Latife Tekin - Berji Kristin - Tales from the Garbage Hills

Before the open wounds on the brides’ ‘faces’ had closed, Flower Hill re-echoed with the news that Güllü Baba’s eyes had dried up. Şengül was nicknamed ‘The Bride Who Dried up the Tears’. All the women who had come to Flower Hill to admire her beauty and weep for her breasts turned hostile when they heard that Güllü Baba shed no more tears. They cursed her beauty, and every time they saw her they turned their backs and slapped their rumps. Children banged tins at her door, and the men prowled round her furtively.

After the Flower Hill folk had given up mourning, they waited for Güllü Baba’s tears to flow again. The women gathered at his door. They cooked him broths which they made him drink, saying, ‘May they bring tears and grief.’ Every now and then they brought him Sirma and put her hands into his withered ones. But Sirma grew tired of coming to Güllü Baba, and she began to stamp her foot and cry. The women made her sprinkle water on his face and they smeared her tears on his eyes, but however much he tried to grieve he couldn’t manage a single tear. His spirit exhausted, his power gone, he fell ill. Tossing and turning in his bed, he repeated, ‘The factories are howling’, and as he tossed he made new guesses about Flower Hill. He gave away Flower Hill’s secrets to anyone who came to visit him.

Güllü Baba had come by these secrets through his tears. God had dried up his tears, but had bestowed another gift of priceless value in their place which was the ability to discover secrets known only to Him. Through this gift he could foresee the fate of the Flower Hill folk: on their foreheads were inscribed, in deep black letters, factories, wind and garbage. These would be the bringers of good luck and bad; factories would be opened on Flower Hill where the deformed men would work, and there would be so many more factories that the women and children would stop scavenging and would fill them: the community would prosper, but their sores would never heal. The factory waste would alter the colour of the earth, the howling wind would scatter, and murmurs would turn into screams.

Güllü Baba, throughout his illness, turned Flower Hill upside-down by giving away many of its secrets. Along with the factories, the garbage and the wind, his name was inscribed on Flower Hill in deep black letters through his predictions, his advice and the words uttered in his sleep. After his recent accounts people began to look with apprehension at the garbage trucks as they came and went, the collectors in their black aprons, and the factories and garbage hills. They saw the wind as having magical powers and gave up the custom of ‘stoning the wind’. It was replaced by the custom of giving ear to the wind, listening to its howling and waiting for the sounds it carried. Güllü Baba left off reciting prayers and breathing on their sores and began to tell fortunes in return for cheese, olives and soup. He no longer talked about the many different colours of flowers which would bloom on the garbage hills, and the huts in which bright green herbs would flourish. The prayers and laments he had raised were forgotten, erased from ear and memory, replaced in Flower Hill idiom by Güllü Baba’s poetic metaphors, such as ‘My troubles are greater than the mountains of garbage,’ ‘The factories howl,’ ‘My eye, like a young girl’s, lights on work, food and water.’ As the factories howled, and the garbage mountains grew in height, new gnomic sayings were added. The factory noise, howling wind and stinking garbage became an insoluble problem, an inaccessible mystery. Factories, waste and garbage crept into the Flower Hill songs alongside the wind: the cranes took wing, and the deer stole away. On Flower Hill, young people in love would complain, ‘My heart is ravaged like the mountains of garbage.’ A cloud settled on the factories, snow flaked over the huts. The screams of the sea birds filled the Flower Hill sky; waste matter spoiled the earth, and the earth colour turned red while the blue plaster on the hut-walls rotted away.

Tell your name, O Falcon-lad!

Peregrine Doǧan.

Who’s your father?

I’m the son of Garbage Grocer.

Is your love a shepherd maid?

While Güllü Baba was predicting the future for the Flower Hill people, the Nato Avenue sign was put up again, shiny and blue, on the chocolate factory wall up Rubbish Road. On the same day the bluish hot water was cut off, and factory snow stopped falling on the huts. A huge tent was pitched in front of the chemical factory, and over the door hung a red banner announcing Workers’ Strike. A worker grabbed a big tin can and whirling round and round began to drum and sing:

Ding Ding, Dinga Ding,

Out on strike the chemists went,

Keep it going, Dinga Ding,

By the factory bloomed a snow-white tent.

Keep it going, Dinga Ding.

The banging echoed back and forth between the factories, and all the strikers joined in the singing until their quavering voices reached the hills and huts.

When factories on Rubbish Road went on strike, and the tent was pitched and the banners hung up, this banging and singing became a habit. The workers called it ‘The Strikers’ Song’. It originated from the first strike in Rubbish Road when the women who worked on the dry batteries used to sing, ‘A white tent, the rose of Rubbish Road, an ill wind, the wind of Rubbish Road.’ After them came the linen workers who put up their strike banner and let the wind blow the rose of the song away while they danced a folk dance shoulder to shoulder in Rubbish Road. The wind seized their tent and whirled it to the skies, then it fell into the garden of the factory which made batteries for cars.

By the factory bloomed a snow-white tent,

Keep it going, Dinga Ding,

But the wind blew up and away it went.

Keep it going, Dinga Ding.

Leaving the tent in the garden it circled round Flower Hill where it blew and blew. After Flower Hill was founded the first to strike were the chemical workers. The noises which filled the women’s buckets by the hot water fountain overflowed into the streets of Flower Hill, stirring up alarm and confusion; children left off playing and scavenging for garbage; men came bent and stooping out of their doorways; women took up their babies; everyone went to watch. Not a soul was left in the huts.

Out on strike the chemists went

Keep it going, Dinga Ding,

To the lightbulb men they sold the tent.

Keep it going, Dinga Ding.

Passing on the tent was a Rubbish Road custom which dated from the strike in the car battery factory. The arrival of the linen workers’ tent in the garden of the car battery factory meant that it would be the next to strike. And so it came about, before the linen workers had time to dismantle their tent and go back to work. The battery workers pegged down their tent securely and on the first day sent a white pigeon flying off to a round of applause. The bird shot into the sky like an arrow and was lost in the smoke of the factories of Rubbish Road. Then it circled round and perched on top of their factory. That turned out to be the longest strike on Rubbish Road. Snow fell on their tent; frost came. After the rains came summer. The strike banner lost its colour and the writing faded. Then the workers who had flown the pigeon and danced side by side to keep their tent from blowing away, disappeared one by one from their place by the tent. Only a handful of men remained at the factory gate. The stubborn ones who stood fast were called ‘Tent Stewards’ by the others.

Afterwards the Tent Stewards were dismissed and ‘New Blood’ workers were taken on at the car battery factory. The strikers with lead poisoning went off down Rubbish Road and kept looking back until they were out of sight. The name ‘Tent Steward’ was left behind as a reminder to the workers on the road. After that strike, anyone who called a meeting in the factory changing-rooms, or in the toilets or picket lines and spoke of exploitation and the existence of a working class, was known as Tent Steward. Like raising the tent, the banner and the song, it became the custom to fly pigeons during strikes and they believed that the factory where the pigeon settled on a roof or chimney would have the next strike. The workers of that factory would be called out with shouts and applause, and while they were all dancing, the strikers’ tent would be passed on to the workers of the factory elected by the pigeon.