Oya Baydar - The Lost Word

‘In other words you’re going to look for what is lacking in you in our homeland. Insallah, you’ll find it, abi.’

‘There is a saying — I don’t know whether you’ve heard it — “The morning light comes from the east.” There is something stirring, alive in the east, a sign of life emerging from death, a hope of change. But perhaps it just seems so to me; perhaps it’s intellectual romanticism, the illusion of a writer. However, an inner voice tells me that I shall achieve something there, that even if I don’t find what I lost I shall understand better why I lost it. It has something to do with my son. Perhaps following in your footsteps to the east will help me to understand, find and regain him.’

Mahmut had not quite grasped what the writer was talking about, but he had sensed the integrity in his heart. He kept remembering his saying ‘perhaps’ and understood that there were some things the writer could not unravel either. For the most part he had been curious about the writer’s son. If a man saw his woman blown to smithereens before his eyes what would happen, how would he live, how does he manage not to become a killer? If I had found the person who shot Zelal I would have killed him. You die on the mountains, in war, and you kill; however, you don’t kill each other out of revenge. There has to be a cause for which people die and will kill; an abstract thing, born of ideas. Neither soldier nor guerrilla knows the other. If there weren’t a war and they could meet in the village coffee houses they would be friends. There are many guerrillas whose mates, cousins and neighbours are soldiers. There are even those whose brothers are soldiers. There, in the midst of gunfire, you are a heartless weapon of destruction, anonymous and without feeling, just like a stray bullet, a mortar or a mine. If you start to think about this, you won’t be able to fight as you did before. God forbid that you should begin to have doubts! Once you have doubts, you are inished as a ighter. First you question why you are fighting, and then it gradually starts to seem meaningless; in time you will forget why you are fighting, lose focus and become confused. Finally you will end up being regarded as a murderer or a traitor, a traitor to that side or this — whereas you had set of on this road to be a hero.

Perhaps the writer’s son had originally wanted to be a hero, but apparently he had failed and run away. Who knows why? If you see your woman killed in front of your eyes, you either kill or run. But the son never saw who killed the mother of his child. Dirty work, treachery. One plants a bomb or one lays a mine; now they are all remote-controlled. Then whom it strikes is the luck of the draw. He thinks about the mines he has laid and shudders. When you lay mines or plant bombs in rubbish bins and buses, when you are operating in a city, you don’t know who it will strike: treacherous hand, treacherous bomb, treacherous heart. But still you do it. Someone has to do the dirty work for the noble cause of the people, to comply with the leaders’ orders, for victory. You have to accept from the start that the ‘one’ will be you. This, too, is a kind of heroism; self-sacrifice. The whole issue is about having no doubt that this dirty work contributes to the inal victory; not asking what sort of victory is won by killing or maiming innocent people, wasting innocent lives. Not questioning the leadership or the organization even for a moment. If you question, if you doubt, you cannot function. Everything is organized for you not to think, not to hesitate. Isn’t it like that in the army, too? Let us say you are a soldier, a Turkish soldier. Can you afford to challenge the legitimacy of an operation on which you are engaged? God only knows what would happen to you if you were to question your superiors! You cannot ight asking questions. Even at home, as a child, if you ask too many questions grown-ups say, ‘You mustn’t delve or dwell on that. You mustn’t think too deeply, or you’ll lose your mind.’ It’s the same in war.

He is thinking about all this as he goes down the slope between the shanties decorated with spindly poplar trees, colourful geraniums and fuchsias flowering in tin flowerpots. From the yellow rambling rose trying to climb a wall of one of the jerry-built houses he stealthily picks a few buds to take to Zelal. There are no roses at home, but they are the flowers of love, the flowers of fairytales. She likes wild flowers: snowdrops, the harbingers of spring, bluebells, yellow daisies and purple wild tulips. Now, like the townspeople, I’m taking her roses. What more can she want!

As he approaches the main road he looks carefully around. Among the long-coated headscarved women waiting for the bus, girls in jeans, poorly dressed men with sweaty armpits and creased jackets with sagging pockets at the bus stand opposite he notices two rather tall men in dark suits, with dark complexions, standing very straight. Taking cover behind the electricity posts, he observes the men. They are some way off. He cannot make out their faces, but it is clear they are not from round here. Mainly people from the Black Sea and from Sivas live in the shanties on the hills that overlook the capital from a distance; the people in the district on the one side of the hill are from Sivas and Corum and the people in the district on the other side are from Kastamonu, Cide and Inebolu.

These two men are from our region. A person knows his fellow countrymen from their mien, their gait and their appearance; he knows them from the way they swing their arms and the way they walk, from their nervous scanning of the surroundings and their tense stance like that of animals on the prowl. I am not suspicious of others but of my own people. I am wary of them because they look as though they are from the east. How terrible is that! Well, what about me? Am I not nervous like them, ready to flee like a trapped animal? If they saw me they would recognize me, too — immediately realize that I am a Kurd.

The two tall swarthy men stand there combing the surroundings with their eyes. A bus and two minibuses stop briefly and the stand becomes relatively empty, but still they wait. Perhaps their minibus or bus has not yet arrived. Perhaps they are from Sivas; the Alevis there look like us. I am being overcautious. He remembers the words he heard during the training on the mountain. One of the comrades from the capital who had been to university and had come to train them had said, ‘Being paranoid does not mean that you are not being followed.’ Perhaps I am right to be wary. He considers all eventualities: they could be from the state, from the organization or they could be from Zelal’s family. When he thinks about the last possibility a chill runs down his spine, despite Ankara’s late June heat. He breaks into a cold sweat. So as not to attract attention he retreats slowly back up the slope and turns into the first street he reaches. He has the same bad feeling in his chest as he did when he went off to fight on the mountain. A feeling as though millions of voracious insects are chomping at his heart, as though a cold bubble of air comes from his chest and grows and bursts inside him. When the fighting begins you no longer feel afraid and you don’t think any more. You programme yourself to kill so as not to be killed. While you fight you are as brave as can be. And even now, if the men drew their guns and came at me, fear would vanish. Waiting is the worst. As you wait, you think, and the more you think the more you fear. He remembers that he is unarmed. He has not had a weapon since he and Zelal came down from the mountain. He does not want to carry one any longer. Recalling the arms on the mountain, he smiles to himself. How absurd it would be to wander around the city with such weapons! He looks at the rosebuds that he still clasps in his hand. The thorns have pricked his palm and have made it bleed a little. As he walks slowly between the shanties he feels that roses are safer than weapons, that they protect people better. No one would suspect somebody wandering around with a bunch of roses. Such a person would be less likely to get shot. His fear and panic evaporate as he walks, but, still, he decides to go down to the main road from the south side of the hill and catch a minibus from the bus stand immediately before the one he had just approached. I mustn’t get into trouble because I’m trying to take a short cut.