throat of the man who switched from a bonus to yoghurt!’, they muttered, and sitting down with their spoons under their arms, refused to eat. The new manager stood beside them, and in a voice soft as down invited them to eat the yoghurt. The men laughed and spluttered over their cream-covered bowls.

That day the new manager tried to give four representatives a kick down one of the roads which straggled and disappeared between the huts below the garbage slopes. But these four stood their ground and waited like four refrigerators at the factory exit. The foreman who had attacked the protesters with a screwdriver hid behind the new manager as he addressed the workers assembled at the conveyor belt:

‘Dear workers of the refrigerator plant, will the union build you hostels on the garbage hills, with windows flaming bright from the garbage glitter? Will it install ventilation in the factory and make the chemicals evaporate in the blue sky?’

After the new manager had spoken he distributed forms and called on the men to resign from the union and sign the papers. The regulars rushed to sign, but the others looked at him askance, sharp as needles. He said he had come with a fever straight from his sickbed to the factory and asked them to hurry. ‘Don’t upset me, boys!’ he said. They laughed at the new manager and his ‘fever’. Master Gülbey detached himself from their jeer and squatted down by the metal plates; he took a hammer and hammered away at the distorted metal until he had straightened it all out.

Gülbey was a craftsman who had gone round the huts at night with union papers and had introduced the union to the factory. Everyone in Rubbish Road knew that Mr. Izak had pushed a case full of money at him to stop him; and there was delighted discussion in the factories of how Master Gülbey had untied the bundles of notes and scattered them like confetti among the men who waited quietly by their machines. Besides the confetti business he had also invented a one-man resistance show called ‘The Plastic Works Sit-in’, which went down in the history of their union and later spread to other factories on Rubbish Road. While Bully Boys still frequented Rubbish Road, Gülbey was caught with union cards on his person, for in those days he worked at a plastics press and was very keen on the union. Mr. Izak removed him and gave him no compensation. Master Gülbey refused to be parted from the machinery he had polished with his sweat and worn smooth by his breath over the years. When he was laid off he chained himself by the arms to his machine. This led to an uproar in the factory. He lay there pitifully curled up and declared he would stay there until the officials came from the Employment Office. Not a single man did any work in the factory until the officials were able to pinpoint the machine where Master Gülbey sat hung with chains and locks. The work shifts piled up. Night fell.

His eyes are welding flames,

His lashes iron rods.

Gülbey the Smith,

Gülbey

Now the men followed Gülbey back to their machines, pressed the pedals and grasped the hammers and handles of the welding machines. They seized linchpins and screws. The conveyor which moved from one worker to the next slowly began to turn. Nothing could be heard but the hiss of the welding, the hammering of the metal workers and the rumble of machinery. Now and then one of the men broke off and, climbing on to the storage depot, looked out for the four men planted outside.

Work went on with quiet urgency for two days in the fridge factory. On the third day production slowed down and, as the hammers softly caressed the metal discs, showers of sleet began to fall on the garbage hills. The flakes slid down the grey-painted windows until evening and the lights came on. The welding flames died down, machines were silent, the arms of the presses fell by their sides. The metalworkers rose up and threw down their hammers and one rushed forward to turn off the main switch. The men for the night shift filled up inside the factory in a rush. The welders with their tools rushed to the doors and windows which they bolted and welded, then a barrel was rolled into the middle. Taci Baba leapt up on the barrel. With eyes like huge plastic moulds, he shouted ‘Metal workers! Lathe workers!’ The veins on his neck swelled like cords; ‘May our resistance be successful,’ he said, calming his pounding heart with his right hand. He was roundly applauded and the men’s hands were stretched out to one another as though celebrating a festival. The headmen and foremen sneaked away quietly from the ‘hand-in-hand’ game and disappeared in the dark corridors. The ‘regulars’, confused and subdued in a corner watched the workers embracing. The lesser regulars watched longer, and while the more regulars grew more frightened, the makeshift mosques on the garbage slopes gave the call to prayer.

It was the month of Ramazan and ‘what’s more’, to use Bald Ali’s phrase, all the workers, regulars and irregulars, were fasting. At Mr. Izak’s unearthly yells they all broke their fast at the machines. While the gleaming sleet fell and vanished in the dark, trucks surrounded the factory and took over the garbage hills. Panic-stricken men, summoned from outside to vacate the factory, burned with the desire to escape and their eyes slid in fear to the dark corridors, the doors and windows.

Master Gülbey got the men together and squatted down. He declared he would bury anyone in the garbage mounds who tried to escape. The workers were trembling at Mr. Izak’s shouts and yells; Gülbey stopped up their nostrils flaring with fear. He climbed up on the roof of the storage depot, jumped on one of the runaway workers and knocked him down — the sleet washed away the blood which spouted from the runaway’s nose over the concrete.