Oya Baydar: The Lost Word

He did not hear the gunshot, and if he did hear it it had not registered. However, the scream became a bullet of sound and hit him with full force in the chest. An anonymous stark-naked scream, without identity and without substance broke from the hills of Çankaya, from the vineyards of Seyran and from the Citadel, from slopes and ridges. It enveloped the lofty districts of the capital girded with the state’s arrogance; its boring civil-servant districts of ties and suits; its shanties decorating the naked hills with poplars, oleasters and pear trees, its slums inexorably edging into the city, its slopes climbing to the Citadel, its avenues, streets, bus stops and stations and its midnight coach station. It spread over the city and struck the heart of whoever was in its path and echoed all around. It reached the strange old woman and Ömer.

He was caught up in the vortex of the sound. How long did he turn in that vortex? How did he get out? Was he able to get out? The woman had crept up to him. Or had he moved towards the woman? He heard her whisper, ‘They killed the child.’ And inside his head the scream turned into a voice and the voice into words and the words into meaning. The child! They’ve killed the child!

Between Platform 2 and Platform 3 and in the middle of the deathly silence that suddenly falls on the coach station a young woman is lying on the ground. The blood flowing between her legs leaves ever-widening circular stains on her long printed cotton skirt. She is very young, almost a child. Her face, lit by the wan lights, is a bluish-white. In the middle of this nightmare she is too beautiful to be true. As she turns her head to the swarthy youth kneeling in front of her, she tries to smile. Then her face contorts with pain, her lips move and she tries to say something — and perhaps she does. The young man gently puts his hand under the girl’s head. He pulls off the headscarf with the crocheted border that covers her forehead and hair and drapes it round his neck; he winds her thick corn-coloured hair around his fingers. With one hand he continues stroking the girl’s stomach and, inclining his face to hers, whispers something, words of love.

The time-stopping absolute silence, that moment of consternation and indecision experienced in another dimension must, in fact, have lasted just a few moments. Two of the youths, who had been making a commotion a few minutes before, shouting slogans, waving flags of crescents as well as Turkish flags, are running away, and no one is pursuing them. The coach station’s night travellers, those being sent off on military service and those seeing them off, approach very slowly, in circles, moving in time to the silence like the final scene in a tragic ballet. Then a burst of sound, shouts, disjointed sentences, questions, oaths, curses and complaints. The young man kneeling beside the girl who has been shot whispers, ‘You’ve shot her. You’ve killed the child! You’ve killed the child!’ as though he has spent all his voice in that first cry that pierced his throat.

The words become a voice and they echo, You’ve killed the child. You’ve killed him! ‘ We zarok kuşt! We zarok kuşt !’

Then the commotion. The screams, ‘Someone’s been shot! Come and help!’ The shouts of ‘Help!’ The hum that makes one’s head throb. ‘Is there an ambulance? Is there a doctor?’ The bustling men arriving with a stretcher, the paper flags trailing on the ground, the bewildered security men. A voice rising from among the dispersing crowds, ‘Martyrs do not die. The homeland will not be divided.’ The brothers trying to gather the people running away and continue the commotion from where they left off, as though nothing had happened. The accursed murder by a gun fired in the air for the sake of a cause that they do not even understand. The childish innocence of the unknown murderer who pulled the trigger. The desperation in the eyes of the youth who clings to the stretcher as they carry away the girl hit by a stray bullet, and the suffering engraved on his face. And the bloodcurdling words of the strange woman who is insensible to what is going on around her and who does not leave Ömer’s side.

‘They put pressure on me, but I didn’t become a collaborator. And I knew who killed the child, but I didn’t tell them. I persuaded myself that he hadn’t died. And it wasn’t the Hungarian daughter-in-law who had hidden the candlesticks. There, I’m confessing to you. I saw who shot the child and who stole the candlesticks, too. It was one of our lot.’

With anger, desperation and bewilderment he grabs the woman by the shoulders and shakes her. ‘What child, which child, madwoman? Who did you see?’

‘Take your hands off me. The people who shoot are all the same and the people who get shot, too. I didn’t speak then. I didn’t give anyone away. The child is always the same, the same child. You shot him. I saw you.’

He pushes the strange woman roughly and runs after the people departing with the stretcher.

He hears the woman shouting after him, ‘Where are these boats going to? Tell me if you know, sir. Where was I going to get off? Which port? I won’t tell anyone it was you who shot the child. Where does this river flow?’

A dirty cover has been thrown over the wounded girl, her eyes are closed and her face and body contract and shake simultaneously. She moans continuously like a sick kitten. From time to time the moans change to stifled sobs. Ömer puts his hand on the back of the boy who is trying to hold one end of the stretcher and says, ‘I’m a doctor.’ There is no point in being honest and saying, ‘I’m a writer.’ Who will take any notice of a writer? Right now only a doctor is important.

They leave the stretcher on the ground. He puts his hand on the patient’s forehead. It’s like ice. To make out he’s a doctor he tries to take the wounded girl’s pulse. She moans, and he takes fright and gives up. The siren of the ambulance is heard in the distance. The security guard arrives with the chief police officer.

‘Did you see the incident?’

‘Yes, I did. I don’t know who shot her, but it must have been one of that group sending off new recruits. Two people ran away. Yes, I’m a witness.’ Identification, address … ‘Yes, I’ll stop by the police station tomorrow.’

The face of the youth beside the wounded girl is the colour of pus. He seems completely drained of blood. He struggles to find his identity card. For a moment Ömer is frightened that the boy does not have one, that they will take him away and that he will get into trouble. If necessary I’ll intervene. I’ll explain who I am, and I’ll protect the boy. He sees a few tears trickling down the youth’s cheeks and getting lost in the stubble on his face.

‘She’ll be all right’, he says, ‘She’ll be all right. Don’t worry.’

While the police are trying to take statements the wounded girl carries on bleeding profusely.

‘The child has gone. The child was our life,’ the youth keeps repeating. He does not care about anything beyond that.

This is when Ömer realizes that the wounded woman was pregnant.

‘Just wait and see. Don’t worry. Perhaps they’ll be able to save the child, too.’

An image of the clotted blood oozing from between the girls legs, spreading on her skirt and over the concrete platform appears before his eyes. He doesn’t believe his own words either.

The noise of the siren gets closer and closer.

‘Where are they going to take her?’ asks the young man in a fearful, suspicious voice.

‘To the hospital.’

‘We don’t have any money,’ he whispers. His voice is desperate, pathetic and sad. ‘And if they are after us … they won’t let us live. And what’s more…’

It is then that Ömer notices the strong eastern accent in the boy’s voice. He remembers the Kurdish cry for help. He looks at his face carefully for the first time. He sees the loneliness, fear, hopelessness and the look of a cornered, wounded animal. He guesses that they are on the run. They are running away from someone. What a good thing the policeman trying to get the statements signed did not hear what he said.