Oya Baydar - The Lost Word

To live; to live like the weeds, trees, flowers, a field mouse, a cat, a tortoise or a fish … To be a harmonious part of nature, of life and the universe … He knew that this philosophy of life was not one he had chosen but one he had accepted. And he was trying to live it on a razor’s edge as though it had been his own choice. Still all alone, without letting on to anyone…

Like the wounded, defeated soldier of a routed army he returned home from the foreign university town where they had sent him. What was home? My mother, my father, the cat, houseplants, shelves full of unread books. And what hurt him most was their never asking for an explanation. It was their smothering him in a circle of understanding and care instead of accusing him and being angry that he found disturbing and embarrassing. He wasn’t the good-for-nothing son who had disappointed them but the defeated sick child. His mother, who always criticized, always wanted more, always expected success, was now quiet and looked at his face with thoughtful moist eyes. His father acted as if nothing had happened; as though his son, who had been studying abroad for years, had successfully completed his education and returned home and was now looking for a job. He had struck bottom. As a family they were all part of a big lie. They were like actors who were trying to play their parts well in a badly written play.

Deniz had felt relieved when Ömer said in a light-hearted jocular voice that wasn’t at all convincing, ‘All right, we understand. You won’t get the Nobel Prize, but at least you can testify to the suffering of this world with your camera.’ His words carried all the sadness, disillusionment and betrayal that weighed on his heart. Perhaps these weren’t his father’s exact words. No, he wasn’t that cruel, but, well, it was something along those lines. Whichever way you looked at it, it said that he had been discarded. A new unbearable load that he immediately threw into his black hole and discarded. He couldn’t bring himself to say, ‘I don’t want to testify to the sufferings of this world. Pain cannot be witnessed. It can only be fought — and I’m not ready for such a fight. I’m not ready for any fight.’ For a moment he even imagined that he could return to his dream world and succeed, that he could become an internationally famous war photographer. A very short moment that was shattered into pieces and disintegrated when reality struck … Hadn’t his mother said, ‘If there’s nothing you can do, go and be a human shield?’ No, no, mothers didn’t say such things; Mother Cat would never say that. No, she hadn’t said anything like that, but I know as surely as if I had heard it with my own ears that the thought went through her mind.

Triumph or death … Aim for triumph even if there is death at the end. They were willing to have a dead son rather than one who had not been successful. For them, a child who had been sacrificed for what they regarded as the right causes — science, the revolution, peace, whatever they might be — was not considered lost; whereas in their eyes and their hearts I am the lost son.

He is exaggerating, and deep down he knows it. He is freed from humiliation, his feeling of guilt and shame by exaggeration. Blaming others turns his humiliation into anger, his guilt into victimization and his shame into self-confidence.

In those days when we were still in shorts we were not lost. We were their hopes as we were dragged to private crammer academies and made to study without pause or sleep for entrance examinations to the most select schools; trained like racehorses to be the most successful in the most prestigious establishments. ‘A lot of work has gone into children like you, and you have to make it worth while. You are privileged children, especially in a society such as ours,’ Elif used to say. She would give examples of her own students, talk about children who were successful in spite of being underprivileged, for whom no effort had been made but who had studied and been successful under very difficult conditions, and she would praise them enviously. He remembers how depressed these oft-repeated words made him feel even as a child.

Of course he hadn’t wanted to become a nobody, as his mother expressed it. Who would? However, he hadn’t quite understood what being a nobody meant. It would have been good if what they called ‘success’ had come naturally, but he neither had the will nor the strength to compete for it. He had studied very hard and memorized everything to get the high marks necessary to make his parents happy and win their favour. However, they always scorned his efforts and wanted better school reports. Even the teachers at school said they expected more from the son of Elif and Ömer Eren. He was unable to understand this at the beginning; then he found it unjust and cruel and rebelled against it.

Elif used to say, ‘Too much ambition is not a good thing. However, its absence makes one lazy and passive, distances one from success.’ I had no ambition, no passion. I never wanted to be better than others. Perhaps because I knew I couldn’t, or perhaps I didn’t want to force myself, I didn’t have the power. I had no desire to be the best. What I wanted most was to be loved. I wanted to have friends who loved me and girls who showed me attention. I wanted to live my one and only little life quietly, full of love and happiness.

It was the beginning of the war when, armed with the most expensive state-of-the-art photographic equipment, he set out towards the hell that was Iraq. Beside the professional correspondents using much simpler cameras he felt embarrassed about the expensive kit that had been his father’s present. They were expecting Baghdad to be bombed soon. For some it was war, for others an assault; for Deniz it was hell. The world hadn’t yet become inured to the war in Iraq. There was still hope that the fire could be extinguished, that the madness could be stopped. From around the world thousands of voices rose, shouting, ‘No to the assault on Iraq!’ ‘No to the war in Iraq!’ There were young people who had come from many European countries to defend Baghdad, if only symbolically, to be human shields in hospitals, kindergartens, schools and oil refineries. If when he went to interview them he hadn’t met the bleary-eyed, Norwegian albino youth who knew English so well he would have been somewhere else now. Was it coincidence or fate?

To make news, he had first spoken to a very young English girl. However, he had realized that they weren’t on the same wavelength and his interview wasn’t getting anywhere. They were standing at the door of the children’s hospital in Baghdad, its walls riddled with bullet holes, its windows broken and three wounded children to each bed. It lacked the most essential medicines, and surgery was performed without anaesthesia. He had noticed the albino youth sitting on the steps watching them with a weary and a somewhat cynical expression. He turned the camera towards him, approached him with the microphone and asked him what he was doing and what he was after in these foreign parts.

The boy said, ‘It’s simple. I’m here so that people don’t get killed and the environment destroyed. I’m here to ease my conscience and, most importantly, because this is what feels right to me. Aren’t you concerned about these things?’

‘I’m a photographer. I’m training to become a war correspondent.’

‘Which country are you from?’

‘Turkey.’

‘There are young people here from your country, too, and, from what I’ve heard the doves where you come from have stopped Turkey joining this dirty war.’

After turning off the microphone Deniz had mumbled rather sheepishly and inadequately, ‘I went to the war protest meetings, too, but I’m not a member of any organization’, remorseful for not having been at those meetings.