Oya Baydar - The Lost Word

She remains frozen in front of the screen. Obviously the digital camera had taken the last picture with the shutter being depressed accidentally. At the moment of the explosion, before rushing over and before he lost consciousness, Deniz must have somehow hung on to the device. He must have spotted the last picture that the camera had taken some time later. An image of violence, terror and suffering; the intolerable burden … He has carried this burden for years! He has not shared it with anyone — not allowed us to help him. He internalized it and buried it within him. He threw it all into his bottomless black pit.

She closes the computer down. She replaces the disc in its envelope and puts it back in the drawer. Deniz will tell his son when he grows up and reaches an age when he can understand why Princess Ulla will never come back, and only then will he share with his son the reason he could not stand the world’s suffering — the burden, the very heavy burden, that he felt unable to share with us.

She realizes that she will not even be able to tell her husband what she has seen. Whatever I say, it won’t be enough. I do not think that we will be able to endure this together. When suffering is this painful it won’t diminish the more it is talked about. When shared, if anything it will increase. I do not have the strength to deal with this. Deniz is happy with his little boy, and Bjørn is a darling. They have established a way of life to suit themselves. When you see them you can believe that there is not just one recipe for happiness.

She realizes that from now on everything that she experiences will be in relation to these photographic images. In the background of her ilm of life there will always be those four rectangles. Just as they have been in Deniz’s life…

On the desk are various pens. She does not touch them but takes out her own purple fountain pen from her bag. She writes a few lines on a blank piece of paper in front of her.

My dear, don’t be angry that I didn’t wait for you to return with the biggest fish. I’m sure you caught it and that Bjørn was delighted. At the moment my heart, my mind and whatever I have are all confused. I don’t have the strength to stay any longer in this place that in your childhood you nicknamed the Devil’s Island. I hope that you will rest for a while in this sanctuary away from the oceans and bloody seas and lick your wounds better — because you are my cat son and you know that cats heal their wounds by licking them — and live happily with your little boy. I think that this time I have managed to understand you, if only a little. Perhaps it’s too late, but it is better than not at all. You’re probably right. There is no single route to happiness, no single deinition of a fulilled life. I love you whatever you are and wherever you are. Kiss Bjørn for me. Tell him that fairy Farmor has climbed on to her magic carpet and returned to her land of mice. Very many mews and even miaows…

She closes the door of the room and then the front door of the house and goes out. Not locking doors is a good thing; not having to do so offers a strange sense of security. The security of those who have never experienced crime, those who have nothing to worry about or fear, those not under threat and those who have no concept of evil. Still, if I knew where the key was I would lock it just the same. My son and my little grandson live here. I’m responsible for them; just as the Little Prince is responsible for the poor rose that has only four thorns to protect itself. Deniz and Bjørn don’t have any thorns.

She has emerged from the Gasthaus’s door facing the sea. The dog yelps. She looks one last time at the cliffs. The image of Deniz sitting at the top talking to an unseen person below — no, the Little Prince speaking to the snake — appears before her eyes. The Pilot says ‘What are you thinking about? You frighten me, my little man’ to the Little Prince, who asks for help from the snake under the rock so that he can leave the world and return to his own planet.

At these big fish competitions, at the festival beer stand, on one of the thousands of tiny islands that don’t even have a place on world maps, under a mask of happiness you are so lonely, so sad that you make me frightened, my little man.

There is no one around, she cannot make out why the German shepherd dog tied up in front of his kennel is barking so persistently. She guesses that he barks at strangers. Am I that stranger?

She walks with rapid steps toward the square by the quay where the jollity of the festivities is evident, by now lubricated freely by the whisky, akevitt and beer produced by traditional methods. I must reach the opposite shore before Deniz returns from fishing. I just hope there is a boat ready and that I don’t have to wait long.

Can a Person Reach Other People?

On both sides of the road are shanties, poplar trees with cotton-wool-like seeds, plum trees that have shed their lowers and are beginning to bear fruit and pear saplings in blossom. As Mahmut climbs swiftly to the top of the uneven earth road he mulls over the situation. In his hand he has the address that the writer has given him and on a small piece of paper the plan that he has drawn; in his pocket is the key to the house in which he is to stay … No, things don’t go this much according to plan; they don’t run this smoothly, as if there are angels waiting by the road asking, ‘What more can we do for you?’ Is this all because of Zelal’s pure heart? How did the writer come to be so providentially at the coach station? How did he get there? Who sent him? People like him do not travel on overnight buses. They go by plane. How did he happen to appear at our side just when Zelal was shot by that treacherous bullet that killed our child? Let us assume that he is a kind man and simply felt sorry for us. He would have given us a few kurus and gone away. Or he would have taken her to hospital and vanished. A famous man; a great writer. Why should he put himself out for us?

Because he wondered what sort of person Ömer Eren was he visited a bookshop and asked for his novels. The slimmest was fifteen new lira. He had left the shop without buying anything. The author had given them money, and he had even opened an account at the bank, but, still, one must be careful. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

The shanties lining both sides of the uphill road are surrounded by trees, hedges and tiny gardens. It is a good place, even though ilthy water lows on either side of the earthen stony path, children play in the dirty water and mangy dogs rooting through the mounds of rubbish fawn around one with their tails between their legs, too lazy to bark. It is more pleasant than any of the places Mahmut knows or has lived in and is far better than the big city where he went to study.

The heaviness in his heart and the lump in his chest ease a little. The child has gone, but at least Zelal is alive. Thank God. We are still young; we can still have children. The writer had said something to that effect as a sort of consolation to him. He had said, ‘New Hopes will be born.’ It is true: Heviyen nu derdikevin pes, ji cane te, ji xwina te lawikek te dine. And next time it would be a boy of my own flesh and blood. Perhaps the wheels of fate have started to run true now. Perhaps God has said, ‘These servants of mine have suffered much. They’ve been sorely tested and deserve goodness and beauty from now on.’

He feels the pain that he thought would never diminish gradually wane. A pregnant woman passes by. Wearing rose-patterned baggy trousers, a headscarf edged with embroidery and carrying a bucket in each hand, she is heading for the fountain a little further down that he has just passed to collect water. So that’s how it is here, too. And, what is more, this is the outskirts of the capital — barely outskirts, as we are actually in the city. Women fetch water like they do in our region — even when heavily pregnant. His thoughts turn again to the unborn baby. It was such an all-embracing love that Zelal and the child had become one. I loved them both as one person. The more I loved Zelal, the more the child seemed mine. Now … now the child is no more. It is as though Zelal is incomplete, is half. As though something has vanished between them, its place let empty. He cannot understand or explain. A moment ago he had felt a little less anxious, but now he feels depressed once more.