Oya Baydar - The Lost Word

The woman turns her back on them again and is quiet. Mahmut is filled with unease.

‘That’s what I mean,’ says Zelal in Kurdish. ‘What am I doing stuck next to people who insult the language I speak, the language I heard when I was born? With whose words I was loved, with whose lullabies I was lulled and with whose oaths I was beaten.’

How poetically she expresses herself, thinks Mahmut. This woman is something else … And, what is more, what she says is true. His heart warms, his youthful body warms and he desires his woman. He thinks how much he loves Zelal and trembles with the fear of losing her. I must not leave her here next to this malevolent old woman. Zelal is a wild rose, a wild but very beautiful rose. Her thorns cannot protect her. If she is plucked, she will be crushed and she will fade. Just as he is thinking he is the legendary Rüstemê Zal, happily riding the horse of hope at full gallop, his heart is overcome with despair. I am the only support she can rely on, that she can trust. How far can I protect my rose? And who will protect me? If only the writer had not left us before Zelal was discharged from hospital. If only I had told him not to go. I don’t know whether he would have listened. He was obviously in a hurry to leave. It was clear that his heart was troubled, constricted. Whether it is to do with him or the world or whatever is anybody’s guess, but he is undoubtedly troubled.

The other patient’s visitors arrive carrying plastic bags. They are a pleasant-faced, kindly couple. They wish Zelal a speedy recovery as they pass by. The old woman says something in a low voice to them. She is evidently complaining about her neighbour in the next bed. Mahmut says in Turkish in a loud voice so that the visitors can hear, ‘I’ve spoken to your doctor, and they will discharge you within a few days’ — although they both know that Zelal should stay for at least another week or ten days.

With her sharp wit Zelal grasps the situation and joins in the game. The frown on her face gives way to the wicked, roguish expression of a child. ‘We seem to be disturbing teyze. Let’s hope I’ll be discharged as soon as possible so that she will be comfortable. Besides, we keep on talking in our own language with its harsh tone,’ she says in Turkish loudly.

The young male visitor interjects, evidently trying to apologize for his mother. ‘Oh, my dear, don’t mention it. Why should you think you are disturbing her? Why should you think you speaking in a harsh tone of voice? Everyone’s language is beautiful. Our mother is rather old, and her illness has unsettled her.’

‘You can see that the son knows what she’s like!’ murmurs Zelal to Mahmut in Kurdish.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ says Mahmut in Turkish. ‘Teyze is right, too. It’s difficult to share a room with a stranger. Insallah, we’ll all feel better soon.’ Then he has a idea. ‘Something totally unexpected happened to us. We were waiting in the coach station for our bus to go home and kiss our parents’ hands. A stray bullet, some hooligan’s bullet, hit Zelal, and we lost the baby in her womb — our baby.’ He is no longer himself and gets carried away by the tragic tale that he tells to move the bad-tempered woman and the young couple. For a moment he forgets it is his own story.

‘Good grief,’ says the woman visitor. ‘What sort of country has this place become! You never know what will happen when you are walking in the street. I hope you get better soon. At least you’re alive, thank goodness. You’re still young. You’ll have healthy children, inşallah.’

‘Thank you, kardeşim,’ says Zelal. Now she’s not acting. She is thanking the girl sincerely; this is evident from her tone.

Mahmut’s eyes fill with tears. Kurd, Turk, easterner or westerner; how good it is when people reach out to one another, sharing their grief and their smiles! Sometimes one word, a single word, is enough. The word ‘brother’, a greeting from the heart, sometimes a look, a touch, holding a hand and jumping a stream, rubbing a bleeding finger on a spider’s web, putting a hand on a forehead is enough; you become friends with the person you previously thought of as an enemy. So what is it? What is it that we cannot share in this transitory world?

‘Thanks,’ he says, addressing the other patient and her visitors. ‘I hope you get better soon, too. If people love one another, if they don’t despise each other, if they think of each other as brothers and sisters everything will improve. One day this country will improve, too. Guns will be silent. Stray bullets will not hit babies in their mothers’ wombs.’

Mahmut mulls over what he’s just said. He wants to believe this himself. Will there be such a day? Will it come? Will the day come when babies in the womb, mothers big with child, young girls, youths, Turks, Kurds won’t be killed, won’t destroy one another, when no one will be captured dead, be martyrs, when all can live without fear? This day will come, the instructor in the camp used to say. Not the female instructor but the older one known as the Doctor.

The female instructor used to explain things parrot fashion, as though reading from a book. She wanted her students to recite by rote, too, and would not allow questions. She used to itemize, like checking of a list, how mankind had arrived at the present day: how they had passed from primitive society to feudal society and from there to capitalist society and how things were moving towards communism. Somewhat bizarrely, while her students were being taught in an almost totally incomprehensible fashion about the transition to communism through working-class revolution, the syllabus seemed to change without warning, and the era of Eastern Bloc communism was swiftly glossed over. Those who enquired were told peremptorily that they were going to skip that subject for now, that the urgent question was the liberation of the Kurdish people and that they were going to learn about the people’s revolution.

The Doctor was different. He did not teach by rote. He conducted his lessons as though holding a conversation. A different world would be established one day. We will not see it, but our children will; if not them, then our grandchildren will. It would be a just, enlightened world where people would not oppress or tyrannize one another and where everyone would have food and work, where everyone would live their life without harming others, freely according to their own choice, their own will. Nature, animals and people will live in harmony. Humanity has been dreaming of this world for thousands of years. If there had not been the hope of such a world people would not have struggled for thousands of years. People only fight if there is the hope of a better world, a better life. If we lose this hope we cannot fight. If we lose our faith we surrender … He would say wonderful things like this. He would talk about life and hope, not about war, death and the organization. His students used to love listening to him, asking questions and receiving considered responses. Then he disappeared. He was too large for the mountains.

Mahmut shrugs off his memories and dreams and returns to the ward. ‘As long as there is no enmity in our hearts, as long as we don’t despise people,’ he concludes.

The bad-tempered woman scowls with the disappointment of not having found support from her son and his wife. The visitors shake their heads in agreement, as though to indicate it is to be hoped that things will get better. A nurse pokes her head round the door and reminds them that visiting hours are over. The son and daughter-in-law say goodbye to the patient and prepare to leave. As they pass in front of Zelal’s bed they wish her a speedy recovery from the bottom of their hearts. They ask whether she needs anything. No, thanks all the same — she does not need anything, thank God.