Oya Baydar: The Lost Word

She had reached for the phone in a state of panic with the thud of accelerating heartbeats, and when she heard Ömer’s voice her agitation had mounted. Something bad must have happened. He’s a night bird; he doesn’t wake up at this hour. Sometimes he works until morning, writing continuously while he drinks. Perhaps he’s drunk, too drunk to realize that I would be asleep at this hour, perhaps even worse…

‘Is something wrong, dear? Why are you calling at this hour? Are you all right?’ She tries not to sound anxious.

‘I’m fine, fine. Nothing’s the matter. I was planning to return tomorrow, but it didn’t work out. I’ll tell you later. I’ll be travelling for a while; I’m going east. I’ll be delayed, and I just wanted to let you know.’

Now what was that all about? At the crack of dawn … He hadn’t told her when he was coming, so why should he let her know that he would be delayed? Perhaps he had simply wanted to hear her voice. Or was he checking up on her? Was she still there — not just in body but emotionally for him? Was she waiting for her husband with tireless patience?

What is left of love? What can be left after thirty years? The fear of not finding what was left where it was left, the anxiety of the insidious power of separations that gnaw at relationships and the worry of losing a person. The cosy habit, the sense of security, that begins where the fire of the passion of the flesh begins to wane and the attraction of the unattainable is lost. A sort of comfort, the feeling of someone being there for you. A bond that both are still afraid of losing.

‘You’re going east? What a coincidence! I’m going west next week, to Denmark. There’s a symposium on the philosophical and ethical dimensions of gene technology.’

‘Me to the east and you to the west … We are gradually drifting apart!’

Did Ömer say these words, or did I imagine them? It’s true we’ve been together seldom during the last few years. Our work and hobbies are very different, and, like it or not, our social circles differ as well. However, I never thought that our paths could separate after we’d shared so many experiences. After all, we have so much behind us. So much what? Youth for a start. Our passionate effort that transformed pain and hardship into the hope of good days to come; a shared belief that we held the key to a bright future not only for the people of this country but for mankind in general, and the revolutionary dream that fired our blood and burnt our hearts. We were excited, innocent children who had not yet learnt that fire burnt. And we played happily, leaping into the heart of the fire. That wasn’t all. There were the shared delights, pleasures, happiness and joy, mutual friends and mutual victories, the smells, the pain experienced together, as well as successes. There were the fiascos and the defeats. And that … that defeat we can’t discuss, that we don’t mention because we fear that if we were to break our silence even once the bond between us would be irreparably broken. Defeat? No, complicity.

‘And while you’re there, will you go and see him, too?’

She understands what her husband wants to say but is still upset by his words. ‘We are gradually drifting apart,’ she repeats. Then, ‘Who am I going to see?’ — just to hurt him.

‘The boy … Are you going to visit the boy?’

She feels anguish as she hears the insecure, humble, begging tone in his voice and his inability to say the boy’s name. Are men more fragile, more vulnerable than women when it comes to such matters? Can mothers endure pain better? Is it the physiology of fertility reflected in the brain? Ömer never got used to it. He never forgave himself or the boy or life itself. And what about me? Have I been able to get used to it while still being ‘me’? Have I been able to accept it?

She sits down at the computer. For a moment she becomes engrossed in the magic of the colourful images on the screen. She remembers the kaleidoscope that she never tired of playing with as a little girl. The cardboard telescope that made flowers of paradise bloom, fairytale butterflies fly about and spilt multicoloured stars from the sky when she put it to her eye and turned it. It was her favourite childhood toy. She did not know the word kaleidoscope but used to call the magic cardboard pipe, a ‘fairytale telescope’. One day she had not been able to resist removing the transparent mica at the end of the cardboard tube from its casing with a knife. She wanted to see those wonderful colours and shapes without the aid of the instrument and to touch the stars and flowers. And she was also curious about the workings of the toy.

As she admires the multicoloured complex patterns reflected on the computer screen, she remembers with regret the coloured paper and pieces of glass that fell on the ground from the kaleidoscope. Never try to analyse the truth behind beauty. Heavenly images can be created from detritus. Just look, enjoy and take pleasure in them. Is it always crucial to know the truth behind an illusion? Is it possible to turn on its head the impulse that the search for truth is crucial? What in these days of virtual reality is the meaning of such questions? She must examine such conundrums in the paper she is going to present at the science ethics congress. It could be useful for enlivening her talk and exploring the link between reality and the virtual world and between the virtual world and ethics.

She makes a note of the formulas of the images reflected on the screen and of her own interpretation. All the reactions of the mouse’s brain cells match her hypothesis. At present the experiment is progressing successfully. How many more mice will be needed? Then will it be the turn for cats? And what about research on people? I must take the students to the lab for today’s lesson. Let them see for themselves how a hypothesis is verified step by step. That is, if any of them are interested. She knows that most of the students enrolled in the department out of necessity because their marks were not good enough for the subjects they really wanted to study. What good is basic science in this day and age? Especially in Turkey. That is why she is pleased that everything is going well with the experiment, and step by step her theory is being proved — even though she doesn’t always feel like giving lectures. She is happy, too, with the images and the figures that she sees on the screen. This may not result in a Nobel Prize but a lesser award, a European Woman Scientist award, for example. So why am I crying? Surely not because I killed a mouse.

She thinks about his question, ‘Are you going to visit the boy?’ For months this issue has played on her mind, since the day she was invited to present the paper at the symposium in Copenhagen. Relatively speaking, Copenhagen is just a stone’s throw from Norway. Naturally she can go to see the boy. What is strange is Ömer asking this on the phone. What was behind it? Was it a mere reminder or suggestion, or was it a request? It is the first time he has mentioned the boy for a long time. Has the memory faded, or doesn’t it hurt as much as before? How much time does a person need for pain to turn to sadness? She remembers the words of a favourite author, ‘Because sadness is the projection of pain.’ My pain has slowly turned to sadness. It doesn’t burn as before, but it is more profound. And this is what I can’t bear: everything ending, passing, getting accustomed to it, and it becoming ordinary … How did Ömer survive? How did he bear his pain? We have never talked about it. We refrained from talking about it, and we avoided the subject. We did not share our mutual pain. If the source is the same, if it hits two people with the same arrow, pain cannot be shared — or at least it doesn’t lessen with sharing. You said, ‘Me to the east and you to the west’ in a broken, bitter tone. If you keep going straight to the east and I keep going to the west, perhaps one day, my love, we might meet on a small remote island.