Oya Baydar - The Lost Word

‘The snow on Mortepe has started to melt,’ says the man. ‘The glaciers won’t melt that easily, but global warming has come to our land.’ Then he notices Ömer’s welling curiosity and adds: ‘I know you, Ömer Bey, but I haven’t introduced myself yet. I did not want to do so in front of the hotel employee. Here words can easily be misinterpreted. There is no need for everyone to know everything about a person’s business either. Sometimes information brings danger in its wake. My name is Diyar. I’m a relative of Jiyan Hanım. Or, rather, I’m the son of her murdered husband.’

‘I had no idea,’ mumbles Ömer. ‘She told me that her husband had been killed — that was all.’

‘I know. She does not like to talk about it. She loved my father very much, and my father loved her, too. Their marriage lasted a short time. Only five years. It was the worst phase of this ongoing dirty war.’

He stops talking. He breaks off the story at the most exciting place, like a professional storyteller. Suddenly Ömer has the feeling that Diyar knows about his relationship with Jiyan, that he is trying to pass on a message and that Jiyan wishes him to do so. But he does not want to be the first to speak. He pretends to be engrossed in the redness of the setting sun reflected on the water, the rocks and the mountains.

‘Magical sights, aren’t they? Whenever I see the setting sun reflected on the mountains I feel that I’m in a fairytale world. This view must be one of the reasons for my returning to this land and not leaving it.’

‘Aren’t you from here?’

‘I don’t exactly know where a person’s homeland is. Is it the place where they are born, in which they grow up or the place they return to? I don’t know.’

‘Which is the place you’ve returned to?’

‘I suppose it’s here. The east of the east…’

‘Where did you get that expression from? I’m sorry, it’s a phrase that I use. I mean, it’s not mine, though, and I don’t know where I borrowed it from.’

‘My father used to say it. In one of his books he mentions this region as “the most east of the east”.’

‘Your father’s books…’

‘Yes, he wrote quite a few. On the Kurdish language, Kurdish history, Kurdish literature. You must have heard of him.’ He mentions a name that Ömer remembers from his youth. ‘Didn’t Jiyan tell you my father’s name either?’

‘No. We rarely had such conversations. We have spoken mainly about the region and its people. I wanted to write something about the area.’

‘Every sympathetic westerner wants to write about the region and our problems. I was born in Diyarbakır, but I grew up in Sweden. I’m one of the children of the Kurdish Diaspora following 1980. In Sweden people who consider themselves intellectual are curious about our region, the Kurds and Kurdistan. Some just from sympathy, from their devotion to human rights, to pay blood money for the prosperity of the west; some to manipulate the balance in the region. But all of them look through their own glasses and write what they see distorted in this way. And they give us advice. Not just the Swedes, of course, I mean all westerners. Please don’t be offended, I wasn’t referring to you. However, to be able to write about this area you have to understand the spirit of the place, to feel it inside. I have been here for four or five years now. My roots are in this land, but even I cannot say that I have been entirely able to comprehend it as yet.’

‘Forgive me, I’m asking you because you broached the subject. Your father and Jiyan Hanım … Was it in Sweden? I mean, I haven’t quite got the hang of it … it seemed a little complicated. Was your mother Swedish?’

‘It’s not complicated. In fact it is simpler than the plots of your novels. My mother is from Diyarbakır. My father is from further east, from around here. I, too, was born in Diyarbakır. Then when the soldiers came in 1980 Diyarbakır and the whole of the east became hell. My parents had to escape and went to Sweden as political refugees. At the time I was six or seven, I can remember our arrival by plane. It was the first time I had boarded one.’

‘And, after that, your father and Jiyan, I mean how did he meet her?’

‘It was a love story. At the time I was a young lad of nineteen or twenty. Jiyan had come to visit her elder brother in Sweden. We used to visit them as a family. My father met Jiyan by chance at their home. He was over fifty then. And as for Jiyan — I don’t know whether I have to explain — she was young and quite enchanting. Don’t get me wrong. My father was not particularly interested in women. He was still married to my mother, and in Sweden there are plenty of beautiful women. All the same, my father had eyes only for his work and research. But Jiyan, especially at that age, was more than just beautiful. Now I understand it better. In those days I was an adolescent preoccupied with northern blondes. My father said, “It’s as though the essence of my country, its heart, mystery and rebellion have come together in this woman. Jiyan is not just a beautiful woman but a country; the country from which I was thrown out, that I left, the country I long for.” It seemed to me too romantic or even rather maudlin at the time. I was angry, too, because he left my mother. Now I understand what he meant.’

He is silent for a moment. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t be telling you all this seeing that Jiyan has not told you herself.’

They leave the deep valley and turn on to an earthen track. The last shafts of light from the setting sun strike the steep cliffs. Like opposing mirrors the granite rocks reflect the light back and forth.

‘We’re almost there,’ says the young man. ‘There is a checkpoint a kilometre further on. If we can reach it before the sun sets, we can pass. Otherwise they close the road. They haven’t quite evacuated everywhere here. Officially it hasn’t been named as such yet, but after the last period of tension, the explosions and operations it has long since been a forbidden zone.’

The days are long, twilight has not yet fallen. They reach the point before sunset. It is a long wait. Papers, identity cards. ‘Open the boot!’ ‘Where have you come from?’ ‘Where are you going?’ … Questions asked in harsh, commanding, scornful voices. Ömer has now learnt to keep quiet in such situations, to hand over his identity card and wait in a corner. Like the skilful actors in a play that has been well rehearsed, the people here know the questions, the answers, the gestures, where to be silent and where to speak.

The leading office at the checkpoint — he must be a junior officer or a military police officer — gives the command in a deep voice with the air of a general. ‘Pass! Next time you are this late I won’t let you through. Go on, get going!’ They make slow progress along the deteriorating road, full of potholes and stones, in the four-by-four that Ömer later realizes is armoured. They spot a clump of trees that seems to jump out at them from among the rocks as they take a bend.

‘We’re here!’

When Elif returned to the hotel she was pretty drunk. It was a night that began with champagne and ended with champagne. And, to top it all, the superb French wines that were drunk in between. By northern standards Le Coq Rouge was an excellent French restaurant. Her date really knew about food and drink. Was that all? His command of his scientific field was not to be sneezed at either. They spent half the night talking about their research, the latest findings in genetics and, of course, the resulting ethical questions. What she liked about the man was his talking with her as an equal — not patronizing her.

As she took off first her trousers and then the lilac blouse, her eye caught on the full-length mirror on the door of the wardrobe. She took off her tights designed to make her look slimmer than she really was, that squeezed in her stomach and her bottom and the specially cut bra that showed off her breasts to their best advantage. She examined her body objectively. Not bad at all for a 52-year-old! ‘My youthful wife,’ Ömer used to say as they made love. His words, his caresses, his closeness gave her far deeper pleasure during sexual union than the physical enjoyment. He used to say, ‘You make love with your brain.’ She never worked out whether this was a compliment or whether he was teasing her. She used to imagine Ömer knowing women who made love with their bodies, their whole beings, perhaps abandoning themselves to their basic instincts like animals, and comparing them with her, and then she would be upset.