Oya Baydar - The Lost Word

He repeats ‘my little man’ with a sentimentality that he is slightly ashamed of but that he can’t suppress. ‘Then, my little man?’

‘Then I saw and understood there is blood and tyranny in the mountains, too. There’s no future other than death. The more I saw and experienced, the less I believed in what I had formerly believed and became disoriented. I began to ask and question what it meant to live a decent life and what it meant to die and to kill. We had broken away and escaped; Zelal from the code of honour and I from the mountains. We had never seen the sea, but even so we longed for it. My father used to say that the sea softens people and the mountains harden and make them more harsh. Zelal and I set off towards the sea. We wanted to reach it. We were going to have a child, and he was Hevi or Hope. He would have a good life. He would live like a proper person. Then … Then what else can there be! There is nothing more.’

‘There is something more. There has to be. New Hevis and new Hopes will be born. Zelal has been saved, as you see. You will reach your sea. As soon as Zelal gets better I’ll take you to your sea. That’s a promise!’

‘Thanks,’ says Mahmut. He pulls himself together. He leaves his native land and language and emerges from his depths, changing once again into his masked-ball costume, discarded for an instant with the intensity of suffering. ‘Thanks, abi, but we can’t run away any longer. Wherever we go the mountains will always follow us. But thanks again.’ He takes a piece of paper and a pencil out of the pocket of his shirt stuck to his body with sweat and grime, and he scribbles something on it. ‘If one day you should ever happen to pass through our area, near my parents, tell my father I am well and that I ask for his blessing. He made so many sacrifices for me. He paid for special schooling for me, and I won a place at university. Tell my father not to write me off because I took to the mountains and didn’t study at university. Tell him it wasn’t because I wasted my time and didn’t work. It’s a complicated story, and if we are reunited one day I’ll tell him. Don’t say anything about Zelal and the child. If the child hadn’t died we were going to go and kiss his hand once everything had settled down. But now there’s no need. And I’m going to give you another name, too. Can you do all this? I mean, I don’t know if you will. In any case, why should you bother?’

‘Tell me anyway, and if it’s something I can do …’

‘If something happens to me, if they track Zelal down, they won’t left her live. There’s only one person I know of who might help her. She’s from our region, a chemist, and she works for women’s organizations. She’s a woman of the world who knows no fear. She comes from a large family, the daughter of a clan leader, and she commands great respect. She is the only person who can take Zelal under her wing in my absence. I’m writing down the address of the pharmacy and other details. If necessary, if I should ask for help, please call her. Make sure she protects Zelal.’

Ömer wonders if it was the unborn child that bonded these two young people to each other. Their hopes seem to have died together with the child. The young man looks as though he is ready to leave the woman he loves and return to the mountain he has fled. Perhaps it’s from despair, suffering, hopelessness … Perhaps it’s just from being young. Who knows.

He feels there is something to this story that he cannot quite grasp or figure out. The stories of people who belong to another world that he is not familiar with, one he doesn’t know, different loves, hopes and fears. He knows that if he decides to write these stories he will always be a stranger to them. He won’t be able to tell them even if everyone thinks he tells them well, that he and those people will know that he couldn’t tell them or get anywhere near the other side.

‘Don’t attempt to go anywhere. Just stay here.’ The fatigue and stress of the strange sleepless night descends on him. He had said to Deniz, too, in the same way, the same voice, the same desperation, ‘Don’t go. Stay.’

The boy is silent.

‘There’s no place to run, Son.’ He looks straight into the youth’s eyes.

This time the young man doesn’t avert his gaze. ‘That’s true. When you are dreaming about the sea as you lie with your arms around the one you love in the hidden valleys between the mountains or in the shelter of caves or in groves, it feels as though there is somewhere, that it is possible. But when you come down to the plain you realize that there is nowhere to flee. If there is, we don’t know about it. When we come down here, we lose our way completely, and we lose all hope.’

Voices in the corridors and on the stairs; cleaners wiping the floors with long-handled mops; the smell of disinfectant, bedpans and commodes being emptied; nurses noisily opening doors, janitors in blue jackets, sleepy-faced doctors on night duty and the relatives of patients who have managed to slip in early unnoticed; the morning bustle of a hospital.

Ömer leans against the corridor wall. He feels the coolness of the wall on his back. He is so tired. His mouth is dry and furred. He thinks about crouching down like Mahmut, but he can’t. We city people can’t sit cross-legged either. I must write something about body language in different regions and classes. He looks for his phone in the many pockets of his hunting vest. As always, he finds it in the last pocket. He dials his home number, and the phone rings for a long time. Clearly Elif hasn’t woken up. Well, never mind. It’s time she did. A sleepy ‘Hello’ from the other end … ‘Good morning, dear’ … ‘I’m going east’ … ‘Me to the east and you to the west. We are gradually drifting apart’ … ‘While you’re there, will you be going to see him, too?’ … ‘The child?’

The unanswered, rueful question that hangs on soundwaves.

The Child Waiting for Princess Ulla

The little boy is playing among the ruins of the old castle. He is absorbed in building houses with the stones he picks up from the ground. Deniz is watching his son. The sun setting over the ocean drives shafts of light that change from yellow to orange, pink to purple, over the ruined towers of the Devil’s Castle. Then a milky-grey twilight … The season of white nights…

Deniz likes this place. This feeling of timelessness, the sound of the waves that break white against the rocks without disturbing the silence, the mystery of the ruined castle, the solitude, the lack of people, the feeling of being cut off from the world and from time. He and Bjørn come a lot. ‘I was just a little older than you when I first came here,’ he explains to his son in his broken Norwegian. ‘My father said that this place was the Devil’s Castle. I wanted to see the Devil, so I … How do you say it? You know when you repeat “I want, I want”, keep on wanting the same old thing?’

‘It’s called insisting. See, I know better than you. So did you see the Devil, Daddy? And was his castle fallen down like this back then?’

‘Yes, it has always been like this. Devils like ruined castles. My parents were in a hurry to get back to the opposite shore to continue the journey. They didn’t let me climb up. So I promised myself that when I grew up I would come here and meet the Devil.’

‘And you kept your promise and came back, didn’t you, Daddy?’

‘Yes, I kept my promise.’

The child wants his father to recount yet again the beautiful story he never tires of hearing.

‘Come on, Daddy. Tell me. The Devil had shut the beautiful Princess in his castle. The Princess used to cry at night. Come on, Daddy.’

‘The Princess used to cry at night and her tears would mingle with the waves of the sea, and the fish would read her tears like letters. And then one day a fish that was caught in my net brought me news of her. He said that when the full moon hung at the top of the highest tower of the castle the Princess was going to throw herself out of the tower window.’