Oya Baydar - The Lost Word

‘It was, without doubt. But, then, she had no other choice. Before she met the Hoca she had thought about leaving, even going abroad. At first one felt that she wasn’t local, that she wouldn’t fit in. But after she got to know the Hoca everything changed. For Jiyan this land, these people — I mean our own people — and the love she felt for her husband became inseparable. It was as though Jiyan had stopped being Jiyan and become the sum of them all. She won’t leave this area. She can no longer leave. If she left she would not be Jiyan any more.’

Ömer feels a strange unease within him that he does not comprehend. He thinks how well the lawyer has described Jiyan in so few words. He said, ‘If she left, she would not be Jiyan any more.’ This was what I have been unable to put into words, that I sensed but could not express clearly. Jiyan was not merely a woman. For that matter she was not just Jiyan. She was the sum of all that the lawyer said. And it was this that made her special, beautiful and remarkable.

To change the subject he asks, ‘Are the families of martyred soldiers — martyrs’ funerals — brought to the mourning house, too?’ He realizes that his question is stupid and falls silent. ‘I’m afraid I’ve been talking nonsense,’ he says like a student asking his teacher an inappropriate question.

‘If this happened, there would be no need for mourning houses. Neither guerrilla nor soldier would be martyred. But you haven’t been talking nonsense, Ömer Bey. This was Jiyan’s latest dream. She was striving to get a quiet, modest ceremony organized for dead soldiers at the mourning house; for all to gather together in the same place, if not in joy then at least in mourning, and to mourn for those who died for their country and those who had been captured dead, whether they were Turk, Kurd or whatever.’

‘Why do you talk in the past tense? Has she relinquished the idea? Has she given it up?’

‘Let us say she hasn’t been successful as yet. Jiyan doesn’t give up. What is more, for her this is something like the Hoca’s last request. In this region of ours the hardest thing is not fighting, dying and killing. What is really hard is being able to cry together for our dead, to feel it inside all of us. Both sides resist it. It doesn’t suit the interests of those who strengthen their power using the dead, those who use the dead as weapons. And just think of two fighting armies embracing each other’s soldiers! What commander could stand that?’

By the time they reached the market Ömer felt in so great a need to mull everything over and put his emotions and thoughts in order that he abandoned the idea of getting in touch with Jiyan just then. He decided to phone to find out whether the Governor’s invitation on behalf of his wife, a great reader, still stood. Yes, they were expecting his visit. They would be very happy to see him and to have dinner with him.

There was still time until the evening. He went into the internet café to check his emails.

In the Footsteps of the Unknown Deserter from Life

After midnight she awoke to the howling of the wind and sound of the waves. She was in the room with the large bed and high wooden ceiling overlooking the sea on the upper floor of the Gasthaus: the room in which she, Ömer and Deniz had stayed as a family twenty years before.

‘The weather is extremely changeable here. Sometimes the sea is as calm as a millpond and stays like that for days, then a storm will break out. You can hear it really loudly in the rooms above. It rumbles and roars. You won’t be able to sleep,’ Deniz had warned. But, still, she wanted to stay in the room. Was it nostalgia or masochism?

The wooden shutter had slipped its latch and kept on banging. She gets up and opens the window to shut it. The storm and the raging waves seem to fill the room. She hastily closes the shutter and pulls down the window. In the darkness outside the night is frightening and wild. It reminds her of the rocky island with the bad witch’s castle in illustrated children’s books or the setting of a horror film. However sheltered and protected this place is, at the end of the day this is Norway, the North Sea. If Ömer were here he would say, ‘We are just a smoke away from the Pole.’ A cold emptiness descends on her, a feeling of foreignness, a sense of not belonging, of being alone … She realizes that she misses her husband and that she wants him with her. Couples should not be so much apart, should not separate their lives so much if their hearts have not already been completely severed from each other, if they haven’t become totally estranged. Worlds that aren’t shared fall apart in the end.

‘You to the west and me to the east. We are gradually drifting apart,’ Ömer had said. Elif feels a pang of sorrow. We must come together again, reunite our hearts. Hearts unite when they walk the same path. We must find a path that we can walk together. Outside is the storm; a roar, penetrating the shutters and windows and filling the room. Sounds like those of animals being slaughtered, perhaps the screams of giant seagulls, perhaps the whistle of the wind that slithers through the rocks like a snake.

She takes out a packet of cigarettes from her cluttered bag that she had thrown on to a corner of the table and lights a cigarette. She is not really dependent on nicotine but is one of those who smokes from time to time, for pleasure or from stress. She needs a cigarette at this moment as well as a strong drink — the sort the northerners call schnapps.

They had slept in this room, in this bed. It was the end of December. It was Christmas Eve, and it was freezing. The tiled stove hastily lit with embers brought from the fireplace made no impression. They had tucked their little son between them so that he did not get cold. He had slept soundly all night long. Husband and wife had joined hands over their son’s head. Locking their feet together, they had tried to cuddle one another and get warm. It was a cold but calm night. They were happy. But tonight…

Contrary to what she had feared, her meeting with Ulla’s grandmother and grandfather had not gone badly at all. Of course, there was the language difficulty, but Bjørn made everything easy. Even if he did not believe that his father had a mother, and that this mother was facing him now, the child liked the foreign woman. On the table was cold and raw fish, dried fish, salted fish, sweet and sour sauces to be eaten with fish and a tasty dish of boiled potatoes mixed with fried onions. They had offered her a strong drink they had made themselves. The memory of Ulla was not overwhelming at the table, as she had feared. If it had not been for the photograph mounted in a frame of pine twigs over the fireplace whose heavy metal doors stood half open, one might have thought she had never lived here. The Ulla in the photograph looked much younger than the girl she had seen when she arrived with Deniz in Istanbul — and died there. In the picture she must have been fifteen or sixteen years old. She was looking into the distance with her sad smile and lacklustre eyes that had upset Elif then, too. So that they did not notice that she had been looking at the photograph, she put on a smile and focused her gaze on the grandfather sitting directly opposite her. She felt that if Ulla’s name were mentioned Pandora’s Box would open and all the unspoken blame, suffering and regret would come pouring out. Or it would be suppressed, and the suffering, blame and regret would be buried and spring up from the soil of their hearts as rancour, anger and enmity.

During the meal the little boy was so over-excited he could hardly contain himself. He kept getting out of his chair and coming over to Elif, trying to hold her hand and closely examining her face. Pointing to Bjørn, Deniz said, ‘He likes you.’ Then he translated what he had just said into Norwegian for the benefit of the grandparents. In her son’s manner, in his face and voice, she had sensed a strange shyness, an effort to ingratiate himself with these poor folk, and she felt upset.