Oya Baydar - The Lost Word

Ömer is surprised at himself. He wants to apologize to all the women he has known and loved, especially to Elif — to his wife to whom he thought he was inseparably bound. No, not because he loves someone else — Jiyan is not someone else — but because he has grasped that what he offered them as passion, as love and desire was a lie with which he tricked himself, not them. In any case, what were all those women who had come and gone in his life other than the satisfaction of his male ego that was so utterly inflated by his fame and success? But Elif was different. She was the strong safe lap of youthful years when we ran flat out in pursuit of a revolution we had no doubts about, our shared ideas, the plane tree I rested my back against, the mother of my son. For a long time there has been no passion but essentiality, necessity. He feels depressed by these thoughts, but he no longer feels guilt. Elif would understand this; she would understand that this feeling is not directed at her, does not take anything away from her, does not belittle her. She would understand that the nameless, indescribable, irresistible attraction that I feel for Jiyan has clinched its own place, its own meaning and bound her more strongly to me.

Would she really understand? No, no man or woman would understand, and even if they did they wouldn’t acknowledge it. I’m making all this up to comfort myself, to live for today. I want it to be like this. I’m resisting reality. Jiyan never asked about my wife. It’s of no importance to her. In fact, I’m not very important to her either. She is not jealous because she doesn’t feel as though she is sharing love and passion with another woman. She lives in the moment; she keeps it alive. Then she returns to her own world that she never reveals and whose narrow door and tiny window she doesn’t leave ajar which is hidden behind her thick black eyebrows. Just like this town. Strangers cannot fathom Jiyan or get through to the realities of that world, its secrets and its fears.

He knows that he should escape from her magnetic field immediately and from this frightening, magical, strange town before being carried away and sinking completely, before leaping over the threshold of no return. If he were to take his small case and board the first coach, jump on the first plane to take off from the nearest airport to his own land, his own world, if he were to return to himself … If he were to return to his wife, to his son who still gave him hope of returning to life, to his readers queuing at his book-signing days, to his arrogant intellectual circle so pleased with themselves and full of their public image, to the comfort brought by alcohol, the lethargy of emptiness, the meaninglessness of life … Before it is too late, before all his bridges both inside and out are entirely burnt?

He knows very well that he will not return, that these questions are an attempt to purge his conscience. He knows it, but he is trying to deceive himself. He finds fault not with Jiyan but with Mahmut and Zelal, the mountains, the region and the town for leading him astray, for enticing him. Sometimes he thinks: put Jiyan in the middle of Istanbul and she would at most be a fairly pretty countrywoman. And if she began to speak she would be a baci from the other country. But in these lands, under this sky, in the shadow of these snowy peaks, with the secrets that envelop her like mist, with the invisible halo that she carries like a crown, and with the power of the mountains and the traditions that have filtered down through the centuries, she becomes Jiyan. She becomes life. Ömer likes this new life whose door he has pushed ajar. With Jiyan he is reborn from being burnt out. It is as though he is going back many years, to youth, to hope, and perhaps to the word he lost. As he tries to penetrate the depths of the town, to reach its soul, to hear its scream, Jiyan and the town intermingle; they overlap. The secret that entwines them both, that renders them unattainable does not manifest itself to the stranger, be he lover or friend. The moment he thinks he has lifted the curtain, town and woman withdraw into themselves. They take on the identity of an ordinary town, an ordinary woman. The stranger remains outside the shell that he feels he will not be able to pierce. Or it seems like that to the stranger.

Yet in appearance both Jiyan and the town are so welcoming, so inviting, so friendly that Ömer sometimes has doubts about himself. Or am I making all this up? Is it all about me, a man in his fities going through a mid-life crisis, Jiyan, a small-town widow, and the town, a poor underdeveloped eastern town? Am I making up a love story, a legend of the east to overcome burn-out, the boring routine of life, to be able to write again?

He wanders around the streets, strokes the stray dogs, greets the tradesmen and spends time in the coffee house. The owner now knows that he drinks his coffee without sugar and that he likes a glass of water with it. He is delighted that ‘our author’ has come. Even those who have not even heard of his name until now, who haven’t seen one of his books, call him ‘our author’. People talk about him. Pupils come and ask for his autograph. Because they are not able to find his books they have his autograph in their school notebooks or the girls have it in their diaries. They part from him giggling with delight. Although it is not his custom he has a shave at the barber’s just for a chat. He visits the town hall and talks to the mayor. He goes to the Culture and Solidarity Association and then, to be even-handed, he goes to the District Governorship and drinks tea with the Governor and listens to his complaints. When the Commander asks, he does not decline his invitation to have a drink and a chat. When evening comes and darkness falls and the sinister armed special force in camouflage and snow masks begin their daily display of terror in the streets that open on to the market square, he realizes that he is not intimidated as he was on the first day and that he has got used to it. They are all a part of the town and its secret: the key to the puzzle. It is only the town’s cats that he has not yet got to know. Cats are in the streets, in the shops, on the walls, in front of the doors, everywhere. When you approach them they disappear; they vanish into thin air, become invisible. Or are the cats the carriers of the secret? he thinks sometimes, laughing at himself. This idea would please Elif. She is a cat person. She always used to say that without knowing each individual cat and its nature you don’t really know a place; you haven’t made it your home. I haven’t been able to get to know the cats. I haven’t yet become part of this place. The cats do not disclose the town’s and Jiyan’s secrets. They hide them in the quivering of their whiskers.

Even though it appeared that everyone including the Commander, the hotel-keeper, the Governor, the cassette-seller, the organization and the military had believed the rumour that he had come here to write a book, he knows that in fact no one really believes it and that everyone has a different story about him. For them I am also a mystery. And what about Jiyan? Does she know, does she understand why I am here and why I didn’t leave within a few days?

She never asked why I was here. In any case Jiyan did not really ask any questions. Once, when he had not been able to cope with things and had asked himself out loud, ‘Why am I here?’, she had said, ‘To seek and to cleanse your heart.’

‘What am I seeking?’

‘What is missing … What you had and then lost.’

What I had and lost: my youth, my enthusiasm, my dreams of self-sacrifice and revolution, my vision of a better future — well, we were going to save the whole world, all mankind, weren’t we? — my son who became a stranger and slipped from my heart and … and the word.