Oya Baydar - The Lost Word

Ömer turned the girl’s words over and over in his mind. How strange, the girl had said, ‘bearer of the word’. That was what they used to say to Ömer; that was how he was known in literary circles. What was the source of this intuition that came from beyond her alienation, her remoteness, her poverty and reached her heart and mind?

Only he and Elif knew that ‘the bearer of the word’ had not delivered a word for a long time now, that he had lost those words. Elif had told him cruelly, ‘When you entered the world of bestsellers, you broke away from feelings, from the sources that nurtured you.’ Whereas she had said, ‘When your readers changed, your writing also changed. You are busy playing to your audience. That is why you can’t write what you want,’ he was filled with the hope that Zelal would say something something more tender, more beautiful, more encouraging.

‘I will try to write the tale you want,’ he said quietly. ‘It will have a happy ending, if I can write it. You know, you keep asking “Why?” Why I’m interested in you, why I’m trying to help you? Precisely for this reason: to find the word.’

‘There was an old woman in the village, a storyteller who delivered the word. She not only told tales herself, she also brought forth the words of children. She used to tell us stories so that we could pass them on to other children. I was good at telling stories. She liked me. She used to say, “You will replace me one day.” Then when I went to school I was not allowed to tell stories in my mother tongue, our own language. The teacher told stories in Turkish. I learnt fast and grew to speak Turkish well. However, I lost the language of stories. I could no longer tell stories — not in Turkish nor Kurdish. I lost the word. That is why I became so interested in numbers. Numbers have no language.’

‘I, too, lost my tongue — although not quite like you. Language is not just words. “The word” is more than words. Whether it’s Turkish, Kurdish, English, French or Arabic, you may know all the words and yet sometimes you’re stuck, you can’t express yourself. The “word” has become empty. Well said, Zelal; you may not have grasped the importance of what you said, but it is true!’

His spirits rose; he relaxed, mellowed. Perhaps there was no need to panic. They say it happens to every writer. Suddenly one day, you realize that you get writer’s block. Something similar to temporary impotence … What was it that nourished me when I was happy to be writing and happy with what I wrote? I was writing our story; the story of people who wanted the whole world, who didn’t limit themselves only to their own lives, who believed they could overcome, change and create a better world but who were defeated. I was writing about the poor, the workers, the slums, little people who didn’t have to be important, who didn’t have to be heroes. I was writing about hope, hope of changing the world, hope of salvation. This was because we were a generation whose faith fed on hope, whose values were founded on hope. ‘You write well about us,’ an old friend had said. He had added, ‘But we were defeated so badly and have become so few that there aren’t many people left who want to read these stories.’

I really did write well about us, but, as my friend said, we were few. Even we had grown tired of our grand narrative that the new world didn’t want to hear, our lofty ideals that were already obsolete, our overwhelming desire to save the world. No, I never rejected my past, never denied it, as some people seemed to think. Yet I didn’t get stuck there. I searched for a fresh approach that would be marketable. I wrote my transition novel, The Opposite Side, which broke sales records, and my publisher, in a state of happy amazement, struggled to keep up with demand for a reprint. I hadn’t thought of it when I named it, but with that novel I passed to the opposite side. An explosion in the number of readers, in three weeks a rapid climb to the top of the bestseller list, staying for months at number one … The Opposite Side was a book in which I used all the clichés in which I had become so adept; in which I launched into bold experiments in form and structure with the audacity of professionalism; that if I had been a critic I would have called ‘insipid and shallow’. I had spilt and scattered all that I had in my repertoire, inadvertently exhausted it. I had learnt the rules of the market, the taste, the demands of readers. Then, without thinking or calculating, similar novels followed one after the other. I increased the love interest and added some suspense, mystery and mysticism. My books sold well. The more humdrum my work became, the better I got at embellishing empty ideas with showy sentences. The more I distanced myself from important subjects and human situations that people didn’t want to read about, the more my books sold. I used up my reserves, I exhausted my inner world: love, faith, hope, man … the internal richness that carries one from words to the true word … When my inner world was exhausted, the word became exhausted, too. Yet the word was all that I had. Now I’m completely empty.

‘If you want to find your word, and you are searching for it in our footprints,’ said Mahmut, ‘go and look for it on the spot, hocam. You can’t reach the right word from a distance. You have to hear the voice. You have to listen so that you can turn it into the word.’

When they left the room and were alone in the corridor Ömer gave Mahmut several phone numbers to call in case of emergency and other things to make their lives secure, including the address of a place they could stay while Zelal recovered — a villa on the outskirts of Seyran Vineyards, the bachelor pad of a friend who didn’t use it much because he was now living abroad — and an ATM card for an account he had opened for them in his own name, just to be on the safe side. In return, he made one request: ‘Wait for me. Don’t make any major decisions before I get back. First let Zelal recover and get yourselves sorted out. Then you can think — we can think — with a clear head. Whatever I tell you or you tell me now is pointless. Wait. All right? I’ll return before long.’ He said this in the imploring tone of voice he used when he spoke to his son Deniz. He added to himself: I shall return when I find the word.

Mahmut nodded faintly as though in agreement and was silent. He didn’t make any promises, but he didn’t say no.

Thus Ömer started on his journey. The road had only been a vague intention, a longing when a few days ago he had told Elif, ‘I’m going east.’ With Mahmut’s words, ‘You must hear the voice to turn it into the word,’ it became fate, inevitable, a fantastic adventure as he set out to find the word he had lost.

Leaving Us With Our Snow, Our Poplars and Our Crows…

Now, as he walks along the streets of the substantial village that Mahmut, with his strong Kurdish accent, had called a town, he tries to put into words the ideas taxing his mind and his heart. He is searching for that ‘everything’ he called ‘the word’, which he had wasted and lost in another world in this small town surrounded by bare hills. The walls of the poor decrepit houses are still scarred with bullet-holes, flying poplar pollen attaches itself to one’s hair and ears, and large crows perch in the poplar trees and dive down on the heads of passers-by, cawing loudly.

He senses that he has come here not to share the fate of those two youngsters tossed in a storm, certainly not for adventure, humanism, intellectual responsibility and all that stuff but for another purpose that he can’t quite express. Is he here to run away from his arid earth, to journey towards a new life on soil where rivers and springs turn rebellious pastures green? Or is he here because he sees the reflection of his own fugitive son mirrored in the two fugitive youngsters? Is he here to look for the word? Or is he here to search for Deniz, the son he lost?