Latife Tekin - Berji Kristin - Tales from the Garbage Hills

Whenever the fridge workers appeared at the surface the men from the Rubbish Road factories would hastily report that the lathemen did not want to join the strike and that the metalworkers had beaten them up with their iron rods and thrown them out. Every factory added a new angle to the tale and different stories accumulated. The hut community heard that someone had written on the door of Mr. Izak’s ironworks, ‘No metalworks — no rights’. Before they could make sense of this, news spread on Rubbish Road and the garbage hills that the lathemen wanted to pitch a mosque tent beside the strike tent. This got mixed up with the story of Mr. Izak’s house with its indoor pool and his wife’s youth and beauty. But no one talked about his wife’s beauty once it was overshadowed by a rumour that underground Mr. Izak was making parts for firearms. The hut people eyed the fridge factory with hundreds of questions in their heads.

The era of the squatter factories on the garbage hills ended with these hundreds of unspoken questions. The workers’ songs mingled with the hodja’s voice — from the mosque built by Mr. Izak — as he preached that a strike meant pitching a tent against God. All these sounds got lost in the screechings of the seagulls, the noise of the refuse drums, and the hum of the community. The garbage hills never stayed still and after every protest the trucks dumped the city’s rubbish a little further from the huts. The huts multiplied as they tried to keep up with the trucks and every night their fences moved nearer to the new garbage heaps. After witnessing the founding of Flower Hill, Mr. Izak suddenly disappeared. He had signed his name clearly in chemicals on the skies above the garbage hills, and he left the direction of his factory to the managers and to the day and night foremen. The garbage hills saw him no more.

The man who wrecked the huts has gone

The man who woke the dead has fled

To distant lands and homes with pools.

He feared the garbage birds.

Fridge-gas has stung him till he cries,

He runs away with streaming eyes.

The fridges go by lorryload

The workers had to tramp the road.

Mr. Izak’s departure was like Kurd Cemal’s. His physical body disappeared from the garbage hills but his name remained, inscribed in their heavens. After Kurd Cemal joined the Town Council they heard he was to set up another big factory which would turn out industrial refrigerators on Panty Way. And after a time his factory materialised.

Like a gleaming star above the garbage hills the inscription read:

‘In a squatters’ community

the coffeehouse, hotel and prostitute

come first everytime’

Kurd Cemal,

Member of the Municipal Council

When the refrigerator factory got going on Panty Way the rumour spread that anyone on Flower Hill who had registered in Kurd Cemal’s party would find work in the plant. The Flower Hill people all registered with Kurd Cemal, and the men gathered humbly at the top of the garbage hills or in front of the town hall to get recommendation cards from Kurd Cemal or Garbage Owner. But ten youths — the cream of Flower Hill — went to work for Mr. Izak and the rest had their names struck off Kurd Cemal’s party register.

This event which resulted in an angry comment from the Flower Hill folk, ‘We’re free to sign up, free to drop out!’ seriously undermined Garbage Chief’s position in Flower Hill. At the time of the founding of the workers’ settlement, a rift had opened between Garbage Chief and the hut people, on account of the money he grabbed and his leanings towards ‘bureaucracy’, but when he tried to close the gap by worming his way into their confidence, then rushing them into joining Kurd Cemal’s party, their respect for him sank to zero. They started a rumour about prostrating themselves in front of Kurd Cemal in prayer five times a day, and the intensity of their swearing took Garbage Chief’s breath away. His only solution was to outshine the star of Kurd Cemal’s inscription that gleamed over the garbage hills. He took a deep breath and declared that Flower Hill must have a school. The hut people paid little attention, thinking the school idea would turn out to be a lie, like the brass taps and the electric cables that were to coil round the huts, but Garbage Chief kept his promise to take part personally in building the school and to bring out a photograph of Flower Hill in the newspaper.

As soon as they heard that the photograph of Flower Hill would appear, they looked on him again with favour. On his advice they hastily knocked up wooden moulds, and a breezeblock yard was set up in their midst. Garbage Chief poured the first mortar into the moulds, letting the sweat drip from his nose, and had his picture taken with the men in the yard. The photograph showed rejoicing and smiles on the faces of the women and children. After the Flower Hill folk had their picture printed in the paper a long rectangular schoolhouse was built for them with two walls of breezeblock and a tin roof. Garbage Chief’s heart, which had sunk to the ground, took off from the roof and flew higher than the stars.

Much later a young teacher came to the long low school dressed in a navy-blue suit and a collar and tie. He assembled the hut people in front of the schoolhouse and made a long emotional speech which began, ‘As I said in one of my poems …’ From then on he always drew examples from his poems when he spoke to the hut people, including his pupils. The Flower Hill folk called this young man the ‘Poet Teacher’. He was fascinated by the darkening sky as the garbage birds spread their white wings to heaven and soon he acquired the habit of standing alone on top of the garbage hills. He astonished the hut people when he declared he could not get enough of the sight of the garbage hills under the evening sun, and that they filled a man’s heart with melancholy. He wrote innumerable poems on the stifling odour, on the garbage glitter and the smoke that rose over Rubbish Road. He recited them to the hut people who turned incredulous eyes on the smoke and the garbage mounds. He collected the songs and games of Flower Hill, and started a folk-dance group of little girls from the huts.

The group went from door to door collecting the caps worn by boys on their circumcision. The Poet Teacher stuck them on his girl pupils’ heads, turning the sequin letters of ‘May God preserve him’ to the back, and covering them with spangled muslin. He got his boy pupils to learn his poems by heart. The son of the squatter family who played for the hut people at weddings became the group’s folk singer on the garbage hills. On Poet Teacher’s invitation the hut people assembled at the school and there he opened the children’s performance with a poetic speech beginning with a reference to the garbage stink that settled even on Flower Hill’s bread. Then he moved on to the good days to come. The musician’s son leapt forward holding a huge tambourine. As the girls spun round he began to sing ‘Lorke Lorke, drinking ayran swelled her belly’. He made the squatters laugh as he sat down with knees crossed just like his musician father. Some of them got on their feet intending to line up opposite the tambourine and dance, but Garbage Chief and the elders of Flower Hill insisted that they should sit down again. The musician’s son nearly passed out playing his tambourine before the squatters. Sweat sprang to his forehead and dripped down his cheeks. Then it was the children’s turn to recite poetry. Poet Teacher took one of the children and made him stand on a wooden chair. The child looked at the crowd with huge wide-open eyes, his face ashen pale with excitement, then words spilled from his mouth about the winged darkness of the garbage gulls; ‘Bird, bird, whose wing is night’. Halfway through the poem he stopped and swallowed, then raising his head helplessly to the flying birds he began to cry. His head dropped like the tears pouring from his eyes, and he couldn’t look at the people any more from shame. Jumping off the chair with his head down, and peeping at the crowd fearfully from behind his curtain of tears, he saw first Garbage Chief weeping, then the elders of Flower Hill, followed by all the squatters. He was rooted to the spot by the gleaming teardrops.