Latife Tekin: Berji Kristin: Tales from the Garbage Hills

Meanwhile refuse was dumped continuously on the Hill, and with the milder weather the seagulls forsook the garbage. Amidst their shrill cries new little refuse mounds grew up around the piles of pickings and all hell broke loose over the division of these mounds among the neighbourhoods and the hut people. People took their children there very early in the morning and did not go home until dark. The bits of plastic, iron, bottles and paper they gathered were sold to the nearby workshops, while all the time the trucks came to Flower Hill driving the pickers down to the stream away from the refuse. Every time the trucks arrived, the Flower Hill people ran to the stream and huddled together, but as soon as the trucks left they dispersed again among the refuse heaps. They were harried for days. Then one forenoon the garbage owner came to Flower Hill in his snow-white car and, holding a white handkerchief to his nose, he showed them sealed and stamped documents proving his rights.

After that morning the owner gave the Flower Hill people a little money per kilo for their pickings, and no more trucks came to the Hill to attack the scavengers. Instead of precious stones and pieces of gold, blood-red sores appeared on their hands. The children stole plastic baby dolls with broken legs and heads from the rubbish heap and played with them in secret. The women kept an eye open for the watchmen and thrust the cracked fancy mirrors they found into their pockets, and at night they looked in these mirrors and combed their hair with combs from the garbage. Flies from the refuse settled on their hair. With the mingled stench of refuse and factory, the wind blew continuously into the huts and into people’s noses, so they sealed their doors and windows and ate bowlfuls of yoghurt to avoid being poisoned. At night they wore plastic sacks to escape the flies. Children were lost inside the bags; the adults drew up their knees and curled up into balls. Breathing holes were made for their mouths, but after midnight the sacks were like steaming clouds dripping hot tears.

Back in the village the community shepherd girls who used to milk the sheep that grazed out in the summer pastures at night were called ‘Berji Girls’ by the community who held the job of bringing in the milk and carrying it to the village in high esteem. A girl’s upbringing was measured by the way she went about milking the sheep. A shepherd girl had her hair stroked and was called ‘Dear Berji girl’. On Flower Hill only the girls who picked over the refuse were considered worthy of the name and awarded such praise. A girl’s reputation on Flower Hill was judged by whether she collected refuse or not, and by the way she went about her work.

When it became clear who the owner was the men gave up picking over the garbage and went off to find work and a living beyond the Hill. Collecting garbage was considered child’s work, women’s work. The women filled their pouches rapidly as though gathering herbs or sorting over cracked wheat. At the same time they minded their homes and children. The men went without work for days, for so long that they got into the habit of getting together to congratulate anyone who had found work, and a woman whose husband had found a job strutted proudly round all the huts, distributing halva and kissing hands. But those who had failed to get work turned this custom into something very different. The halva distributors were cornered behind doors by the other women, pinched black and blue, and eventually beaten up openly.

There was no lack of wind to tear the roofs off the shacks on Flower Hill. Holding on to roofs, wearing plastic sacks at night and washing in bluish hot water came to seem as natural as eating and drinking. And when the wind blew very hard the squatters climbed out on the roofs and lay down flat to stop them taking off. This was far more effective than pulling from below with ropes and hooks. Meanwhile ‘stoning the wind’ became a custom. For every roof climbed, a handful of radish seed was scattered below Wind-Curse Point and the wind was stoned to death.

But stoning the wind was useless. On the contrary, after every stoning it blew up even blacker and fiercer against the people. Sweeping straight down on the roofs it tore the pitchpaper off the ceilings and left it swinging loose. It lifted walls off the ground, caught women and children in the street and blew them over. No tears could wash away the dust swirled about by the wind. Heads were racked with pain, and over their floral headscarves the women tied thick bands of cloth called ‘Windbreakers’ round their aching heads. The men went about pressing their hands to their ringing ears. The trees on Flower Hill grew sideways instead of upwards, and the birds came and went, swooping over the hill.

While the wind blew in fits and starts the Flower Hill folk made up all kinds of wind stories. They believed the wind was the hill’s lover who resented their coming and establishing a community up there and they thought if they adopted the wind’s name, it would quieten down. They gave the name ‘Wind’ to children born at the time, whether they were male or female. They composed wind songs and even invented games about it.

The children forgot blind man’s buff and hide-and-seek and discovered new games, mostly played sitting down. They stood before the wind and turned into whirligigs or, sitting on sheets of tin, flew down to the stream with outstretched arms, and they called this game ‘Giving the Wind the slip’. The women carrying water on their backs produced other unsual games as they came and went. They walked from one hilltop to another swinging and splashing water from their cans. They knelt, then stood in a row and sang, Water, water, pretty water! Droplet, flying droplet! Let the wind, my lover, come!

The men invented a different game called ‘Walking against the Wind’. They played it on Rubbish Road which joined the minibus route half an hour away from Flower Hill.

Oh Wind,

My eyes keep running, my poor knees shake,

All the time my shoulders ache,

My arms can’t lift, my fingers chill,

One of us must leave this hill.

The Flower Hill simit-sellers and pedlars made up the song. The factory workers on the Hill countered the Flower Hill folk by making up their own song and dance, in which the Flower Hill men also took part. Every morning they walked ten steps apart in a row, from one end of the road to the other, some facing, some back to back. First they began to sing all together, then with hunched backs and bowed heads and arms held stiffly by their sides, they compressed their shoulders and drew in their necks. When they reached the middle of the road they sang ‘Hey, Wind, hey!’ and all turned sideways on to the wind.

Surprisingly, this dance continued in the same order every morning and evening. When the factory night-shift had dispersed, the workers appeared at the gates in a row. They stood before the watchmen who searched their pockets to check if they had stolen anything from inside; after the search the workers came out on the road and began the wind dance. And before they got half-way down the road the hut people met them gliding slowly like black birds.

In time changes came about through the wind dance performed by the Flower Hill men on Rubbish Road. They became accustomed to walking sideways, hands pressed to their sides, bowing their heads as they walked. One winter day when the wind was flinging the snow over the shacks, they were completely bent double and that snowy night they came home with twisted backs and necks awry and fell into bed fevered and sweating. For ten days the Flower Hill men did not open their eyes from ‘Wind Sickness’; then the fever and sweat stopped and the illness passed but left them with neck and shoulders even more twisted and lopsided.