Oya Baydar - The Lost Word

‘What power does conscience have? The winner is always the one who uses violence, the one who is strong. We see it all the time.’

‘You are wrong. We win in the long run. Brute force will destroy itself. The world will change.’

‘How?’

He felt that the young Frenchwoman with the dishevelled hair who had not slept properly for God knows how many nights had an answer. It was evident that she had not even had the opportunity to shower — the city water was cut off and she, too, had helped to carry a few jerry-cans of water to the hospital — and while looking after patients she had come close to being ill herself. If she didn’t have an answer that she believed in, had faith in, then she wouldn’t be able to carry out the job she was doing; she would not be able to bear it. Deniz was afraid of measuring himself on the scale of that answer. He had just asked himself, ‘How?’ He hadn’t even asked the question aloud.

He gave his valuables to a child who was begging amid the ruins, and, not telling anyone, he left for Baghdad with very little money in his pockets. When he reached the city after risking all sorts of danger including death on the hazardous roads, most foreigners had already left. The young people who had come in solidarity, the teams of human shields, had scattered. Nobody was in a position to deal with them, and there was no work for them in a Baghdad on the verge of defeat. Some of them had given up; others had decided that passive resistance was pointless and had armed themselves to organize militant resistance. Deniz found Olaf in a hotel in which western correspondents were staying.

The young Norwegian was preparing to go back. He said, ‘There is nothing more I can do round here. I’m a pacifist. I don’t use weapons. And there is nothing here except weapons, violence and death. I’m going home now.’

Deniz had tagged along with Olaf, and together they had escaped from that region of chaos. After the desert, the blood, the turmoil and suffering what he needed was an oasis where he could rest his tired soul, a dark cave to which he could retreat like a wounded animal, a place where he could lick his wounds. This time, instead of hiding in a dream world and lies, he was going to take refuge in oblivion, in disappearing and becoming an anonymous stranger.

He came across the mysterious Devil’s Island of his childhood by accident when he started working as a night porter at a small hotel run by a Turk who had come to Oslo to work years before. A photograph hanging on the wall by the stairs leading to the rooms on the upper floor: a sheer cliff pounded by the foamy waves with a ruined castle on top and a deep blue sky … A nebulous image stirring in his memory, a feeling of déjà vu, mists clearing from a corner … I know this place. Then another step forward: I want to go there.

While he was killing time staring at the wall in front of him during the long Nordic nights, this ordinary Norwegian scene, one of hundreds of islands, thousands of cliffs along the coast of the North Sea, became a dream that slowly turned into an obsession. His dreams were illuminated by a fleeting memory that surfaced from the depths of his mind, a distant recollection of the island of which the little boy had said, ‘I’ll come back here when I grow up, and I’ll meet the Devil.’

A refuge where no one would be able to find him and destroy his peace … A land where bombs don’t explode, where its dead don’t lie in scorched streets stinking of blood … A real island where he could live naturally, peacefully and simply just like the fish, the cats, the wind and the earth; a place where successful, grumpy, cruel or conceited grown-ups didn’t point accusingly with their menacing fingers and give him condescending looks. I shall be happy there, and I shall be free. I shall be me.

He knew neither the name of the island nor its location. He wondered if the place had a name. It was so many years before. I was only a child — so how can I remember it? Candy-coloured dolls’ houses with decorated Christmas trees visible through the windows, empty streets in the early twilight, a strange old man sitting in a rocking-chair, a woman with baskets on her arms who kept appearing and disappearing, the castle ruins on top of the cliffs, the Devil’s Castle, the dark-blue sky, the toy ship that connected the island to the mainland…

I must call my mother. She will know. He wrestles with himself for a moment. If I call her, she will interrogate me again. She will ask why I abandoned my brilliant career as a war photographer and fled. There will be that condescending, accusing, hurt tone in her voice once more. He will ache inside. He will feel sad.

Still, he calls her with a deep longing in his heart that he doesn’t want to admit even to himself; impatient and fearing to hear her voice … But, he tries not to show it. His tone on the phone is as calm and natural as if they had spoken only the day before.

‘Hello, Mother. You know that island we went to when I was small, where we spent the night? You know, the one with the Devil’s Castle? Do you remember where it was?’

‘You are incredible, Deniz! Not a peep out of you for almost two months … Good thing you remembered that island. At least we know you’re still alive!’

‘Don’t start straight away, Mother. I told Dad I had left Iraq and was in Norway.’

‘So you think that’s sufficient, do you?’

‘Yes, Mother. I do. I don’t think you need to know more. Anyway do you remember what the island was called and where it was?’

‘I can’t remember the name, but I can recall roughly where it was. What are you going to do there?’

He lies. ‘I told my girlfriend about it, and she wants to go there during the holidays.’

He has no girlfriend; he is all alone. He knows it will make his mother happy to think that he is with a girl. My solitude has always hurt my mother. He feels guilty and sad. He pities both himself and his mother. The only way to eliminate this bad feeling is to enter a world where dreams and lies are intertwined.

‘My girlfriend’s gorgeous, Mother. You would love her if you saw her. Don’t worry. Your son isn’t alone any more. She works for the socialist newspaper here. I’ll start working as a photographer next month.’

In a hurt voice Elif describes the location of the Devil’s Island as far as she can recollect it. ‘You’ll find it. It’s so quiet round there that anyone you ask will show you the way. As your girlfriend’s Norwegian, you can ask as you go along. Have a good holiday!’

He senses the doubt in his mother’s voice and hears the sadness that has returned just as the wounds were healing and when what happened has almost been forgotten.

‘Thanks, Mother. Say hello to Dad. I’m all right. Don’t worry about me. No, I don’t need anything. I’m fine, just fine.’

He didn’t need anything except a quiet, distant sanctuary — and an old vehicle to take him there; perhaps a motorbike … As long as it got him to the Devil’s Island, there was no need for more … He wouldn’t be going back anyway.

He recognized it as soon as he saw it from a distance. He was not surprised that his mother recalled the location so well after all those years. It made him angry. Professor Elif Eren, always unruffled, always clever and always right, never made a mistake! Please be wrong for once! Fail for a change! Stop making people feel like worms in front of you. Don’t crush them and reduce them to the test animals you dissect!

When he got closer to the island and saw the boat tied to the pier his anger collided with the sweet reminiscence of the scent and warmth of his mother’s bosom that rose up from the depths of his mind and dissipated. The woman with the baskets on her arms appeared through the mists of his memory and walked towards the boat. It was foggy and the Devil’s Castle was barely visible, but Deniz knew it was there from the playful memories of his childhood. As he boarded the boat with the motor cycle he had bought for almost nothing from a man who sold second-hand, third-hand even fifth-hand vehicles, he remembered his father’s words: ‘We are going to the Devil’s Island that was in the book your mother read to you.’ A shadow passed over his heart, something like regret. ‘Don’t go. Stay,’ he had said, ‘There is no place to run to, Son.’ His father’s eyes were moist. They were more than moist; they were full of tears. They think that I don’t notice, that I’m cold, unloving, whereas I notice everything. I feel and I understand, but I can do nothing. I become helpless. I shrug, pretend to be indifferent. I throw everything in the deep, bottomless pit within me — and I’m free of it.