Oya Baydar - The Lost Word

She counted the days; she counted the months. How many days was it since the seed had sunk into her? How many months would my murdered baby have been? The girl who knew about numbers calculated exactly. She was lost in warm thoughts for her unborn child. ‘He’s my child, my son, born from war. But he will bear peace. Peace will become hope, and his name will be Hevi,’ Mahmut had said while stroking her stomach.

That was all very well, but how will peace be born of war? How will the forests that had been set on fire become green again? How will the destroyed villages and hamlets be repopulated? How will wounds be dressed? How will the blood be cleansed? A warmth and tenderness has pervaded me because this woman has treated me well, but my suspicion and resentment has not passed. I feel less fearful and lonely but still foreign and out of place.

The food trolley arrived. The trays were left on the small tables beside them. She had no appetite for soup or pilaf or yogurt.

‘Try to eat a little something. You have to be strong to get better,’ Zelal’s elderly roommate said.

‘I don’t feel like eating. It’s as though a lump has got stuck in my throat,’ she said. She swallowed a few spoonfuls of yogurt not to upset the woman.

‘Where are you from?’ the woman asked.

‘We’re from far away. From the east, from one of the villages of Van,’ she lied with her instinct for preservation.

‘My husband was a military man. We travelled around that area a lot. It used to be called eastern service. Erzurum, Ardahan, Doğubeyazit, I know them all. I don’t know Van. My husband was a gendarme. In those days there was the Moscow threat. They guarded the Russian border. And they also went after bandits. The bandits would go up the mountains with our men in hot pursuit. The bandits in those days were not like today’s ones. They were like innocent babes compared with the present ones. At the moment trouble is further south. The separatist terror is striking the south-east. It is in your area, in Van, too, isn’t it?’

Zelal swallowed a few times. ‘Yes … It is in our area, but we don’t know about it. We left our own village and migrated to a hamlet. When I was in the village I was very small. The guerrillas would raid the village and demand food, shelter and weapons if there were any; if not they wanted young men, and then the soldiers would come and collect the men and take them away saying, “Why are you harbouring guerrillas?” They would enter the houses and drag us out. First one would strike and then the other. We were in a terrible situation. Then we left the village. We heard later that the village supported the militia. We moved down to our uncles’ hamlet far away.’

‘If people didn’t protect them, the separatist terrorist organization would not take hold. That’s what my dead husband used to say. The PKK did not exist at the time, but, as I said, there were bandits. My husband used to say, “The people protect the bandits. They hide them.” The people there have been hostile to the state for as long as I can remember. Now they have become real enemies. There are so many inciting them — that’s why. Yet when I was in the east, especially in Erzurum, I had such good neighbours … I was young at the time, like you, inexperienced and timid. My husband, as I said, was a gendarme. He would go off into the country in pursuit of bandits. In those days there weren’t quarters or anything. We lodged in a house in the town. I couldn’t stay alone, I got frightened. The neighbours’ wives used to come and stay the night. They would help me with everything. In those days the Kurds were not like that — they were not hostile. The most loyal batmen were Kurds. They would die for you. They were so trustworthy, so loyal. But now…’

Zelal was tempted to say, ‘Now their eyes have been opened. Everyone has trampled on us because we have been such loyal servants. A dog that is beaten a lot will become ferocious’, but she refrained. She just said, ‘Now there is a lot of tyranny. This one tyrannizes, and that one tyrannizes. And so everybody goes up the mountains.’

‘A beating from a teacher or the state does no harm. You have to be biddable to a certain extent. If you rise up then you will be beaten down. If they were not drawn to the agitators it would not be like this. If you turn your gun on a soldier then of course you’ll get what you deserve. The Turkish army won’t abandon this land to one or two looters.’

This time Zelal could not contain herself. ‘Now look here, teyze! You talk well, but if your village were being raided three times a day, your brother and your father were struck with the butts of guns and dragged along, if you were beaten for speaking Kurdish, if the gendarmes raided and took your flocks and animals, if you were stopped constantly, if when you fell sick on the road you died before you reached a town, then there comes a day when you see that tyranny and beating does harm and you revolt. When we met, to begin with, you looked down on me. You saw me as an enemy. But you seem to be a kind woman, a mother. You have love to give to others. And, thanks, you’re protecting me now. So I thought I should tell you how I feel. Please don’t get angry or upset. But you should know that no one wants their loved ones to die, their children, their husband, their father or their brother. You talk about the homeland; the homeland is the homeland of both those who die and those who kill. But it isn’t like that. Our village was our homeland. We were frightened, driven out, and we ran away. They shot the child in my womb, as you heard. I — we — don’t have anywhere to go. We will live a dog’s life in strangers’ houses at strangers’ doors. The Kurds are loyal, aren’t they? You said that. We can be loyal servants.’

Breathless, she fell silent. I’ve been running off at the mouth. I’ll make the woman angry again. She regretted what she had said. If I said you’re right, what you say is justified, it wouldn’t be any skin off my nose! But I’m like this. I’ve been like this ever since my childhood. Seri hisk: headstrong they used to call me at home. Only my teacher used to say, she is not headstrong, she’s clever, proud. The teacher was a good man, a special man.

She was afraid that just as she had got close to her, begun to like her, she had made the sick woman angry. ‘Don’t be angry, teyze,’ she said. ‘You are older and more experienced. You know about such things. Let it be as you say.’

The excitement of talking was added to the sedative effect ofthe medicine, and just before nightfall, as the lights on the far hills were lighting up one by one in the dusk, she took refuge in sleep. Sleep swathed her wounded body and her wounded heart. She began to run after the goats in the green meadows. She gathered violet, purple wild tulips and yellow daisies among the rocks. She reached the spring before the animals and filled her cupped hands with water. The water was cold, and she drank eagerly. The sky was a deep blue in the land of dreams, the earth a green kilim sprinkled with sparkling iridescent flowers. The peaceful happiness of her dream was like a warm quilt and enfolded Zelal like Mahmut’s body, Mahmut’s arms. She slept.

Jiyan Means Life, Commander!

Whether in fiction, or in real life, it was inevitable that they made love. That they came together and loved not just with promises, not just with eyes, words and silences but with glowing hearts and bodies was no momentary madness, no fleeting fancy but their inevitable fate.

The evening they met at the chemist’s shop — and was it not a sign that it was the Hayat Chemist which was open that night? — as they talked about this and that, the region, Mahmut, they realized it when they parted and their eyes met at the moment of farewell. They had got the message, had not pretended not to understand, had not resisted; they had acquiesced. The following days during which they lived as though nothing had happened, no spark had been ignited, were no more than a delay, a fearful expectancy that did not suit their independent personalities. Now, as they lay side by side, they were ashamed not of their love-making, their union, but of having waited until now, of putting it off, of their moral scruples. They had deceived no others, just their own passion, their own bodies and their destinies.