Oya Baydar - The Lost Word

Freed of hairslides, elasticated bands and the other fetters of a virtuous widow, Jiyan’s raven-black hair that spread out in ripples and curls like a raging river was the only barrier between their perspiring bodies, the only covering for their nakedness. It seemed to Ömer that everything, every incident and every development following that extraordinary night at the coach terminal, had occurred with mysterious and unerring teleology for them to find each other. The strange woman in the Ankara coach station: the one who had lost her child while fleeing across a central European river … The woman who was shot there: Zelal who had lost her baby to a stray bullet … Mahmut who had fled from the mountains; neither coward, penitent nor confessor, a naked person who had cast off his guerrilla uniform, his militia clothing, somebody who yearned for the open sea he had never seen … Elif, his wife, whom he always kept in the depths of his heart even when he was with another woman, who was going west after her lost son … Everything, all of this, seemed to be leading up to his meeting with Jiyan.

Now at a moment without yesterday or tomorrow, making love sometimes roughly, sometimes gently, and lying side by side damp, sweaty, naked, satisfied and tired on the mattress spread out on a rainbow-coloured nomadic kilim that covers the floor of the room, they experience the serene happiness of a cat that has stretched itself out in the sun.

One can also reach Jiyan’s house by a wooden staircase from the depot behind the chemist’s shop, through a door hidden by a cupboard with shelves. The main door to the building is in the back street. Looking at the building from the outside, it is difficult to imagine that the interior can be so large and luxurious. Jiyan’s flat is nothing like the houses typical of the town’s notables. Having prepared himself for ornate, tasteless heavy brocade armchairs, gilded suites of furniture, carved sideboards stuffed with crystal and silverware and elaborate lace cloths, Ömer is surprised to be greeted by the restful aesthetics of simplicity and emptiness. In the huge sitting-room there are only a few pieces of furniture: in one corner a plain white sofa and armchairs; in the middle, a large, long dining-table with a cream-coloured cloth decorated with white pearls and simple white embroidery; against the wall, a solid wooden sideboard with hand-carved tulips in the corners; in the opposite corner, huge cushions with colourful flowers hand embroidered on white and scattered all around the cushions, newspapers and magazines … This must be Jiyan’s corner.

One wall of the room where they now lie side by side, naked and content, is taken up by a wooden cupboard of many doors resembling the closets of old mansions. In the middle of the cupboard is a recessed section designed as a dressing-table. There is a mirror behind two wooden panels that open out on either side and are decorated with pretty flower pictures. Immediately below it is the wide shelf that Jiyan uses as a dressing-table, with rings, pots of creams, makeup, combs and brushes and in front a small stool. And then there is this large comfortable mattress spread with snow-white linen sheets on the floor.

When he first arrived and she was showing him around her home, Jiyan had said, ‘For me, mattresses and cushions on the floor are essential items. I brought the kilims, the embroidered cushions and so on from the mansion in the village, I mean, from home and also the doors of the cupboard in the bedroom. Did you notice the panels of the mirror? In my father’s village was a young man. He used to draw and paint pictures on paper, cardboard, wood, whatever he could lay his hands on. If he couldn’t find anything else he would make figures with small stones on the dry earth. I bought him lots and lots of paint, oils and watercolours in many colours, and coloured pencils. It was he who painted the flowers on the panels of the mirror. They are lovely aren’t they?’

She stopped talking and ruefully attempted a smile. ‘I miss the village, the mansion with forty rooms … Of course, it didn’t have forty rooms, but that’s how it was known. In my great grandfather’s time it was described as quite palatial. That’s why it’s still known in the area as “the mansion”. The family also call it that. I miss the people, my animals and the countryside. I was able to live in the village only for a very short time. Sometimes I wonder whether it was all a beautiful dream. You know there are some dreams that you can’t get enough of, and as soon as you wake up you close your eyes again wanting them to continue. Were those days a dream like that?’

When he asked why she did not go to the village very often and what had happened to the mansion, she had said with the same sad, soft voice, ‘The village was evacuated. It was because of a disagreement within the clan. My father had already left the village anyway. The family had moved here, to the town. But we used to go back in the summers. There are mountain pastures, it’s cool: the air and the water — everything is good. Then when war broke out my family refused to join the militia. Don’t imagine that it was because they were on the side of the rebels on the mountain. Being part of the militia is considered collaboration. That really would not be in keeping with clan law. Besides, contrary to what one would expect, it would be dangerous. When they refused to join the militia, pressure from the state increased. The rebels on the mountain thought they had found an easy prey and began harassing them. In other words, there was no peace any more, and everyone migrated. After that the military evacuated the village. My father also had houses in the town, but they loved the village and the mountain pastures. They were their — how should one say it? — their kingdoms. In our parts, whether you are a clan leader, a khan or an agha you are lost in the town, your sultanate lies in the countryside.’

‘What happened to the boy who did pictures, who painted the panels of this mirror? Tell me something cheerful. Tell me that he studied art, he became an artist, that he holds exhibitions!’

‘Became an artist? … The things we suffer here are too painful to make light of. Fairytales are not real. People do not attain their desires and live happily ever after. It was better in the past, before the war. There were people from this region, the villages, who got somewhere, but now…’

He saw that the young woman’s eyes had become misty and that her lips were trembling slightly, and he regretted his thoughtless words.

‘The boy who painted pictures is dead. One cannot become an artist here. Depending on one’s background and nature, one becomes a guerrilla, a terrorist, a traitor, a separatist, a collaborator, a martyr or an informer. Or you are captured dead. You are going to be angry with me again, and you are going to say don’t politicize instances of oppression or injustice, and don’t fight for your right to justice. Well, how do we fight for our rights? We have only our dead, our suffering and our privation.’

What impressed Ömer was the extreme sensitivity, the defiant fragility, the heat of a volcano about to erupt that was concealed beneath Jiyan’s hard shell, her serene poise. When she became excited, emotional — and the smallest incident, a word used randomly or a memory were enough for her to get excited and emotional — a shadow would pass across her eyes, the left corner of her mouth would twitch slightly and lift, and her long, slim fingers adorned with silver rings of multi-coloured jewels would begin to tremble imperceptibly. What had she been through, what had she witnessed, what had she left behind? He did not know. Was she really so mysterious? Or was she just a charming, pretty woman, and was Ömer writing the scenario with his writer’s imagination and his own troubled mind? Her harsh, clipped eastern accent that to someone else might seem unattractive, her speeches that resembled theatrical tirades and which bordered on affectation, her enigmatic silences were all a part of her. When local women who came to the chemist’s shop to buy medicine, to have their blood pressure taken or to ask for advice, and men in local dress resembling that of the peshmergas, young girls with or without headscarves began to speak to the chemist or Jiyan Abla in their own language, he realized how much a part of the community she was, and he was astonished. When Jiyan passed them in the street, the men raised their right hands to their chests and greeted her with an exaggerated respect peculiar to the region. Sometimes the women asking for a cure for their troubles or an ointment for their wounds would hug and kiss her, sometimes take her hand in theirs and lovingly hold it fast. No, Jiyan was not merely the product of his poetical fancy, the heroine of a novel that he had created influenced by the strange mental state into which he had descended. She was the fruit and the essence of this wild impenetrable land whose soul and mystery was impervious to invasion. A unique and cherished fruit, a beautiful and splendid essence.