Oya Baydar - The Lost Word

As they enter, the lawyer silently greets the people inside. Together he and Ömer go over to the father.

‘Ömer Bey is one of our writers. He has come from Ankara to share our grief. He would like to offer you his condolences,’ he says in Turkish and then repeats what he has said in Kurdish.

The father stands up. ‘Welcome, begim. My son has been shot. Zarok kuştin!’

Zarok kuştin! Zarok kuştin! Zarok kuştin!

The scream that rent the night in the Ankara coach station: Mahmut’s voice, Mahmut’s words. We zarok kuşt! Ev zarok kuştin!

It’s as though a circle drawn with a compass has met the point where it began. Ömer is seized with the feeling of being imprisoned in the middle of the circle he has drawn himself. Without knowing what he should do he pats the young father’s shoulder. He feels that every word he utters will be empty, insincere and soulless. I have no part, no blame in the murder of this boy, in these people’s grief. Then why is there this feeling of shame, of guilt? Was it not the same feeling that dragged me here in the footsteps of Zelal’s and Mahmut’s suffering? His heart and mind are illuminated by a light that filters through from the walls of the mourning house, the suffering of these people. Was not Deniz’s defeat, his running away, leaving everything behind, abandoning everything, a result of this feeling of guilt, this shame, too?

He feels he must say something, even if it is a useless remark. ‘This time they will be punished. This time they won’t get away with it.’

‘No one will be punished. They won’t even be tried. Neither a lawyer nor anyone else will have enough might to oppose these tyrants,’ says the grief-stricken father. ‘You’ve come all this way, begim. Thanks. The lawyer said you are a writer. You have a pen. They say the pen is mightier than the sword. We also believe in the power of the word, the pen. We want peace, for death to end. But now my only son has been shot. Write as much as you like — you can’t bring him back. Round here the sword is more powerful than the pen. Don’t let anyone ever tell me about the power of the pen or the word.’ He falls silent.

Everyone is silent. One of the women brings tea on a plastic tray with gilt decoration. An enlarged passport photograph of the dead boy in a black uniform with a white collar has been hung on the wall. It must have been taken when he started school, for registration purposes. The sadness in his eyes touches Ömer’s heart. It is as though the boy is watching his own death, his own mourning. Yellow, red and green flowers have been arranged in a water bottle on the small table that has been placed in the middle of the room with chairs arranged on three sides; flowers identical to those on the table with the plastic cloth where he and Mahmut’s father had drunk tea.

Since Ömer and the lawyer entered the mourning house the women have stopped praying and lamenting. The room is silent. It is as though the silence is about to become a sound and turn into words.

When they are outside again the lawyer says, ‘Don’t take the father’s words to heart. He would not have talked like that if he hadn’t thought of you as a friend, if he hadn’t expected help. He opened up his heart to you. It’s difficult to explain, but he trusted you. He needs you, people like you, me, all of us. In fact, we need all of you. When I think about it, it seems that our anger, our reproach, stems from this need.

‘Is this why you are here?’

At first the lawyer does not understand the question.

‘What I meant to ask is whether you stayed here because you knew you were needed? Jiyan Hanım said that if you had wanted you could have been a lawyer in Istanbul or Ankara or somewhere else; you could have stayed at university and become an academic. But you chose to stay here.’

‘You could say that. This is my country, my homeland. They say that something is more valuable when it is in its place. Whether we take to the mountains or whether we stay in the town — right or wrong — in our own way we believe that we owe it to this land, this people of whom we are a part, and we try to repay this debt.

‘What has this land given you other than suffering? This town where mourning houses are considered normal…’

‘It is not this land, nor the people that create suffering. Suffering was imposed on us by the pressure of history, by the cruelty of those in power. We, the children of this land, feel the shame of this suffering inside us. The Hoca used to say that if you lose the shame you feel for the suffering of the world and the people then you lose the essence of man. We learnt many things from the Hoca — I mean Jiyan Hanım’s husband whom we lost.’

Ömer’s thoughts that, a little while ago in the mourning house, were a formless quest begin to settle and take shape. I used to feel the shame for others’ suffering inside me. I used to feel responsible for the exploitation of workers, people’s poverty, their oppression, their wars, their murders and their dead children, for all the suffering of the world, and I would attempt — we would attempt — to atone for the sins of mankind. When this sense of responsibility diminished, when I became absorbed in my own concerns, I lost the word and myself.

‘And what about Jiyan Hanım? Is she, like you …?’

‘Jiyan can’t leave this area either. If she goes, a mighty tree under whose shadow everyone shelters will have been toppled. If people like her go, the conscience and hope of the town will collapse. The blind rage of the mountains will have complete control. I’m not using going in the sense of moving or leaving here, Ömer Bey. People can stay and still be gone.’

People can stay and still be gone. Perhaps I was one of those like that who stayed but was gone. A woman chemist; a country lawyer; the Hoca; others like them … Those who stay, those who fight. The last strongholds of conscience …

Not able to overcome his curiosity, Ömer asks, ‘Jiyan Hanım ’s husband, the Hoca … Who was he?’

‘He was one of our philosophers, one of our writers who came from this region. He was originally a jurist, but he had worked on our history, our language. He was respected both in the region and throughout the Kurdish world. After 1980 the Hoca lived for many years in exile in Sweden. Jiyan’s elder brother was in Stockholm. They met there when she went to visit her brother. There was more than a twenty-year age gap between them, but they loved each other very much. Theirs was a passion fit for a fairytale, a love that knew no bounds. At the beginning of the 1990s when a pardon was granted for some of the political exiles the Hoca returned home. They married and lived here.’

‘What about his death?’

‘Didn’t Jiyan tell you?’

‘I could only talk to Jiyan Hanım briefly on the subject. I didn’t want to intrude into her private life, and she plainly didn’t want this either. However, I did hear something about it.’

‘I’m sure you have heard something. Here one hears a lot of things — everything but the truth. One shouldn’t believe too much in what one hears, Ömer Bey. If you are in the middle of a war each side has its own version of events, its own truths. That applies particularly to unsolved murders. I know. I have dozens of unresolved cases on my hands.’ It’s obvious that he does not want say more.

Ömer feels a strange jealousy and frustration. The doors that look as though they’ve been partly opened are again closed to the stranger. This man knows everything about Jiyan. I don’t know anything. ‘Wasn’t it difficult for Jiyan Hanim to stay here after her husband was killed?’